My 100 Favorite Movies, 2020 Edition

If I do this, will I be the last living blogger?

Anyway, I mainly used this blog to keep track of lists. Here's an updated list of my favorite movies, ranked 1 to 100 (101, actually) in a swift and poorly-considered way.

1. The Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1954)

2. The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969)

3. Rio Bravo (Hawks, 1959)

4. Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955)

5. McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Altman, 1971)

6. Playtime (Tati, 1967)

7. The Searchers (Ford, 1956)

8. Singin' In The Rain (Donen, 1952)

9. La Jetee (Marker, 1962)

10. Badlands (Malick, 1973)

11. Rushmore (Anderson, 1998)

12. Yojimbo (Kurosawa, 1961)

13. Ride The High Country (Peckinpah, 1962)

14. Pather Panchali (Ray, 1955)

15. No Country For Old Men (Coen, 2007)

16. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)

17. The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939)

18. Ikiru (Kurosawa, 1952)

19. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Weir, 2003)

20. Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001)

21. Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Anderson, 2003)

22. The Grand Budapest Hotel (W Anderson, 2014)

23. The Shining (Kubrick, 1980)

24. Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2002)

25. Dead Man (Jarmusch, 1995)

26. The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963)

27. Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)

28. The 400 Blows (Truffaut, 1959)

29. True Grit (Coens, 2010)

30. The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946)

31. The Lady Eve (Sturges, 1941)

32. Moonrise Kingdom (Anderson, 2012)

33. Inherent Vice (PT Anderson, 2014)

34. Cleo From 5 To 7 (Varda, 1962)

35. Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn (Raimi, 1987)

36. Young Frankenstein (Brooks, 1974)

37. Paris, Texas (Wenders, 1984)

38. Boudu Saved From Drowning (Renoir, 1932)

39. Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954)

40. Band of Outsiders (Godard, 1964)

41. Sullivan's Travels (Sturges, 1942)

42. The Wages of Fear (Clouzot, 1953)

43. Boyhood (Linklater, 2014)

44. F For Fake (Welles, 1976)

45. Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958)

46. M (Lang, 1931)

47. The Grand Illusion (Renoir, 1938)

48. Two-Lane Blacktop (Hellman, 1971)

49. L'Atalante (Vigo, 1934)

50. Bob Le Flambeur (Melville, 1955)

51. Duck Soup (McCarey, 1933)

52. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Lang, 1933)

53. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (Leone, 1966)

54. Parasite (Joon-ho, 2019)

55. The Iron Giant (Bird, 1999)

56. Week End (Godard, 1967)

57. Out Of The Past (Tourneur, 1947)

58. Mon Oncle (Tati, 1958)

59. Diabolique (Clouzot, 1954)

60. There Will Be Blood (Anderson, 2007)

61. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong, 2010)

62. I'm Not There (Haynes, 2007)

63. Ghost World (Zwigoff, 2001)

64. Gerry (Van Sant, 2002)

65. Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)

66. Stagecoach (Ford, 1939)

67. Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia (Peckinpah, 1974)

68. Always For Pleasure (Blank, 1995)

69. The General (Keaton, 1927)

70. Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)

71. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004)

72. Toni Erdmann (Ade, 2016)

73. Children of Men (Cuaron, 2006)

74. Meek's Cutoff (Reichardt, 2010)

75. Killer of Sheep (Burnett, 1977)

76. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Demy, 1964)

77. Persona (Bergman, 1966)

78. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)

79. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (Ford, 1962)

80. The Thin Blue Line (Morris, 1988)

81. Human Resources (Cantet, 1999)

82. Mad Max: Fury Road (Miller, 2015)

83. Topsy-Turvy (Leigh, 1999)

84. High and Low (Kurosawa, 1963)

85. The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo, 1965)

86. La Ronde (Ophuls, 1950)

87. The Godfather Part II (Coppola, 1974)

88. A Man Escaped (Bresson, 1957)

89. Little Dieter Needs To Fly (Herzog, 1997)

90. The Maltese Falcon (Huston, 1941)

91. Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans (Murnau, 1927)

92. Aguirre, Wrath of God (Herzog, 1972)

93. Gun Crazy (Lewis, 1950)

94. Cockfighter (Hellman, 1974)

95. Harlan County, USA (Kopple, 1976)

96. Nosferatu (Murnau, 1929)

97. Paterson (Jarmusch, 2016)

98. My Dinner With Andre (Malle, 1981)

99. L'Avventura (Antonioni, 1960)

100. Scarface (Hawks, 1932)

101. A Christmas Tale (Desplechin, 2008)

At Dog Canyon: The Fall Vs. Whatever It Is That Is Encroaching

I forgot to post a link to my article at Dog Canyon from Thursday, but it consists of entirely too many words about The Fall with entirely too little about my central idea of how The Fall is like poetry: check it out!

Top 25 Albums of the 00s

I am one of those antiquated goofballs who counts from 1 to 10 rather than 0 to 9, so I'm not convinced that the 00s are over yet. But prevailing opinion has turned against me here and I like making lists (clearly), so here's my picks for the Top 25 Albums of the Decade as redshifted to the past by a year.

25. Sigur Ros - () (2002).
24. Silver Jews - Tanglewood Numbers (2005).
23. Richard Davies - Barbarians (2000).
22. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala (2007).
21. Mekons - OOOH! (2002).

I'll be the first to admit that Sigur Ros's decision to sing in the made-up scat language "Hopelandic" is ridiculous, but () is a lovely and inspiring work. Tanglewood Numbers isn't the best Silver Jews album, but it's a contender and that's good enough for me. I almost picked 2001's Bright Flight instead, but I ultimately decided that Bright Flight has higher peaks ("Time Will Break The World," "I Remember Me," "Death Of An Heir Of Sorrows"), but Tanglewood Numbers is more consistently great.  Barbarians is an utterly brilliant album that captures Davies' experience as an immigrant wrestling with the pros and cons of American culture.  Please come back to us, Richard Davies.  Night Falls Over Kortedala is a wonderfully eclectic mix of sounds with Lekman's signature wry humor and powerful emotional twists.  OOOH! (which stands for Out Of Our Heads!) is the best Mekons albums since Mekons Rock and Roll, a rollicking tide of apocalyptic humor, country-tinged agitprop, and drop-dead stunning songwriting.  The best Mekons songs make you feel like you just wandered into a boisterous argument about obscure truths between drunken intellectuals who have devolved (evolved?) into choral sing-shouting at each other.

20. Yo La Tengo - ...And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out (2000).
19. Danielson - Ships (2006).
18. Vic Chesnutt - At The Cut (2009).
17. The Hold Steady - Separation Sunday (2005).
16. Scott Walker - The Drift (2006).

YLT's 2000 album was a moody affair of quiet revelations, end-of-the-evening dance songs, and the cinematic "Night Falls On Hoboken."  I listened to it constantly while writing my thesis in 2000, and I credit it with giving me the right feel to maintain my sanity.  Ships is the best Danielson release, summing up the whole of Daniel Smith's inclusive all-my-friends-and-the-kitchen-sink philosophy of songcraft into a metaphor about travel.  At The Cut is Chesnutt's penultimate album, the little fucker, but it's also his most fully realized album, combining his knife-edge emotionalism with the truly dramatic music it deserves.  Separation Sunday embraces the silliness and majesty of rock music by marrying barrroom rock riffage with hyper-literate lyrics that are simultaneously breezy stories of skatepunks and a profound investigation into religious mythology and guilt.  The Drift is the most terrifying album ever made, the darkest mirror to chamber-pop lightness, an investigation into the soul that finds all of humanity lacking.

15. The Decemberists - Picaresque (2005).
14. The New Pornographers - Electric Version (2003).
13. Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha (2007).
12. Deerhoof - Milk Man (2004).
11. The Wrens - The Meadowlands (2003).

Picaresque is the best Decemberists album for being the best example of the Decemberists' folk-art aesthetic.  Everything they've dumped on us since has reeked of white elephant intent, but with Picaresque, Colin Meloy and co. took their Progressive Era + Brit Folk pretensions and gnawed away at the frame until they'd created a chapbook of stories bursting with life.  Electric Version similarly saw the New Pornographers, who are, after all, the 2000s version of the Cars, blow their pop music up into a sharp-eyed examination of the world around them, complete with the best pop hooks and harmonies since "Just What I Needed."  Armchair Apocrypha is Bird's gnomic Astral Weeks, gathering his love of esoterica (whistles, loops, and yelps) into a mesmerizing folk-rock album.  Milk Man captures Deerhoof  at the cusp of a shift in their sound, where the previous albums set pop and noise at greater odds and the later favored pop and rock harmony a bit too prominently.  Milk Man had Deerhoof subsuming the opposition into a fun and extremely listenable whole.  If you try, you can hear the work in The Meadowlands, years of effort with countless added and erased layers of instrument and vocal tracks hidden just below the surface of every song.  But the album never sounds like work: the songs rock and bleed and fight against whatever is encroaching with the effortlessness of a group of tightrope walkers who don't appear to realize how far out on the rope they are.

10. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002).

Like Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers album, this is the sound of a band on the verge of falling apart. Five years of a mostly stable line-up had leapt from the country-rock pleasures of A.M. to the genre-defying Being There to the art-pop of Summerteeth to this album, which boldly married commercial folk-rock music and avant-garde noise and deconstruction.  And meanwhile band leader Jeff Tweedy first forced out longtime drummer Ken Coomer in favor of the creative Glenn Kotche and then, surprisingly, guitarist/keyboardist/primary collaborator/rival Jay Bennett.  Their label balked, but Wilco waited them out, building buzz with their fan base, and the band beat the label.  Yankee Hotel Foxtrot isn't the work of a single vision, but a single voice with a number of different lenses that alternately obscure and dissect the underlying song.  The future was now.

9. Earthless - Rhythms From A Cosmic Sky (2007).

Earthless is a power trio that performs instrumental rock.  I have to remind myself of this fact many times over while listening to this album.  Two 20+ minute tracks and a short cover of a Groundhogs tune (with vocals!). In lesser hands, anything this self-indulgent would be insanely boring, but Earthless effortlessly invokes the blues-rock powerhouses of the late 60s/early 70s (Hendrix, Sabbath, and Funkadelic, in particular) with a psychedelic sense of movement and flow somewhere between Acid Mothers Temple, the Allman Brothers Band, and the Velvet Underground.  But all these 60s comparisons aren't fair: Earthless is entirely their own band.  I chose Rhythms From A Cosmic Sky for this list (because I'm partial to producer Tim Green's Hammond organ cameos), but it has only the slightest edge on the other two Earthless albums, Sonic Prayer and Live At Roadburn.

8. Sufjan Stevens - Come On Feel The Illinoise! (2005).

He's impossibly precious: the stabs at Reichian minimalism, the crazy-long enthusiastic song titles, the whole 50 states project, the high-school jazz-band on acid sound of the music, the wings they all wear in concert.  I sorta want to punch the guy or take him hunting or at least get him drunk on expensive single-malt and force him to watch a bunch of John Ford movies. His pretensions aren't just those of the twee indie dandy sort, but - as the Spanish might say - entirely huevos-free. But that's unfair. It takes balls to make oddball art-pop music like this, and it takes serious chops to make music this weird so damn palatable. 

7. Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender (2004).

Speaking of precious, Newsom is a harpist with a strangely sweet girlishly nasal-whine voice. And she's a hell of a great songwriter. Her tracks are beautiful and literate, seemingly pulled from the great Victorian Era of folk-rock (I think this happened in the early 70s, shortly after Nick Drake died).  Newsom has a Victorian novelist's way with words, a sense of clever circling around the point.  And the songs are seemingly as direct as if they had been written for fingerstyle guitar in the 1920s, while being, in fact, fairly sophisticated in structure and performed on an angelic harp, a rarity, to say the least, in rock music.  Watching Ms. Newsom perform live has brought me an appreciation for the complexity of the harp. I doubt many Appalachian songwriters or Victorian novelists ever thought of working on a piano turned sideways with most of the wood stripped away.

6. Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Common Life (2008).

Punk music was supposed to challenge the norms and your expectations, but, y'know, it's been 30 years since its heyday. Much of what passes for punk music in the 00s is the opposite of challenging: exactly what you think it is, a rehash of either the Ramones or Minor Threat or The Fall.  Many punk fans are the opposite of what they're supposed to be, too.  Instead of constantly being on the search for sounds that are new and surprising, they are the most rigid of dogmatists, excluding anything from their club that threatens their own personal hegemony.  This is human nature, of course, especially when we're talking about the music of revolution, a call that is especially appealing to teenagers. And the teenagers who would be punk fans are in a weird place: overly concerned with authenticity but lacking the tools to apprehend it, trapped in a cycle of defiance that sets rules about them that were defiant more than a generation ago, but are now as defiant as, I don't know, Converse low-tops. All of that is to say that when a band like Fucked Up comes along, a band that revitalizes and reinvests in punk by combining its roaring power with proggy ambition and serious guitar chops, this is a rare and wonderful thing.  Fucked Up challenges the norms and expections by taking the ideology of punk seriously. God bless 'em for it.

5. Mastodon - Leviathan (2004).

Speaking of proggy, how about an art-metal concept album about Moby-Dick?  In retrospect, Moby-Dick is ideal inspiration for a creative metal band, being about not just the humanisim in brotherhood of men on an insane mission, but the mission itself, the doomed struggle against indifferent nature. Mastodon is such a creative metal band, with old-school Iron Maiden drama, but also the heaviness of stoner metal, the twin-guitar prowess of death metal, and a sense of melodic lyricism rarely heard in metal.

4. The Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat (2004).

The Pynchonian impulse in rock music is rarely as realized as on Blueberry Boat. Again and again on this album, technology fails us and our own natures overwhelm our best intentions. The sound is offputting, sudden shifts in mood and tempo bathed in wildly artificial bloop-bleeps and vintage synth-percussion and heavily wah-wahed spazz-guitars.  But Blueberry Boat has a beating heart and all of its tall tales, despite their borderline autistic focus on detail, bring the creative intelligence behind this album to fully bear on the listener.  This is a modernist magnum opus disguised as a postmodern rock opera.

3. Akron/Family - Love Is Simple (2007).

The dystopian hippies of Akron/Family know that love isn't simple, not for most people. But they also know that love doesn't have to be complex.  Love is fundamentally an estactic emotion, both necessary and difficult, and it can embrace the opposition and hold it in check. I'm off-track here. Love Is Simple is a collection of songs that follow no formula but their own hearts.  Akron/Family wants to give you the gift of satori.  They intend to shock you into a great realization, even one that can be a banally expressed as "love is simple." 

2. Boris - Pink (2006).

The answers might be lost in translation.  What is Boris doing on this album?  What are these songs about?  Why Pink?  Why "Farewell"?  Why "Pseudo-Bread"?  I don't know, but the music is incredible.  Doom metal, ok.  Profoundly moving rock, yes.  Boris is creating powerful and moving soundscapes to project their rock dream upon.  I may remain confused about their message, but I understand their means of conveying it.  And that may be the whole of the message.

1. Animal Collective - Feels (2005).

Here Animal Collective peaked.  Their electonic avant-noise and bucolic folk tendencies were perfectly balanced with their Beach Boys-esque pop, creating a work that could transport listeners straight out of the hell of 2005, the year that Bush began his second term, and into a timeless sense of well-being.  And the second-side suite of "Bees" -> "Banshee Beat" -> "Daffy Duck" -> "Loch Raven" -> "Turn Into Something" rivals Abbey Road for sequence perfection. When I think of the sound of the 00s I think about the moment about 2 minutes into "Banshee Beat" when the shimmering, jittering guitar envelopes the track like crickets enveloping low murmer of trucks on a distant highway in the hum of evening silence.  This is where synthetic and organic between one, like a tree that sprouts perfectly machined cogwheels as fruit.  And then Avey Tare suggest that you get out and find a swimming pool, and it's summer and you're 18, and all is right with the world again.

My Favorite Films of the 00s

The panelists on the most recent Wasted Words podcast (including my pal Nate Patrin!) spend a lot of time talking about the utility of year-end lists.  I mention this not to add my two pennies, but to suggest that you check out the podcast and to introduce another useless list here.  What follows are my favorite movies of the 00s, offered without explanation because I'm basically too wiped-out to explain.

1. Synecdoche, New York
2. I'm Not There
3. No Country For Old Men
4. The New World
5. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
6. Spirited Away
7. Gosford Park
8. Gerry
9. A Serious Man
10. There Will Be Blood
11. Grizzly Man
12. Los Angeles Plays Itself
13. Mulholland Drive
14. Children of Men
15. Before Sunset
16. The Class
17. Elephant
18. George Washington
19. Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai
20. In The Mood For Love
21. LOTR trilogy
22. Kings and Queen
23. Time Out
24. Ratatouille
25. Encounters At The End of the World

The Best Albums of 2004, Five Years Later

Back in January 2005, I listed my favorite albums of 2004:

1. Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat.
2. Wilco - A Ghost Is Born.
3. Animal Collective - Sung Tongs.
4. Mike Watt – The Secondman’s Middle Stand.
5. Liars – They Were Wrong, So We Drowned.
6. Mission of Burma – ONoffON.
7. Deerhoof - Milk Man.
8. Will Johnson – Vultures Await.
9. The Streets – A Grand Don’t Come For Free.
10. TV on the Radio - Desperate Youths, Bloodthirsty Babes.

Best album of 1967 that I never expected to hear in my lifetime: Brian Wilson - SMiLE.
Other albums I considered: Mekons - Punk Rock, Iron and Wine - Endless Numbered Days, Madvillain - Madvillainy, Shearwater – Winged Life.

Bought too recently to review: Oneida, Comets on Fire, Panda Bear, and Cul de Sac/Damo Suzuki.

Would I still rank 2004 albums the same way?  Not a chance!  Last year I gave myself a report card for my 2003 picks, a practice I will continue.  For one thing, it promotes humility. For another, shame. And, as an added bonus, it gives me a chance to revisit favorite albums that may have dropped from my regular playlist. Everybody wins! Here's my picks for 2004 with five years of time to let them percolate:

1. Animal Collective - Sung Tongs (up from #3).  At the time I could stop raving about how delightfully psychedelic this album is. I still love it, maybe even more than the Fiery Furnaces, who have finally worn me down. But every time this album or a track from this album crops up in my listening, I am invigorated.

2. Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat (down from #1). Actually no, I still love this album. But I do have some lingering fatigue for it that I didn't have at the time. I'm much more inclined to listen to only one song from it at once rather than commit to the whole enchilada.

3. Mastodon - Leviathan (not yet on my radar). This album rules. I wish I had heard it in 2004.

4. Deerhoof - Milk Man (up from #7). My affection for this album has only grown, while my affection for the Liars album has plummeted (I mean, yes, the Liars albums is awesome in some respects, but it's also sort of a drag). This one is my favorite Deerhoof album.

5. Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender (not yet on radar). I'd read about the twee harp girl on Pitchfork, but I was foolishly avoiding her in 2004. I shouldn't have. This album is chock-full of stunning music and passionate, brainy songs.

6. Wilco - A Ghost Is Born (down from #2). Still a great album and sometimes my favorite Wilco album, but it's tarnished by the lackluster efforts that have followed it. And I don't like the second half as much as I used to. But the first six songs are unstoppable.

7. Comets on Fire - Blue Cathedral (bought but unreviewed as of when I made the list). Comets on Fire will MELT YOUR HEAD. And I like their follow-up album even more. Are they still together? I miss these guys.

8. Oneida - Secret Wars (bought but also unreviewed). This one has the krautrock/punk/drone down flat, but it's also fairly user-friendly for newcomers to Oneida.

9. The Magnetic Fields - i (doesn't appear to be on my radar). Now that I think about it, I may have had this album when I made my list, but I think I had seriously underrated it. Some of the songs are a little lackluster, but most are witty fun.

10. cLOUDDEAD - Ten (definitely not on my radar). I don't remember when I got into cLOUDDEAD, but their freaky psychedelic hip-hop head-trip is an utter delight.

Honorable mentions:

Mike Watt - The Secondman's Middle Stand (down from #4). Watt's song-cycle held a lot of interest for me back in 2004, but it's become the Watt album I reach for the least in the intervening years. Sorry, man. I still like it, but I don't love it quite as much.

The Hold Steady - Almost Killed Me (not on radar). Not the best Hold Steady, but still a great album.

Dosh - Pure Trash (radar-less). Martin Dosh's song-cycle loosely about the terrors of parenthood would have resonated with me quite a bit in 2004, when my wife and I were expecting our first child.

Brian Wilson - SMiLE (left off list intentionally). At the time I thought including it would be an automatic #1, but I hear more of its faults now.  Not that there's many, but the album is more of a re-creation than a creation for 2004.

Danger Mouse - The Grey Album (unheard at the time). Everybody was raving about this at the time, but I held off. Probably shouldn't have, though, because it's fascinating.

Mission of Burma - ONoffON (down from #6). Still awesome.

The New Year - The End Is Near (not on radar). Also great.

The Dexateens - The Dexateens (unbought). Killer debut from killer band.

Danielson - Brother Is To Son (unheard).

Of the others, I've sort of lost interest in the Liars album, although I still think it's a significant work of art.  I've really lost interest in Will Johnson and Centro-Matic in general. The Streets don't move me like he used to, and the TV On The Radio is the only album of theirs that I hardly ever listen to.  I like Madvillain, but not as much as other DOOM albums, and I only picked up his other one from 04, Venomous Villain, recently.  So there you go.

That's only 4/10 that stayed on my list, but two of my top three were pretty consistent, and all of my top three stayed on the list.  Not so good overall, but not so bad with the high-profile ones. I'm going to give myself a B for the year. I probably deserve a B-, but goshdarnit, I feel I deserve the bump.

Top 10 Albums of 2009

I know, I know.  You've had enough of the opinions of The Knowledgeable And Qualified.  You're asking yourself, "So what does a fat guy with a blog think about 2009 in music?"  Glad you asked!  Considering my poor track record, these are sure to be remembered for a good week or maybe even less.  Here's what I liked:

10. Dinosaur Jr - Farm.  How, you may ask yourself, can I assure myself that this guy is getting old and complacent?  Here's your first hint!  This album is so much of a piece with the earlier Dino Jr albums that it wouldn't be out of place in any Best of 1989 list, and yet it's in my Top Ten list of 20-freakin'-09.  Well, complacent I may be, but I know what I like, and I like this.  Maybe this is the problem with trying to make a long-term assessment of music at the end of the year.  Be sure to keep an eye out for my self-report card coming out this week, in which I'll tell you what my picks for 2004 were and why I was completely wrong about all of them.  Anyway, I know this isn't the greatest Dino Jr album, but it's a damn good one and it works for me. So yeah, it's my No. 10 album for 2009.

9. Akron/Family - Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free.  Akron/Family's last album, 2007's Love Is Simple, was a near-perfect mess. It was my favorite album of that year, a psychedelic mix of choral singing, folk music, skronky freakouts, and an overwhelming emotional need to reach out and connect with the listener, to bring you along on the woolly acid trip of the lyrics.  Man, I loved that album.  This one has all of the same elements, but they are considerably less integrated.  It seems less like a journey to a destination than a time-killing road trip to nowhere with friends.  Which is fun, and this album is definitely pretty good.  But it won't turn your head inside out, which is definitely a step down for the Akron/Family.  Not bad, but not insane.  I will say that the live show I caught with some friends at the Mess With Texas Fest during SXSW was freakin' insane.  More of that, please.

8. Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavilion/Fall Be Kind EP.  I originally gave this spot to Tortoise, but after listening to both albums again, I switched them.  I seem to be on my own with this opinion, but I think Animal Collective peaked with Feels.  I originally underrated this one for failing to be Feels.  It doesn't contain the folk elements that infuse Feels with such beauty.  Animal Collective have moved on, and their direction into upbeat pop isn't terrible by any means.  It's just not quite as far up my alley, y'know.  Merriweather Post Pavilion dropped in January, and I was unimpressed then.  By the time Fall Be Kind, an EP that basically contains outtakes from MPP, came out last month, I had come around to the sound.  So I don't think it's the album of the year (as Pitchfork does), but I do like it and think it's a significant album of 2009.  Significant enough to be here in my Top Ten in a way that I ultimately denied Tortoise, that is.

7. Oneida - Rated O.  Oneida's getting weirder, and god bless 'em for it.  On this album - a three-disc set! - Oneida lunges from third-world funk to their more typical redefined krautrock to garage-rock jams to screaming noise-rock to head-space chanting to afro-pop guitars to pure brown-noise drone to 60s-style sitars as punctuation.  Nearly two hours of music total, and it's never uninteresting.  This one's definitely not for Oneida neophytes, though.  Start with Secret Wars or The Wedding, both of which are a little more accessible (a relative term with Oneida) and then move along to Rated O or 2008's Preteen Weaponry. These later albums are more rewarding listening experience, even if they require more patience from the listener.

6. Andrew Bird - Noble Beast.  Although not quite as strong as Bird's previous album Armchair Apocrypha, Noble Beast is still an impressive collection of songs.  It took a little while to grow on me, though.  Where Armchair Apocrypha and 2005's The Mysterious Production Of Eggs had a way of rewriting your expectations in an epic sweep that carried you from moment to moment, Noble Beast is more hermetic.  It is still full of surprises, but they are more coy, waiting for you (or, more likely, your subconscious mind) to do the work of unlocking them.  On the fifth listen, though, I was hooked.  The things that took me by surprise were not what I expected them to be, which is quite alright due to the nature of surprise.  And man, Bird writes a gorgeous hook.  Something to whistle along with, should you happen to possess a set of pipes that allow you to whistle along with the man.

5. The Dexateens - Singlewide. This album dropped on my birthday, and it felt like a present.  Over the last few years, the Dexateens have been moving in a direction that dropped the raging guitars of their early work but kept the folk and country aspects with an added pure guitar pop sheen.  I compared them when this album came out to Big Star and the Band, and I think those remain apt comparisons.  This one is more contemplative than the previous albums, but it culminates in the kicker "Can You Whoop It?," which throws a handful of Southern stereotype jokes at the wall and then states bluntly, "Locks are for the honest/Guns are for the wise/Laws are for the frightened for to line their nest with lies/I live in the space created by your compromise/So can you whoop it?"  Now here's a strange thing: when I visited Tuscaloosa over the summer, I heard rumors that guitarist and founding member John Smith, who wrote a bunch of the songs, had left the band, which was later confirmed by Dexateens lead singer Elliott McPherson.  But the website doesn't acknowledge it, nor has the band made much of a fuss about it.  Frankly, with music this good, I hope that whatever is going on with Smith being out of the band is a temporary thing.

4. Isis - Wavering Radiant.  Does it make me a poseur that I like this album almost as much as Isis's magnum opus Oceanic?  Then so be it.  I've long held that Isis is like Sigur Ros with distortion pedals and the occasional cookie monster vocals.  But Isis is actually quite a bit more psychedelic and varied than Sigur Ros, with a musical palette that includes metal and hardcore along with the post-rock melange of krautrock and space rock that the Icelandic band employs.  Anyway, this is one of the headiest and still heaviest albums of the year, and that's a neat trick.

3. Mastodon - Crack The Skye.  Everybody loves Mastodon, and I'm no different.  This is yet another concept album, but I can't follow the story to this album at all, and I don't care.  The music is amazingly intricate and thoroughly thrilling.  There's two 10+ minute tracks, but the music is far too engrossing to notice the song length.  There's elements of all kinds of genres on this album, but the album is overwhelmingly a) metal and b) greater than the sum of its parts.  This is the sound of a band trying to figure out just how far they can push themselves.

1 (Tie). Vic Chesnutt - At The Cut.  I was thinking about putting this in the No. 1 slot all by its lonesome when I heard the SOB had killed himself on Christmas Eve.  I'm still somewhere between heartbroken and furious.  I know it's wrong to dock the album for this.  I didn't know the guy, but I knew he was in pain.  Anyone who listened to his songs knew he was in pain.  But he was also witty and full of sharp humanism, and I wanted more.  I didn't know about his $70K+ medical debt.  And I'm talking about Chesnutt instead of At The Cut, which is his best album yet. Wryer and more incisive than he's ever been, with music so well-tuned to his songs that it freakin' hurts, At The Cut invites intimacy while asking you if you really deserve it.  In retrospect it sounds like a suicide note, but no more than many of his albums.  Why now?  I didn't know the guy, but I feel like I lost a friend.

1 (Tie). Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs.  I gave it a boost in the worst possible circumstances, but it's not like this album doesn't deserve it.  YLT has broken no new ground with this album, but man, I love this ground and they own it.  Does this make me old and complacent?  Maybe!  I don't care.  This is great stuff.

The rest:

11. Tortoise - Beacons of Ancestorship 
12. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
13. Sonic Youth - The Eternal
14. The Bats - The Guilty Office
15. Pelican - What We All Come To Need
16. Darcy James Argue's Secret Society - Infernal Machines
17. Sunn 0))) - Monoliths and Dimensions
18. The Clean - Mister Pop
19. Mission of Burma - The Sound, The Speed, The Light
20. A.C. Newman - Get Guilty
21. The Soft Pack - The Muslims
22. The Clientele - Bonfires On The Heath
23. The Mountain Goats - The Life of the World to Come
24. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
25. Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse - Dark Night Of The Soul
26. The Fiery Furnaces - I'm Going Away
27. Molly Berg and Stephen Vitiello - The Gorilla Variations
28. Sparklehorse + Fennesz - In the Fishtank 15

The Moviegoer, Part I

I have been watching lots of movies this year. In years past, I've read lots of books, but this year I've opted to spend my time with cinema. This doesn't seem to be a conscious decision on my part, but perhaps a by-product of parenthood of small children and a shortened attention span. Anyway, I've finished only one book in the first two months of this year: David Simon's Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets. I'm a big fan of The Wire, which Simon co-created. To a lesser extent, I'm a fan of the tv show Homicide, which was based on this book. I probably don't need to tell you that I loved it. But I did.

But that's it for literature this year. I have a couple of other books that I'm reading, and I'll probably follow up when I finish them. But I'm watching lots and lots of movies. Since January 1st, I've watched (and many of these were not the first time I'd seen them):

1. Dr. T & The Women: B
   
2. Encounters At The End of the World (this was the third viewing in two weeks): A+
3. Amarcord: A+
4. Out of the Past: A
5. Pineapple Express: B
6. Man on Wire: A-
7. Kung Fu Panda: A-
8. Last Night At The Alamo: A
9. The Order of Myths: A
10. M. Hulot's Holiday: A
11. Peter and the Wolf (2008 short): A+
12. Wagon Master: B
13. Paranoid Park: A+
14. Kiss of Death: B
15. The Night of the Hunter: A+
16. Topsy-Turvy: A+
17. Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains: B-
18. The Day The Earth Stood Still (original version): A
19. Burn After Reading: B+
20. Drunken Angel: B+
21. I Live In Fear: Record of a Living Being: A-
22. Wattstax: B
23. Aliens: A
24. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist: A-
25. Hamlet 2: B-
26. Eyes Wide Shut: B+
27. Lessons of Darkness: B
28. Stroszek: A+
29. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: A
30. Pootie Tang: C+
31. The Trial: B
32. Trafic: A+
    

That's 32 movies in 59 days. Judge me harshly, if you be so inclined.

100 Albums To Provide Solace In Isolation, 2009

Blogger seems to make hard-coding a cut a chore, so this one is going to be unnecessarily long and more of interest to me than anyone else. SORRY!

So yesterday's movie list was for the desert island of the soul. Today's music list supposes that I am lost on one of 2001's spaceships, spinning meaninglessly through the vacuum. But I don't want to listen to Thus Spake Zarathustra over and over again! Luckily my faithful pal, the ship's computer HAL, has allowed me to load up an iPod with 100 of my favorite albums to bring along. Thanks, HAL! That ought to make the time I spend running around in circles so much more interesting!

Here's the list:

1. Akron/Family - Love Is Simple (2007)
2. Andrew Bird - The Mysterious Production Of Eggs (2005)
3. Animal Collective - Feels (2005)
4. Aretha Franklin - I Have Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You) (1967)
5. The Band - The Band (1969)
6. Bartók: The String Quartets (Emerson String Quartet recording, 1989)
7. Beach Boys - Pet Sounds (1966)
8. Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique (1989)
9. Belle & Sebastian - The Boy With The Arab Strap (1998)
10. Big Star - Third-Sister Lovers (1975)
11. Black Sabbath - Paranoid (1971)
12. Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited (1965)
13. Boris - Akuma No Uta (2003)
14. Brian Eno - Here Come The Warm Jets (1973)
15. Buzzcocks - Singles Going Steady (1979)
16. Camper Van Beethoven - Key Lime Pie (1989)
17. Can - Tago Mago (1971)
18. Charles Mingus - The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady (1963)
19. Charlie Rich - Feel Like Going Home: The Essential Charlie Rich (1997)
20. The Clean - Anthology (2002)
21. The Cramps - Bad Music For Bad People (1984)
22. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Willie and the Poor Boys (1969)
23. The Decemberists - Picaresque (2005)
24. Deerhoof - Milk Man (2004)
25. Dirty Three - Horse Stories (1996)
26. Duke Ellington - Money Jungle (1962)
27. Earth - Earth 2 (1993)
28. Elvis Costello - Armed Forces (1979)
29. Fairport Convention - Liege and Lief (1969)
30. The Fall - Hex Enduction Hour (1982)
31. The Feelies - The Good Earth (1986)
32. The Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat (2004)
33. The Flaming Lips - Clouds Taste Metallic (1995)
34. The Flying Burrito Brothers - Gilded Palace of Sin (1969)
35. Funkadelic - Maggot Brain (1971)
36. Gang Of Four - Entertainment! & Yellow EP (1979)
37. George Jones - The Essential George Jones: The Spirit Of Country (2001)
38. Geraldine Fibbers - Lost Somewhere Between the Earth & My Home (1995)
39. The Go-Betweens - Before Hollywood (1982)
40. Guided By Voices - Alien Lanes (1995)
41. Hank Williams - Original Singles Collection (1992)
42. Hüsker Dü - Zen Arcade (1984)
43. Isaac Hayes - Hot Buttered Soul (1969)
44. James Brown - Love, Power, Peace: Live At The Olympia, Paris 1971 (1992)
45. Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender (2004)
46. John Coltrane - My Favorite Things (1961)
47. Johnny Cash - Columbia Records 1958-1986 (1987)
48. K. McCarty - Dead Dog's Eyeball: The Songs of Daniel Johnston (1995)
49. The Kinks - The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society (1968)
50. Lee "Scratch" Perry - Arkology (1997)
51. Leo Kottke - 6 and 12 String Guitar (1969)
52. Louvin Brothers - Satan Is Real (1960)
53. Love - Forever Changes (1969)
54. Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs (1999)
55. Meat Puppets - II (1984)
56. The Mekons - Rock N' Roll (1989)
57. Miles Davis - In A Silent Way (1969)
58. Minutemen - Double Nickels on the Dime (1984)
59. Mission of Burma - Signals, Calls And Marches EP (1981)
60. The Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers (1976)
61. The Moles - Instinct (1994)
62. My Bloody Valentine - Loveless (1991)
63. Neil Young - Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969)
64. Neu! - Neu! (1972)
65. Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (1998)
66. New Pornographers - Electric Version (2003)
67. Nick Drake - Pink Moon (1972)
68. Ornette Coleman - The Shape Of Jazz To Come (1959)
69. Os Mutantes - Mutantes (1969)
70. Pavement - Crooked Rain Crooked Rain (1994)
71. Pere Ubu - Terminal Tower (1985)
72. The Pixies - Surfer Rosa (1988)
73. The Ramones - Rocket To Russia (1977)
74. REM - Life's Rich Pageant (1986)
75. The Replacements - Let It Be (1984)
76. Richard and Linda Thompson - Shoot Out The Lights (1982)
77. Richard Davies - Telegraph (1998)
78. Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street (1972)
79. Scott Walker - The Drift (2006)
80. The Silver Jews - Bright Flight (2001)
81. Slayer - Reign In Blood (1986)
82. Sleep - Dopesmoker (2003)
83. Sly and the Family Stone - There's A Riot Goin' On (1971)
84. Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation (1988)
85. Sparklehorse - Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot (1995)
86. Steve Reich - Music For 18 Musicians (ECM recording from 1978, please)
87. The Stooges - Fun House (1970)
88. Sun Ra - The Singles (1996)
89. Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings And Food (1978)
90. Television - Marquee Moon (1977)
91. Terry Riley - In C (I'll take the original 1968 State University Center of Creative and Performing Arts version)
92. Thelonious Monk - Brilliant Corners (1957)
93. Tom Waits - Bone Machine (1992)
94. Uncle Tupelo - Anodyne (1993)
95. VA - The Harder They Come Soundtrack (1972)
96. Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967)
97. The Who - Sell Out (1967)
98. Willie Nelson - Red Headed Stranger (1975)
99. Wire - Chairs Missing (1978)
100. Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One (1997)

----

Now here's where it gets long. Through the goodness of his heart, HAL has allowed me to expand to 300 albums. I tried to modify my blogger template to allow expandable entries so that this would be behind a cut, but Blogger, in its infinite wisdom, has made this modification difficult. So take your time! Or do the smart thing and skip this!

o Adverts - Crossing the Red Sea with the Adverts
o Akron/Family - Love Is Simple
o Albert Ayler Trio - Spiritual Unity
o Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
o Andrew Bird - The Mysterious Production Of Eggs
o Animal Collective - Feels
o Animal Collective - Sung Tongs
o Aretha Franklin - I Have Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)
o Armand Schaubroeck Steals - Ratfucker
o Bad Brains - s/t
o Band - Music From Big Pink
o Band - The Band
o Bartók: Concerto for Orchestra; Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta; Hungarian Sketches (Fritz Reiner & The Chicago Symphony Orchestra)
o Bartók: The String Quartets (Emerson String Quartet)
o Bats - At The National Grid
o Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
o Beach Boys - Smile (Vigatone)
o Beach Boys - Sunflower/Surf's Up
o Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique
o Beatles - Revolver
o Bedhead - Beheaded
o Belle & Sebastian - The Boy With The Arab Strap
o Big Star - #1 Record
o Big Star - Radio City
o Big Star - Third-Sister Lovers
o Bill Evans Trio - Everybody Digs Bill Evans
o Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath
o Black Sabbath - Master Of Reality
o Black Sabbath - Paranoid
o Blue Oyster Cult - Tyranny & Mutation
o Bob Dylan - Blonde On Blonde
o Bob Dylan - Blood On The Tracks
o Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
o Bob Dylan - John Wesley Harding
o Bob Dylan - Nashville Skyline
o Bob Wills - The Essential Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys
o Boris - Akuma No Uta
o Boris - Pink
o Boris - Smile
o Brian Eno - Discreet Music
o Brian Eno - Here Come The Warm Jets
o Brian Eno - Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)
o Brian Wilson - Smile
o Buddy Holly - Original Master Tapes
o Buzzcocks - Singles Going Steady
o Byrds - Sweetheart of the Rodeo
o Camper Van Beethoven - Key Lime Pie
o Camper Van Beethoven - Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart
o Camper Van Beethoven - Telephone Free Landslide Victory
o Camper Van Beethoven – Camper Van Beethoven (The Third Album)
o Can - Ege Bamyasi
o Can - Future Days
o Can - Tago Mago
o Captain Beefheart - Doc At The Radar Station
o Captain Beefheart - Trout Mask Replica
o Cardinal - Cardinal
o Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um
o Charles Mingus - The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady
o Charlie Rich - Feel Like Going Home: The Essential Charlie Rich
o Chills - Submarine Bells
o Clash - London Calling
o Clash - The Clash (UK)
o Clean - Anthology
o Clem Snide - Your Favorite Music
o cLOUDDEAD - ten
o Comets on Fire - Avatar
o Comets on Fire - Blue Cathedral
o Congos - Heart of the Congos
o Cramps - Bad Music For Bad People
o Creedence Clearwater Revival - Green River
o Creedence Clearwater Revival - Willie and the Poor Boys
o Culture - Two Sevens Clash
o Danger Doom - The Mouse and the Mask
o Danielson - Ships
o David Bowie - Station To Station
o David Bowie - The Man Who Sold The World
o Decemberists - Her Majesty
o Decemberists - Picaresque
o Deerhoof - Milk Man
o Dillard & Clark - The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark
o Dinosaur Jr - Bug
o Dinosaur Jr - You're Living All Over Me
o Dirty Three - Horse Stories
o DJ Shadow - Endtroducing
o Django Reinhardt - Verve Jazz Masters 38
o Dock Boggs - His Folkways Years
o Duke Ellington - Money Jungle
o Earth - Earth 2
o Earthless - Rhythms From A Cosmic Sky
o Elizabeth Cotten - Freight Train and Other North Carolina Folk Tunes
o Elvis Costello - Armed Forces
o Elvis Costello - This Year's Model
o Eric Matthews - It's Heavy In Here
o Fairport Convention - Liege and Lief
o Fall - Hex Enduction Hour
o Fall - This Nation's Saving Grace
o Faust IV
o Feelies - Crazy Rhythms
o Feelies - The Good Earth
o Feelies - Time For A Witness
o Fela Kuti - Zombie
o Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat
o Fiery Furnaces - Gallowsbird's Bark
o Firesign Theatre - Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers
o Flaming Lips - Clouds Taste Metallic
o Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
o Flipper - Generic
o Flying Burrito Brothers - Gilded Palace of Sin
o Fucked Up - Hidden World
o Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Common Life
o Funkadelic - Maggot Brain
o Galaxie 500 - On Fire
o Galaxie 500 - This Is Our Music
o Gang Of Four - Entertainment! & Yellow EP
o Gene Clark - White Light
o George Jones - Cup of Loneliness: The Mercury Years
o George Jones - The Essential George Jones: The Spirit Of Country
o Geraldine Fibbers - Butch
o Geraldine Fibbers - Lost Somewhere Between the Earth & My Home
o Go-Betweens - Before Hollywood
o Go-Betweens - Bright Yellow Bright Orange
o Go-Betweens - Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express
o Go-Betweens – 16 Lovers Lane
o Gram Parsons - G.P. / Grievous Angel
o Guided By Voices - Alien Lanes
o Guided By Voices - Bee Thousand
o Hank Williams - Original Singles Collection
o Howlin Wolf - Chess Box
o Hüsker Dü - New Day Rising
o Hüsker Dü - Zen Arcade
o Iggy Pop - Lust For Life
o Isaac Hayes - Hot Buttered Soul
o Isis - Oceanic
o James Brown - Love, Power, Peace: Live At The Olympia, Paris 1971
o Jandek - Blue Corpse
o Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
o Jens Lekman - Oh You're So Silent Jens
o Joanna Newsom - Milk Eyed Mender
o Joanna Newsom - Ys.
o John Cage & David Tudor - Indeterminacy
o John Cale - Helen of Troy
o John Cale - Paris 1919
o John Coltrane - A Love Supreme
o John Coltrane - John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman
o John Coltrane - Live At Birdland
o John Coltrane - My Favorite Things
o John Fahey - The Legend of Blind Joe Death
o Johnny Cash - Columbia Records 1958-1986
o K. McCarty - Dead Dog's Eyeball
o King Crimson - In The Court of the Crimson King
o Kinks - Arthur
o Kinks - Something Else
o Kinks - The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society
o Kraftwerk - The Man-Machine
o Kris Kristofferson - Kristofferson
o Laurie Anderson - Big Science
o LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
o Lee "Scratch" Perry - Arkology
o Leo Kottke - 6 and 12 String Guitar
o Little Willie John - Fever: The Best of Little Willie John
o Lou Reed - The Blue Mask
o Louvin Brothers - Satan Is Real
o Louvin Brothers - When I Stop Dreaming: Best Of The Louvin Brothers
o Love - Da Capo
o Love - Forever Changes
o Macha - See It Another Way
o Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs
o Magnetic Fields - i
o Mastodon - Leviathan
o Meat Puppets - II
o Meat Puppets - Up On The Sun
o Mekons - Fear & Whiskey
o Mekons - OOOH!
o Mekons - Rock N' Roll
o Mekons - The Edge of the World
o Melvins - Bullhead
o Merle Haggard - Swinging Doors and The Bottle Let Me Down
o MIA - Kala
o Mike Watt - Contemplating the Engine Room
o Miles Davis - In A Silent Way
o Miles Davis - Live At The Fillmore East, March 7, 1970: It's About That Time
o Miles Davis - On the Corner
o Miles Davis - Tribute to Jack Johnson
o Minutemen - Buzz or Howl Under The Influence of Heat
o Minutemen - Double Nickels on the Dime
o Minutemen - What Makes A Man Start Fires?
o Mission of Burma - Signals, Calls And Marches
o Mission of Burma - Vs.
o Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers
o Moles - Instinct
o My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
o My Morning Jacket - At Dawn
o Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood - Nancy and Lee
o Neil Young - Dead Man
o Neil Young - Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
o Neil Young - Rust Never Sleeps
o Neil Young - Time Fades Away
o Neil Young - Zuma
o Neu! - Neu!
o Neu! 2
o Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
o New Pornographers - Electric Version
o Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left
o Nick Drake - Pink Moon
o Nina Nastasia - the Blackened Air
o Nina Nastasia & Jim White - You Follow Me
o Oneida - Secret Wars
o Only Ones - The Only Ones
o Ornette Coleman - The Shape Of Jazz To Come
o Os Mutantes - Mutantes
o Palace Brothers - Days In The Wake
o Palace Music - Viva Last Blues
o Patti Smith - Horses
o Pavement - Crooked Rain Crooked Rain
o Pavement - Wowee Zowee
o Pere Ubu - Terminal Tower
o Pere Ubu - The Modern Dance
o Peter Laughner - Take The Guitar Player For A Ride
o Pixies - Doolittle
o Pixies - Surfer Rosa
o Pogues - If I Should Fall From Grace With God
o Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
o Ramones - Rocket To Russia
o Ray Charles - Modern Sounds In Country & Western Music
o Red House Painters (I)
o REM - Life's Rich Pagaent
o REM - Murmur
o Replacements - Let It Be
o Replacements - Pleased To Meet Me
o Replacements - Tim
o Richard and Linda Thompson - I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight
o Richard and Linda Thompson - Shoot Out The Lights
o Richard Buckner - Devotion & Doubt
o Richard Buckner - Since
o Richard Davies - Barbarians
o Richard Davies - Telegraph
o Richard Hell and the Voidoids - Blank Generation
o Richard Thompson - Rumor and Sigh
o Roky Erickson - I Have Always Been Here Before: The Anthology
o Rolling Stones - Between the Buttons
o Rolling Stones - Exile On Main Street
o Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
o Roxy Music - Country Life
o Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
o Scott Walker - The Drift
o Serge Gainsbourg - Histoire De Melody Nelson
o Sigur Ros - ()
o Silver Jews - American Water
o Silver Jews - Bright Flight
o Silver Jews - Tanglewood Numbers
o Six Organs of Admittance - School of the Flower
o Slayer - Reign In Blood
o Sleep - Dopesmoker
o Slits - Cut
o Sly and the Family Stone - There's A Riot Goin' On
o Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation
o Sonics - Here Are The Sonics!!!
o Sonny Rollins - Saxophone Colossus
o Sparklehorse - Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot
o Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant - Stratosphere Boogie: The Flaming Guitars of
o Staple Singers - Best of the Staple Singers (Stax)
o Stereolab - Emporer Tomato Ketchup
o Steve Reich - Music For 18 Musicians
o Stooges - Fun House
o Stravinsky: The Rite Of Spring (Gergiev/Kirov Orchestra)
o Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
o Suicide - Suicide
o Sun Ra - The Singles Collection
o Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings And Food
o Talking Heads - Remain In Lights
o Television - Live At The Old Waldorf
o Television - Marquee Moon
o Terry Riley - In C
o The Dexateens - Red Dust Rising
o Thelonious Monk - Brilliant Corners
o Thelonious Monk - Thelonious Monk Trio
o Tom Waits - Bone Machine
o Tom Waits - Rain Dogs
o Tom Ze - Estudando o Samba
o Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die
o Townes Van Zandt - The Late Great Townes Van Zandt
o Uncle Tupelo - Anodyne
o VA - The Harder They Come Soundtrack
o Vashti Bunyan - Just Another Diamond Day
o Velvet Underground - Loaded
o Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground
o Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground and Nico
o Vic Chesnutt - About To Choke
o Viktor Vaughn - Vaudeville Villain
o Who - Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy
o Who - Sell Out
o Wilco - A Ghost is Born
o Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
o Willie Nelson - Red Headed Stranger
o Wire - Chairs Missing
o Wire - Pink Flag
o Wrens - the Meadowlands
o X - Wild Gift
o Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One
o Yo La Tengo – Painful

100 Desert-Island Movies

Here's the situation: I am shipwrecked on a temperate deserted island with a 52" plasma tv, a state-of-the-art blue-ray player, and an unlimited supply of power from the native coconuts, all of which have mutated to mature with electric outlets on their sides and cold fusion within. By an extraordinary chance, I took the care to pack 100 of my favorite movies into a waterproof container that just happens to wash up next to the air conditioner, Laz-E-Boy, and well-thumbed copy of The Complete Idiot's Guide To Training Monkey Butlers To Cater To Your Every Whim. But which movies could I watch and rewatch until my rescue, which may well be years hence? What's in the bag?

Glad you asked! Here's my 100 flicks for the desert island. I made a similar list a few years ago, but times have changed, and so has my bag o' flicks.

3 Women (Altman, 1977)
8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)
The 400 Blows (Truffaut, 1959)
A Man Escaped (Bresson, 1957)
Amarcord (Fellini, 1973)
Aguirre, Wrath of God (Herzog, 1972)
Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson, 1966)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)
Badlands (Malick, 1973)
Band of Outsiders (Godard, 1964)
The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo, 1965)
The Big Lebowski (Coen, 1998)
The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946)
Blue Velvet (Lynch, 1986)
Bob Le Flambeur (Melville, 1955)
Boudu Saved From Drowning (Renoir, 1932)
Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia (Peckinpah, 1974)
Burden of Dreams (Blank, 1982)
Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)
Children of Men (Cuaron, 2006)
Cockfighter (Hellman, 1974)
Days of Heaven (Malick, 1978)
Dead Man (Jarmusch, 1995)
Deliverance (Boorman, 1972)
Diabolique (Clouzot, 1954)
Duck Soup (McCarey, 1933)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004)
F For Fake (Welles, 1976)
The General (Keaton, 1927)
Gerry (Van Sant, 2002)
Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai (Jarmusch, 2000)
The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)
The Godfather Part II (Coppola, 1974)
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (Leone, 1966)
Gosford Park (Altman, 2001)
The Grand Illusion (Renoir, 1938)
Grizzly Man (Herzog, 2005)
High and Low (Kurosawa, 1963)
His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940)
Human Resources (Cantet, 1999)
Ikiru (Kurosawa, 1952)
I'm Not There (Haynes, 2007)
The Incredibles (Bird, 2004)
The Iron Giant (Bird, 1999)
Junior Bonner (Peckinpah, 1972)
Killer of Sheep (Burnett, 1977)
La Jetee (Marker, 1962)
L'Atalante (Vigo, 1934)
L'Avventura (Antonioni, 1960)
The Lady Eve (Sturges, 1941)
Little Dieter Needs To Fly (Herzog, 1997)
The Long Goodbye (Altman, 1973)
M (Lang, 1931)
The Maltese Falcon (Huston, 1941)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (Ford, 1962)
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Weir, 2003)
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Altman, 1971)
Miller's Crossing (Coen, 1990)
Mon Oncle (Tati, 1958)
My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki, 1988)
The New World (Malick, 2005)
Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955)
No Country For Old Men (Coen, 2007)
Nosferatu (Murnau, 1929)
On the Waterfront (Kazan, 1954)
Once Upon A Time In the West (Leone, 1968)
Pennies From Heaven (Ross, 1981)
Pierrot Le Fou (Godard, 1965)
Playtime (Tati, 1967)
Princess Mononoke (Miyazaki, 1997)
Ran (Kurosawa, 1985)
Ratatouille (Bird, 2007)
Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954)
Ride The High Country (Peckinpah, 1962)
Rio Bravo (Hawks, 1959)
Rivers and Tides (Riedelsheimer, 2001)
The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939)
Sans Soliel (Marker, 1983)
The Searchers (Ford, 1956)
The Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1954)
Singin' In The Rain (Donen, 1952)
Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2002)
Stagecoach (Ford, 1939)
The Straight Story (Lynch, 1999)
Straw Dogs (Peckinpah, 1971)
Sullivan's Travels (Sturges, 1942)
Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans (Murnau, 1927)
Taxi Driver (Scorcese, 1976)
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Lang, 1933)
There Will Be Blood (Anderson, 2007)
Thieves Like Us (Altman, 1974)
The Third Man (Reed, 1949)
Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958)
Two-Lane Blacktop (Hellman, 1971)
Unfaithfully Yours (Sturges, 1948)
Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
Week End (Godard, 1967)
The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969)
Yojimbo (Kurosawa, 1961)
Young Frankenstein (Brooks, 1974)

-------

First edit: I somehow left off Ikiru, so that's going on and Throne of Blood is coming off. Also missing: The Shop Around The Corner, Los Angeles Plays Itself, Topsy-Turvy, The Man Who Would Be King, and Zero For Conduct.

Best of 2003, Five Years Later

As a report card of sorts, here's the 2003 albums I liked at the end of the year and the ones I like now from 2003.

Best of 2003 (as published in Dec 2003):

1. The Decemberists - Her Majesty the Decemberists

2. Go-Betweens - Bright Yellow Bright Orange

3. Knife in the Water - Cut the Cord

4. Pernice Brothers - Yours, Mine, or Ours

5. Calexico - Feast of Wire

6. Ted Leo & the Pharmacists - Hearts of Oak

7. Summer Hymns - Clemency

8. Okkervil River - Down the River of Golden Dreams

9. The American Song-Poem Anthology

10. New Pornographers - Electric Version

Honorable mentions:

Yo La Tengo - Today Is the Day EP

Consonant - Love and Affliction

Iron & Wine - The Sea & the Rhythm EP

Elf Power - Nothing's Going To Happen

Aaaaand, five years later, here's my favorite releases from 2003:

1. New Pornographers - Electric Version
2. Fiery Furnaces - Gallowsbird's Bark
3. The Wrens - The Meadowlands

4. The Decemberists - Her Majesty
5. Andrew Bird - Weather Systems
6. Pelican - Australasia
7. Go-Betweens - Bright Yellow Bright Orange
8. Sufjan Stevens - Greetings From Michigan
9. Nina Nastasia - Run to Ruin
10. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Hearts of Oak

honorable mentions
Television - Live At The Old Waldorf

Viktor Vaughn - Vaudeville Villain

King Geedorah - Take Me To Your Leader
Loose Fur - Loose Fur
Animal Collective - Here Comes The Indian
TV on the Radio - Young Liars EP
Lyrics Born - Later That Day
Four Tet - Rounds
Young People - War Prayers

This is either a sign of how much my tastes have changed or how long it takes certain music to work its way into and out of my ears. I mean, 6/10 of my original list dropped out. Many of those were too insubstantial to stick with me for long, the Okkervil River and Summer Hymns albums in particular. The Knife in the Water and Pernice Brothers albums features a few top-notch songs surrounded by some mediocre tracks. I still like the Calexico album, but I think I overrated it now.

On the other hand, the New Pornographers album is still among my favorites. I came to love The Fiery Furnaces (although with 2008's Remember album, I finally understand why so many people hate them, because it's godawful). The Wrens are always strong. If I'd heard that album in 2003, I may have put it at #1. As is, anything in the top 10 is a contender for #1, depending on how I feel. I do notice that my top ten is heavy on indie-folk-rock and most of the hip-hop and avant-rock stuff I like goes on the honorable mention list. Maybe that's a sign of weakness, I dunno. The Television album is a stunner. If it were a proper 2003 release, it would definitely be #1. However, I'd had a bootleg of it for years when Rhino released this beautifully clean version in 2003. Should be a special category for that sort of thing.

Overall, I give myself a C- for 2003. 4/10 isn't that great, especially when 3 of those move down on the list. But, hell, I'm trying. 2003 was the year we launched The High Hat, and it was the year I made myself a promise to develop my writing. 2008 was the year my first book was published. That's not too shabby, I guess.

Top Ten Albums 2008

Late to the party! Here's my favorite albums of 2008.


1 Fucked Up – The Chemistry of Common Life/Year of the Pig EP. Fucked Up is a monster of a band. Their sound is endlessly creative, but distinctly grown from hardcore punk. Their singer, who has a style somewhere between Hank Rollins and Ian MacKaye (so, yes, very DC), keeps things punkish, while the band has taken the sound and gone all King Crimson on it. The Year of the Pig EP is mostly taken with the 18-odd minute title cut, 3 shortened edits of it (the UK version is my favorite), and a few toss-off tracks. Although Fucked Up has a bunch of prior EPs and one full-length, 2008 was the first year I heard them, and 2008 was the year of Fucked Up. This I say to you on the day that George Bush has left office.


2 Boris – Smile (both US & Japanese versions). I was unprepared for how much I would love Boris, who combine the best in slow Black Sabbath-y metal, psychedelic avant-rock, and a solid rock heart. Smile is one of their most accessible albums yet, but it still brings the rock and the trippy noise. The Japanese version is a little bit better. Although both albums feature mostly the same tracks, the Japanese version features different mixes and different running times for several tracks, which gives it a slight edge.

3 Oneida – Preteen Weaponry. The creative souls in Oneida have brought their experimentalism to bear on Preteen Weaponry, a single-song, three-track album. The sound reflects the band's kitchen-sink aesthetic of krautrock, garage-rock, Brit-folk, no wave, prog-rock, post-rock (which is really just prog-rock redux, right?) and god knows what else. It's immediately arresting.


4 The Instruments – Dark Småland. Echoing Nico and John Cale's early solo albums, the Instruments are Elephant Six psychedelia through the ears of a cellist. It's utterly beautiful.


5 Why? – Alopecia. One of the leaders of the ethereal hip-hop-ish collective cLOUDDEAD, Why? is resistant to genre, to say the least. I wasn't as taken with TV on the Radio's Dear Science as 98% of the other reviewers out there. Alopecia is the album that I suspect many reviewers wanted Dear Science to be: post-genre, post-everything, and creative as hell.


6 Robert Forster – The Evangelist. When this first came out, my friend William Ham talked about how choked up he got on hearing it. I know what he means. Every song aches in the absence of Forster's fellow Go-Between Grant McLennan, who passed away in 2006. Forster's solo work has never been quite as rich as resonant as it is now.


7 The Hold Steady – Stay Positive. Doesn't move the band forward much, but the (slight) sense of adventure in the production is a welcome new chapter for the band.

8 Black Mountain – In the Future. Everything old is new again. Doesn't mean it's bad, but definitely, defiantly retro.



9 The Dexateens – Lost & Found/The Distant Seconds – Spectral Evidence (tie). The Dexateens album was online-only, but it killed. The Distant Seconds album came out at the very end of the year. And it killed.


10 Earth – The Bees Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull. If Samson was Clint Eastwood and he joined a band instead of shooting people.


11 Deerhoof – Offend Maggie. I feel like I should have loved this more than I did. Their previous album, Friend Opportunity, had diminishing returns for me, and I'm afraid some of that rubbed off on my feelings for Offend Maggie.


12 Harvey Milk – Life… The Best Game In Town. A late discovery for me, Harvey Milk plays art-metal that is sometimes something completely different. I like 'em now, and think I'll eventually love them.


13 Destroyer – Trouble In Dreams. Dan Bejar's band continues to get better. Here, they improve on the emotional turmoil of Destroyer's Rubies.


14 The New Year – The New Year. Why is the third New Year album the self-titled one? Perhaps because it's a little more open and naked than any of their past work. The Kadane brothers are getting older, but losing none of their edge.


15 Ponytail – Ice Cream Spiritual. I didn't even know that Captain Beefheart had children.


16 Deerhunter – Microcastle/Weird Era Cont. A mite bit overrated by some, but very good, nonetheless.


17 Earthless – Live At Roadburn. If ZZ Top played krautrock. Not as good as their last two albums, mainly because this album consists of two 30-odd minute live versions of older songs. So points for awesomeness, but points off for stasis.


18 Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes/Sun Giant EP. I like the Fairport Convention and the Band, and I like these, too.


19 Torche – Meanderthal. More metal that's halfway to indie rock. Very entertaining.


20 Vic Chesnutt – Dark Developments. Vic Chesnutt's always a clever and fun songwriter. Having the sometimes-fun/sometimes-profound Elephant Six band Elf Power back him up was a brilliant stroke, and this is his best album in a few years.


honorable mentions


Ruby Suns – Sea Lion
Titus Andronicus – The Airing Of Grievances
Au – Verbs
Dr. Dog – Fate
Los Campesinos! - Hold On Now, Youngster...
Wolf Parade – At Mount Zoomer
Silver Jews – Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea
TV On The Radio – Dear Science

I liked all of these, but I couldn't move any of them into the top 20. Maybe with more time, I'll feel differently.

Upcoming reading + meaningless list

Have I reminded you lately that I'm reading in LA this weekend? Because I am. At Metropolis Books on Saturday, August 30 at 6 pm with Kim Cooper and David Smay. Both Kim and David are 33 1/3 authors ("In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" and "Swordfishtrombones," respectively), virtual friends, and awesome people, so I'm very very very excited about this.

Plus! I'll be returning to LA on October 29 to read again at the Hammer Museum at UCLA with Kim Cooper and Scott Plagenhoef ("If You're Feeling Sinister"). This one will include multimedia craziness! I owe a word of thanks to the 33 1/3 series' kick-ass publicist Claire Heitlinger for setting that up, because it is one of the most mindblowing opportunities anyone has ever offered me as an author.

Finally, my friend Joe Gross mentioned the "pick an album for every year you're alive" meme that was going around while I was on vacation from the Internet. He said 1979 was his toughest year. I got stuck on 1988 and 1989 and finally just quit trying to decide.

• 1972 Can - Ege Bamyasi
• 1973 Richard & Linda Thompson - I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight
• 1974 Eno - Here Come The Warm Jets
• 1975 Dylan - Blood on the Tracks
• 1976 Modern Lovers
• 1977 Television - Marquee Moon
• 1978 Big Star - 3rd/Sister Lovers
• 1979 Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Rust Never Sleeps
• 1980 Talking Heads - Remain In Light
• 1981 Mission of Burma - Signals, Calls & Marches
• 1982 Tie between The Fall - Hex Enduction Hour & Richard & Linda Thompson - Shoot Out The Lights
• 1983 Meat Puppets II
• 1984 Minutemen - Double Nickels On The Dime
• 1985 Mekons - Fear & Whiskey
• 1986 Feelies - The Good Earth
• 1987 Dinosaur Jr - You're Living All Over Me
• 1988 (3-way tie) Go-Betweens - 16 Lovers Lane, Pixies - Surfer Rosa, and Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation
• 1989 (3-way tie) Camper Van Beethoven - Key Lime Pie, Mekons Rock N' Roll, and Pixies - Doolittle
• 1990 Galaxie 500 - This Is Our Music
• 1991 My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
• 1992 Tom Waits - Bone Machine
• 1993 Pavement - Crooked Rain Crooked Rain
• 1994 Cardinal
• 1995 Sparklehorse - Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot
• 1996 Neil Young - Dead Man Soundtrack
• 1997 Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One
• 1998 Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over the Sea
• 1999 The Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs
• 2000 Bedhead - What Fun Life Was
• 2001 Spoon - Girls Can Tell
• 2002 Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
• 2003 New Pornographers - Electric Version
• 2004 Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat
• 2005 Animal Collective - Feels
• 2006 Joanna Newsom - Ys
• 2007 Akron/Family - Love Is Simple
• 2008 Boris - Smile