Sunday, January 29, 2012

My 2011: The First Annual Jaybee-bies Awards

Well, the notoriously late Voice's 2011 Pazz and Jop Poll Results have finally come out, which means it's time for me to finish up my 2011 year in music. 

And I'm well on my way, having already gotten four albums this year.  Sooooo….

Welcome to the First Annual Jaybee-bies (Okay, that name needs work The Geezies? ) Awards.
Where I summarize, yet again, what I - as opposed to the rest of the world - listened to in 2011.  Welcome to my world.
Overall, this wasn't a year of obsession, but rather one of riches, balance and satisfaction.  There were no albums whose songs haunted me throughout the days and weeks, but rather album after album of very high quality and varied music.  Being unofficially bipolar, it's probably better for me that way.
Anyway, let the awards begin!

Self Restraint Award:
I usually give this award to myself if I can keep my music purchases to less than 20 a year.  (It's origins lie in a similar award from my teen years, if I could keep something else to less than 20 times a month. I never won.) But that takes more……..FOCUS……than I can possibly muster, and I ended up with 25. 
I blame Amazon.com with their monthly 100 mp3 albums for $5 (and this January there are 1,000!) and Other Music, whose used bin exerts a gravitational pull on me.  Maybe I should to move to another state. Anyway, the winner this year is Not Me.  Too bad the old award isn't still around though…

MP3 Firsts Award:
This marks the first year I've gotten an mp3 instead of a CD. Actually four.  Now I know what those young folks - forty year olds, I mean - are talking about!  I obviously can't win this again, so I'll probably shoot for more MP3s than CDs this year.
Anyway, I'd like amazon.com…   

But now, awards for actual musicians:


Best Album of the Year:

1. W H O K I L L by tUnE-yArDs - This record is unique in that it's the only one I got all year that came out in 2011. (Nutboy's got some things to say about this, but later for that.) I may not have logged as many listens for this as I did for, say Grandaddy or Nick Drake, I'm still playing it eight months later, so  I know it's got legs.  A perfect balance of accessibility and experimentation, tunes and weirdness.  Even the lyrics are good.  Here's "My Country".
It's sheer coincidence that my pick should coincide with Pazz and Jop.  My picks are usually more lame.

2. The Sophtware Slump by Grandaddy - Sadness and tunes.  An unbeatable combination for someone like me. Try Underneath the Weeping Willow.

3. Halcyon Digest by Deerhunter - Guitars, weirdness, etc.  A favorite for the whole family.  Desire Lines may be the song of the year.

Honorable Mentions:
Too many, really, hence those riches I was talking about.  Michigan, Seven Swans, The Boy With the Arab Strap, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, Modern Times, Bryter Layter,

Artist of the Year:
Sufjan Stevens, for deluging me with his back catalog - Michigan, Seven Swans, and Songs for Christmas.  He didn't put anything out this year, which is probably why he didn't attend the awards ceremony that took place in my basement last Tuesday. It's a shame he didn't pick up the statuette, which looks a lot like my son's soccer trophy from grammar school. 

Best Educational Experience:
This goes to the record that rewards my wandering ears with enough joy to encourage even more exploration.
And the winner is… Francophonic by Franco - This compilation has so much music, and even though I had something by him already, so little that I ever knew about.  The opening of an entire world (well, continent, anyway).
Special mention to all the others - Charles Mingus, Sunny Ada, Eric Dolphy and Terry Riley - who didn't make me sorry.

Resolutions:
I have to give myself a plan of action for the new year, which I may follow or ignore as the music dictates:
Try to win next year's Self Restraint award.
Get more MP3s, if for nothing else, just to save some space.
Buy more current year music, because I've got Nutboy breathing down my neck.

Closing Ceremonies:
Music did what I needed it to do for me.  Around this time a year ago, I was miserable.  Slowly but surely music - along with the other good things in life I'm learning to appreciate more - brought me out of it.
Which is why I listen.

Good night and have a musical year.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

My 2011: Fall and the Holidays

For me, Thanksgiving is a critical time of the year formusic. I like to remember the holidays for a given year with a very specific musical background.  And when the music is just okay, so are the holidays.  Sorry family and friends, it just seems to be so.
Over the years, I've had some brilliant ones - 2007, for instance, with Neko Case's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood and the Go Betweens Oceans Apart- and some bad ones - well, let's not go there.  So I try to learn from a bad year and play it safe.  And with a couple of gift cards left I decided to cast a wide net when I put my order into barnesandnoble.com.
I knew that, at some point, I'd get that one Nick Drake album I'd missed, especially since he's such a sure bet. So I finally got Bryter Layter, his second record.  But I have to admit that, at first, I was not happy.  Nick's usually my morning depression go-to guy, but here he's a bit peppier than usual.  Too many horns, lush strings and back-up singers made it hard to warm up to, but that's all more than balanced out by what I go to Nick for: beautiful, sad and ultimately uplifting songs. And here Nick has some of his very best.  Otherwise, why would I play it almost every morning since I got it?  A-
The documentary “Who Is Harry Nilsson?”  rekindled my interest in him, and I decided to go for  NilssonSchmillson, which is always showing up on All Time Best lists.  And as is the case when you actually buy such records, the first impression is less than ecstatic. This stems from already knowing chunk of the music already, sometime too well.  (Jesus, did I really need to hear "Without You" again, and in Spanish, too?)    But it’s also got several of my favorite Nilsson songs – "Gotta Get Up", "The Moonbeam Song" and "Jump into the Fire". The bonus disc has got several more tracks that are well worth it, except for the annoying commercials at the end.  (I’m seeing a lot more if this lately.  Why?)  B+, but I think it's going to go up.
Eric Dolphy lurks in the background of one of my favorite John Coltrane records, and I love his Berlin Concerts.   Out To Lunch is his last major record before his premature death in 1964, and it’s got all the Dolphy-isms I enjoy so much – mainly the solos that seem to jump out perpendicularly from the themes and melodies.  An ex-friend (God, they’re really adding up, aren't they?) knew him. “Eric was a such sweet guy”  I have no reason to doubt this, but then again, said ex friend still owes me money.  Probably owed Eric, too.  (Unsolicited advice – never room with a musician.)  Anyway, the record is really good, and I expect I’ll be hearing new things from it for a long, long time.  File Under Education
The leadoff and title track of Against Me!’s New Wave is one of the most bracing punk rock songs I’ve heard in years.  It’s a shame that the rest of the record just can’t quite keep up.   Nice and loud, earnest, political (I love how they make the lyric “write that song, in response to military aggression!” actually sound great)   I like these guys so much that I want to like the record more.  I’ll check back in a few months to say if I’ve fallen in love or not.  B+

But I couldn't wait for this order to arrive so I ended up back at Other music (where else?), where I find Grandaddy’s The Software Slump (used, of course) and, of all things, Christmas music!  

And by whom, you might ask?  F*cking Sufjan Stevens of course. (Three albums and a total of seven CDs, which must make him Artist of Jaybee’s Year, if such an award existed.)  

Sufjan was putting out Christmas EPs for his friends for five years in a row, and he finally put all of them together into one box - Songs for Christmas - where I could pick up a used copy.  And it turns out to dominate the holiday music this year.  Definitely one of the best holiday albums around. A-
Grandaddy makes a kind of space music, but the space in question is California.  Jason Lytle's vocals bear a slight resemblance to Flaming Lips front-man Wayne Coyne.  And even some interest in technology and robots.  Jason seems a little more pro-robot than Wayne, but maybe is even more sad. It's strange that Software would lead off  with an eight minute dirge.  But it works, and I find myself still listening to its deft balance of snap crackle and pop.  After several weeks, I'm still playing it. Another maybe album of the year?  A

Amazon keeps tempting me with their $5 mp3, and I succumbed again, first with Brad Paisley's American Saturday Night, which comprises part two of my investigation into whether modern country music does anything for me at all.   The trouble with music downloads is that you can forget that you have them.  Thus my play count so far is only 1.
And then with A Tribe Called Quest's Anthology. I snuck in a listen early Christmas morning.  For hip hop, this is surprisingly listenable and tuneful.  Again, only a single play.  I hate when that happens. 

Part of the reason for the low play count of those mp3s is that I got Grant McLennan's Horsebreaker Star for Christmas. Nutboy (link) was pushing this record hard.  I held off because of the different versions floating around.  Nutboy’s got the single CD domestic version, so naturally the old Jaybee one-upmanship comes out and I have to get the original two-CD 24 song import.  These last-CDs-of-the-year are really hard to judge.  Right now, it's sitting at a B+, but may move up.

All in all, an excellent season.

Next: 2011 in Sum

Sunday, January 15, 2012

My 2011: Summer of Jaybee

If you've been reading my year end summary posts, you know by now that summer begins with Father's Day and ends with my birthday.  In other words, it's All. About. Me.
I use these occasions to get some exploring done. I mean, why take chances with my own money when I can get my wife and kids to spend theirs? As usual, I put them up to getting me some esoteric  (for an Irish Catholic boy in his fifties, anyway) music, by thoughtfully adding it to my Amazon (and in case they miss it, Barnes and Noble) wish list.  Then I clear my throat a lot. 
That's how I get things like Terry Riley's In C.  Classical music?  Who knows?  Strange?  Of course.  And thank you, Brian Eno - "rock musician" - for getting me here.  It's not so much that Eno's music is like Riley's.  It's more that Eno can be a portal to the unknown.  Which begs the question, when was the last time I got something by Eno anyway? I'd better add something to the old wish list.  (Hmmm.  Music For Airports? Apollo?) For the life of me I don't know what to say about this record, other than that it is forty five minutes of various themes in, guess what? The key of C! It's a little more static than Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, but it's also like a calm pool of water that, when you bother to look, you'll see things further and further down.  Thanks kids!
And then there's king Sunny Ade of Nigeria - a superstar on the order of Frank Sinatra in Africa but not famous here in the USThe Best of the Classic Years is a compilation of his output from 1967-74 and it's really remarkable. Simultaneously spacey and groove-y. The last time I'd run into the King was in the early eighties with Juju Music, which while good was a bit too slick for its own good.  This one has a hint of rawness that lets that spacieness go down easy.  Great for late hot summer nights.

Charles Mingus's Ah Um is one of the best jazz records I own, but I'd held off on getting his highly regarded Black Saint and Lady Sinner  because I kept reading words like "difficult" and "inaccessible".  So I took the plunge and gathered my strength for a daunting listen. Now I'm not really sure what all the warnings were about. The best way I can describe it is that it sounds like soundtrack music to a late fifties crime drama. (No, not my late fifties. The late fifties. Don't rush me.)  I'd file it under "Education" but I'm already enjoying it.  B+
And Franco, whose Francophonic, Vol 1 is also just a mere scratching of the surface of recordings by this African master.  This collection covers 1953 to 1980, and ranges from folk-like short songs to Grateful Dead-like guitar jams. There's a moment about halfway through "Minuit elecki Lezi" that bursts out into such an ecstasy of guitar sound that I can't help but think that the Dead heard it way back when.

But summer's not just for schooling, so around this time I finally succumb to Amazon’s $5 download enticements.  I get my first download album – W H OK I L L by tUnE-yArDs. Led by the remarkable Merryl Garbus, this is easily the most perfect balance of tunefulness, funkiness and weirdness I’ve gotten all year.  Maybe album of the year.  And it actually came out this year, too!  A
When I picked up Michigan, the check out guy at Other Music, perhaps recognizing another Catholic, suggested Sufjan's Seven Swans to me.  So I put it on my wish list and it miraculously appeared for my birthday. It's a quiet, lovely meditation on faith. (Now why the fuck would I write a sentence like that?  Well, I guess because it is.)  It's less sprawling than either MI or IL.  The songs are of a more uniform length and the instrumentation is very spare, which suits the material perfectly.   SS has just got the knack for coming up with great melodies, again and again. Not quite Illinoise, but just about as good as Michigan. A-
Somewhere around here I also download Miranda Lambert’s Crazy ExGirlfriend. And like I said, these downloads are easy to forget about, so I'm only listening to it now. This is Contemporary Country music, so the singing is great and the lyrics are a lot of fun. I love when a woman says she needs a beer. I appreciate the muscular rockish music, even though I like it a little more jagged myself.  But it's growing on me. Not sure yet.  
Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians Greatest Hits was just so magical that it motivated me to get the less than brilliant Soft Boys Underwater Moonlight, which I promptly lost.  It might have been great, who knows?  So this year, I try Fegmania! and again, it's good, but not great. Oddly, it's the bonus cuts that keep bringing me back   Some great moments, though. Robyn may just be a Greatest Hits kind of guy… B+
Pavement specializes in confounding old folks like me with their noise for the sake of noise (Slanted and Enchanted) and weird tunes that take a minute to even resolve themselves (Brighten the Corners).  Both are ultimately very worthwhile, but I just don't like being made a fool of.  The musical equivalent of a bunch of kids playing slapball in front of your house, and you are forced to confront the fact that now you're the cranky old man.   Anyway, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain takes all that is great about Pavement and puts it all in one place.  The tunes are more straight ahead, the noise only comes after a great surge of in-tune guitar, the crappy singing isn't quite as crappy.  Even my wife hums along to this one. A-
Speaking of which, Modern Times is the first Dylan record my wife actually sings along to. Yet, it pisses me off.  Someone please explain to me how Dylan's any better than Led Zeppelin in regard to his "carelessness" in songwriting credits. To me, he's a creep and a lowlife.  Oh, and a genius.   A-

So summer ended up being a perfect balance of styles and accessibility and by the end of it, I was feeling much better.   Like I said, all about me.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

My 2011: Springtime for Jaybee

I don't consider the season of Spring to be much of a mood enhancer.  Whatever people tell you, it's an overrated season.  One day it’s freezing and the next, it’s warm, humid and rainy.  Every once in a while, there’s a lovely day, but you’re probably working late that night anyway, so you miss it.  Then you go out the next day, under-dressed, and catch pneumonia because somehow it’s below freezing again. 

But if you’re really lucky, you find an opportunity to go to my favorite record store Other Music and sidle up to their used CD bin.  By definition, it’s a crapshoot.  But that's where I find Sufjan Steven's Greetings from Michigan (2003) and Deerhunter's Halcyon Digest (2010).


Michigan is just as sprawling, if somewhat less frenetic than Illinois - one of my top CDs of the 2000s. It's also more mournful, which suited my mood perfectly.  Muted, yet melodic, it was exactly what I needed for feeling shitty overall, and a drive to the cemetery.  A-


It was surprising to find Halcyon Digest in the bin, since it did so well in many 2010 year-end polls, But somebody's loss is my gain.  Friend Robin had burned a song of theirs for me a couple of years ago, and while it had a great spacey guitar sound, I didn't detect much of a song underneath it.  HD is much better.  It's still got the striking atmospherics, but this time there are tunes and words to back it all up. There are a couple of hazy spots, but overall it's very strong, and "Desire Lines" (link) is just amazing.  Having by now been softened up by Sufjan (a possible gay porn movie title?), Deerhunter were just the thing to lift me out of my funk.  A-


But it took the Insect Trust to make me laugh.  I stumbled upon (in Other Music, of course) Hoboken Saturday Night (1970) and to say that the Insect Trust is an eclectic group of musicians is to vastly understate the case.  There's music journalist/saxophonist Robert Palmer. (Not that idiot from England, but rather the writer of "Deep Blues" and of a NY Times column on pop music, including a famous dis of poor old Billy Joel.) Then there's guest jazz drummer Elvin Jones.  But before you go thinking it's a jazz record, listen to the one that opens with a banjo playing a standard Middle Eastern riff. There's a slight whiff if 60s to it, but unlike most hippie music it's got a great rhythm section.  Like a favorite uncle, it occasionally shows it's age, but is very entertaining, especially if at least one of you is drinking.  B+


Belle and Sebastian's The Boy with the Arab Strap (1998) is an ever so slightly less than great B&S album.  There's nothing quite so titanic as the best stuff on Sinister.  And nothing quite as joyful as the best of Tiger Milk.  But once you get past that, you realize you're listening to a wonderful record.  Sweet gentle tunes with the old B&S sting in the lyrics.  Lovely.  A-

So now I’m getting a little cocky and it's back to Other Music for the third time (There seems to be an invisible bugee cord attached to me and the store.)  where I find the Pixie's Bossanova and Portishead's Dummy.  

Here's my take on the formerB+



Now I admit that I was expecting something different from Portishead. Although they had a weird little hit with "Sour Times", I thought that Dummy would  be more of an accent on Beth Gibbon's vocals, and girded myself for "too pretty".  I needn't have worried.  Dummy is a "trip hop" record, and thus, was not meant for Springtime.  (If I got it back in January I would have either loved it, or slit my wrists.) So I put it away for a while and found that it worked pretty well in the fall.  But at night, for heaven's sake!  B+

So by now music was doing a good job of uncurling me from my assumed fetal position. With summer coming, I was even considering standing up.

Next: Summer of Jaybee

Monday, January 2, 2012

My 2011 - Winter of My Discontent

By January 2nd of any given year, I'm already plotting on how to use my Christmas gift cards to buy the records I'm afraid to get with my own money.  These are the more risky records – “reaches”, whether due to genre or by their reputation for being “experimental”. In a word, educational. Something I can hide in during my Seasonal Affective Disorder.

So I got a record that has appeared on so many All Time Great Lists, I was ashamed of not having gotten it already - Ray Charles Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Volumes 1 and 2.  I was very hesitant about this one, because my taste in country music is very finicky (the line between deep - Hank Williams - and idiotic - Hank Williams Jr. - isn't easy for a non-country fan to discern).  Plus, having been ruined by the Beatles (me, that is, loving the electric guitar above all) soul music came to me slowly.  I didn't even like Motown until the 70s.  I now get funk but am still working on hip hop.  Pathetic, really.

But enough about me.  How was the record?  Well, at first, it sucked, actually.  The backing chorus repeating every important line annoyed the sh*t out of me, reminding me of nothinmuch as the muzak station playing in my dentist's office when I was a kid.  So I had to leave it alone for awhile. 

Now I'm back and it all sounds perfectly natural.  The soul approach saps the potential, well, sappiness of the country tunes, and those tunes add a little more melody than typical soul music.  I listened again last night and it just keeps getting better.  The best of both worlds, I say.  B+, and rising.



But then blammo!  SAD?  Fekking miserable is more like it. But this time, there were actual reasons for it.  Floods? Starvation, you ask? Nope. Just work related stuff, which is all that it takes to set me off. 

And unfortunately, music isn’t always the cure. If you try to force music onto a bad time, you just end up with a miserable time set to music you’ll never want to hear again, no matter how good it is, simply because it reminds you of that awful time.  It’s better to just ride it out.
Next: Springtime for Jaybee

Sunday, January 1, 2012

What I Talk About When I Talk About 2011


Everyone else has long since published their Best of the Year lists, some as early as November.  Why do I wait until the new year?  Because, as any one of my uncles might say, the old year ain't fekking over yet, is it? 

But not everyone is related to my uncle, so I see these lists begin to sprout up, and all I can think is that there's still plenty of time for new music - especially in the holiday season - that might define the year. 

And it’s not until December 31 at about 11:45pm that I can relax, feeling reasonably sure that no one's going to surprise me with the greatest CD of the year.  But now it's 2012.  2011 is now officially fekking over. So while I await my uncle's list, I'll offer mine.

If you've seen any of my prior Best of Year lists, you already know that "My 2011" has little – and this year, very little - to do with what was actually released that year.  It's all about what I got around to buying/getting/hearing.  So if you’re looking for a genuine "Best of 2011", move on. 

But wait a minute, what was all that crap about maintaining the integrity of the year, you ask?  (Hey, that's a good phrase!  I wished I used it.)  Well I say, what's the difference?  I either heard it this year or I didn't. 

But I probably will, if I may pick a New Year's resolution that isn't too inconvenient, let you know more about what's going on in the year as said year proceeds, than I have in the past.  Are you happy?  Plus it lets me enjoy my New Year's Day hangover without having to tell you everything from scratch.

One moment, while I powder my nose…

Okay.  Back now, feeling…refreshed.

I’d like to think of myself as someone who keeps up to date with music (and books and movies and occasionally, real life), but what really ends up happening is that in any given year, I hear about new records, but don’t actually hear them (and then just the ones I buy) until the following year.  Oh, I could go out and buy them right away, but which ones?  There are thousands of new CDs released every year.  So we’re all literally drowning in new music.  (No, we're not, stupid.  Not literally!  Just testing you.)

And with all the hype floating around out there, it’s hard to distinguish temporary enthusiasms (and outright bs (as opposed to my own, kinder, gentler bs)) from thoughtful opinions on music that might have some lasting value.  Will what I buy today be something I’ll want to hear a year from now?  Better to just wait that year to let it all sort itself out.  Oh, I won't be bored.  I'm still wading through the previous year's stuff.     But if you've got the cash to splurge now, knock yourself out.  (Of course you could put some of that aside for poor, you selfish bastard, but I digress.  The Irish Catholic equation of Pleasure and Selfishness isn't even another post.  It's a whole other blog.)

But all this waiting does put me back about a year, so it’s kind of like showing up for a New Year’s party in February, and then killing everyone's little remaining buzz by talking about how a quieter, smaller party would have been more appropriate.  

So here I am at your door, without even bringing a bottle.


In 2011, I returned to artists who've previously made CDs that I loved. I’m always a little hesitant to do this, since it’s hard to imagine how another record could be anything but a disappointment. And while the new ones I got were not quite obsession-inducing, most were excellent.  Not great, but very, very good.  So it turned out to be kind of an A minus year.  I’ll take it. I've had worse.

And on that note, with apologies to Robert Christgau, I'm going to make another New Year"s Resolution to steal his grading system.  Why not?  Everybody else has.

Next: 2011 - Winter Discontent