122. Spoon – You Got Yr Cherry Bomb
You may have realized if you've been reading everyday that I have a startling affinity for horns, horn sections, marching bands, pretty much any brassy shit. I tend to love songs that feature them, and I tend to specifically mention them as a highlight when talking about those songs. This is a specific style of brass, though, and how it plays in the context of the song is very important. I'm not talking ska. No one should take any ska made in the last 20 years seriously - fun, but that's it. This is the real deal - Chess, Stax. Motown shit. You might say I have lean on that music sometimes, as in I would probably rather listen to Al Green or Marvin Gaye or Otis Redding than just about anything else 50% of the time. Oh yeah, and I like indie music still too.
Which is why this is my favorite song Spoon has ever produced. I love the band, but this has a sound unlike anything else in the canon. A lot of people don't know that Spoon have actually been around for like 16 years now. They didn't start getting indiettention until Kill the Moonlight dropped in 2002, and the didn't start getting any real-person attention until this album, 2007's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, one of the best albums in a year of great albums. But over that decade and a half of turbulent change in music, the band had stuck with a deep down pop groove, deep bass and plodding-jab guitars, lots of empty space and post-punk shreds. A nicer Modest Mouse that would at least buy you a glass of wine first. So, uh, what the fuck is this?
This is the sound of a band maturing. Chiming pianos and xylophone usher in Britt Daniel's voice, the driving light snare and a tamborine being played on the other end of a wind tunnel. And then at :23, a horn section quietly staccato sidesteps it's way into the background, laying low behind the established melodies. More voices fade in and out of the mix like ghosts in the studio, or ghosts in the machine. The song sounds like it was inspired by the room, the place it was made, not the band or the sound - like Spoon went into Stax and recorded a spectral impression, filtered through their voices and instruments. At 1:57, when the noise drops out and we're left with a few brief seconds of xylo and hand claps, there is one last breath of fresh air before the horns stomp back in and finally take over the song they have been brewing behind. The ghost vocals coo along with the fading music, and like that, in less than three minutes, the spectres of Spector's past are gone. That noise at the end of the track, by the way, is the original space rock version of the song. Another ghost of Spoon's past played out in one of the best songs of their prolific career.
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.
126. Broken Social Scene – 7/4 (Shoreline)
Apologies to those of you who already know a bit about Broken Social Scene (which you should, god dammit) but this needs to involve some history for those who don't. So there were these two bearded guys making no money in the Toronto indie scene at the turn of the millenium, Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning. And they recorded an album that wasn't very good, but they released it anyway, and decided they wanted to play it live. When they did so, it sucked. Who wants to see two hipsters who are only marginally good on their instruments play a shitty album? So to make the live show more interesting, they started just inviting everyone they knew in the fairly vibrant Toronto scene to come play with them. And thus, Broken Social Scene was born. A supergroup, except no one knew of any of the solo artists or other bands until AFTER Broken Social Scene, well, broke. You know a couple people from that original live balloon-up. Leslie "One Two Three Four" Feist, some people from Stars, some people from Metric, a guy from Do Make Say Think, the girl from Thee Silver Mt. Zion. There are more, but really, you started not knowing these bands three examples ago.
Then as a group they put out an AMAZING album. But that's not where this song came from. "7/4 (Shoreline)" is from 2005's merely very good eponymous album. And it shows the band at the height of it's bloated, 20-member indie-chamber-orchestra power. What is that, like 15 people singing the opening lines of the song? At least two girls, including Feist, who then gets the main parts of the verses. Yeah, you recognize that voice. But listen to how much simple orchestration is lying beneath. Live, there are maybe 6 guitars playing, and that comes across in the studio version as well. There is just a lot of EVERYTHING, and it would seem like overkill and self-indulgence, but it still works because the song is damn good. Well-written, rooted in traditional song format enough to stay together but still climactic and loud and messy. "It's coming, it's coming" is my favorite part of the song. When you can feel a room full of musicians, friends, lurching forward together towards one cacophonous goal.
Then the horns come in. Like they had been hiding behind the row of guitars during the recording, an full horn section rolls in to play an entirely organic melody line that has been bubbling just beneath the surface since the opening chords. And the horns get the limelight at the end of the song, with all the singers taking a back seat. That is how friends play, they share it. And although it's not their best song or album, "7/4 Shoreline" really shows Broken Social Scene for what they have been - a giant mess of friends trying to sort themselves out live. We're lucky to get to observe the jumbled chaos.
Also. This is another act on the very short list of great bands whose entire recording careers have fallen into this decade. Someone write some comments and give me more examples of bands on that list. I'm thinking about it myself.
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