Pitchfork: Staff Lists: The Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s: 20-01

Made a playlist of the tracks I had (62). Lots of the less cool stuff, and none of the hip-hop. The funny thing is a few of these I only had on cassette and had to replace via itunes.

As with any list there's a lot of stuff that sounds old and dated, and other stuff that sounds fresh like it came out this week. There's stuff I bought on cassingles back in the day, and stuff I only discovered years later in the OOs. The oldest tracks are very emotional to me and evoke memories. The later stuff I can take with a grain of salt and appreciate intellectually. There's also a subset of music that has never left my CD player or MP3 player and therefore just sounds like another day.

192. Harvey Danger "Flagpole Sitta"
189. The Sundays "Here's Where the Story Ends"
184. The Cure "A Letter to Elise"
183. Mercury Rev "Holes"
175. Stone Temple Pilots "Interstate Love Song"
169. Suede "We Are the Pigs"
168. Alice in Chains "Would?"
152. Jane's Addiction "Stop!"
151. Green Day "Longview"
150. Fatboy Slim "Praise You"
149. Matthew Sweet "Girlfriend"
146. Julee Cruise "Falling"
140. Guns N' Roses "November Rain"
138. The Lemonheads "It's a Shame About Ray"
137. Pet Shop Boys "Being Boring"
128. Supergrass "Caught By the Fuzz"
125. Spacehog "In the Meantime"
124. James "Laid"
118. Morrissey "Now My Heart Is Full"
113. Cornershop "Brimful of Asha"
111. The La's "There She Goes"
106. New Radicals "You Get What You Give"
105. Happy Mondays "Kinky Afro"
98. Elastica "Stutter"
87. Liz Phair "Fuck and Run"
85. Air "All I Need"
74. Wilco "Via Chicago"
72. R.E.M. "Nightswimming"
70. Boards of Canada "Roygbiv"
68. Saint Etienne "Avenue"
66. The Cardigans "Lovefool"
59. Deee-Lite "Groove Is in the Heart"
54. Portishead "Glory Box"
52. The Stone Roses "I Wanna Be Adored"
50. Oasis "Live Forever"
43. The Chemical Brothers [ft. Noel Gallagher] "Setting Sun"
40. The Orb "Little Fluffy Clouds"
39. Beastie Boys "Sabotage"
37. Sinead O'Connor "Nothing Compares 2 U"
36. Guided by Voices "Game of Pricks"
34. New Order "Regret"
32. Bonnie "Prince" Billy "I See a Darkness"
31. Underworld "Born Slippy .NUXX"
29. The Verve "Bitter Sweet Symphony"
26. Blur "Girls & Boys"
24. Built to Spill "Car"
23. Spiritualized "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space"
22. The Breeders "Cannonball"
21. The Smashing Pumpkins "1979"
19. Mazzy Star "Fade Into You"
18. Daft Punk "Da Funk"
17. Belle and Sebastian "The State I Am In"
15. Depeche Mode "Enjoy the Silence"
13. Nirvana "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
11. Bjork "Hyperballad"
10. Weezer "Say It Ain't So"
9. Beck "Loser"
7. Neutral Milk Hotel "Holland, 1945"
6. My Bloody Valentine "Only Shallow"
4. Radiohead "Paranoid Android"
2. Pulp "Common People"
1. Pavement "Gold Soundz"

Pitchfork: Album Reviews: M.I.A.: / \ / \ / \ Y / \

Had to know this was coming. There was no way M.I.A. was going to survive all of her new found fame with her Pitchfork cred intact.

Beatles Week

Pitchfork's coverage of the Beatles reissues have more than made up for their pointless oughts retrospective. There this, from their review of Abbey Road:

The Beatles' run in the 1960s is good fodder for thought experiments. For example, Abbey Road came out in late September 1969. Though Let It Be was then still unreleased, the Beatles wouldn't record another album together. But they were still young men: George was 26 years old, Paul was 27, John was 28, and Ringo was 29. The Beatles' first album, Please Please Me, had come out almost exactly six and a half years earlier. So if Abbey Road had been released today, Please Please Me would date to March 2003. So think about that for a sec: Twelve studio albums and a couple of dozen singles, with a sound that went from earnest interpreters of Everly Brothers and Motown hits to mind-bending sonic explorers and with so many detours along the way-- all of it happened in that brief stretch of time. That's a weight to carry.

Which really puts things into perspective when you look at how much (or how little, depending on how you look at it) the bands of the oughts have accomplished in the same amount of time: Radiohead, Wilco, Arcade Fire, etc. all pale in comparison.

That being said, George is still my secret favorite:

The Stone Roses - "Fool's Gold"

Now that they're re-releasing the first Stone Roses album as a 20th anniversary edition, I can no longer escape just how freaking old I am. Still, a classic. I covet every single one of these guitar licks.

Hang the DJ

Having spent the weekend with Pitchfork's Top 500 list (I discovered that I had all of 153, plus some others that I'd never bothered to rip from CD), I've come to the conclusion that music, particularly in the MP3 age, is a really poor way of gauging the zeitgeist.

500 songs and very little that speaks to the alienating jingoism of the Bush years, the haunting disruption of 9/11, the war on terror, the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the tech boom and bust, the fall of the stock market, the credit crunch, the collapse of the housing bubble. No Ikea, Apple Store, Target, Prius. No Obama. Nothing on the rise of Gen-Y, the middle-aging of Gen-X, or the fading of the boomers into senescence. Nothing, in fact about the way we've lived our lives for the last ten years. Just a lot of timid noise and burble, self-regarding hipsters and in-it-for-the-money pop-stars. Ultimately, little of relevance.

You'll get a much more engaging view of the world if you look at the way TV has changed and altered, both itself and our relationship to the world over the last ten years -- the cool medium only getting colder: emotive 24 hour cable news, so-called reality programming, the ascendancy of HBO-style dramas, Bravo competition shows and TV on DVD, the DVR and the end of appointment viewing. And so on.

Pitchfork's Epic Listmaking Arrgggh

I'm not exactly sure what the point of Pitchfork's best of the 00's lists are, but there is something a little oppressive and totalitarian about it. Just in case you're worried that you might have had an independent thought in the last 10 years, Pitchfork is here to ensure that you know that there were only 500 songs worth listening to, ranked in order of something or other. Radiohead (#24) is very good, but not as very good as Kelly Clarkson (#21). Morrissey (#181) is marginally good, but Britney Spears (#141) is marginally good-er. It's all epically meaningless. And what's the point if "Hey Ya" turns out to be the best song of the decade (my pick, "Such Great Heights" by the Postal Service flared out at #89)? What's been proved? Get your own iPod and press shuffle. You'll probably get an equally meaningful set of results.

Blur's Midlife Crisis

Damon Albarn and the gang get some well deserved respect from Pitchfork.

R.E.M. - Reckoning

Pitchfork has a review of R.E.M.'s Reckoning Remaster that's so good, it makes you want to hear the album on cassette tape:

Declaring Reckoning to be R.E.M.'s "best" album sells short just how many different kinds of great albums R.E.M. have released. But, more so than any other R.E.M. record, Reckoning is unified and energized by the very restlessness that has driven the band to explore so many different ideas and identities. It is this paradoxical engine of transparency and mystery that has made the band so unique, regardless of the particular approach they choose to take for a given record. Any way you look at it, this is R.E.M.

Where's my boom box?

Pitchfork's Provincialism

Pitchfork smugly tries to justify its own failures and lack of taste by slagging a perfectly innocent, good but not great, Glasvegas record:

Last year, the NME placed Vampire Weekend on its cover and declared that we were living in a time of renewed greatness in American music. Not long after, a blogger at The Guardian made essentially the same claim. Weirdly, the conventional wisdom for those of us on this side of the Atlantic was just the opposite, the line being that 2008 was a relatively ho-hum time for American indie rock. My suggestion for UK indie: It's not us, it's you. In the past few years, it's too few art school bands, too few mavericks, and too few iconoclasts; it's far too many groups that amount to a haircut, a worn copy of Is This It?, and a provincial accent. Above all, it's far too many bands that confuse ambition with chart placements instead of creativity.

No really, Pitchfork it is you. And here's the proof in your final paragraph:

Here in America, we spent a lot of 2008, and now early 2009, celebrating a noise-pop underground that, in places, takes weak pop songs and slathers them with fuzz and reverb under the pretense of art. In this environment, it's great to see a band like Glasvegas go for it, take their own noise-pop impulses and shoot for the rafters. And yet, not only do they do it on almost every song, in almost the exact same way, but they seem to do just the opposite of the American brethren-- start with the fuzz and reverb, with quality noise-pop, then tack on layer after layer of gloss until their songs are transformed into modern rock. In their rush to be the UK's most important band, they seem to have ignored restraint, charisma, and charm-- the qualities that made them Next Big Thing candidates in the first place.

You can't have it both ways. You're either into the "noise-pop underground" or you're admiring of bands that exhibit "restraint, charisma, and charm." Show me where you have that combination in the 2008 best-of and I'll gladly give it a listen. If 2008 was such a ho-hum year (and believe me it was), why should I be bothered with your celebration of fuzz and reverb just because it has an American accent? Instead what you have is your own set of provincialisms, and anyone who is not from Portland or Brooklyn is not likely to get a fair shake. Talk about the pot and the kettle, what is American indie music but a pair of engineer specks and a worn out copy of Daydream Nation?

The truth is that indie music (as portrayed by Pitchfork and its followers) has lost the plot. It's become a music that doesn't rock, you can't dance to it, it's too stupid to be meaningful, too quiet and self absorbed to be fun. It's essentially devoid of any of those pleasures that might have gotten you into music in the first place. The records themselves are just signifiers for your blog, badges for your Facebook page. You're the right sort of white person. Congratulations and big deal. Whether anyone would actually want to listen to the stuff is beside the point.

Pitchfork Top Albums of 2008

Why do I get the feeling that all the little indie nerds will be pitching a fit when they see Pitchfork's top ten list?

Here it is:

1. Fleet Foxes - Sun Giant EP / Fleet Foxes
2. Portishead - Third
3. No Age - Nouns
4. Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
5. Deerhunter - Microcastle / Weird Era Cont.
6. TV on the Radio - Dear Science
7. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
8. M83 - Saturdays = Youth
9. Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair
10. DJ/Rapture - Uproot

So it's Fleet Foxes for the win and Vampire Weekend makes the top 10. I can hear the cries of outrage now. Even though those were my two favorites on this list, they were not a big hit with most of the kids who consider these bands derivative, or inauthentic, or (worse yet!) in danger of becoming popular. They're good bands with good records in a year that didn't have much to offer.

My guess is that none of these records would have made last year's 10 ten list which was like a murder's row of brilliance (Battles, Spoon, Animal Collective, of Montreal, Radiohead, M.I.A., LCD Soundsystem - oh, 2007, how I miss you). But rather than see 2008 as an abject failure, Pitchfork does something different, and something that I really hadn't thought possible: they give it some shape, make it coherent, draw together some loose threads and allow 2008 to tell its story - even if it is a lesser story. For once, Pitchfork lives up to its own hype and provides a public service by inviting us to try out some music we might have missed, or underestimated, or misunderstood in some way. That, in and of itself, is a lot more than you might've gotten out of other similar lists, listmakers and would-be tastemakers.

So where I was frustrated, I am now intrigued:

Hercules and Love Affair? Antony sings disco!

M83? Sounds kind of smooth, if you know what I mean.

Cut Copy? MGMT + Pitchfork Seal of Approval.

Deerhunter and No Age? Definitely need to spend more time with these records.

Portishead? Creepy and unlistenable - but now legendary! So Third is probably worth a spin.

TV on the Radio? Overrated, overrated, overrated. It's the third time they've made the same murky sounding, treble-free record. But hey, at #6, not so bad. Doesn't bother me as much. Mozel Tov.

As for Vampire Weekend, I admire the fact that these guys already seem like they've been around forever. They released a great summer record in the dead of winter, and let it carry them through the whole year. If Wes Anderson listened to more Paul Simon, or The Police his movies might have sounded like this. But the secret is, that there are fun little stories buried in these songs.

And Fleet Foxes: they're not as good as Band of Horses, or Iron and Wine, or early My Morning Jacket, or even Midlake, but in 2008, this was the record we needed to fill in the gap. The only thing that bugs me is that no one else has noticed how "White Winter Hymnal" is sort of a gimmick. It's the "Mushaboom" of the album. It's the quirky hook that draws you into the more expansive, and more contemplative songs that fill out the rest of the album.

So there you go. Pitchfork's list saves the year from its own worst tendencies and will hopefully annoy the right sort of white people. Good stuff.

New Iron & Wine Today

Hurrah! At last something I've been looking forward to might actually be good. Pitchfork review. 8.6 score. Best New Music.

For an Iron & Wine album, The Shepherd's Dog is so varied that it takes several listens for everything to fully sink in, but the individual details-- such as the dramatic steel guitar at the end of "Love Song of the Buzzard" or the cascade of banjo in the middle of "Innocent Bones"-- are nearly as rewarding as the overall sound of the album. The sequencing is also well-considered, setting contrasting songs against each other and ending on the stunning and starkly emotional "Flightless Bird, American Mouth". The vocal harmony as it rises into the chorus is shiver-inducing, and the song finally delivers the sense of resolution that much of the album purposely holds back.

I've been a big fan since the first album and it can only be good news that Sam Beam is exploring new territory. This will probably make it to my iPod before the end of the day.

----------------
Listening to: Band of Horses - Is There a Ghost
via FoxyTunes

Prinzhorn Dance School

[Photo Via Flickr]

Pitchfork has a review of Prinzhorn Dance School's album, giving it an 8.2. They write:

Only 70% or so of Prinzhorn Dance School's debut album is made up of music. The rest is... well, it's hard to say. What do you call the space in a song that lingers between the guitar parts, vocals, and beats? It's not exactly empty space, since it takes on properties that change according to sounds in the surroundings. And it's not "negative space" as plied by sculptors, whose hold on nothingness needn't account for fluctuations in drama brought about by time. So what do we call this space, then? Is it material, immaterial? Is it music?

I don't know what it is either, but I'm kind of hooked. The songs on the album are oddly catchy in spite of all the clang and noise. It's sort of like eavesdropping on noisy neighbors. But there's also this sort of gleeful dislocation from the awareness that you're listening to something odd. It's like the first time you heard the Ramones. That brief, what the? And then, oh yeah. The same for the Violent Femmes, or the White Stripes, or Pavement. It's the left-field-ness of it that appeals.

The full album is streamed here and you can judge for yourself.

Mom Rock and Ethan Hawke

Pitchfork's Rob Mitchum reviews the soundtrack for the new Ethan Hawke film, The Hottest State:

..it's terrible. The Hottest State soundtrack features a roster of acts old and newish that would draw the envy of Cmdr. Braff: Bright Eyes, Feist, Cat Power, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, etc. But rather than culling the castaway B-sides from this posse, Hawke organizes a tribute session to none other than Jesse Harris-- that's right, the Jesse Harris. You may best know Harris as Norah Jones' guitar player, but he has a solo career in his own right, playing exceptionally harmless jazzy folk/folky jazz in the vein of James Taylor. So basically, Ethan Hawke (and all these other artists, apparently) have all the cutting-edge and adventurous preferences of, say, my Mom's bunko group.

Such a burn!

Of course, Rob is the same guy who wrote that Wilco's Sky Blue Sky "nakedly exposes the dad-rock gene Wilco has always carried but courageously attempted to disguise." So clearly, Rob is still dealing with a lot of angsty teenage type oedipal issues. "What's that racket, son?" "It's called music, dad! Jeez! Of course you'd never understand!" Slam. Slam. Stomp. Stomp.

I guess I'd rather rock with Rob's dad, and hang out with his Mom's bunko group. They seem to at least have it together.

Too Little Too Late for the Magic Numbers?

A Pitchfork review announces that the Magic Numbers' second album, Those the Brokes, may finally (finally!) be arriving in the states. It's a pretty lukewarm (6.3) assessment:

The only people in the music business successfully marketing sounds like the once fervently hyped Magic Numbers'-- that is, unassumingly sentimental folk-pop even an exhausted Baby Boomer could love-- are in the coffee business. Almost as remarkable as the songs on the Magic Numbers' self-titled 2005 debut was their indifference to fashion, both underground and mainstream.

More than eight months after the UK edition hit well-stocked import aisles, this slimmed-down domestic release of Those the Brokes won't bring commercial success to the band any more readily. At least, not unless the sort of people who don't usually seek out new music somehow discover the disc's best tracks. If they do, they'll hear several solid-to-excellent songs that extend the rootsy trajectory of the Magic Numbers' fine first outing, making up in winsome intensity what they lack as far as edginess or sex appeal.

First UK single "Take a Chance" encourages us to risk our pride for love. The burnished harmonies of the group's two sibling pairs-- Trinidad natives Romeo and Michele Stodart along with London-born duo Angela and Sean Gannon-- make it easy to overlook any risks the cheery power-pop arrangement declines to take itself. The video for second single "This Is a Song" shows the band playing to a slowly growing assemblage of cross-legged young people, a real sleeper hit. Despite the apparent obviousness of the title, this is a song against itself-- as broken-hearted as it is upbeat and catchy. ("Don't wanna hear it," comes a backing vocal.) The questioning "Let Somebody In" and comparatively muscular "You Never Had It" each glide by on the kind of inchoate magic that in more credulous days used to be called "soul".

Regardless, The Magic Numbers are a hugely talented band that deserve better than the treatment they've received from the music industry and the press. If music has been left to the coffee houses then so be it. I'll take Starbucks over Hot Topic any day.

St. Vincent Review in Pitchfork

Pitchfork gives a rave review to the Annie Clark's St. Vincent record, Marry Me. They actually like it more than I do which makes me feel better for feeling like I like it more than I should.

Anyway, here's what they have to say in their 8.0 review:

In the case of music like this, the devil to conquer is preciousness and indulgence. No doubt, in lesser hands Clark's quirks and eccentricities would mark the St. Vincent project a no-go from the start. But at every turn Marry Me takes the more challenging route of twisting already twisted structures and unusual instrumentation to make them sound perfectly natural and, most importantly, easy to listen to as she overdubs her thrillingly sui generis vision into vibrant life.

Good stuff.

Bat For Lashes - "What's a Girl to Do"

A new band that also just happens to be nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. The album Fur and Gold is released in the states, according to Pitchfork, on July 31.

Band of Horses - "The Funeral" (Live at 2006 Pitchfork Music Festival)

A live video of one of the best songs by one of the best bands of 2006.

Pitchfork and Spoon

Most reviews of the new Spoon album, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, have been pretty lukewarm, but Pitchfork loves it:

With Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Spoon have once again found a gray area between the poles of pop accessibility and untested studio theorizing, modifying a formula that has grown to feel familiar even as it wanders, and refusing to square the circle while doing so. Through whatever process they use, the band has also managed to create yet another wonderfully singular indie rock record, unafraid of unfettered passion or self-sabotage, and which affirms a shrouded, hybrid style as unquestionably theirs. Perhaps it is fitting to refer to Ga Ga, and Spoon albums on the whole, as growers, then, but with a different definition: one that takes into account the bands continual, and continually rewarding, approach to creative maturation.

I'm a big fan so I'll have to check out the album for myself very soon.

Giallo at the Disco

This record's from March but I only came across it today. "I Always Say Yes" by Glass Candy which Pitchfork describes this way:

eight minutes of skeletal terror-disco, with horror synths straight out of Dario Argento's Suspiria set to a pulsing analog beat and singer Ida No's chilly, haunted vocals.

If no one had told you, you would have thought it was just a dance track, but the notion of "terror-disco" is too good to pass up.

Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation Reissue

Pitchfork gives the reissue a 10.0 and says:

I don't expect to hear too many complaints about the rating above. Daydream Nation is a great uniter: You'd be hard pressed to find many fans of indie rock who don't have some love for this record. That's partly because this record is great, sure-- that's one boring reason-- but it's also because this record is one of a handful that helped shape the notion of what American indie rock can potentially mean. It's almost a tautology: Indie fans love Daydream Nation because loving stuff like Daydream Nation is part of how we define what indie fans are.

There's something to that circular logic but not a lot. I sometimes liked this record, and I definitely liked the people who liked it, but I never loved it, nor do I think it defines everything that's come after it in the last 19 years. For some, indie rock is becoming defined by nostalgia for skate culture, slackerisms and Dinosaur Jr. And the ironies of Sonic Youth's lost youth were already being played out when Goo hit the shelves. To celebrate Daydream Nation is really to celebrate ourselves. For we too were once young, raw, unformed, energetic, ineloquent and direction-less. It is the sound of a million Converse high-tops with nothing to do and nowhere to go. There was never any danger of a teenage riot because in the world of Sonic Youth nothing is really at stake, and there's nothing to rebel against except our own sleepy complacency.