2009 Better-Late-Than-Nevers Round-Up

Ten songs from year-end lists I’ve been motoring to this past month:

“Make Her Say,” Kid Cudi (w/ Kanye West and Common): An indomitably sexy number. As the Lady Gaga coda goes, “He’s got me like nobody.” And it ain’t his (or their) rap(s), I assure you. Although, I will concede Kanye wins the prize here with lines ab her legality and using his medulla oblongata. And how out of touch I am, turns out this jam was nominated for a Grammy!

“Lasso,” Phoenix: “Where would you go tied up to a lasso?” Not very far, presumably. But what these guys lack in sense they make up for in energy and songcraft. Wolfgang Amadeus is one of the few albums on year-end lists that makes sense to me. Pop fans tantalized by a few Of Montreal songs but disappointed by their albums ought to click with this immediately. ELO fans won't be disappointed, either.

“Lust For Life,” Girls: A clanging guitar riff stays around too long before a nasally voice busts out about how he “wished he had a boyfriend” but “he’s fucked in the head.” When he says he wished he had a "father" or a “beach house” his voice dips low as if showing us the self-importance he thought these distinctions might give him. It’s Jonathan Richman’s gay nephew from San Francisco. Over a whole album these guys suffer from Violent Femmes Syndrome: annoying affectation substituting for songs. For one ditty, though, it’s a messy comin’ out party. They might be giants, or at least legends in their own minds.

“If Life Exists (?),” Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard: A junkyard of psychadelic acoustica swirled into some mantric grace: “But it’s hard to get too bored when you pick the right two chords and you keep on strumming as if you don’t know what’s comin’.” It’s Kimya Dawson and the Moldy Peaches’ cousin from NYC. He does comics too.

“Cruel Intentions,” Simian Mobile Disco (w/ Beth Ditto of The Gossip): Relaxed, sultry groove. Southern-fried guitar licks. Could be one of the Weather Girls (remember “It’s Raining Men”?) singing; only older, slightly diminished: “Call me up/we’ll hang out.” Retro disco, anyone?

“My Love,” The-Dream (w/ Mariah Carey): Self-proclaimed (and repeatedly!) “radio killah,” for The-Dream, it’s all in the mix: an economical (i.e., gangsta lean) orchestral lushness. It’s not just the falsetto but this canned-whip-cream electricity (auto-tune?) that gives the music its vibe. Unfortunately, the slow jams don’t always come w/ songs; no fries w/ that coke. Not the case, here, though. Mariah’s bit is minimal but full of gusto: “Tell me what they know about my love.”

“Imma Star (Everywhere We Are),” Jeremih: More influence of The-Dream: icy synths, hey-ho thugamuffin chorus, strutting tempos, bling fantasy, Jeremih’s “got the game on a slipknot.”

“Living Without Your Love,” Walter Jones: More retro disco even though I found this one on a comp called Future Disco. Truly, if I were told this had come from a ‘70s Chic album I would have believed it. Still, there is a spare and elegant quality to this—what I’ll hazard to call a feminine quality— that is lacking in most contemporary club music. Or so what I hear of it via the Rcrd Lbl freebies I get sent everyday.

“Now We Can See,” The Thermals: Sometimes the Thermals have this kinetic spirit that is hard to pin down but undeniable. And then sometimes the Thermals sound too three-chord rock basic. Same band, but one you like, one you're hohum ab. The spirit here is conveyed in a chorus that goes: “oh-way-ah-oh-ho,” over and over. Very nice. They no longer have the disease but still need the fix.

“Drop,” Rich Boy: In your face club-rap: a slow grind (crunk? screw? I dunno), but it’s got a beat that cracks with chain-gang intensity and a mesmerizing backtrack of looped female gibberish. “You forgot to bring your gun so you got to use your heart now,” Rich Boy barks, “...Now, drop.” Meaning, I think, what we used to mean by saying, “get down.” As in down and dirty. It's the kind of song that demands your attention, whether you like it or not. And it depends on the "not" like any real gansta or punk. As the jam fades, a zany non sequitur is tossed out, “Kobe, karaoke comin’ thru!” Gotta love ‘it.

Yodeling garage-punk: The Monks "Oh, How to Do Now"

New wave Dylan doing "Jokerman" on Letterman w/ the Plugz

Baby It's Cold Outside

“Strange Enough,” N.A.S.A. (featuring Wu-Tang, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, & Karen O.)— Combine vintage Wu Tang, the insistency of a tight contemporary club mix, and an impenetrably angsty Karen O. (batting champion in my Top Ten, apparently) chorus, and what you got is some wicked hot jam whose nostalgia (“Rumpelstiltskin,” indeed) feels more than earned next to what else passed for hiphop in ’09. With your now obligatory weed references, it’s just about keepin’ on keepin’ on in a very strange world. BTW, when did underground become code for pothead or am I forgetting (ha ha) it always meant that?!

“Gardeninginginging,” Knight School— Reportedly off an album called The Poor and Needy Need to Party, one of those kind of titles that make you wonder how nobody ever thought of it before, and of which I’m not sure really exists beyond the blogosphere. I first heard this tune on a mix tape given to me this last year but it could have come from Olympia or Eugene or Athens or Charlotte anytime over the last twenty-five years—timeless lo-fi jangle pop distilled into a two-chord hum-a-long of yearning harmonies and self-deprecating humor. Not that I’m at all clear as to what it’s about: being “sick and tired” and calling “oly-oly-oxen-free” to “old friends” in a “crowded universe," all of which sounds to me humble and funny. Maybe it’s about going home, too; doing some gardening, with ringing guitars as accompaniment. If the voluntary simplicity movement doesn’t already have a theme song they could do worse than this disarmingly bittersweet number, for sure.

"I Was Young When I Left Home," Antony with Bryce Dessner

Before this song, all I knew about Antony was Hercules and Love Affair’s retro-disco “Blind” from last year and some ugly pretentious or pretentiously ugly, I’m not sure which, record covers. This, nonetheless, is the best Dylan song put out in ‘09. Purists might have trouble with Antony’s celestial falsetto but if you liked Bowie’s “Song For Bob Dylan” or any Iron & Wine song or ever lost something you loved, you’ll be right at home here. “I Was Young When I Left Home,” croons Antony in his trembling falsetto, making a traditional song sound as indelibly pop as the Cowboy Junkies doing “Sweet Jane.” There’s this old canard that songs are somehow more subjective than albums. I disagree but this song makes me wonder. “I never wrote a letter to my home” and “baby sister gone all wrong” and “can’t go home this way” and “when I pay the debt I owe to the commissary store then I’ll pawn my watch and chain and I’ll go home.” It’s not the story of my life— in this economy, I’m relatively debt free and get to see my parents— but it does intersect with it enough that it makes me want to cry. I found it on Dark Was The Night, a good way to hear some of the best of the progressive freaky folk rock sounds of contemporary indieland. If I sound too sarcastic for you let me try to put my finger on my general ambivalence about the Grizzly Bears and Animal Collectives (it's a veritable zoo) by saying simply: too much Peter Gabriel! Not here, though. And if you find Antony's face-painting foppishness too subjective he’s got a rejoinder already readymade: “If you missed the train I’m on/count the days that I’m gone/you can here the whistle blow 100 miles.” Let’s hear it for the boy.

country gals tellin' it like it is

“Fifteen,” Taylor Swift- The music is about as gritty as a John Cougar Mellencamp car commercial. Esatz, sure; there’s no virtuoso soloists here. Excepting, perhaps, Taylor’s voice, which is fragile, limited; as girl-next-door faceless as any Dixie Chick or Bangle. And that is as it should be, the better to render her songs raw and still somehow emblematic, personal and still somehow universal, like pop songs are supposed to be. Jaded rocker machismo cannot abide Swift’s frilly gossamer lite country pop. But to fifteen year-old girls, like the two in this song, she’s a hero. And tougher than you think: “back then I swore I was going to marry him someday but I’ve realized some bigger dreams of mine.” I don’t want to make too big of deal of her story telling, as it’s not essential to what I think makes great pop, but in pop it’s rarely done better than this. From the git—“you take a deep breath/and you walk through the doors/it’s your very first day/say hi to your friends/and try to stay out of everybody's way”— she takes you there. High school, a ruthless popularity contest, full of shiny new hopes and muffled miseries. Endure, kids; endure.

“Only Prettier,” Miranda Lambert- This was closer to my Number One until I watched the videos, where in every version I checked Miranda is, confoundingly, restrained and serious. When this song is, in fact, a stridently big bodacious grinner that stomps and swings cheerfully. “Let’s shake hands and reach across those party lines,” challenges Lambert, “we’re a lot like you, only prettier”! The song is so damn winning I imagine it’d make curmudgeonly partisan columnist Paul Krugman reconsider bipartisanship. “I got a mouth like a sailor and yours is more like a Hallmark card,” she chides. The strutting crunch and sociable lap-steel guitar melody make you want to hug a redneck. Or at least imagine the possibility you could coexist happily with one for the duration of the song. Besides a couple other tugs at the heart her latest album is kind of hohum, though. Why is it the country music outsider alt-rockers love most always seems to turn out to be not as good as you might have hoped?

Rock & roll

"Heads Will Roll," Yeah Yeah Yeahs- The summer hit of ’09, it is unfathomable to me how, more than any of my top three, anybody could resist this club rocker; as if they would have to be somehow immune to the collision of music and physical sensation. Sure, it’s as tritely nostalgic as P-Funk’s “free your ass and your mind will follow” and as emotionally powerful as, uh, masturbation? The synths are as goth as a hearse racing the streets after midnight, the thumping riffage as synthetically powerful as a dentist drill, and the bridge pure Donna Summer disco. Pop music. Dance music. As rock & roll as any shama-lama-ding-dong! Off with your head, just dance!

"If I Can't Have You," Kelly Clarkson- Apparently, I’m the only person in America who really, really likes this song, but I imagine it’s a huge hit with Japanese train commuters. It doesn’t replace “Since U Have Been Gone” as her song but it is heart-racingly classic rock & roll. More Out of Our Heads than Beggars Banquet but rock & roll nonetheless. The blaring buzz to the computerized production kicks like late-night coffee. In a sense Clarkson’s ain’t –no-mountain-high-enough pipes make it harder to tell whether she feels something or is just flexing her muscles but what, as the kids might say, a beast she is w/ those muscles! “I haven’t seen the best that love has to offer…but we can break the rules,” she wails. I’m pretty sure she means it.

"Tie My Hands," Lil Wayne & Robin Thicke

Okay, it’s ab the aftermath of an event from ‘05, was released in ‘08, but it took til ‘09 for “right now we just ridin’ on love, a shot in the dark” to cut through my defenses and “they don’t want us to see but we already know” to register w/ me as Us, like a post-Katrina “won’t get fooled again.” So sue me, I’m slow! Amidst the run-on raps and forays into rock and hard-to-find mixtapes that never sound as good as the critical hype would have you believe, Lil Wayne is still now and then able to make his ridiculously vein boasting sound essential. And then dismissed as Justin Timberlake’s dorky sitcom Canadian cousin by people who should know better, Robin Thicke has made the best blue-eyed soul-sexy-lover’s rock-RnB of the last decade. Together, they’re butter and toast. Post-intellectual, post-cynicism. Obama wins the Presidency, the Saints win the Superbowl, what comes next for a hope and a prayer? We could use some Big Easy right about now, no?

you can't be neutral on a moving train

Howard Zinn, historian and political activist, succumbed to a heart attack swimming Wednesday at 87, evoking for me an image of this intrepid champion of the underdog struggling against the current. Something Zinn has done for over a half century with pugnacious wisdom and irascible humor. The linked obituary, although honorable, for the sake of social context, shares Princeton historian Sean Wilentz's critique of Zinn's counter-cultural history of the U.S.: "turning old heroes into villains...after awhile the glow gets unreal." For me, Zinn's people's history made real sense out of the raw deals and broken dreams I'd been dodging my whole life; family and friends losing jobs, struggling to make ends-meet, the strain on relationships. Zinn gives voice to every worker-minority-immigrant-woman-poor-farmer In American history used up and discarded like an old wheelbarrow. In his heart a belief that progress, such as it is, never fast or big enough, is always forged by the leadership of people and not the benevolent concessions of elites chronicled in textbooks. Class war? Fuckin'-A-right! But few can keep up the good fight. The jingoistic Americanism, greedy capitalism, hawkish militarism, the spiritual desolation and widespread social conservatism grinds you down. But not Zinn, swimming against the current until the very end. I don't know that I would have found my way to teaching without his People's History of the United States. For me, Howard Zinn is one of the very few great American heroes. R.I.P.

One of my better-late-than-never finds from '09 year-end lists, sort of: "Listomania" and "1901" appear on the lists but I like this tune better. Say you've lost your way, lonely, the songs asks, "where would you go with a lasso?" I'd try Whole Foods or the Fremont farmer's market, see if I couldn't rustle up me a little lady. Nothing artier-than-thou, just zoom-zoom power pop w/ a gleaming electro-sheen.

Starting Over

“Starting Over,” Black Lips: Begins with some 12-string Searchers jangle that is intentionally garagy. The voice is some off-script drunkin’ karaoke warble about how he’s gotta keep running and drink some beer and blow out his mind, etc. All of which wouldn’t signify that much if it wasn’t for the crowd counterpointing dude’s sloppy lament with soothing “ahhhs” and beseeching “starting overs.” The chorus transforms the inarticulate pain towards something like a catharsis. The lead ends with some wounded animal cries of “allllriight” a la Darkness Springsteen. It’s all so physically satisfying I’m willing to imagine drunk guy might even give up the hooch. Or not.

Pet Shop Boys "Love, Etc."

“Love Etc.,” Pet Shop Boys: Split the Pet Shop Boys career into an early pop period and a club period. (And then maybe a musical theater period, although I’m entirely unfamiliar with this one?) From the club period I like the first three or four tracks of Very and lose interest after that. Fifteen years later this song feels like a throwback, and an unassuming one. The first four or five times through I thought, ‘okay, but why not just put on Discography?’ Fifty plus plays later I think “Love Etc.”’s a piece of pop pastry, dreamy electro-pop tempo, hooks galore, big-boy choruses, perfect for 2009. It’s Yes-We-Can pop jingoism (“I believe we can achieve the love that we need”) and still wryly sardonic (“you don’t have to be beautiful but it helps”). Their gayness has never (nor maybe their lousy videos either?) played well in the States but their pop craftiness rules as far as I’m concerned.

You Need More!

2009: Top of the Pops Songs

Top Ten
1. “Love Etc.,” Pet Shop Boys
2. “Starting Over,” Black Lips
3. “Tie My Hands,” Robin Thicke & Lil Wayne
4. “Heads Will Roll,” Yeah Yeah Yeahs
5. “If I Can’t Have You,” Kelly Clarkson
6. “Fifteen,” Taylor Swift
7. “Only Prettier,” Miranda Lambert
8. “I Was Young When I Left Home,” Antony with Bryce Dessner
9. “Strange Enough,” N.A.S.A. (featuring Wu Tang & Karen O.)
10.“Gardeninginginging,” Knight School

Runners Up
11. “Next Hype,” Tempa T
12. “Day ‘n’ Nite,” Kid Cudi
13. “Space,” Sarah Buxton
14. “You’re Not Sorry,” Taylor Swift
15. “Rockin’ That Thang,” The-Dream
16. “My Heart Is Open,” Keith Urban
17. “Be By Myself,” Asher Roth & Cee-Lo
18. “Oh Lonesome Me,” M. Ward & Lucinda Williams
19. “Hey There Ophelia,” MC Lars (featuring Brett Anderson & Gabe Saporta)
20. “Animal,” Miike Snow
21. “I Gotta Feeling,” Black Eyed Peas
22. “Poker Face,” Lady Gaga
23. “Psychic City,” YACHT
24. “Even Now,” Caitlin & Will
25. “Tightrope,” Yeasayer
26. “Never Gonna Happen,” Lily Allen
27. “Right Hand Hi,” Kid Sister
28. “Of the Mountains,” Dan Deacon
29. “My Wife’s Home Town,” Bob Dylan
30. “Tin Birds,” Blank Dogs
31. “Let’s Go Surfing,” The Drums
32. “Nu Style,” Shystie
33. “Fork In The Road,” Neil Young
34. “Wrong,” Depeche Mode
35. “Young Adult Friction,” The Pains of Being Earnest
36. “Do It for Free,” Sarah Borges & The Broken Singles
37. “Blue Snakes,” Canyon
38. “Knock You Down,” Keri Hilston, Kanye West & Ne-Yo
39. “Moth’s Wings,” Passion Pit
40. “Make Her Say," Kid Cudi

So here it is. Some justifications may or may not follow. Radio professionals looking for further progamming consultation leave a message and I'll get back you. If it wasn't for a whole bunch of people who listen to waaay more current releases than I do this would be a list of a whole bunch of Robyn and Wedding Present and Kinks and Le Tigre and Rollings Stones and Handsome Boy Modeling School songs, so thank you. You know who you are and I won't call you out right now so as to spare you from being blamed for my crassly commercial and willfully obscure tastes.