Top 30 Albums of the Decade- Part 6

5. LCD Soundsystem- 2005

Now we get to the really good stuff. In LCD Soundsystem's debut album James Murphy and company create one of the most versatile albums out there. Where as groups like TV on the Radio and the like manage to approach multiple genres within a single album, LCD does it in a single song, with so many tracks creating a perfect harmony between rock, techno, and pop. James Murphy bounces between an emotionally drained individual as in tracks like “Never as Tired as When I'm Waking Up”, too an apathetic and sterile dance fueled android in tracks like “Too Much Love”. “Daft Punk is Playing at My House” is the kind of heading pounder you wanna playing along with if you have a guitar, yet its still my favorite song to hear in a club. “Tribulations” has an ominous robotic quality to its sound, but is accompanied by very personable lyrics. “Movement” has a somewhat slow build up to it, but then descends in to a slurry sleazy punk realm. “Loosing My Edge”, in particular is a track that needs to be studied. No single song this decade was encapsulated what has happened to music, and what it means to be a fan. 20 years ago, you could spend ages scouring every record store and garage sale to build an evermore complete record collection. Such commitment meant something, that you really cared about the medium; it made you cool. Today, any kid can spend a couple hours googling some bands and wind up with more b-sides and unreleased tracks than their parents ever had. How are these people better informed and cooler than people like himself, Murphy laments. And the worst part is he realizes, they're all actually kind of nice people. Luckily this album is very cool, and listening to it will make you cool too!

Best Tracks- Daft Punk is Playing at My House, Tribulations, Never as Tired as When I'm Waking up, Loosing My Edge

4. The Strokes- Is This It?- 2001

For some reason, The Strokes became the most polarizing figures in music for the time after their release of Is This It? Some said they were dopey brats that got lucky, others said they had saved rock and roll. I fall closer to the latter category. I don't think they saved rock music, but they along with the White Stripes, helped it survive and remain relevant for at least another 5 years or so. What's interesting is that that is far from what Julian Casablancas and company were trying to do as their music was so effortlessly carless and nonchalant it seems preposterous that they had some grand scheme behind it all; by comparison, they make Vampire Weekend look like they are trying really hard. And that what was so refreshing about this album when it released. Do you remember what rock was like back than? The engaging and thought provoking malcontents that were Rage Against the Machine, Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails had long since fallen by the wayside to be replaced by monotonous godawful moan fests about trivial matters from groups like Nickelback, Popa Roach, who ever else was popular in 2000. Then The Strokes came along; their music was fun, breezy, refreshing. Julian had a slurry unrehearsed voice that lacked polish, and that was just fine. They didn't need any stupid message in their song, instead they filled it with zany non sequiters and inside jokes about life as privileged New Yorkers. By truly working together as group instead of letting a prima donna vocalist gum up the works they made 13 instantly likeable and catchy tunes. “Someday” evokes such a strong sense of nostalgia, even though your listening to something that never happened to you; “Hard To Explain” has one of the best openings, best guitar hooks, best chorus, best everything that came out that year; If you don't love “Last Night” for its grungy, spastic simplicity, then you're no fun. One should stop thinking about this albums impact and just enjoy it for what it was.

Best Tracks- The Modern Age, Someday, Last Night, Hard to Explain

3. Of Montreal- Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?- 2007

While I may get really annoyed when people say they don't like bands like Radiohead or the like, I can't really fault a person for not liking Of Montreal. They are undeniably weird. They are the Mad Hatter of music; extremely chipper and enthusiastic, but in a very bizarre almost unsettling way. Hissing Fauna is by far the best of their work and very stylisticly separate from their other albums. Where as previous and future LPs are kinda all over the place, Hissing Fauna instead focuses on one singular and particularly awful event in singer Kevin Barnes life; each song represents one stage in the long messy process of dealing with it. “She's a Rejector” is inconsolable rage at the person who did this to him. “Gronlondic Edit” represents a first attempt to be pretend to be over it and finding something else to focus on (religion? Friends?). “Cato as a Pun” is complete and utter depression and giving up on pretty much everything. “A Sentence of sorts in Kongsvinger” is excitement over using this experience to make a better person of one's self. “We Were Born the Mutants Again With Leafing” is finally achieving acceptance and “Labrinthian Pomp” is actually getting yourself out there and learning to have fun again. Yes, the track names are very strange. And the music isn't in chronological order creating a sort of Tarantino-esque puzzle for you to try and rearrange All the tracks are very poppy; even the depressing ones. They're all very glossy, which is sort of a contrast to their more low fi methods found in early work. While previous influences came from more traditional 60s pop rock, here we see heavy influence from artists like Prince, and it works very well. All of this would make Hissing Fauna a great album, but its because of one song, “The Past is A Grotesque Animal”, that it's one of my favorite. The 11 minute monolithic centerpiece to the entire album, “The Past is a Grotesque Animal” begins with an ominous sense of dread, builds steadily towards its climax and then explodes at the end with a sound that can best be described as flying saucers on fast forward. Chronologically, this track is one of the closest to the occurrence of the aforementioned yet non descript event. As a result Barnes, is borderline incoherent with a blend of despair, rage, fear, and confusion; and he spends the song slowly but surely purging himself from all of this creating one of my favorites sets of lyrics ever in a song. So ya, its pretty weird.

Best Tracks- Suffer for Fashion, Gronlondic Edit, The Past is a Grotesque Animal, We Were Born the Mutants Again with Leafing

2. Yeah Yeah Yeahs- Show Your Bones- 2006

For all the blistering savagery of their first LP, people were mostly caught off guard by the stylings of Show Your Bones. Much of it was actually quite reserved with Karen O saving her violent outbursts for only certain occasions instead of screaming the whole time. With this album the group showed they weren't just some cacophonous one trick pony and that “Maps” wasn't some anomalous abnormality. Rather, O showed that genuine sincerity was actually something she excelled at, as shown on tracks like “Dudley” and “Turn In To”. This change in direction turned some people off certainly, but I really enjoyed it. Sure, there are still plenty of loud nasty tracks like “Phenomena” and “Mysteries”; and they're really great. But I don't consider them to be the albums high points. Rather I prefer tracks like “The Sweets” and “Warrior”, for these show Karen O's greatest strength; her ability to start of as quiet and even timid, then without any notice drastically and abruptly explode into a roaring beast. Lyrically this is also a wonderful album. It's mostly very non literal and extremely vague. This is by design I believe; I read in an interview with O once that she thought that lyrics tend to age very poorly, especially if they revolve around the specifics. For that reason her lyrics are intentionally vague. She speaks in abstracts and mysterious metaphors, describing events in terms of colors in “The Sweets”. In “Turn In To”, she says she wants to become like someone else and something else, but she doesn't reveal who or what or why; instead all you can do is take her enthusiastic and optimistic word for it. It's simple but its one of my favorite songs in terms of just lyrics. “Gold Lion” exemplifies everything I just said that was good about this album. She tells a bizarre story of what can perhaps be best described as being possessed, and as such she does seem like two different people in the song. A restrained slightly anxious person, and a terrifying monster howling at the moon by the end. It's one of my favorite songs ever and easily the best thing this band has ever done.

Best Tracks- Gold Lion, The Sweets, Warrior, Turn In To

1. LCD Soundsystem- Sound of Silver- 2007

“All My Friends” is my favorite song ever. It starts with a lightning fast piano beat best likened to the musical equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. The song for nearly all of its 7 minute span, is driven forward by James Murphy's vocals as he tries to explain through small pieces of stories and his own history what it is like to be forced to grow up. Not the simplistic benin denotation of such a concept, such as having to pay bills and not being able to stay out till 4 getting shit faced. But instead being forced to take stock of who you are and find out what pieces of yourself you want to endure and what pieces you must regretfully let go of, even if they were the best parts of yourself. It has my favorite set of lyrics, more so than “The Past is a Grotesque Animal” by Of Montreal or “Turn Into” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It's extremely personable and relatable (“if the sun comes and we still down wanna stagger home/ then it's the memory of our betters that are keeping us on our feet”) and it forces you to realize one day you too will be faced with such a dilemma. It concludes with Murphy, using what seems to be a single massive breath of air, forcing a grand climatic finale to it all, then it quickly dies off.

Someone Great is also in my top ten all time favorite songs. It consists of this uniquely inquisitive and compelling computerized beat, that's so full and rich sounding that your almost surprised that the song even needed lyrics when Murphy starts singing (actually its an abbreviated version of what was originally a purely instrumental track) Again, Murphy shows himself to be extremely adept at writing as the song describes the departure of someone; something that is so hard for him to discuss, that he actually can't. Instead, the best he can do is to focus on the peripheries of the event, things like the weather that day, the coffee he had, hearing a phone ring. By using everyday occurrences as a means to situate himself in such a volatile moment, he is able to avoid being completely disoriented. There is a lot going on in Sound of Silver

One of the things I find so compelling about this album is that, more so than most of albums of this time, James Murphy and company take pop music and present it in a way that is not only interesting but meaningful; as if it was a genre that was capable of real depth. This is a concept that has at worst not been seriously considered since the early 90s and at best not successfully communicated since the same time. This is a real shame since pop, (all of its trend following minutia not withstanding) is a genre that has an incredible amount of versatility, and LCD Soundsystem utilizes this to its fullest. At times it is remorseful and contemplative. In “New York I Love You But Your Bringing Me Down”, Murphy laments what has happened to the city that once inspired him. it is also aggressive and confrontational. In “North American Scum” he attempts to apologize for a post Bush America, but instead comes off as having way to much fun in his excuses that he comes to be emboldened and proud of their brash flaws, with a grungy and brazen beat to follow suit. Nearly every song is brilliant for one reason or another. Nancy Wang's dead pan vocals at the end of the mysterious “Get Innocuous” are perfect. Murphy yelling at the top of his lungs in “Us V. Them” about being drunk and lonely, and still sounding entirely triumphant about it is awesome, especially after the slow methodical build up to that point makes you think that point will never come. “New York I Love You” was the best way to end the album. It starts out slow and sedate making you think the album will fade away quietly then it kicks in with a roaring cacophonous guitar and Murphy claiming that he might just be right about everything he said and then Sound of Silver burns out. Just we you think its done, they actually play themselves off the stage.

Best Tracks- North American Scum, Someone Great, All My Friends, New York I love But You're bringing me down

Review: M.I.A.- MAYA

In attempting to navigate my way through the nuances and mysteries of M.I.A.'s new album, I grew concerned that I would be woefully incapable of separating my thoughts on its content from my increasingly scathing view of her character. After all, people don't like M.I.A. anymore. Who was once a mysterious and distanced observer of the absurdity of pop culture in a world that cultivates constant warfare and atrocities, has now been swallowed by the most superficial and banal elements of it. More concerning, she has taken the scope of her world view, formally aimed at intriguing dichotomies and anathemas, and turned it narcissisticly inwards on herself. With all the animosity she has excessively garnered, would any of that negativity unfairly crossover into what should be an unbiased critique of an artistic endeavour? Alas, such fears appear to be moot, as there is plenty to MAYA in it's own right to make you not like it.

To understand just what the hell went wrong, one must first grasp the multiple shifts in focus and theme M.I.A. has made here. Whereas Arular and Kala were both studies in how two vastly disparate cultures- the war torn third world, and the over privileged globalized world- struggle to mesh together, MAYA has a more mono-thematic approach. This is an album about the culture of the internet; just look at the bloody album cover. While this may seem needlessly abstract at first, such a mission translates tangibly into the music and sounds we are subjected to. Rather than represent the wonders of the digital age for all its expansive, creative, and bold contributions it has made to music, she instead chooses the guttural route of engaging in all the unfocused, unstructured, and fractured noise that also creeps through the tubes. As a result, this album is a aural mess. Random sounds, noises, and barely audible distractions are haphazardly and lazily pieced together into a jumbled forest of distortion. There are some interesting and discernible melodies, such as the faux metal hook in “Steppin Up”. But it is buried under, smothered even, by aimless cacophony. “Lovealot” starts off promising as M.I.A. effortlessly shows her talent for stringing together vocal slurs that have an almost onomatopoeic quality (it sounds like a slowed down “XR2”). However it doesn't take her long to get bored and throw away all coherence in favour of clashing factory-house noises that have no business in the song. One wonders if M.I.A. listened to the brilliant “Clavda” by Bjork- a song where a seemingly randomized string of noises are reined in and molded in to an engaging melody. M.I.A. has the random part down, but seriously over estimated her capacity to fulfil the terms of the all important second part.

By crafting an album around internet phraseology and decorum, her sound has lost its softer organic quality, in favour of sterile artificiality. The Bohemian, Rastafarian, and African vibes and instruments are frustratingly absent, only to be replaced by... the sound of visceral banging on metal sheets and buzzing chainsaws? One notable exception is “It Takes a Muscle”; it has a casually laid back Hawaiian quality, and is unsurprisingly her at her most genuine and sincere. It also benefits from a semblance of recognizable pacing, which apparently M.I.A. is too trendy for now. So many songs brazenly insert musical oddities, abruptly segue from one poorly conceived musical experiment to another, or most annoyingly, just stop without warning or reason. Its as if these songs were constructed not only with an elitist disdain for structure, but for what is palatable to the ears.

While this album certainly carries an offensive grating sound it, what is even more distressing is its lyrical content; or lack thereof. M.I.A. showed with previous work, she can craft insightful, thought provoking, and distinctly unique lyrics. She used her position as a person that was acutely aware of the vast differences between the 3^rd and 1^st world to highlight them. In “M.I.A” She spends one line talking about texting from her Nokia and the next blasting the corruption of the democratic political process. In “Amazon” she relaxingly paints her nails and leisurely sips on a cocktail, only to then be held hostage in the rainforest. By playing these two divergent streams of thought off of each other she provided a n interesting commentary and forced us to look at our lives in a different light, if only for a few seconds. Now, she likes tweeting from her iphone and is pissed that her internet connection is down. She has lost all communion and interest in her roots and has fully embraced the vapid culture she once subtly mocked. How did she go from conveying the absurdity and horrors of torture in songs like “Sunshowers” and “$20” to playing around with Gossip Girl memetics in “XXXO”?

She spends less time on this album trying to describe the things she has seen and learned and the experiences of others; Remember “Mango Pickle Down River”? That was a great story. Growing ever more narcissistic she instead uses the album to talk about herself as much as possible. “Story To Be Told” has her almost complaining that no one is telling her story in a seemingly victimized manner. Didn't she already tell her story in “Paper Planes”? Didn't the New York Times tell her story? And everybody hated it. She named her last two albums after intriguing and mysterious figures that exist either in her memories or her dreams. For christ sakes, she named this album after herself, with a cover that places her vestige at the proverbial center of the goddamn internet. I'm not convinced she is entirely a lost cause however; after all “Born Free” is a good song. That silly video aside (its not a subtle political message, its about as blunt as Mr. Mackey saying “drugs are bad”, m'kay), it shows that she still has a few not entirely self centered things left in her to say. Interestingly, at one point she says, “with a nose to the ground, I found my sound”. When she once again pays attention to the world around her she has something interesting to say. Its no surprise that this song is by far the most energetic song in the collection with an actually interesting fuzzed out base hook.

M.I.A. has taken the credibility and benefit of the doubt that two brilliant prior outings has afforded her and used it to callously test the boundaries of her creative licence and what listeners will blissfully tolerate. In MAYA, she has violently crashed into those boundaries spilling and splaying a torrent of poorly crafted ideas, unfinished thoughts, and an egotistical and impatient demeanour over the shores of a culture she was so sure she understood. I can think of nothing more beneficial for M.I.A. than the backlash that MAYA has already wrought upon her.

Review: Arcade Fire- The Suburbs

Just in case you thought the summer had been too carefree and breezy, the Arcade Fire are back; and to no one's surprise, they're still damn good. With their third LP the group takes aim at the disaffecting concept of life in the suburbs. With the first track the tone is set for an album with a razor sharp focus and conflicting sense of grandeur and sedation. Songs often carry a calm serene vibe in certain aspects and barley stable, yet still controlled spasms in others. Notice the blitzkrieg tempo of “Ready to Start”, in conjunction with his demoralizingly calm tone. In “The Suburbs” we are treated to a quaint, folksy piano line and Win Butler's voice that is weighted down by borderline terrified sense of anxiety; and slowly but surely the tune adapts to him- very well done. The group appears to be trying to encapsulate the boring drudgery that stigmatizes the suburbs with unbridled and untaped creativity and emotion that they have proven to be so adeptly in tune with.

The album as a whole seems to carry the grandiose vibe similar to Funeral that was somewhat lost in Neon Bible for a leaner, more streamlined, but ultimately less fulfilling sound. Even slower tracks like “Rococo” seem to grow and rise above you with a growing sense of blunt dread.With the suburbs, the group actually takes a step away from some of their classical stylings at times. Violin is in several instances replaced by high scale pop synthesizers. This is particularly noticeable in the underlying beat of “Rococo” and the main melody of the “Sprawl II”. Its subtle maneuvering but one that garners great returns. As with the previous albums, this one benefits from mostly great pacing. More methodically directed tunes such as “The Suburbs” and “Modern Man” fit well with with tracks that fly forward at such a speed that you can barely keep up like “Empty Room” and “Month of May”. “Month of May” is actually a terrific track that got overshadowed by “The Suburbs” when they were both released earlier in the year; it evokes a sort of “Go With the Flow” by Queens of the Stone Age vibe. The pacing does suffer a bit in the middle as if the group is saving their waning energy for the climatic conclusion. Then again any 16 song album is bound to suffer from the occasional long in the tooth syndrome.

Regine Chassagne isn't featured enough in the album, but that was true of the other albums I suppose. Her voice is piercing yet maintains a soft edge somehow. She really needs a solo album. Luckily the album's best song, “Sprawl II” is all hers. Carrying melodic artifacts of recent work by MGMT and Hercules and Love Affair with a slightly staccato vocal track that is actually very reminiscent of Blondie, its a bit of a weird song. It burst and bubbles with bright eyed pop hooks and her perpetually energized wails and slurs. It perfectly encapsulates the stifling malaise of the suburbs, “They heard me singing but they told me stop/ quit these pretentious things and just punch a clock.” As with “In the Back Seat” she holds nothing back; belting out the words while still retaining a perfectly audible quality, free from any grizzled distortion.

As has become the hallmark thematic exploration with the group, Butler and co delve once more into to the increasingly contested issue of the nature of family. Butler seems less concerned about being a family man per say, rather he is pondering the implications and consequences of pursing a family in a world such as ours. He has approached this matter from multiple angles, all of them having a negative connotation, implying he still not comfortable with the life of normalcy that having a family often denotes. In Funeral the problem Butler approaches is obvious: if you have a family, you can loose it. Neon Bible observed the idea of religion, once thought to be a central foundation to a stable family, which has now been modernized and monetized into a perversion of its original intent and comfort. With The Suburbs, a key characteristic of the traditional family- the environment in which they are supposed to thrive in- is dissected and analysed. The results are disturbing to say the least. The groups conclusion seems to be that a life in the suburbs is one of stagnation, suffocation, a festering and contagious sense of boredom. The suburbs is an assault on the psyche for the sake of sheltering cohesion. They need to escape this. In “The Suburbs” we are encouraged to “move your feet from hot pavement and into the grass”. In the Sprawl II Chassagne is terrified of being surrounded by mountains of dead shopping malls. Butler says he wants, “to break the mirror of the modern man” freeing him from the confines and boarders that he is supposed to conform to by his mid 30s. Its powerful imagery and hearing the group progress through these deliemas traced back to the first album has been a rich and satisfying journey. This is a tightly cohesive trilogy of albums that feels stronger as a combined effort; that is saying a lot I believe.

The last track is short but sweet, but highly noteworthy for two reasons. It has the same beat from “The Suburbs”, only slowed down and repurposed. After months of listening to the first single on repeat as so many others have no doubt, it is highly refreshing to hear the melody in an altered state. More importantly and ominously is the subject matter, brief though it may be. Butler in a frail, exhausted, and defeated voice, achingly admits, “If I could have it back, all the time we'd wasted, I'd only waste it again” After the whole album and especially “The Sprawl II”, the proceeding song, we think that Butler has gotten to the core of his fear of a family life, but even after three albums he, regretfully, still hasn't. Knowing everything he has discovered in these exercises, he would still make the same tragic mistakes. Something is holding him back; and its not necessarily the taunting spectre of death, or the malignant corruption of religion. At the beginning of this album and throughout, Butler was so sure the suburbs were at the root of this fear, but by the end he is just as lost as ever. On the plus side, Arcade Fire will probably have to keep making albums as a result.

Song of the Week: "Round and Round" by Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti

Part Animal Collective, part Beck, part 70s New York porno-funk, Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti are distinct, to say the least. As they continue to garner more and more attention and accolades, it is becoming increasingly difficult not to listen them. To further compound this,, here is a track off their most recent album, Before Today, titled "Round and Round". Starting off with a quirky off beat funk riff, the song seems to wander in and out of, and side to side of a coherent stream; but its a fun stroll. As the lyrics and Pink's vocals seem to become ever more lost and disoriented, he eventually finds his direction; and we are treated to an epic yet strangely soothing and comforting chorus. Give it a listen.

Playlist: Euro Trip

So I spent the last three weeks or so in Europe: Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, and Germany. After about three days I became extremely irritable. I realized it was because I hadn't listened to any music since I left. So I decided to patch together a play list of the songs I listened to the most while abroad. Hit up the media player to give it a listen, or find links below to most of them. I guess it was wishful thinking to find any Gang of Four on YouTube.

Camera Obscura- Let's Get Out of this Country

-Pretty obvious place to start off with.

LCD Soundsystem- North American Scum

-The majority of the people I was traveling with were Aussies or kiwis- and the loved ripping on myself and the American. Europe in general wasn't too hot on us surprisingly. This song seemed appropriate therefore. Don't blame the Canadians!

Juan Maclean- The Future Will Come

-Definitely a euro trash, “take me to dance central” in a thick german accent kind of song. Haven't listened to it in a while; had it on repeat for much of the trip.

Berlin- Riding on a Metro

-To be played only when on trains, subways, and the like; or the entire duration of my Berlin visit.

The Flaming Lips- Powerless

-Being lost in a foreign city by yourself creates an understandable level of anxiety. Listening to this makes things so much worse. Very creepy, lots of fun when you want to scare yourself a little.

Of Montreal- Coquet Coquette

-This song at the time seemed to encapsulated the difficulties of trying to flirt with the locals through a rather broad language barrier. I should have just played them this.

The New Pornographers- Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk

-Addressing some of the issues brought up by the previous song, this track seemed particularly fitting when in Kiev.

Gang of Four- Guns Before Butter

-“The Fatherland is no place to die for”. I was in Russia; obvious choice.

LCD Soundsystem- Give it up

-When you run out of money and start seriously considering hooking in Lviv, this song helps.

Best Coast- Boyfriend

-This song really has nothing to do with traveling in Eastern Europe, but its summer! How can you not listen to this song right now?

Eagles of Death Metal- Secret Plans

-When your on no sleep, and its time to go out again, this song pumps you right up.

Peaches- Kick it

-Pretty much just for the last line.

LCD Soundsystem- Home

-Return trip only. Also, still the best song I've heard this year so far.