104. MGMT – Electric Feel
You know that one friend of yours that, at first glance, looks like a total douche? If you were meeting them for the first time again out at a bar or at a mutual friend's place you would totally avoid them Twilight fans based on something like their gelled hair or sparkly purse or some shit? Might be a great person, a stand up guy, a really close friend, you might love this person. But this does NOT excuse the fact that they outwardly express themselves as total tools. They could be the coolest person in a room, down to earth and fun, but because they choose to be look and act likes douches, well, most people classify them that way. And that's pretty much how I feel about MGMT. The way they look, act, sound in interviews, the shit that comes out of their mouths, the fashions they inspire and their horribly vapid fanbase. It makes me want to hit them in the faces with a snow shovel a la the creepy guy who eventually turns out to love church or something in Home Alone. But just like that friend, there's a lot more under the polo shirt or thick glasses or sideways ponytail, and with MGMT, there are redeemingly kick ass songs. Three of them.
Their 2008 album Oracular Spectacular is good, but super, super uneven. Some of the tracks are even pretty unlistenable. But the boys (yes, MGMT is actually only two people on album, and yes, since I am regrettably older than them I can call them boys) crafted 3.5 songs that are perfect singles, all different but with similar sounds and styles and panache. "Kids" has blown up on the radio. "Time to Pretend" garnered them an indie following, coming out as the first single in late 2007 and building up excitement for their debut. "Weekend Wars" is, well, the .5. But none of the other singles can hold a candle to the audio time-travel space-exploration groove of "Electric Feel."
Plus, when is the last time you loved a song written in 6/4 time? Count it out, you'll see. With a stuttering synth line and elephant-plod bass pluck, chicken-scratch guitar licks and speaker-alternating tambo-jangle (count those dashes - new record) MGMT opens up a bizarre strut down the sidewalk of the kitschiest bits of your iTunes, through disco and 90's electronic and early 70's funk. When Andrew starts singing, well, more like cooing, in a deeply reverbed falsetto, shit turns on. The synth lines get all giant and regal, sweeping through the chorus like a tornado laying waste to the midwest, or a tsunami crossing over land. Waves of electronics wash over classic white-boy funk lines toward the climax, the only true climax that comes in any of MGMT's songs, the best moment of music they've produced. The high point of their career thus far comes at 3:15, "Do what you feel now/Electric feel now." Everything goes up in a haze, the chorus crashes the coke-party, keytars woosh and whir through the background as the band flexes it's aural muscle, creating walls of ambience and noise over a fading cry of voices. Live, they don't do the fade and the song plays out. I like this better. Just gives a taste of what's to come, like the end of "Umbrella." Then your douchey polo-wearing friend walks away to hit on some poor unsuspecting girl down the hall. But hey, he's a good guy.
I'm going to take a couple days off, because apparently you are all taking a couple days off too (I know, no one is at work this week) but I will be back to posting on Saturday, January 2nd. And then Monday - we get to the Top 100.
105. The Raconteurs – Carolina Drama
All right, who's keeping the Jack White count? What are we up to now? Three or four I think, doesn't matter because it's not stopping here. And for this selection, we have White's roots rock n' roll four piece. True, on the first album they sounded like a Midwest Nirvana for the nu age. But on their 2008 album Consolers of the Lonely, Jack White, Brendan Benson, and the support channeled "Squeeze Box" Who and Led Zeppelin 3 and created a late-'00s British Americana revival mud-stomper.
But on the album's last track, "Carolina Drama," Jack White and the boys channel something purely American in a down and dirty Dylan story of lust and betrayal. Personally, I think this is the best thing Jack has written outside of the White Stripes, better than any other Raconteurs, The Dead Weather, solo material, or guest spots with at least 100 other bands. This is the most successful branching out he's ever done, and it's the most traditional roots music that he's ever created. A forlorn tale about murder in a down home, South Carolina family? A confused ten-year-old and a drunk step dad? America, Fuck Yeah.
With a slow, deep twang groove, the song opens up and lays all the characters out immediately. At 1:40, we get the ethereal female vocals, what sounds like a harpsichord backed up by a fiddle, and a trademark super-affected Jack White guitar line. Like Dylan's "Hurricane," these brief sign posts are simply meant as breathing points in a heavy and heady story. Fiddle lines simply separate segments of a story being told as straightforward as possible, less a song and more a tall tale set to music. And after another respite, at 3:45 the music perfectly shadows the story as it hits it's stomping, clamoring climax, a murder scene portrayed through layers of roots strings and blood-dripped vocals. A Greek chorus begins to chant through the background, the deus Ex Machina of Jack's southern tragedy. And when they all join together to sing a melody only refrain and the instruments slow down like tires on a gravel road, White comes forward again to give a sly, somber coda to the story. Like many of the best American novels, our characters come and go, but what remains is the dark personal emotionalism with which the story is told.
106. The Von Bondies- C’mon C’mon
A two-minute audio kick in the nuts. And from 1:30 to 2:15, the sound of coursing adrenaline caught on tape. Brief song that gets to the point. Same kind of post.
I’m Back, Baby!
Amazed it took me this long to slip a Futurama quote into the blog. Hope you people had a good holiday, I did, but jesus was that short. The older I get, the shorter Christmas gets. It was all of four hours this year, surrounded by napping and NBA games.
Anywho, I'm back now. Posting will resume when I get a chance, and the new poll will go up sometime after 5 today, so get any last minute votes in.
On to the matter at hand. Today, at work, is my make-up day. I'm going back through albums this year and giving them another full listen. I've heard all of them once, but I never gave them time to set in. So today I'll be giving another complete listen to:
Miike Snow - Miike Snow
Girls - Album
Fever Ray - Fever Ray
The xx - xx
Later on today, I will give my second impressions.
107. Kanye West – Flashing Lights
The American public is a fickle, fickle bitch. Going from poster boy to whipping boy isn't a new story. In fact, it's become somewhat of a natural transition in our society, and I can't say I'm surprised about the current state of affairs for Mr. West. I am surprised, however, by all the people who are letting an (ridiculous, unnecessary, immature, far from savvy) outcry taint their opinion of Kanye's music. One not surprising in the slightest mistake doesn't undo a decade of brilliant, groundbreaking, occasionally gut-punching music. I don't care how you feel about the man, he's one of the most important music figures of the '00s, and probably the MOST important of the second half of the decade. Really. Who else has put out three fantastic albums since 2003, been nominated for as many Grammy's in such a short amount of time, and been at once the subject of so much controversy and praise? This is being a rockstar, kids. Baby-boomers will remember this from their childhoods as HOW THIS IS SUPPOSED TO WORK. John Lennon claimed to be bigger than Jesus. Kanye only shit on a horrible pop artist at a poorly-viewed awards show.
Why am I focusing on this so much? Because we will be talking about Kanye a bunch more on this blog.
But here is the basic concept behind Kanye. He does what he wants without consideration for the current state of hip-hop music. He follows his own set of rules, and consistently does what no one else is doing. And then everyone follows. And with 2007's Graduation, the third in Mr. West's immaculate trifecta, it appears that Kanye decided he wanted to be grandiose, giant, and neon. Like he wanted to glow in the dark, ride in space ships, and make hip-hop more shiny and epic than anything that had come before. And through his futuretro beatmaking, he infused his genre with more techno sheen than ever before.
This song has three things. Strings, electronics, and Kanye. With those three elements, he constructs the most ambitiously futuristic soundscape in the history of rap music. Like the soundtrack to a blacksploitation sci-fi sex scene. Picture THAT. With a foot in the past and the remaining 95% of his body pulsing into the future, Kanye took off from this planet in his sexy, female-voiced spaceship and reached for the fucking outer reaches of the music galaxy, certainly outside of the realm of everything hip-hop was doing in 2007. It's just unfortunate that snafus and public opinion have brought Mr. West crashing back down to earth, and hip-hop as well, without giving other artists the chance to strive for the same Daft Punk-ian and Air-esque beats. Shit was about to get really good. Then it got all thuggy again.
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