May's Best New Music
(New to me, that is, not necessarily new this month)
Jay Bennett, Whatever Happened I Apologize - I’m sorry that it took Bennett’s death for me to become aware of this album, which is available as a free download. It’s a stripped down, intimate record that features mostly Jay’s voice and guitar (and, of course, excellent lyrics). Go grab it, listen to it, and remember what a great artist we lost this month.
Green Day, 21st Century Breakdown - I’ve been waiting a long time for this one, as have all the Green Day fans. The Foxboro Hottubs album was nice, but I think everyone has been wondering how these guys would follow up American Idiot. I’d guess very few would have guessed “rock opera,” but that’s exactly what this is, and it’s good. It’s not, you know, deep, but Billie Joe Armstrong has a grasp of, and ability to channel, teen angst that rivals Trent Reznor’s. This album adds things like strings(!) and timpani (!!) to the typical three-chords-and-a-snarl Green Day sound and the result is their most mature album yet (and that’s a good thing).
Rush, Moving Pictures - This is a bit of a cheat, since I (along with every other male who was in junior high in the early 80s) had, and listened repeatedly to, this album. I re-discovered it recently thanks to Jason Siegel - I saw ‘I Love You Man’ a few weeks back and also re-watched the entire run of ‘Freaks and Geeks’ - and though I was not much of a Rush fan back in the day (a little too proggy for this new wave fan), the awesomeness of “Tom Sawyer” cannot be denied. Catch the spirit, catch the spit indeed.
The Kills, Midnight Boom - I’ve been going through somewhat of a chick-singer renaissance lately. There have always been female singers (Liz Phair, Fiona Apple) and bands fronted by female singers (Pretenders, Breeders, Garbage) that I’ve liked, but for whatever reason - inertia, disinterest, sexism - I’ve never considered myself a fan of most female rock singers. So far this year, though, I’ve been blown away by a handful of great distaff rockers: the recent albums by Metric and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs may show up on my Best of ‘09 list, I really like St. Vincent after a first listen, and this Kills record absolutely, uh, kills. Allison Mosshart’s snarl and guitar sound perfect together and the album as a whole captures everything good about the current state of garage rock. Go buy it, and remember to get the Heavy Weather record when that comes out, too.
April's Best New Music
(New to me, that is, not necessarily new this month)
Various Artists, Dark Was the Night — the latest Red, Hot compilation, a two-disc set that reads like a who’s who of indy rock circa 2009: Bon Iver, Grizzly Bear, The National, Decemberists, Spoon, Feist, TVotR, Ben Gibbard, Andrew Bird, and so much more.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, It’s Blitz! — I respected ‘Fever to Tell’ more than I liked it, and was a little disappointed by ‘Show Your Bones,’ but I love this one. It still rocks when necessary but overall it feels like a more mature record, showcasing not only Karen O’s stellar vocals but her songwriting ability as well.
Metric, Fantasies — An early contender for album of the year, this is a beautifully-constructed pop album that feels like Garbage with more weight to it.
I’ve read three of the five nominees for best novel, which is unusal. I enjoy science fiction and fantasy but don’t typically make a point of searching it out. This year, though, two of my favorite authors (Neil Gaiman and Neal Stephenson) both released novels. Plus, Cory Doctorow put out Little Brother, which I have been interested in reading about since Cory first mentioned it on The Well.
So I read all three (including the Gaiman and Doctorow books in the last month) and they are all excellent in completely different ways. ‘Graveyard Book’ is pure Gaiman, slightly scary and a bit arch with a humanist heart; ‘Anathem’ is pure Stephenson, voluminous, packed with hundreds of ideas, scores of which are fascinating; and while I haven’t read rnough Doctorow to know if ‘Little Brother’ is “pure Doctorow,” it was the most entertaining of the three, with a healthy dose of outrage and calls to action mixed in.
As to which one will or should win, I have no idea. I don’t know what sorts of books the Hugo people typically choose, and I’m not well-versed enough in science fiction and fantasy to intelligently compare these wildly different books.
All I can say is that I recommend all three — I’ll recommend the Doctorow book to almost anyone, the Gaiman book to people I know with a love of teen literature and scary stuff, and the Stephenson book to people I know who won’t be turned off by the length of the book and its digressions into alternate space-time reality theory.
