THE BEST OF:
1999
Tim Frommer
1. Superchunk: Come Pick Me Up
Under the macro-genre of "indie rock," Superchunk was king of the hill last year. Now that doesn't automatically make it number one, but once it was on my stereo, little knocked it out of heavy rotation, regardless of musical flavor. There is not a weak track on the entire album, the production is near-flawless and it contains the best lyrics on any release I heard this year. I saw Superchunk perform about a month before Come Pick Me Up was released and had high hopes for the record. Those hopes wereexceeded and then some. Ten years into a solid career and they are still going strong.
2. Cibo Matto: Stereo Type A
It was almost a toss-up with Superchunk for my favorite of the year, but a couple of tracks were duds compared to the rest of the brilliance on Cibo Matto's second release. A melting pot sound of hip-hop, jazz, rock, pop and soul; the cacophony of the duo's adopted hometown of New York City. As great as the soundtrack is to Stereo Type A, singer Miho Hatori's performance is the icing on the cake. (The metaphorical food lyrics are less plentiful this time out.) Studious effort on her English enunciation and pronunciation has turned her into a first-rate diva and MC. In concert, she was absolutely mesmerizing, a tsunami of sound and grace.
3. Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros: Rock Art and the X-Ray Style
Señor Strummer was on the cover of no fewer than three music magazines this winter; none because of the 20th anniversary of London Calling. Rather it was because of this new collection, the first in nearly a decade. Vaguely reminiscent of the deliberate pace of "Straight to Hell," Rock Art is a long overdue return. Would it surprise you that a label dispute was behind the silence? Would it surprise you that he still has a lot to say?
4. Spaceheads: tour support vol. 6 (available online only at insound.com)
This isn't a download, just only for sale through the insound website. Defining "jazz" is the corollary to dancing about architecture. Spaceheads mix trumpet, percussion, samples and loops into a fascinating new sound. Instantly appealing, then it grows on you.
5. Le Tigre: Le Tigre
Thank goodness Kathleen Hanna and her alter-ego Julie Ruin call on the same muse. Picking up steam from one of the more unexpected and original records of 1998, Julie's debut, Kathleen is back with a new band and an instantly catchy collection of 21st century protest songs. Guitar, distortion box, sampler, organ, drums: a B-52s sound for the next millennium, whenever it starts. "My My Metrocard" is the first of hopefully a rash of songs to call New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani a "fucking jerk." Who took the ram from the rama-lama-ding-dong, indeed? Worth her stripes.
6. Sleater-Kinney: The Hot Rock
Sleater-Kinney is certainly one of the best bands of the decade and they have only been around for the latter half of it. Yet, this is a bit of an uneven album representative of the band's growing pains. That it is still among my favorites for the year says a little about my opinion of the 1999 release crop, but much more about how good these women are. The addition of a couple of songs relegated to b-side status would have a made a stronger
overall picture of where the bands currently stands. As it is, if "Get Up," "A Quarter to Three," "Start Together" and, especially, "The End of You" are a sign of what's to come, count me in for the long haul.
7. Moby: Play
I admit to not being very adventurous in learning more about the music under the broad umbrella of "electronica." In fact, I'm not sure whether Moby is classified there. What I do feel confident about is the creativity and originality found on Play. Make up your own mind on the sampling issue; at the least it has exposed you to sounds you probably missed the first time around.
8. Death Cab for Cutie: Something About Airplanes
To find new bands, I rely on my track record with a label, word-of-mouth and the well-articulated recommendations from sources I trust. The preponderance of the last of these is basically what happened in this case since I'd never heard of the band nor the labels that co-released this. Friends of the Idaho boys in Built to Spill, Death Cab are familiar to that sound much the way
the Malkmus effect is evident in some of the Silver Jews' output. Not imitation, perhaps flattery, but a well-crafted release on its own, regardless of influences and well worth the extra effort of finding it.
9. Everything but the Girl: Temperamental
There could be little doubt that after Ben Watts' near-fatal illness and Tracy Thorn's work with Bristol-sound pioneers Massive Attack, EBTB's sound was going to be in for a radical change. If I went out to dance clubs, this is the soundtrack I would want to hear even though the BPM are a little too fast for my liking. The devastating track "Hatfield 1980," a tale of suburban life, is 100 times more powerful than lame movies like "American Beauty" and will send a shiver up your spine when Ms. Thorn sings "I'm seeing my first knife/My first ambulance ride."
10. Grant Hart: Good News for Modern Man
I have long felt that Bob Mould's songwriting was influenced to a more refined pop bent after playing with Grant Hart in some 80s band. Since the disintegration of Hüsker Dü , Bob has certainly been more prolific, commercially successful and accessible than his former bandmate, so we have to cherish what is offered. Grant's latest release, again under his own name after the end of Nova Mob, is a collection of eleven new diamonds in the rough, some, like the winning "A Letter from Anne Marie," have been part of his live set for years.
Rob Brookman
1. The Magnetic Fields: 69 Love Songs
Over the course of three discs and 69 tracks, Stephin Merritt and helpers manage both to encapsulate and explode a century's worth of songform while simultaneously digging up shiny new gems from its most timeworn and overtapped theme. The results, predictably, are untidy, audacious and occasionally silly, but viewed as a whole they're also pretty brilliant. One of the first great pop albums whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts, its parts are nonetheless indispensable to the whole, and no listener even remotely interested in this brave little opus should do without the complete set. A classic.
2. Sleater-Kinney: The Hot Rock
Thirty years after Elvis made his last bid for artistic respectability, 20 after the Stones gave up the ghost with Some Girls and 10 after Bruce found L-O-V-E and turned his back on pop's commercial center, the World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band happen to be a bunch of girrls. On this, the fourth album in their increasingly impressive career, the added nuances coloring their singing and playing does little to blunt the primal thrill of their patented sonic attack. If anything, it makes it even more worthwhile.
3. Old 97s: Fight Songs
Twelve cuts of perfect pop, with just enough twang to convince No Depression disciples that the boys in the band hadn't been bodysnatched by –Beatlemanics. Every hook sinks in, every chorus counts and, cut for cut, no one authored a stronger collection of songs in 1999.
4. Randy Newman: Bad Love
Newman's best non-soundtrack work in 25 years hits the mark because, for the first time in a long time, the cynic leaves just enough room for a little bit of soul. Of course, it wouldn't be a Newman album without devilish little trifles like "Big Hat, No Cattle" or "I'm Dead (But I Don't Know It)," but it's the little glimpses of pain and regret that give the artist's barbs and broadsides an extra measure of emotional heft.
5. The Pretenders: Viva El Amor
"They don't make 'em like they used to," Chrissie Hynde laments on the album opener, but she can't be talking about her own outfit, which hasn't sounded so consistently tough and tuneful in its 20-year career. Even the pretty love songs come complete with a little extra attitude; reference the one that asks her partner to "love me from the heart down." Her most complete performance, and her best to date.
6. Le Tigre: Le Tigre
A longtime Bikini Kill admirer, Kathleen Hanna's Julie Ruin conceit left me cold. But with a new band and her old name to keep her honest she reengineers punk sonics while reimagining girl groups, John Cassavetes and New York in the Giuliani era. It never once gets bogged down with Ruin-esque pedanticism, and it never stops sounding great.
7. Various Artists: Zimbabwe Frontline Vol. 3: Roots Rock Guitar
Party You might remember Trevor Herman from such African compilations as The Indestructible Beat of Soweto Volumes 1 through 6 and Guitar Paradise of East Africa. On this, his third foray into the Zimbabwe pop firmament, he succeeds yet again in presenting his passion as a living music and not a cultural curio. Harder than Limp Bizkit, more danceable than the Pet Shop Boys and it's got way more going for it spiritually than either. Try it out at your next party.
8. Moby: Play
Humane, lyrical and endlessly generous, this is electronica for those put off by the genre's occasional bouts of chilly insularity. If it's not as awe-inspiring as, say, DJ Shadow, it's generally more approachable. And that's no less impressive a feat, actually.
9. Holy Modal Rounders: Too Much Fun
The liner notes describe this pairing as "one of, if not the oldest American group still performing with it original members." The record books aside, though, the Rounders still amount to a bizarre and fascinating force of nature, 35-some-odd years down the road. Peter Stampfel's creaky cartoon of a voice and Steve Weber's willful informality might seem overly whimsical to first-timers, but all of these old chestnuts the boys unearth benefit from the goose. Stampfel calls it "psychedelic folk." I call it a gas.
10. Prince Paul: A Prince Among Thieves
Prince Paul may well deserve credit for introducing the now omnipresent inter-cut skit to hip hop, and here he takes it to another level. The story here is witty and surprisingly compelling, the charaterization sharp and the music never less than exciting. I know how it all ends now, and I'm still finding little surprises on my 50th listen.
10. Pavement: Terror Twilight
The boys get older and sing about it. They still sound fresh, just not as confident. They can still rock but prefer to take it slow. They still make records that people in the 21st century will give a damn about.
9. The Flaming Lips: The Soft Bulletin
The follow-up to Mercury Rev's Deserter Songs. A bunch of weirdoes get sentimental, which was apparently all they needed to put their songs across. Wispy vocals and lush arrangements. Strange, beautiful, etc.
8. Cadallaca: Introducing Cadallaca
Guitar, organ, and drum. Garage rock for now people. Starring Corin, Sarah, and a drummer named sts. The organ could have come out of the Attractions. This year's model is a Cadallaca, bright and shiny and new. It rocks, too.
7. Sleater-Kinney: The Hot Rock
Guitar, bass, and drum. Classic rock gets a brand new bag. Labeled alternative, but simpler and better than that. Starring Corin, Carrie, and a drummer named Janet. Corin and Carrie do away with harmonizing and instead sing at and around each other. Get your rocks off, indeed.
6. XTC: Apple Venus Vol. 1
Fussy, arty, indulgent, and other adjectives that should sink any record. So what am I doing still playing this record nine months later and enjoying it so much? Pretentious art school boys; who are they to put such irresistible melodies in my head?
5. Wilco: Summerteeth
In which Jeff Tweedy writes with equal passion about romantic love and domestic violence. He finds the fine line between love and hate and dances all over it. He writes about loneliness without feeling sorry for himself. His band is sympathetic, and they know how to play.
4. Prince Paul: A Prince Among Thieves
A 90s tale of the streets by the producer extraordinaire and an all-star cast of rappers. The narrative interludes are unnecessary; the songs tell it all. The music is cinematic, the singers well cast, and Prince Paul is one amazing conductor.
3. The Clash: From Here to Eternity
The first official live Clash album comes 16 years after Mick Jones was forced out of the band and the Clash as we wanted to know them came to an end. The songs are generally in chronological order of their studio dates, but the performances are scattered from 1977 to 1982, so that some of their debut album songs are performed in the later years. If there was a point to this song order it was probably to prove that as a live band the Clash never lost it, and they succeed: the album never lets up, never loses the beat, never stops making the case that this was one of rock's greatest bands. Even the slower, reggae-style songs are driven, and Joe Strummer proves each time that a great rock and roll singer doesn't need need to make octave leaps to sing great rock and roll. It seems like a missed opportunity to include nothing from Give `Em Enough Rope, where the songs got buried in a botched heavy metal production mix and could have been set free in a live context. Small complaint. On From Here to Eternity, the Clash punch the clock, set the place on fire, and everyone goes home exhausted and happy. They were only naive in thinking they could handle success; they trumped everything else.
2. Old 97s: Fight Songs
They are young and celebrate youth, and they know what they're talking about. They take themselves very seriously. They quote the minimalist short story writer Raymond Carver in song, they even thank him in the liner notes though he's 10 years gone. They are optimistic about the present. Ah, youth. If rock and roll is about exuberance (at its best, it is), then this is the definition of rock and roll. At its best.
1. Ali Farka Toure: Niafunke
An album that could have been titled America Talks to You ("The African Desert"). The storyline for this album reads like fiction. Toure was the tenth of 10 children born to his mother and the first to survive. He was in his mid-60s at the time he made this album, recorded in his Mali homeland at the edge of the Sahara desert, in a town called Niafunke. (An Africanized version of neo-funk? Who makes up this stuff?) The recording crew found an abandoned building, which in the words of producer Nick Gold was "standing alone and abandoned just outside the village like an elaborate folly." They used an electric generator for those occasions when Toure wanted amplification; sometimes Toure played acoustic guitar on his own, sometimes nodding at the other musicians to join in. It makes for a great story, and a great record, too.
Some say that Africa is the home of rock and roll, but if it was born there it still spent its formative years in America, and it is to the American blues that Toure goes for his root chords. The main influence is John Lee Hooker, but with a difference; Toure mixes things up in a way that Hooker never would. Hooker found a groove half a century ago and stuck to it, while Toure lets the music take him where it wants to go. The lyrics are in something other than English, and it may be just as well. With music this good the lyrics could only get in the way. Maybe out there was an album recorded last year that I didn't hear and would have preferred to this one, perhaps recorded in Nigeria, or in Mozambique or Senegal, but I'm fairly confident that it didn't come out of New York or Minneapolis or Seattle. Haunting, beautiful, etc.
Burton Glass
1. Wilco: Summerteeth
Few things are more satisfying for a pop music fan than to watch a band steadily improve from album to album, surprising you with new ideas while remaining true to its roots. Jeff Tweedy and his band, Wilco, do just that with Summerteeth, their fourth CD (including last year's collaboration with Billy Bragg, Mermaid Avenue) since the break-up of Tweedy's last band, Uncle Tupelo. Propelled by dark lyrics draped over some sort of post-country sound that updates late-period Byrds for the new century. The standout tracks make up the whole blessed album, so singling out, say, "A Shot in the Arm" or the scary, confessional "Via Chicago" doesn't do it justice. The top album in, by my ears, a pretty good year in music.
2. Beck: Midnite Vultures
Lifting from black culture isn't a crime when creating memorable pop it's a prerequisite. But doing so without adding anything to the mix should be. Fortunately, Beck struts down that line expertly with his funky, sex-drenched opus, Midnite Vultures. From the opening track, "Sexx Laws" to the Prince-channeling "Nicotine & Gravy" to the closer "Debra" (in full falsetto), Beck shows how he is full command of his art, moving beyond cut-and-paste to this, a fully realized vision. Right now, he's the future.
3. The Flaming Lips: The Soft Bulletin
The Soft Bulletin caught a lot of people by surprise. A one-hit college radio wonder, the Lips present not just album largely devoid of filler, but with a sound and songs that hold together. My god! A concept album that works! The spectacular "Race for the Prize" is typical of the effort, a grand-sounding song with Wayne Coyne's Neil-esque voice overlapping with keyboards and an inescapable hook. This year's OK Computer.
4. Macy Gray: On How Life Is
Okay, so the major label gurus worked overtime to hype Macy Gray and give her debut an AOR shine. In this case, On How Life Is, her debut, deserves the attention. Gray moves deftly across the R&B, soul, pop and rock spectrum with only minor stumbles. Her voice -- high, squeaky even -- gives songs such as "Do Something" or the feisty "Why Didn't You Call Me?" a distinctive edge. Expect a string of albums that surpass this Top Ten effort.
5. Moby: Play
Finally, techno's first superstar Moby coughs up Play, the true successor to previous mindblower, Everything is Wrong. It was worth the wait. Here, Moby takes archival field recordings of African-American blues and marries them with big beat to great success. The centerpiece booty shaker is clearly "Bodyrock," but the complicated "Honey" and the mournful "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?" help make Play Moby's best.
6. Fountains of Wayne: Utopia Parkway
More of a valentine to, rather than a concept album about, growing up in the New Jersey suburbs, Utopia Parkway is a tiny masterpiece. What, you aren't interested in the romantic reminiscing of nerdy boys from the swamp? Fear not, because songwriters Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger have produced 14 pop gems about suburb life ("The Valley of Malls"), teenage longing ("Denise"), and desperate attempts at entertainment ("Laser Show"). Fountains of Wayne prove that snappy songwriting and Beach Boy harmonies never go out of style.
7. The Roots: Things Fall Apart
The Roots receive extra kudos as rappers who actually -- gasp! -- play their instruments and tour to prove it. Fortunately, ?uestlove and his crew have the songs, hooks and rhyming chops to demonstrate real staying power. Top track: "You Got Me," featuring Eerykah Badu.
8. Beth Orton: Central Reservation
Beth Orten's second long player, Central Reservation, places her among the top singer-songwriters today. "Stolen Car," the album's lead and centerpiece song, is typical: self-assured and vulnerable at the same time. Unlike her first album, the modern beats are pushed to background, but Central Reservation remains timeless.
9. The Magnetic Fields: 69 Love Songs
Big is rarely better, but mopester Stephen Merritt beats the odds with this three-CD opus about, well, love. He mixes styles as diverse as his subject, from college synth pop to Broadway musical. Whether tackled in chunks or as a whole, he's given us something real and lasting.
10. Q-Tip: Amplified
Let's face it: A Tribe Called Quest had been in a slow but clear decline over the past two albums prior its demise. Q-Tip, the Tribe's primary voice, rebounds nicely with his solo debut, Amplified, and the singles, "Vivrant Thing" and "Do It." Q-Tip could have left off a few of the new gangster touches, but on the whole he stays true to himself -- thankfully.
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