Seventh Annual Jaybee-bies: Listening to Fiddling While Rome Burns

Best of Times, Worst of Times, Ho-hum:

So how good a year was it (Musically speaking)?

Great! I’m usually complaining about now but this time around I really can’t.

There hasn’t been anything quite as great as last year’s Teens of Denial by Car Seat Headrest, but 2017 was way more consistent than 2016.

It’s been such a good year musically that even though I didn't get any great holiday (my definition) music, I realize that was probably too much to ask for. In a way, I did get it, just too early, and everything since then has been trying to catch up. Most of it great stuff, too. Just not for the holidays.

It was so good that my son’s record - good as it is - just made the top 10. But I have to grade him hard here, don’t I?

And how bad a year was it?

Well, my mom died in 2017, along with an uncle, aunt and cousin. I made a playlist for her. The effort involved digging into a lot of music from my childhood, which was emotionally draining. So it’s a good thing that the music was there for me.

And, of course, there’s this sociopath trying to destroy the country, but hey, what the fuck, right?

(I Still Suck at) Resolutions:

I still say “awesome” and “let's get on the same page” way too much.

I don’t get 10,000 steps in a day.

I don’t write 1,000 words per day.

I don’t exercise.

I don’t eat enough vegetables.

I eat too many sweets. (Hey, I thought dark chocolate was a health food!)

I could probably cut down on the drinking a bit.

So how can you expect me to follow my musical resolutions, like getting guitar lessons from my son Michael?

So how did I do with last years resolutions?

Buying fewer CDs: A  mp3s: 20  CDs: 9

Buying Current Year Music: B-  Still pretty crappy. Just Randy Newman, American Epic (if that counts, Nick Cave (if that counts), Jens Lekman, the New Pornographers.

2018 Resolution: 

Catching up on the current decade: I’ll be focusing on the 2010s and so may not do so well on the Current Year Music resolutions. Nothing like clashing resolutions to start off a successful year!


Top Ten Albums:

Tied for first:
Innocence Mission: Glow (1995) - Their seeming lightness is overcome by sheer joy.
New Pornographers: Whiteout Conditions (2017) - A big ole box of hooks and snark. 
King Creosote and John Hopkins: Diamond Mine (2011) - Like Glow, this one is so fragile you think it's going to break, but it never does.
Loudon Wainwright III: Older Than My Old Man Now (2012) - An older, wiser man looks death, and even worse - family - in the eye.
Courtney Barnett: The Double EP, A Sea of Split Peas (2013) - She's sly, she's funny, she's a bit insecure, but she's got a great deadpan delivery

6. Car Seat Headrest: Teens of Style (2015) - Some hooks and sounds even more brilliant than Denial, but hampered by airplane-hangar sound.
7. Jon Hopkins: Immunity (2013) - In a genre not reknown for deep emotion, this one wears you down until you hear the heart beating underneath.

8. Jens Lekman: Life Will See You Now (2017) - He writes in a style even my mom would have liked, and happens to be pretty great, too.

9. Todd Snider: Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables (2012) -  Strong medicine, this explains how Trump happened. I'd buy it if he could have explained why Bernie didn't happen.

Tied for tenth:
Death Cab for Cutie: The Open Door EP (2009) - Expert, driven, tuneful music.
Forlorne: The Old and Weathered Glass (2017) - Son of blogger gets even better.
Low: Things We Lost in the Fire: (2001) - This one feels like they know 9/11 is coming and they're already in mourning.
Roots: How I Got Over (2010) - Combines the best of Kanye and Lamar.
Future Islands: Singles  (2014) - Just a shade shy of awful, they manage to do all the right things to make it almost soulful.

Yeah, I cheated. There are fourteen.

Honorable Mentions:
Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and the Jazz All Stars, Kanye West, Miles Davis, Cloud Nothings.

Am I saying that the Top Ten are better music than the Honorable Mentions? Yes, but just for now.


Most Fun: New Pornographers

Most Bracing: Todd Snider

Most Work (But Worth it): Kendrick Lamar, American Epic

Most Work (And Possibly Not Worth It): Nick Cave

Most Surprising: Innocence Mission

Most Disappointing: Sonic Youth: Dirty

Best Artist: Courtney Barnett

Favorite Songs: My favorites can be found here:


Observations:

Pop beat out everything. It beat out hip-hop and jazz. Hip-hop because it’s not one of a go-to genre of mine, and jazz because those records were already familiar to me and thus lose out to the new.

One might think protest music would be the order of the day but sometimes pop - not stupid, empty pop, but instead smart, brainy pop - was the right medicine.

Last year’s music gave me hope. Let’s see how far into 2018 it gets me.

Short, Sharp Shocks, or Smaller is Better:

As you might recall (no, you don’t. Who’s kidding who? Only I’d recall something like this.) vinyl albums held about forty minutes worth of music. You could fit up to an hour or so, but forty was the average.

So my natural skinflintedness meant that, if for no other reason (other than not having to get up off my ass every 20 minutes to flip it over), I’d love the CD format (about 80 minutes of music per), even if they cost a bit more than vinyl.

Ah, but what if the music is there just to fill up the space? Whereas before artists had to pick and choose only the best of their new songs to fit on vinyl, now they could spread out like those guys sitting on the subway train, with results that could be just as uncomfortable.

So I eventually came to “appreciate” (ie, respect and even enjoy, while still writing to my congressperson about instituting unit pricing on albums) the "short album".

Early rock n’ roll albums were pretty short, mainly because the songs were short. Even twelve of them wouldn’t always hit thirty - let alone forty - minutes.

Songs are just longer now.

Now, if I were to fully embrace my inner (and soon to be outer) grumpy old man and combine it with my natural nerdiness...well, for one thing, I’d end up with one hell of a super-villain.

But I’d also endlessly debate the merits of musical unit-pricing based on songs per dollar vs. minutes per dollar.  I can just see the entire Marvel and DC Universe surrendering to me, on the one condition that I just shut the f*ck up. Now that’s winning, baby!

Anyway, last year’s Puberty 2 by Mitski was pretty short (about 31 minutes) but didn’t feel that way. Not sure if that’s a compliment, but it’s probably because there are eleven songs on it

And this year, I came across a few records that come up short timewise, but not aesthetics-wise.


Cloudburst:


The Cloud Nothings: Attack on Memory (2012)

Although it only has eight songs that run 33 minutes it feels complete, and even generous. Now that’s intensity!

This foursome plays aggressive-to-harsh electric guitars a la Parquet Courts but change tone often enough - and add melody enough - to keep it all from beating you down.

There’s even a burst of Feelies drone-guitar in the cheerier-than-average “Fall In”.

The mid 20s singer complains a lot, but his gravelly voice sounds old and vaguely threatening, verging on ugly. And when things get out of hand, they careen out of control and crash.

But they pull themselves out of the ditch and start up again, with guitars propelling them along the way.

A-

"Fall In"



The Harsh Mirror:


Death Cab for Cutie: The Open Door EP (2009)

Damn, I lost focus again and forgot to keep it in the decade!

I have a hard time even saying their name, both for silliness and sheer mechanics. (You try saying it fast.)

And, admittedly it's an EP, not an album. But, like with the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor, just let it go.

I had already gotten a taste of Ben Gibbard’s songwriting from Postal Service. And like on that album, his melodies can seem a bit mechanical, as if he plotted them out on graph paper.

What works for it, though - like the atmospherics of Give Up - is the sturdy rocking band behind him.
So the outcome is a little more organic.

And the lyrics are filled with painful self-examination. Not the physical kind.  That comes later in life, boys!

A-

"My Mirror Speaks"




Sweet (and Weird) and Lovely:

King Creosote and Jon Hopkins: Diamond Mine (2014)

 I’ve only had this for about a week, so I should really wait to digest it, but I just don’t want to.

Nutboy recommended this to me a while ago, but I immediately lost his email.  Well, I finally dug it up, and I'm glad I did.

Sweet, quiet, with odd and everyday sounds mixed in. King Creosote provides the former, with a voice so fragile you think it’s going to shatter. Jon Hopkins, who I will talk about in another post, provides the latter, and helps to keep this from going down too easy. Together, they make a Scottish Neil Young.

But you’d better play it early, before the neighborhood noises start to drown it out. Yes, it's that fragile.

But well worth it.

A-

"Your Own Spell"