Best of 2009

I haven't heard everything released this year, but here are my favorites to this point:

Album: "The Hazards of Love" by The Decemberists. Runner Up: "Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix" by Phoenix.

Track: "Easy" by Deer Tick. Runners-Up: "1901" by Phoenix, "The Wanting Comes In Waves / Rapid" by The Decemberists, "Bull Black Nova" by Wilco.

Live Act: Art Brut. Runners-Up: The Flaming Lips, Phoenix.

Deer Tick - Born on Flag Day

Rating: B+

Deer Tick is kind of a litmus test for your take on the importance of authenticity in rock 'n roll music. On the face of it, Deer Tick are just a bunch of poseurs. Look at Born on Flag Day's hidden track: A twenty-something dude from Rhode Island (John Joseph McCauley III, the band's lead singer, guitar player, and songwriter) rasping out Leadbelly's "Goodnight, Irene" live, over stereotypical live bar-room sounds - bottles clinking, pool balls clacking, laughter and talking over the guitar strumming. Does it get any more contrived than that?

So how you feel about authenticity is likely how you're going to feel about Deer Tick. If you think blues can only be written by those who've suffered, if you think country music is for southerners, and if a bunch o' young white guys covering an old black dude (as in the aforementioned Leadbelly cover) makes you feel uneasy - you're probably not going to dig Deer Tick.

The flipside is the argument that everything in the rock idiom is derivative - that it's the All-American melting pot of blues, country, folk, and bluegrass, and that criticizing rock music for being derivative is like criticizing ice cream for being cold. Sure, some bands wear their influences on their sleeves, as Deer Tick does, but that just means they're producing a more coherent synthesis.

I don't find either argument entirely persuasive, but a lot of that is around what "authenticity" even means. I think authenticity is important, but confining authenticity to antiquated notions of who should be playing certain kinds of music is artificially limiting. The thing that makes music, or any art, compelling is the extent to which it touches on common chords on human emotion. John Joseph McCauley III's experiences may differ tremendously from the artists who created early blues music, early country music, and even early rock 'n roll - but he knows what loneliness feels like, the appeal of wide open spaces, and the propulsive energy of music; and, most importantly, he can pass that along.

Which isn't to say Born on Flag Day is a masterpiece. It's uneven, as if by design, with hard rocking numbers sandwiching sleepier tracks, blues following country following rockabilly. The two standout tracks are as good as anything released in 2009. "Easy" is a vicious straight-ahead rocker, propelled by a deft Christopher Dale Ryan (seriously, why do these guys all use their middle names) bassline and a snarling chorus ("No you don't know / how easy it is"). "Smith Hill," which refers to an area of the band's hometown of Providence, RI, is a wonderfully written song. The harmonies coming in on the last line of the verse "Tonight I'll see my sweetheart / I've got a fifty dollar bill / But somewhere in her weak heart / She knows I never will" are chilling. The strings on the track make it sound a little slick and over-produced; Deer Tick is a band that sounds better raw than polished. They blew me away live, but the recorded product is not quite as strong.

Which brings us back to authenticity, I guess. Your mileage may vary on what authentic means, whether a bunch of white Northern youngsters from the city can play music originated by folks from basically the exact opposite circumstances. It works for me, as long as they're playing the hell out of it, and Deer Tick are.

Buy it from Amazon (MP3 Format) (only $5 if you act now!)
Deer Tick on MySpace

Le Loup - Family

Rating: B-

Ah, the sophomore album. When a band's debut meets with some success, as in the case of Le Loup's debut album, 2007's The Throne of the Third Heaven of The Nation's Millennium General Assembly, it leaves a world full of possibilities - and potential pitfalls. There is a delicate balance between evolving from the original sound and departing from it entirely. Many of the great first albums were followed by let-down second albums, and many of the great second albums were made by bands with uninspiring first albums.

Le Loup is trying hard to strike a fine balance here. The serpentine melodies of Throne are back, this time augmented with more harmonies and African-style polyrhythms. The touring band has changed considerably (see my review of their recent Boston concert), with three previous members departing. Largely gone is auteur Sam Simkoff's banjo, though a sampled five-string does make some appearances in "Morning Song" and "Go East." In short, they haven't thrown out the original formula, but there have been changes.

I wanted to like this album more than I do. I like it fine; it's got beautiful harmonies and arrangements, and some of the tunes are great - "Sherpa," in particular, is the kind of tune that will stick in your head for days. It's fun, and pretty, and catchy, and tasteful - and if it didn't follow Throne, and its existential creepiness, maybe I would have liked it more. I listened to Family again and again, waiting to have something grab me like "Planes Like Vultures" and especially "I Had a Dream I Died" - and it didn't happen. This is a good record, but not an arresting one.

I suspect, months down the line, I'll have one of the tunes come on shuffle and it will strike me in a way that it did not over the past few weeks, and I will re-listen to the whole album and it will be like hearing it anew. Until then ... here's where I'm at.

Buy it from Amazon (MP3 Format)
Le Loup Site

Live review - 12/4/2009 Phoenix and Spoon at The Orpheum

Phoenix - I had seen the Versailles band at ACL, where they impressed the hell out of me, so I suspected I was in for a treat here. The sextet opened with "Lisztomania," off their latest offering, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and quickly had the crowd in thrall. They mixed in some loud fuzz rock from their previous albums to complement the dancier numbers off Wolfgang. Lead singer Thomas Mars showed his typical humility, thanking the crowd profusely between numbers, but also displayed some swagger, swinging the microphone before catching it. He even dropped the mic on the stage before walking off during finale "1901," before he and the band came on for a final chorus to raucous applause. Phoenix is quickly becoming one of my favorite live acts.

Spoon - I had a thought partway through the set - "Is Spoon cool?" I don't normally think of or care about whether a band is cool, but Spoon begs the question. The quartet showed up clad in fashion boots, skinny jeans, and black collared shirts, played with an absolute minimum of between-song banter, and often unleashed classic rock poses like the pigeon-toed, hunched over thrashing guitar solo. Then there's the music - all distortion and jagged-edges, with Britt Daniel's is-he-British? voice snarling and rasping and throwing class rock-'n-roll ejaculations and affectations everywhere. Spoon is cool.

Except that Spoon is not cool. Spoon has songs like "My Mathematical Mind" and "The Beast and Dragon, Adored." Daniel's lyrics identify not with the cool kid in school but with "the waterboy," according to "The Underdog," the single on their latest album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. Set with these lyrics and themes, the distorted guitar and intermittent echoes vocals and effects veer to the weird. Spoon is not cool.

Ultimately, of course, it doesn't matter, but from my perspective it seems that Spoon is angling to be the coolest of the dorks, as if to see, "We may not be cool, but we can at least be cool about not being cool." Whatever; they rocked. Sneak peaks into some of the new songs suggest a band more comfortable to let songs stretch out with extended solos and instrumental interplay. The previous times I've seen Spoon, the live show was pretty faithful to the albums, but they showed a willingness to add effects, vocal ticks, and solos to existing tunes. The set, from opener "The Way We Get By" to closer "You Got Yr Cherry Bomb," was well-chosen and terrifically executed. The set made me excited for new album Transference, which drops in January.

Movie Review - Here Come The Waves

I had a chance last night to check out a sneak preview of Here Come The Waves, an hour-long animated film made to accompany their 2009 album The Hazards of Love. I adore this album so I was intrigued to see accompanying visuals, especially on the big screen at my favorite movie theatre (The Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square). At first, I was kind of hoping for a narrative - Hazards is one of those albums where you feel like you know what's going on, but it's really more a series of interconnected vignettes than a coherent story - but the trailer dashed the idea that Waves would shed any light on Hazards' plot.

Instead, Waves gave us a series of moody, psychedelic images that augmented the emotional feel of Hazards rather than the literal content. There were four different animators. Peter Sluzska takes the viewer through a world of nature, woods full of trees and flowers that sometimes are static and sometimes are smashing together or falling apart or ejaculating color in the fierce "Won't Want For Love." Julia Pott then takes over - her quirky, cartoonish drawings don't quite fit with the other artists but were probably my favorite, full of dancing bears, animated constellations, and appropriately enough, a ship buffeted by waves in "The Wanting Comes in Waves / Repaid." She often takes the viewer into items, showing dancing subatomic particles or fantastical elements. For "The Rake's Song," Hazards' creepiest moment, we get the disturbing animation of Guilherme Marcondes, who treats us to skeletons and skeletal branches rushing past a blood red circle. While Pott's view dove into items, Marcondes prefers to have the imagery rushing past a mostly static image, creating the impression of an animated painting rather than animation. Finally, Santa Maria begins the album's final quarter with beams of brilliant light and rapid-fire antique store knick-knacks before easing into subdued night sky scenes for the album's poignant closer, "The Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned)."

What's the verdict? If you love Hazards of Love, get a copy of this and throw a party for your other Decemberists-loving friends (or those receptive) - it'll be a fun way to spend an hour and five bucks. If you don't have Hazards, this is a good introduction, but I'd probably just go ahead and pick up the album. And if, by some bizarre quirk of fate, you're lukewarm or miraculously don't like the album, you'll want to skip Here Come the Waves. It's not going to shed any light on exactly who Margaret or The Rake or the Queen are or what they're doing, but it will give you some beautiful, quirky images to go with The Decemberists' beautiful, quirky songs.

The Decemberists Site
Here Come The Waves Trailer
Buy The Hazards of Love at Amazon