This Particular Postmodern Moment

Top Albums: 16 from 2007

2007-12-31T05:42:42Z

Really the only measure of my favorite albums from the year is how often I've played them. I get enough new music every month, that it's just survival of he fittest around here. Whatever compels me to listen and get to know it the most is gonna lasts, the shallower stuff, or the stuff that just doesn't catch my fancy, won't be on this list.

El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead

Common, Aesop, Mos Def, Kweli, Dizzee, Jay-Z, even Ghostface and Wu-Tang put out hip-hop albums this year and "I'll Sleep" is the only one that really matters to me. It's definitely the record I played front-to-back more than any other. I saw El-P live twice and he was amazing.

Bloc Party - A Weekend in the City

This album came out in February. I still love it. It starts with the line "I am trying to be heroic." How could I now love it? We saw them live on my birthday. It was unreal. They even played one just for me. But, the album, it's passionate, loud, restless, sing-along anthems all the way, with a little more pop than last time. It's okay. As long as they stay on this path, they'll stay my favorite band of the decade.

Handsome Furs - Plague Park

They're an off-shoot of Wolf Parade, my favorite new band of the the last few years. Contains an anthem of my particular midwestern/urban take on angst called "Cannot Get Started".

Once - Original Soundtrack

One of the best movies of the year contains a lot of my favorite songs from the year. Glen & Markéta are a great duo, and their passion bursts out of every note.

Menomena - Friend and Foe

There were weirder records than this that I liked, but this is the weird record that also had the jams I liked to play in the car. Weirdness you can sing.

Jason Lindner - Live/UK

Jazz is back for the fall. Actually, I picked this one up over the summer, but it's been on really heavy rotation since October. His live set at the Wex was killer. A lot of new jazz recordings are weak, largely because they rely too much on days gone by (and because horn players have weak tone, but that's a whole other thing). This is one of two or three records this year that shattered that mold.

Battles - Mirrored

Instrumental bad-asses. I'd love to make theatre that feels like this. It's grumpy and raw and head-banging.

Fionn Regan - The End of History

This year's Bob Dylan must be the closet yet. He's like Damien Rice on ginseng with a book of Ginsberg in his bag. I read a couple books because of this record.

Phronesis - Organic Warfare

See "Live/UK" above and then think wider, foreign thoughts. Phronesis is bass heavy and wide open, and they meld like fingers on a single hand. It's easy to put yourself in their heads, and awesome to just get lost in this album.

Beirut - The Flying Cup Club

I can't escape this album, it's been playing in just about every coffee shop I've stepped into since it came out. And wouldn't you know it, I end-up singing along everytime. Fionn Regan makes you read books, Beirut makes you write them.

Prefuse 73 - Preparations & Interregums

Prefuse 73 is one of my top 5 artists of the last 5 years or so. This album is no let down, with beats that stutter and stop and start again, melodies that grow out of nowhere, and a healthy dose of attitude. It's also the best album cover on this list.

Kanye West - Graduation

El-P's record matters to me and this one doesn't. But, that doesn't mean I haven't played this one again and again and again. I tried to put it down, but I couldn't. It's the true crack rap, and I love that Coldplay song.

Band of Horses - Cease to Begin

This album has the dubious honor off being played twice through as I went drove to Bowling Green to pick-up my wife after she crashed a rental car. Ugh. There is, however, a good reason I played it through and through that night. It's gorgeous.

St. Vincent - Marry Me

Marry Me is one of the top 5 songs of the year. It's ambiguous, heart-breaking, aching, and stunning. The rest of the album picks-up from there and ex- p - a -- n --- d s.

Rufus does Judy at Carnegie Hall

I just played this album for 4 straight days. My friend Gabe said it made him feel the gay-est he's ever felt. (And Gabe's gay.) It's a great record of a really remarkable performance and a hell of a lot of fun.

The Bad Plus - Prog

The Bad Plus are a conundrum. Do they suck? Are they amazing? They've certainly got a shtick, and they're shtickin with it. What I do know is that this album is highly listenable, and that's what counts for me these days. Fuck yeah, Tom Saywer.

That's all folks. Return in March for my favorite movies of the movie year.

Just Saw It: Michael Clayton

2007-11-26T03:24:32Z

Michael Clayton was really great. It was a little dense, and not too much of a puzzle, but the performances were great, and it had a lot of tension. And the end was awesome. "You are so FUCKED." Yeah, dog. George Clooney.

Just Saw It: Lars and the Real Girl, Miami Vice, Letters from Iwo Jima

2007-11-24T01:43:36Z

Lars and the Real Girl Each of us has something slightly poisoned in our head or our heart that we try to treat or cure, or otherwise deal with through an addiction, a distraction, foibles, or grand failures. That's why this movie affecting even though there's not really much to it. It was affecting, though. Miami Vice Never thought you'd hear me say it, but Miami Vice is a pretty good movie. The opening sequence was downright mesmerizing. It gets a little less surprising after Sonny gets involved with the bad girl. And the soundtrack its pretty unfortunate. But it's WAY better than I would have expected. I kept reading that t was worth it, but I wouldn't have believed it was this interesting. Letters from Iwo Jima Beautiful. Sad. I started it at about 6am this morning, it was barley light outside when I finished. I got really lost in it. I surprised that the American soldiers are actually shown in a pretty poor light occasionally. It's totally worth seeing, though. Great performances and more than a few surprising character developments.

Alan Moore on the Simpsons

2007-11-20T05:12:17Z

2 Things

2007-11-19T23:04:22Z

1. One more reason I love the Believer magazine. This is the email I got in response to my change of address.

Thanks for letting me know Matt, I changed it. Good luck with your move, and congratulations on OSU's victory over my alma mater this weekend. A deserving win, good sir.

2. Amazon has entered the gadget market. The machine sounds like it'll be pretty sweet, but it's also pretty ugly. And since it's only available online, I can't go to a store and see it in action, see what it feels like in my hand. I really wish Apple were making it, it'd be a lot nicer. Also, now that we have touch-screen phones, I don't see why anyone would bother to make a handheld device with all those buttons.

My Dog at 5.5 months

2007-11-10T19:30:21Z

I mean, come on. How beautiful is she?!

Just Saw It: The Lives of Others

2007-11-10T19:28:22Z

Fantastic fucking movie. It was just really interesting and engaging and well-made and well-acted, until the last 20 minutes or so, when it entered the realm of the sublime. And the very end may have been a bit obvious, some could even say cheesy, but it hit me just right. I loved it. This is one to own. HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION. I wish I could write something like this.

This is Hip-Hop

2007-11-10T19:25:30Z

Just in case there's any confusion.

Just saw them, sort of: Northfork and Talk to Me

2007-11-07T15:25:05Z

I'm putting an entry on my blog just to tell you how Fucking frustrating these movies were. I really wanted to like them for a while, I did. Then I just fast-forwarded through the last 30 minutes of each. Fuckin waste my time!

New Tunes: Band of Horses

2007-11-07T15:19:25Z

I really dug the first Band of Horses album. It was a sad, country-ish, slightly psychedelic record with a voice that reminded me of the guy from The Flaming Lips. That sentence alone will turn-off most of my friends. Their new album is sad sometimes, but it turns up the rock and the hooks. The songs are mostly beautiful, with occasionally choruses that make you want to put air drum while you're driving. Check out tracks 1 (Is There a Ghost) and 3 (No One's Gonna Love You) for evidence. It's the first record in months that's made me want to just put it on repeat and drive around a lot.

Just Saw It: American Gangster

2007-11-07T15:09:53Z

This movie needed some Jay-Z. (I'm referring to the fact that Jay-Z put out an album "inspired by" the movie, but the music isn't in the movie.) It was long, and even, with a nice bit of mounting tension, but it didn't have much in the way of peaks and valleys along the way. Very steady for two hours, then one good, albeit short, action scene followed by a long, boring resolution. Public Enemy over the credits lifts you up a bit, but it's impossible to deny that I was left wanting for more. And Denzel's great, but even he seemed to be phoning it in a bit. It's like it was too easy for him. Gimme his "X" anyday. Which is not to say it wasn't fun and interesting. It was. But "Zodiac" was a way better action/thriller.

Well, that settles Halloween

2007-10-05T17:27:29Z

http://spoiledrottendoggies.com/costumes.htm

I read a book

2007-10-03T15:20:20Z

So, the same day I wrote about not reading enough fiction nowadays, I read almost all of Vendela Vita's Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name. I don't hesitate to recommend it.

Stuff I Haven't Been Reading

2007-09-29T17:13:26Z

I haven't been reading much fiction lately. Aside from a lot of comics, that is. That's weird for me. I know it wouldn't be a concern for most people, but I was in the habit of finishing at least one fiction book every 3 weeks or so (in addition to everything I read). So what's happened? It could just be a string of bad luck. 2 of the last 3 fiction books I've started (one of them is a re-read) haven't strung me along even to page 100. That's usualy my rule, read to page 100, even if I'm not liking it. So, the first problem book was The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon. I've really loved his last couple of books, especially Kavalier & Clay, which is on my top 20 books list. So, the fact that I can't bring myself to read another 12 pages of this book is pretty disappointing. It can't be his fault, can it? The other big problem book for me is Home Land by Sam Lipsyte. The Believer chose it for their first annual Believer Book Award, and I enjoy every single word ever written in the Believer magazine. So, it's pretty upsetting to think that my tastes depart so far from theirs on what was the best book of 2005. It's definitely a good book, no doubt there. The conceit is very clever, the characters are well drawn, it's very, very original, an it's brutally ufnny. So, what's wrong with me? I can't make it through more than 83 pages?]]> I have a bookshelf over my bed, which is where I put the Books Bought and others that I have a serious intention of reading one day. And inevitably, over time, some of these are pronounced dead, and taken gently and respectfully downstairs either to the living room shelves, if they are hardbacks, or the paperback bookcase immediately outside the bedroom door, where they are allowed to rest in peace. (Do we have a word for something that looked like a good idea once? I hope so.) I’m sure you all knew this, but in fact books never die—it’s just that I am clearly not very good at finding a pulse. I have learned this from my two younger children, who have taken to pulling books off the shelves within their reach and dropping them on the floor. Obviously I try not to notice, because noticing might well entail bending down to pick them up. But when I have finally and reluctantly concluded that no one else is going to do it, the book or books in my hand frequently look great—great and unread—and they are thus returned to the bookshelf over the bed. It’s a beautiful, if circular, system, something like the process of convectional rainfall: interest evaporates, and the books are reduced to so much hot air, so they rise, you know, sideways, or even downstairs, but then blah blah and they fall to the ground… something like, anyway, although perhaps not exactly like.So, okay, here are a couple of choice cuts from Hornby's column that I really dig. And a picture of him.

I read 55 percent of the books I bought this month—five and a half out of ten. Two of the unread books, however, are volumes of poetry, and, to my way of thinking, poetry books work more like books of reference: They go up on the shelves straight away (as opposed to onto the bedside table), to be taken down and dipped into every now and again. (And, before any outraged poets explode, I’d like to point out that I’m one of the seventy-three people in the world who buys poetry.) And anyway, anyone who is even contemplating ploughing straight through over a thousand pages of Lowell’s poetry clearly needs a cable TV subscription, or maybe even some friends, a relationship, and a job.

And ...

I don’t want anyone writing in to point out that I spend too much money on books, many of which I will never read. I know that already. I certainly intend to read all of them, more or less. My intentions are good. Anyway, it’s my money. And I’ll bet you do it too.

So, the point is that I feel upset that I'm not reading fiction, because I'm afraid it indicates something about me that I don't want to know. And, I feel guilty not reading the books that I buy. And, of course, it's the usual cycle. When I have time to read, I get bored. When I'm too busy, I just wish I had time to read. So I'm fucked as usual. Did I mention that the show is not going very well? Maybe I should have talked about that.

New Frontier will be awesome

2007-08-06T15:27:12Z