A Song...

...is never so good taken up again halfway through.

I mean, if you listen to a song on your ipod, walking into work or college or wherever, and you pause it halfway through because you arrive at your destination, and then perhaps an hour later you put your coat back on to brave the brutal snow once again, and switching on your ipod, the second half of that song comes on again, and it's suddenly only half as good. Know what I mean?

It might be because the damn thing's been playing on repeat in your head ever since.

Or it might be a partial confirmation of my suspicion that all songs are best at their beginnings.

P.O.S. + Blakroc = A.W.E.S.O.M.E.

With all the end of the decade fun I've been having, I have been neglecting some of the things that have happened in the previous year. I apologise, but I will make up for it a little bit today.

1) P.O.S.

If you're anything like me, you grew up on grunge, then worked backwards through the finest in American hardcore punk, before jumping into the 21st century via alternative rap. I understand that this is unlikely, but please bear with me. Remember the rap/rock crossover fest that was Walk this Way? Me too. Remember Puff Daddy (P Diddy?) vs. Dave Grohl on It's All About the Benjamins? No? Luckily I'm here to remember it for you wholesale. It was awesome. Now, follow me, if you will, on a flight of fancy. What if I was not good at maths, but instead was a RAP GOD! What kind of music would I make? Luckily, I don't need a time machine to head back through the ether to press a Public Enemy 12 inch into my 8 year old self's sweaty palms. No, the answer exists in the world as it is now. I believe, provided of course that I was a talented rap god (by no means guaranteed), that the music flowing from my mixing desk would sound something like P.O.S. Observe:



That drum beat reminds me, did you get the White Rabbits this year? Not sure about the album, and their London show was one of the more painful concert experiences of my life, but this single rocks with a hefty side of Awesome Sauce(tm):



Also, one thing we must never forget is that P.O.S. graced us with one of the world's greatest Pearl Jam covers. I love it:



2)Roots rock indie losers The Black Keys (to be fair to them, I only assumed that they were such based on maybe one song, and that appalling name), teamed up with some of the biggest names in rap and dropped a disc a couple of weeks ago that actually, amazingly, lives up to the (rop/rack)/(rap/rock) promise. So, despite the fact that they probably never dress in anything other than black, and never breathe in unless through the comforting mediating influence of a clove cigarette, I am forced to recommend them. Cheers, asshats:



PS: How it happened. If it happened in edited form.



PPS: 2009 was also a great year for sublegal mashups of indie music and rap. Observe:
Radiohead x Jay-Z = Jaydiohead
Sufjan Stevens + Who's who in alterna-rap

Best of the 2000s: Giant Sand: Chore of Enchantment

Before they went on to achieve unexpected success as Calexico, Joey Burns and John Convertino were firmly part of the revolving Tucson musical collective Giant Sand. Giant Sand is basically Howe Gelb and friends, and it would be hard to think of a man better equipped to be the centre of such an undertaking.

Even though I love Giant Sand, they are absolutely terrifying for the newcomer. They are very much a cult band, with seemingly hundreds of records released by different line-ups, and a thriving ecosystem of collaborators and side projects (including, by this point, pretty much anyone who is anyone in indie music). He also taught guitar to Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter for the harrowing Generation X art-film Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

Luckily for normal people who would prefer not to spend the whole of 2010 listening to an endless stream of Howe Gelb output (It's a fools errand, he will probably release enough material in 2010 to last you for 2011, and so on. You'll only be free when he dies.), Chore of Enchantment is a safe entry point to the Pandora's box which is the Gelb output. It contains all the things that make him himself: wordplay, eclecticism, deceptively simple guitar work and an endlessly roving intelligence, and condenses them into one digestible hour.

The album is, at heart, the most upbeat memorial album ever. It is bookended by tributes to Gelb's friend and former Giant Sand bandmate, slide guitar hero Rainer Ptacek. It contains some standout moments, including Shiver, a cute country ballad which was, bizarrely, used to score a Coke commercial.

I saw Gelb play a solo show in Aarhus, Denmark, where we both lived for some time in the early years of this decade. Gelb took more away than me, his current band is filled with musicians from the thriving jazz scene there. He had with him a CD player perched on top of his piano. He played random songs, and played along on the piano, or on his red guitar. The mistakes and missteps were part of the performance, as was the open stage where anyone could join him. That's Gelb in a nutshell, generous, eclectic and genius in equal parts.

C'mon, c'mon.



Wow, I've never seen that video before. How fine it is.

Best of the 2000s: Modest Mouse: The Moon and Antarctica

One of the concerns I have about doing this retrospective is that it will reveal me as what I am. Old. I am painfully aware that the selections I've made so far have all been from the first half of the decade, and I don't see that this is going to change a huge amount with subsequent additions.

A less old person might have chosen one of the more recent Modest Mouse records, Good News for People Who Love Bad News (excellent), or We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank (less so). The reality is, though, that my selection marks me as old in two ways:

1) I am old because I remember the first years of this decade. They are, in fact, my formative years. I was 19 when this record came out in the year 2000. 2000 still sounds like the future to me.

2) I am old because I still listen to some pieces of music as solid albums.

The Moon and Antarctica is much easier to type than Modest Mouse's other albums, but it also possesses other virtues. The key to my enjoyment of it is that it asks, no demands, to be played and enjoyed as an extended, cohesive whole, with all the thematic and musical coherence that that implies. Although it swerves drunkenly across genres from track to track, from spacey dream-rock to acoustic prettiness and back via some bass-led almost dance, it never feels like anything but a whole object. That makes it really difficult to select a representative track to post below, but it also makes it a wonderful example of a form which is gradually being lost in the wake of changes in the way music is being consumed. If I come across any of the individual tracks when I am randomly wandering through my music, it seems like a lost orphan, and I have to reunite it with its kin by playing the whole album. This is why I am happy to risk seeming old by recommending it; it is, I think, a rare enough thing to praise.

Albums of the Decade: At the Drive-In: Relationship of Command

Is that a Trojan horse on the cover? I like to think so. The new millennium started with a year of awesome, spine-melting, rock-punk; Queens of the Stone Age broke into the big time with Rated R, superficially a loud, stupid cock-rock album, ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead released Madonna (technically late 1999, but who's counting when there's a point to make?), superficially a punk album with proto-emo overtones and a side of snotty teenage rebellion, and, best of all, At the Drive-In dropped Relationship of Command, superficially the loudest, most drum-intensive thing ever to bleed out of your speakers at maximum volume. Of course, these dirty surfaces are deceptive: QOTSA are secretly very sophisticated, they create an stoned-desert atmosphere so thick it's like treacle, and Rated R contains a couple of Mark Lanegan's greatest vocal performances. ...AYWKUBTTOD have a real emotional bedrock, subtly underscored by the off-kilter music (see Mistakes and Regrets). But the biggest Trojan horse of all, of course, is Relationship of Command. Secretly, instead of the hammer it appears to be, it's a scalpel. A rocket-powered scalpel.

I remember seeing an At the Drive-In performance on Jools Holland (thanks, internet!). If they never did anything other than elicit the look of horror (sadly not on that YouTube clip) that crossed Robbie Williams' face when he realised that he would have to follow that crazily overpowered performance, I would love them. Happily for me, and also for people who missed that show, ATDI give use plenty of other reasons to love them. Firstly, RoC has, by far, the best opening 30 seconds of any album ever (featured below). Tribal drums plug directly into your animal instincts while a weird, super-treated, grinding guitar wobbles out an almost synth tone, shot through with feedback, but then, crucially, it stops. A lone bass bangs out a single note a few times, is answered by quiet piece of feedback, and then plaintively calls out again. This time the bass is answered more emphatically and is joined in its call by the guitar and the drums. It's like a non-pansy-assed version of Peter and the Wolf. Then all hell breaks loose.

If this sounds awesome to you, get the album. If it sounds awful, I'm probably not going to convince you with talk of texture-clashes, impressionistic sci-fi lyrics, virtuoso playing and Iggy Pop guest appearances. But I wish I could, because in many ways this kind of music set the tone for the decade, sadly setting the tone for Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit, but happily informing the work of crossover angular dance-punk like Bloc Party and the weird rock voyages of the Mars Volta. Overall, I like it because it makes me want to jump up and down.

Albums of the Decade: Jim O'Rourke: Insignificance

Over the next month or so, I'll be highlighting some of the albums that I think are among the best of the decade. There will be no order to them, I'll just put them up as they come to me. Maybe I'll rank them at the end, but I don't think so.

Looking at you reminds me of staring at the sun,
And how the blind are so damn lucky.

These charming words are just a small example of the heartfelt lyrics you can expect on Jim O'Rourke's Insignificance, an album where the vitriol of the sentiment is only matched by the prettiness of the arrangements.
O'Rourke is probably best known, if at all, for his work as a producer with some of the biggest names in indie music (also, and this is an extremely interesting fact, he co-wrote the songs for the actually quite good Jack Black vehicle, School of Rock). He's no slouch as a performer, though, as this album demonstrates. A charge could be leveled against it that it is just a work of pastiche, simply retooling some crusty '70s rock stylings. This would be missing the point, I think. The album's classic sound (and it is incredibly well produced), is used to lull the listener into a false sense of security while O'Rourke pours bile over various, thankfully, unidentified people.
The lyrical concerns range from loneliness (on the gorgeously understated Good Times) to break up fuck yous (All Downhill from Here) and back, making brief stops at bondage (Life goes off) and, best of all, wanting someone he knows, and presumably hates, to be told it's his last night on Earth, and then, when he has taken a girl home to comfort him in his last hours, finding out that he is paralysed and can't even kick the girl, who has gone to sleep because she has work in the morning, to stop her from snoring. Cute.
Enjoy this track, I couldn't find one without the movie picture. I'm thinking Jim isn't much of a video guy.