A Quarter of the Way There

Now that we’re one whole quarter of the way through, we decided to take a second to examine how this voyage (nearly 3-years-worth!) has affected the top 5 lists we each made at the very start. The results were, well, see for yourself

Zack: I looked back at what I had picked as my Top 5 favorite bands/artists when this began and what I wrote, and well, lol. Hendrix still reigns supreme, but the rest of my Top 5 has been completely shaken up. I’m relistening to Harvest Moon as I write this, so Neil Young has earned his place. Kanye has dropped two incredible solo albums and helped make this happen, while Lupe has produced 2 subpar albums and 1 good mixtape in that time, leading to a major switch. Hilariously, I made it a point to say that “Country pretty much sucks,” which now seems to have come back and bitten me since I have to include Johnny Cash here. Oh, and I finally opened my horizons and listened to the Clash (minus their debut and Cut the Crap). What happened after that was practically destiny.

Top 5 Bands (as of 8/25/13)

1. The Jimi Hendrix Experience

2. Neil Young

3. Kanye West

4. Johnny Cash

5. The Clash

Emily: Revisiting this Top 5 bands/artists list was more difficult than I expected. It was pretty easy when I did it the first time when we started the blog since my musical tastes were fairly narrow. However, after exploring 250 albums that were mostly unknown and hearing new music all the time as it has been released (and from Zack, of course), I barely knew where to start with this list. Two bands came to mind quickly; one my favorite since middle school that I could never give up, and the other a newer favorite that was cemented by seeing them live and from 15 feet away. After that, I didn't know how to continue. Should I pick the best live bands? The ones whose albums I keep coming back to? What about the ones I've just started to explore? To try to sort this all out, I decided to sit down with my breakfast and a mug of green tea to sort through old blog posts and iTunes and hopefully come to a conclusion. The results were even more inconclusive. I thought of how much I love Jeff Buckley and the Dead Kennedys, but does listening to one album qualify as a favorite? What about my evolving fandom of Kanye West? I've listened to way more of his stuff than those other two, but I can count that as a favorite. And then there are the concerts - I've seen the Killers, Muse, fun., and a slew of other artists in the past few years. Does that count as a favorite? I think my ultimate conclusion is that I don't really have favorite artists anymore. I now listen to music on an album-by-album basis, and those albums - not a discography, not an artist - are what have become my favorites. Regardless, the task was 5 artists, and that is the list I will provide - though it doesn't really give my music favorites justice.

Top 5 Bands (as of 8/25/13)

1. Green Day

2. Foo Fighters

3. fun.

4. Kanye West

5. The Killers

#250: Bjork - Vespertine (2001)

Emily: My general impression of Bjork can be summed up by her infamous swan dress, which she actually wore around the same time Vespertine was released. She even had an egg-shaped purse! So avant garde! Or, more likely, batshit crazy. Luckily for us, there was a significant lack of swan involved in this album - as well as a significant lack of crazy reflected by said swans. What I expected would be filled with earsplitting experimentation was actually a beautiful collection of ambient music, punctuated by Bjork's ethereal singing. The album has a dreamlike quality that softens background noise into fantasy, fitting quite well with the Harry Potter book I've been re-reading. I imagine it would work well as an antidote to studying as well - perhaps I'll try it out in the coming semester. I guess Bjork really was going for avant garde with the swans after all.
Favorite Tracks: It's Not Up to You; Sun in My Mouth; Heirloom

Zack: Bjork is pretty much known for being Icelandic and a little crazy (I’m not sure if the two can be mutually exclusive, and I have no idea if that joke was funny), so I didn’t really know what to expect here. What she delivered was an album of lush soundscapes that envelop you. There’s almost a certain mystical quality to it. Like each song may have come from a really dynamic scene in Spirited Away. Her singing can be hard to understand some time, but it fits in with the music perfectly. Overall, Vespertine was a very unique album that seemed to whirl and whisk across the room while it was playing.

Favorite Tracks: Pagan Poetry; It’s Not Up to You; An Echo, a Stain

#249: Elvis Costello and the Attractions - This Year's Model (1978)

Zack: It’s been a while since we listened to My Aim Is True, but I’ve relistened to it a couple dozen times at this point. I think I mentioned back then how impressed I was with the genre versatility, and that’s definitely why I still appreciate it. Costello flies between styles from track to track, creating a diversity that most musicians (let alone musicians in their debut album) would be afraid to tackle. This Year’s Model, his second album, doesn’t vary as much, but it does have several really good songs. And, as we should all expect, the lyrics to those songs are extremely clever and even a bit cryptic. For example, Pump it Up – which used to be played all the time at the large retail establishment that I worked for – is about masturbating. Anyway, I liked My Aim Is True Better, but This Year’s Model was still a solid album.

Favorite Tracks: (I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea; Lipstick Vogue; Pump it Up

Emily: For many of the artists that have multiple albums on this list (especially those with 4 or more), we've tried to intermingle them with other albums in order to spread them out more or less evenly (and not to end up with, say, 4 Byrds albums in the last 100). The next step is to listen to each in chronological order. We could listen to them out of order just because, but this way we can really see how these artists evolve in terms of musicianship, lyrics, genre, and connection with the audience. Since these artists tend to be those included in the pantheon of popular music, it also allows us to see why and how they became so highly regarded in the first place. Elvis Costello happens to be one of those artists, and he's one that I initially knew next to nothing about. I really enjoyed My Aim is True and have relistened to it since we reviewed it way back when, and This Year's Model built on the successes of that debut. Costello knows how to create great pop music. The album is upbeat with hints of pop, punk, and new wave, and the lyrics are creative enough to keep you listening closely even while you're dancing along. Though this was a great album, I'm still trying to figure out why Elvis Costello has been placed on the level of the other artists with multiple albums on the list. The evidence is building, and I guess I'll find out more in a couple hundred albums or so.

Favorite Tracks: (I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea; The Beat; Lipstick Vogue

#248: Antony and the Johnsons - I Am a Bird Now (2005)

Emily: From the photo that makes up I Am a Bird Now's album cover, one could assume that they were in for something dark, depressing, and/or weird. The hospital bed, the sad girl with dark lipstick, the name of the file on Wikipedia including the word "deathbed" - it all points to that. In this case, however, you just can't judge an album by its cover art. I Am a Bird Now, while not exactly upbeat, is neither dark nor depressing nor weird. It's a collection of simple songs full of emotion and personal connections. Antony Hegarty, the lead singer, clearly pours his heart into his work. This shows in the lyrics and music, but it comes through most strongly in the way he sings. The result is a beautiful album that will stay with you, just waiting to be listened to again and again.

Favorite Tracks: You Are My Sister; Fistful of Love; My Lady Story

Zack: The first person to tell me about Antony and the Johnsons was my freshman year suitemate. He hyped it to me in the spring of 2010 because he was excited about their fourth album coming out the following fall in light of their third album, which he had fallen in love with the previous year. Considering his other big recommendation for me was G. Love and the Special Sauce, whose debut album I still enjoy years after we first listened to it for blog-related purposes (BRP), I probably should have heeded it back then. I Am a Bird Now, while not one of the two albums he had such a passion or high expectations for, is just very sweet sounding. It sort of reminded me of Nick Drake, not in tone (definitely not in tone, at all), because of their mutual simplicity. While Antony Hegarty was able to form a complete band and bring in a who’s-who of guest musicians – Lou Reed, Rufus Wainwright, Devendra Banhart and (surprisingly) Boy George! – there’s no denying that the driving force of each song is Hegarty’s piano work and his singing. Even when he cedes some control of the song over to one of these legendary or, at the very least, exceptionally talented musicians, it’s still very clear that each and every song is his creation.

Favorite Tracks: Fistful of Love; My Lady Story; You Are My Sister

#247: Les Rythmes Digitales - Darkdancer (1999)

Zack: Full disclosure: I was in a really foul mood when I listened to this album and there’s a pretty decent chance I let it bleed into my experience. Regardless, I’ve been in bad moods before and listened to an album for the blog and found that it settled me down or picked up my spirits or something. This was not one of those cases. All I kept saying to myself was “Jeez! More of this shit?” Pretty much every track was a test of perseverance against extreme annoyance. Each song was seemingly endlessly repetitive, looping the same aggravating sounds over and over and over again. It seemed like Daft Punk’s Rollin’ and Scratchin’ -  by far the worst track on an otherwise pretty solid Homework – stretched over an entire 55 minutes. I wanted to throw my laptop to the other side of the room and go drink some herbal tea. I may do the latter now as a means of coping.

Favorite (?) Tracks: Damaged People; Hypnotise; Sometimes

Emily: Unlike Zack, I was in a pretty good mood while I listened to this album. It was my last day of work, and I was merrily slicing up flyers with a paper cutter for my boss. This ended up being quite a good environment for listening to Les Rythmes Digitales. Yes, each track was extremely repetitive and could probably have been half as long and created a similar effect. However, the production is very clean to hear - it doesn't have a lot of the earsplitting scratching and other sound effects that turn me away from electronic music as a genre. I found myself bobbing up and down as I did my work, as full-out dancing is generally discouraged when your boss can walk in at any moment, with visions of European discos playing in my head. For a genre that I generally dread listening to, Darkdancer was a remarkably pleasant surprise.
Favorite Tracks: Music Makes You Lose Control; (Hey You) What's That Sound?; Dreamin'

#246: Drive-By Truckers - Southern Rock Opera (2001)

Zack: I was mildly interested in listening to this up until the time I saw it was a double album. Country and Southern rock have been so hit-or-miss for us that I was terrified of investing more than 90 minutes into something I might come to loathe. I pushed it back a few days. Finally, I figured, I was going to have to listen to it eventually and I might as well try and enjoy it. I’m glad I made it a point to go in with an open mind, because this album is a really impressive feat of musical ingenuity. Southern Rock Opera is, as the name suggests, a southern rock (with some alternative country and even a dash of cowpunk here or there)-styled rock opera that aims to deconstruct the Deep South mythology. If it wasn’t for the three-guitar based assault that’s constantly whirring about, it would practically be academic. Drive-By Truckers have no interest in glorifying the South and its larger-than-life figures, a la Lynyrd Skynyrd, or even condemning its – ahem – checkered past like Neil Young famously does in Southern Man and (the fabulous track from Harvest) Alabama – a well-known dispute touched upon on SRO in the second track, Ronnie and Neil. Instead, they want to focus on the grey that lies between those two extremes. Or, as it’s put in a few songs, breaking down “the duality of the ‘Southern Thing.’” And when their attention is clearly devoted to that goal, SRO is magical. I think things tend to get a bit hazy when they jump into the secondary theme of exploring things from Skynyrd’s point of view, and the insistence on doing so adds quite a few unnecessary tracks, especially on the album’s shaky back end. But when Drive-By Truckers are trucking along in their investigation of southern dichotomy, they take both the southern rock and alternative country genres to a level of intelligence and sophistication I haven’t seen elsewhere.

Favorite Tracks: Birmingham; Wallace; The Southern Thing

Emily: True to its name, Southern Rock Opera tells quite an operatic story of the South. By personifying the different experiences and elements of the "Southern thing" through icons such as Lynyrd Skynyrd, George Wallace, and Neil Young as well as other unnamed Southerners and members of the Drive-By Truckers themselves, Southern Rock Opera creates a nuanced image of the South in the 1970s and beyond. The first half of the album is especially successful. Southern rock and country provide a backdrop to the story, which could effectively work as a staged musical. Well, maybe not one with a cohesive story, but perhaps a series of vignettes that all tie together as elements of the band's Southern thing. This idea really came to mind while hearing The Three Great Alabama Icons. The rock of this song is more subdued to make way for a spoken-word story of the narrator, a young Southerner, and his interpretation of the great looming figures of his home state - Ronnie van Zant (of Lynyrd Skynyrd), Bear Bryant (Alabama's head football coach in a football-loving state), and George Wallace (the infamous Alabama governor who became the face against the civil rights movement in the '60s). The storytelling was so vivid that I could envision the scenes being acted out as the narrator spoke, and it continued into the next song, Wallace, which describes George Wallace's entrance into hell - from the perspective of the devil. Unfortunately, the second half of this double album wasn't nearly as unique or successful. But the first half? It presents the South in music from an original, honest, and realistic perspective, a perspective that seems to be lacking in most other country and Southern rock music.

Favorite Tracks: The Three Great Alabama Icons; The Southern Thing; Birmingham

#245: The Byrds - Mr. Tambourine Man (1965)

Zack: Behold, the band that makes everyone say, “Wait, they have how many albums on this list?” The fact that The Byrds have five albums deemed to be among the 1001 best is such a head-turner that we forgot all about them until I realized that we should be listening to one every 200 albums or so and we were about 240 albums in. So here is our first foray into a band deemed to be as sonically significant as Led Zeppelin, The Who and Radiohead, and I thought it was about as campy as Hitchcock’s movie sounds on paper. It was that semi-folk rock sound that tends to dominate classic rock radio stations more than it should and that we’re bumped into a few times before here. I typically find this sound to be unimpressive, and this wasn’t really a change. Mr. Tambourine Man had its moments, but it was, for the most part, just sort of boring. Hopefully The Byrds change it up somewhere down the line, because four more version of this would be hard to stomach.

Favorite Tracks: I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better; It’s No Use; Mr. Tambourine Man

Emily: Zack told me that I had to pick a Byrds album in this batch. In fact, he even listed them under 2 categories to make sure I didn't forget. Even though they have 5 albums on the list, I guess I've just skipped over them every time we've decided to listen to folk. Having listened to their debut, I'll probably end up skipping over them again later on. The band had seen A Hard Day's Night and decided they wanted to sound like the Beatles, so they bought similar instruments and worked with that mid-'60s pop-rock sound, adding some folk in as well. They came up with a pleasant enough collection of songs made for radio play, but Mr. Tambourine Man is nothing remarkable. If you want a mid-'60s Beatles sound, just listen to the real thing instead.

Favorite Tracks: Don't Doubt Yourself, Babe; I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better; Here Without You