Hey, I was at this show!; image courtesy of pitchfork.com
I was surprised to discover that I haven’t mentioned Julianna Barwick much beyond a brief SXSW recommendation, because I’ve been into her for a while now. If you ever see me in the Asthmatic Kitty t-shirt I inherited from a clothing swap a few years back, she’s the artist I’m representing (no hard feelings, Sufjan). Credit of my awareness goes to my partner, who forwarded this Dusted piece because of my known fondness for female voices and loops. NPR is streaming her forthcoming album The Magic Placeuntil its release on the 22nd, and I recommend you check out this beautiful record.
When talking about Barwick as a musician, I should really be talking about vocals. Her music is predominantly vocal-based, and gestures toward the formative years she spent in church choir. However, I find it especially interesting how she conceptualizes and manipulates her voice as an electronic instrument, potentially making her a good addition to Tara Rodgers’ great book Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound. For one, she eschews traditional lyrics and tends toward mouth-singing and abstract syllables. For another, she threads her voice through an effects pedal and a looper. This distorts the sonic and tonal quality of her voice and allows her to build her voice into a choir, as well as embellish upon several passages that coalesce into fully-realized pieces of music. Given the spare set-up, it’s remarkable how lush and expansive her songs are. I caught Barwick during last year’s SXSW and was surprised that these songs, which don’t lend themselves to rock venue performances, could still teleport me to some place outside myself. As someone who believes in some semblance of a spiritual realm and the transformative power of community but has little regard for organized religion, I appreciate how her music gestures toward the sacred without tying itself to a particular deity or dogma.
Some people may dismiss Barwick for creating yoga music for hipsters. Frankly, I’d prefer it to the new age soundtrack on my yoga DVD, though it is uniform with its out-of-time production aesthetic. I certainly understand if some people only hear layered gibberish with little variance between songs. But what I get from Barwick’s work isn’t a set of songs so much as a healing musical experience that gives my head the space to wander, collect, and recharge. That the opportunity for such restoration is generated through electronic equipment and her being makes it all the more exceptional.
Janelle Monáe did a lot to define 2010's year in music; image courtesy of newblackman.blogspot.com
Jennifer Kelly is my favorite writer at Dusted, my go-to music e-zine. Recently she conceded that this year in music had a lot of contenders, but no clear leader of the pack. She then went on to list ten albums she really liked regardless of music critics’ echo chamber. It’s a good list, and I recommend you check it out. I also think you should give some time to Wetdog, a British punk band I learned about from her list.
In many ways, 2010 was an embarrassment of riches. So many big-name artists released career-peak records and lots of up-and-comers made me excited to listen to music each week (day? half-day? quarter-day? how rapid is the cycle now?). On paper, it’s a banner year. Yet I can’t pick one album that defines it. But that’s probably a good thing.
If I were to draft a list, three albums would place at #2. Critical darling Janelle Monáe comes the closest to topping my list. She defied commercial expectations with a pop album called The ArchAndroid about a futuristic metropolis that fused Prince with Octavia Butler. Joanna Newsom channeled Randy Newman, Joni Mitchell, and Blood on the Tracks-era Dylan to create the dusky reveries on the enveloping Have One on Me. LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy lifted synths straight out of Depeche Mode’s Black Celebration and the Eurythmics’ “Love Is a Stranger” while borrowing from Berlin-era Bowie for This Is Happening, which was book-ended by two of the man’s best songs.
Joanna Newsom on David Letterman; image courtesy of stereogum.com
The last two artists also managed to follow up and improve upon the albums that made them big tent attractions. Like most great pop music, they transcend their influences and ambitions. Yet each album is weighed down by at least one song. I always skip Happening‘s “You Wanted A Hit?,” which is too long and repetitive, even if it is aware of these things. I won’t fault Monáe and Newsom’s scope, but pruning a few tracks off for an EP or as b-sides might have been helpful. I think “Say You’ll Go” and “Kingfisher” don’t have the impact they could have elsewhere. If Newsom were referencing PJ Harvey’s Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, “Kingfisher” would be her “Horses in My Dreams,” but it’s buried here.
BTW, no one’s jostling for #3. It’s Flying Lotus’ elegantly trippy Cosmagramma all the way.
As with every year, there are albums that are overrated and underpraised. Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a perfect #11. It’s got fascinating angst and pathos that recalls another celebrity guilt rock record, Nirvana’s In Utero while squarely situating it as a black man’s experiences with fame. West’s bionic, prog-inflected production is the most potent it’s ever been. “All of the Lights” and “Monster” are among the year’s best songs, though credit goes solely to Nicki Minaj for the latter. But Jesus am I tired of reading ovations that cite the rapper’s Twitter feed. Yes, it provides insights into his process. And yes, it is noteworthy how West made so many tracks available to fans before the album was released (and maybe I’d bump it to #10 if “Chain Heavy” made the final cut). But it’s hardly album of the year or even a career best (in my opinion, he still hasn’t improved upon Late Registration).
Conversely, Spoon’s Transference is an ideal #9. People seem to hold one of America’s best rock bands in lower esteem this year for making an incomplete-sounding album. To my ears, this is an ingenious thing for a band so preoccupied with space and compositional austerity to do with a break-up record. I keep returning to tracks like “Is Love Forever” and “Nobody Gets Me,” yearning for a resolution I know I won’t find. I’d also mention that Marnie Stern‘s latest record (which would probably round out the top five) and Dessa‘s A Badly Broken Code (a peerless #4) were slept on. If they didn’t place higher, it’s only because they didn’t feel the need to announce their greatness and came on as slow burners. The same could be said of Seefeel‘s earthy dub on Faults (possibly #7) and Georgia Anne Muldrow, who had an incredibly prolific year that peaked with Kings Ballad (between #8-10). Psalm One’s Woman @ Work series on Bandcamp has me anticipating her next album. Oh, and since this was a year largely defined by albums about break-ups and shaky make-ups, Erykah Badu’s Second World War (#8) needs your attention.
There’s also lots of new stuff I liked this year that I hope ages with me. I’ve made peace with my misgivings about the limited shelf life of Sleigh Bells’ bubblegum through blown speakers, in part because Treats (#12-15 with some staying power) sounds amazing in the car, which is where all great pop records become immortal in the states. I’d like Best Coast more if leader Bethany Cosentino just went ahead and wrote a concept album about the munchies or her cat instead of devoting so many songs to boys. Sufjan Stevens’ indulgence bored me silly, as did Surfer Blood’s inability to rise past their influences and sound like themselves. Big Boi and Bun B’s ambitious releases deserve their accolades, but they should excite me more than they do. I have yet to fall in love with Robyn the way everyone else has, but Rihanna continues to be my girl.
I’m really into the new Anika record, which is tailor-made for insomniacs. However, I’m certain that a woman with a Teutonic monotone snarling her way through catatonia as producer Geoff Barrow quotes post-punk’s buzzsaw guitar noise holds limited appeal. I always welcome a new Gorillaz album, and Plastic Beach certainly delivered. Among others, I liked new efforts from Baths, El Guincho, Noveller, M.I.A., Grass Widow, Sharon Van Etten, Soft Healer, Beach House, Mountain Man, The Black Keys, Cee-Lo Green, Tobacco, Sky Larkin, Tame Impala, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Nite Jewel, Deerhunter, Vampire Weekend, Warpaint, Antony and the Johnsons, The Budos Band, and Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, even if the last two artists essentially release the same great album each time out. And even though I get a free cocktail if Merge wins the Album of the Year Grammy, Matador had a good year for me with Glasser, Esben and the Witch, and Perfume Genius, whose harrowing confessionals will hopefully find a larger audience (Sufjan fans, listen up).
(Note: don’t get me started on the Arcade Fire. I’m going to be mean and unfair, as I’ve been since I gave up on liking Funeral. Suffice it to say, I’m not fond of them and think I can tell you more about living in a Houston suburb than they can. But it won’t be a productive conversation because I’ll tear up my throat launching cheap shots about dressing for the Dust Bowl and wearing denim jackets to prove that you’re one with the working man. It’s not helpful, so I’ll be kind and say they’re fine at what they do but I want no part of it.)
Part of why I can’t settle on a #1 is because I don’t think it matters. I don’t think I need an album to define the year for me. It’s always seemed that selecting one was a fool’s errand. Steve Albini may very well be an insufferable jerk, but he’s absolutely right when he said “Clip your year-end column and put it away for 10 years. See if you don’t feel like an idiot when you reread it.” Last year, I chose Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone. While it helped situate my feelings for the year, it can’t hold a candle to her modern classicFox Confessor Brings the Flood. But now I’m not even sure what the point is. This exercise doesn’t take into account all of the older music I finally prioritized this year. For me, 2010 is just as much defined by digging through Cocteau Twins and Throwing Muses records (4AD had a good year in all kinds of ways), as well as getting excited about Mary Timony, Jenny Toomey, and Carla Bozulich.
Carla Bozulich and I will be spending some quality time together next year; image courtesy of wfmu.org
Furthermore, I’ve sometimes lost sight of why I write in this medium. Apart from being vulnerable to having my content scraped by sketchy sites and feeling like I should be doing something more politically important with my time, it can be a challenge to keep the routine of blogging from dulling the impact of your work. This may have more to do with a need to explore scarier forms of writing, like the kind that requires the involvement of a guitar or a storyboard. As a departure, I started a film blog series for Bitch last month. It’s been the right kind of challenging, though I’m not always certain I’m effectively communicating what I hope to accomplish. Music allows for abstraction where films require exposition, which sometimes makes me feel like I’m writing several variations on “I walked to the chair and sat down.” But I’m learning and it’s been a lot of fun.
I don’t mean to be self-effacing toward my efforts, as I’m proud of them. It’s been a good year and it’s healthy to be critical when you’re taking stock. Perhaps I’m responding to a lack of stability. This was a year of change. Some changes were seismic, like when several friends had babies. Others were gradual, like my partner launching a successful music e-zine and me delving into the world of freelance writing in earnest while taking a deep breath and learning to play the guitar. While some friends returned to Austin, others moved away this year and more are soon to follow in 2011. There’s even an infinitesimal chance I’ll be in that number, but the likelihood of uprooting and leaving the food carts and backyard parties of my adopted home is so small and too profound to consider, so I push it away.
But as I’ve thought on these feelings during the year, the lyrics from LCD Soundsystem’s “Home” resonate. Though detractors may note Murphy’s manipulating my generation with lines like “love and rock are fickle things” and “you’re afraid of what you need . . . if you weren’t, I don’t know what we’d talk about,” I’ve taken comfort in crooning them in my car. That’s the best of what pop music can accomplish–taking abstractions and making them applicable to life’s mundane realities, at times clarifying their importance. In whatever medium, I can’t wait for another year of writing about it.
James Murphy, you and I had another good year; image courtesy of nymag.com
Antony Hegarty in performance; image courtesy of capitalnewyork.com
I usually don’t like to begin posts by with defensive statements acknowledging relative inactivity. They tend to read or are intended to be understood as apologies, and as a woman I avoid offering concession for things that aren’t my fault. The cause of my recent lack of blog fodder is industriousness. I’ve been busy. This needs little justification. In addition to the girls’ studies conference I recently attended, I start another blog series for Bitch Magazine tomorrow. This one is called the Bechdel Test Canon and will focus on feminist responses to a selection of movies that pass the Bechdel Test. Thus, I have been marathoning a lot of features. I’m also working on a couple of other professional projects that I’d rather not elaborate upon at this juncture, but require considerable attention.
The unfortunate reality of being occupied while running a popular culture blog is that media texts generate regardless of your ability to keep up. For a little over a month, I’ve been lagging behind notable releases from Sufjan Stevens, Deerhunter, and Antony and the Johnsons. When releases are relevant, I try to link a preview like NPR’s First Listen, which usually demos a new release a week before it hits stores. However, I regrettably neglected to do so this time. This isn’t so much a concern for Stevens’ The Age of Adz, which for me recalls the petulant tone, Auto-Tune dalliances, and incoherent grandeur of Kanye West’s 808s and Heartbreak except that its indulgences are boring and experimentations are predictable. However, it’s certainly a concern for the Johnsons’ consistently elegiac Swanlights. Frequent commenter Kathy recently brought up Hegarty, who I have mentioned previously. Thus, a long overdue post.
I will admit considerable initial hesitancy toward Antony and the Johnsons writ large, and chanteuse Antony Hegarty in particular. The band garnered much praise with 2005′s breakthrough, I Am a Bird Now. Later that same year, Hegarty provided vocals and piano to “Beautiful Boyz,” an ode to Jean Genet on CocoRosie’s maligned sophomore release, Noah’s Ark. The singer collaborated with Björk on Volta and covered Leonard Cohen songs in the documentary I’m Your Man. Several friends championed Hegarty with breathless comparisons to Nina Simone and invocations of cabaret.
Theoretically, this should have been enough to convince me. But it wasn’t until Hegarty channeled childhood heroine Alison Moyet on Hercules and Love Affair’s 2008 debut that I was moved. My hunch as to why forces me to confront some of my latent transphobia and homophobia. Unlearn, Alyx.
To be clear, I don’t have the hang-ups about transgender people that some feminists do. To me, top surgeries and sexual reassignment procedures don’t register as misogynistic or comparable to the plastic surgery some women receive. There’s a big difference between cisgender women getting breast implants and nose jobs in the name (under the guise?) of choice and transgender men and women wanting their bodies to reflect how they conceptualize their sex. Frankly, such comparisons are reductionist and insulting.
But I was initially resistant toward Hegarty’s output because it was so ponderous and heavy with tortured import, which I do think is linked to the singer’s orientation. Wither the happy? Why is everyone dying in all of these songs? Why are emotions so intense? Why does this sometimes negatively impact phrasing, as exhibited in the leaden Hegarty-Björk duet “Dull Flame of Desire”? Hegarty’s music sounded like a black hole where the corpses of Jean Genet, Candy Darling, and Kazuo Ohno rot eternally as mourners crowd and bawl over the loss. Even though it matters that they lived and important that we reflect on how and why they died, it was too overwhelming for me.
Performance artist Candy Darling (1944-1974) on her death bed and on the cover of "I Am a Bird Now"; image courtesy of pitchfork.com
Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno (1906-2010) as cover subject for "The Crying Light"; image courtesy of pitchfork.com
Now, I tend to like my music varied and complex in emotionality and not dwell on or engineer a limited range of emotions. This isn’t to say there isn’t variance in Hegarty’s funereal music. But I think my discomfort with it most likely stemmed from being more comfortable with queer chanteuses having conga lines tail behind. This makes me wonder if I had difficulty processing the pop song as lamentation, especially from a singer who identifies as trans and gay. After I embraced Hegarty’s dancier side and noted the wrenching lyrical content it belied, I felt it my duty to revisit the Johnsons’ previous efforts. I enjoy Swanlights, even if my loyalties are still with The Crying Light. I was astonished by their powerful, austere beauty. I’ve also been able to process more recent acts like the riveting Perfume Genius.
But could I only appreciate queer excess when it wasn’t steeped in profound sadness? Does this need for keeping private feelings at bay suggest my unconscious desire to put out musicians back in the closet? May it stem from privilege, residing in a cisgender white lady’s discomfort over being uncertain if male pronouns apply when addressing the musician? May it make me uncomfortable to face that seriousness is vital when the majority of queer people are not privy to all civic rights, risk mortal danger in quotidian situations straight people don’t have to negotiate, are targets of hate crimes, and in some cases are denied medical coverage and left to die because some hospitals won’t treat them?
Addressing those injustices are worth tearful, shaky, defiant encomium. It demands complete attention and re-education. As a result, the music can be too overwhelming to make it into steady personal rotation, but I welcome it when it presses its importance upon me.
Thanks to my friend Evan, who alerted me on Monday that some serious Aughties musical canonization was going down this week, I’ve been following Pitchfork’s unveiling of the Top 500 tracks of the decade. As it may be of interest, I thought I’d share my feelings.
In subsequent posts, I may comment on their impending coverage of the decade’s best music videos and albums, as well as their formulations on the reclamation of pop, the exploration of noise, and the mainstreaming of indie rock. I won’t devote posts to it, though, because there’s a fine line between providing useful commentary and hearing yourself type. And my hunch is that discussing the singles list will suffice, as it presents, by microcosm, a general set of criticisms I’ve long held about the “tastemaker” e-zine.
Covering Pitchfork’s appraisal of the decade in this way makes more sense to me anyway, as the 2000s marked the resurgence of the single. Our increasingly digitized media culture cultivated the need for that one song, found at the click of a mouse or the touch of an mp3 player button or phone pad. That song also tended to get posted on blogs, e-zines, and MySpace pages (however briefly) as a means to define the self or selves (this was a decade when Gnarls Barkley, Brightblack Morning Light, and Crystal Castles could potentially coexist on the same shuffle or mash-up).
So, this list is the first time I’ve seen music of my youth canonized in such a way that it now seems historical. When Pitchfork first did the list half-way through the decade, I was 22 and just out of college; an adult, but only sorta. More specifically, the songs were still new. But having graduated from college twice over and a year into my second post-college job in 2009, I can look at songs from 2000, when I was in high school, and feel my age like many folks who transitioned into adulthood in decades prior.
And now, some nostalgia. A lot of the songs on this list bring up specific memories, images, people, and feelings. I remember my friend Brooke trying to teach me a dance routine to Aaliyah’s “Try Again” for our junior prom. PJ Harvey’s “Good Fortune” reminded me of a high school boyfriend which, in hindsight, speaks to an epic love song’s power to project. I remember a classmate singing the chorus to OutKast’s “Ms. Jackson” to herself in French class. I remember hearing Jay-Z and UGK’s “Big Pimpin’” at a Claire’s somewhere in New York City on a field trip. Radiohead’s “The National Anthem” confused the hell out of me, but I kept playing it at full volume anyway. Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On” was a confusing song that made perfect sense. And if Daft Punk’s “One More Time” was released when the class of 2001 voted for our song, it would’ve been my pick (I submitted U2′s “Beautiful Day” and Counting Crows’ “Hanging Around”; our song ended up being Aerosmith’s cover of The Beatles’ “Come Together” from the Armageddon soundtrack, for some reason).
Then there’s the rough transition between high school and college. Songs off Radiohead’s Amnesiac and Daft Punk’s Discovery suggest my lonely, uncertain summer before college. I started college, withdrew mid-way through my first semester, and resumed in the spring. This was a “the” time — The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Shins, The Avalanches, and the last album by The Dismemberment Plan. It was also when I started to follow Pitchfork, mostly to avoid writing term papers.
After a summer back home, I applied for a college radio show. It was here that I really started learning about music, and just how much music there was. KVRX maintains a “none of the hits all of the time” policy; if a musical act got a single or video on rotation in a commercial market, they could not be played. While I was there, we pulled The Arcade Fire and Franz Ferdinand from rotation. Some deejays would think that by pulling a musical act they liked out of rotation, we were initiating a taste-based attack on coolness (i.e., undiscovered = good, discovered = bad). While this prejudice existed (and I would certainly perpetuate it at times), pulling an artist embraced by the mainstream out of college radio rotation felt more political to me. “Spoon is on 101X? Great! They’re awesome. Now let’s shine a light on the thousands of other bands who’ll never get that kind of attention.”
Pitchfork made an effort to shine a light too, biases notwithstanding. During my tenure at KVRX, my relationship with Pitchfork became contentious. While I followed Pitchfork, I was also dismissive or derisive of the staff’s opinions (a classic push-pull for many music geeks: we are at once too cool for Pitchfork, yet check to see if we line up with their rulings). As I came into my own as a feminist, I also became more critical of what they covered, how they covered it, and what they dismissed, out of which came, among other things, this blog.
Yet, there are so many songs on this countdown that remind me of that time. I remember my first radio show, when I played Interpol’s “NYC” because I had some vague idea of who they were. I remember exactly where I was when I first heard TV on the Radio’s “Staring At the Sun” and Dizzie Rascal’s “I Luv U.” I remember seeing Spoon perform “The Way We Get By” on Conan and hoping they’d get big. I remember hearing the bass line to Broken Social Scene’s “Stars and Sons” for the first time. I remember fighting The Rapture’s “House of Jealous Lovers” for weeks before surrendering. I remember being unable to avoid The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights.” I remember playing Broadcast’s “Pendulum” while getting ready for parties. I remember rocking out to The Gossip’s “Standing in the Way of Control” in the deejay booth. I remember LCD Soundsystem’s “Losing My Edge” being one of the go-to songs deejays would throw on for a smoke break when we weren’t quoting from it (I alluded to it in this post’s title). I remember hearing M.I.A.’s “Galang” at a party and having it blow my mind. I remember impromptu dance parties after Alliance for a Feminist Option meetings when a bunch of sweaty grrrls I still call friends would shimmy to Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” and OutKast’s “Hey Ya!” I remember skanking harder and smiling wider than I ever have with the person I built my life with to Ted Leo and the Pharmacists’ “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?”
In addition, there was Boards of Canada, Wolf Eyes, Feist, Black Dice, Andrew Bird, Ladytron, Devendra Banhart, Destroyer, Hot Chip, The New Pornographers, Deerhoof, M. Ward, Liars, Junior Boys, The Walkmen, Manitoba (later Caribou), El-P, The Go Team, (Smog), Sufjan Stevens, RJD2, The Books, Talib Kweli, Phoenix . . . . The list goes on. If I ever had trouble keeping up with new artists after graduating in 2005, it was only because I had so many established artists to follow.
Of course, my college radio utopia didn’t last. It couldn’t. My monolithic friend group fragmented. People moved, lost touch, became casual, or just stopped being friends. Perhaps this is really when the decade became more to me than a sequence, instead an evolution of time. Late-in-the-decade offerings like LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends” and Animal Collective’s “Fireworks” convey this for me.
After college, I acquired Deerhunter, CSS, Hercules and Love Affair, Santigold, Bat for Lashes, Grizzly Bear, Battles, No Age, Be Your Own Pet, Girl Talk, Magik Markers, Vampire Weekend, Vivian Girls, Women, King Khan and the Shrines, and St. Vincent.
Assuredly there will be more new artists for me (and you) to adopt. Just this week, because of the countdown, I picked up on The Knife.
There are artists whose countdown placement evinces moments when we were willing to bet the farm on an act that now seem dated (Death From Above 1979, The Streets, and Klaxons). There are also acts I didn’t “get” but sorta came around on later (hello, Joanna Newsom). There are acts I didn’t know that well in college but came to treasure later (bless you, Neko Case). There are acts I enjoy but could never fully champion (I like you fine, Belle and Sebastian). There are acts I appreciate, but kinda overwhelm me and can’t listen to all the time (Jesus, Xiu Xiu). And then there are acts for whom I just never got the fuss (Fleet Foxes and The Decemberists).
With that said, this countdown plays predictably. Accepting minor issues like what song was selected to represent an artist and where songs fell in ranking, Pitchfork got a lot right. They also got caught up with some songs that I think they’re overselling, and some things they marginalized or completely overlooked. I’ll preoccupy the rest of this post with those flaws.
For me Pitchfork’s big Achilles heel has always been hip hop, primarily because they really only cover mainstream hip hop (Lil Wayne, T.I., 50 Cent, Clipse, Eminem, Cam’ron, OutKast, Kanye West, and Jay-Z — the last three are all over this countdown). And while this isn’t a problem in its own right, it limits how hip hop is defined and what it represents, which, in a lot of commercial hip hop, that still means money, Cristal, whips, blunts, and bitches (though not in all cases). It certainly suggests that the only way for rappers to be successful and culturally relevant is to be part of a corporate mechanism. This seems like something a publication that prides itself on giving visibility to independent artists should re-evaluate. Because, in my mind, if there’s no Busdriver or Jean Grae, I question the validity of the list.
As a result, it largely eclipses underground hip hop which has seen tremendous advancements over the course of the decade, particularly in the states. Talent from labels like Stones Throw, Quannum Projects, Rhymesayers, Definitive Jux, and anticon., along with talent at labels like Plug Research, Mush, Warp, and Ubiquity have created some of the most vital and interesting work in the genre, expanding its sound and its content while working outside a corporate mechanism in the process (anticon. runs as a collective). But you’d never know that if you only read Pitchfork, who acknowledged a few efforts, primarily from white male label owners (El-P) and instrumental artists (RJD2, DJ Shadow). No female MCs were acknowledged. This may also speak to the dearth of female MCs in underground hip hop, but doesn’t excuse it (I love you, Jean Grae; I love you, Psalm One). My challenge to hip hop fans in the next decade is to try to create online resources as influential as Pitchfork to get the message out. You’ve got guaranteed spots on my blogroll.
Also, as you may have noticed if you combed through the entire list, only the top 200 songs are accompanied by blurbs from the writing staff. While I understand that writing 300 more blurbs presents its own challenges, I also think it suggests that tracks 500-301 weren’t good enough for a write-up. And this makes me especially sad when many of the women I loved in this decade – Vivian Girls, St. Vincent, Goldfrapp, Sleater-Kinney, Bat for Lashes, Björk, and The Gossip — are thrown at the end and not given any qualifying statements. This especially seems necessary for a song like The Gossip’s “Standing In the Way of Control,” which became an LGBTQI anthem this decade. That would be especially useful to read alongside #18, Hercules and Love Affair’s “Blind.” This is a great dance song that I’ve always interpreted as an anthem for coming out and living life queer. But you wouldn’t know that from Tim Finney’s write-up.
And while I’m heartened by the women who did make it to the top 200, especially women like M.I.A., Beyoncé, Missy Elliott, Annie, and Karen O of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who made the top 20, I can’t help but notice that many of these women are pop artists who work extensively with predominantly male producers. I don’t want to suggest that cutting a track with Timbaland or Diplo or Pharell from The Neptunes means that women are robbed of artistic autonomy, as I wouldn’t say that for Justin Timberlake. However, I do take issue with what female artists and what songs get praise. Or even what versions of songs. While the Diplo remix of the version of M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” that features UGK is great, I wonder why her version isn’t enough.
That said, the 2000s were both a hell of an education and a hell of a time. Pitchfork knows it. I know it. Hopefully, you know it too. It was a great time to be alive. I hope the next decade is even better.
If I may indulge in some cred wankery for a moment, I’d like to point out that I’ve been a follower of Annie Clark’s from way back. No, no. I mean, way back. Before she recorded under the name St. Vincent even. Early 2004.
It turns out that Annie Clark went to high school with a college friend of mine, who talked up Ms. Clark’s talents and recommended that I review her EP for KVRX. However, Hollie also had another dark-haired, musically-inclined friend named Annie who I got drunk with at a party. This led to a rather embarrassing exchange between myself and Ms. Clark where I wrote a babbly testimonial on her Friendster page (remember Friendster, kids?) and . . . well . . . she was quick to point out that I got the wrong Annie.
That said, she was also quick to send me her three-song EP, Ratsliveonnoevilstar, which I promptly reviewed and put into rotation. I don’t think it got a lot of spin, but I wrote a glowing review of it. In it, I really got a sense for her love of shimmery strings, idiosyncratic and minute production, coy but confrontational lyrics, and putting her rich voice front and center.
Of course, her interim between this period and her debut as St. Vincent is well-documented. She played with folks like The Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens, and I also caught her behind the cello at a Castanets show during SXSW 2k6. But when she finally released Marry Me in 2007, I was enlivened to hear all the promise I heard on that EP, distilled and glorious.
Cover of Marry Me, released on Beggars Banquest in 2007; photo taken from freewilliamsburg.com
Point is, while she may not remember me, I always believed in her.
And I still believe in her, because her sophomore release, Actor is wonderful. My dear friend Kristen hipped me to a certain national public radio station that was premiering it, and I haven’t been able to stop listening to it. And I was already in love with many of these songs, which I heard during SXSW 2k9, as I was fortunate enough to see her put on a delightful show at Central Presbyterian.
Still of St. Vincent performance at Central Presbyterian, found on Flickr
There’s a lot to love on Actor. For one, there’s her voice. As a choirgirl mezzo-soprano, I appreciate the hell out of her swoony, supple alto. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that high school me would have been all about St. Vincent. I also love her inherent properness — the girl’s diction is as immaculate as her posture and guitar playing — and how it creates an interesting tension with her frank, wryly sexy lyrics (a favorite of mine is the first line off opening track “The Strangers” — “Lover I don’t play to win/For the thrill until I’m spent,” but there are plenty more).
In addition, she’s a fan of vocal loops, doubling and tripling and quadrupling her voice until there is an entire chorus of Annie Clarks echoing, harmonizing, dialoging, and sometimes completing trains of thought for itself. I believe this to be a feminist act — using one’s voice as an instrument, noise, an assertion of the self, and an acknowledgement that it can be many different things at once, while still residing in the same throat.
On that tack, I love Ms. Clark’s production sensibilities. I put her in ownership specifically, as she meticulously helms her own recordings, serving here as co-producer and playing many of the instruments herself (homegirl did go to Berklee, after all). Her songs are luminous and exquisitly crafted, characterized by either jarring, exciting spurts of guitar feedback and distortion (“An Actor Out Of Work” and “Marrow” especially) or building, layer by layer and wave upon wave into bottomless sonic structures (the one-two punch of “Party” and “Just the Same But Brand New” do this nicely for me). But she owns them. Just watch her:
Thus, one of the main things I love about Ms. Clark is her assuredness. I wouldn’t fuck with the woman behind “An Actor Out of Work,” no matter her deceptive politesse, would you?
If this album isn’t much of a departure from her debut, I think it might be because she already has a very clear take on who she is as both an artist and as a young woman. It’s evident in her sturdy voice, her steady hand guiding the production, and her direct yet candid, florid lyrics. Even when her lyrics point to a very mid-20s, female sense of doubt and uncertainty (a sense many of us can identify with, I’m sure — listen to “Party,” “Save Me From What I Want”), there’s little doubt that Ms. Clark knows exactly what she wants and will learn more and share with us as she grows older. At 26, she’s already gotten a pretty good start to figuring it out. At 25, I can’t wait to hear more from her.
Annie Clark looks ahead, though slightly off-center
