Saturday, December 31, 2005

NYLPM No More

I lost a post sometime last week. This wasn't Blogger's fault, it was mine. It was in my head and I lost it. I was walking home with an armful of records and CDs, fresh from the Rotate This Boxing Day sale and pondered the notion that this was probably my ninth or tenth straight year that I'd shopped at that sale -- a streak that is in danger of ending once I finally graduate. Shops opened and/or closed during that time, others have been around the entire time but I don't bother with their sales anymore, but Rotate stayed constant. I returned from Berlin on Boxing Day 2003 and hit the sale the next day. This year I returned from the much closer and less exotic locale of Hamilton, Ontario and went straight from the train to Rotate This, making it my first stop ahead of the Yonge/Dundas corridor and avoiding being on those streets around the same time as a tragic fatal shooting. Or, I might have been thinking about how I had thought, back on the 15th, that my favourite albums of 2005 would be more in line with critical consensus than they had been in years (maybe ever?), only to watch year-end lists with little ressemblance to my own roll out for the past two weeks. Like I said, I don't know what I was thinking about. I lost that post. Oh yeah, I returned from California on 3 Jan, 2003 and missed all Toronto Boxing Day sales entirely. Not much of a streak then.

New York London Paris Munich is calling it a day. It's a low-key finale, coming on the final day of 2005 when few people are reading blogs, but ending something on New Years Eve Day does feel like the most appropriate way to end something. It'll be easy to remember the date, if nothing else. I don't really know him, but Tom's readers and friends are likely none too surprised at this. Over the past couple of years, Tom's done a lot of reflecting on the role music plays (or should play?) in his life. Likewise for NYLPM. Tom has written about how others used to want their blogs to be like NYLPM, whereas now they're more likely to emulate something like Fluxblog. He's not dissillusioned about music by any means (for instance, his UK#1 project Popular isn't going anywhere, thankfully), but there's been a "blogs and/or lording over message boards has passed me by" attitude in his writing for some time now, and when that happens, motivation vanishes rather quickly.

I've been a Freaky Trigger reader for many years now, back to the days of Tom and Ned's famous 90's lists, but strangely enough, I didn't read NYLPM very often. It was (proudly!) more POP and UK-centric than my typical tastes over the past six years, and when comparing more recent posts to those in the archives, the dwindling energy was instantly noticeable in everything from the lack of unbridled enthusiasm to the decreased frequency of posts.

The abrupt cessation of one of the longest-running blogs on the internet (in any discipline) makes me think about the status of this blog. Actually, this subject has been on my mind for a few months now. I started this in January 2000, two months before NYLPM started up. There really is no comparison between their massive 3500-post excursion (and dozens of regular contributors) and my one-man operation.

This was the first year that I felt the quality of writing and content here didn't improve from the year before. Not because I'm no longer improving as a writer, because I am, but my best writing of 2005 turned up on another blog in a different discipline and I'm immensely proud of that. I thought just as much about music this year as I have in past years, but I wrote about it less often. This resulted in fewer think pieces, and more instant reactions to gigs I'd seen or ecstatic rants about albums I'd heard.

However, unlike 99% of bloggers out there, I don't care if I jump the shark. Unless I completely lose my interest in music at some point, I can't envision an appropriate reason to stop writing the Diary of Musical Thoughts. I never kept a "proper" diary. I was never interested in that. If I want to know what was happening in my life from Jan 2000 onward, reading these archives helps me vividly reconstruct what I was doing at that time. I might only write about music here, but the music that occupied my mind is the gateway to whatever else was happening in my life.

I might have been less attentive to the "craft" of music writing lately, but the more visceral, less polished nature of these posts is probably closer to the real, unhinged, electronic apparition of me. Lots of blogs wrap up because the authors don't have their hearts in them anymore. Maybe my writing was sloppier this year, but it was closer to the real me, rather than the real me trying to convince people that he is a competant music writer.

I'm terrible at predicting the future, but it seems certain that blogs will evolve from their current form and eventually we'll all be listening to podcast feeds beamed directly into your wireless handheld (or the chip in your brain)(or whatever). Until then, this is my "proper" diary. It ends when I die.

See you next year!

Thursday, December 15, 2005

It's December 15 ...

... and that's too close to the winter solstice for my liking. There's too much snow piling up outside my door. There's also the matter of my

TOP 20 ALBUMS OF 2005


Silly preamble: This quality of music on this list obliterates that of my 2004 list. Even in that post from one year ago, I was complaining about having an uncomfortably high ambivalence about that list. This year's top three (and perhaps as many as the top six) are all better than last year's number one, Xiu Xiu's "Fabulous Muscles", although I should say that I still stand behind the amazing quality of that album and continue to listen to it regularly (a lot more so than anything else on the 2004 list, which is exactly how it should be, right?).

In most years, I find myself buried under a mountain of new music in October/November. I dig myself out from under that pile and try to absorb as much music as possible in a massive rush to put together these year-end lists by my self-imposed deadline. This year, the rush happened at the start of the year and I was struggling to keep up. The summer was quiet, as usual, and the fall seemed to crawl along without too many musical bombshells being dropped. At least that's what it felt like to me. Then the year-end chin-stroking began, and the general mood was one of disappointment -- this wasn't such a great year for music, they said. Nah, the calendar was front-loaded and memories fade, said I, noting that eight out of the twenty albums here were released (or leaked, same difference for me) during the first three months of the year.

I hate making overly general "This was the year of [X]" statements, but I'll throw out a bone by mentioning that there were very few disappointments for me this year. Established, 10/20/30+ year-old acts (Depeche Mode, New Order, Saint Etienne, John Cale, Madonna) made great records that comfortably slot in next to their best work. Bands that I had been lukewarm about in the past blew me away with the best music of their careers (Animal Collective, Caribou, Sigur Rós). Kelly Clarkson had a classic single. Ciara had a handful of them. "Trapped In the Closet" was damn enjoyable, and so was the album it came from. I was finally sold on the magic of Superpitcher and Jacques Lu Cont remixes. Yep, I was pretty happy this year.

(Can Con note: just two out of twenty this year, which is the least amount of Canadian representation I've had since 2000. I'm certainly not down on Canadian music these days, so I'll chalk it up to stiffer competition.)

(Decision-making note: my top two album basically blew away the rest (this happens almost every year), but trying to break the tie between them might have been the toughest bout of year-end hair-splitting I've ever done. I'll probably swap their positions in my mind about 238 times during 2006, but for now, the tiebreaker is simple: one of them is making me smile a lot more than the other these days.)

20a. Madonna, "Confessions On a Dancefloor". It starts like gangbusters with the spectacular "Hung Up" and the equally outstanding "Get Together". Once the cooldown phase begins in the second half, it fizzles faster than a lit match in a snowstorm, culminating (so to speak) with a perfunctory/sorry attempt at schaffel. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a Verve Release (in a year where there weren't many of them).

20. Roots Manuva, "Awfully Deep". He manages to imbibe his beats with a cavernous, thumping quality that you just don't hear with other artists, but what do you expect from (arguably) hip-hop's biggest Basic Channel fan?

Yes, I just copped out. Sorry.

19. Xiu Xiu, "La Foret". Stepping back from the more immediate, poppier sound of "Fabulous Muscles", this more improvisational album felt like a different kind of pain entirely -- less crafted, more reckless.

18. Six By Seven, "Left Luggage at the Peveril Hotel". The world completely forgot about them, they slinked off to make a fourth album that nobody knew about (I believe "4" was an internet release only), and the only fanfare surrounding their fifth album was the squint-and-you-still-missed-it news about the band breaking up just before it was released. Don't miss these Spacemen 3 rave-ups ("Waiting For you Now"), and the cathartic-like-open-heart-surgery epic "Here Comes the Sun".

17. Caribou, "The Milk of Human Kindness". It's a significant improvement on the much-heralded "Up In Flames" by virtue (in large part) of its amazing diversity. It effortlessly spans psych-folk, motorik, and noise, while packing the whole thing into a joyous and perfectly brief 40 minutes.

16. New Order, "Waiting For the Sirens' Call". "Krafty" is their strongest single since "Regret", and its chorus virtually screams "I was made for opening summer festival shows." The album's more retro (= more dance, less rock) style pleased many fans who were none too thrilled with "Get Ready", and even the campier moments ("Jetstream", anyone?) hardly dampened anyone's enthusiasm for it (unlike "Working Overtime". And "Jetstream" is amazing, ffs). It's not a return to form ("Get Ready" served that purpose), but it is a return to *a* form, I suppose.

15. Sunn O))), "Black One". More drones to drift off to death with. With bonus cackling. From a casket.

14. t.A.T.u, "Dangerous and Moving". Inevitably, it will be about the Big Two. "Dangerous and Moving" smokes the similarly bombastic "Not Gonna Get Us" (both songs feel designed for driving at, er, 200 kph, don't they?). "All About Us" can't seriously mount a challenge to "All the Things She Said", although it certainly aims BIG, with ultraviolent (and sexy) video, and Wagnerian arrangements. But once you get past the Big Two Singles, the rest is anything but filler (unlike the comparatively drab "200 KPH In the Wrong Lane").

13. Billy Corgan, "The Future Embrace". Billy's dream wasn't to rock out. He always wore his influence on his sleeve, talked about Boston and Queen when everyone else was rambling on about punk, but most people just played up the grungetastic Billy vs Kurt angle. Billy loved Stevie Nicks and Depeche Mode, so Smashing Pumpkins covered them both, made an album seeped in 90's electronica and 80's synth music, and the world shook its head in confusion. The final Smashing Pumpkins album was a facade, I felt as though they were pretending that the previous three or four years had never happened. "Look, it's the original lineup! We rock again!" Next thing you knew, they'd imploded, surprising nobody. "Adore" may be spectacular in parts, but it is a) far too long, b) far too rock. Billy Corgan corrected things on both counts with "The Future Embrace". Forgetting that he was once in a grunge band, he covered his live setup in enough silver paint to film a Flock of Seagulls video. Sonically, he set the controls straight for the DM of "Everything Counts" and "Get the Balance Right", made his goth album, and covered every song in layers of shoegaze-y guitar (those FX are icing on the cake and they MAKE the album).

12. Audion, "Suckfish". Minimalism is hot. I still can't believe it, but it is. Other than the Modernist (whose records project squeaky smiley family friendly fun and couldn't be more different than what Matthew Dear is doing here), who has instilled this much unadulterated fun into minimal grooves? Every track is filled with thick, electrohouse crunch. It's a sexy, sleazy (dig the song titles too) dancefloor romp, now someone should find Peaches and stop her before she tries to steal every last one of these beats.

11. The Warlocks, "Surgery". Now they need to become a full-on girl group.

10. Ellen Allien, "Thrills". Dirtier and greasier than the too slick, too Kompakt-esque "Berlinette", Ellen Allien's records retreated from glamourous nightclubs and tapped into the sound of an underground hideout choked with dry ice smoke and ominous, dark blue spotlights.

9. The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band, "Horses in the Sky". The last album was an instrumental album with singing thrown on top, but this one is a singing album with instruments thrown on top (and sometimes they didn't bother with instruments at all, e.g. "Hang On To Each Other"). Huge difference. Throw your head back and sing.

8. Broadcast, "Tender Buttons". After years of wondering why Broadcast seemed like such a good band in theory, yet made such boring records, they delivered this. It's the album that Stereolab should have made after (or arguably before) "Cobra and Phases Group", a full-on funky motorik pop groove record stuffed with three-minute gems.

7. Jesu, "Jesu". Doom, buried under walls of guitars, too long by at least 15 minutes, frequently devastating, DOOM, kill yr speakers, play me loud, DOOM.

6. Low, "The Great Destroyer". Their "loudest" album to date is also their best. "When I Go Deaf" is like nothing else in the Low canon, they're abusing their distortion pedals while screaming their heads off and coming completely unglued. Sadly, the recurring themes of retreating/giving up/retiring took on new poignancy in light of Alan Sparhawk's annus horribilis. But to me it feels that throughout the entire album, the defeatist attitude is wrestling with catharsis and healing (swooning harmonies can make you feel that way), with even a bit of swagger ("Monkey") mixed in.

5. Rhythm and Sound, "See Mi Yah". Yeah, it took me six months to wash those 24 hours out of my system, but once the cleansing stage was over, I immersed myself in ONE MONSTER RIDDIM all over again ...

4. Animal Collective, "Feels". This record saved me a lot of time this year. You see, sometimes an album is so good that it eliminates the need to listen to anything else remotely like it. After doing somersaults over "Feels", I no longer felt the need to endure Broken Social Scene's self titled release. "Feels" has all of the kitchen sink theatrics and infinitely better tunes. BSS's album, to its detriment, comes off like an exercise in studio wizardry first, and a bunch of songs second. Let's see how many production tricks we can fit into one hour! "Feels" is so *alive*, with its propulsive table-banging rhythms and gutshots of reverb stoking the record from start to finish. From the hazy strumming of (MBV's) "I Need No Trust" sound-a-like "Flesh Canoe" to the tribal wailing of shouldabeenfifteenminuteslongANDthealbumopener "Banshee Beat", it's a crystallization of Animal Collective's talents.

It certainly made the middle third of Caribou's "Milk of Human Kindness" feel a lot duller too.

3. Depeche Mode, "Playing the Angel". "A Pain That I'm Used To", "John the Revelator", and "Suffer Well" constitute the best 1-2-3 opening punch on any Depeche Mode album other than "Music For the Masses".

2. M83, "Before the Dawn Heals Us". "Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts" tried to faithfully recreate "Loveless" with synths. Afterward, M83 wanted to attempt the same with "Isn't Anything", with one caveat: they hadn't *heard* "Isn't Anything" in fifteen years and tried to reconstruct it from memory. Oh, and the reason they hadn't heard it in fifteen years was because they lived in a cave since 1990 and weren't around to hear lo-fi slacker indie explode in the 90's (plz ignore the nonsensical timeline vis-a-vis xeroxing "Loveless" on their last album). So they ended up plastering their memories onto music which remained fresh in their mind: Loverboy. What's with the weepy instrumental interludes? ... or the appearance of aching balladry the likes of which Kevin Shields wouldn't attempt until "Moon Song"? Gorgeous from start to finish.

1. Sigur Rós, "Takk...". Why? Because it's a fairy tale. They no longer sound like mist rising from a crack in a glacier -- those records weren't so great anyway. They've reeled in the massive sprawl of "{}" and made their pop album. They've packed it with piano-led hooks and a series of heart-stopping crescendos. "Sé Lest" is filled with childlike wonder, coasting over Disneyland, soaring over rolling hills, eavesdropping on oom-pah-pah bands playing for a modest group of ten spectators all dressed in their Sunday best. The second half is downright dour, hitting a glorious low point in the final minutes of "Andvari", as the ghostly strings draw out the despair not unlike the final moments Gavin Bryars' maudlin "Sinking of the Titanic". Sighing. Sighing. It's hard to write about this without coming off like a twee indie fuck. What I just wrote is probably indistinguishable from a description of a shit Múm album. Damn.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Mogwai, "Travel Is Dangerous"

Stuart Braithwaite once said: "Any band that doesn't rock is pish."

The band finally realized that their studio recordings now sound out-of-step with the skull-scraping explosions of their live shows (or more realistically, they finally decided to do something about the disparity). Hence, we have the chatter in advance of their forthcoming album "Mr. Beast" (what a shit title) that hypes the album as a return to the more balls-out sound of "Young Team".

Influence among contemporaries is reciprocal, and on the basis of "Travel Is Dangerous", bands like Aereogramme are influencing Mogwai far moreso than the reverse. I have a feeling that the new album has absorbed a considerable amount from "ambient metal" bands like Isis and Pelican. "Travel Is Dangerous" is massive, and on this one track at least, they've thankfully kept the gargantuan sound without resorting to gargantuan track lengths (there's a reason why I get kinda bored after hearing two or three Isis tracks in a row).

My (slight) perception is that the "Young Team" pluggers have lost a bit of steam over the last couple of years, leading to an increasing prevalence of opinion that Mogwai are still peaking. If "Mr. Beast" turns out to be Slint trying to play early 90's Soundgarden at maximum volume, then initial feedback about the album should quickly and definitively prove me right or wrong (those who hate it will stand it up to "Young Team", and those who love it will probably declare it the long-awaited successor to "Young Team").

I listened to "Come On Die Young" today and it's obvious that it hasn't dated well in the context of the music they've been making ever since. I still love it and now have even more appreciation for the absurdly difficult task they assumed for themselves -- namely, making an album where the first forty minutes constitute one exceedingly long build-up. Some people claim that nothing happens during those first forty minutes, with a bland and featureless slog stretching all the way to "Ex-Cowboy" (I disagree). However, I do find that "CODY" feels very, very remote from the "ideal" Mogwai album where they finally peak (more on that in a moment).

So what's wrong with "CODY"? Dave Fridmann is a big part of it. Like Albini (who would hate the allusions + comparisons I'm about to make), Fridmann uses a formula in the studio and simply plugs each band into his formula. That's not really a criticism, because bands work with him for exactly that reason. No matter what their recordings sounded like before, Fridmann laces them with a spacey, warm-fi, "recorded in the midst of a grassy field" quality. His formula isn't particularly versatile, which is why "CODY" is so homogeneous compared to something like "Rock Action", which regularly shifts from industrial crunch to Verve-y balladry throughout its running length (a full half hour shorter than "CODY"!) For me, "Rock Action"'s kitchen sink approach comes closest to the ideal because it shows the band doing so many things so incredibly well -- often all in the same track ("2 Rights 1 Wrong" keeps twisting itself into confounding shapes with each listen ... their best ever song?) Throw it together with the best of "Happy Songs For Happy People", which showed them capable of writing soaring, epic, heart-wrenching melodies deserving of inclusion of the best soundtracks never made, and you might end up with an album that tops "Loveless".

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Depeche Mode, The Raveonettes @ Air Canada Centre (Dec 1)

In the end, the concert was only part of the story. Bands, songs, or even moments in songs will regularly become forever linked with events in your life. If not, then you're not listening carefully enough. Stop listening to music regularly. Find a new hobby. Spend your money and time elsewhere.

Even before my department scheduled my Ph.D. defense for the day after their concert at the ACC, Depeche Mode were already my favourite band ever. I've lost interest in loads of bands over the years, sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently. Some of them were even present or former inner circle heroes. These things happen for countless reasons -- sometimes they break up or made a crap album, causing me to temporarily lose interest in them. Sometimes (probably more often than I would like) there are no good reasons for it. A band falls through the cracks in my attention span, becomes lost in the shuffle of a million other names, and don't pique my interest again for months, years, or forever.

None of that has ever happened with Depeche Mode. I didn't need to link any more important life events to this band. The first concert I ever saw was Depeche Mode at Exhibition Stadium in 1990. I have the wrinkled, faded Violator $30 concert t-shirt to prove it. I've known my friend Sandra for over half my life and I've never seen her happier than those four minutes during which Depeche Mode played "A Question of Time" in the encore of their summer 1994 show. "Enjoy the Silence" is my favourite single of the 90's. It's enough already! I don't deserve any more of this!

Just then, reality came calling and (quantum?) entangled yet another Depeche Mode Mode into my everyday life. This is my biggest challenge ever, isn't it? Someone's trying to tell me to get off my ass, stop being afraid of a few tens of thousands of words on a page and the threat of a few professors berating me for a couple of hours, bring my A-game, and GET SHIT DONE. Do it my own way. Is anybody surprised that I'm going to this show? No, they're not. Nobody else is dumb enough to do this but me. This is monumentally stupid, isn't it? My favourite band comes to town the night before the culmination of a billion years of work. It all goes down in about a sixteen hour span. It's not about the show. It's not. If it wasn't the show, I'd still be home, studying the same page of equations for the 100th time, wishing that I had a couple more days to prepare. I'll never feel fully prepared. One thing is for certain though: I'm not looking forward to this show, because once it's over, that means ...

The Raveonettes have the thankless task of playing while people were still filing in and milling around outside. Unfortunately, their intimate harmonies are easily ignored in a large venue like this, and the volume necessary to experience their Wall of Sound approach evaporates while travelling to the seats in the upper level. But none of this prevents "Twilight" -- their "Disco 2000" moment -- from being exhilirating.

Their synths are sitting atop platforms that might have been hauled off the set of a 50's sci-fi movie. The elaborate video screens and projections from past tours are pared down to a more basic setup that mainly showed closeups of the band members performing, with the odd animation thrown in to mix things up. It's like they want to be a real rock band now and are bored of standing stoically around their keyboards listening to another man sing (hoarsely) while cartoons play in the background (yes, it's 2005, why do you ask?). What is there to look at now besides Martin Gore's black leather pants and black frilly angels wings?

Duh. Look at the band, listen to the pleasantly energetic crowd (a marked improvement over the thousands of bored and boring asshats who flocked to their last two Toronto gigs), and experience their best album in fifteen years played at full volume. "A Pain That I'm Used To" feels scaled back in comparison to its "Reptile"-ified album version, but "John the Revelator" is tight, funky, perfect. As the intro to "A Question of Time"-soundalike "Suffer Well" hits, I become excited at the notion that this will be one of those gigs where the band plays a swath of their new album in its normal playing order before switching to the old stuff ... whoops, this IS "A Question of Time" after all. That was clever. I tip my hat.

"Policy of Truth" has been the odd single out of the "Violator" quartet on a couple of other tours, but tonight it nearly outshines all of them. The gold continues to flow with "Precious", a slamming version of "Walking In My Shoes" (I have never particularly enjoyed this song on record, but live, it breathes fire into me), "Suffer Well" for real this time ... this set is flawless, peak after peak after peak. Crazy Heroin Dave is dead. Long live Happy Fun Dave, the guy who has honed his voice into a instrument that's twice as powerful as his predecessor despite consuming only half as much air.

The pace finally slows down and it's time for the more sedate portion of the gig when Martin Gore sings. The delicacy of "Damaged People" is like banging on pipes and watching them twinkle. I don't know how they did it, but they perfected "Construction Time Again" twenty years after the fact. This song easily outclasses the schmaltzier "Home" and Dave's brooding "I Want It All". I could complain that they should have gone full-scale gothic right here and played "Nothing's Impossible" instead, because that might have snapped me out of a temporary trance where my thoughts drifted off into the expected events of the following morning ...

Everything snaps back into focus with "I Feel You", and finally the entire arena becomes unglued during the opening bars of "Behind The Wheel". People who were grooving in their seats suddenly leap to their feet, those who were already standing briefly lose control of their limbs before latching onto the beat. "World In My Eyes" is followed by perennial set closers "Personal Jesus" and "Enjoy the Silence", the latter now incorporating drum (!) and guitar (!!) solos to extend its excellence for a minute or two longer.

At this point, the crowd's overall mood is one of exhaustion. Swapping "Behind The Wheel" with one of the songs in the encore might have kept the energy level through the roof right until the end, but that would be nitpicking. After a return to the 80's with resurrected hits "Somebody", "Just Can't Get Enough" and "Everything Counts", they return for a second encore of "Never Let Me Down Again" that feels nearly anticlimatic now. Almost in recognition of that fact, "Goodnight Lovers" serves as the cooldown phase. This little anodyne lullaby is one of their most underrated singles, and it's a refreshing change to see a Depeche concert close on such a mellow note, lights dimmed, soothing harmonies, soft blue glow.

A career of increasingly complex and elaborate tours have given way to a more basic stage setup that thrives on the basis of little more than an exhaustive back catalogue littered with excellence. U2? Say what? Depeche Mode are trumping some of the best new music of their career with some of the finest concerts of their career. Now, as I walk and ride home in the rain, my last obstacle is gone. The concert is over. I could always say that the concert came first. I guess it's all me now.