I'm not sure that there's anything overarching that makes these songs "summer songs"--a label that can evoke joy, excitement, or nostalgia depending on the context. More just that its a group of songs I've been listening to quite a bit lately. Though: one thing I did notice is that many of these songs fulfill similar roles on the albums that they originally appear on--either the 2nd or 3rd songs on the record, or the 2nd or 3rd to last songs (with a few exceptions, notably the 1st and last tracks). Most are momentum holders.
Which makes sense: to idealize certain times of the year is to focus on their big events or transitional qualities. The new year, snow melting, leaves changing and autumn. Even if, say, the color changes of autumn might take an entire month, we often enjoy the leaves as indicators: things that are tangible and trackable. It's about the milestones. July, however, is a month to be appreciated for its own stubborn stagnation. The best ones just stay put, sunny and hot.
And thats what I like about these songs. However much I might appreciate "Can You Get to That," I like it even more because it bridges the gap on Maggot Brain from the psych-jam of the title track, and the impossibly catchy centerpiece "Hit it and Quit it." And while "Spaceboy" is a touching track in any context, It's placement between the triumphant "Mayonaise" and guitar climax "Silverfuck" on Siamese Dream underscores Billy Corgan's sincerity in a way no one song could on its own.
None of this is too different from what makes the middle of summer so special: a time of blissful suspension, where, under the best of circumstances, you forget the exact contours of the whole that you're operating within. Enjoy, and happy july.
In a relatively recent interview, ex-Clipse rapper Pusha T predicts a new album released this November.
Beyond his collaborations with Kanye West, my only experience with Pusha until recently was 2006’s infectiously dystopic Hell Hath No Fury, which created one of the most unique album universes of any release in recent memory. However, after picking up Clipse’s more sporadic but still suburb first album Lord Willin’, I couldn’t be more excited to hear what Pusha is doing next. Clipse has proved to be one of the most versatile rap groups of the decade—their funky party tracks and cautionary coke tales ask each ask to be taken seriously for what they are. Check out some of their best work below:
So I first didone of these about a year and a half ago, and I do think I was on to something. Not that the choices were perfect—though, all things considered, this revised list is relatively close to what I had before. But the idea at all. You’ll notice that the URL on the link to the previous post calls it an “indulgence,” which, in hindsight, is a hyper self-conscious statement that is only true if writing about what you love is an indulgence. Fact is, from my early childhood discovery of Behind the Music, music-fandom in every form just makes me happy.
Accordingly, this list is meant to be an update on how my own, constantly-evolving preferences have developed in the last year and a half, but also as a way to kick off the new direction I hope this blog will take. I will be updating more frequently, reviewing, documenting and reflecting on the music that moves me every day, hopefully helping create a forum for folks to do the same.
And one last note on the list: it’s interesting to observe that, while my cross-genre literacy is always growing, the top album on this list is one I fell in love with at 14, for the glaringly obvious reason that it was rock music with a lot of heart. It operated within the familiarity of a genre, but earnestly and passionately tugged at that genre’s boundaries in a thousand small directions.
My love for some of these albums lies in their ability to crystallize the perfections of a given style, while others are more rooted in the awe of their innovations. But I’m not sure that either of these qualities are as crucial as the ability to make someone hear a form differently. To make it mean something new and beautiful when you talk about country rock, or punk, post-rock, whatever it may be. And that’s kind of a nice way to think about this list: for whatever else they might be, these are 25 different ways to hear.
25. Animal Collective- Strawberry Jam (2007)
24. Beck- Sea Change (2002)
23. The Clientele- Strange Geometry (2005)
22. The Flaming Lips- Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002)
21. …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead- Source Tags and Codes (2002)
20. The Wrens- The Meadowlands (2003)
19. Ghostface Killah- Fishscale (2006)
18. The Antlers- Hospice (2009)
17. The Mountain Goats- Tallahassee (2002)
16. Clinic- Internal Wrangler (2001)
15. Radiohead- Hail to the Thief (2003)
14. Panda Bear- Person Pitch (2007)
13. Modest Mouse- The Moon and Antarctica (2000)
12. Grizzly Bear- Veckatimest (2009)
11. Clipse- Hell Hath No Fury (2006)
10. The Microphones- The Glow, pt 2 (2001).
Part of what I understand the imperative of the “lo-fi” label to mean is to enhance a record through the use of fuzz or negative space, creating a sensation of depth. And to my knowledge, noone has fulfilled this mission more fully than Phil Elvrum. When you turn off The Glow, pt. 2, it feels like a symphony just stopped, breaths still being held. In some cases the instrumentation is extensive (“Map”), while some are actually quite minimal (“I’ll Not Contain You”); either way, it causes a bewildering awareness of how engulfing Elvrum’s use of tape fuzz actually is. Variations of this technique may have been imitated to a crutch throughout the decade (see: chillwave), but Elvrum breaks new ground by embedding his style within songs with imaginative storytelling and imagery. It’s innovative now, but imagine how it sounded in 2001. Indeed, the album listens like an epic, impeccably timed novel, with a lyrical, intricate beginning, and a series of short, beautiful ballads interspersed to build interest to a blisteringly powerful climax (“Samuri Sword”). With the possible exception of Kanye West, Phil Elvrum has constructed the most expansive and musically diverse statement-of-self-through-stories of any artist this decade.
9. The Hold Steady- Separation Sunday (2005).
For an album that draws much of its appeal in the unironic fun of straightforward hard rock, there’s actually a lot going on here, irony included. The Hold Steady have managed to create an album of intersecting stories, complete with a trope of Catholic guilt that is treated just seriously enough to be laughed about. References to Baptisms and resurrections shift from profound statements about the anxiety of experimenting with drugs and alcohol, to fleeting, witty wordplay. It’s at once a record of vignettes, a record of themes (guilt, trust, hedonism) and a record to drunkenly sing along with. Its stories are propelled by perfect characters, too—Craig Finn’s lyrics lay out anecdotal skeletons for them, but the guitarwork fills in their flesh. And who can resist a song that makes use of the line “you’ll be high as hell and born again” with so much power and triumph that you’ll believe its happened already?
8. The Mountain Goats- The Sunset Tree (2005)
The Mountain Goats have released four good records since The Sunset Tree, but I get the impression that, even on the best songs on these, there has been a little too much discussion about how long to hold that note, or how quiet to get at the song’s end. Darnielle has an impeccable grasp on the little things that package the song’s emotional inspiration into something neat and definitive. However, this has never sounded so effortless as on The Sunset Tree. The album is rawer than subsequent releases, and in some ways, I think rawer than many of its early 2000s predecessors. However, this quality is deeper than just the use of 4 track recorders—it lies in the lyrical and thematic cohesiveness of the record. It’s Darnielle’s first concept album about his abusive childhood, and the songs are loosely tied together, seemingly without the need for an overarching narrative. This benefits the album, as small stories and confessions weave in and out of Darnielle’s engaging storytelling. The result leaves you feeling at times confused, even violated, but more than anything hungry. It demands more listens. It screams for closure, yet its strength is in its resistance to that closure. It’s that rare jarring experience that’s positively addictive.
7. The National- Boxer (2007)
Most of my attempts to describe The National are somewhat oxymoronic. Unless I submit to an inability to characterize them—opting instead for impressive but relatively meaningless statements like “just listen to them; they’ll make you a better person,”—I tend to get stuck using competing superlatives that really just communicate the magnitude of my feeling. Magnitude of exactly what I’m feelingisn’t always clear, which is somewhat ironic for a band whose music seems extraordinarily well thought-out. Boxer is the culmination of this thought, which is somehow so powerful that it elevates the tendencies of Matt Berninger’s voice to be both soothing and exciting, of lyrics that are mysterious and instantly familiar, and instruments (Berninger’s voice included) that manage to simultaneously compete for prominence and submit to a sparkling, ghostly sound that is more of a whole than any combination of musicians I can think of. The National might not make you a better person, but I sincerely believe they’ll make you a better listener; their songs do the little things that construct a world within the album, one that is both universally and individually accessible. Which is, again, somewhat contradictory, but that’s okay. They do it all, and so well that every vying component deserves proper recognition.
6. Kanye West- Late Registration (2005)
This album made me love hip-hop. Which at first made me question its merits, slightly: yeah it was good, but great art should be challenging. And a hip-hop record that can move a 16 year old kid from Ames, Iowa into gawking adoration can’t be that challenging, right? Except, hip-hop that is this introspective (“Heard ‘Em Say”), triumphant (“We Major”), or fucking-get-down-on-your-knees, soulful (“Hey Mama”) has never been so seamless. There’s a difference between accessibility—an ease of consumption that comes with strict adherence to the formula of genre—and ‘Ye’s ability to extract something deeper from his songs. Somewhere in this album lies a Holy Grail of pop music: the strings, horns, cut-and-paste clips of pop choruses, the drumbeat from “Crack Music”—it’s all so intentional, I swear to god there’s a hidden Pop Essence the dude’s hiding from the rest of us. Late Registration may not contain the most innovative or diverse use of genre-crossing samples (see: Paul’s Boutique, Mr. Hood). But it does something those albums don’t: while the Beasties or KMD sometimes felt like tour guides, with the content of their samples pointing to thousands of exciting musical directions, Late Registration is unmistakably Kanye’s vision: a baroque manifesto of hip-hop’s ability to express anything, to anyone.
5. The National- Alligator (2005)
Imagine an Alligator’s skin: ultimately slick, but with rough spots that add character, and an underlying toughness that demands to be taken seriously. While Boxer sounds like a long walk home defined by complex acceptance, Alligator is anxious and volatile—it stumbles, stops to think, and repeatedly stands up with more tense resolve than it began with. The songs build, seemingly to avoid combustion, into climaxes that make the negative space somehow more subtle and comforting. Matt Berniger’s voice sounds a little more hoarse here than in Boxer, and it works for the way the songs ebb and flow. Though many of the songs seem to manifest a sort of mature tension, that tension functions within a structure of the band’s comfort with each other, ultimately serving as a testament to the group’s enormous potential.
(If you look closely at this one, you can spot yours truly in the bottom left 'round 4:11)
4. Ghostface Killah- Supreme Clientele (2000)
Consider: out of the four songs on Supreme Clientele under two minutes (excluding intro and conclusion), Ghostface manages to 1). Alley-oop a spectacular freestyle about Karl Malone to the RZA (“Stroke of Death”) 2). Oversee Inspectah Deck’s finest moment as a producer (“Stay True”) 3). Croon soulful about Wu’s connection to Iron Man (“Iron’s Theme”) 4). Record “Saturday Nite,” a track containing so much explosive energy I don’t think it could exist in a less concentrated format. And these are supposed to be the fucking interludes. Maybe Supreme Clientele’s biggest strength is the overarching contrast between Ghost’s relentless delivery and the RZA-influenced (if not produced) liquid beats. He is an exhausting lyricist, both in both delivery and content: his verses are like crashing tidal waves, gaining intensity by the second. And trying to make sense of the way that his surreal, non sequitur imagery somehow constructs a druggy, superhero-filled universe may be an impossible exercise. Yet still, carrying the record through all the way are the soulful beats—listen closely to the 1st 5 seconds of “Nutmeg.” The crescendo first builds trust, then ebbs downward like a deep breath of satisfaction, and the strings at :04 add a little cinematic garnish. It’s emblematic of the album: an impossibly smooth piece of work that is so full and rewarding it can support any direction the emcee decides to take it. Let’s be thankful that, with Supreme Clientele, Ghostface decided to go everywhere.
3. Radiohead- In Rainbows (2007)
This might be the best Radiohead album there is. There’s nothing it doesn’t do right. “All I Need” fulfills Kid A’s promise to combine electronic worlds with vocals that couldn’t be more human. “Bodysnatchers” combines a heavier rhythm section reminiscent of Ok Computer’s hard rock tracks and flips it into a more mature paranoia. “15 Step” makes you want to dance and scream. “House of Cards” and “Reckoner” make you want to lay down after dancing and screaming and somehow never lose a grasp on the songs themselves. The whole album is knowable, begging for possession. And, despite the mastery of all the dissimilar and fantastic things that Radiohead does, the album has a singular identity. There is nothing this album cannot do.
2. LCD Soundsystem- Sound of silver (2007)
There is something ineffably impressive about someone’s ability to carve out a singular niche within a genre already colonized with niches. It’s even more impressive when that niche, wrought out of one’s own stylistic mastery, evolves back out of its place into something self-defining. I don’t know how James Murphy managed to do this with LCD Soundsystem, in two albums, but he has managed create an album that will forever be embedded in how I conceive of dance music. Or dancepunk, or—really—my idea of what a good songwriter can accomplish with a vision of how instruments are supposed to sound. In Sound of Silver he is a snarky poet, an overflowing repository of nervous energy, a passive conductor of electronica, and, in “Someone Great,” a singer-songwriter who has blessed us with the opportunity to share some time with him. He’s the difference between hearing something and thinking “nothing else sounds like that” and “nobody else could make something that sounds like that.”
1. Wilco- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)-
When Jeff Tweedy delivers the album’s first lines, they are slow and deliberately pronounced. On beat, but there is a weird sensation that the rhythm section slows down, ensuring that the man says what he needs to say. Except it’s bigger than the rhythm section: it’s the feedback, the piano, the entire eclectic world that the song’s grab-bag instrumentation creates. All this for a line—I am an American aquarium drinker, I assassin down the avenue—that doesn’t really make sense. It’s a telling moment, indicative of what made Yankee Hotel Foxtrot the decade’s most thrilling, diverse, and ultimately rewarding album. There’s a confidence throughout that demands the listener’s respect, and makes every bell, drumbeat, or slice of negative space feel monumental. Each genre change feels like a small confession, told with prematurely channeled cathartic energy; a new part of a whole that permutates before our ears. Even the relatively simple pop songs—“Kamera,” “Heavy Metal Drummer,”—they’re embedded in this moving whole, feeling like small, cast-off crystallizations of how pop music can move us: nostalgia, acceptance, optimism. Toward the end of “I am Trying to Break Your Heart,” Tweedy repeats the assassin down the avenue line, voice fighting with fuzz, bells, and something that sounds like either distorted cymbals or bombs. It’s the only way the song could really end: if his voice had managed to maintain control, had the band managed to keep the inventive confidence that flows within Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, there is no way of knowing what could have happened.
A few weeks ago I was asked, on the first day of a course, to write about the first time I became aware of my race. With a few weeks hindsight, it becomes interesting to note that I chose to write about an awareness of being part Latino, rather than the more dominant whiteness (or maybe its more interesting that this contradiction just occurred to me now?). I suppose there are several explanations for this—growing up with mostly white people means that there was somewhat less physical difference to become conscious of, which is a lot of what racial awareness is all about. However, I could have just as easily written about discovering the significance of being white, in any of the various stages this occurred. Instead, I chose to engage with the darker 25%. And despite this, I seemed to wind up analyzing whiteness, as thoroughly as if I had chosen it as my ostensible topic.
My narrative (and why I believe it is how it is):
“A friend of mine once told me that, to him, my Latino heritage was like the garnish of a meal. It’s definitely there—you know this because you see it—but it doesn’t really add anything to the overall flavor. Either way, I’ll taste like a white person.
It then seems somewhat appropriate that my earliest awarenesses of ethnicity were always prompted by others—their questions and the observations about my skin color. The influence of Latino origins in my own life has, admittedly, been much more aesthetic than cultural, meaning that for much of my life I’ve considered myself biracial, but mostly in the eyes of others. That it could even be any different was an awakening that happened quite late in my childhood.
I share a birthday with my father so it didn’t seem like so much of a stretch that we’d both get tan in the summer, even if my mother was noticeably whiter. The notion that this whole thing had to do with his side of the family didn’t come until I was almost 13 years old, living in the 87% white Ames, Iowa, and my friend actually asked, “so, like, what are you?” I responded, “tan.” Afterwards I asked my father about the question, and he struggled to remember what percentage was Nicaraguan and what percentage was Cuban and whether there were any other countries whose names he couldn’t remember. I had asked him, planning to have a more specific answer for my friend, but left feeling like I had nothing to say. He could’ve responded “tan.”
The divorce between my skin color and any accompanying cultural influence didn’t have to be so concrete, though. This was around the same period that I overheard a conversation between my brother and mom about an assignment he had in class, in which he was to write about a family tradition that celebrated the family’s heritage. She thought for a few minutes, seemingly unable to imagine any relevant rituals, then jokingly suggested that he write about the traditions of our cavemen ancestors.
The point stuck. While the dismissal was innocuous, lighthearted, and coming from a relentlessly compassionate woman, it was still a dismissal of culture. And the sarcastic treatment of simply the idea of our family having unique traditions defined us in opposition to anything I might consider “diverse,” or “cultural.” Traditions were things that other people had. My job, however was different: it was to be the referent against which only unknowable others’ differences could be understood. To stand upright in the center of Ames, a big white measuring stick.”
The essay is still, at its core, about being white.* It’s about biracial identity confusion, but an identity confusion whose roots I trace to growing up in an overwhelmingly nourishing environment, one in which my (still relatively light) skin color was not a source of prejudice because I was well-spoken, have a European sounding name, and was so generally well-behaved.
Yet still I chose to arrive at this topic though an attempt to engage with my minority heritage, rather than using whiteness as a guiding framework. As if I couldn’t comfortably write about what it meant to be white in a mostly white town without first acknowledging the countries that some great-grandfathers came from. And I had to realize that my sense of separation from the acknowledged “cultural diversity” of others was a symptom of my own privilege, before I could realize I was fundamentally writing about whiteness. I gave the Writing about Being Part Latino thing a shot: instead, frank thoughts about whiteness emerged.
It’s a pretty extraordinary process: starting to write about my minority experience, realizing I never quite felt like I had a minority experience, and then writing instead about the realization of not having a minority experience. Why was it so hard to just write about whiteness? I suppose—and bear with me here, I promise this won’t devolve into self-pity—that it’s the shame.
Truth is, there were plenty of traditions I could have written about. There was the advent wreath, the epiphany cake with a little baby inside, both Roman Catholic traditions. There were even more modern traditions that I expect to be passed down, if only through the secular family—frog cupcakes, for example. But none of these seemed particularly cultural; they had no sense of identity tied to them(jury’s out on whether some of this had to do with Catholic schooling). That why, growing up, for better or worse, I disqualified them from relating to anything I could have attributed to my race. There were no white traditions, at least none conceived of as such. So then, what is left for me to identify with about being white? Only the material privilege and social capital, and that’s no fun to talk about.
None of this is meant to lament my whiteness or victimize myself. Rather, it’s to propose that: to experience white guilt is not (necessarily) to undergo a trivial and/or condescending exercise in paying one’s psychological dues—it’s instead the result of a natural process through which ones tries to engage with his or her identity. It’s a form of cognitive dissonance, in which one decides what it means for oneself to be actively implicated in others’ suffering. It’s something that was apparently so unpleasant to deal with in the essay, I fear that came dangerously close to claiming an identity I have had minimal lived experience with (or, at least I tried to claim it).
So, what to do? Reading this, it might seem logical to reclaim whiteness in some way, visit stuffwhitepeoplelike, pick out the best stuff, and be proud. Not exactly—the thought makes me too nervous now, the legacy too volatile.
I’m more inclined to think that the rhetorical difficulty—impossibility?—of identifying as white, without answering “material privilege and social capital” when asked “what makes you white,” should be an invitation to talk about exactly these things. How they have affected our lives and what that means. This should not always be a self-defacing process, but we shouldn’t shy away if it feels that way. It is pretty ugly what brought us together.
Ideally, such conversations would be a step toward deconstructing the ways in which racial myths originated—fully talking about how they were created should also mean talking about how to break them down. However, even if this won’t happen immediately, we must still engage white individuals to imagine themselves as complicit in an oppressive system. This is necessary to imagine oneself outside of that system, destroying that system.
*To be clear: I don’t want my fairly casual use of racial identity labels to be essentializing. It is perfectly reasonable that someone identifying as Latino (or Hispanic-American, or biracial) could feel the same feelings I did. Similarly, the feelings I attribute to “whiteness” could be felt by one with any heritage or set of identifications. When I use such terms, perhaps I more closely mean: “whiteness as I understand it, and as it has affected my life in my own circumstances.” Or, if you want to get more technical, something like, “the set of systemic privileges, generally found in persons of light skin color, that have been maintained over centuries through shifting criteria for inclusion.”
Dom Sinacola's thoughts on The Microphones' The Glow, pt. 2, an album that has drifted in and out of my life since 8th grade.
"The Glow, if it hasn’t been drilled into your psyche by now, is decidedly “lo-fi,” as purely as that term can be digested, a record of simple, inexpensive means stretched to fill the responsibilities normally supervised by cadres of instruments and small countries of musicians. At least in theory: where lo-fi has come since this record’s release is almost meaningless, but back in the days of yore, Elvrum was demonstrating “lo-fi” as the functional bridge between the hugeness of alternative rock (the ostensibly limitless resources of radio pop and the cosmic spit-length of Radiohead’s burgeoning world-rule) and the immediacy, even accessibility, grunge left behind when the word became more groan than buzzed. (And yep, Elvrum’s from Olympia, WA.) The Glow Pt. 2, then, is that piece of architecture canonized, an immense, self-contained testament to elephantine aspirations held breathlessly within mousey every-people."
See CMG's top 10 of the decade, complete with a Ghostface/Joyce contrast, here.
