No Such Place is an album I have come back to over and over again this past decade. Its fusion of varied production (and producers), Southern Gothic story telling and haunting lyrics have caused me to examine its face closely and in different detail over the . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
The National craft mood music. In the span of four albums and an EP they have created a niche of elegant and dark atmospheric rock bolstered by vocalists Matt Berninger’s languid baritone and everyman poetics. These are the 21st century blues for those of us who grew up in the ‘80s. A world view framed by three decades worth of anxiety, mild paranoia, and disappointment -- a vision fully, and flawlessly, realized on the group’s third album become a member or log in.
I’m not going to qualify anything here–it’s tempting to get into a semantic argument about the differences between “best” and “favorite” records to explain why I think that twelve old-time rock ‘n’ roll songs spoke-sung by a broken Catholic is better than anything this decade by Radiohead, by Animal Collective, by Wilco (as much as I adore all three of those groups). Did become a member or log in.
Radiohead's Kid A is advanced. You know this because you've listened to it. You know this because countless writers and critics and friends and foes have told you so. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of people who know more about the band than I do have spent countless hours in hopes of understanding the record and several more hours trying to condense their findings for you to read. And if you haven't read those--just a hypothetical, of course, because you have--then you . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
There could be a lot to resent about the Strokes before ever listening to their music. A bunch of wealthy, well-traveled prep-school kids from Manhattan hit a bit of luck and became an overnight sensation. The money, the pedigree, the luck -- all potential sources of envy, cynicism and ire for an everyday Joe like you or me who may feel, at times, short on all three and who may wonder why good fortune seems to be bestowed on those who already have it by the truckload. But that's all before you listen to Is This It, and most likely you probably didn't know most of that anyway when you first heard it.
My first introduction to the band was by way of their video for "Last Nite" featuring the band kicking around a soundstage reminiscent of the bygone days of television programs where the guest musicians might've been the Monkees or the Carpenters, or a maybe a young Mick Jagger, bangs and all. (Its haloing, intentionally low resolution led me to believe it might be the start of a Mentos commercial. Seriously.) But by the end of the video, I was scrambling to buy the record. I wasn't alone. Labels reacted similarly, as "Last Nite" leaked/teased ahead of The Modern Age three-track EP, which ultimately ignited a bidding war that resulted in the release of Is This It on RCA.
Even now, "Last Nite," as familiar as it is, feels simplistic. It's short, to the point, rough and free of any layered production effects. The album, of course, is much in accord, and it's this that makes it difficult to describe the Strokes' immediate and lasting impact on the decade, and likely far beyond. Because how can something so small be so big? Shakespeare says "brevity is the soul of wit," and so too, may it be the heart of music.
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
Following 9/11, the world seemed a bit colder. If there were an historical event that defined the 00s for the United States, it was certainly that one, and the disillusioned wake of its terror certainly felt chilly and uncertain. Maybe that's why the renewed interest in Joy Division and the late Ian Curtis sprang up in recent years - a music perfect for soundtracking the removed time in which we lived. Perhaps, also, that's why Interpol struck such a chord with people in 2002. The band's icy distillation of post-punk was, admittedly, a reminder of their Mancunian forebearers, but done in a way that seemed inherently of its own time and place.
Turn on the Bright Lights, Interpol's first and best record, is the type of debut album that can make and break a band simultaneously. Certainly Interpol has had a rough time critically living up to its near-perfect tone in the ensuing years. But as I sat down to revisit this album for, honestly, the first time in close to five years, it felt like opening an icy tomb, the wintry breath of 2002 sweeping across my ears. I shivered and remembered the first time I heard the untitled first song's delicate, hypnotic opening moments and its lyrics perfectly hanging the era in the painful light of truth - "Surprise, sometimes, will come around." Like an elegy to a moment where facade falls away, it was a bracing piece of art rock unlike anything else around it at the time.
Though its lyrics seem trained inward, rather than outward, "NYC"'s breathtaking bridge is the album's purest moment. When the drums momentarily drop out, the thrumming guitars laying down a foundation for what's to come, Paul Banks delivers the album's titular line. Evoking images of Tribute in Light, "turn on the bright lights" seems like more than just another casual line of self-reflection. This is the inside identifying itself with the outside and finding its most honest self in the world around it, like an urban Romantic finding expression in the concrete world.
The album is a daunting listen - there is no resolution, no happiness, no joyous chorus or riff to be found. It is a dark, frigid exploration of a modern person, unsure even of the right words for themselves and the people around them, but finding in the larger world's chaotic expanse a note with which to harmonize and define. words/ j neas
MP3: Interpol :: Untitled
MP3: Interpol :: NYC
---------------------
+ After the jump: Interpol's Black Session: Maison de la Radio, Aug 27th 2002
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
As Justin said in his Decade entry on Sufjan Stevens’ Michigan, some albums feel intrinsically linked to the experience of listening to them. Maybe it’s a romantic sentiment, but music works like some aural madeleine, carrying dense and indulgent sensory memories that go deeper than the textures of the notes and melodies and into some–well, okay, it is a romantic sentiment, but if we’ve all brushed off romance, then we probably already . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
It'd be easy to peg Funeral a death processional. People have done it before. Nearly every time anyone ever talked about the record, in fact. I never read the liner notes to the album, but apparently they mention the death of three family members of the band, and their inspirational impact. And then, of course, there's the album name, so coldly explicit, or . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
Vic was our Keats, our Nina Simone. There will never be another like him. - Guy Picciotto, Fugazi
It's funny the things we tend to remember, or I should say, the things I tend to remember. The minutiae. The first time I heard the name Vic Chesnutt was in the Fall of 1995; I was 20 years old and a sophomore at the University of Georgia in Athens. Having recently been turned on to Jack . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XM, channel 26 (SIRIUS), and channel 43 (XM), can now be heard twice, every Friday - Noon EST with an encore broadcast at Midnight EST. Below is this week’s playlist.
SIRIUS 122: Jean Michel Bernard - Generique Stephane ++ R.E.M. - Letter Never Sent ++ The Walkmen - We've Been Had ++ The National - All The Wine ++ The Clientele - I Wonder Who We Are ++ Cotton Jones - Nicotine Canaries ++ The Ruby Suns - Remember ++ The Beach . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
What is it that makes us want to deconstruct art by units of time? Lists. We love making them. We love arguing over them. And here, on the verge of a new decade, we’re in a position to do the same again. What were the best albums of the past ten years?
Here at AD, we started talking it through and decided we weren’t going to add to the cacophony of lists being put out by various music pubs. There are enough of those. Since the beginning of October, Monday through Friday, we . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
What is it that makes us want to deconstruct art by units of time? Lists. We love making them. We love arguing over them. And here, on the verge of a new decade, we’re in a position to do the same again. What were the best albums of the past ten years?
Here at AD, we started talking it through and decided we weren’t going to add to the cacophony of lists being put out by various music pubs. There are enough of those. Since the beginning of October, Monday through Friday, we have been featuring posts detailing . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
What is it that makes us want to deconstruct art by units of time? Lists. We love making them. We love arguing over them. And here, on the verge of a new decade, we’re in a position to do the same again. What were the best albums of the past ten years?
Here at AD, we started talking it through and decided we weren’t going to add to the cacophony of lists being put out by various music pubs. There are enough of those. Since the beginning of October, Monday through Friday, we have been featuring posts detailing . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
What is it that makes us want to deconstruct art by units of time? Lists. We love making them. We love arguing over them. And here, on the verge of a new decade, we’re in a position to do the same again. What were the best albums of the past ten years?
Here at AD, we started talking it through and decided we weren’t going to add to the cacophony of lists being put out by various music pubs. There are enough of those. Since the beginning of October, Monday through Friday, we have been featuring posts detailing . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
What is it that makes us want to deconstruct art by units of time? Lists. We love making them. We love arguing over them. And here, on the verge of a new decade, we’re in a position to do the same again. What were the best albums of the past ten years?
Here at AD, we started talking it through and decided we weren’t going to add to the cacophony of lists being put out by various music pubs. There are enough of those. Since the beginning of October, Monday through Friday, we have been featuring posts detailing our favorite albums of the decade. Now with less than two weeks left in the last year of the first decade of the new millennium we are ramping up--highlighting our absolute favorites.
Nothing can stop me in my tracks faster than the phrase “change your life.” Maybe I’m just stubborn, stuck in whatever form I was made in--or re-made in--but my skin crawls every time a book, a record, a film is supposed to change my life, or any time I hear someone close to me say that some work of art has changed their life.
I’d like to think that I’m just being fair to the work, whatever it is. It’s quite a bit of pressure to put on something, after all--to assume, before you’ve even heard the group, that the unfurling of a few notes of music are going to mark the pre- and post- in your biography. With those expectations, it’s almost impossible to hear -- or read, or see -- anything the way you were supposed to.
“Moments can be monuments to you,” David Berman sang in the Silver Jews song “People”, before conceding, “If your life is interesting, true.” Indie rock has always been about deflating the thoughts of those who would tell you that every moment has to matter, that tiny things are more important than they seem to be. Way over yonder in the more emo camp, you’ll hear that every single moment matters so much--”shouting the poetic truths of high-school journal keepers”, as Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo once said. The real truth, though, probably lies somewhere in the middle of these two places, some place where the quotidian can be both nothing and everything, where big moments are actually made up of tons of smaller moments.
…And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead’s magnum opus, 2002’s Source Tags and Codes, falls right into that fertile country: somewhere between Sonic Youth’s squall, Pavement’s squiggling, and Refused’s new noise, all of it built into a Babel of feedback and tied together with the strings of a violin. It’s emotional without being maudlin, honest without being trite, loud without being dumb--and even if Trail of Dead couldn’t capture it again on subsequent releases, well, neither could anyone else.
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
