Mack’s picks of 2006
Friday, January 12, 2007
1. Joanna Newsom - Ys
Eleven minute eight second long songs (that’s the avg, I did the math)! Now, I’m the first attention-span lacking, slack-jawed turboite to gasp at this number and head to the fridge for a fresh bottle of Sunny D, but just hold tight for one second (or Three Thousand, three hundred and forty-one seconds for that matter). The songs may be long but they are NOT boring. Before a single stroke of the harp we hear Joanna Newsom’s affecting voice and lyrics. From then on we are on an incredible adventure. We lay staring up wondrously at a wide-open sky. We probe at the dynamics of science. We gape at the unbearable burden of life. We consider animals and insects. We reflect on family members and lack thereof. And finally, we rejoice at the dumb sweetness and mystery and pain within all of it. And that’s just in the first song. Newsom gives us fifty more seconds to think about it (because her biggest instrumental gap thus far has been six seconds) and then starts again without aid from instruments for the first ten seconds of the second song. Joanna Newsom has too much to say to let her instruments do the talking. Instead they dance beautifully in the background, like paintings complimenting the room of a party filled with people and stories and celebrations. You owe it to yourself as a human being to listen to this album consciously and actively.
2. Ladyhawk – Ladyhawk
I don’t have enough good things to say about this band. Once I heard someone refer to these songs as crushingly tender, to which I disagreed slightly, arguing for tenderly crushing. I think that’s as good as a description as any. But then you could also go with rockingly sing-a-long-able. I know that one from experience. Another friend called the album a “downer”, meaning it in the best way possible. At first glance, all of these descriptions seem to be describing quite opposite sounds. That is the genius of Ladyhawk. They are funny, they are punishing, they are loud, they are abrasive, they are soothing, they are smearing, they are sad, they are sullen, they are powerful, they are golden, they are brave. And as I said, I don’t have anywhere near enough good things to say about them.
Ladyhawk - Dugout
Ladyhawk - My Old Jacknife (video)
3. Phoenix – It’s Never been Like That
Pure pop catchy genius. This is the Pet Sounds of the indie pop car commercial culture.
4. Hold Steady – Boys and Girls in America
Hyper Literate yet at the same time Hyper drunk. To attempt lyrics like this takes huge balls. When I listened to this album I often had to stop and consider what Craig Finn just said, “do I laugh at how ridiculous that sounded and the words he decided to use?” It only took seconds to find my response. “I can’t. I just like it way way too much.” I think ‘rollicking’ is a good word.
Hold Steady - Killer Parties Remix
Hold Steady - Chips Ahoy! (video)
5. Regina Spektor - Begin to Hope
Although it seems like I might, I don’t like Bjork. I think she’s weird and too obsessed with quirk. Quirk always seems fake and insincere to me. I shouldn’t like Regina Spektor. Begin to Hope is syrupy with quirk. Little cat growls and high-pitched spikes are tossed like dice after a family dinner. But inside the sometimes fake-accent sounding twirls in Regina Spektor’s voice is something incredibly endearing to me. I could try to describe it but I think that would be a betrayal. All I’ll say is that when she fake laughs through lines about voices, words, and music breaking her heart, I want to rush to her side and catch her as she falls, whether she’s faking pretending to fall or not.
