The Fake Fictions at Cleary’s on Clark
Probably the defining live moment for me in 2005 came towards the end, at this modestly-attended show in December. I’d spent a year performing very little, and watching the FFs fling their short and sweet tunes with such vigor made me check off a resolution to have the kind of fun they were having a little more often in the oh-six.
Bloc Party, Silent Alarm
I’m thinking maybe I fall in love with the same number of albums each year as I did when I was a teenager, in spite of the fact that I “consume” so many more as I get older, as my dispensable income swells along with the available technology. This shakes out to roughly 3 to 6 albums, and in 2005, Silent Alarm was one of them. At first I bristled at the post-punk-isms, the revived “angular” guitars we’ve been flooded with since the Strokes and/or Interpol. But then, after about three listens, the songs started outweighing the mere sounds, and they were distinct, adventurous and passionate. After a certain point in the listening continuum, analysis dripped away, as it always does with these few records. What I heard ceased to be a kind of great music and became just great music.
Re-discovering Swans
In all seriousness, I was looking for a CD to cheer myself up. At the local shop, there was the re-release of Children of God, an album I remember really liking in high school. I took it home, gave it a close listen, and found that, to my delight (again, seriously), it totally holds up. In fact, I’d say that, heard from the far side of a decade-plus spent actually paying my own rent, it sounds better than it even could have in ‘88. I snapped up a couple earlier, more “brutal” albums, as well as the Gira-compiled 2-disc set from their later, more acoustic stuff. Then, of course, what we know as Swans ended their recorded output with the sound-collage-smeared double album, Soundtracks for the Blind. I can’t say it’s all brilliant, but it’s amazing how such a bleak approach, always on the brink of breaking under its own weight, instead mutated into this wide and ultimately enriching array of sounds. And now, even after a 2005 spent re-tracing Swans’ crooked line, I’m still dumbfounded by the finished drawing.
“I’m Pretty Sure I Can See Molecules” by Troubled Hubble, “Ageless Beauty” by Stars, “Helena” by My Chemical Romance, “Apply Some Pressure” by Maximo Park, “Daft Punk is Playing at My House” by LCD Soundsystem, and “Paul Simon” by the Russian Futurists
I was way more selective about my singles this year; I flicked things off the iPod quite swiftly. As my old friend JJ used to say, “life is too short for music that’s just okay.” These little songs, just a few minutes each, took over city-blocks in my head almost immediately. They made it their business to make my heart beat faster–every one, every time.
Buttercup, Sick Yellow Flower
A fiend of a friend who lives in San Antonio has this band. I’d been privy to their demos for 3 or 4 years and was always impressed with the songs—state-of-the-art indie rock, soulfully jittery singing and a radio-sized hook rationed out on about every third song. At the beginning of the year, these guys finally released their debut CD, and they went for broke in the best possible sense. To my ears, there’s a concept at work–travel, or at least the disconnected sense sometimes associated with it. The mood swings from confused to giddy, from perfectly still to bursting-all-surfaces, but never once stops being pop music.
The music at my wedding
It was a great day, with music to match. During the ceremony, my declaration was made via my brother’s performance of a song I’d written for Amy during the summer we’d fallen in love. Later, my friends John and Tom sang Ron Sexsmith’s “God Loves Everyone,” possibly the song I most wish I’d written, and definitely the one where Amy’s and my sometimes-at-odds spiritual lives find a joyous common ground….and invite everyone in. We first-danced to the Beatles’ version of “Til There Was You,” and we all danced into the night to songs since cemented in my heart as in one way or another “ours:” Men at Work’s “Everything I Need,” Wilco’s “I Got You (At the End of the Century),” Stevie Wonder, Edith Piaf. Oh, and we also played “Hey Ya,” but maybe that goes without saying.
Hearing “Seventeen” by Ladytron at a loft party populated mostly by people well below the age of 30
I’ve come to like this song quite a bit, but at the time I first heard it, in all its anonymously-80’s bloopy-bleepiness, I felt woefully out-of touch. “So,” I thought, “the kids have started ripping off Berlin.” And if at “21 you’re no fun,” then what are you at 34? I shuddered to think, but have since stopped.
Mini-Hootenanny at the baby shower for Tom and Casey
It was at our apartment, with the performers backed into the corner with the plants. I played a couple baby/family songs, and so did three other friends, as well as Tom himself. The show was put on for the lucky couple, but hearing the talent and love of my friends made me feel pretty blessed, too.
Sun Kil Moon, Ghosts of the Great Highway
It doesn’t happen often, maybe once every few years, but when it does, it’s downright scary. Someone drops a CD in your hand and says something like, “you might like these guys.” You take it home and find that not only do you like it, but it’s as though someone had been reading your mind. Dropping the second person, let me say that it’s like God peeked under the rind of my skull, saw that I was recently obsessed with the Band, Nick Drake, and the louder bits of Uncle Tupelo, and decided with a crash of lightening to create this album just for me. At first, the sensation was so total that I wasn’t even sure I liked—that I could like—Ghosts of the Great Highway. Of course that proved silly, and I’ve since grown to love all these songs—but to me they still sound almost unnaturally perfect, and so I’m very far from done with them.
“16 Military Wives” video and song by The Decemberists
Song of the year for me, video of the decade so far. I loved the Decemberists anyway, but to have them penning this shockingly-rare political protest song, brilliantly framing it in a hilarious and even-more-pointed video was a revelation. This from people who usually croon about mariners and barrow-boys. We need more of this.
Embrace and the writing of Nick Southall
I didn’t know much about Embrace except that their first album was compared to Oasis, and what little I’d heard of their music (a promo copy of “All You Good Good People”) bore this out. Then, early this year I read a piece on them by a Stylus writer named Nick Southall. I say that casually, but this wasn’t just a story about a young Brit’s favorite band. It was a glorious reclamation of what it means to have a favorite band, to let a band into your life like you would a lover, or maybe in the way people I don’t understand do with sports teams. The article came around just as I was reaching a crisis point with music myself, just as it seemed everyone who wrote or talked about music—myself included—had somehow lost the thread in this file-trading, blog-scouring, culture-devouring anti-boom. Mr. Southall’s unabashed emotion helped to quell my consumerist paranoia, and Embrace’s singles collection, being so triumphant-sounding (like Oasis, but more celebratory than sneering in its massiveness) made it easy for me to re-connect with the triumph of music generally.
