123. The Decemberists – The Engine Driver
If you couldn't tell from the 600 or so words I post on this blog a day, I consider myself a writer. Enough so, in fact, that I hope more people are reading this for my writing than anything else, the list, the music, the time waster. There are very few songs in existence that champion the writer, not the songwriter but the author. Well, scratch that. Very few good songs in existence, that aren't whiny, that wouldn't wear a cardigan with over-sized buttons if it was a 22-year-old.
This song would only wear a warm sweater and glasses, and that's good enough for me. The Decemberists have been making intelligent, literate indie-pop since 2000, but hit their creative peak (thus far, they could go anywhere, up or all the way down from here) with 2005's Picaresque, a baroque and sprawling set of finely crafted melodic chamber pop. The album has more mandolin than R.E.M.'s whole catalogue, if that helps you put it in perspective. Not nearly as influenced as their most recent work by prog tendencies and the ever-fatal draw of the concept album, Picaresque maintains a strong and evident connection to grounded, simple-structure verse/chorus songsmithing. On "The Engine Driver" the band strikes their greatest solution of pop sensibility and bookish-weirdo charm.
Little additions to the song foreshadow later obsessions in the band's work, but here provide perfect accents to the forlorn-writer lyrics and calm of Colin Meloy's voice. The melodica lightly rapping in the background over a strummed resonator guitar, the sounds of thin metal combining into a wistful organic whole. The melody wafting over the New England sea shanty feel of an accordion, yanked from the Sea Captain's wharf and placed directly into The Decemberists lap. The quirks build on the pure songwriting, aiding rather than distracting, adding with sprazzatura rather than smacking of contemplation. And when the band swells upwards into "I am a writer/writer of fictions" it's impossible for me not to feel a twinge of happiness that a band so lovingly and earnestly crafted a song about what I love, and who I am. Quirky, literate, and often wearing sweaters - this is me in aural form.
Back To It: 124. Morrissey – Irish Blood, English Heart
There are really three options here. You love Morrissey. Or you hate Morrissey. Or who the fuck is Morrissey? He was the lead singer of the Smiths and went on to have a successful if peak-and-valley solo career. I’m not going into anymore background here, this is 101. If you don’t know it, you should refer to the prerequisite for this blog, which is more of a 201 section. Or at least a hard 151. With the hot young professor who wears patches on the elbows of his sport jackets. Hot and bothered yet? Morrissey would be.
This was Moz’s first single in seven years, and pulled him from pariah back to cultural relevance. His Smiths back catalogue is cemented in the indie-verse as essential and his character (and yes, Morrissey is a character) is legendary for his celibacy and meat-celibacy. But as a solo artist, like I said, you love him or hate him. I tended to hate him. He was a little douchey, a lot weepy, and I found the music to just be a watered down version of everything he had done before.
Up until this song. A galloping, raging screed against the tense relationship between Britain and Ireland, Moz ratchets the melodrama up to an entirely new stratosphere, from personal terror and self-loathing to international warfare and self-loathing. Boo hoo. At just over 2:30, the song is an enraged blast of alarm from the King of Dread, and the music matches Morrissey step for step for the first time in more than a decade. That guitar bend and slide at 0:40 cracks open Morrissey’s anger and allows it to spew out over crashing guitars and terse, taut musical jabs. When the chorus floods in and he sings about spitting on Cromwell’s name, as people from this side of the pond, we just know that he’s PISSED. About SOMETHING. And not since the mid-‘80s has Morrissey been able to produce music that so closely mirrors the anger, pain, and dread of his over-the-top words. Maybe he never will again, but at least he got one more before being bugged again about a Smiths reunion. Now back to his talking points, celibacy and veganism and no he won't see Johnny Marr.
This is What Happens When You Take My Contests Seriously. Cake.
Sometimes, I get a little cocky. Shocking. I started working on the Top 151 a few months ago, in the summer. This kind of thing takes a long time, and I put a lot of man hours into that text document. The people around me (admirers, onlookers, gawkers and the like) started to take notice and get suspicious. And this is when one of my bouts of arrogance hit.
Shannon said she could guess most of the songs on my list. "This girl?" I thought. "She didn't know who Bob Dylan was when I first met her." I had hundreds of songs on the initial list, and I felt like the general public had heard well less than half, so I decided to make an ill-fated, bravado-induced wager.
She had until the week after Halloween to send me a list of her own 150 guesses. And if she got more than 50 right (how will she possibly get a full one-third of them, thought I), that's right, I'll buy her a cake. Her choice of cake. All to herself, a la Kevin McAllister and his very own cheese pizza. And so, over Thanksgiving, this happened:
thelistomania.cake
God Dammit. She got 75 right, half the list. Which seems fine in retrospect and gives me a good feel for the list as a whole. I now know that half of the songs are immediately recognizable to a fairly astute music fan, and half the list is unknown or out of left-field or incorrect (Ha). But still, I had to buy a cake. My one caveat? I'm writing the name of my blog on the cake. And I'm posting a picture.
And yes, I have the icing-penmanship of a 2nd grader. Eat it. More songs on the next chunk of the list coming soon.
Giving Thanks
Today, I'm giving thanks...for my iPod. After years of shitty upstate New York radio, my iPod provides me with all I could ever want. Let's see you put on some Lonesome Crowded West Modest Mouse, local alternative (ie Trapt and Hinder) radio station. Also, I would like to give thanks to the mega packs of blank CDs at Target. No one uses you anymore, but for a nickel a dozen I can impress my girlfriend with a mix tape everyday of the week. Like flowers, but I don't have to leave my desk chair or put on pants. It's the thought that counts, right?
Also thankful for the people that read everyday. Keep reading. And tell your friends. Please. Back to regular posting tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving.
125. Jay-Z – Roc Boys
This is but the first time you will see Jay Hov on the list. (And yes, for rap songs I'm going to use as many goofy sing songy nicknames as I can come up with, because I am the whitest boy on the face of the planet and otherwise I would just type Jay-Z over and over again.) Well actually, it's not even the first, because he guested on pretty much every good pop song of the decade, including the aforementioned and busted upon "Umbrella." But like Jack White, Jay-Z is a figure that is inseperable from the fibers of music in the '00s. Like Prince in the '80s, Jay-Z is the genius of an art form traditionally not accepted as a whole by white America, but as did the tiny purple symboled one in his decade, Jay has helped make rap/hip-hop/urban the dominant sound of this decade.
This song is a comeback. Just like all his other songs. Constantly self-imposing retirements will really do that. But this single came after not just a hiatus, but also what was easily Jay-Z's single worst album, Kingdom Come. This is a beautiful bounceback though, stylish and historic and cultural and prescient. From his soundtrack to the ballsy and smooth-like-silk film American Gangster, Roc Boys is a call back in every way possible. A song about how Jay-Z made his own way, slinging 'ye before he could sling words. A song about the '70s, and black culture blossoming in America after decades of shit. A song about a bygone era in music, harkening back to Motown and Stax with the hottest horns this side of the Millenial Line.
Like any Jay-Z song, the man is the point, the strongest aspect, what makes the song what it is. An impossible to miss personality comes through, with obvious comparisons between '70s drug bosses and modern entrepeneurs shining through in a poignant and ever-necessary conversation. But teh horns, dey kills meh. They come in like hot fire, and loop throughout the song with a real hook, not a chipmunked female singer, not bell tones, not Timbaland raga shimmy. This shit is a real, messy, smack you in the face James Brown hook. And when Jay tells them to run out at the end, he unecessarily gives up the spotlight not to a section of instruments, but to a tonal callback that encapsulates everything the song is about. The man knows how to operate a throwback, and makes it work with ease. One other thing Jay has adopted from his '70s icons: don't let 'em see you sweat.
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