What?! Favorite albums revisited? After months of hibernation and a dozen or so posts in between...it's finished? Almost, but maximum relief will arrive in the near future. Sometimes the short writings so akin to kidney stones hide cunningly in a recess of the urinary tract. That anxious pain of wondering if I'll ever expel another fairly innocuous idea from my system has just about passed. The wait will be over soon enough, and as a brash side-note, I'd like to mention that Stephen King has indeed been dethroned as the master of suspense.
King had a good run. Can you believe he got ousted by such a widely unknown writer? Just like in the film version of The Mist, this story has a twist-ending.
And with that I segue gracefully into gushing over my favorite Rolling Stones' album.
10.The Rolling Stones—Exile on Main St. (1972): The quintessential Saturday night soundtrack, Exile on Main St. is a raunchy celebration of dance-crumpled mini-skirts and lipstick-smeared collars. The album showcases brass-blowing session men in impeccable harmony with their rock superstar overlords; the Stones achieve a broadened and voluminous sound without cutting the contributions of any core members of the group (as the Beatles did on Sgt. Pepper, wherein Ringo was left to idle so constantly that the bloke learned how to play chess when he wasn't needed). On Main St., rocks are gotten off, joints are ripped, and hips are shaken—and that only covers the first three tracks.
Later on, the Stones muse on the dual natures of love and luck, reason and spirituality, but such melodic insights should not be mistaken for a lull in the party; the boys simply need to recharge their long-enduring batteries, and they do so with tranquil resolve, even when scraping the shit off their shoes in “Sweet Virginia.”
“Loving Cup” jumbles sentiment with lust and liquor until the distinctions seem moot—for they are all but things that embody longing and pleasure, the group's primary drives. Powered by gospel-like backup vocals, “Tumbling Dice” is a soulful entreaty that evokes how Abba's “Take a Chance on Me” might sound in Bizarro World. “Stop Breaking Down” is rowdy, blue-infused rock best-suited for strutting trouble-makers with simple yet sound advice to offer.
In addition to breaking down: along with many others, I'd be best advised to stop comparing the Rolling Stones to the Beatles. If you favor the pragmatic principles of physical attraction and compatibility to that grand and hokey romantic yarn about soul-mates transcending mortality to go on and on across the universe, you almost certainly prefer the Rolling Stones. If you view pop-sensibilities that duly garner radio play as a gift rather than a demerit, you almost certainly prefer the Beatles.
Exile on Main St. is the Rolling Stones album that most makes me squirm and beg, “Do I really have to choose?”
9.Bright Eyes—I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005): Have you heard the one about the woman who was flying to meet her fiancée over the largest ocean on planet Earth when--quite unexpectedly--the plane went down? Like most of Conor Oberst's narratives, it gets much more captivating once the music cues. In the tradition of singer-songwriters who eschew chops in favor of poetic passion (and inevitably garner comparisons to Bob Dylan), Oberst and his indie-pals craft folksy melodies to serve the boy-genius' visceral storytelling and vivid imagery.
Conor's depth and versatility of sound lift him above derisive accusations of Emo-sympathizing. Sometimes he comes across as snotty, but such petulance is entirely redeemed by his volition, grit, and sincerity. I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning does more than just flourish as a (mostly) folk album released 40 years after Bringing It All Back Home, which was released decades before MTV, Nirvana, and Nine Inch Nails. The album also presses with the right amount of force against the boundaries of what exactly constitutes folk music.
“Lua” and “The First Day of My Life” are romantic acoustic ballads that stand as Oberst's finest musings on heartache and true love, resp. “Another Travelin' Song” channels the grieving swagger of Gram Parsons. One could wear Chuck Taylors or cowboy boots while dancing to it without feeling like a hypocrite either way. It's the sort of song that can be boogied to with perked ears that seek out every note and word.
Whereas the previous entry constitutes an ideal night-album, it's worth savoring I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning shortly after arising from bed for the day. All ten tracks goad a heightened awareness in listeners. Whether somber or fiery, the songs command attention and coax a craving for details. On “Road to Joy,” Oberst concludes his masterpiece with a nod to Beethoven and waylays with his brand of minutely crafted, righteous spunk. “The Sun came up with no conclusions,” he sings. “Flowers sleeping in their beds/ The city cemetery's humming/ I'm wide awake, it's morning.” From the standpoint of a contented night-owl, this album marks one of the premier reasons to toast with coffee the majestic expansion of daylight that comes with every new sunrise.
8.Modest Mouse—The Lonesome Crowded West (1997): Though he seems like a goofy cynic at heart, Modest Mouse front-man Isaac Brock's musical mind tends to gravitate toward dark moods and loathsome squalor—particularly on his group's earlier efforts. On their second LP, the salty Pacific Northwesterner and his two band-mates capture the wry indictments of a hung-over malcontent on a cross-country journey.
“Teeth Like God's Sunshine,” the album's opener, is like an American indie-rock counterpart to “Paranoid Android.” The first track is a jaded and sprawling overview of the downfalls of a lonesome, crowded culture. “Shoeshine” rollicks, plods, rises, and thrashes for nearly 7 minutes without squandering a second. With snide exhaustion, Brock advises us to “Go to the grocery store and buy some new friends” before plaintively asking, “Do you need a lot of what you got to survive?”
“Convenient Parking” comments on the dispassion incited by highway travel to various cities that all pretty much look the same. Brock's musings on monotony culminate in a concise and primal outcry in the chorus that calls to mind the profane tantrum of a sweat-stung, working-class underling stuck in an L.A. traffic jam. His imagery is even more concrete and evocative on the sobering, twang-laden ballad “Trailer Trash.” Descriptions of indigent teenagers “eating snowflakes with plastic forks” and pithy summations of their parents (“Short love with a long divorce”) almost cause too much heartache to be considered beautiful. (Almost.)
In spite of his detection of sinister undertones in mall-walking and Orange Julius stands, his snarls of blasphemy in “Jesus Christ Was an Only Child” and “Cowboy Dan,” Brock's band has to offer a headphones sanctuary that is in no way nihilistic.* No—a more fitting designation of such a sonic hideaway is along the lines of the lonesome, uncrowded bliss.
7.Spoon—Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (2007): Few bands, in my estimation, have handled the transition from indie darlings to (fringe) mainstream fame with as much nonchalance and integrity as Spoon. It matters little that a fluky teen drama, The O.C., played a significant role in their rise to success. Spoon have outlasted that sort of chic ephemera and established themselves as perhaps the most critically praised band of the naughties on our side of the Atlantic (where Radiohead are deemed foreigners...brilliant and gloomy foreigners).
My favorite of their LPs commences with “Don't Make Me a Target,” a disaffected alt-rock gem that expresses the wariness of peaceful individuals cloaked in the gigantic shadow of nuclear-age tyrants. The baleful bitterness of the opener is surpassed by its virtue and accentuated by a momentous jam of jangled riffs gone haywire and piano keys that sound precisely stomped more so than fingered. “Rhythm and Soul” and “Finer Feelings” are tuneful deep cuts that could easily pass for singles. Former Get-Up Kids bassist Rob Pope plucks the groove that impels the jaunty pop-flourish of “Don't You Evah.” Front-man Britt Daniel's mastery of quirky tinkering in the production booth is evident throughout the album, and his melodic rasp once again employs grit to create smooth textures in the same way that sandpaper refines unseemly bumps and blemishes.
Spoon expand on their minimalist roots on “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” and “The Underdog,” a pair of singles boosted by horn-section blasts of gusto. “Cherry Bomb” is somehow at once crystal-clear and enigmatic, joyful and faintly rueful (with lines such as “We lost it all before, you and me”). My savviest stab at its meaning is probably reductive: it serves as a contrite love letter, an infectious message to Daniel's better-half akin to, “Sorry I fucked up, but bare in mind, I wrote this song for you, so please take it easy on me.” “The Underdog”--as a struggling and loopy muser on pop-culture has mentioned before--provides the perfect soundtrack for a muted game of Super Punch-out. The likes of Super Macho Man, you see, represent hulking masses of hubris, bulky meat-heads with steroid-enhanced egos who shun the advice of frail but sagacious water-boys, while Little Mac embodies the righteous jabs of humility that so often (yet somehow unexpectedly) pulverize the undue conceits that fester inside of us.
Delivered with Paul Simonesque wryness and attention to detail, “The Underdog” can also be construed as a fine dismissal of those foolish enough to charge that indie-darlings on the rise are damned if they do (sign to a major label and—shudder—risk accusations of “sell-outs!”) and damned if they don't (cash in on what they could potentially earn because of some misguided attempt at purity). Ga X 5 stands as indelible proof that success is not the enemy of creativity—and that any would-be hipster-derisions mean nothing compared to the pay-raise that a truly great band deserves.
6.Pink Floyd—Dark Side of the Moon (1973): In regard to this undeniable classic, some have a bold theory. Edgar Allan Poe—that dreary pioneer of Gothic horror and mystery who used the word “phantasmagoria” in wise recognition that it would soon go out of style—met up with Jules Vern—the main forefather of science-fiction and author of From the Earth to the Moon—and traveled in a time machine built by H.G. Wells to Abbey Road Studios in London, where they scared the bejesus out of a reefer-stoned Roger Waters as he gazed with sorrowful longing at a photograph of Syd Barrett, the former front-man of Floyd—who had opted out of the pressures of fame and adulthood and went into seclusion, owing to the mental havoc wreaked by schizophrenia and way, waaaayyyy too many doses of LSD.
After a fit of hysteria and a frantically snuffed-out joint, Waters' terror was quelled—not by reason, for that had clearly failed him, but rather by the unreasonable nature of creative miracles. The three artists swapped notes, exchanged ideas on psychosis, man's relation to the cosmos, and psychedelic space-rock much closer in tone to Kubrick's 2001 than the Grateful Dead. An epiphany was born, but shortly afterward, Poe raided Floyd's liquor cabinet and began blubbering, “O—the contemptible plight of it all!” Vern affronted Waters' ego with incessant beseachings of "Wishing to revel in the grand acquaintanceship of the transcendent Paul McCartney.” The brainstorming session had precipitated a rather dismal celebration. With a brusque clearing of his throat, Waters thanked his innovative visitors from the past but hinted not so subtly that they had better depart. The writers obliged--ruefully--and boarded the time machine that flashed psychedelic and (dare I say) faintly phantasmagorical beams of light before vanishing in a puff of smoke.
When band-mates David Gilmour, Richard Wright, and Nick Mason returned from their lengthy lunch-break, waving away dense clouds with cheeky grins and commenting on the peculiar odor of Waters' strand of marijuana, they were told to never mind such distractions and report at once to their instruments, for their chief songwriter had made a breakthrough.
As evidenced by much of Floyd's canonized output from the '70s, Waters never forgot that unlikely meeting, and from it he extracted memories whenever he got stuck in his effort to pen a new number. The aforementioned event was freshest in his mind, naturally, when his band recorded Dark Side of the Moon.
Saw it on Behind the Music.
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Albums Five-to-One, baby, coming soon.
* Bah! Those lowlife, asshole nihilists...
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