Opening Salvo

So Greg asked me why I didn’t do a top ten, why I might not get around to it this year. “Even I posted a top ten,” he cajoled. Well, yeah, Greg, but you didn’t put any damn comments on it! No reviews, no why’s or wherefores. How’s a cracker supposed to know? Y’suck, man! Y’suck!

But then I had to ask myself if I was entirely proud of all the purple prose I’d spilled in the “editorial sections” of top tens posted in years past. I had to admit it was not so. Ultimately, I had to admire letting a list speak for itself; who needs the jibba-jabba?

But I am a writer, and a nerdy nerd on the topic of pop music who likes the sound of his own printed voice. So I had to reach a compromise, and here ’tis: I’ve limited myself to 10 words about each of the 10 albums in this, my top 10 for 2002. Please notice that hyphenated expressions count as one word, and that I didn’t stick with sentence form, resulting in some of the entry-descriptions having a delightful haiku-like quality.

I’m also drunk.

(One caveat here: I’ve no right, really, to do this list because I fell in absolute love with Spoon’s “Girls Can Tell” album this year, but that was put out in 2001, and I’ve not heard their 2002 release, “Kill the Moonlight.” You go, Spoon!)

The Ten

1. Desparecidos, Learn Music / Speak Spanish
punkish half-hour concept album
passionately deriding urban sprawl
STORYTELLING!
INTEGRITY!

2. Interpol, Turn on the Bright Lights
spiky new-age coating
with a fuzzy shoegazing center
GOD DAMN!

3. Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
not-that-difficult
bloopy/bleepy folk
still breaking hearts
(like mine)

4. Oasis, Heathen Chemistry
tuneful rock stars
become tuneful again–
YOU KNOW YOU’RE RIGHT!

5. Sleater-Kinney, One Beat
protest songs at zeppelin level–
aging gracefully
an institution now

6. Weezer, Maladroit
actually riding the guilty-or-not pleasure line
better than
number seven

7. Andrew W.K., I Get Wet
i’ll buy the walk
since he certainly
talks the talk

8. Beck, Sea Change
uneven, but
some songs actually
as good/sad
as hank, cash

9. The Hives, Veni Vici Vicious
what is garage?
i’ve no idea.
this kicks my ass!

10. Rhett Miller, The Instigator
Whiskeytown bang meets
Matthew Sweet buck–
pop songwriter’s songwriter!

Old and Out of Touch: A 2001 Top 10 List
by Dan ZP

1. Jimmy Eat World, Bleed American
This isn’t just my number one album of the year; it’s what I’m all about. I’m all about: large recording dollars gone to making shit sound HUGE, good singing with harmonies, hooks the size of Florida–and unbelievably positive vibes. To wit: “Just try your best / Do anything you can / And don’t you worry what their bitter hearts / Are gonna say.” Is this the new U2? Here’s where emo “sells out”, I guess, but I see that as a good thing. How else is a sub-genre supposed to become simply, finally, kick-ass rock music?

2. The Emily Rock Group, Pop and Fade
This is the last album by Cleveland-area post-punk holdouts formerly known as Emily. Rhythmically tight like the Jesus Lizard, sans the abrasion-for-its-own sake ethos. Somehow, these three guys pile on a beautiful racket, and the impressionistic, rushing-outside-the-car-window lyrics are the icing on the gravy. Think Sebadoh circa Bakesale, with the ugly/pretty songs smooshed together more finely. A better half hour you will not find, aurally speaking. Bonus: They’re obscure!

3. Rainer Maria, A Better Version of Me
The previous album from these guys—1999′s “Look Now, Look Again”–made me feel kinda old. Such young players, such bleeding hearts–quite convinced that heartache matters. Thematically, “A Better Version of Me” isn’t quite as whiney as its predecessor, and the sound is more confident, too—gigantic shoegazing outroes, heftier hooks, tighter rhythms. So, quite a fitting title here. This is your basic emo music, but prettier and more expansive than you could imagine. Meanwhile, the lyrics retain a wide-eyed quality, while gaining an occasional toughness: “I’ve got to fight / Just not in the way I once thought right.” And by the way, they sing much better now. Well–she does, anyways.

4. The Strokes, Is This It
The CD got to my apartment before the hype did. I consider myself lucky, ‘coz this is simply wonderful–and wonderfully simple. It’s been a long time since I’ve been this happy about not knowing what the hell a singer’s going on about. Rock and roll.

5. Goner, Dollar Movie
Yes, I used to play with these guys. What are they? They are more emo than what is currently called that. They are solid songwriters, exquisite arrangers, and emotional dynamos. They rock quite fucking hard–which you know if you’ve ever seen them live. But the end of this record also has what is maybe the most purely bittersweet song this nerd has ever heard–”Lifer’s Lament,” a chin-up for anyone who leads The Creative Life. It’s kinda like if R.E.M.’s “Daysleeper” just spat it out: “In a room full of past-due bills / No, you don’t exactly feel blessed / But just give it time, you will.” Especially with bands like Goner nudging us along.

6. Whiskeytown, Pneumonia
What a surprise and yet no more than a reminder when I heard this one. After Heartbreaker, my opinion of the man was quite diminished (despite the 3 1/2 brilliant songs on that disc). But hey–Ryan Adams used to be in a band. And Whiskeytown didn’t just keep Ryan’s emotional flourishes in check–they pinned the music down, too: Caitlin played fiddle and sang better than a truckload of “guest stars,” and Jay (I think that’s his name) played the most tasteful guitar to be found anywhere in “y’allternative” music. This is easily their best album, and sadly, their last.

7. Dashboard Confessional, The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most
Rainer Maria would write lines like this if they didn’t check themselves: “The bottle is waiting / The cap is twisted, begging to be used / and so are you.” But Chris C’s not-checking is what you gotta love about him. Or hate, I guess. I can feel this album teetering towards something gross, like Sarah McLaughlin–it’s not as sincerely “confessional” sounding as the extremely minimal “Swiss Army Romance” from I think last year. But I can also feel where the hype is justified–Dashboard is like a misery-seeking missile. It will find it in you, and it will blow it up.

8. Weezer, “The Green Album”
If some band you’d never heard of came out with an album whose ten songs contained 8 completely unbelievably catchy-as-hell songs that were about nothing in particular, you could be into it, right? Well, just pretend that this is that band, that Rivers Cuomo never got all upset and made the stellar (and, yes, far superior) Pinkerton. And while you’re at it, recognize that “Hash Pipe” is one of the best “unlikely” singles of the past several years, and that it makes you wanna throw goats and do the nasty and all that shit Lester Bangs would have us do. Yeah.

9. Radiohead, Amnesiac
Whether or not or to what degree this music is “experimental” or “weird” or “obscure” is a matter of taste. The only reason people sweat Radiohead in regards to these qualities is that, amazingly, they sell records. All I know is that Radiohead channel and broadcast a music and a mood that is, to me, indescribably present-tense. That’s it.
10. The Rosenbergs, Mission: You
Often hailed for their staunch independence as a band, The Rosenburgs sport a sound that’s as cheerful and forthright as their views on the industry are dim and doubtful. At times, this album makes Weezer sound like Tad–it’s just that bubbly. Cars, Cheap Trick, The Knack all come to mind–with a new-millennium digital sheen and sweet harmonies. (I mean both old and new meanings of sweet, btw.) It was just getting warm last April when I got this, and I just swallowed it hook, line and sinker: “Summer’s here / And you appear / I’ll be fast asleep.” Awesome.

Also enjoyed…
Sigur Ros, Grandaddy, Centro-Matic, Dismemberment Plan, Belle and Sebastian (no more loud-mouth jokes from me in 2002), Nelly Furtado, Jeff Mangum, Jay Farrar, Oasis, Macy Gray, Five-Eight, Beachwood Sparks, the re-released full-length Johnny Cash prison albums, the Ride box set, Feelies, Kinks, Big Star–OH, THE SWEET AUTUMNAL MEMORIES!

“Enjoy the night.”
–Ronald Thomas Clontle

1. Radiohead, Kid A
No doubt!  But seriously, this was pretty much it.  Not just the idea of this album, but the goods themselves, the sad longing in “How to Disappear Completely” and the creeping paranoia (which I personally think topped the creeping paranoia of OK Computer) in “Idioteque” and “The National Anthem.”  Eventually even the semi-instrumental “filler” songs seemed to serve the wallop of the “real” ones.  A music geek treat, to be sure—but also kick-ass in a simpler way.   But maybe that’s just me.

2. Sleater-Kinney, All Hands on the Bad One
I only had this for a couple weeks, then lost it.  But I remember being very happy with it.  It’s been good to hear this band get…uh…”mature,” I guess.  It’s possible to get refined and tricky without losing intensity, and these guys deserve props for this.  “Youth Decay” and “Was It a Lie” don’t just make me tense—they make me want to sing.  Which is a far heavier thing.

3. The Put-Outs, Sing the Hits
This ruined Jets to Brazil for me.  It’s basically pop-punk, I guess.  Tommy Stinson produced it, and the guy sings in that rough way about drinking and not getting laid.  Like Social Distortion or the Replacements or that one good Goo Goo Dolls album (yeah, there was one).  Totally the kind of record I didn’t think anyone made any more.  Very visceral and just awesomely rawking.  Must be heard very loud.

4. Crooked Fingers, Crooked Fingers
Eric Bachman kicks it down a notch.  That’s where the Archers were going, anyways—but who would have ever thought bitterness could get as poignant as “Broken Man” or “A New Drink for the Old Drunk”?  Keyboards fatten and clean guitars strum, and it’s all sad as hell, consistently so.  And the songs are oddly rootsy in their simplicity, giving this a sort of “instant classic” quality.  Beautiful.

5. Catatonia, Equally Cursed and Blessed
This sounds pop to American ears, including mine.  But only in the UK would something so shimmery also be so rock solid.  These songs are unbelievably catchy with booming guitar, good beats and sneering, bored-but-tough-chick lyrics.  In “Londoninium,” Cerys Matthews gets four syllables out of “endlessly” and sounds like she does not give a single fuck.  Or how about: “Joan of Arc / come kiss my art / leave a charcoal mark”?  American version comes with “Road Rage” and “Mulder and Scully,” without which this album wouldn’t have made it, probably.  So very worth the four dollars I paid for it.

6. Jurassic 5, Quality Control
Some kid who’d just been fired left this behind at work.  I picked it up and proceeded to get completely blown away by just how old school it is.  Like the first Jungle Brothers album, this is all about funkiness and mind-blowingly good rhymes.  The kind of thing that gives you shivers or makes you groan involuntarily.  Hopefully not in front of anyone–though that can be difficult.

7. At the Drive-In, Relationship of Command
The most recently-appreciated album on the list, so I may live to regret this.  But I’m so amazed that I even like this at all, I gotta throw it up here.  There’s music in this, you know–not just very good shouting and guitars.  Quite a workout, but I’d venture to say that in its alternately slow and quick burning, it has more in common with Jane’s Addiction than Rage Against the Machine.  Which in my book is a good thing.

8. OutKast, Stankonia
“B.O.B.” is just about the best song this year, and the rest of this is pretty amazing, too.  I’d put this higher if it wasn’t so damn schizo, though.  Stankonia doesn’t quite hit all of its targets, but the very idea of throwing something like “Toilet Tisha” or “I’ll Call Before I Come” out there is, in the current hip-hop climate, just ballsy beyond belief.

9. Primal Scream, Xtrmntr
They have Mani from the Stone Roses and Kevin Shields from My Bloody Valentine now, you know.  How could they go wrong?  Well, they could, of course.  Just that they haven’t; not with this.  This is so full of sound.  It makes Boston sound like Songs:Ohia or something.  And it’s brutal and electronic and screeching.  In that way, it’s sort of like this year’s other Kid A.  A Kid A that makes you shake your ass a little.  It’s nothing at all like Screamadelica, by the way.  Very good for long rides on filthy trains.

10. Sunny Day Real Estate, The Rising Tide
Like with Fugazi, I always preferred the idea of SDRE over the reality.  Respect over enjoyment, you might say–until this album.  For whatever reason, The Rising Tide has won me over to the Sunny Day cause; the intricacies of the music compliment the flowery lyrics rather than slowing things down.  “Killed by an Angel” is the first song, and it sounds exactly like its title.  The rest of the songs are either delicate or roaring or both, but always…”rich” is the word I’d use.  Oddly, it reminds me of Led Zeppelin.  Good for listening to while looking through falling snow up at tall buildings.

Man, Were These Close
Badly Drawn Boy, The Hour of Bewilderbeast
The Roots, The Roots Come Alive
Deanna Varagona, Tangled Messages
Clem Snide, Your Favorite Music
Ryan Adams, Heartbreaker
T. Griffin, Tortuga
Elastica, The Menace
Yo La Tengo, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
Steve Earle, Transcendental Blues
Open Mike: A Tribute to the Songs of Mike Merz

Top Three Guilty Pleasures
1. “Come on Over Baby” by Christina Aguilera
2. “Break Stuff” by Limp Bizkit
3. “Wait and Bleed” by Slipknot

Post Script
There’s always stuff you didn’t hear:  Sigur Ros, Granddaddy, The Glands, LeTigre, just to name a few  friends’ picks and press raves.  Some would say if you didn’t hear everything in a given year, you shouldn’t make a top ten.  But hey—it’s not like I’m getting paid for this.  It’s all in the name of fun.  Plus, it’s really quite inspiring to comb over the last year and realize how fruitful it’s been–how sweet it is to be a music fan.  The older I get, the easier it is to blow off songs, albums, bands–even whole genres. To quote my number one underrated artist of all time, “I don’t wanna be like that.”  And so, geeky shit like making top tens keeps that nasty temptation at bay.  Hope you agree, hope you liked–let me know what you thought.

“A lot of opinions out there…”
–Ronald Thomas Clontle