Friday Nite Music Club

In honor of my #1 song of 2001, it's...my #1 song of 2001. Granted, it's shaky and the sound's not that good, but...no matter...

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Best Songs and Albums of 2001

As I was writing my ‘Brain vs iPod: 2002’ piece a few weeks ago, I kind of knew in the back of my head that this would cause me to do one for every year of the decade, and sure enough, it has. Here is 2001...to be followed, I’m sure, by 2003-2006. I’m not going to go with the ‘Brain vs iPod’ thing, though, as the interesting part is simply the ranking itself. So without further adieu...

2001 was an okay year for music. Compared to 2002, it was mediocre at best, but as with even the driest of years, there’s still a lot of quality in the Top 10 or 15. Hip hop was almost nonexistent in 2001—you can see exactly why Jay-Z manufactured a feud with Nas...there was nothing else worthwhile going on—though as we saw in the 2002 piece, that was only temporary. As for music as a whole...well, Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot finished #8 on my 2002 Albums list. Had it been released in 2001 as originally intended, it would have been #2 in 2001. That pretty much says it all. Still, it’s not like I dislike any of the albums I’m about to discuss or anything.

Best Albums

1. Bob Dylan, Love and Theft. For a long time, I associated this album with its release date—9/11—but enough time (and listens) have passed by now that now I just associate it with being awesome. Whereas I think 2006’s Modern Times was a bit overrated, it’s really hard to overrate Love and Theft. He showed that he still had a lot of wit and talent left on 1997’s Time Out of Mind, but that album was saturated with an overall feeling of illness and mortality (“It’s not dark yet/but it’s getting there.”) With Love and Theft, Bob just reared back and decided to have a good time. It’s such a fun album, from the “Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum” opener to “Honest With Me” to “Summer Days.” Even some songs that feel like they should be more downbeat—“Cry a While”, “High Water (For Charley Patton)”—have a quaint looseness to them. Actually, Modern Times was probably a great album...it’s just that my standards were set so high with Love and Theft that it was going to be impossible to live up to my expectations. There really isn’t much competition here—it is far and away #1 for 2001.

2. North Mississippi Allstars, 51 Phantom. If I ever actually finish a piece I’ve been writing about R.L. Burnside and Mississippi blues-rock, you’ll see that I discovered NMAS in 2000 when I happened across their set opening for a jamband at the Blue Note in Columbia. After happily digesting their 2000 album of blues covers—Shake Hands with Shorty—I started looking forward to the fall 2001 release of their next album. Even though I expected to enjoy it, I had no idea it was going to be as good as it was. Mixing in a few originals with their variations of some more blues standards, NMAS makes the whole thing sound both laid back and energetic, original yet totally observant of history. Originality is tough in the blues genre, but NMAS continues to push the envelope.

(3. Dave Matthews Band, The Lillywhite Sessions. I’ve talked about this one before. I put this one in parentheses because, even though I want to count it in the 2001 releases, I know that I already put their 2002 album, Busted Stuff, near the top of that year’s list, and about 90% of BS’s songs are the same as on the Lillywhite Sessions. So for now we’ll just say that this is where it would have ranked if I’d ranked it.)

3. Rilo Kiley, Take Offs and Landings. Rilo Kiley released a few different versions of their debut EP, Initial Friend, and though Initial Friend was pretty damn close a full-length album (9 songs, I believe), Take Offs and Landings was their first official LP release. Jenny Lewis hadn’t totally discovered and developed her amazing voice yet—there’s a little more quirk and a little less beauty here—and she was still splitting the lead singing load with guitarist Blake Sennett, but Take Offs is still a hellaciously good effort. It’s hard to come up with original takes in lovesong lyrics, but songs like “Plane Crash in C” (one of the best titles ever), “Science vs Romance,” and “Go Ahead” are really quirky and unique. This was a prolific time for Rilo Kiley, as they would release the even better The Execution of All Things the very next year...and More Adventurous only two years later. Granted, the Beatles put out like 19 albums a year in the mid-‘60s, but for the 2000’s three great albums—each better than its predecessors—in four years is quite a feat.

4. R.L. Burnside, Burnside on Burnside (Live). I argue with myself a lot about which live albums to include on these lists. I included 2002’s Live from the Wetlands from Robert Randolph & The Family Band, but I’m not including the outstanding Live from Mars release from Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals or Jay-Z's MTV Unplugged on this list. I guess the main criterion is this: if the album is intended to introduce an artist(s) (as Live from the Wetlands does)—and if the songs on said album aren’t really available in any other form to a music buyer—then it counts. That explains Wetlands. R.L. Burnside had been putting out minor releases (my favorite: A Ass Pocket of Whiskey) for a while, however if it weren’t for the marginal success of Burnside on Burnside, not only would I not have heard of any of his other releases, they wouldn’t have been available to me even if I had. In other words, this was, for all intents and purposes, the introduction of R.L. Burnside to the world.

All that said, this album is really, really fun. Burnside took a bunch of songs that I’d heard before in one form or another—North Mississippi Allstars hold him up as their god and perform quite a few of his songs—and crafted a great live show out of them. Plus, he was a dirty old man when this was recorded. Burnside was someone who enjoyed life—despite the obstacles thrown his way—and it just radiates from this disc. “Jumper on the Line” and “Snake Drive”, in particular, are just phenomenal.

5. Ryan Adams, Gold. This one surprised me. Every time I think of this album, I underrate it. It’s as uneven as every other Adams album—when you’re as freakishly prolific as he is, not nearly everything you come up with is going to be as good as you hope it will be at the time—but the quality extends pretty far beyond the two radio songs, “New York, New York,” and “Listening Bell,” which, as you’ll see, are two of my favorite songs of the year. I love how Adams’ sound and voice just naturally rotate between country, rock, and R&B on songs like “Firecracker” and “Gonna Make You Love Me.” He let himself have some fun on this one (that’s not always the case), and the results were strong, especially on the aforementioned “New York, New York.” I always loved Denis Leary’s 1990s comedy routines, and he talked a lot about his love for New York, both its good and its bad. Adams’ musical tribute here falls into the same “You take the good with the bad, and I love this place” category...only significantly less funny, of course.

6. India.Arie, Acoustic Soul. Peruse this list, and you’ll see that there’s no Alicia Keys here...other than the presence of “Fallin’” on the Top 50 list. I ended up with both Acoustic Soul and Keys’ Songs in A Minor at the same time. I was blown away by Acoustic Soul’s originality and quality, while A Minor told me that Keys was just a one-trick pony. I love “Fallin’” as much as the next person, but there just wasn’t much else on Keys’ album. So it really really pissed me off when Keys basically won all the Grammys for which India.Arie was nominated. Of course, Arie’s next album was completely and totally bland and uninteresting, while Keys took a gigantic step forward with The Diary of Alicia Keys, so for once maybe the Grammys were smarter than I was. Then again, A Minor just really cannot hold a candle to Acoustic Soul, so...yeah, screw the Grammys.

7. My Morning Jacket, At Dawn. Another one I apparently like more than I thought I did. I love every song on 2005’s Z (off the top of my head, I have to figure it will be the #1 album on my 2005 list), and I’ve always regarded 2003’s It Still Moves as a major step forward for MMJ. However, it turns out that At Dawn is pretty damn good. While Jim James’ songwriting (and singing, for that matter) has taken major steps up the pyramid since 2001, songs like “Just Because I Do” and “Phone Went West” are still top-notch.

8. John Mayer, Room for Squares. Being that I sacrificed all of my music nerd cred when I admitted that I like Mandy Moore a while back, I guess it’s safe for me to admit that I occasionally enjoy John Mayer as well. Never mind that he’s one of the funniest, wittiest musicians around...he’s a pretty damn strong singer-songwriter as well. Some of the songs on Room for Squares haven’t aged very well, but a) I sure did like them in 2001, and b) plenty of the songs—like “3x5” and “Not Myself”—are still perfect examples of early-‘00s singer-songwriter pop. And the dude has some chops on the guitar, he really does. That helps.

9. Cake, Comfort Eagle. Another surprising one. Cake are one of the rarest creations in music: a band with a sound that is 1000% their own. You hear three seconds of a Cake song, and you know it’s a Cake song. The bass sound is ska-ish, but totally original, and lead singer John McCrea is a complete and total enigma. That said, while they’ve put out some fantastic songs (“Never There,” “The Distance,” “Let Me Go,” “Sheep Go to Heaven,” their great cover of “I Will Survive”), in my opinion they’ve really only put out one truly strong-from-start-to-finish album: Comfort Eagle. Which is funny, since it didn’t sell nearly as well as 1996’s Fashion Nugget or 1998’s Prolonging the Magic. Known mostly for “Short Skirt/Long Jacket” and the really cool, creative video for that song, Comfort Eagle really does have numerous great moments, from “Meanwhile, Rick James...” to “Arco Arena” to “Long Line of Cars” and “Love You Madly.” I don’t know what makes this album better, really—the sound is still purely Cake, and the lyrics and song titles are just as strange as ever—I just know that it’s better.

An aside: I saw Cake at a free show in DC in 2002, and for the encore McCrea announced that they were taking requests. He responded to requests as they came up. “Maybe...no...probably not...yeah, we can probably do that one...NO, F*** YOU, I’M NOT TAKING YOUR REQUEST—YOU WEREN’T SINGING ALONG DURING THAT LAST SONG.” No idea if he was being serious or just messing with the guy (likely a bit of both), but it was one of the more startling and awkwardly funny things ever I’ve seen at a concert.

10. Black Crowes, Lions. I freely admit that my view of this album is probably influenced heavily by the fact that 2001 was when I saw the Black Crowes live for the first time, and they blew me away. That said, this is a good reminder of just how effortless the Crowes appear to make solid blues-rock music. They took some chances on Lions, and for the most part it paid off. Of course, then the Robinson Brothers remembered that they hate each other, and the band broke up for a bit. So maybe they didn’t like the album as much as I did. Either way, I could listen to “Soul Singing” all day long.

11. Radiohead, Amnesiac. When a group earns my respect, that tends to carry over when they do something I’m not sure I get or like. I don’t immediately proclaim their next album the greatest thing ever (unless it is), but I’ll give it more opportunities to impress me than it might seem like it deserves at first. With The Bends and OK Computer, Radiohead earned my lifelong respect; therefore, when they made an album almost entirely devoid of melody or understandable words, like Amnesiac, I gave it repeated listens until I could start to understand what they were aiming for with it. I’ve come to appreciate the melody of songs like “Morning Bell/Amnesiac,” and the guitar lick of “I Might Be Wrong” is just sickeningly good. However, just because they’re Radiohead doesn’t mean this album is anything better than #11 for the year.

And yes, I did just rank a Black Crowes album ahead of a Radiohead album.

12. Incubus, Morning View. I feel like Incubus is one of those hard rock bands I shouldn’t like. Lead singer Brandon Boyd often makes the “I think my words are deeper and more meaningful than they are” mistake, and...well, we’ll just say that his beautiful abs don’t really do anything for me. That said, Incubus actually does make some meaningful music occasionally, never moreso than on Morning View. The three singles—“Wish You Were Here,” “Nice to Know You,” and “Warning”—are the best this album has to offer, but all three are quite solid, and mixing in a few more decent songs like “Circles” and “Mexico” is enough to get them the #12 slot on the list.

13. Jay-Z, The Blueprint. The first hip hop album on the list! Like most Jay-Z albums, there are moments of brilliance followed by dullness. You remember the singles, and you think the album was great...but then you realize that there really wasn’t much else to the album beyond the singles. The exception to the rule is 1998’s unbelievable Reasonable Doubt, Vol. 2: Hard Knock Life. That said, songs like “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” and “The Takeover” are strong and memorable. Now...if I’d included Jay’s MTV Unplugged release with The Roots as backing band on this list (it didn’t meet the criteria, though it’s unique enough that I had trouble making that call), then that album would easily be in the Top 5. You can hear in his voice the energy and excitement coming from getting to play with such a great live band, and it takes songs like “Big Pimpin’” and “Give It 2 Me” to a level I didn’t think those songs could attain.

14. Ozomatli, Embrace the Chaos. Ozo’s debut album, Ozomatli, positively blew me away.

Actually, a correction: their live show blew me away the first time I saw them in 2000, and their debut album simply backed up the impression of them that I was already forming. They have an energy and depth to their sound that almost no band of the ‘00s can match. Their second album, Embrace the Chaos, is solid, but not as strong as Ozomatli (and not NEARLY as strong as their next album, Street Signs). A lot of songs need an extra ounce of energy to them, and there’s just not as much to keep your attention. However, despite the lack of great songs, there are plenty of good ones (best: “Dos Cosas Ciertas”), and Embrace the Chaos sneaks onto the list.

15. Gorillaz, Gorillaz. When I first heard “Clint Eastwood,” I thought this whole Gorillaz experiment was going to one of the greatest ideas ever. The song was great, the video was great...the whole idea of a cartoon group making interesting music was just so cool. And then I listened to the rest of the album. “Clint Eastwood” = fantastic. “19-2000” = great. The rest of the album = ...eh. It’s moody and experimental, which is fine; it’s just that...well, it’s boring. Those two songs and a couple other decent ones, though, are enough to get Gorillaz into the Top 15, though.

Honorable Mention:

Charlie Hunter Quartet, Songs from the Analog Playground. Surefire way to get me to buy your cd: put a “Featuring Mos Def and Norah Jones” sticker on the cover. I discovered this when I first started working part-time at Barnes & Noble in 2003 (after Norah had established herself), and when I stumbled across this in the jazz section, I had to give it a shot. It doesn’t disappoint. This is technically jazz, but there’s a dominant groove to most of the songs, something unseen in most of today’s “Miles and Coltrane did everything you can do in jazz—therefore our job is simply to recreate what’s already been done” jazz sound.

Dave Matthews Band, Everyday. Yes, it’s the worst album DMB has made. However, I’m a DMB fan, therefore I still find some things to like about this album. “Everyday” is fun (though 1000x better live than on the album), “So Right” is good, even “I Did It” has a fun guitar lick to it even though “Make a bomb of love and blow it up” is a lyrical lowpoint for anybody, much less a musician I significantly respect.

Nas, Stillmatic. In the likely made-up ‘feud’ between Jay-Z and himself, Nas landed the hardest single blow with “Ether,” a song so full of personal insults that it almost becomes uncomfortable at times. However, as with Jay-Z’s albums, Nas’ are mostly uneven as well. There are highlights here in “Ether” and especially “One Mic”, but for some reason I never really agree with his beat selection. Most songs here tend to blend in with one another after a while.

Train, Drops of Jupiter. In his lyrics, Train frontman Pat Monahan so closely toes the line between ‘witty’ strange and ‘stupid’ strange that he can’t help but stumble (or fall, or plunge) off the edge a few times. In that way, his songs and lyrics haven’t aged tremendously well. However, “Drops of Jupiter” is annoyingly catchy despite the “The best soy latte that you ever had/And me” line, and his unique melodies go in unexpected directions and make songs like “She’s On Fire” and “Whipping Boy” solid listens.

Aesop Rock, Labor Days. Whereas I feel I shouldn’t like Incubus but I do, I feel I should like Aesop Rock way more than I do. He’s got everything I bitch about hip hop lacking—originality in flow and subject matter, interesting beats, etc. But it just doesn’t click with me as much as you would think it does. Labor Days is an interesting album, and it scores all sorts of originality points, but...his delivery just wears me out after a couple of songs.

Now...on to...

Best Songs of 2001

1. “Honest With Me,” Bob Dylan (It just plain rocks.)
2. “51 Phantom,” North Mississippi Allstars (I’m not sure what I find so amazing about this straight-forward rock-blues song...I just know that I love it.)
3. “Clint Eastwood,” Gorillaz
4. “New York, New York,” Ryan Adams (Just about the strangest timing for a video filming ever.)


5. “Jumper On the Line,” R.L. Burnside
6. “Soul Singing,” Black Crowes
7. “Izzo (H.O.V.A.),” Jay-Z
8. “3x5,” John Mayer
9. “Answering Bell,” Ryan Adams
10. “Everyday,” Dave Matthews Band (In mid-September ’01, DMB was prepared to release as a single a song called “When the World Ends,” complete with a lyric that said “I'm gonna rock you like a baby when the cities fall/We will rise as the building's crumble”. After 9/11, they decided that would be, shall we say, a bad idea. So they released “Everyday” instead, replete with the single happiest video ever.)


11. “Fallin’,” Alicia Keys
12. “Warning,” Incubus
13. “Plane Crash in C,” Rilo Kiley
14. “I Might Be Wrong,” Radiohead (To the guitar riff in this song, I say—in the words of Lloyd Dobler’s best friend Corey from Say Anything—“I love you. You invade my soul.” And yes, I just made a Say Anything reference. Bite me.)
15. “Science vs Romance,” Rilo Kiley
16. “Just Because I Do,” My Morning Jacket
17. “Not Myself,” John Mayer
18. “Dos Cosas Ciertas,” Ozomatli
19. “More Than This,” Charlie Hunter Quartet & Norah Jones
20. “Cry a While,” Bob Dylan (Bob Dylan saying “booty call” = surefire Top 20 song.)
21. “19-2000,” Gorillaz


22. “One Mic,” Nas
23. “Video,” India.Arie
24. “Sugartown,” North Mississippi Allstars
25. “Short Skirt/Long Jacket,” Cake
26. “Wish You Were Here,” Incubus
27. “Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum,” Bob Dylan
28. “Snake Drive,” R.L. Burnside (I thought one time that I had come up with a killer guitar lick for a blues song, then after getting all excited about it, I realized it was the lick from “Snake Drive.” Bitches, man. And yes, that was another Say Anything reference.)
29. “Ship,” North Mississippi Allstars
30. “Gonna Make You Love Me,” Ryan Adams
31. “So Right,” Dave Matthews Band
32. “Survivor,” Destiny’s Child (What can I say...I’m a survivor. I’m not gon’ give up. I’m not gon’ stop. I’m gon’ work harder.)
33. “Love You Madly,” Cake
34. “Bulletproof,” Rilo Kiley (Jenny Lewis’ vocals at their quirkiest and cutest. She aims a lot less for ‘cute’ and a lot more for ‘hot’ nowadays.)


35. “Shake ‘Em On Down,” R.L. Burnside
36. “High Water (For Charley Patton),” Bob Dylan
37. “Summer Days,” Bob Dylan
38. “Go Ahead,” Rilo Kiley
39. “Drops of Jupiter,” Train
40. “Firecracker,” Ryan Adams
41. “Phone Went West,” My Morning Jacket (Jim James’ voice is never whinier than right here, but there’s a lot of drama here, and I think he pulls it off.)
42. “Nice to Know You,” Incubus
43. “Shadow Stabbing,” Cake
44. “Heart of the City (Ain’t No Love),” Jay-Z
45. “Goin’ Down South,” R.L. Burnside
46. “Mud,” North Mississippi Allstars
47. “Morning Bell/Amnesiac,” Radiohead
48. “Lickin’,” Black Crowes



49. “Mississippi,” Bob Dylan (How many artists have covered this song now? 139?)
50. “Ether,” Nas

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What am I missing?

So The Butterfly got curious and decided she wanted to see the train wreck that was supposedly Britney Spears' performance at the MTV Video Music Awards earlier this week. Here it is:



I have to ask...what am I missing? I realize she did a marginally worse job of lip-syncing, and I realize she doesn't have that six pack anymore but...is this really much different than any number of her previous performances? I know she didn't wear a boa around her neck or french kiss Madonna, but...this is exactly what they had to be expecting.

Now...I'm not saying it's a good performance. Far, far, far from it. But I get really tired of the build-you-up-to-break-you-down routine. We're not talking about an amazing artist. She was propped up for years--media folks just couldn't get enough of her--and now the tide has turned on her career, so no matter how she performed on Sunday, it was going to be deemed a train wreck.

Again...let me be clear: this performance is worthless, but I've thought that about most of her performances. It's just all part of a storyline that the actual subjects of the story can't change. And it annoys the hell out of me.

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At roughly the same time when...

...a new iteration of the iPod is introduced, a music god says the future of music doesn't include the iPod.

"You'd pay, say, $19.95 a month, and the music will come anywhere you'd like. In this new world, there will be a virtual library that will be accessible from your car, from your cellphone, from your computer, from your television. Anywhere. The iPod will be obsolete, but there would be a Walkman-like device you could plug into speakers at home."

...

"Either all the record companies will get together or the industry will fall apart and someone like Microsoft will come in and buy one of the companies at wholesale and do what needs to be done."

Now...Rick Rubin's been right about most music-related things for almost 25 years now (sans the Slayer and Mel C albums), so I somewhat believe what he's suggesting here. It makes sense to me, and honestly I welcome the thought. Sounds good to me. But...do you really think Apple won't be ready for this? You already can plug a "Walkman-like device" into your speakers at home. It's called the iPod. And more importantly..."Walkman-like device"? Is this 1986, Rick?

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NBC to cut ties with iTunes

So apparently NBC is pulling it’s iTunes contract after it runs out this December. You can get the details here. But this could come as a pretty big blow to Apple. NBC Universal is their top digital video supplier accounting for about 40% of downloads. As a huge Apple and iTunes fan myself, I’m not too happy about the situation. Guess I’ll have to keep my fingers crossed and hope these two will kiss and make up.

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Brain vs iPod: 2002 edition

With all this talk I’ve made recently about how great hip hop was in late-2002, I figured it would be interesting to go back and look at 2002’s albums. I figured I’d throw out the Top 10 albums of the year according to my memories and perceptions and compare them to what my iPod ratings of each song actually tells me.

Hip hop did indeed make four outstanding late-year contributions to 2002’s quality output, but 2002 was really a great year all around. The Flaming Lips put out Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Dave Matthews Band released their best studio album (Busted Stuff), Counting Crows (remember them?) had a decent one in Hard Candy, and of course Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot finally saw an official release after a long ordeal (Jim DeRogatis actually counted Yankee as a 2001 release since that’s when Wilco intended for it to come out…and since that’s when the bootlegs hit the internet). I’m sure I’ll end up doing something similar to this for 2003-2006, and I may be proven wrong, but right now I think 2002 was the deepest musical year of this decade so far. Just a ton of great stuff.

So based purely on opinion, here’s my 2002 Top 5.

1. Common, Electric Circus. I said quite a bit about this one recently, but I just can’t say enough about how interesting and weird this album was.

2. Jurassic 5, Power in Numbers. I was so excited about this one when it came out—I had religiously memorized just about every second of their 2000 release, Quality Control, and I just could not wait to see what they did next. This was a deep album, and it actually threw me off a bit. The group that made the most fun album in a long time in Quality Control actually got a bit serious on PiN, and the result was an album that got a little better to me each time I listened to it. Plus, it has the added benefit of being one of the only hip hop albums (possibly the only one) that my wife loves.

3. Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Possibly not quite as great, top-to-bottom, as The Soft Bulletin, but songs like “Fight Test” and “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (Pt. 1)” are outstanding, and “Do You Realize???” really might be the greatest song of all-time. It doesn’t make me cry or anything, but I think it’s safe to say my eyes glisten every time I listen to it. Every single time. And I’m comfortable enough in my masculinity to admit that.

4. Dave Matthews Band, Busted Stuff. The best capitulation-to-the-fanbase album of all-time. After taking a large step in a different direction with 2001’s Everyday, they went back and finalized the demo’s leaked on The Lillywhite Sessions that the DMB fanbase loved so much, and the result was a moody, bluesy, wonderful album. “You Never Know” and “Bartender” might have been my favorite two songs of the year if not for the aforementioned “Do You Realize???” and Talib Kweli’s “Get By.” Have I mentioned how great a year 2002 was?

5. The Roots, Phrenology. Like Electric Circus, we see lots of strangeness and experimentation here. “Water” and “The Seed 2.0” are also strong candidates for Song of the Year in any other year but 2002. Seriously—any of the six songs I’ve mentioned here (“Do You Realize???”, “Get By,” “Water”, “The Seed 2.0”, “Bartender”, “You Never Know”) would be the #1 song of 2007. But one of those won’t even make the Top 5.

So what does my iPod tell me about 2002 albums? Here are the Top 15 based on my star ratings...

1. Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Apparently I like the Lips even more than I thought I did!

2. Common, Electric Circus. One of my thoughts when I was starting to use iPod ratings to judge albums was than an album’s overall groove would be neglected by simply looking at star-ratings. A song that furthered the overall mood of the album might by itself not merit a strong rating. In other words, I was suspicious that albums like Electric Circus would not grade out as well as they should. Apparently that’s not a problem, as when I randomly hear a given EC song, I’m reminded of the groove as a whole. If that makes any sense at all.

3. Jurassic 5, Power in Numbers. Damn shame that this was the last fantastic album we got from them.

4. Dave Matthews Band, Busted Stuff. My brain’s mostly agreeing with my iPod here.

5. Rilo Kiley, The Execution of All Things. I actually had no idea this came out this year. I got into RK a few years later, so I wasn’t connecting it with a date. What a neat listen this is. The more I think about it, the more I think this one’s better than its follow-up, More Adventurous. Both are quite strong, but only Execution has “With My Arms Outstretched” and “A Better Son-Daughter.”

6. Talib Kweli, Quality. Going by star ratings, I guess this is the best overall Kweli album…though we’ll see what happens when Eardrum starts growing on me. A lot of really strong songs, but only one truly great one—“Get By.” Might have been the best album of 2003 if he’d just waited another two months to release it.

7. Robert Randolph & the Family Band, Live at the Wetlands. This one surprised me. I don’t usually list live albums in the “Best Albums” category because they’re usually supplemental to the studio albums. For RR&FB, this was their debut album, so I’m counting it. And oh, how fantastic it is. Six songs, 60+ minutes of pure blues, soul, and joy.

8. Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. More interesting than great (the greatness would come with the next album, A Ghost is Born), this is still a lovely album all the way, from “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” to “The Late Greats.”

9. Pearl Jam, Riot Act. An highly underrated album. “Thumbing My Way” is possibly the saddest, prettiest song in the PJ catalog, while “Love Boat Captain” and “I Am Mine” are as emotional as Eddie Vedder’s vocals has ever been. Really, 2-3 weak songs were enough to knock this all the way down to #9.

10. Bruce Springsteen, The Rising. Oh yeah. Damn near forgot about this one.

11. David Gray, A New Day at Midnight. And this one. To me, David Gray’s one of the more underrated artists in a long time…underrated even by me. I listened to this album for the first time in a while last week, and I was surprised by how emotionally effective it is. Not as emotional as A Century Ends and not as catchy as White Ladder, but strong. And he’s the only person I know of who can get away with a lyric like “Jumpin’ Jesus, holy cow/What's the difference anyhow” (from “Be Mine”) and maintain respect.

12. The Roots, Phrenology. This one shocked me. I guess the high points (“Water”, “The Seed 2.0”) distracted me from the fact that there are a few low points and dull moments. And as I mentioned with Pearl Jam above, a couple weak moments are enough to knock you a long way down in this list.

13. Cody ChesnuTT, The Headphone Masterpiece. It’s a bit of an understatement to call the sound quality of this album “lo-fi”. Well, not only is it monstrously lo-fi, it’s also immature, slightly perverted…and just so much fun to listen to. I imagine this one of those “you either love this album, or you absolutely loathe it” albums, but with songs like “Up in the Treehouse” and “Serve This Royalty,” count me in the “love it” group. Plus, ChesnuTT provided “The Seed” for use (and upgrade) by The Roots.

14. Norah Jones, Come Away with Me. A perfect mood piece. My buddy Walsh (immortalized, ahem, in the Lollapalooza posts) made a copy of this album for me some time in the late-summer/early-fall of that year and said “Just listen to it. You probably don’t think you’ll like it, but you’ll love it. Her voice is unbelievable. And while she’s pretty attractive, once you hear her sing, you’ll think she’s the hottest person in the world.” He was just about right on all counts. And I could very easily write 1,000 words on just how amazingly gorgeous “Nightingale” is. Sheesh…another song that needs to be at the top of the “Best Songs of 2002” list…they’re everywhere…

15. Counting Crows, Hard Candy. Another underrated album. In the Crows’ three previous albums, the great songs were unbelievable, and the not-great songs were darn near unlistenable. In Hard Candy, a certain consistency is reached. The best songs (“Richard Manuel is Dead”, “Miami”) are strong and emotional, but they’re not classics like “Round Here” or “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby.” However, every song is solid.

Honorable Mention:

Beck, Sea Change. I was going through a pretty tough breakup when this was released, and my roommate at the time wouldn’t let me listen to this ablum more than once a week or so. Every song’s the same tempo and the same emotion, and while that wears you down, there are some unbelievably good songs here, like “Golden Age” and especially “Lost Cause.”

Atmosphere, God Loves Ugly & Lucy Ford. These two albums established MC Slug’s credentials as more than just an ‘asshole with a heart of gold’ persona. Dude’s got talent, and he’s managed to craft himself into a sympathetic, simple figure even though half the songs are about getting drunk or being pissed at a girl for dumping him. At the time of Lucy Ford’s release, Walsh—who LOVED that album—surmised that it was likely a “lightning in a bottle” type of situation, where no other album would be nearly as good as that one. Instead, every album since then has been better than its predecessor, right up to 2005’s You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun We’re Having.

Queens of the Stone Age, Songs for the Deaf. I’m the only person in the world who enjoys Lullabies to Paralyze far more than this one. It’s still good, though.

Matchbox 20, More Than You Think You Are. Not amazing, but better than you think it is. No, really.

Audioslave, Audioslave. Nothing amazing, but strong hard rock is still enjoyable from time to time.

Blackalicious, Blazing Arrow. Blackalicious is solid, never spectacular, and this is an enjoyable listen.

And just for the hell of it...

Top 34 Songs of 2002

1. “Do You Realize???”, Flaming Lips
2. “Get By,” Talib Kweli
3. “Nightingale,” Norah Jones
4. “Water,” The Roots
5. “Thumbing My Way,” Pearl Jam
6. “You Never Know,” Dave Matthews Band
7. “The Seed 2.0,” The Roots
8. “Bartender,” Dave Matthews Band
9. “With Arms Outstretched,” Rilo Kiley
10. “Love Boat Captain,” Pearl Jam
11. “Lose Yourself,” Eminem
12. “Lost Cause,” Beck
13. “I Got a Right Ta,” Common
14. “Bright Lights,” Matchbox 20
15. “A Better Son-Daughter,” Rilo Kiley
16. “Fight Test,” Flaming Lips
17. “Freedom,” Jurassic 5
18. “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1,” Flaming Lips
19. “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” Wilco
20. “Come Close,” Common
21. “My City of Ruins,” Bruce Springsteen & the E-Street Band
22. “If I Could Give All My Love (Richard Manuel Is Dead),” Counting Crows
23. “Up in the Treehouse,” Cody ChesnuTT
24. “Hard Candy,” Counting Crows
25. “What’s Golden,” Jurassic 5
26. “Save You,” Pearl Jam
27. “Ted’s Jam,” Robert Randdolph & the Family Band
28. “If I Was Santa Claus,” Atmosphere
29. “Be Mine,” David Gray
30. “Caroline,” David Gray
31. “Waitin’ for a Sunny Day,” Bruce Springsteen & the E-Street Band
32. “Miami,” Counting Crows
33. “I’m the Man Who Loves You,” Wilco
34. “Cochise,” Audioslave
35. “High Fidelity,” Jurassic 5
36. “Come Away With Me,” Norah Jones
37. “God Is In the Radio,” Queens of the Stone Age
38. “Brown Sugar,” Mos Def & Faith Evans
39. “Freedom,” David Gray
40. “Don’t Know Why,” Norah Jones

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Talib Kweli, Eardrum

Of all the pseudo-underground, ‘conscious’ rappers and that I discovered in the late ‘90s (Talib Kweli, Mos Def, The Roots, Common, Jurassic 5, etc.), I’ve always been the most fond of Kweli. Mos Def has more charisma, and though he only chooses to show it so often, seems to have the most overall talent. Common is the most suave. The Roots have the best live presence. Jurassic 5 were the most positive force in music at their peak. But Kweli’s the workhorse, the most blue-collar of the group, and beyond that, he seems to be the most honest, the most unflinching about his view of the world.

Flaws and honesty are huge with me, and Kweli has both. For one thing, unlike the others I listed, he doesn’t have that single perfect, definitive album. Mos has Black on Both Sides. The Roots have Things Fall Apart and/or Phrenology. Common has Electric Circus and/or Like Water for Chocolate. Kweli has created possibly the best songs of the group (“Four Women,” “Get By,” and “Broken Glass” stand out the strongest for me), but he hasn’t made the perfect album yet. After listening to, digesting, and admiring his latest—Eardrum—I can say that he’s only beginning in that pursuit.

Talib Kweli is no longer just a Brooklyn rapper—he’s an entrepreneur. He created his own vanity label, Blacksmith, and he created Eardrum as an introduction to the label. He’s not looking to become a new Jay-Z (he won’t pull off an “I’m not a businessman/I’m a business, man” lyric any time soon), but he obviously wants more a) money and b) say in the world of hip hop. He’s signed on acts like Jean Gray and Strong Arm Steady, and I’m sure they’ll be putting out albums soon. However, Kweli is obviously the biggest talent and the brightest light of Blacksmith, and for the label to be a success, he had to bring his A-game on Eardrum.

Did he? Well, it opened at #2 on the Billboard charts, so he did something right.

Eardrum is at once all that’s right with hip hop and a lot of what’s wrong with it.

Now, before I get too far into Eardrum analysis, I have to say...this is an impossible album to review and compare to other albums. There’s so much going on here, with 20 tracks (not unusual for a hip hop album, though about half of those tracks are usually skits or intros or outros), and roughly 15 guests ranging from the predictable (Blacksmith artists Jean Gray, Strong Arm Steady), to the relatively predictable (Kanye West, Musiq Soulchild), to the slightly unexpected (KRS-One, UGK), to the totally-out-of-left-field (Justin Timberlake, Norah Jones). A lot of songs work, some don’t, and over the course of so many songs and 70+ minutes there are numerous ups and downs.

In other words, if you were to trim about 5-6 tracks (chosen by me) from this album, you’d be left with probably the best album of the year. But how do you judge an album with lots of greatness but a little too much filler? Are the hits more important than the misses? (With an iPod that can quite easily just skip over the mediocre tracks, I’d say yes, but that misses the point of judging the album as a whole, now doesn’t it?)

Being that I’m not sure how to review such a heavy book, so to speak, let’s make this an itemized review.

Good

Lyrics. If Kweli has one skill that puts him far above other MC’s, it’s his lyrical skill. As I referenced in another post, Jay-Z said as much with his “If skill sold/Then truth be told/I’d probably be/Lyrically Talib Kweli.” (Kweli apparently agrees, with his “If lyrics sold/Then truth be told/I’d probably be/Just as rich and famous as Jay-Z” response). On Eardrum, as with everything else he’s ever released, Kweli brings his A-game. No subject is unprotected—religion, hot girls, his children. He raps about everything, and he does it well.

He nails down culture as a whole with a simple lyrical technique on “More or Less”...”More uprising, less sanitizing...More building, less destroying...More jobs, less unemployment...more marijuana, less coke...more schools, less prison...more freestyle, less written...more serious s---, less kiddin’...more history, less mystery...more beyonce, less britney...more happiness, less misery...”

He has fun with a woman on “Hot Thing”...”I watched you dance across the floor to the title track/You ‘bout to get me “Off the Wall” like you’re Michael Jack’/I make a scribe in your beauty my sacred duty/I will write a song, write a book, write a play, make a movie.”

He speaks deeply about growing up poor on “Eat to Live”...

My little man go to bed so hungry
Get up, go to school with his nose runny, come home with his nose bloody
His sister laughin, he like "What's so funny~?"
'Til she drowned out by the sounds of hunger pains in his tummy
Nuttin in the freezer, nuttin in the fridge
Couple of 40 ounces but nuttin for the kids
Little man know to eat to live but he don't wanna leave the crib
The kid who punched him in his face house right down the street from his
He went anyway, more scared to face his moms
She'll beat him soon as she flip out, seein his face scarred
Walkin past the dopefiends with they smoke to the place of God
Hopes and dreams pourin out the holes in they face and arms
Little man in the face of harm if he don't eat
He need energy so when he go to school he can compete
And keep up, all he got is bodegas
But hey he only got enough a for quarter water and a Now or Later
Anyway, grandma say Jesus'll be here any day
Good - cause with nuttin to eat it's gettin hard to pray

He attacks every subject with brains and wit, and lyrically Eardrum is as good as just about anything he’s done.

Spirit and Delivery. Kweli gets his point across with more than just the words. The delivery has to count for something, and kweli’s reserved-but-intense tone (and his variety of cadences) serve the spirit of the words well. Some have been critical about these things, but I’ve always seen it as a strength.

I was about say that Kweli has a lot of activism in him, but that would be an over-simplification. He’s not trying to get people to rise up against the system, and he’s not telling people “Vote or Die!” He’s actually said that “I don’t be f---in’ with politics” because there’s just no point. If nothing else, Kweli is trying to get people to take control of their own thoughts and wishes (while shaking their butts, of course), and this comes across in his voice. Even in a laid-back song, there’s intensity there, and it always keeps my attention. Which is good because...well...the beats on Eardrum are iffy at best.

Bad

Production. Halfway through my first listen of Eardrum, I was ready to unleash a rant about the production tendencies of your average hip hop producer in 2007. Let’s put it this way: when the best hip hop of 2007 just makes me reminisce for the good old days of 2002, I think it’s safe to say hip hop is still in bad shape. In 2002, guys like Kweli and Common were experimenting with beats and sounds, and they created albums that covered a lot larger scope. Now half the songs on every hip hop album I buy sample generic R&B tracks. And it’s Kanye West’s fault. If Nelly helped to kill half of hip hop with stupid anthems about teeth and rims and his overwhelming catering to the lowest common denominator, then it’s my theory that Kanye is strangling the other half. He re-introduced the ‘70s R&B sample into the world of hip hop, and he did it so well that everybody does it now. And well...the depth of quality in ‘70s R&B was so shallow that it allowed disco to emerge. Most of these R&B samples sound exactly alike, and there are way too many of them in the first half of Eardrum...despite the fact that Kweli enlisted a different producer on almost every song.

Blown opportunities. When I saw the ‘guestlist’ for this album, I was quite thrown. Norah Jones? Trying to woo the AAA market? Timberlake? Aiming for mainstream? UGK? Trying to shore up the Houston base? Despite the questions, there were opportunities for greatness, and while some of these collaborations were strong...wel, they could have been stronger.

I’ve ranted before about when rappers bring in a great, unique singer and give her a simple line to repeat ad nauseum (a la Mary J. Blige on Kweli’s “I Try” or Lily Allen on Common’s “Drivin’ Me Wild”). If your’e going to bring in a great singer, let her sing great! Norah isn’t given a ton to work with on “Soon the New Day”, but she makes the most of it. She gets a little room for expansion and she uses it all. Kudos to her.

As for the others...Kweli and JT’s collaboration, “The Nature”, is alright. Nothing amazing, pretty generic chorus...honestly, it’s about what I expected it to be. What I didn’t expect was to be bored by the Kweli/KRS-One collaboration. That was a match made in conscious-rapper heaven, but “The Perfect Beat” just never takes off. Nor does “Country Cousins”, featuring UGK (just as Abe Froman was the sausage king of Chicago, UGK are the hip hop kings of Houston). It was an interesting idea to pair up Houston’s finest with Brooklyn’s, and with sturdy production—I imagined a really deep, southern beat—this could have worked. The ‘70s soul sample just doesn’t cut it, though.

Then there’s Kanye. In “In the Mood”, he adds a somewhat humorous (in a juvenile way) verse that seems totally out of place with the rest of the song. I guess it’s too much to ask for him to match the tone of the song with the tone of his guest verse.

(I’m hard on Kanye here, and while it’s relatively well-deserved—he really hasn’t done as much to further hip hop as I think he could—he’s still in a position to do great things for the future of hip hop. He is to hip hop what George Bush thinks he is to Iraq—he broke it, and he may be the only one who can save it.)

I should mention, though, that Blacksmith signees Strong Arm Steady do a very nice job on "Go With Us"...a good enough job to clinch that I'll buy the next album they put out.

Length. When Outkast put out Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, I loved the attention they were getting for it. Hell, they won the Best Album Grammy. It was fantastic. But...it was also an exhausting listen. Lots of experimentation, lots of highlights...and lots of wasted space. Combining the two efforts might have ruined the point of the ‘Andre 3000’s brain versus Big Boi’s brain’ concept, but it would have also made for one helluva listen. As it was, it’s a great iPod album (skip the crappy parts), but it’s almost impossible to listen to all the way through. It takes two hours, and there is plenty of filler.

That’s a problem with Eardrum, and not only is there some excess, but it all seems to be located in the first half of the album. Certain songs are just unnecessary, and others are decent but repetitive of themes better enunciated in other places on the album.

So there you have it. Lots of greatness, many flaws. Don’t think for a second, though, that this isn’t worth getting. Right now I’d give it the edge over Common’s Finding Forever for Best Hip Hop Album of 2007, and we’ll see if Kanye has anything to say about that.

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Friday Nite Music Club

Since I reviewed their album earlier in the week, here's some Rilo Kiley for you...here's "With Arms Outstretched" from The Execution of All Things...

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So there's another study...

...that says that music piracy is responsible for everything wrong with the country today (in particular: $12.5 billion and 71K jobs (pdf)), and it once again turns out that the people in charge of the study don't actually know the habits of P2P'ers (via Daily Swarm).

The study makes for some alarming reading, but it suffers from a few significant flaws. First and foremost, it appears to fall into the "illicit downloads == lost sales" fallacy, the view that each song obtained over a P2P network is a lost purchase. "Unfortunately, there is no precise measure of the degree to which consumers of pirated CDs would continue to purchase those CDs at legitimate prices," according to the study. "While the degree to which these legitimate purchases would occur differs by market, it appears nevertheless that such purchases would comprise a very significant fraction of the total number of pirated CDs now purchased... In this study, the weighted average substitution rate used for the physical piracy of recorded music is 65.7 percent. It is then assumed that only 20% (1 in 5) of these downloaded songs would have been purchased legitimately if piracy did not exist."

That's a bit better than the one-to-one argument, but not by much. It essentially assumes that one of every five downloaded songs would have been purchased, were it not for file-sharing. Although a 20 percent figure may not look like much, it is still a percentage not justified by our own knowledge of file-sharing trends. The study needs to make a firm argument for why this percentage is so high. It's a flaw similar to that in a 2006 study commissioned by the MPAA.

Note that the assumption cuts both ways. Not only does it assume many would-be sales, but it also ignores sales that do stem from file sharing. P2P users buy a lot of music, after all. Three out of four P2P users said that they bought music after downloading it online, with 21 percent of the respondents to the survey commissioned by the Canadian Record Industry Association saying that they have bought previously downloaded music on more than 10 occasions. So here again, we have data not being taken into account, data which would necessarily lower the study's estimates.

Another study even goes so far as to argue that the effect of file-sharing on legal music sales is "not statistically distinguishable from zero." Published this past February in the Journal of Political Economy, the study tracked the effects of 1.75 million song downloads on 680 albums. The researchers concluded that the availability—and even increased downloads—of music on P2P networks did not correlate to a negative effect on music sales. "Even our most negative point estimate implies that a one-standard-deviation increase in file sharing reduces an album's weekly sales by a mere 368 copies, an effect that is too small to be statistically distinguishable from zero," the study's authors reported.

I can't imagine the impact of file sharing is "not statistically distinguishable from zero"...I mean, maybe it is, but that seems a bit extreme--not even 10% as extreme as the claim that 71,000 jobs have been lost due to file sharing. All I know is, when I was doing the whole file sharing thing back in the day (haven't in a while), a) half of the stuff I downloaded was something I never would have considered buying (therefore there was no lost revenue), and b) if I downloaded something and liked what I heard, I was pretty likely to actually buy the albums I was sampling. That's how I discovered Ben Harper, David Gray, North Mississippi Allstars and others. The bands I liked made money off of me just like normal, only I wouldn't have discovered them if not for P2P services.

The music industry mightily resisted file sharing when it should have been adopting it...and they're STILL fighting this idiotic fight. Instead of embracing the situation and figuring out how to make money through the new technology, they whined and fought and, in the process, allowed the concept to take hold. I'm not going to pretend that file sharing could have been wonderful for the industry, and profits could have stayed exactly where they were in the N*SYNC days, but they made this as hard on themselves as possible, and it appears to have done irreparable damage.

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Rilo Kiley, Under the Blacklight

“VERY Disappointing” ***
“Timeless Classic” *****
“Embarrassing” **
“Unexpected, But Amazing” ****
“What up?” **
“Thank god” ****
“?? Oh come on Rilo” **
“I Think I Just Fell in Love” ****
“What happened to Rilo Kiley?” ***
“Innovative! Awesome! Love it!” *****
“Mixed Feelings” ****

These are all from the iTunes page of Rilo Kiley's new album, Under the Blacklight.

Boy, do I love band/fanbase tension. It’s like crack to me. Or Dunkin Donuts coffee. I’ve read books and books on Bob Dylan and how he has hopped from genre to genre, expectations be damned. I love looking at Neil Young setlists and seeing that he didn’t play a single hit...to the likely frustration of two-thirds of the crowd. I enjoy reading that Wilco’s fans (and critics) are pissed that they’re “selling out” and by selling their songs to VW commercials. I love recalling the chaos that came about on Dave Matthews Band message boards when Dave picked up an electric guitar. The same exhilirating tension that exists in songs that seem about to fall apart before coming together like it was planned all along...that’s what I get when I see a band at odds with its fanbase.

And that’s what I see in Rilo Kiley right now. It’s hard not to. After establishing themselves as alt-country gods, Jenny Lewis (on whom I had a massive crush for the 90 or so minutes it took to watch The Wizard when I was 11), Blake Sennett, Jason Boesel, and Pierre de Reeder pushed back the walls for Under the Blacklight, adding drumloops, harder beats, and somewhat harder subject matter to Lewis’ hypnotic vocals and Sennett’s killer fills. And the reviews from fans are, shall we say, mixed.

I posted this link in a review of Common’s new album Sunday, and I’ll now discuss it in detail here.

[T]his music takes a bit of explaining, since it veers from the bookish bohemian vibe that helped Rilo Kiley become the darlings they are.

"It has a different tone in a lot of ways," said Lewis. "I don't know if it lacks the feeling from our previous records, but it was an attempt on my part to create something different. The sound on this record is as important as the lyrics, if not more important."

Rilo Kiley won the fussy hearts of indie rock eggheads with three albums' worth of extremely pleasant and progressively more polished folk-pop. Often standing just outside the stories she wove -- "It wasn't me, I wasn't there, I was just watching from over here," reads a particularly telling lyric from her 2006 solo album, "Rabbit Fur Coat" -- Lewis dissected the romantic foibles of chronic overthinkers. Her voice was like orange sherbet: cool, sweet, a bit old-fashioned. The music was intellectually driven too, an amalgam of vintage moves and clever little gestures.

As satisfying as this sound was for lovers of sophisticated songcraft, it became limiting. Lewis eventually found herself writing differently, exploring how a strong groove or rousing arrangement can reshape the meaning of words. She also became more interested in music's erotic pull. Perhaps tired of constantly being labeled an "indie pinup," she came up with songs like "Smoke Detector" and "Close Call," which demanded more openly sensual performances even as they explored the costs of putting one's sexuality on the line.

Some fans have expressed bafflement, even rage, over this new direction. The message boards on the popular fan forum rilokiley.net overflow with arguments about whether the tracks that have made it to the Internet can even be classified as Rilo Kiley songs. Some posters have compared them to the work of Gwen Stefani and Fergie. That's an inaccurate description but not shocking, since "Blacklight" producers Mike Elizondo and Jason Lader have worked with major pop stars including Stefani, Eminem and Maroon 5.

Okay, first of all, NOBODY should be compared to Fergie. Nobody.

Second, though I need to digest Under the Blacklight a bit more, I have to say I’m leaning more toward 4 stars than 2. When a talented, open-minded band takes a step in a new direction, they usually land on somewhat solid footing. And even more, it goes great the second time around. But I’ll get to that in a moment.

Finally, RK fans really could have seen this coming. Listen to “Love and War (11/11/46)” from More Adventurous...there’s a significant amount of No Doubt (in a good way) in that. Listen to the drum loops on The Execution of All Things’ “The Good That Won’t Come Out” or the artifical sounds in More Adventurous’ “Accidntel Deth”. It’s always been in them. The warning signs were there amidst the alt-country perfection of “I Never” or “Plane Crash in C” or “More Adventurous.” They branched out more and more with each album, and this was a logical—if large—step in an already-established direction. Hell, read some of their interviews, and you realize that they never intended to be labeled 'alt-country' anyway. They've always aimed to be a pop band.

And besides, it’s not like they shelved the instruments entirely and hired Will.i.am and Kanye West as producers here. They’re still Rilo Kiley. Amid the hard beat of “Silver Lining” are still the same syrupy guitar licks and gorgeous vocal exploits. Despite the No Doubtishness of “The Moneymaker”, you still hear the full instrumentation and, again, gorgeous Jenny Lewis vocals. Having such strengths allows you to experiment, and power to those who do just that. Comfort zones are too comfortable.

Anyway, as I said earlier, when a band expands its horizons so definitively, one thing is almost always certain—the second attempt will be better. MUCH better. I mention this because the career track of Rilo Kiley is beginning to remind me of Wilco’s, and that’s very good company.

Let’s compare:

* Their debut (Rilo Kiley’s Take Offs and Landings, Wilco’s A.M.) established their earthen alt-country bonafides but left a lot of room for growth.

* Their second album (The Execution of All Things, Being There) alternated between the expected alt-country goodness and some good old-fashioned genre bending. It was an uneven effort but showed potential beyond what was previously established.

* Their third album (More Adventurous, Summerteeth) took this new direction and made jaw-droppingly good music out of it.

* Their fourth album (Under the Blacklight, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot) changed the game entirely.

Two things about that: 1) Wilco’s fifth album (A Ghost Is Born) was their best ever, and 2) I can’t believe I’m saying this, but with each progressive album I think Rilo Kiley has actually been a couple steps beyond where Wilco was. Take Offs is more varied and mature than A.M. Execution > Being There. And honestly, this one’s tough to admit, but More Adventurous > Summerteeth. (I might have to do a “Brain vs iPod” on this one...I may be overstating things, but I don’t think so.) Now, upon first listen, Under the Blacklight doesn't really match up with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (I'm thinking five stars is overstating things a bit), but...well, I wasn’t knocked out by Yankee the first time around either. We'll see what happens.

Either way, I'm looking forward to the next Rilo Kiley album. Is it too early to say that?

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Common, Finding Forever

I’m going to start a review of Common’s Finding Forever by talking about his 2002 album, Electric Circus. Last summer, my musical hero ?uestlove had this to say about Electric Circus:

Electric Circus is the brilliant tree that fell in the forest--and nobody was around to hear it. [It] was an album so radical that no one really bothered to pay attention. But I think in due time--similar to Shuggie Otis' Inspiration Information, albums that you just discover 15-20 years down the line--that will be the album. That was the least-selling record of his career--sold barely 200,000 units. No fault of his own--a lot of it had to do with the fact that the label went bankrupt and actually ceased to exist a week after he released it. So he was without a label, and the album just deep-sixed.

Earlier in the same interview, he said that he thought EC would “catch on in the future. ... It has a futuristic clock-work element to it.”

Now, I’m not totally sure what that means, but I know I agree with it. When EC was released on December 10, 2002, hip hop was in a golden age...to me, at least. The Roots’ Phrenology—phenomenal and almost as misunderstood as Electric Circus—had come out a couple of weeks prior (November 26), Talib Kweli’s Quality (ditto) the week before that (November 19) and Jurassic 5’s Power in Numbers the month before that (October 8). That’s a murderer’s row of amazing hip hop right there! Not since fall 1998—Lauryn Hill’s Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Outkast’s Aquemini, Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt, Vol. 2: Hard Knock Life, and Black Star’s Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star—had so many great hip hop albums come out so close together. And not only were they great, they’ve gotten better with age.

I was giddy about this great music at the time, but looking back, I should have appreciated it even more than I did. The naïve optimist in me thought that was where hip hop was headed—this cool musical candyland with no walls or genre barriers, where guitars and futuristic sounds and deep messages combined with the heavy bass and samples and classic hip hop techniques. Alas, I was horribly incorrect.

It’s been almost five years, and I don’t think there’s been a single album that good released since then...not even by those artists. Jurassic 5 took four years putting out a decent-at-best release and broke up. Kweli put out a strong-not-spectacular album in ’04, and he’s got another one out in three days. The Roots have been prolific in putting out two albums since Phrenology, but neither has been as ground-breaking. And Common started over.

Electric Circus was the best example of both a) how great this new hip hop was and b) how horribly wrong I was. Coming so soon after Phrenology—which was recorded in the same studio (NYC’s Electric Lady) with many of the same happened-to-be-hanging-out-there producers and musicians, it took things further than anybody else had, for better or worse. I shared my copies of both EC and Phrenology with a friend of mine who loves hip hop, assuming he’d be as blown away as I was, and while he thought Phrenology was pretty good, he couldn’t stand EC. It creeped him out. He didn’t even get all the way through it.

A lot of fans didn’t like it, actually. After the relatively clean, accessible sound of 2000’s revelatory Like Water for Chocolate, the album that established him as a bigtime presence in hip hop, Electric Circus demanded work. When you establish yourself with a particular song or album, you’re pretty much guaranteed to tick off your fanbase if you ever try something new. Just ask Bob Dylan, or (in more modern times) Dave Matthews, or Rilo Kiley, who are putting out a new album on Tuesday—Under the Blacklight—which sounds NOTHING like anything they’ve ever done (it’s streaming on their Myspace page, and it’s already pissed a lot of folks off). They’re selling out to the man! They’re turning their back on the fans! They’re dead to me!

Or, they’re just following their artistic vision.

Common immersed himself in the sounds coming out of Electric Lady studios (he was no doubt at least minutely impacted by his girlfriend-at-the-time Erykah Badu as well) and created something entirely unique in the land of hip hop. Five years later, EC still sounds challenging and innovative.

And five years later, Common has changed his sound entirely. That’s not inherently bad—I love it when an artist changes directions. Com’s new album, Finding Forever, is as strong lyrically as anything else he’s put out. He’s self-deprecating, passionate, sharp, and just as unique as he was when he released Can I Borrow a Dollar? in 1992. Sonically, it’s a logical follow-up to 2005’s Be, and nothing more. There were two major developments between Electric Circus and Be. First was the need to go somewhere different—no matter how good EC was, there was no way to follow up on it. It went as far as it could go in the direction it went. Com had no choice but to make a right turn. And second was the emergence of Kanye West. When West blew up with The College Dropout in 2004, he became the de facto ‘Biggest Producer in the World’, and his Chicago ties led him to work with Common. West’s sound, which revolves mostly around souped up old soul samples, represented the new direction that Com needed, and Be was strong. There was no way I could enjoy the follow-up to Electric Circus as much as EC itself, but it was good.

So when I found out when he would be working primarily with West again for Finding Forever, my main question was, will Common take another creative step, or will this be Be II? Well I’ve plowed through this album a few times (something you have to do for an artist like Com), and while it sounded distinctively Be II-esque the first time (lots of the same type of soul samples), it’s definitely growing on me.

First, you’ve got the old hip hop standard, the call-and-response. It’s well represented in songs like “Southside” (with a refrain of Common yelling “South” and West yelling “Side” quickly and repetitively.

Then you’ve got the hip hop love song, a Common specialty. Hip hop love songs are unbearably cheesy 99.9% of the time (though Ja Rule’s responsible for about 92% of that), but Common has two of the best—Like Water for Chocolate’s unbelievable “The Light” and Electric Circus’s “Come Close”—and he adds more to the catalog with "So Far to Go". It’s super smooth, plus it welcomes legally-troubled R&B badass D’Angelo back to the world of music, and it doesn’t try to be more than it is.

There’s the social anthem, another Common specialty. After “The Corner” dominated Be, it’s “The People” and “U, Black Maybe” that respond to the call for social responsibility. “The People” even has a Gil Scott-Heron sample just to reinforce the concept.

Beyond what’s expected from Common, there are the unique, one-time-only styles that come and go. On Electric Circus, “I Got a Right Ta” thumped and buzzed like no other song in the Com catalog. On Be, the courtroom drama of “Tesify” came, ruled, and went. This time it’s “Drivin’ Me Wild”, as strangely poppy as anything Common’s done, with the quirky Lily Allen filling in on the chorus.

Now, "Drivin' Me Wild' is a strong song, but...quick aside: it’s a pet peeve of mine when somebody’s brought in for a guest appearance, sings the melody they’re supposed to sing (exactly like anybody else could have), gets their name on the song (“featuring _____!”), and disappears. On Talib Kweli’s The Beautiful Struggle, Mary J. Blige sang the chorus for “I Try” and appeared on the video and everything...only she didn’t really get to be Mary J. Blige, doing Mary J. Blige types of things in the process.

I’m saying this because that’s pretty much what Lily Allen does here. When I got to the end of the album the first time around, I recalled that Allen was to appear on one of the songs, and I couldn’t remember which one it would have been. Again, good song, but...opportunity wasted. You had Lily Allen in the studio, she could have done a little more.

Another aside, this one ironic: there’s a lyric on the song “Break My Heart” that goes “She said, ‘you know I don’t be datin’ rappers’/I said I got my SAG card, baby, I’m an actor.” That’s a reference to his ever-growing IMDB page, and it’s also an example of some solid self-deprecation. Why’s it ironic? On Electric Circus’ “Soul Power”, he (supposedly) takes on Mos Def for his detours into acting and his lack of commitment to his hip hop craft. From the PopMatters review of EC:

More than any of his "conscious" peers, Common has never given up on the idea that hip-hop in its most organic form, is a site where young black folks waged rhetorical warfare with each other. This point is made clear on the J-Dilla produced "Soul Power" which is the most traditional hip-hop track on the disc. Challenging the notion that fellow "gramscians" shouldn't take aim at each other Common rips into his more celebrated (or rather famous) peer Mos Def ("Nigga breathe, can tell by how you rap you don't believe/ain't hungry no more/so off me you feed"). After detailing his own "boulevard credentials" (that's for my "nigga" William Jelani Cobb) Common accuses Mos of fronting on his own ghetto-pass ("paint picture of the ghetto like JJ/You the Ray J of this rap world") -- as phony as say Ray J's transformation from Brandy's little brother to a Lil Kim chasing knuckle-head thug. More directly Com describes Mos as "See through, tryin' out act Don Cheadle" which is the line that specifically calls Mos out as Mos replaced Cheadle in the stage production of Suzi Lori-Park's Pulitzer-winning play Topdog/Underdog. The clear point of Common's attack seems to be that Mos Def has become complacent as a rap artist, resting on the laurels of BlackStar's debut and his solo joint Black on Both Sides, which was released nearly four years ago (perhaps more comfortable flossin' opposite Jeffrey Wright and Queen Latifah and cashing checks from Nike). In the second verse of "Soul Power", Common shouts down a more logical target, becoming one of many folks who are quickly tiring of Ja Rule ("I'd rather listen to silence, than you holla/Borrowed your persona, from the late that made 'Dear Mama'").

For the record, neither of them will be out-acting Don Cheadle any time soon--nobody does. Anyway, I just found that ironic...especially since I'm watching Smoking Aces (supporting actor: Common) as I write this.

In all, Finding Forever, like every Common album, grows on you. It challenges you to see the artists’ intentions on each song, and once you’ve done that, it challenges you to figure out how it could have been done better. Aside from letting Lily Allen be a little more like Lily Allen, and aside from maybe toning up a couple of the meandering moments, I don’t see a lot of room for improvement here. If I have a complain, it’s that he could have aimed higher. But again, I’m an Electric Circus snob. I’ll get over that. Finding Forever is not my favorite Common album, but it’s still challenging and rewarding, and (at least until Talib Kweli’s Eardrum enters the equation next week), it’s easily the best hip hop album of 2007. That might say as much about the current state of hip hop as anything else, but...strong album in the end. Plus, bonus points for the use of an extended Nina Simone sample in "Misunderstood"...it's the only faster way to my heart than a Curtis Mayfield sample. Well played.

--

Before Rilo Kiley and Talib Kweli make their alterations to this list next week, here’s where we stand with the Best Albums of 2007:

1. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black
2. The White Stripes, Icky Thump
3. Wilco, Sky Blue Sky
4. Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, Living with the Living
5. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
6. Pat McGee Band, These Days (The Virginia Sessions)
7. Common, Finding Forever
8. The Ike Reilly Assassination, We Belong to the Staggering Evening
9. Blue Scholars, The Long March EP
10. Brother Ali, The Undisputed Truth
11. Bright Eyes, Cassadega
12. The Polyphonic Spree, The Fragile Army
13. Queens of the Stone Age, Era Vulgaris
14. Paul McCartney, Memory Almost Full
15. Kings of Leon, Because of the Times
16. Modest Mouse, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
17. Elk City, New Believers
18. Ozomatli, Don’t Mess with the Dragon
19. Dinosaur Jr., Beyond
20. Tinariwen, Aman Iman: Water Is Life

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