THE JO-TEL …believes some of what Nathaniel and John say, but believes England is still our sovreign

Watching MTV2 right now (as in, like four weeks ago when I started this post):

See the latest videos from today’s [positive adjective] bands.

Thrice - “Digital Sea”

What? Thrice? The lyrics to this go “Drowning … in a digital sea.” This is terrible. This is MTV2 (with emphasis, TWO!). What the fuck? I need to say something. This is terrible. I have decided to completely drop my music snobbism. I’m going to try to get everyone into the best music I can so bands like Thrice won’t have jobs. I get really pissed off thinking about times when everyone was listening to like, Led Zeppelin.

Everyone was like, “Hey did you get the new Zeppelin?”

And everyone else was like, “Fuck yeah! That song ‘Stairway to Heaven’ is fucking tits! Here, hit this!”

And everyone was like, “Oh, nice. So uh, we only have like, four TV channels, and there wasn’t shit on last night. So I just listened to that whole album like, three times on my ’phones, man.”

Wouldn’t that be a lot better than getting to occasionally snicker at people in record stores who are like, “Oh! The new Thrice album. I love that song, ‘Digital Sea.’” I’m pretty much sure that people would listen to Person Pitch. Anyhow, more people should listen to good stuff.

Stuff like the stuff on this list.

Last year, the only reason I was able to get a top 10 list done was because I was unemployed. This was before Pandorockers was a blip on the radar. I had moved out of the Jo-tel and new music pretty much dried up. I resorted to (sigh) iTunes. (PS about that. If anyone knows how to get all your iTunes purchases to load onto a new computer, please enlighten me.) Luckily, I bought a few great albums that wound up on the list. But I still had to pad the list with stuff I just liked.

This year I kind of have to do that too … but there was way more stuff I just liked. The problem I had this year was the opposite of last year. I got so much music this year that my listening was diluted. And when I did like an album enough to put it on repeat, it was generally not from 2007. Here is a straight top 10 albums I was into this year:

1. The Boss - Nebraska
2. Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited
3. Phillip Glass - Glassworks
4. Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash - Nashville 1969
5. Sigur Ros - Takk…
6. Emmylou Harris and Linda Rondstadt - Wester Wall: The Tucson Sessions
7. Etta James - Her Best (Yes, a greatest hits album.)
8. Elton John - Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy
9. Sam Cooke - Ain’t that Good News
10. Neil Young - Greendale

Honorable mention:

Explosions in the Sky - The Earth Is Not a Cold, Dead Place
Labradford - Prazision
Bob Dylan - The Times They Are a’ Changin’

The list proper:

11. Softlightes - Say No to Being Cool, Say Yes to Being Happy

(I originally wrote this as my No. 9 before I realized I’d forgotten to include LCD and Iron & Wine, and I wasn’t going to just bail on this gold material, right there.)

I don’t know what this type of music is. I can’t really, off the top of my head, think of any albums that I would consider shoegaze. The first time I heard that term I was like, “I’d probably like what those bands are selling.” I seem to gaze at my shoes a lot so … you know. If they came up with a genre called “saying ‘indeed’ a lot” or “dirty glasses,” I’d probably want to check those out too. Anyhow, I think that’s what the Softlightes might be. But it’s also poppy in that bubblegum sort of way that you’d have to have a cold, shriveled heart not to like, at least in secret. If I may, Johnny D, but I feel like the Softlightes are a combination of Teenage Fanclub, a Care Bear, and, why not, um … Neu! I saw them live having never heard of them and they were good, they had cool visuals, and they picked “I’m on Fire” by the Boss as a cover and KIOTB, knocked it out the box for those not up on their acronyms. CTFO and S, yo. My favorite track probably has to be “The Robots In My Bedroom Were Playing Arena Rock.” Here’s a video on the You Tubes.

This album is my Shoe in of the Week, brought to you by Mates of State.

10. Iron & Wine - The Shepherd’s Dog

So uh … I guess this dude got some electricity in his cabin this year, so congratulations to him. At least a gas generator. At at some point last summer, a few friends came to visit him and brought some things that needed plugs. They drank iced tea and hot coffee and made things in iron skillets. Biscuits were involved. The first whiskey was sipped between 11 a.m.-1 p.m. The heat kept the bugs away every day except one, the last, when it rained, and they stopped their playing to watch from the porch. The day his friends left, it was hard to sleep.

9. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

Every time I listen to this album, it gets better. Okay, so seeing that this album is pretty well-reviewed and -regarded, it’s getting in the top 50 pretty high up. But people seem to be disappointed that this album isn’t Funeral? Okay, I can accept that. Or maybe it’s the backlash from the DMB-fan–level douche bags discovering “AF” this year. Whatever it is, I’m starting to get over it a little. I saw Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem at the Hollywood Bowl this year. I hadn’t listened to Neon Bible all that much when I saw them, and I probably hadn’t listened to Funeral in a while, and when I went back after the show to listen to Neon Bible, I was surprised that so many of the songs that had stood out as bangers at the show were on it and not Funeral. So you could say that’s bad, because they haven’t progressed; or you could say that’s dumb, how could I not tell them apart, they’ve regressed. But I say that “Neon Bible” is a lot better of an album that most people are giving it credit for. Here’s an email I wrote after seeing the show. It also touches on LCD, which you can skip until you get to No. 6 if you want:

The crowd disappointed me for LCD kind of. Mostly sitting around, very little dancing, which was a problem the first time I saw them, but that was because they’d had a song on the OC so tons of Marina people came.

[I feel like I may have gone on this rant on the Jo-Tel before, but in case I haven’t: There are a lot of people in LCD … and as far as I can tell, each one of them has at least one cowbell at their disposal. At least. And they are NOT shy about employing liberal amounts of cowbell in their dance numbers. Okay, next, what percussion instrument is more dance-inducing, pound for pound, and the cowbell? None, I would argue. And I feel like James Murphy is conscious of that fact. And so it was painful to watch the mystified and slightly frightened faces of the members of LCD when they played the Fillmore during the OC era, and all of them were frantically banging on their cowbells (or, occasion permitting, wood blocks), practically commanding feet to be moved, and nothing. Just swaying. It was probably a Village of the Damned-type scenario for them. No amount of cowbell would get these people moving, and that’s just sad. Where’s the joy? Also, please watch this Village of the Damned remake movie trailer from 1995. You won’t be sorry. (Is it ironic or coincidental that Jenna Elfman is in this movie? Scientolorific!] This time, there were also tons of Marina/West LA peeps, but I guess too much time had passed between the OC and now for any of them to remember that they’d ever hear of LCD. Also, James Murphy opted against playing “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House,” for reasons I would like to believe were related to his sellers’ (out) remorse about the OC imbroglio.

The West LA people had, however, heard of the Arcade Fire. There was a dude in front of me that pretty much reminded me of Snax, and was reacting to AF the way you would imagine Snax would react if he thought it was cool to like/know all the lyrics of AF. I don’t think I really need to elaborate there. But aside from that guy, it was pretty cool to see however many thousands of people who AF had obviously connected with, all singing and clapping. It had me convinced there for a while that AF would possibly be around two decades from now, with us all married or divorced, shelling out $200 Ameri-Euros for tickets so we can drag our kids on visitation weekend, and tell them to wait in line for food while we sneak a joint in a mens room stall. “No Cars Go” was a highlight, as well as, as always, “Rebellion.”

The song “(Antichrist Television Rules)” rules.

8. Akron/Family - Love is Simple

I really love this album. Yet another crippling disability I have when it comes to critiquing music is that I have no ear for good lyrics. Unless it’s straightforward and narrative and obviously brilliant, like say a Nebraska or a Red-Headed Stranger, or rap cause I notice that, it will taken me several listens before I’m able to sing along and appreciate anything more subtle than:

Congregation gathers down by the riverside
Preacher stands with his Bible groom stands waitin for his bride
Congregation gone and the sun sets behind a weepin willow tree
Groom stands alone and watches the river rush on so effortlessly
Lord and hes wonderin where can his baby be
Still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe.

Bad lyrics? Those will stick out, THRICE! I’m fucking watching you over here! But and so therefore, my liking an album relies perhaps more heavily that others on an album’s overall whistleability. The whistleability can keep me coming back to an album until I’m able to listen to what they have to say, which, as I said, tends to take a while. I should also mention that — though perhaps not at all related, but complimentary — I place a high value on whistling ability. Nothing like a good whistle in an acoustically advantageous space to lift the spirits! So two points here. One, this is perhaps the first example on this list of an eminently whistleable album (I’m writing this one first. Iron & Wine also is one of these), of which there will be others. But secondly, I actually noticed the lyrics on this album. There’s a good mix of the narrative and straightforward and the abstract. It’s sort of like an easy Sudoku, but in a good way. The song that stuck out at first was (obviously?) “Don’t Be Afraid, You’re Only Dead.” The way the lead singer, whose name I will not look up, sings “Love is simple,” long, agonizingly … it’s almost as if he’s trying to subliminally say that maybe love ISN’T so simple! Check out that read! Where’s the nearest poker table!

Also, the “Look what you did, kid” part in the last song is sweet, and “There’s so Many Colors” was obviously off some great, lost Neil Young album.

7. Boys Noize - Oi Oi Oi

Electro? Is that what this is? Anyhow, ZzZzZzZZzZZzZZZzt-zt … zzzzt. That was my onomatopoeic attempt at an electric shock. That was what I was trying to do with the alternating pattern of cap and lc zees, with the zt aftershocks bringing it all together nicely. Anyhow, I really did like a lot of dance and electronic albums this year. I guess just not enough to crack the top 10. But if Boys Noize were crafting an acceptance speech for this award, it would be imperative that they remember to thank the Field, Pole, Kavinsky, Ulrich Schnauss, Ellen Alien, Apparat, Simian Mobile Disco, Ghostland Observatory, Souvenir, Ratatat (Remixes only), Modeselektor, Autechre, Black Devil Disco Club, etc. et etc. that I bumped this year. But Boys Noize was a cut above. Due to this album’s face-shredding dance jamz, probably 100-200 people that drive home on Beverly Blvd. or 3rd St (main streets I cross on my walk home … and my walk to work but this is a strictly walk-home album) think I have a big problem with playing the air drums, I have a gerbil up my anus, or both. This album is like the soundtrack to some futuristic machine gun and martial arts battle. No in-between. No handguns, no explosions, no swords. Just machine guns … and martial arts. Also, maybe Vampires are involved. And Stephen Dorff. Okay, so I’m just describing Blade at this point. But uh, did you see that first scene in Blade, where Traci Lords’s character takes that dude to a rave in a slaughterhouse, and he’s totally into it until the DJ booth lights up and there’s a big sign that says “BLOODBATH,” and then the blood starts coming out of the sprinkler heads, and everybody’s soaked in blood, and he’s like, “Oh shit. Of course. Vampires.” And then he’s about to get eaten and he backs into Blade, who then proceeds to kick a serious amount of ass. Sure, he uses a shotgun and a boomerang-like thing that kills like, eight dudes on one throw. But basically that.

6. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver

Oh! Here’s the other dance album on the list this year. Yes, it’s true, “All My Friends” is a great song. “Get Innocuous” is also a great song. [Mini EMD Update here. Innocuous, two Ns; Inoculate, one N; Innocuous is not the adjective form of the verb inoculate.] Last year, 4th of July was my funnest day in L.A. so far, BY far. Me, Patsy, Lauren, Ober and M-Web went out in Manhattan Beach to this party at the Beverly Hills 90210 beach house (it was in the show. Not exactly sure how.). There was like 11 kegs and a mountain of cases of hard alcohol, we knew the DJ, there was a blender with a motorcycle engine and motorcycle handlebars with a motorcycle throttle to make it blend margaritas, and I’ve never seen such a collection of prowling cougars … it was magnificent to see so many thriving in their natural habitat. So this year I decided to get down to MB too. I wound up getting a late start and I got stuck in horrifying beach traffic on Imperial Highway with all of East LA. I was listening to “Sound of Silver” and getting extremely pissed that I wasn’t crushing brews. I sat there in traffic long enough to hear the album at least one time through. When I finally got to Ober’s, I still had to skateboard a ways to Hermosa Pier, where everyone was crawling through pubs. I put in my headphones and put “North American Scum” on repeat. It was loud and there were American flags and drunk bitches everywhere. Their mouths moved, but I couldn’t hear what they were laughing.

5. R. Kelly - Double Up

You knew it was coming. I understand that this is a list of my favorite albums, and not the best albums. But I really don’t get why this isn’t on ANYone’s radar as one of the best albums of the year. It was the peeing on a girl, wasn’t it? God, lighten up.

I’ve listened to an inordinate amount of R&B this year, even for me. And the majority of it was after Double Up came out. Because I just didn’t understand why people weren’t going insane over this album. Was it nothing special? Nothing new? Was it derivative and boring, a rehash of old songs and older themes? Why wasn’t it being hailed as one of the most imaginative albums ever? What the fuck was I missing? If all this has been done before in R&B, then that means I need to listen to a LOT of R&B, because obviously I’ve been missing out.

At the very least, where was the plaudits for “Same Girl,” “Real Talk,” “Best Friend”? I mean, okay, people love those songs almost universally, especially “Real Talk.” But this stuff is “Trapped in the Closet” without the chaff. In other words, it’s amazing.

But it’s not just those three songs. “Flirt” is my No. 1 R&B single of the year (full list forthcoming, hopefully). “The Zoo” is Kels’ best mad genius sex-euphemism song ever, better that even the transcendent “Sex Weed.” Plus there’s also “Sex Planet.” “Tryin’ to Get a Number,” featuring Nelly, and “Hook it Up” are 100% gold club bangers. And then there’s just the straight jamz, “Get Freaky in the Club,” “I Like Love,” “Get Dirty.” Even the Virginia Tech tribute song, which I hated at first, isn’t so bad.

Obviously, Kels is not always on point. His genius isn’t apparent on every track. On some, it’s downright unapparent. But put in this album, skip to Track 5 and hit play. Listen until Track 11, skip 12, and then listen to “Best Friend” at 13. That right there, even if it were surrounded by twenty Track 12s, would be enough to get this album into my top 5. It’s a showcase of what this dude can do. Kels is one of the most dynamic, exciting forces in modern music, and if he ever creates his White Album, look out.

4. Panda Bear - Person Pitch

When we all went up to Yosemite and were hiking down from the waterfall through the off-limits area with all the snow, Shark prepared a mix for me to listen to on his iPod. “Ponytail” was one of the songs, which caused me to pull the iPod from my pocket to see what was going on here. Pandorockers had been abuzz about the new Panda Bear, which i had dismissed due to my firm and Swangerian belief that the critical acclaim for Animal Collective is a world conspiracy directed solely at me, and that everyone is in on the fact that Animal Collective actually sucks, because they know that if all my friends are talking about an album, I’m going to try to listen to it and find the good, even if it’s not my thing, just to try and expand my musical horizons, and the conspirators all just want me to say “Yeah, Animal Collective is pretty good, actually. I guess I was wrong about them,” at which point everyone will cast off their falsehoods as if they were never uttered, and collectively sneer “You like Animal Collective? Those guys sound like farts in a cold bathroom.” Give up now, assholes. I will never submit! Panda Bear rules though. Where does music like this come from?

3. Stars of the Lid - And their refinement of the decline

Before SOTL came around, the only ambient music I’d really enjoyed was the soundtrack to MYST. Actually, I also loved Eno’s Music for Films (and became thoroughly convinced, through repeated listening, that Nobuo Uematsu, the composer of the music for the Final Fantasy games, is the world’s biggest Eno fan).

But I definitely get it now. I see this at No. 3 or so on a lot of people’s lists, like they’re reluctant to put it higher for whatever reason. Well I’m also one of those people. However, if this were a list of most-listened-to albums, ATROTD would be a resounding No. 1. No other album would even come close, except for maybe The Tired Sound of Stars of the Lid.

I’ve always been too intimidated by the classical canon to really listen to anything. This ranks among my most personally embarrassing areas of complete and staggering ignorance, along with world geography and botany. I feel like there is this weird paradox that I can’t work mentally around, where on one hand, these works are supposedly some of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, from the minds of geniuses and prodigies, and yet it seems that most people put them on while they’re studying carbon chains or the plu perfect or something. On the other side of the spectrum, you have those in the audiophile set who spend almost unbelievable amounts of money chasing the most pure, crisp sound they possibly can in order to listen to this stuff ($5000 for a turntable cartridge? Check this shit out. Crazy). I’ve always envisioned a time in the future where I’ll have a full-on listening room, with a couple hundred Gs worth of audio equipment, BV speakers, Krell amps, at which point I will purchase a “Classical Music for Dummies” volume, a few SACDs, and start from the beginning. But I imagine, every now and then at first, I’ll take Vivaldi’s violin concertos out of the CD player and slip in some good ol’ SOTL: that band I used to listen to all day at work, while scrutinizing yet another story about Oscar contenders. Honestly, I can’t wait. My only distraction will be the delicious drink I make for myself.

(N.B.: The main part of this review was written previous to reading Shark’s review. Weird how so many people have similar reactions to this music though.)

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.

2. Okkervil River - The Stage Names

The top two are pretty much interchangeable, depending on what type of mood I’m in or if I’m driving or walking. This one keeps the energy up a bit more. So yeah, you’ve seen the list, Akron Fam, Iron & Wine, Band of Horses waiting for you to get through reading this one … there’s that whistleability trend I was telling you about.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m pretty sure that Black Sheep Boy could be considered one of the Jo-Tel’s best-loved albums of all time (except for Hip E., who probably still hasn’t heard of Okkervil River), along with things like The Milk-Eyed Mender, Inches, Blueberry Boat, Funeral. So the thing about The Stage Names is, it’s this year’s best follow-up album to any album I have loved. It does not disappoint me really in any way. The Stage Names presages great things for Okkervil River guy, mark my words. This sort of ties into my whistleability thing, and I could equally apply it to “Cease to Begin” in the 1 spot, but so okay: throughout time, lots of music has been written. Lots of melodies … more melodies probably that there have ever been two sisters hooking up with the same guy at the same time in all of history … but barely. And I feel like I’ve listened to my fair share of melodies, at least to the point where I feel confident in the amount of cachet I place on a good melody in a song, where I feel like I’m hearing something new, where I’m taken off guard by the way in which the procession of notes automatically elicits emotions with no conscious input on my part, an immediate connection with the song. So these two here at the top, these are the two discs where that happened the most, where every song was a pleasant surprise. I’m putting this second, but given another week, it would probably be first … and Iron & Wine would be moving up. I enjoy the song “A Girl in Port” very much.

1. Band of Horses - Cease to Begin

Okay, at this point I’m spent. I know it’s going to look weird that I have really nothing to say about my favorite album. “The General Specific” is maybe my favorite song of the year, aside from “Best Friend” and “Gronlandic Edit” from Of Montreal. Did this dude live in the Jo-Tel?

And growing up here
There comes a fork in the road
Pants have got to go
We’re on an island on the 4th of July
It looks like the tide is going home

“Marry Song” is also a powerhouse. Anyhow. This is this year’s Shearwater. No one else like it as much as me. But whatever.

—-

Appendix A

Best rap album.

Finalists:
Ghostface - The Big Doe Rehab
Birdman - 5 * Stunna
Prodigy - Return of the Mac

Winner: Prodigy - Return of the Mac

Okay, I’ll admit it. I found out about this album from Pitchfork. There … phew. I followed some link Johnny D sent and found myself in the review section. Saw that this got an 8.5. Firstly, Mobb Deep rules. I think this might be the ‘yac talking, but look. Quiet storm was a single. Where is Wayne’s song where he rhymes like this?

Also, the remix is worth a listen to see Havoc. Plus a respectable verse from Lil Kim, who a lot of people forget actually has flows. Then you have Prodigy’s H.N.I.C. album, which wasn’t that great, but produced another one of my favorite rap songs, Keep It Thoro. You know who else Keeps it Thoro? Raph. What up, Dun!

I throw a TV at you crazy

Anyhow, back in high school, if I was heading to the North Riverside shopping center, I would stop in the mix tape store and see if they had any new DJ Funk mix tapes. DJ Funk is a Chicago-based ghetto house DJ. It was good summer driving music. I could print some lyrics, but I have a job now that I don’t want to lose. I would pretty much blast that shit from the white Camry wagon. Anyhow, the thing about the new Prodigy album is I’m actually kind of embarrassed to be playing it. It’s just too grimey for a bespectacled white dude to be bumping from his Volvo. “I sit alone in my dirty ass room staring at candles, high on drugs. All alone with my hand on the Mac 10 handle, scheming on you niggas.”

No. It’s too thoro. I didn’t honestly think this was possible.

Anyhow, great album, a few amazing songs, too grimey.

—

Top 20 songs.

1. R. Kelly - Best Friend
2. Of Montreal - Gronlandic Edit (The catchiest song about budding atheism ever written)
3. Band of Horses - The General Specific
4. R. Kelly - Flirt
5. The-Dream feat. Fabulous - Shawty is a Ten (Perhaps the first time in history where the clean remix of a song is better than the explicit original.)
6. Prodigy - Mac 10 Handle
7. LCD Soundsystem - All My Friends
8. Birdman feat. Lil Wayne - I Run This (There are a lot of great Father and Son collabs on this album. Hard to choose. Great record.)
9. The National - Fake Empire (Late to the party on this one. Gorgeous song.)
10. Boys Noize - Arcade Robot
11. Lil Wayne - King Kong (BOO Da Drought 3. BOO!)
12. Mary J. Blige - Work That
13. MGMT - Kids
14. M.I.A. feat. The Wilcannia Mob - Mango Pickle Down River
15. Dan Deacon - Wham City (If we ever made a song about the Jo-Tel, I doubt it would be this good)
16. Andrew Bird - Dark Matter (Any song where the game Operation is mention already has a leg up.)
17. Field Music - A House is Not a Home (Hello? Kinks?)
18. Okkervil River - A Girl in Port
19. Soulja Boy - Crank That (Soulja Boy)
20. M.I.A. - Paper Planes

–
Couple other random music notes from this year.

Favorite new genre that I got into: Post Rock

Two albums that would’ve made the list until I found out they came out in 2006:
Frightened Rabbit - Sings the Greys
Low Budget and DJ Deluxxx - Snap or Die (mix tape)

Things I’m excited for in 2008:
More Hott Pandorocker Action
Professor Green album
Tha Carter IIIs
Possible Newsom & Ys Street Band full release?

-PETE