ovticartmy: Okkervil River

Showing posts with label Okkervil River. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

A Large List of Music I Enjoyed in 2008

Why so early with a Best Of list? I've still got a lot of albums to check out properly, and yet here we are, partially because my hand was forced leading me to post this elsewhere first (though without the lovely YouTube videos), and also because my piece of shit TyTn phone crashed yesterday meaning I lost absolutely everything on it, including yet another Week in TV post, so I've got to reconstruct that from scratch, something I could have spent today doing but instead I stupidly farted around trying to figure out how to append .srt files to .avi files (here's the short answer; you can't because vobsub_vd.vdf and textsub.vdf files are more slippery than the King of Eels and never seem to work even when added to VirtualDubMod plugin folders, meaning you waste hours and hours installing, uninstalling, and reinstalling programs and all you get is much misery).

Where was I? Oh yeah, music. As you can see from my top fifteen album list, it's been another good year (though there is much carping across the internet that dammit, those musicians didn't excel themselves this year, how selfish of them). There are several albums I'm still getting into, and many more I've not even heard at all. As usual, I expect to find more out as soon as I hit Publish (last year I damned The National with faint praise and then realised Boxer was a masterpiece), but for now, let this stand.

Albums of the Year:

1. Re-Arrange Us - Mates of State
2. April - Sun Kil Moon
3.= The Family Afloat - Bound Stems
3.= Lay Down In The Light - Bonnie "Prince" Billy
4.= Real Emotional Trash - Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks
4.= Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
5. Microcastle - Deerhunter
6.= Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust - Sigur Rós
6.= Narrow Stairs - Death Cab For Cutie
7. This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That - Marnie Stern
8.= Gift of Screws - Lindsey Buckingham
8.= Who Killed Amanda Palmer - Amanda Palmer
9. For Emma, Forever Ago - Bon Iver
10.= Only By The Night - Kings Of Leon
10.= Sea Lion - The Ruby Suns

Disappointments of the Year:

Heart On - Eagles of Death Metal
Seventh Tree - Goldfrapp
Caught In The Trees - Damien Jurado
Stay Positive - The Hold Steady
Everything That Happens Will Happen Today - David Byrne and Brian Eno (Yes, I know I blogged about it before, but it never got any better than the first listen.)

Possible Contenders That I've Not Yet Listened To Enough:

Something for All of Us... - Broken Social Scene Presents: Brendan Canning
Dear Science - TV On The Radio
The Stand Ins - Okkervil River
Untitled - Nas
Hold On Now, Youngster... - Los Campesinos

I know, that video's been around for a year and a half but it's so great it needs to be seen as often as possible.

Worst Album of the Year/Decade:

The Bedlam In Goliath - The Mars Volta (Having been forced to listen to a lot of Mars Volta this year, I have to ask: what the fuck is the appeal of this band? It makes me turn into an old fart complaining about the racket, which earns it extra hate points. HATE!)

Best Use of Autotune to Confound Squidbrains Album of the Year:

808s and Heartbreak - Kanye West

Best Posthumous Release of the Year:

Leucocyte - Esbjörn Svensson Trio

I Don't Get What The Big Deal Is Album of the Year:

In Ear Park - Department of Eagles (The hipsters love it but it reminds me of cloying 60s pop filtered through an Americana mindset and as such depresses me greatly.)

Why Isn't This More Popular Album of the Year:

This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That - Marnie Stern (The woman is a musical genius, and has the requisite cute-hipster look to appeal to all of the douchebags. She should PWN the world by now.)

Underrated Album of the Year:

Only By The Night - Kings Of Leon (Yes yes, stadium rock etc. But it's a grower, and even if it's not as good as Because of the Times, it's partially because that was the best rock album of the decade and it's hard to top. Two more albums like this and I might change my tune, though.)

Best Classical Music Album of the Year:

Video Games Live - Jack Wall/Slovak National Symphony Orchestra/Crouch End Festival Chorus/David Temple (I only just found out about it! Tron Medley? Halo? Civ 4? I never knew you cared enough to make this, world.)

Songwriter of the Year:

Amanda Palmer, whose commitment to brutal truthtelling shocked and thrilled me.

Lyrics of the Year:

Gardenia by Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks

~~Richard Avedon. Richard Avedon would.~~ Richard Avedon would surely approve.

Overrated Album of the Year:

Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes (While I love the first half of the album, the second half is just nothing. I cannot remember a single thing about it and I've heard it about 30 times.)

Best Soundtrack of the Year:

Lost Season Three OST - Michael Giacchino
Plus, I've not heard it on CD, but the soundtrack to Snow Angels was lovely, and would probably swipe this spot.

Best Comedy Album of the Year:

Flight of the Conchords OST - Flight of the Conchords

Most Overdue Return of the Year:

Harps and Angels - Randy Newman

Most Welcome Return of the Year:

Mountain Battles - The Breeders

Most Career-Rehabilitating Return of the Year:

Forth - The Verve (Not technically a good album, but even in semi-FAIL mode it's infinitely better than Richard Ashcroft's solo work.)

Most Reputation-Destroying Return of the Year:

Snowflake Midnight - Mercury Rev (They discovered technology! And made an embarrassing hash of it. Bring back David Baker and Suzanne Thorpe.)

Thursday, December 20, 2007

A Large List of Music I Enjoyed This Year

Usually when someone makes a list of their favourite music of the year, they consider the large (or small) amount that they came into contact with, and will strip out all of the crap, then all of the not-so-crap, then the good, then the very good, and merely leave the outstanding, the life-changing, the most perfect albums and songs. I admire that, and think it is a great skill to have. I too try to do that, but this year, screw it. I'm just going to namecheck very nearly every album I've heard, and then contrive a bunch of nonsensical categories for them to fit into. To the one or two albums I heard this year that didn't get on here, I'm sorry.

Favourite Albums of the Year:

Person Pitch - Panda Bear
Strawberry Jam - Animal Collective
Neon Bible - Arcade Fire
Because Of The Times - Kings of Leon
In Rainbows - Radiohead
Cease To Begin - Band of Horses
And The Refinement Of The Decline - Stars of the Lid
Release The Stars - Rufus Wainwright
Icky Thump - The White Stripes
The Stage Names - Okkervil River

Honourable mentions:

All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone - Explosions in the Sky
Some Loud Thunder - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Armchair Apocrypha - Andrew Bird
Saltbreakers - Laura Viers
Mirrored - Battles

Best album that was released in the US in 2006 but in the UK in 2007 and I want to put on the main list but feel it would be wrong to do it:

Boys and Girls in America - The Hold Steady

Best album that was released in the UK in 2006 by a band I have seen live and I actually had a copy of but only got around to listening to as a result of their Mercury Music Prize nomination:

Fur and Gold - Bat for Lashes

Disappointments of the Year:

Drums and Guns - Low (It's obviously a brilliant and thought-provoking album, but I found it impenetrable and it left me cold. Basically, it was like being called an idiot by an album, and I'm taking revenge by sticking it down here.)
Hello Love - Be Good Tanyas (I hate putting this here as the first half of the album is wonderful, but the latter half washes over me totally. I've tried and tried and tried to warm to it, but it's not happening.)
Volta - Bjork (It's almost a return to form, but falls frustratingly short of the mark.)

Albums that might have gotten into the list given more time and more listens:

Magic - Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Sound of Silver - LCD Soundsystem
Boxer - The National
The Flying Club Cup - Beirut

Favourite Jazz Album of the Year:

Being There - Tord Gustavsen Trio [I think you mean the Turd Ferguson Trio. Embarrassing. -- Canyon]

Favourite Hippety Hop Album of the Year:

Liberation – Talib Kweli and Madlib

Favourite Protest Album of the Year:

We'll Never Turn Back - Mavis Staples

(Yes, they were pretty much the only jazz, hip-hop, and protest albums I heard this year, but if you don't tell anyone, I won't either.)

Favourite Instrumental Soundtrack of the Year:

The Fountain - Clint Mansell feat. Mogwai and The Kronos Quartet (Runner-up: Zodiac by David Shire)

Favourite Compilation Soundtrack of the Year:

Once (Runner-up: Black Snake Moan)

Album I would never buy as the band would probably use the money to fund their happy slapping empire:

Favourite Worst Nightmare - Arctic Monkeyfuckers

Favourite album that makes me seem like I'm down wiv ver kidz:

Men's Needs Women's Needs Whatever - The Cribs

Favourite Singles of the Year:

Atlas - Battles
Fireworks – Animal Collective
No Cars Go – Arcade Fire
Stuck Between Stations - The Hold Steady
Conquest - The White Stripes
Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band EP - Joanna Newsom
Get Lucky - New Young Pony Club
Men’s Needs – The Cribs
All My Friends - LCD Soundsystem
Wanderlust – Bjork (not a single yet, but it will be)

Favourite Album Tracks of the Year:

Unless It’s Kicks – Okkervil River
The Runner – Kings of Leon
Yankee Go Home - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
I'll Work For Your Love – Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Islands on the Coast - Band of Horses
Ootischenia – Be Good Tanyas
Hiding on the Staircase - New Young Pony Club
99 and 1/2 – Mavis Staples
Reckoner – Radiohead
Between My Legs - Rufus Wainwright
Gold - Interference
Drink Deep – Laura Viers

Sweetest song about a drug overdose:

Chill Out - The Hold Steady

Best post-rock cover version of a Stephen Sondheim song:

Don’t Bother They’re Here – Stars of the Lid (covering Send In The Clowns)

Best old blues standard by an actor who has played a Jedi, an superhero, a supervillain, a junkie, a shark expert, and an Afro-wearing former hitman who now walks the earth like Kane from Kung-Fu:

Stack-O-Lee - Samuel L. Jackson (also the best scene in Black Snake Moan)

Most Pointless Album of the Year:

Proof of Youth – The Go Team (Even though Chuck D is on it, it sounds identical to the previous album. It has the same progression through the album, the same structure, practically the same samples. I gather the main chap in the band has defended it, stating that he's the only person making music like this so he should keep to the same furrow, but my God, man, there's honouring the rules of the new genre and then there's copying and pasting into a new folder.)

"Don’t Get It" Album of the Year:

Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga - Spoon (The critics fell over themselves with this, and obviously there is some ambition and a lot of variation, but it puzzled me, as did the praise. It's alright, but really rather bland.)

Overrated Album of the Year:

Myths of the Near Future - Klaxons (Amy Winehouse, or Bat for Lashes, wuz robbed.)

Annoyingly Ubiquitous Hero of the Hipster-o-cracy:

Mark Ronson (As I've said before in other circles, he's the Mike Flowers it's mandatory to like, except that Mike Flowers was awesome, and Ronson is a dreary, name-dropping, too-cool-for-school rash on the arse of pop, and he can go away now kthxbai.)

Worst Album of the Year:

Leaving The Nest – Benjy Ferree (I tried to give this a proper listen, but everything about it made me angry and nervous. It was on Domino so I thought I would like it, but it baffled and annoyed me. Like a medieval lute player got transported to Mars and came back to play arrangements of their folk music. Never again!)

Worst Song of the Year:

Young Folk - Peter, Bjorn and John (Shut up shut up shut up shut up!!!! You're nothing but a cute whistly bit and then three minutes of bland indie-pop and the love you engender is entirely unjustified. I HATE YOU!!!!)

Other Worst Song of the Year:

1234 - Feist (After hearing her first album, I wasn't sure if I liked her or not. When I realised she was part of Broken Social Scene, I figured I should give her a chance. One million unwanted but enforced listens of this song later, and I've up made my mind. Go away, Feist. You annoy me.)

::re-reads list:: I do go on, don't I.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Okkervil River Is My New Favorite Band (And A Rant About Studio 60)

The A.V. Club did an interview with Will Sheff, who, despite looking a bit (oh, how do I say this without being offensive? No chance, I’m going for it) special, seemed like an intelligent and interesting person (he used the word “quixotic”! And said he liked movies! That’s generally enough for me). I’d never heard of the band, but we promptly downloaded* their latest album, The Stage Names. It is excellent. Filled with references to pop culture and its effects on people’s lives, it’s incredibly catchy, melodic, mostly deceptively-upbeat-sounding stuff, indie folk/pop/rock done with intelligence and wit and a real ear for hooks that get stuck in your head. Of course, I wouldn’t be a real critic unless I dubbed it a new ridiculous sub-genre – let’s call it “meta-rock.”

That’s a crappy-sounding version of the first single, “Our Life Is Not a Movie Or Maybe” – the sweeping sound references 80s pop songs with a discordant, desperate twist, though the genius of it is the racing heartbeat of the drum (though you can't hear it very well on that version) and the song’s frantic crescendo. The second track, “Unless It’s Kicks”, may be even better – a rollicking, uptempo kick in the gut. The lyrics again deal with the influence of pop culture on the characters’ lives – in this song, the narrator asserts, “What gives this mess some grace unless it’s kicks, man / unless it’s fiction / unless it’s sweat or it’s songs?” And later:

And on a seven-day high, that heavenly song
punches right through my mind
and just hums through my blood.
And I know it's a lie, but I'll still give it my love.

Ouch. But Sheff isn’t simply condemning the fact that we tend to view our lives as if they were movies or songs; he hits on the feeling of hearing a song you love and instantly feeling like the world has expanded into something joyful and glorious (even though it takes a song to [perhaps artificially] create that feeling, and it only lasts for four minutes). It’s incredibly odd to hear a song that talks about that feeling while actually giving you that feeling, and it makes my brain hurt, so I’m going to stop talking about it for the moment.

I suppose unsurprisingly, it turns out Sheff used to be a critic – this page has links to a bunch of his old articles. Looks like he’s got pretty good, if slightly pretentious, taste, though his attack on soft rock is a bit harsh – poor old Peter Cetera. Why pick on such an easy target? Does he have something against bouffants and soft-focus lenses? (And I’m sorry, but some of his songs are great, and I don’t mean that ironically – I get genuine pleasure from them, partly because they remind me of my childhood and how much I loved them then. “I am a knight who will fight for your honor”? How much of a curmudgeon do you have to be not to find that strangely wonderful? [And with that I realize I’ve now become a character in an Okkervil River song.])

I do find it a little disconcerting to read Sheff’s articles, though. When’s the last time you saw a critic rocking out on stage? It’s not right – they’re supposed to be detached and thoughtful, with their pipes and their monocles and their big books full of words, not hot-blooded and full of ketamine (with the exception of Michiko Kakutani, obviously). It’s a little embarrassing – like watching one of your teachers sing Grateful Dead songs on an acoustic guitar. I suppose I’ll have to get over it, though, because they’re playing in London in December and we’ve got tickets. I suppose to be really obnoxious, whenever they finish a song, I could shout out, “B plus! What it lacked in precision it made up for in enthusiasm! WOOOOOO!!”

*While trolling YouTube, I found a clip of Sheff talking about deciding to be a musician and saying that it was worth it even though he doesn’t have health insurance (!) and last year he didn’t have a place to live (!!!). Oh god, the guilt. I’m really tempted to go out and buy the album, though I will probably end up rationalizing the guilt away by convincing myself that buying the tickets gave them more money anyway (okay, 20 pounds, but, um, the exchange rate is really good). Usually, like any music fan, I’m happy for bands I like to stay obscure, but in this case I really hope they start getting more famous. They certainly deserve to.

+++++

And Now, A Rant

By now we all know that Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip was poo. Where Aaron Sorkin was once clever and inspiring, writing fiercely intelligent and funny characters, he became hackneyed and insipid, recycling plotlines from his better days (badly, I might add) and writing characters who were either thinly-veiled versions of his crazy-for-Jesus ex-girlfriend (Harriet Hayes), supposedly ridiculously smart while never actually demonstrating this beyond being able to rattle off obscure statistics (um, everyone), or versions of himself (Matt Albie – I would say “slimy, massively arrogant, ridiculously unlikeable versions of himself,” but it appears this would be redundant) or his partner in crime, Tommy Schlamme (the absolutely odious Danny Tripp – and I cannot mention this without giving a shout-out to Television Without Pity, who said they were disappointed he hadn’t named the character Danny Schlanny, which made me laugh for half an hour [btw, Joe R.’s recaps were often the only reason we even bothered to watch, besides horrified fascination]). But I’m going to stop criticizing it now, because if I don’t, I will run out of internet.

Unfortunately for denizens of the UK, it’s time for them to be endlessly patronized about commedia dell’arte and Bush’s bad behavior during 9/11 (yes, the show actually goes back in time to lecture us. Thank god it didn’t get a second season, in which Matt and Danny would time-travel to Nazi Germany learn how evil Hitler was). It just started showing here a few weeks ago, to massive, slavish adoration from the journalists here, who apparently have never gone on the internet, because they are completely perplexed about why such a stunning example of show from infallible genius Aaron Sorkin would get cancelled by those awful money-hungry studios! They just didn’t understand his brilliance! To which I say, You lazy, incompetent little shits – it would take you two seconds of googling to find out exactly why it was cancelled – because it was shit.

It made me angry to read those articles, with their willful ignorance and their slavish devotion to Sorkin (they didn’t even bother to get anyone’s opinion other than his about why it was cancelled – I wonder if maybe he would be, I don’t know, biased?). This leads off into a subject for another day – the UK media’s shoddy reporting on American shows and movies, their simultaneous disdain for American media and the fact that they have to admit that it’s often better than what’s created here (at least in terms of TV shows and movies – though it will usually be with the tag “it’s good…in an American way”), and their love of anything coming out of it perceived to be intelligent (like Sorkin, which is why he is so ridiculously overpraised – he’s not like most Americans, because his show is about how bad American TV is!).

Aaaaanyway, I came downstairs this morning to find that the Admiral had scrawled a furious note in the Guardian Guide – the weekly TV guide from the Guardian, arguably the best paper in England (though notably filled with snobbery about American culture). Andrew Mueller, one of the reviewers, has been reviewing Studio 60 since it began six weeks ago – he praised the pilot, but foolishly we laughed and said that it would be funny to see his assessments get more negative as the show went on. Three episodes in and they were not – instead he was rambling about how mobs with pitchforks should have been storming the studios demanding that the show not be cancelled. Okay, we thought, well, the third episode wasn’t that bad, though alarm bells were starting to go off (notably with Danny’s rant about how cocaine addicts don’t hurt people [he was a former cocaine addict himself – I know, eerie coincidence!! Another eerie coincidence? Aaron Sorkin was a cocaine addict! OMG, this is freaky!] – no, only drunk drivers do that, and of course cocaine addicts are sedentary because we all know cocaine is a depressant).

We decided that the show didn’t become truly awful until the sixth episode – which has plotlines where the cast learns about how awful the blacklist was (really awful!), where we learn that the only black character on the show had a childhood straight out of Boyz N the Hood (this is after he rails against stereotypical “black people versus white people” comedy), and we learn that another character’s Midwestern parents are so ignorant of culture that they don’t even know who Abbott and Costello were (since when has the Midwest not been hooked up to electricity?), but they do know that their son is wasting his life on frivolous comedy while his brother, the war hero, is – get ready for it – STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF AFGHANISTAN! It’s so incomprehensibly awful I can’t even express it.

But guess what Andrew Mueller’s reaction is?

The more of this we [we?? I sincerely hope he’s using the royal we] see, the more it seems appropriate to disdain from summarising the spectacular virtues of Studio 60 in favour of suggesting imaginative punishments to be visited on its American proprietors, who canned it. This week: feed them to hippopotamuses. [My suggestion: feed Andrew Mueller to Hiphopopotamus from Flight of the Conchords.] Anyway, tonight’s episode, with an Eli Wallach cameo, is another eruption of auteur Aaron Sorkin’s singular genius. In between adroitly perpetuating the internal soap operas, this thrillingly tours Sorkin’s signature obsessions [i.e., the things he writes about in a TV series about a COMEDY SKETCH SHOW]: American political, cultural and military history, and the clash between the country’s liberal and conservative impulses.

RAGE!!! And you thought I was exaggerating about the media’s circle-jerk of praise! I think the Admiral’s reaction sums it up best: he circled the review in pen and then wrote “FUCKING ANDREW MUELLER!!”

That’s about right.