Music Library: Boris, Dirty Projectors, Dylan, Fiery Furnaces, Frank Sinatra, F**ked Up, George Jones, Griftegård, Harvey Milk, Ithdabquth Qliphoth

A few purchases and gifts to catch up with:

Boris - Japanese Heavy Rock Hits, Vol. 1 - 4 (2009). Almost immediately after my last Boris post, eMusic made Vol. 1 - 3 of this single series available for download (and a kindly friend hooked me up with a track from Vol. 4, available only for those who had bought the vinyl directly from Southern Lord). So we're talking about a single per side for the first three - six songs - plus one extra.  Each album of the series proper features a member of Boris on the cover and that member provides the lead vocals on the two songs therein.  I think.  I wonder if this is meant to mirror the famous Kiss solo albums.  The music throughout is more along the lines of the experimental noise-pop from Smile, although there's frequent stabs of pure metal stomp and thrash.  Interesting!  Which you can pretty much always say about Boris!

Bob Dylan - The Bootleg Series Vol 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964 - Concert At Philharmonic Hall and The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs - Rare And Unreleased 1989 - 2006. I picked up the former from eMusic without realizing that for some godforsaken reason, they had cut all of the celebrated stage patter.  Which was the main reason I wanted it.  I mean, the performances are great, but the early folky Dylan isn't my favorite to hear playing live.  The latter was a Xmas gift (thanks to my in-laws!) with outtakes from the most recent stage of Dylan's career.  And it's pretty revelatory, better than some of the actual albums from the last few years.

Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca (2009). This band's Talking Heads-esque afropop-influenced indie rock has grown on me quite a bit at the latter part of the year.  I didn't rank this all that high on my Best Of 2009 list, but I think it may be more of a grower with more time.

The Fiery Furnaces - Take Me Round Again (2009).  I bought this with my last set of eMusic downloads for 2009, which was too late for me to include it with my best of the year.  Which is kind of a shame because I like it more than I'm Going Away, their proper release for 2009.  These are re-workings of the songs from I'm Going Away with each of the Friedberger siblings recomposing the songs solo. And it's not just interesting for fans, but pretty great music, too.

Frank Sinatra - "Nature Boy." One of my kids' favorite songs. I almost always stick to the Alex Chilton cover or Nat King Cole original, but I had an extra download from eMusic and thought it would be fun to hear the Chairman's take.  Which is half-great and half-overdone.

Fucked Up - Year of the Dog EP (2006) and Year Of The Rat EP (2009). These are the first and third in Fucked Up's series of EPs based on Chinese astrological signs. The other one is Year Of The Pig, which I reviewed several months back. Presumably Year Of The Ox is on its way. Year of the Dog is pretty good, but it can't hold a candle to Year of the Rat, one of the best Fucked Up singles yet.

George Jones - Burn The Honky Tonk Down (1965). Another best-of, although this one opens with the title cut, one of my favorite of his songs that I've never been able to get ahold of in the past. The Meat Puppets do a killer cover of it, but the original is unstoppable.

Griftegård - Psalmbok EP (2007). Swedish doom metal band performing one song named for Charles Taze Russell, the father of the Jehovah's Witness faith, and one for the engraver Paul Gustave Doré.

Harvey Milk - The Bob Weston Session (1993), Special Wishes (2006), and "In The Ground." The first is the unreleased demos for Harvey Milk's first album as recorded with Bob Weston in 1993.  Many of these tracks were re-recorded elsewhere in their catalog. The second is the band's comeback album, and it's fantastic, full of the super-creative metal/indie/psychedelia that make the band so damn interesting and fun. The last is a single from a split in 2009, but it's more repetitious than their best work.

Ithdabquth Qliphoth - Funeral Spirit Of Holy, Holy And Holy Trance-Formation EP (2009). Black metal from Russia that flirts with ambience before erupting into the pounding stuff and then back to the ambience. Evil!

Music Library: John Coltrane and The Seven Samurai

I'm kidding, of course, about the Seven Samurai.  But there is something of Akira Kurosawa in Coltrane, I think.  As Kurosawa was the post-War Japanese director most accessible to Western audiences,  John Coltrane is the most accessible post-bop/free-jazz musician to audiences unattuned to the demands of jazz upon a listener.  Kurosawa was not a director given to compromising his vision, but his tendency to pull ideas and imagery from popular genres such as the Western and popular directors such as John Ford contibuted to the timeless appeal of his movies that allowed his own ideas and imagery to cross back over into Western cinema.  It's hard to imagine, for instance, where Peckinpah, Coppola, Spielberg, and George Lucas, for instance, would have been without Kurosawa.  Coltrane's style - the sheets of sound, the honking overblown horns, the endless modal improvisation - was similarly uncompromising.  But Coltrane also used pop music and the blues to give listeners a road-map through his sound, and Coltrane's passionate rapid-fire sax translated surprisingly well to psychedelic rock of the late 60s and afterwards, contributing to the very idea of an expansive guitar solo.  As Kurosawa led to the epics of the late 60s and pop genre-smashing of the 70s, Coltrane begat Jimi Hendrix and Tom Verlaine.  Not to mention most anyone playing jazz associated with the high period of Modern Jazz.

I read a biography of Coltrane many years ago, most of which I've forgotten.  But what sticks with me is that Coltrane was a pretty boring guy.  Outside of his apprenticeship with other musicians and almost-obligatory heroin addiction and recovery, Coltrane appears to have been a man who disappeared into his music.  He practiced, recorded, and toured.  He held complicated religious beliefs, but anyone who listens to his music can hear that.  He assembled the tightest quartet in jazz and rode them as far as they could go.  And then he went on for a couple of more years before he very suddenly died.  His story is almost archetypical, a jazz version of Icarus.  Kurosawa survived his fall from grace for a few more decades, and even got to make a handful of movies after his heyday.  Coltrane didn't.  I don't know which is worse.  I mean, to be the person living the life, it's certainly better to survive.  But to be the legend: well, I don't know.

There's a lot of early (pre-1960, that is) Coltrane albums on Prestige.  Most were not originally attributed to Coltrane, but after his fame grew, Prestige rechristened them for the man.  Most are also pretty decent albums, if not as revelatory as the albums after he came into his own.

Dakar (April 1957).  This one is a hard bop album that stands out from the standard hard bop of the late 50s by virtue of the interplay between Coltrane and the other saxophonists Cecil Payne and Pepper Adams.

Traneing In (Aug 1957). The Red Garland Trio is the aforementioned Mr. Garland on piano, Paul "Mr. P.C." Chambers on bass, and Art Taylor on drums.  Another top-notch hard bop album.

Blue Train (Sept 1957). My version of this album is actually called The Ultimate Blue Train, but I have my doubts about how seriously Blue Note is using the word "ultimate." I suspect that at some point new material will surface and then there will be a version of Blue Train that is somehow more ultimate, marking mine as the Penultimate Blue Train.  Anyway, this is Coltrane's first real date as a bandleader, as well as his only album for the Blue Note label.  Four of the five tracks were written by Coltrane, and it marks the first appearance of the "Coltrane changes," which are an approach to the structure of a song that have become a standard Mendoza line for jazz musicians to master.  This album would be a career-level high for most musicians, but for Coltrane, it's barely the beginning.

Soultrane (Feb 1958). Yet another date with the Red Garland trio.  As with Traneing In, this is excellent hard bop.

Giant Steps (1960, recorded Apr-Dec 1959).Only three weeks after Coltrane and Miles Davis knocked out Kind Of Blue (oh, you've heard of it?), Coltrane revolutionized bebop with this album. And then he quit bebop altogether.  As Lindsay Planer writes on Allmusic, "The resolute intensity of 'Countdown' does more to modernize jazz in 141 seconds than many artists do in their entire careers."  Yeah, that.  Every song is a classic.  Every performance is amazing.  And this is only Coltrane's second album as a bandleader.

The Avant-Garde (with Don Cherry, recorded June-July 1960). This one was unreleased until 1967.  It's a strange one, too, with Coltrane co-leading a band with Don Cherry, who was mostly known as Ornette Coleman's trumpeter/cornetist at the time.  And the band is basically Coleman's band, with Ed Blackwell on drums and Charlie Haden on bass for two tracks, switching out with Percy Heath on bass for the other three.  Three Coleman compositions, one by Cherry, and Monk's "Bemsha Swing."  And Coltrane and Cherry aren't bad together, but they don't gel like Coleman and Cherry do.

My Favorite Things (1961, recorded October 1960).  So Coltrane went modal, meaning that these songs are mostly given over to epic soloing with minimalist (and yet vital) accompaniment.  Four tracks, including the Sound of Music title track and a reworking of "Summertime."  It's not just one of the most popular jazz albums of all time, but one of my favorite albums.  I first heard it when I was 21 or so, and suddenly jazz made sense to me.  That was a few years before I heard Richard Thompson play, but I think he mentioned at my very first RT show how much influence McCoy Tyner's fractured piano style had on his approach to the guitar.  Oh, which reminds me that I should mention that the band on this album includes most of his classic quartet: McCoy Tyner on piano and Elvin Jones on drums.  The bassist was Steve Davis, though, rather than Jimmy Garrison.

The Complete Africa/Brass Sessions (May-June 1961). Coltrane's first album for Impulse! is another departure (what do you call it when all an artist does departures?) of sorts: a big-band album.  Coltrane has Tyner and Jones, along with bassists Reggie Workman and Art Davis, who at the time were both part of Coltrane's regular quintet.  But there's also a 15-piece brass section that includes Eric Dolphy, Freddie Hubbard, and Booker Little.  Although these tracks were originally released on two separate albums, my copy is the Complete Africa/Brass Sessions, which moves the track order around and adds two tracks.  I frankly love the hell out of the versions of "Greensleeves" herein, which are funky, ominous, and utterly amazing.

The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings (Nov 1961).  Captures three days of the quintet (Coltrane, Dolphy, Tyner, Workman, and Jones) live at the Village Vanguard (with four more musicians occasionally cropping up, including Jimmy Garrison on bass and Roy Haynes on drums).  The orignal release was Live! At the Village Vanguard, but I was lucky enough to get a copy of this four-disc box set from a friend a few years back.  Outstanding music.

Duke Ellington and John Coltrane (Sept 1962). Ellington replaced Tyner in Coltrane's quartet for three of these tracks and then replaced Garrison and Jones with two of his own guys on four other tracks.  It's lovely to hear these two guys working together, even if it fails to achieve the heights of the similar Money Jungle, which Ellington made with Charles Mingus and Max Roach.

John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman (Mar 1963). There's no logical reason for why this album works so well. Johnny Hartman is a jazzy pop singer in the style of Nat King Cole (I'll get to the album I have of his in a week or two), but here he and the classic quartet mesh so amazingly that it's hard to describe music this transcendental.  They stick to ballads, and the result is, well, perfect. A word of caution: listening to this album in the proximity of a romantic interest may result in pregnancy without proper protection.

Impressions (1963, recorded Nov 1961 and Apr 1963).  Three tracks from the Village Vanguard set (so already included in the above box set), including "India," a 14-minute track which features Dolphy joining in on the last minute, "Up 'Gainst The Wall," which is pretty good, and "Impressions," a stunning near-15 minute tracks of Coltrane constantly pushing limits.  Tyner is barely present on that track.  The final track on my version is "After The Rain," a flat-out lovely track recorded in 1963 with the classic quartet, although later editions add a version of "Dear Old Stockholm."

Newport '63 (recorded Nov 1961 and July 1963). The final track is another one from the Village Vanguard with Dolphy and Reggie Workman.  The other three are long tracks from the 1963 Newport Jazz Festival, including a 17+ minute version of "My Favorite Things."  Cookin'!  Even with Roy Haynes on drums!  However, you can definitely hear how much more Haynes favors bashing his drums over Elvin Jones, who was more of a cymbal man.

Afro Blue Impressions (Oct 1963).  90+ minutes of live dates from late in 1963 with the classic quartet.  Nothing definitive, but man, these guys were fantastic.

Live At Birdland (Mar - Nov 1963). Or, more precisely, three tracks recorded live at Birdland in October 1963 and three tracks recorded in-studio in March and November 1963. This is fantastic stuff, among the best of the albums with the classic quartet. The three live tracks are just brilliant, but the studio tracks include "Alabama," an elegy for the four little girls killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, AL.  It is easily one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever recorded.

Crescent (Apr - June 1964). Wikipedia notes that this is one of the darkest albums in Coltrane's catalog. Allmusic calls it meditative. I lean towards Allmusic's take: it seems meditative to me. The final track has Coltrane and Elvin Jones duetting on sax and drums, which is a sign of things to come.

A Love Supreme (released Feb 1965, recorded Nov 1964). This is the peak: the greatest, most beautiful, most passionate, most amazing piece of music Coltrane ever made, and one of the greatest achievements of humanity. This is a single work in four parts, and while it is absolutely a work of jazz, it is most like the work of Bach. My version is the Deluxe Edition, which includes a live version of "A Love Supreme" recorded in Antibes in 1965, the only such live version of this piece.

The John Coltrane Quartet Plays (Feb - May 1965). It's unfortunate timing to follow the peak, but this album is crazy with brilliance. If A Love Supreme didn't exist, this would be the best of the quartet. Well, it would be tied with Live At Birdland. The choice of pop material ("Chim Chim Cheree" and "Nature Boy") hearkens back to My Favorite Things, but the constant search for transcendence in Coltrane's playing is purely of 1965.

Ascension (June 1965). Coltrane added an extra bassist (Art Davis) and a bunch of horns for this (Pharoah Sanders, Freddie Hubbard, Archie Shepp, and three more).  This is pretty much the turning point for Coltrane from modal Modern Jazz into free jazz.  Like Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz album of 1960, Coltrane has assembled a crack team of young avant-garde musicians to realize a 40-minute piece of music. Unlike Free Jazz (although just different, not better), Coltrane is careful about assembling the soloists to build on a theme. The CD version, which I have, includes both 40-minute takes of "Ascension."

Live In Antibes 1965 (July 1965). For some reason the track listing on my version is different from the one on Wikipedia.  I have only the 45-minute version of "A Love Supreme" that is also on the A Love Supreme Deluxe release and a 20+ minute version of "Impressions."  According to Wikipedia, instead of "A Love Supreme," I should have "Naima," "Blue Valse," and "My Favorite Things."  Oh well.  Both tracks on my version kick ass.

First Meditations (For Quartet) (recorded Sept 1965). Unreleased until 1977, this is the final recording of Coltrane's classic quartet without other accompaniment.  Coltrane was unhappy with the sound of this album and later went back into the studio with Pharoah Sanders and Rashied Ali.  But that story is below.

Kulu Se Mama (June - Oct 1965). The first and final three tracks feature an expanded band with Pharoah Sanders and several extra percussionists, including Juno Lewis, who wrote and chants on the title song.  The second and third tracks feature the classic quartet doing some lovely classic quartet style music.

Om (Oct 1965). Only one 30-minute track herein, with the classic quartet augmented by Pharoah Sanders plus bass clarinet plus flute.  Sanders and Coltrane chant lines from the Tibetan Book of the Dead at the beginning and end of the track.  In the middle is some pretty wild free-skronk blowing.

Meditations (released Sept 1966, recorded Nov 1965). Right, here's Meditations that I mentioned above. The classic quartet plus Rashied Ali on drums and Pharoah Sanders on sax. These are the same songs as they recorded on First Meditations, but the playing is more of the wild untethered and overblown sound of the late-period Coltrane. It was too much for Elvin Jones and McCoy Tyner, who left the quartet after this was recorded. It sounds pretty decent to my ears, though.

Interstellar Space (Feb 1967). I should remedy my lack of post-quartet albums. I know that the Coltrane albums of 1966 and 1967 are special and mind-blowing, but I've never gotten around to most of them. This one is basically a conversation between Coltrane and Rashied Ali, with the results among the freest jazz Coltrane ever recorded. Lovely and skronky.

Retrospective: Impulse (released 1992). This is a three-disc box set that I got as a gift many years ago.  It's a phenomenally bad idea, splitting Coltrane's Impluse! recordings up like a greatest hits collection.  I've deleted the tracks I have elsewhere, and the remainder includes one from 1962's Ballads, two from 1962's Coltrane, one from 1965's Dear Old Stockholm (which I used to have but was stolen), one from 1965's Living Space, and one from 1967's Expression. All on my Amazon wish list! Amazon doesn't have Live In Japan, though, and that's one I feel I should hear. Ah, well. That one would have brought my Kurosawa comparison nicely full-circle.  As is, I'm just going to have to leave off here.

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