Around the Year in 20 Songs

This Christmas, my folks got me Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music (thanks, mom and dad). It’s a carefully culled collection of eighty-four “folk” songs recorded between 1927 and 1932. Cracking open the record-sized booklet and reading Greil Marcus’s essay about the tunes included within and Smith’s alchemical methods of compiling them, I couldn’t help but think of John Crowley’s Little, Big, a novel that manages to similarly conjure mysterious wonder from apparent ordinariness.

In Smith’s original notes for the anthology, he writes about each song in headline prose. It’s a little-big way of introducing these timeless tunes, and I thought it might be a fun exercise to apply to some favorite tunes of 2011. Here are twenty of the songs I played over and over and over this year.

Arctic Monkeys “Black Treacle”– PLAYING AT REGAL PACE OF COLD MOLASSES, BAND CONFECTS SICKLY SWEET BRIT-ROCK

Coldplay “Every Teardrop is a Waterfall” – GO AHEAD, TURN UP WORLD BEATER’S LATEST AD FOR YOUR EMOTIONS

Cults “Abducted” – GUY/GAL DUO CAPTURES SIXTIES GIRL-GROUP SOUNDS

Cut Copy “Take Me Over” – AUSSIE DANCE-EROOS CONJURE GHOSTS OF MEN AT WORK

Destroyer “Savage Night at the Opera” – SLOW MOTION DRIVE THROUGH EIGHTIES TAKES RIGHT TURN INTO POP MAJESTY

The Drums “Money” – DESTITUTE SINGER WANTS TO BUY YOU SOMETHING, BUT THERE’S A CATCH

Eleanor Friedberger “My Mistakes” – FIERY FURNACE GOES SOLO, RECALLS BIKE CRASH, LEARNS A LESSON

The Horrors “Still Life” – SHIMMERY, ENTRANCING CATHEDRAL ROCK FOR SIMPLE MINDS FANS

Jay-Z/Kanye West “Why I Love You” – OVER CAESAR-KILLER HOOK, RAP KINGS MUSE ON POWER, PARANOIA, AND PAYBACK

Jens Lekman “An Argument With Myself” – SWEDE HAS LATE-NIGHT BICKER WITH SELF; INTERNAL CONFLICT HAS NEVER SOUNDED SO CATCHY

M83 “Midnight City” – HOLY S#%$!

Stephen Malkmus “Senator” – OCCUPY YOUR EARS WITH CAUTIONARY TUNE ON WHERE WE’RE HEADED AND WHAT OUR LEADERS WANT

Neon Indian “Polish Girl”– MORE VIDEO GAME PSYCHEDELIA FROM INDIGENOUS TEXAN: LET’S PLAY!

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart “My Terrible Friend” – CURE-LIKE TUNE JUST, LIKE, HEAVENLY GOOD

Paul Simon “The Afterlife” – ICON’S TAKE ON GREAT BEYOND IS GRACEFUL RETURN TO FORM

Kurt Vile “Jesus Fever”– ESCHEW THE FLU-SHOTS, JESUS FEVER LIFTS HEAVY LIDS TO DREAMY SKIES

The War on Drugs “Baby Missiles” – GET YOUR MOTOR RUNNING WITH JERSEY MASH-UP OF BRUCE AND YO LA TENGO

Washed Out “Amor Fati”– CHILLWAVE PIONEER DESTINED TO CALM LISTENER’S NERVES WITH WARM SYNTH BATH

Wilco “Standing O” – ROUND APPLAUSE FOR CHUGGING ROCKER FROM NO DEPRESSION STALWARTS

Wild Flag “Romance” – PUNKY PAEAN TO MUSIC’S POWER IS POP PERFECTION

Sunny Sides Up

The solo/side project is as old as mythology itself. Back in the day, the Greeks peppered their tales of gods and heroes with thrilling cameos, digressions, and spin-offs. Who among us can forget good old Herakles popping into Hades to rescue Theseus? It’s like back in the fifties when Miles Davis rescued a young John Coltrane from relative obscurity! Of course, the ancients didn’t always need demigods or even the House (band) of Atreus (a clear corollary to Motown) for a worthy solo effort or side project. Sometimes a guy like Ajax grabbed some time in the spotlight. Maybe he wasn’t as epic or timeless as his better-known peers, but he offered a solid diversion nonetheless (not unlike Ringo’s Blast From Your Past).

As far as music goes, this sort of mixing is de rigueur in the jazz world, but not as common – or successful – in the pop scene. Damon Albarn’s brilliant Gorillaz offers an exception here, while his interesting but hardly classic project the Good, the Bad and the Queen supplies the rule. The solo/side project is more sidereal than stellar, more fleeting than Fleetwood Mac. Often, it fills in a gap between bigger releases by the whole band or suggests a testing of the waters. And so it came as a pleasant surprise to me that three of my favorite albums of 2011 were solo/side projects.

In the indie-rock pantheon, it doesn’t get much more Olympian than the Super Furry Animals, Fiery Furnaces, and Sleater-Kinney. Members of these divine bands – Gruff Rhys of SFA, Eleanor Friedberger of FF, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss of S-K (who team up with Mary Timony of Helium to form Wild Flag) – have dropped their more familiar epithets to walk disguised among the mortals. Despite their distinct sonic palettes, Rhys’s Hotel Shampoo, Friedberger’s Last Summer, and Wild Flag’s eponymous debut all share a vacation vibe. Fortunate enough to have caught the tours behind each release, I’d like to briefly describe the results.

On their self-titled debut, Wild Flag play an angular yet poppy brand of rock that evokes both Wire and the Go-Go’s. When M and I saw them at the Paradise, the one extra piece of stage equipment was a fan aimed at Janet Weiss’s raven locks. Apparently, its sole purpose was to provide the beloved 80’s video effect of the slow-motion stiff breeze. No one called attention to this Aeolian touch, but it managed to convey the group’s sense of humor and their ability to play with rock tropes. More importantly, the band played a consistently tight and highly energetic set. Standouts included party anthems “Romance” and “Boom,” which feature handclaps, shout-along choruses, and thundering Zeus-ical drums. The band played the album in its entirety and closed with a bonus cover of Television’s classic “See No Evil.”

As the Fates would have it, the opener for Wild Flag was Eleanor Friedberger. Her solo effort Last Summer is as breezy and ever-so-slightly melancholic as its title. The set itself had a casual groove that matched the velvet jeans Friedberger had donned for the evening. Playing album tracks and even newer songs, she toned down the rapid-fire delivery often showcased in her Fiery Furnaces performances. While highlights “My Mistakes” and “Roosevelt Island” lacked the keyboard fuzz that sounds so dizzyingly pleasant on record, they still worked well because Friedberger packs such great narratives into her lyrics. The former tune wonders, “why keep time traveling / if it doesn’t get better on the second time around?” The latter re-imagines the Velvet Underground’s ominously frenetic “I’m Waiting for the Man” as a spacey romp.

     Finally, the latest Gruff Rhys solo album Hotel Shampoo plays up the singer’s appreciation for the Beach Boys and his openness to . When we saw Rhys at the Brighton Music Hall, he was backed by a great Welsh surf-rock outfit called Y Niwl (pronounced ‘Uh Nule’). Upon taking the stage, Rhys first played a 45 of The Cyrkle’s “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” a Bacharach/David composition sampled on Hotel Shampoo’s catchy lead track “Shark Ridden Waters.” Other strong showings from the new album included the mod-sounding “Christopher Columbus” and the sweet “If We Were Words (We Would Rhyme).” 

The Whole Album

I was recently talking to my brother about new music, and he happened to mention Wilco. Or maybe I did. At any rate, he said he hadn’t picked up their latest album (The Whole Love). He admitted that after a few spins of their prior effort Wilco (the album), he simply did not listen to it. I concurred. It’s a weak album. Even the band seemed to concede the record’s dullness by giving it such an unimaginative title and lead single (“Wilco (the song)”). So why – Chris rightly wondered – should he bother with another Wilco album after that dry offering? Without providing a compelling argument or any evidence, I told him that The Whole Love is an effort worth hearing. I’ll elaborate on why below.

     Marching in like an uncaged Krautrock lion and stepping out like a folksy prodigal son, The Whole Love derives its integrity from a seemingly disparate jumble of songs and sounds that touch on the many phases of Wilco’s two-decade tenure. I don’t mean to imply that we’re on a trip down memory lane. Rather, the record’s breadth serves as a testament to the band’s versatility; they manage to conjure such incongruent influences as Pere Ubu and Gram Parsons without stretching credibility or sacrificing their own tuneful identity.

Thankfully dropping the self-parody shtick that sunk Wilco (the album), Jeff Tweedy returns to what he does best: delivering crypto-poetic meditations on failed relationships in a voice that both sneers and soothes. Lead track “The Art of Almost” evokes the abstract, multi-colored contraption on the record cover. Over nearly eight minutes, the music’s fits and starts and eventual tumble into chaos echo the “Misunderstood” formula that Wilco so often revisits. This compositional return-to-form is followed by “I Might’s” lyrical one. There are lines hearkening back to those on Summerteeth that made my dad think maybe he didn’t like these guys after all (e.g., the hints of domestic violence on “She’s a Jar” or the murderous dreams of “Via Chicago”). Despite "piss and blood" sno-cones, setting "the kids on fire," and other ominous nonsense, Tweedy insists throughout the rumblingly groovy “I Might” that “it’s alright.” The glockenspiel and roller-rink organ agree.  

The album then slows down and smoothes out with Tweedy’s comfort food vocalizing on tracks like “Sunloathe” and “Open Mind.” The former is ultimately more positive than its downer title suggests. That song title evokes the Velvet Underground’s “Who Loves the Sun?” but the guitars and synths sound more like the Beatles’s “Here Comes the Sun.” Obliquely about battling depression, the lyrics ultimately promise, “I don’t want to lose this fight / I don’t want to end this fight.” “Standing O,” a welcome return to the joyous rock of Being There’s “Monday” and “I Got You,” abruptly interrupts all of the mellowness.

Epic closer “One Sunday Morning (Song For Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend)” provides the hypnotic yin to the motorik yang of “The Art of Almost.” The song somehow manages to seem shorter than its twelve minutes. Its “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” narration traces a defiant son who grows contrite as the song progresses and who ponders, “how much more I owe than I can give.” It’s a meditatively great ending to a meanderingly great album that embraces the whole of Wilco’s love for music that both challenges and consoles.