« November 2008 | Main | January 2009 »
December 31, 2008
Stop Getting Your News from TV!
I want to add a thought about Kevin's chart of the day, which shows that more people now get their news from the internet than from newspapers, an unsurprisingly but still foreboding development.
The chart also shows that people still get most of their news from TV. Internet and newspapers lag far behind. This is at the root of so many of the complaints Americans have about the news media. The worst and most common sins of the media are committed by TV news: substituting confrontational debates for substantive discussions; treating serious subjects too briefly or not at all; spending too much time on Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and missing blond women in Aruba or wherever. I recognized that newspapers and especially blogs and internet outlets have serious problems. But if you want long-form journalism that takes a single subject and works it over for 10,000 words (something that will take 45 minutes to read and really teach you something in the process), you've got to turn to magazines and their websites. (Try here, here, or here to begin.) And if you want breaking news that brings horrible things like warrantless wiretapping or black sites into the open, you've got to turn to newspapers and their websites. So next time someone tells you they're fed up with the media, take away his or her TV remote and hand him or her a copy of The New Yorker. I'd bet Wolf Blitzer, in his heart of hearts, would recommend the same thing.
Year's Best Culture Interviews
From John Cusack banter to Joss Whedon podcasts, MoJo talked with some fascinating culture-makers this year. Below, six of our favorite culture interviews of 2008.
Iranian exile Marjane Satrapi speaks out.
Five questions for the pop-art provocateur of Andre the Giant poster fame.
The Oscar-winning filmmaker talks about turning his camera on Abu Ghraib for Standard Operating Procedure. Plus, the best political ads you never saw and why.
The MoJo Interview: John Cusack
The former Lloyd Dobler banters with MoJo editor Clara Jeffery about his movie War, Inc., her inner 16-year-old, and what it's like to still be Gen X's favorite antihero heartthrob.
The MoJo Interview: Bill Maher
Caustic comedian Bill Maher on his new movie Religulous, bargaining with God, and why Christianity is just as crazy as Scientology.
The MoJo Interview: Joss Whedon
The geek god behind Dollhouse, Buffy, and Firefly talks about "womb envy" and why feminists are hot.
December 30, 2008
MoJo Faves of 2008: Phone Sex, Aryan Outfitters, and More Photo Editor's Picks
We get a lot of exceptional photo essays submitted each week. It's hard to pick just one per issue, and even with the expanded outlet of the website, there's still not enough room for everything worthy that passes across my desk. Between the photo essays that ran in the magazine in 2008, and those that found a home on the Mother Jones website, this was a bang-up year for picture stories here.
That said, below are my five personal favorite MoJo photo essays of 2008.
Out of Iowa by Danny Wilcox-Frazier
One of my absolute favorites. Having grown up in the Midwest, I can relate to the photos in a visceral way. Not just the content and subject, but the style, the point of view, the context. The photos have a remarkable, quiet intensity, such a Midwestern trait. It's fitting that Wilcox-Frazier won the Duke First Book prize for this body of work, even more so that Robert Frank was the judge the year this project won. Look for more work by Wilcox-Frazier here in Mother Jones in the future.
Phone Sex Workers by Phillip Toledano
While the photos themselves are beautiful portraits of usually unseen people, it's the pairing of the photos with the subjects' stories that makes this project so riveting. That, and you see what a diverse and really interesting group of people phone sex workers are. On a related note, Jona Frank's series of portraits, Right, works on almost the opposite principle—focusing on everyday people, college kids you could see anywhere. This particular group of people happen to attend Patrick Henry College, a self-described Evangelical Ivy League school. Many are training for a life in politics, working for Republicans. It's not a secret world, but a world very foreign to most readers of Mother Jones. It's good to get to know your neighbors, or your enemies, however you see them.
Aryan Outfitters by Anthony Karen
I'm a sucker for photo essays that dig deep, that take the viewer into a slice of life that most people don't even know exists. Karen's long-term project on the White Power movement in the United States brought him to the home of Ms. Ruth, a seamstress who makes Ku Klux Klan robes. It's a simple but absolutely fascinating aspect of a (photo) story that's been told countless times. Someone has to make the robes, right? It's almost a Gay Talese-like vignette, a compelling look at somebody who does something very mundane and, on one level, very ordinary. Karen's complete book on the KKK, Invisible Empire: Ku Klux Klan, will be published by PowerHouse in April 2009.
The Last Empire by James Whitlow Delano
When we published Whitlow Delano's China photos, the world was just about to head into the Olympics, and with that, into a visual overload of all things Chinese. By the time other photographers' parachutes were just opening and they were spreading out through the country, Whitlow Delano was on his way out, after having spent a number of years there. His photos cut through the clutter and crap giving you a street-level view of the the humble, the absurd, the mundane, and the spectacular. They are gritty, immediate, and sublimely elegant, all at once. His photos of still stand out above most other images that flooded out of China over the past year.
Bolivia's Cocaine Trade: A Bitter Leaf by Marco Vernaschi
In a still-in-the-works long term project, Italian photographer Marco Vernaschi tackles a big, complicated, and dangerous story. Showing how the domestic troubles of Bolivia's miners feeds into the cocaine trade, Vernaschi shot in the mountains and jungles of South American, bringing viewers into places few outsiders see. He shows not just protest miners, but their families too. Cocaine producers, as well as the villagers who work for them and the federal officials fighting them. It's a level of commitment that is not easy to keep up. The result is a rich photo essay that takes us beyond what we've seen and farther than what we think we know.
December 29, 2008
What Kind of New Year's Eve Will You Have?
Gawker claims there are only five kinds of New Year's Eve parties.
Poor me, I'm a definite number 4.
December 26, 2008
Eartha Kitt Dies at 81
Legendary singer and actress Eartha Kitt died yesterday of cancer at age 81. The AP described her as rising "from South Carolina cotton fields to become an international symbol of elegance and sensuality," while the New York Times called her a "seducer of audiences" whose wide-ranging career presaged current entertainers:
Ms. Kitt, who began performing in the late 40s as a dancer in New York, went on to achieve success and acclaim in a variety of mediums long before other entertainment multitaskers like Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand and Bette Midler. ... With her curvaceous frame and unabashed vocal come-ons, she was also, along with Lena Horne, among the first widely known African-American sex symbols.
After the jump, video of Kitt singing "Santa Baby," a hit in 1953.
December 23, 2008
Melissa Etheridge Meets with Rick Warren, Responds to Controversy
Singer Melissa Etheridge has posted a statement about the Rick Warren "wrangle" at HuffPo in which she describes meeting the pastor at an event for the Muslim Public Affairs Council over the weekend. She called the pastor "very thoughtful" and said he "regretted" comparing gays to pedophiles:
On the day of the conference I received a call from Pastor Rick, and before I could say anything, he told me what a fan he was. He had most of my albums from the very first one. What? This didn't sound like a gay hater, much less a preacher. He explained in very thoughtful words that as a Christian he believed in equal rights for everyone. He believed every loving relationship should have equal protection. He struggled with proposition 8 because he didn't want to see marriage redefined as anything other than between a man and a woman. He said he regretted his choice of words in his video message to his congregation about proposition 8 when he mentioned pedophiles and those who commit incest. He said that in no way, is that how he thought about gays. He invited me to his church, I invited him to my home to meet my wife and kids.
Hooray?
In the piece, she urges gays to "stretch out our hands" to "hateful people," even suggesting that we volunteer "en mass" for organizations affiliated with Warren's church. Sure, the Saddleback web site apparently removed the section banning persons "unwilling to repent of their homosexual lifestyle" from membership at the church, and Warren popped up at a really gay thrift store in West Hollywood just yesterday (which, as Towleroad points out, Mike Barnicle left out of his list of the five places gays live). But framing the debate around whether Warren manages to maintain general standards of human decency and lawfulness around apparent queers is not the point, as David Corn so clearly pointed out in his earlier piece on the controversy: the point is whether someone who has made such offensive statements so recently should be invited to give the invocation at Barack Obama's inauguration. So while I respect Etheridge for making the effort to be friendly with Pastor Warren, I'm not backing down on speaking out, and I'm sure as hell not volunteering for his AIDS charities. Daily Kos recently featured a post noticing that Warren only seems to like gays when they're sick; you can add "when they're famous and make albums you like" to that list, I guess, too.
2008 Box Office Champs Prove Americans Like Flying Guys, Talking Animals
Box Office Mojo's chart of the past 365 days at the box office has a couple surprises, and none of them are reassuring about our nation's taste in movies. While even a cave-dweller would know that The Dark Knight snagged the most of our hard-earned cash in its batty claws this year, I bet you can't guess the #2 movie, or tell me what three (or four?) kiddie flicks giggled their computer-generated, disturbingly-anthropomorphic ways into the Top 10. It's all pretty depressing, to be honest, so take a deep breath and click "continues" to find out.
Top Ten Grossing Movies, Dec. 24, 2007 - Dec. 22, 2008
1. The Dark Knight ($530,822,957)
2. Iron Man ($318,313,199)
3. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ($317,023,851)
4. Hancock ($227,946,274)
5. WALL-E ($223,773,410)
6. Kung Fu Panda ($215,434,591)
7. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa ($172,901,193)
8. Quantum of Solace ($161,664,762)
9. Twilight ($159,776,480)
10. Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! ($154,592,439)
That's right, Iron Man was #2, just barely beating out Indiana Jones, although over $200 million separates the Batman from the rest of the, er, flock. I guess we should just be glad Beverly Hills Chihuahua didn't make it on the list.
While there's a week left in 2008, it looks like their Top 10 will probably stay the same, since numbers 11 and 12 are Sex and the City and Mamma Mia!, respectively, and neither seem likely to experience a huge post-Christmas surge. However, with only about five million bucks separating WALL-E from Hancock, there's a fighting chance the best movie on that list could overtake the, er, 6th-worst, in the next 7 days. Get out there and spend money on WALL-E, people!
December 22, 2008
Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young Set for Glastonbury; Coachella Rumors Heat Up
What better pastime on this dreary winter day than happily imagining ourselves sprawled on the lawn at a summer music festival, trying to catch a glimpse of the performers between the dancing hippies? Festival promoters are even helping with our creative visualizations by making some lineup announcements. The UK Sun reports that Glastonbury has "gone back to basics" this year with two legendary performers set as headliners: Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young. God bless those guys, but they're probably the only respectable musicians around who could make co-headliners Blur seem young. Ouch, I know, but for reals. Of course, this is the festival that caused an outburst of creepily-verging-on-racist complaints when headliner Jay-Z was announced for the 2008 edition, although the fact that the rapper ended up cheekily covering Oasis' "Wonderwall" at the show seemed to make it all worthwhile. But you can't help wondering if festival boss Michael Eavis is so desperate to avoid a similar controversy, he's going with the oldest, whitest, most respectable rockers around? (And Blur?) (Why am I being so mean to them?)
After the jump: can we legally start Coachella rumors before January 1?
California's hot and dusty interpretation of Glasto otherwise known as Coachella will move up from its traditional end-of-April date and take place April 17-19, 2009, so I suppose it's okay to start the lineup speculation two weeks early. Of course, the biggest rumor every year sprouted up again, but Johnny Marr already put the kibosh on that one, dagnabbit. Fake flyers seem to pop up every year, and Stereogum posted the first one a while back; we kind of have a love-hate relationships with these things—it's fun to use our imaginations, but the real lineup, when announced, always pales in comparison. This year's "dream team" includes previous headliners The White Stripes and Daft Punk as well as the oft-hoped for David Bowie; the fake flyer also includes longshots like Lil Wayne and the Cocteau Twins. You go, graphic designers!
A purportedly-more-reputable blog (is that an oxymoron?) has the interminable Killers headlining, along with that Neil Young guy and predictable appearances by Franz Ferdinand, Crystal Castles, Primal Scream, and Fleet Foxes, as well as a deadpan listing of Hall and Oates. Well, I suppose they were pretty amusing on Jon Stewart.
So, Riffers: dream festival lineups or previous headliners that made you wince? Comment away!
December 19, 2008
U2 Set to Release New Album in March
Irish combo U2 will release a new album, No Line on the Horizon, on March 3, the band's label announced yesterday. Horizon was originally expected this year, but there were some false starts: material recorded in 2006 with producer Rick Rubin was tossed, and longtime U2 collaborators and producers Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite were brought back in; then, as the album was nearing the finishing stages, the band decided it needed two more songs. But I guess they finally finished the thing, and Billboard quotes a source as calling the material "amazing and a little out there." Okay!
Horizon will be U2's twelfth studio album, the follow-up to How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, which has sold over 9 million copies worldwide since its 2004 release. The band is also planning a 2009 tour as part of its crazy-lucrative stock deal with Live Nation.
After the jump, RX's brilliant edit of George W. Bush doing "Sunday Bloody Sunday."
Christmas Carols Get 8-bit Makeover
While most music genres race forward, absorbing new sonic technologies like a giant music-box Borg, the 8-bit phenomenon clings proudly to the past—specifically, the restrictive palette of classic computer and video game consoles. Even artists like Beck have seen the appeal of their buzzy, blippy tones; witness the 8-bit remix of "Hell Yes", renamed "Ghettochip Malfunction":
If you liked that, get ready for a very bleepy Christmas.
Via the UK Guardian comes notice of a new 8-bit album the whole family can enjoy: The 8bits of Christmas. The holiday-themed release features eight (natch) classic tunes performed by "chiptune maniacs" on various pieces of obsolete yet adored technology, like the Atari 2600 and the Commodore 64. Nullsleep's jittery version of "Silent Night" is about as calming as a locust attack, but wanders off intriguingly into new melodies; Bit Shifter's "Let It Snow" makes me want to play a video game where I fly a sleigh through some sort of snowman attack. Download mp3s of the tracks here, or listen below.
December 18, 2008
Analysis Shows White Dudes Dominated Billboard Charts in 2008
Boy, am I glad I didn't have to do the Excel work to come up with these charts. A dogged reporter named Randall Roberts at the LA Weekly has delved into the Billboard Top 10 album and singles charts for every week this year, tallied up demographic data about the artists, and made some dandy little diagrams with the results. It turns out that Americans really like white guys. Whites outnumbered blacks on the charts by 63 to 36 per cent (with Latinos grabbing the leftover 1%), while men outnumbered women on the charts by nearly a 5-to-2 ratio. High five, bros! As far as musical genre goes, R&B/hip-hop dominated the singles charts, while pop/rock commanded the album charts, so, combined, they're just about equal, with country way behind. Other odd statistical revelations include the fact that the South was the region that produced the most Top 10 hitmakers by far (attributable to an "unlikely Southern coalition" of country and R&B) and Rihanna singlehandedly helped her native Barbados to the Top 7 list of foreign countries represented on our charts. Okay, Barbados, you get a high-five too.
December 16, 2008
Top Ten Awesome Bush Shoe-Toss Animated GIFs
Sometimes the internet might seem like a vast wasteland of empty-headed blogs (ahem!), pornography, and pop-up ads, but then something like this happens, and it renews one's faith in having this series of tubes hooked up to our idea trucks. Or whatever. Journalist Muntather al Zaidi not only expressed Iraqi frustrations at still-President Bush with his famous footwear lob, but also inspired legions of Photoshoppers to create their own chuckle-riffic versions of the event and provide them on their internets for all to see. My ten favorite, via Boing Boing, HuffPo, Wired, and Urlesque after the jump.
10. Pokemon
9. Some weird video game (help?)
8. Tis the Season
7. Monty Python's Stomping Foot
6. The Oozinator!!
5. The Matrix
4. Bom
3. Austin Powers
2. Stooges
1. Cat
The Best Singles of 2008
What a bonkers year for singles. The undisputed heavyweight champion song of the year, with the magical combo of hipster cred and unexpected popular appeal, is, inarguably, copyright 2007, so any replacement #1 will necessarily feel kind of anticlimactic. I suppose it's stretching it to include MGMT as well, but everybody else is, so I'm going to look the other way. It's a mess. To be honest, I finally settled on 20 great songs and then scrambled the order until it looked right. What emerged on top was at first a surprise, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense: it's a convention-smashing ode to staking a claim on your future, no matter what the haters say.
1. Santogold - "LES Artistes"
There's a new genre in town: the song about becoming famous that helps make you famous. I suppose the White Stripes "Little Room" got it started, but Santi White's clear-eyed look into her own future covers the joy, the nerves, the trepidation, and the regret involved in creativity and fame, with a dis to the wannabes who try and take you down. "I can say I hope it will be worth what I give up," she sings, over a soaring guitar riff that out-rocks anything Metallica or G N' R spit up this year, a moment where greatness and ambivalence are inextricably linked.
2. Lil Wayne - "A Milli"
The most sonically menacing three and a half minutes in pop music this year. Consisting entirely of a collosal bass drum, a slowed-down sample of A Tribe Called Quest, and Wayne's growling vocals, the track maintains an almost unbearable level of tension. In terms of, well, notes, here's what I think is happening: the bass drum is one step up from the sample, and Wayne's rap holds a monotone two steps down, creating an uncomfortable harmony that never resolves. It's a perfect backdrop for lyrics whose braggadocio is so surreal as to be both hilarious and kind of terrifying.
3. MGMT - "Time To Pretend"
The second of two "get ready to be famous" songs this year, Brooklyn's MGMT take the opposite road from Santogold, choosing to see pop music and fame as a game, sarcastically imagining their rock star futures: "Let's make some music, make some money, find some models for wives." However, it's paired with a tune that couldn't be more sincere: a massive keyboard riff and the loping dance-rock rhythm that's anchored great singles from "Float On" to "Sunday Bloody Sunday."
4. Glasvegas - "Geraldine"
This Scottish quartet found the sonic link between U2 and the Jesus and Mary Chain, adding the kind of charming, heart-tugging lyrics you could sing, teary-eyed, in your local pub. The simple two-chord backing track shudders with a gargantuan reverb, providing a perfect background for singer James Allan's precision vocal melodies, which add syllables to the words in a thick brogue: "My name is Geraldine, ay-yeem yee-er soh-cial worr-er-kerrr!"
5. Fake Blood - "Mars"
There was a moment in the early '90s when great rave singles seemed to discover an awesome, effective trick: access the driving intensity of techno and the uplifting drama of house by alternating the two! Genius! Bizarre Inc. did it most memorably in "Playing with Knives," but the mysterious UK producer known as Fake Blood has updated the formula for the oughts with cutting-edge production tricks and a silly sense of humor. A bass line careens like an out-of-control spaceship, giving way to a strangely filtered set of exultant chords, and then a quick vocal sample chimes in as an afterthought: "Mars!"
6. Kanye West - "Love Lockdown"
Even on this list of crazy tunes, this may be the strangest song of them all. A minimalistic combo of a tuned bass and cheesy electronic piano chords gives way to massive, pounding tribal drums in the chorus, all underneath a mechanized, muffled Robo-Kanye. It's categorized as "hip-hop" on iTunes, but it's most akin to mechanical electro like Royksopp's "Remind Me" or even The Human League's "Don't You Want Me," using machines to form a perfect expression of the frozen emotional landscape of heartbreak.
7. Vampire Weekend - "A-Punk"
An irresistible slice of chiming ska-inflected Afropop, made all the more charming by the fact that it turned out to be made by four white dudes from New York singing about Washington Heights and, er, Sloan-Kettering. The jangling guitar gives way to a keyboard line of simple major chords, and even the line "Look outside at the raincoats coming" can't dampen the song's sunny spirit. It's over in two minutes, and you want to start it right back up again.
8. DJ Mujava - "Township Funk"
Leave it to the UK's Warp Records to discover that the South African dance music style kwaito is sounding a lot like the early experiments in proto-techno that came out of Detroit and Chicago. This track has a three-chord pattern and an immediately catchy, blippy keyboard line, but it still sounds exotic and mildly unhinged. It could be the syncopated, marching drum pattern, or maybe the rumors are true and Mujava's got some issues. Either way, he created one of the strangest dancefloor killers this year.
9. Portishead - "Machine Gun"
Whether this is the finest moment on Third is debatable, and it isn't even the point. But as the first "teaser" single released before the highly-anticipated album, "Machine Gun" was the shot heard round the world. The distorted, staccato samples that comprise the backing track are even more disturbing than the song's namesake, mechanized but utterly alien noises, like alarms or warring space robots. The message couldn't have been more clear: this ain't your mama's Portishead.
10. Cut Copy - "Hearts on Fire"
The lyrics describe a moment "that could change your life," and the ecstatic, propulsive music rises to meet the promise, blasting great big chords and even a quick female "ah-ah" vocal sample, then breaking down to delicate arpeggios for the moment of truth: "I reach out to you tonight." Capturing the stirring drama of New Order and the blissful heights of house music, it feels like the first time your high school crush looked back at you.
11. Kid Cudi - "Day 'n' Nite" (Crookers remix)
An unassuming new singer from Cleveland gets a storming, stuttering remix from the Italian techno duo of the moment.
12. Pitbull - "Krazy"
Another inspired combination of American hip-hop and Italian techno. Who knew?
13. Deerhunter - "Nothing Ever Happened"
Punk rock energy meets drone-rock expansiveness; the chorus contains the only half-step vocal harmony I think I've ever heard.
14. Hercules & Love Affair - "Blind"
A funky dance tune that understands the melancholy at disco's heart.
15. T.I. & Rihanna - "Live Your Life"
A cavalcade of cheesy references creating a moment of pure pop joy.
16. TV on the Radio - "Golden Age"
Who else could rhyme "natural disaster" with "ghetto blaster" and get away with it?
17. Friendly Fires - "Jump in the Pool"
An thrilling moment of dance-rock glory.
18. T.I. & Jay-Z - "Swagga Like Us"
The weirdest "Paper Planes" remix ever.
19. Busta Rhymes - "Don't Touch Me"
A weirdly organic, jazzy turn from the fastest rapper in town.
20. Tie: Gnarls Barkley - "Going On" / Beck - "Gamma Ray"
Danger Mouse explores two sides of the same double-time beat.
So close, Ladyhawke, Surkin, Raveonettes! Alright, Riffers, there you have it. Great music I missed or overhyped tunes I've drunk the Kool-aid on? Comment away.
December 15, 2008
Johnny Marr Quashes Smiths Reunion Rumor
Or, "William, It Was Really Nothing." Ahem. Reports emerged late last week that The Smiths were possibly maybe "on the verge" of a reunion, after lead singer Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr "settled their differences." The UK Telegraph was reporting that "industry sources believe that a comeback could be imminent." While just about every other band who ever broke up has already reunited, long-suffering Smiths fans likely didn't get their hopes up (mostly because Smiths fans don't really have any hopes to get up) and our abject cynicism and unfettered pessimism was proven right once again, as Marr has forcefully denied the rumors of a reunion to NME:
Marr issued a statement to NME.COM saying that rumours floating around that the band were reuniting were "untrue". He declared: "The stories circulating about a Smiths reunion are, as usual, untrue." Marr added he was committed to his current band The Cribs. "I'm currently very excited about writing and recording with The Cribs for a new album to be released next summer and we're playing shows in February, so going back in time isn't in my plans," he said.
Considering your musical promiscuousness post-Smiths, I'm sure The Cribs totally believe you.
If you remember back to mid-2007, Morrissey reportedly turned down a £40 million (about $900 quadrillion US) (not really) offer to reunite for a Smiths tour, the only requirement being the presence of both himself and Marr on the same stage at the same time. Jeez, guys, you'd think it would be Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke who would hold the biggest grudges, but I guess Moz wanting to do Cilla Black covers really, really pissed Johnny off. Well, I'd say something like "heaven knows I'm miserable now," but we all know I was already miserable.
The Best Albums of 2008
The word of 2008 may be "hope," but the uniting theme of the year's best albums is more like "anxiety." This year, TV on the Radio and Portishead looked ahead with trepidation, while M83 and Hercules and Love Affair found solace in excavating the past, and Kanye, Beach House and Lil Wayne gazed inward at their own troubled souls. However, bubbling under is a celebratory, genre-hopping eclecticism from Santogold, The Very Best, Vampire Weekend and Flying Lotus, a nascent vision of a new world. Maybe there's hope after all?
1. Portishead - Third (Island)
It's impossible to separate this album from its triumphant context—a band rising from, if not the dead, at least the comatose, and tossing out all their old instruments in pursuit of something new. What they created still sounds both shocking and inspiring, seven months after its release: an experiment in sometimes brutal, sometimes delicate sonics, held together by the perfectly-executed vocals of Beth Gibbons. While the lyrics explore the depths of despair, Gibbons sings with soaring confidence, sometimes hitting what sounds at first like a wrong note until the careening music shifts to resolve it. While it was clearly the musical achievement of the year, Third is such a challenging listen it's hard to recommend to the uninitiated. But like a dive into icy water, it may sting at first, but you'll emerge exhilarated, and feeling joyfully, utterly alive.
"Silence"
2. TV on the Radio - Dear Science (4AD/Interscope)
Our country's greatest band has managed to capture the hidden zeitgeist underlying the Obama party: confused, anxious dread, with progress in sight but far from certain. The beats shuffle along in syncopated grooves while the guitars add funky riffs, but vocalists Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone can't help but acknowledge their doubt, both in society and themselves: "I'm living a life not worth dying for," go the lyrics to "Red Dress," and you know they mean both us and our war, both a hope for change and a cry for help.
"Golden Age"
3. Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III (Cash Money)
Sure, I wasn't quite ready for this album when it finally came out; accustomed to Wayne's eclectic mixtapes, the familiar hip-hop tropes at work here at first felt like a throwback. But what I've realized is that the 26-year-old Dwayne Carter has devoured the lyrical and musical themes of hip-hop and spit out a strange, sometimes menacing and sometimes hilarious subversion of the genre. Fuck the police? Wayne takes that literally, turning the siren of "Mrs. Officer" into a come-on. Bragging about your gunshot wounds? A 12-year-old Dwayne shoots himself on "Shoot Me Down." By nature a scattershot collection of the wildly prolific Wayne's material, a little focus could have made Tha Carter III transcendent. But its abounding strangeness makes it great.
"Mrs. Officer"
4. M83 - Saturdays = Youth (Mute)
Frenchman Anthony Gonzalez' tribute to the most guilelessly dramatic music of the '80s hasn't appeared on a lot of year-end best-ofs, so I wonder if maybe you had to be there. But to those of us raised on the Cocteau Twins, Kate Bush, and, well, The Breakfast Club, S = Y is like a long-overdue vindication—our love and angst was real! More so even than a mash-up, this is deeply referential music, its sounds inextricably linked to memory: "Kim & Jessie" pounds with Phil Collinsy drums, "We Own the Sky" swirls with New Ordery guitars. The album's philosophy is encapsulated by the final line of "Dark Moves of Love": "I will fight the time and bring you back."
"We Own the Sky"
5. Hercules & Love Affair - S/T (DFA)
With the ascendance of neo-disco hipsters like LCD Soundsystem, it's easy to forget that funky 4/4 beats weren't always cool. But this album, produced by New York DJ Andy Butler and a shifting lineup of cohorts, reminds us where disco came from: the gays! Or is that now "teh gheys?" Either way, it was a profoundly queer mix of celebratory beats and outsider passions that gave anthems like Sylvester's "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" their power, something H&LA understands intuitively. Bringing gifted vocalist Antony Hegarty into the mix was inspired, and his voice, both melancholy and strident, lifts up these reimaginings of classic sounds like a mythical hero.
"Blind"
6. The Very Best - Esau Mwamwaya & Radioclit Are the Very Best (self-released)
The most last-minute entry into my Top 10, The Very Best have made a head-spinning mixtape that puts the ground-breaking promise of M.I.A.'s world-conscious beats into exhilarating practice. UK combo Radioclit represent edgy electro, and vocalist Mwamwaya represents kwaito, a syncopated South African dance style, but this mix goes everywhere: a melodic version of M.I.A's own "Paper Planes," a stomping remix of Vampire Weekend, a newly vital sample of the Beatles. But as Pitchfork said, while this is joyfully global music, it's neither "condescending nor touristic," since it aims not to capture a tradition, but to express a personal vision.
Download the whole thing for free here!
7. Santogold vs. Diplo - Top Ranking (Mad Decent) / Santogold - S/T (Downtown)
A tie is a cheat, I know, but Diplo's wildly eclectic rework of the young singer's already-diverse debut serves as a companion album that both subverts and enhances the original. Santogold's array of styles touched on dub, new wave, and indie rock, channeling the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Sleater-Kinney only to turn and dive into bassy electronic weirdness; Diplo's 35-track (!) mix delves even deeper, expanding the palette into reggaeton, classic rock and, er, Gerri and the Holograms. Like TV on the Radio, Santi White doesn't so much trample genre as surf its waves, staying upright on the turbulence with an acute sense of balance and conviction.
"Lights Out"
8. Flying Lotus - Los Angeles (Stones Throw)
It's unfair, but understandable, to compare SoCal producer Steven Ellison to the late, great J Dilla: both are quirky solo producers making boundary-pushing, often instrumental hip-hop. But while Dilla's woozy, soulful tracks were products of isolation and melancholy, Ellison's sound crackles with energy, like the swirling, chaotic maelstrom of its namesake city. Samples range from sitar to harp, and even what sounds like a bleepy transmission from space, but this heir to the Coltranes arranges the cacophony into a jazzy, atmospheric whole.
"Roberta Flack"
9. Beach House - Devotion (Carpark)
This Baltimore duo's lilting ballads have the gentle appeal of Mazzy Star or Low, but you can tell they've had classical training, since each note and syllable is placed with seemingly effortless precision. Moreover, they use just about every instrument around—organs, pedal guitars, harpshichords. On top of it all floats Victoria Legrand's voice, pure and nearly vibrato-free. Her lyrics all focus on "you," whether it's offering that "your wish is my command" on "Wedding Bell" or begging "please do not go" on "You Came to Me." Whoever she's devoted to haunts the album like a ghost.
"You Came to Me"
10. Kanye West - 808s and Heartbreak (Island Def Jam)
Honestly, it was watching Kanye this weekend on Saturday Night Live that sealed the deal for me: his rendition of "Love Lockdown" was sloppy and often out of tune, but it was delivered with such raw emotional force that it left a lump in my throat. The LA Times quoted 19th century German philosopher Heinrich von Kleist in their review, saying that "grace appears most purely in that human form which either has no consciousness or an infinite consciousness." On 808s, Kanye tries to strip himself of his aching consciousness, burying his voice in fuzzy auto-tune and robotic beats, but what emerges is indeed graceful, and in fact, more human, not less. The fact that hip-hop's most radical experimenter was able to once again crash through the genre's boundaries is a shock in and of itself, but that he focused his agonized despair into art is all the more courageous.
"Welcome to Heartbreak"
11. Vampire Weekend - S/T (XL)
Too-smart white boys ape Afropop with such joy and wit that you put aside your Paul Simon memories and dance.
12. Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours (Modular)
The Australian combo separate themselves from the pack of '80s revivalists with a surprising stragegy—sincerity.
13. Deerhunter - Microcastle / Weird Era Cont. (kranky)
This Georgia combo inherits the blistering guitar work and pensive edginess of Sonic Youth.
14. Amadou & Mariam - Welcome to Mali (Because)
The duo brings their melancholy take on Malian music to the world, taking on electro, reggae and the Smiths like the coolest 50-year-olds around.
15. Friendly Fires - S/T (XL)
The UK combo takes dance rock to euphoric heights, evoking both shoegaze and Hot Chip.
16. The Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust (Vice)
The garage revivalists push their fuzzy retro-rock into gritty, modern territory.
17. Fleet Foxes - S/T (Sub Pop)
Hymnal, reverb-drenched odes avoid folk-rock clichιs with Beach Boys harmonies.
18. Quiet Village - Silent Movie (!K7)
Dance dudes make strange and wonderful lounge-exotica.
19. No Age - Nouns (Sub Pop)
LA kids deconstruct punk rock.
20. Dungen - 4 (Kemado)
Swedish psychedelia comes down to earth.
Coming soon: my top singles of the year, and no, "Single Ladies" will not be on top.
December 12, 2008
Some Writerly Advice
First I saw this silly article about women foregoing bikini waxes.
Then I read a WSJ article on laid-off execs growing beards.
Pubic hair. Beards.
I never wrote one word about the biggest story of my early journalism years: Monica Lewinsky. The controversy itself was so unworthy and the topic so beyond covered, I decided I'd hold off until and unless I had something worth saying about that topic. I never did, so I let that big story go without my 'expertise'. So here's my advice to writers trying to get in on Obama's win and the economy's losses: If you don't have something worthwhile to say, it's ok to say nothing. Really. A decent idea, or a story more in your line, will come along.
I will give the hair stories this though: Both the men and the women in these pieces feel like "real" men and women letting their hair go natural. What's up with that?
Torture Playlist: Trent Reznor Responds
Back in February, we posted a "Torture Playlist" featuring songs that the American military had used to, um, "enhance" interrogations, including tracks by Eminem, Drowning Pool, Metallica, and Rage Against the Machine. As Jesse Finfrock covered here on Wednesday, musicians have joined forces with a human rights organization to put a stop to the use of music as torture. Now, Stereogum points out that another artist has joined the voices of protest: Trent Reznor, whose music as Nine Inch Nails was used to torture Chicago military contractor Donald Vance. Yesterday, Reznor posted an outraged message at his official website entitled "Regarding NIN music used at Guantanamo Bay for torture":
It's difficult for me to imagine anything more profoundly insulting, demeaning and enraging than discovering music you've put your heart and soul into creating has been used for purposes of torture. If there are any legal options that can be realistically taken they wil