Culture Greyhound

Today I continue a series of posts dedicated to the best albums of the last decade, posting analysis of one album at a time.

45. The Thermals – Now We Can See

As far as concept albums go, Hutch Harris has nailed the formula.  There’s nothing vague or nebulous about the themes present in the lyrics of Thermals albums, whether it be the compelling tirade against politics and religion on The Body, The Blood, and the Machine or the analysis of love on the trio’s latest effort Personal Life.  As for Now We Can See, the first-person narrative is someone who has just recently died, and the observation is revelatory, unique, and brilliant.

Harris ponders how one would feel once dead through this narrative, and it makes complete sense.  The words reflect regret on things left unaccomplished, but overall, our protagonist is nonchalant and relieved, because, hey who cares, he’s already dead. Nothing to be done.  He’s free from the burden of life and the inevitable end.  The stark, subtle realization that there is nothing left to fear is prevalent throughout the album, and it conjures the brightest feeling of optimism ever felt on a post-punk collection of songs.

As for the music, well, the Portland trio has only gotten sharper and tighter in their feel-good power chord delivery and sing-along chants.  The title track is reminiscent of Baltimora’s “Tarzan Boy,” and Kathy Foster’s bass lines and percussion (when recording, the Thermals only had two members – drummer Westin Glass would join for the following tour) provide solid accompaniment for Harris’ declarative tenor and guitar solo.  While “Liquid In Liquid Out” gives a clever commentary on the wasteful routines of a life passed, “When We Were Alive” rocks harder than anything the band has churned out since Fuckin’ A.

In a solid half hour, the Thermals will win your heart and banging head with simply structured rock and roll and, in contrast, an uplifting approach to a usually fearful topic.  And after you’ve memorized every note and word, go see them live.  It all makes life worth living.

The Thermals – We Were Sick

The Thermals – Now We Can See

The Thermals – Liquid In, Liquid Out

Today I continue my ongoing feature showcasing my personal picks for the best songs of the past decade, posting ten songs at a time.

90. AC Newman – Drink to Me Babe Then

The head writer for the New Pornographers had an impressive first solo outing – The Slow Wonder combines the melodic superiority with a mellow, easygoing feel.  “Drink to Me Babe Then,” introduced to me by my dear friend Kim way back when we were still on college radio, is a gem and the highlight from the album.  Adding an acoustic sway to the sweet pop Newman is known for, the song easily peaks with a sweet whistling interlude.

Continue reading

Today I continue a series of posts dedicated to the best albums of the last decade, posting analysis of one album at a time.

46. Girl Talk – Night Ripper

Before 2006, Girl Talk was merely a laptop-based sound collage dude, as his 2002 debut Secret Diary reveals.  It’s interesting, but as far as the Greg Gillis we know and love today, it’s worlds apart, and frankly, musically speaking, an unlistenable mess.  2003’s Unstoppable, while still pretty low-key and amateur, is more in line with the mashup style Girl Talk would be famous for.  And then there was Night Ripper, a 45-minute nonstop party album, combining indie with mainstream hip-hop, modern R&B hits with classic rock staples, Motown gold with 90’s alternative.

This year, Gillis released his fifth proper LP All Day, and if one thing is certain, it’s that the man has honed his craft.  Still, there are many moments of timeless brilliance on this breakthrough disc – Puff Daddy alongside the Pixies, Biggie with Elton John, David Banner rapping to Nine Inch Nails, MIA rocking out to Hum.  The mixes come at you a mile a minute; it’s not an album to fully digest in one sitting, or two, or three.  And the remarkable thing is this: much like another artist who takes from pop culture in its current incarnation to make something completely different (I’m thinking of Weird Al), the results have oddly aged well, even when the source hasn’t.

Since Night Ripper exploded onto the scene with glowing reviews, Gillis has remained a mainstay on the dance scene, entertaining the festival circuit with his signature brand of shows (where he invites fans to rush the stage for the entirety of his performance) and becoming a prominent figurehead in the copyright/sampling debate.  Naturally, Girl Talk has as many detractors as fans – how, they ask, could someone get so famous for creating something anyone could do in their bedroom?  And yet, almost five years after Night Ripper and a plethora of emulation later, no one does it quite like Girl Talk.

Today I continue my ongoing feature showcasing my personal picks for the best songs of the past decade, posting ten songs at a time.

100. Peter Bjorn and John – Young Folks

From that catchy whistling to the shaking maracas, how could this song not have been a huge hit?  I knew it was gonna be everywhere the first time I heard it.  I’m a sucker for the boy-girl conversation songs (Johnny and June’s “Jackson” is probably my all-time favorite, and “Paradise By the Dashboard Light” is up there as well), and “Young Folks” is no exception.  It’s a percussive, melodic “I Got You Babe” for the iPod generation.

Continue reading

Today I continue a series of posts dedicated to the best albums of the last decade, posting analysis of one album at a time.

47. Fall Out Boy – From Under the Cork Tree

Coming home from the Green Day concert I attended in 2005, we stopped at a mall somewhere and my sister purchased Fall Out Boy’s second album From Under the Cork Tree. Because of the source, I was admittedly biased from the start – if my sister introduces me to it, I am unfairly skeptical of its validity.  In retrospect, I can see how this is utter idiocy; turning a blind eye to a young pop-punk group immediately after watching the elder statesmen of pop-punk live in concert is incredulous.  Once “Sugar We’re Going Down” hit Fuse, I was officially hooked, and I begrudgingly asked my younger sibling if I could burn a copy of the disc.

The appeal to Fall Out Boy, other than their uncanny ability to write something undeniably catchy and radio-ready, is their experimentation with several standard rock rhythms in one song.  It’s pretty typical today in the emo/power pop circuit, but back in 2005, I hadn’t really heard anything like it.  Combining elements of punk, emo, and even rap cadence, the group expanded from their mostly standard pop-punk debut Take This To Your Grave.  To the untrained ear, this is just a conventional album – the key is the passionate Pete Wentz-penned, sex soaked lyrics, crooned by the effervescent Patrick Stump.

Take for example, the unusual rhythm of “Of All the Gin Joints In the World,” a start-stop guitar-led anthem about a superficial, purely sexual relationship.  The chorus is blunt: “All the way/Your makeup stains my pillowcase.”  Or observe the so-honest-it’s-sexy pick-up lines in “Dance Dance” – “Why don’t you show me a little bit of spark you’ve been saving for his mattress?”  And of course, who could forget the candid observation from “Sugar We’re Going Down” – “I’m just a notch in your bedpost, but you’re just a line in a song.”

The best pop albums, whether they be backed by instruments or computers or whatever, are ones that feel instantly familiar, yet provide a unique, progressive approach all their own.  Much like most music for the masses, pop-punk is a slowly progressing medium.  With mainstream success, Fall Out Boy opened the next chapter in that book with this album, a brilliantly accessible, glossily produced power-chord love affair with something subtly new to offer.

Fall Out Boy – Of All The Gin Joints In All The World

Fall Out Boy – Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down

Fall Out Boy – 7 Minutes In Heaven (Atavan Halen)

Today I continue my ongoing feature showcasing my personal picks for the best songs of the past decade, posting ten songs at a time.

110. Queens of the Stone Age – No One Knows

This band has always been awesome.  Go back in time and take a listen to the self-titled debut or Rated R if you don’t believe.  But I suppose it was this song (and video, and album Songs For the Deaf) that put Josh Homme’s brilliant stoner/stripper rock concoction on everybody’s map.  Probably because everybody recognized the temporary drummer (isn’t he in Foo Fighters?!).  But still, these guys bring the rock.

Continue reading

Today I continue a series of posts dedicated to the best albums of the last decade, posting analysis of one album at a time.

48. The Bloodhound Gang – Hooray For Boobies

Part of making a personal list of your favorite albums of an entire decade requires you to realize that you were younger and more juvenile once.  And I suppose that’s all I can say to my 2010 friends, the ones that know me now in all my present music snob glory.  That’s the only defense I have for putting this album on my list of my favorite albums of the 2000s.  Those who have known me since grade school, however, would not be a bit surprised.  They heard me blare it constantly long after the novelty wore off – they saw me slowly learn all the words to the whole damn thing.  I imagine I could have put something more in the “critical darling” category in this spot, but I opted to put something I actually listened to incessantly, as opposed to a summer fling album (it was either this or Hybrid Theory, though I’m sure some of you wouldn’t have minded).  I suppose this album represents the nostalgic part of this list – a time when life was simpler, making Mom mad with “parental advisory” stickers on CDs was a thrill, and I was easily amused by witty fart joke raps.

Released at the turn of the century, Bloodhound Gang’s third (but really second) album Hooray For Boobies continues the crew’s brand of now-cringe-worthy middle school humor delivered in generic rap-rock fashion.  While it didn’t have the immediate hilarity or major success of 1996’s One Fierce Beer Coaster, the disc spawned the major novelty hit “The Bad Touch,” featuring the most memorable line of BHG’s career (“you and me baby, ain’t nothing but mammals….” you know it when you hear it).  After a massive tour, they released the disappointing Hefty Fine in 2005 and made random appearances on the Bam Margera show.  Haven’t heard from them since.  Not surprised.  When you make music like this, you’re bound to embody the epitome of your core fanbase (privileged, slacker, stoner, white kid, et al).

In my defense, the melodies are catchy and radio-ready – the guys were good at coming up with hooks, and Jimmy Pop’s rapping is clever and at times laugh-out-loud hilarious, the best it’s ever been.  In “Three Point One Four,” witty remarks are delivered at rapid-fire pace, as are the dick jokes littered in the fellatio ode “Yummy Down On This.”  The whole album features Pop’s ability to take a taboo subject and litter it with metaphors, puns, similes, and random musings; it makes the disc (or at least portions of it) worthy of multiple listens.  Another appreciative aspect is the diverse use of electronic instrumentation (especially drum machines) and liberal, appealing sampling (Falco, Metallica, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and Homer Simpson are all heard in “Mope”).  For such a dumb album, these guys sure spent a long time putting it all together.

At age 24, I’m not going to pretend that this album is awesome, or defend its musicality, or say it changed my life, or even make false claims that I listen to it today.  I guess it’s just here to remind myself that I’ve come a long way from 8th grade.  And that I used to enjoy life more. And I used to have a lot more fun.  To everything there is a season….

Bloodhound Gang – Three Point One Four

Bloodhound Gang – The Ballad Of Chasey Lain

Bloodhound Gang – The Bad Touch

Today I continue my ongoing feature showcasing my personal picks for the best songs of the past decade, posting ten songs at a time.

120. Prodigy – Girls

Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned fared better across the Atlantic in Prodigy’s native England, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t blaring in my dingy yellow car during high school.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  “Girls” is a standout from a banging comeback from one of the 90’s most successful, riveting, and interesting electronic groups.  And while nothing on the disc comes close to their previous work’s brilliance, and the crew would later shell out typical guitar-driven bore for shillings, this track gives us a glimpse into the progression that could have been.

Continue reading

Today I continue my ongoing feature showcasing my personal picks for the best songs of the past decade, posting ten songs at a time.

130. Flaming Lips – Do You Realize?

Just a couple of days ago, I talked about how awesome this song is, but as fate would have it, the list compels me to elaborate.  In three-and-a-half glorious minutes, Wayne Coyne sums up our life….or at least it feels like he does.  With a simple question, he gives the most personal compliment to everyone listening, then continues to examine the beauty we take for granted – the sun, our friendships, our life.  It’s a sweet call for a simple enjoyment of who we are and what we’re doing, in this very moment of our fleeting lives.  Because it’s hard to make the good things last….

The Flaming Lips – Do You Realize?
Continue reading

Today I continue a series of posts dedicated to the best albums of the last decade, posting analysis of one album at a time.

49. The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

There’s plenty of works to choose from, and yes, there are die-hards who would claim several alternatives, but for many Flaming Lips fans, the “favorite album” answer is more or less split right down the middle between 1999’s masterpiece The Soft Bulletin and the 2002 follow-up Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. And while the former isn’t eligible for this list (check the release date, yo!), I still am partial to the latter, which was, at the prime age of 16, my first introduction to these Oklahoma City darlings.

I suppose you could say the two go hand in hand – Bulletin being the Rubber Soul to Yoshimi‘s Revolver.  But the comparison kind of ends there.  Because while the Liverpool lads went from Dylan-esque to full-on studio experimentation and reinvention, the Lips took the celestial sounds of their newfound popcraft to a more consistent level.  Sure, the experimentation is all here, the sonic whooshes and blips and beeps and crunchy electronic noises found on previous works, but here Wayne Coyne’s earnestness is at the forefront, and usually accompanied by a solid backing of beautiful sounds.

Take the acoustic foundation of the album’s highlights (of which there are many) – “Ego Tripping At the Gates of Hell,” “Do You Realize,” and the title track all have memorable strumming to provide a background for Coyne’s honest, revealing croon.  He takes the topics discussed previously to a deeper level, as heard on the classic aforementioned tearjerker “Do You Realize.”  Love, life, and the universe are all taken to task here with sentimental, trademark sonic flourishes to bask in while you ponder.

Upon its release, much like the Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi was compared to the latest effort from Radiohead.  Much of the comparison was the electronic experimentation used, and the stark differences in mood; one reviewer even described the album as music that Radiohead would make if “Thom Yorke believed in God.”  In retrospect, these comparisons seem apt for the time, but no more, because the brilliance that is Yoshimi, made by a band who had already been blowing minds for two decades, is in a league of its own.

The Flaming Lips – Fight Test

The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt.1

The Flaming Lips – Do You Realize?