The Sordid History of Sousa's Horrible Musical Tastes

[Sousa]

They did. They should've also put out a self-help book called Live Life Like Live Lives.

[Sousa]

Cowboy Junkies - The Trinity Session (1988)

As I've joked about with GoGo in the past, I am probably the world's only die-hard Cowboy Junkies fan. They're certainly the "who?"-est band on the list so far, and since The Who won't be here, they may well maintain that position. I'll keep this short because I love this album to death, I listen to it to this day on the reg, and I promised this would be more introspective than anything.

But I can't not talk about this album. I stumbled upon it at some time during my senior year of high school, though I couldn't tell you when. Noted music review site and EWB meme allmusic.com had a "Related Artists" function, and I used it for one of Counting Crows or Live (genuinely don't remember) and got kicked to a band called Cowboy Mouth. On a related note, I had never heard a Cowboy Mouth song until about a week ago, and it was god-awful and Teenage Sousa probably would've loved it, so thank fuck for that. I went to Best Buy with only a barest idea of a few musicians I was looking for.

Instead of Cowboy Mouth, I grabbed a CD from a band called Cowboy Junkies. It was on sale for five bucks, and I bought it with two or three "Related Artists." It was only when I got home that I realized I'd gotten the wrong CD. I meant to take it back at some point, but I never did.

So one day, I decided on a whim to listen to it in the car. It was my 1985 Mercury Cougar, which had a tape deck. I had a Discman adapter for that tape deck. I was driving past my friend Ian's house on Diamond Mill Road in New Lebanon, Ohio. I don't remember the exact date, but I remember exactly where I was.

When I pushed play, this happened.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUhaq4Yg74w

It was the damnedest thing I'd ever heard. And it was basically love at first listen.

The Trinity Session was recorded over two days in Toronto's historic Church of the Holy Trinity, and the band tricked the church's officials into allowing them to use the facility (they said they were a gospel band). After paying off a security guard for a few extra hours and sneaking in during the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's lunch break a few days later, the band was left with a raw alt-country album recorded over a single microphone, often in a single take with guest musicians. It was never mixed or edited.

It's a remarkable piece of work, utterly unlike any other album I've ever heard. Margo Timmins is an amazing singer, and in this environment with these musicians, she flourishes. They take Hank Williams's country standard

and turn it into http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeeRadDRgmo. They take the doo-wop hit

and turn it into http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoOhLndbkx8. They write http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4hKmQpcT1k.

In its way, it might be mistaken for "peaceful" music--it's quiet, introspective, and slow. But it's chilling and frank, and when the harmonica kicks in at the start of the bluesy

it still gives me goosebumps. Small wonder I've spent so many hours of my life writing to this very album; it's the soundtrack to many of my favorite stories that I've written.

I'm not going to do highlights or lowlights--not for this one. I know this album so well that it's like an old friend. It's worth a listen, even if it might not be up your alley. It's the kind of album that's ready to take you by surprise.

NEXT: A musician I've fallen out of love with recently.

[Skummy]

I was genuinely expecting Cowboy Junkies last time. They're utterly lovely, and I love most of their cover versions I've heard, though have never really sat down and allowed myself to listen to them all that much. Their version of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" is superb, though.

[GhostMachine]

Good band. My favorite cover by them, though, is the first one I ever heard: their version of Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane".

[Sousa]

NEXT: A musician I've fallen out of love with recently.

Swerve!

Built to Spill - There's Nothing Wrong with Love (1994)

So in the process of exploring the albums I owned from the person who was going to be next, I discovered his cover of Built to Spill's "Twin Falls," and I realized that I had completely forgotten that this album existed and how much I loved it. But it deserves a spot on this list and more attention anyway since it's one of the real gems of 90's indie rock.

By the time I was getting close to graduation, I was trying to take up bass guitar in earnest. I wasn't as into the wanky Chillywilly slap-bass as I had been before, but I still wasn't any good. Still, the bass gave me a chance to spend some time with some friends who were musicians--Ian, a drummer, and Jared Philips, who went on to play guitar for a decent little band called Times New Viking.

It's impossible to over-emphasize how hanging out with these guys expanded my tastes. It was my first exposure to bands that will appear later on this list and broadened my horizons to the point that I probably owe much of the rest of this list to them. It was music with a more poppy bent than anything I'd listened to so far, but there was an underlying harshness that I appreciated.

Built to Spill--through this album and their slightly more successful Perfect from Now On and Keep It Like a Secret--was one of the first bands I took to at this point. Hailing from the vast potatoscape of Idaho, they were driven by vocalist and guitarist Doug Martsch, whose philosophy of "sing in a little kid voice AND ADD MORE GUITARS!!!!11!1" defined pretty much all of the band's career. There's Nothing Wrong with Love was my favorite, and it's easy to see why in hindsight; it's got a teenage sentimentality to it with wonderful hooks and melodies. I imagine Yewbers discovering them for the first time may be put off by Martsch's vocals--he's got a childish nasal quality that can put people off--but the songs are lovely bits of 90's indie rock.

Song Highlights:

- This was the song that made me love this album. If anything, I think I like it better now than I did then. The way the cello comes in during the second verse is just a beautiful bit of songcraft. "I wanna see movies of my dreams!" Me too, Doug.

- It's a good example of Martsch's technique of layering guitars on top of guitars, then throwing on more guitars, then adding a guitar solo. And it's got a great combination of childish innocence and chemical dependency.

- It's funny that I managed to find a YouTube video that combines these two songs; I can't imagine one without the other. "Twin Falls" is a lovely little ditty about childhood romance, while "Some" is all about misconception and judgment. But between "Twin Falls"'s heads-up-7-Up and "Some"'s quiet-verse-loud-chorus motif, these are the songs I probably remembered best. Except "Car."

- Some of the lyrics are ridiculous ("Shut down the whole system at the spine with fishing line"), but the melody and the hooks got me. As I recall, it's also the only minor-key song on the album, which makes it stand out more than most.

Song Lowlights:

- I dunno. I liked just about all of this. I guess this one's the weakest?

With the Benefit of Hindsight:

This one, like Randy Travis before it, was something of a revelation. I'm so glad that I remembered this existed and deserved a spot because there's a better-than-average chance it would've been years before I'd discovered Built to Spill again. I'm going to go track down my weather-beaten copy of Perfect from Now On and rock out to

now. Great stuff, highly recommended, especially if you've never heard of it.

NEXT: The one who was going to be next last time!

[Sousa]

Ben Folds - Rockin' the Suburbs (2001)

Just like Built to Spill did. Except that they were talented.

Ben Folds is a frustrating musician to me now as a 30-year-old with kids and a job. I think his last solo album, Way to Normal, embodied that. He's an incredibly gifted musician, both in terms of performance and songwriting. Here's a great example in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxx5WvePCtY, which is a beautiful, sweeping piano ballad... with an entire verse dedicated to Lisa Nowak (the diaper-wearing astronaut who tried to kidnap and murder her boyfriend) for no really good reason. He's got a nice driving piano song later on the album, but it starts with a horrible Mr. Miyagi "sensei" thing at the beginning and is called http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATMSs2iw7gg.

Basically, Ben Folds is a very good musician who, more often than not, goes for the lowest common denominator. He's part of a broader geek culture that's obsessed with irony, and while I understand it (and in fact am often a part of it), he takes it to a whole new level. He's a 47-year-old man who once wrote a bitter breakup song called "Song for the Dumped" ("Give me my money back, give me my money back, you bitch!") and has never really moved past that.

So I've not really liked the last few Ben Folds albums, so it was with some trepidation that I picked up Rockin' the Suburbs, the album that pretty much defines College Freshman Sousa.

What I remember about being a freshman in hindsight is that I was this huge asshole. I know, I know, I have a reputation for being condescending around here, but I feel like I was a whole other beast back then. I didn't understand the privilege I had, and I'd grown up in a small, mostly white, mostly middle-class town. Suddenly, I was thrust into a situation where I was surrounded by people who came from different backgrounds, who didn't have it as easy as I had. I was in a dorm with a gay residential adviser who stressed diversity. I was pissed off because, no, didn't they understand, I wasn't a racist, and besides, shouldn't we be, like, color-blind and not pay attention to how people are different?

This isn't to say that I spent all of my freshman year bitter; I took to college well, made friends that I still have to this day, and excelled in classes. But I was outright hostile to the broader culture of college, and I flocked to people who were like me. Male, middle-class, and white.

So Ben Folds was a good fit, a very brilliant songwriter with something of a bitter streak. And to be fair, this isn't a bad album, really. Aside from Whatever and Ever Amen with the Five, it might be his best. But I associate much of it very closely with a part of my life that I associate with having a bad attitude that listening to it again was something of a chore.

Song Highlights:

- The sequel to

which threw me off because it wasn't called "Fred Jones Part 1." I've always felt like this was Folds's opus, one of those times when his songwriting ability truly bears out and rises to the forefront instead of drowning in a sea of smugness. It's a simple story about an old man driven away from his job at the newspaper after years of hard work, with a simple interplay of piano and strings on top of it (and great backing vocals by Cake's John McCrea). It doesn't hit below the belt, it doesn't condescend, and it's pretty close to perfect.

- Again, when Ben Folds is reflective and doesn't go for novelty-for-novelty's-sake, he can put out some wonderful stuff, like this ode to an aging hippy who's become part of the system he fought to bring down, with a great driving piano line.

- A very sweet, very melodic number about--like pretty much everything else here--being bored.

Song Lowlights:

- Uhhhh, right. Dude. Okay. This is an entire song sniping at turn-of-the-century alt-metal culture, all about "white boy pain" and daring to use bad words. But it comes from Ben Folds, who represents a whole other brand of whiny entitled suburbanites who use bad words. You wrote "Song for the Dumped," dude, why are you picking on someone else for being an angry kid?

- This one represents what I was talking about earlier, the intersection between Ben Folds the Gifted Musician and Ben Folds the Baffling Songwriter. It's a song about his son and not wanting to grow up and the first verse is about Arby's. I mentioned earlier that my love of new dads elevated stuff like Creed's "Wid Alms Why Dopaw," but I've never been able to get into this one. That said, his son is adorable in the music video. D'awwwwwwww.

- Gave me diabetes.

With the Benefit of Hindsight:
At this point, I don't know if I'll ever be able to reconcile the potential of Ben Folds with the fact that he keeps going for cheap laughs and condescending jokes. That said, he's a very, very good musician. To me, his defining songs aren't the ones with the trademark Ben Folds smarm (or the ones where he says his girlfriend is a brick and he's drowning slowly). They're the heartbreak of

the loneliness of

or the reflection of

He's a fantastic musician, but it only bears out about half the time, which is what's frustrating about him. Still, if you've never heard Ben Folds before, Rockin' the Suburbs is as good a place as any to start.

NEXT: Another band with a frustratingly uneven output and a whole lot of novelty-over-substance.

[GoGo Yubari]

Ben Folds mocking other people for using swear words for the sake of swear words is pretty unintentionally hilarious.

[Sousa]

Fuck it, I listened to this one last night and I've got a busy week ahead, let's just do one more.

They Might Be Giants - Lincoln (1988)

The long-suffering, never-wavering love affair between Sousa and They Might Be Giants began in the 90's, and--like many kids my age--began with Tiny Toon Adventures.

This later led me to Flood, which isn't really the band's best album but has some of their most famous songs, including the sublime http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAbZzdalZh4. My friend Jesse expanded my interest with

and Apollo 18's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrc9siok3IU.

So it's fair to say that I've been a They Might Be Giants fan for a long, long time, but I never started buying their albums until college. Flood was first and didn't engage me beyond a few songs. Mink Car came out my freshman year and featured the excellent

(maybe my favorite TMBG track) and not a lot else.

And then there was Lincoln. Sweet, sweet Lincoln.

For those not in the know or those who are interested in exploring the band a bit more (notice all the links above, guys!), They Might Be Giants are John Flansburgh and John Linnell, two East Coast nerds who have made a reputation for being a novelty act that, frankly, is both undeserved and on the nose. Does that make sense? It should.

TMBG are, of course, hand-to-glove with Sousa in general and College Sousa in particular. They follow the Ben Folds sensibility of being smarmy, dorky, and "quirky," but by that same token they replace Folds's bitterness with a real sense of dread and despair. They've got a reputation for http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pG0QTzO-K0, but they've also done

(IT'S SUPER EFFECTIVE!),

(IT'S SUPER EFFECTIVE!), and songs for kids' TV shows (It's not very effective...).

So yes, call them a novelty act, but give them credit: they've got range. Lincoln is a great example of that, and it's an album that got them the attention they needed for a major label debut, which led to pretty much everything else.

Having not listened to this one for years (my CD copy is hopelessly scratched), I was surprised that I'd forgotten how freaking weird it is. I know TMBG as a band that experiments--and whose experiments often go hopelessly off the rails--but there are parts of this album that are just stupid. Some goofy nonsense parodies ("Pencil Rain" for those of you who were desperate for a "Ballad of the Green Berets" parody and are therefore three hundred years old) sit alongside zany high-concept songs about affairs with Santa Claus, and then a jazz number or a sea chantey or a little bit of salsa kicks in. It is all over the map, and sometimes, that map goes to a place called Cowtown.

But as I've always said, when TMBG hits, they hit harder than nearly anyone. The best songs here take the motifs of 80's punk and new wave and add something that's often missing: heart. The authors behind "Instanbul" probably aren't best known for despair, but Linconl features one of my favorite break-up songs ever. There's songs of isolation, workplace despair, and even a jazzy ode to a character who sounds like Mister Zero. And it's often clever lyrically to boot; while it sometimes tries way too hard ("The Yellow Roosevelt Avenue leaf overturned"), it very often succeeds ("If it wasn't for disappointment, I wouldn't have any appointment").

Lincoln probably isn't the best TMBG starting point--they're the sort of band that demand a compilation (they've got a pair of good ones). But it's also an album that features what is, I feel, their best work, even if it's not the most consistently great album they've ever done.

Song Highlights:

- "To take the house he built for her apart." This is the defining early TMBG song, before they went to a major label and added a full band, when they were wearing their new wave influences on their sleeves. It's a break-up song, but it's a break-up song through the lens of They Might Be Giants, so it's going to do things one wouldn't normally expect. The bridge in particular is a wonderful bit of business. "I'm just tired, and I don't love you anymore." Did I mention ?

- Notice that these first three good songs all have music videos? Yeah, TMBG pick their singles really, really well. Again, a little bit new wave, a little bit punk, but with a great driving melody and a sad story of love over a long distance.

- Yeah, maybe this one fits into the "too clever for its own good" category, with its theme of "the 1960's misremembered," but I can't not enjoy it. And it's got a catchy chorus to boot.

- This song was King Shit of TMBG Mountain when I first bought this album, and what a tune it is. Ballroom jazz with a sinister edge.

- A resigned, melodic ode to workplace ennui.

Song Lowlights:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP6EE67bmIQ - see it's funny because it sounds like "this is the dawning of the age of aquarius" lolol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsBCJycshcE - see it's funny because it kind of has the same tune as this song from the sixties lolol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfkgnXvUd3c - It starts out with some promise, with a catchy little sea chantey tune, but it's pretty much the quintessential TMBG Novelty Song, and "he ended up sad, he ended up sad, he ended up really really really sad" is not the same thing as a hook.

With the Benefit of Hindsight:

TMBG can be a frustrating band because about half of any given album is brilliant and the other half is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abwpt7sRnPY. Lincoln has some of the best bits of their entire career, though, and I was glad to revisit it. Remarkably, after thirty years together, TMBG are now probably enjoying more success than ever--thanks in large part to their work with Disney on children's albums. It's perhaps not what I'd rather they be known for, but they deserve any success they get.

NEXT: A band that had a fairly recent career renaissance, back when they were wee lads just having split into two different bands.

[MalaCloudy Black]

I always remember TMBG the most from their stint as guest stars on Home Movies.

[Hobo]

On the subject of Ben Folds, I really really like Lonely Avenue.

But everything else is kinda... eh. It feels, I dunno, very suburban white guy.

[Colly]

Y'all don't know what its like being male, middle class and white.

[METALMAN]

The first BFF album is one of my favourites ever, and the next two are quite good as well.

Ben Folds solo is mostly awful though, and I have no idea why.

I mean, he did a decent cover of In Between Days. i like Late and that one with Reginald Spektor but I seriously don't care for anything else.

I remember I used to think Tiny Dancer was originally by Ben Folds.

[GhostMachine]

You know why Ben Folds doesn't suck?

Because he did this:

And also because he worked with William Shatner.

[Sousa]

I'm really, really tired of Ironic White Guy versions of classic hip-hop, to be honest.

I'll do another one of these this weekend. Preview:

[Sousa]

LET'S GET BACK TO UPDATING ALL OF SOUSA'S THREADS GUYS

Dinosaur Jr. - Where You Been (1993)

I've tried to do this one like three times and just can't get into it for reasons that aren't clear to me. And I think I've figured out why: Dinosaur Jr. make much better old guys than young guys, and they certainly work much better when they're a team.

Dinosaur Jr. are J Mascis, Murph, and Lou Barlow--that is to say, that's what the lineup should be. Before Nirvana and Pearl Jam and their ilk hit the big time and made "grunge" a word more commonly associated with music than that shit in your shower, these three were putting out music that sounded truly grungy: nasty, grimy heavy rock that sounded a bit like this:

And that was in the 80's, remember--when bands like Hüsker Dü and The Replacements were inventing the sort of music that "grunge" later popularized.

I found Dinosaur Jr. through music-loving friends, but what I only now appreciate was that what I found was post-split Dinosaur Jr. J Mascis and Lou Barlow did indeed go their separate ways after three pretty good albums, and while Barlow went on to form Sebadoh and do pretty well for himself, Mascis (and drummer Murph) stuck with the Dinosaur Jr. label. As it happens, the split coincided with the band signing to a major record label, putting out a few fairly successful radio singles (including a Spike Jonze-directed music video for "Feel the Pain"), and Where You Been--their most successful album.

If you know the history of the band like I do, this is obviously their big "going for broke" album. Where their early work was gritty and dirty, Where You Been is polished to a sheen and epic in scope. It's bursting at the seams with big production numbers and additional instrumentation (from pianos to strings to timpani to the bells on "Out There"), it's ten songs long, and it's got much more of a radio-friendly pop bent. If ever there was an album that at least sounded like a sellout album, it's this.

But how does it hold up? Much of Dinosaur Jr. strength has always been with J Mascis, who's an exemplary guitar player with a very unique vocal style--a little warbly, a little whiny, but all J. So when he thunders into things with "Out There" (see above post) right from the start, you'll sit up and pay attention. Much of the rest of the album alternates between the poppier side of Major Label Dinosaur Jr. ("Start Choppin" was probably the band's biggest hit) and heavy rock, which this iteration of the band doesn't really have a knack for. But it's ten songs long, and it's some of the most easily approachable stuff they've ever put out.

In short, if you've never heard Dinosaur Jr. before (and you should really rectify that), this is a great place to start.

Song Highlights:

"Out There" - What a tune this is. For as much as Dinosaur Jr. was a self-conscious stoner band, "Out There" is probably the best case for J Mascis, Brilliant Fucking Musician there is. And I love the video. Playing guitars on mountains! Pink hats! Drowning stuff! Yeah!

"Start Choppin" - If you've heard any Dinosaur Jr., it's likely this one or "Feel the Pain." Great guitar hook, very J Mascis-y vocals (which you can take or leave--I'll take), and a little unnecessary screeching.

"Not the Same" - Okay, first off. Minus a billion billion points for trying to be Neil Young, J. It's not working. I was going to bump this song straight down to Lowlights... and then I got to the end and remembered the wonderful last half of the song. I really do prefer Dinosaur Jr. as a three-man act, but this is one instance when piling on the instrumentation really works, with some very nice, simple piano lines working their way in.

"Goin' Home" - Nice, simple, laid back, and pretty.

Album Lowlights:

"Get Me" and "Drawerings" - Oh come on you guys this is one song idea that you made two songs, and neither is really that great. The worst part is that they're side by side on the album, so the untrained listener is going "wait this is that song again what?"

"Hide" - Dinosaur Jr. can do heavy, but... not really without Lou Barlow ("Out There" excepted). There are two pretty closely aligned songs on here (the other one is the slightly okay "Gone Away"), and on a ten-track album it's really noticeable when two songs are basically the same as two other songs.

With the Benefit of Hindsight:

I am really, really glad this album existed. If it hadn't existed, I wouldn't be a Dinosaur Jr. fan--like I said, it's a good entry point. But in 2007, Lou Barlow and J Mascis finally buried the hatchet and returned to alt-rock (yes, with Murph in tow). The result was Beyond, Farm, and I Bet on Sky--which may be the three best albums they've ever put out. Something about J Mascis as a grown-up, gray-haired old man just works, and the albums (the first two in particular) are masterful blends of the sludgy stoner stylings (yes) of their first albums and the pop sensibilities of the post-Barlow work. The result is some of the best music they've ever produced, from "I Got Lost" to "Your Weather" to holy fucking hell "Ocean in the Way".

Basically, I became a Dinosaur Jr. fan long after they were any good (and seriously, every album pre-Beyond but post-Where You Been is an exercise in sadness), and they rewarded by coming back and picking right back where they left off before breaking up. And being awesome. That's the power of Dinosaur Jr. to me and why I'm still a fan over a decade later: they were very good stoned young guys, but they are awesome stoned old dudes.

UP NEXT: Our first (but not last) foray into Scandinavia and our first (but not last) foray into that vast wasteland that is early 21st century garage rock!

[Sousa]

All right, one more just because holy shit that last album didn't take long and I'm trying to listen to a bunch of these.

The Hives - Veni Vidi Vicious (2000--though not in the States until 2002)

Two things happened while I was an undergraduate that changed a lot about the way I started listening to music.

1. The garage rock trend. All at once, horrible buttrock bands like Linkin Park and Nickelback (BET WE'LL NEVER HEAR FROM THOSE GUYS AGAIN) started giving way to bands similar to the ones I liked. The Strokes! The White Stripes! The Vines! Additional band that begins with The (see above)! This was a glorious period for me as a young adult--especially because noted Horrible Turn-Of-The-Century Band Sum 41 was NOT AMUSED.

2. I discovered 97X--BAMMMMMMMMMMMM--the FUTURE of rock & roll.

97X was a modern rock station that ran out of Cincinnati, playing everything from local music to indie rock to world music to pretty much anything a little off kilter. It was David Dye's World Café without NPR's pleas for donations (but with corporate radio's pleas to BUY SHIT NOW). So influential was my discovery of 97X that a ton of the bands I'm about to talk about (including the next one) owe their place on the list to 97X. It's the new "my buddy Ian had this album and I kind of liked it!" on this list.

So the garage rock revival is probably best known these days for giving us Jack White and precious little else of lasting interest, and how you feel about that will probably vary wildly. I'll have more to say about him when (SPOILER ALERT!) I write about what might be his most successful album, but for now I'll just say that I took to this trend like a duck to water and was more than happy to fork over my hard-earned tutoring dollars to any band with a The in front of their names.

Out of all of them, though? Except the White Stripes, I probably liked the Hives best. Or specifically, I probably liked This Particular Album best. 97X played "Main Offender" and it was love. I listened to a ton of this album walking down the tree-lined path from the honors dorm to Wright State's campus because god damn it I was a college student and I was going to walk down some tree-lined paths in the autumn while listening to headphones.

Veni Vidi Vicious is not the sort of album that revolutionized music; it didn't define garage rock in its time (though the Hives were ahead of the curve, playing this sort of music well before White Blood Cells made everyone sit up and pay attention. What set the Hives apart for me was that they were louder, faster, and slicker than any other band. This is a twelve-track album that's over in under a half-hour, and the only time it slows down is for a surprisingly straight cover of Jerry Butler's "Find Another Girl." It's inoffensive, it's predictable, and there are no surprises to be found.

And it is so much fun. It's a wonderful combination of 1950's aesthetic with driving guitar rock, and it's tighter and more polished than probably anything else on the list so far. There are no really irredeemable songs, it sticks with its motifs, and by the time it starts to get a little bit tired, it ends. Bam. This is the anti-Use Your Illusion, and it was well worth rediscovering.

Song Highlights:

"Outsmarted" - I got onto Dinosaur Jr.'s case like an hour ago for reusing motifs over a short album, and while that holds true here, it's mostly because I hold Dinosaur Jr. to a higher standard because at their best they are so good. "Outstmarted" is the best song that sounds like "Outsmarted" on this album (and there are two or three--at least one of which almost uses the opening drum line exactly). It's got a great head-bopping beat and is the best real summary of the album--that is, you won't be able to sit still while listening to it.

"Supply and Demand" - The last half of the album is definitely a little worse than the first, but the closer is a nice bit of business. Yes, it's a little dumb, but so is everything else here.

"Main Offender" - No wonder this one took off. Pure classic.

Song Lowlights:

A Very Generalized Complaint: Here's my big problem with this album, and it's not one particular song or another. I listened to it ten minutes ago. I listened to it intently. And looking back, I can only remember like 60% of the songs on it. As I mentioned above, it's very samey and not particularly risky, which means that a lot of it just sort of runs together. It could probably safely be under twenty minutes, frankly.

With the Benefit of Hindsight:

So many smiles. Try this one out! It won't take you very long, even if it's a relatively safe start to our 97X (bammmmmmmmmmmmmm) trend.

UP NEXT: Pitchfork says this is one of the ten best albums of the 2000s. I think it's a hell of a lot better than their #1. And it's a hell of a lot riskier than Veni Vidi Vicious.

[MalaCloudy Black]

I remember being in high school and watching Late Night almost every night, and they would usually have The Hives, The White Stripes, etc. on a lot. At the time I wasn't a fan because I was still very much in my HEAVY METAL IS THE ONLY TR00 MUZAK phase, but going back and listening to some of these songs now I'm like.. hey, this is pretty good, yeah?

[Sousa]

Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)

I'll try to keep this quick because I don't have a lot of interesting context for this album; it's another one that 97X (baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam) was spinning at the time. It was recorded for AOL Time Warner's Reprise Records, dismissed for being a "career-killer," distributed online, and then picked up by AOL Time Warner's Nonesuch Records. It is Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and it is so good you guys.

Buckets of ink have been spilled talking about what an album this is, its strange history, how it represents such an unusual step forward for a band that started out as a fairly safe alt-country band. All I'll say is that I heard "Heavy Metal Drummer" on the radio and liked it, so I figured I should check out the rest of the album as well. And holy shit the rest of the album.

I mean. This is what "Heavy Metal Drummer" sounds like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5OS2kzlIgw

Wistful, sort of dippy indie rock pining for an idealized 80's that probably never existed. Not particularly interesting on its own. Safe, right?

Turn on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and it starts with this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlxH9-TYseY

A noise-driven, scattershot, seven-minute-long ramble with nonsense lyrics like "take off your Band-Aid 'cause I don't believe in touchdowns." To say this wasn't what I was expecting would be an understatement. But it clicks. It just works. The chaos piles on for seven whole minutes, and it's just so fucking pretty.

Really, that's my experience with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: it was the coolest album in the world pretty much out of nowhere. Of course it still holds up.

Song Highlights:

Uh. I like pretty much this whole album, so I'll just pick three so I'm not just gushing.

"Heavy Metal Drummer" - I went into this one with high expectations, of course--I'm not so far removed from these albums now that I've forgotten them. I had a feeling that I was going to love this all over again... except "Heavy Metal Drummer." "Oh, yeah, it's that song about playing KISS covers beautiful and stoned, that's going to keep my attention." Lo and behold, I cannot fucking resist this song. It's not so much the lyrics as it is the music, which just sort of glides along over the steady drumming with lovely piano lines. And Jeff Tweedy's voice. Damn it, this song, you made me miss the innocence I've known.
"Jesus, Etc." - Those strings, man. Jeff Tweedy, man. It's so freaking pretty.
"Radio Cure" - Dark, moody, and brooding. And then the chorus hits. Is it strange that the words "upbeat dirge" come to mind? That's what this album is, really--it's an album of contradictions.

Song Lowlights:
"War on War" - This is my least favorite song, I guess? I don't know, even it's pretty good.

With the Benefit of Hindsight:
It's where ugly things and pretty things come together to make lovely things. That's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Listen to it if you haven't. IT IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN FUCKING KID A, PITCHFORK.

UP NEXT: Cat Stevens sues somebody!

[ROC]

That album always gets me when after the wildness of "I Am Trying..." it goes into the downright soft "Kamera." Always a fantastic transition. Holy balls.

[GoGo Yubari]

Going back to The Hives, my favorite song on it is quite possibly "The Hives Declare Guerre Nucleaire." So awesomely quick and to the point and fun. They pull the same trick on their next one with "Abra Cadaver" and it still works perfectly. "Supply and Demand" is wonderful too.

Worst track is probably "Find Yourself Another Girl," an experiment that doesn't really provide any decent results.

I finally got to see them live the other year and they were fun as fuck, too.