1999 Retrospectual
... or, "Maybe this year I wear the crown, eh?"
by Marc Hirsh
This was an odd, odd little year for music. It started off with an underage former Mouseketeer squealing about how horny she is. The Offspring, who should know better, gave us two terrible singles that betrayed their desperation by being gimmicky in the extreme (which meant that when they finally gave us "The Kids Aren't All Right," those of us who were horrified beyond belief at "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)" could barely recognize it as a pretty good song, while everybody else ignored it because it wasn't, you know, funny). Sixpence None The Richer gave us "Kiss Me," a sweet and totally insubstantial song from the soundtrack to She's All That, a sweet and totally insubstantial movie. Jennifer Lopez demonstrated that she could sing but never bothered to show why she should. KorN and Limp Bizkit went multi-platinum and ignored the fact that looting and setting fire to t-shirt kiosks at Woodstock is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a political statement. TLC delivered "No Scrubs," a song so stupid that it had to define its terms in the first verse, and which begat "No Pigeons," which was even stupider, if you can believe it. Jewel abandoned any pretense of playing folk music, releasing a flat-out pop song with inane lyrics that were saved only by cranking up the inscrutability factor to twenty. Will Smith released a horrible, horrible single that only served to demonstrate what a hot dance track "Rock The Casbah" was in the first place. Some guy named Lou Bega did something or other, but damned if I can remember what. And it ended with another underage former Mouseketeer squealing about how horny she is. This one sounds like she might actually be able to sing, though. That's what's known as progress nowadays.
My Top Ten, meanwhile, is going to confuse the hell out of a lot of folks for the simple reason that the average person will have a hard time finding three of the top five in their local record store. Frustrated? Don't worry, you can still waltz right into your local CD shop and demand your own copy of the highly-available and totally without peer best album of 1999...
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1) Wilco, Summer Teeth (Reprise). Jeff Tweedy's musical love letter from, and to, the abyss. Wilco ditches the sound of country for a more lush, Brian Wilson-derived pop sound (sort of an Automatic For The People with an "Up On Cripple Creek" groove), but the ache and hurt are still there. And yet somehow, the more downcast Tweedy's songs get, the more determined he becomes to weather the storm and become, if possible, the better for it, if only a little. Supporting him every step of the way is one of the best rhythm sections currently existing and one Mr. Jay Bennett, who plays every instrument known to mankind but only when necessary. Since June, I have known that there would not be a better record for the rest of the year, and it has grown deeper and more meaningful with each listen. Very few albums ever do that; only great ones even come close. |
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2) (tie) Aimee Mann, Bachelor No. 2 (or the Last Remains of the Dodo) Limited Preview Edition EP (Superego); Music From the Motion Picture Magnolia (Reprise). I will forego the political reasons why you should immediately purchase Bachelor No. 2 (and they are numerous, covering such disparate grounds as corporate mergers and artist's rights), which was going to make this list even when I figured I'd never get my hands on a copy. Now that I have one, it's a no-brainer: this 7-song EP (available only from her live shows and here ), a DIY salvage of a corporation-scuttled album , is more focused, realized and flat-out enjoyable than most full-length albums. The Magnolia soundtrack, on the other hand, combines most (but not all) of the rest of her hijacked album with a few scattered rarities from throughout her solo career (along with two of the more listenable Supertramp songs). Taken together, they stand as a reminder that Aimee Mann is (and has been for the past decade, you silly people) the best writer of unheard cynical pop songs around. Bachelor No. 2 is more cohesive, but both showcase a slightly new piano-based sound: the guitars are a little less stinging than on 1996's indescribably wonderful I'm With Stupid and Aimee's apparently itching to try out a bunch of new textures, from the horns of "Calling It Quits" to the just-guitar-and-voice of the Jeff Buckley tribute "Just Like Anyone." And she's still writing some of the most trenchant and direct lyrics you've ever heard; "Deathly" and "Driving Sideways" are so beautiful that they hurt (or maybe they're so painful that they're lovely). While the songs of both CDs cover much of the same failed-love territory Aimee has mined so successfully in the past, Bachelor's lyrics can be also read as an angry diatribe against a massive corporation which tried, and failed, to silence her and hold her marvelous creations hostage. Voices carry, indeed. |
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4) Various, Astralwerks 1999 v.2 (Astralwerks). Can I really be this excited over a cheapie giveaway CD designed to make me purchase artists from the stable of an electronica label? I'd picked this promo disc up for free at my favorite local record store ( Luna Music , 86th & Ditch, Indianapolis, shop there often) and promptly started dreading the day that I'd actually have to listen to it. Once it was over, I couldn't wait to put it on again. More than anything, this was probably the disc that finally won me over on the electronic revolution (although my discovery of Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe Express a few years ago certainly primed the pump). It works wonders as a sampler that's supposed to convince you to buy the albums by artists on the Astralwerks roster, of course, but the most remarkable thing about it is the way it all fits together. A rock track like the Chemical Brothers' assured "Let Forever Be" fits almost ridiculously well with the soul-influenced disco remix of "Feeling For You" by Cassius, and the loping country techno of the Beta Band's "Round The Bend" bounces off of Todd Terry's lush and beautiful "Let It Ride," and so on. And while every artist here (including heavyweights Fatboy Slim and Basement Jaxx) is interested in getting you moving, they also want you listening and show their mastery of the all-important hook. If you're lucky, you may be able to find this CD sitting in the freebie section of your local record store. If so, grab it posthaste. Otherwise, there's always the used bin... |
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5) You Am I, Saturday Night, 'round Ten (BMG/Ra). The bad news is that you'll have to go to Australia to get a copy of this. The good news is that it will be worth your time and expense. I am tired of praising You Am I's updated take on late-'60s Who because I've done it so much that I feel that I can't say anything new about it. So buy this live album, make sure to get the double-disc version with the bonus CD-ROM and five new studio songs and wonder why their US label doesn't even attempt to put these guys over on the American public. Bonus points for kicking it all off with the so-totally-rock-and-roll announcement, "I'm gonna have me some unreal fuckin' good times." |
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6) Fiona Apple, blahbityblahbityblah (Clean Slate/Epic). I'll be damned. The second album from everybody's favorite half-cocked lit fuse (a mixed, but apt, metaphor) achieves the greatness that her uneven debut had bestowed upon it just for flirting with it. Sideman Jon Brion's promotion to producer helps out, to be sure (it's hard to find fault with the guy behind the boards for Aimee Mann, echoes of whom pop up in the opening "On The Bound" and absolutely nowhere else), but Fiona's in charge. The music has evolved from the sub-Toriisms of Tidal to a post-Joni wonderland (while Tori has decided to take the opposite route back to sub-Toriisms). Her voice (in both senses of the term) has become looser and more confident, while the lyrics bespeak a woman now graduated from her teenage years (even if only barely), fresh from being burned but now mature enough to place it into a greater context. Even the much-maligned title makes perfect sense when you read it for what it is, an 8-line poem about sticking to your guns when you're outmanned. As poetry, it beats anything Jewel ever wrote. As an unfinished lyric, it's a completely convincing first verse for an unwritten song. As a statement of purpose, it's devastating, showing remarkable strength and focus. Not for nothing is she smiling on the cover. |
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7) Diana Krall, When I Look In Your Eyes (Verve). I have my sister to thank for introducing me to Diana Krall's wonderful jazz albums Love Scenes and All For You earlier this summer. In fact, I'm still sort of high on Krall's marvelous voice and nicely dextrous piano, so there's a good chance that I'm ranking this higher than it deserves. But I can almost guarantee that once I start to tire of half of these cuts (turns out that an orchestra isn't the best backdrop for Ms. Krall, and drums don't add much either), I'll continue to come back to those that are just her trio and quartet. Classic songs, deft instrumentation, masterful and seductive vocal phrasing. What more do you need? |
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8) Sleater-Kinney, The Hot Rock (Kill Rock Stars). Not a perfect album, but one whose high points are so staggeringly high that they more than compensate for the sluggish bits (which are more tolerable than anything else). The best songs surge forward on a bed of herky-jerky guitar and skitterish drums while two separate vocal lines intertwine like the conversation you're trying to have being nudged aside by the nagging thought in the back of your head. Since most of the songs concern relationships and their pitfalls (a common enough topic, but Sleater-Kinney are willing to make admissions that most artists won't touch), what might be actively annoying in lesser hands comes across as charming and heartbreaking. Plus, any album with masterpieces like "Memorize Your Lines," "God Is A Number" and "Burn, Don't Freeze" can withstand a few merely listenable songs. |
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9) Jason Falkner, Can You Still Feel? (Elektra). If Dave Grohl had been a member of Jellyfish instead of Nirvana, this is what the Foo Fighters would sound like. I dismissed this on the first few listens as over-orchestrated Rundgrenesque pop, with Falkner's one-man-band gimmick tiring out the listener with over-complex songs and a desire to put every instrument known to man somewhere in the mix of every track. And I may not be far off. But I keep coming back to it. Inspirational verse: "If the path of least resistance is all you ever take, at least you've been consistent." |
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10) Smash Mouth, Astro Lounge (Interscope). Because sometimes you absolutely must party. |
Individual songs that brightened my year:
Hole's "Awful," which chimes when it needs to chime and roars when it needs to roar, contains the eyebrow-raising line "He's drunk, he tastes like candy, he's so beautiful" and houses one of the world's more increasingly rare perfect guitar sounds;
Guided By Voices' throbbing and triumphant "Teenage FBI," which I have managed to acquire on three different CDs (not to mention the alternate version on 7"), the best of which is not, I fear, the band's latest, Do The Collapse ;
Lo-Fidelity All-Stars' groovy "Battleflag," which grafted dynamics and structure onto the popular face of electronica and wasn't on either of the two LFAS album samplers that came into my possession this year, despite the fact that it was better than any of the five aimless songs on them;
Madonna's nifty little pseudopsychedelic throwback gem "Beautiful Stranger," which makes this the second year in a row that Ms. C. has pleasantly surprised me and which was just about the only good thing to come out of crap-fest (in more ways than one) Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me;
Susan Tedeschi's "Rock Me Right," a raunchy modern blues that takes the horniness of Joan Osborne's "Right Hand Man" (which sounds like an outtake from Snow White next to this) to even more depraved and wonderful levels (you'll be amazed at how incredibly filthy the line "Your cotton ain't rotten, just needs to be picked" can sound in the proper context);
Kid Rock's "Cowboy," which was as fun, focused and deserving of all of the ubiquitous "It's Kid Rock's summer, we just live in it" praise as the loud and lumbering "Bawitdaba" wasn't (even if it does sound exactly like "Where It's At");
Tal Bachman's "She's So High," which was about as perfect as an I-don't deserve-her pop song can be, with a marvelous chorus sung in a falsetto on par with Brian Wilson's; and
"I Want It That Way" by the Backstreet Boys, which is such a stupid song that the fact that the record built around it is so vastly entertaining is all the more remarkable. A nice reminder that sometimes the puppetmasters do know what they're doing.
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This year's Better Late Than Never Award is, like last year's, kind of a cheat, since I had technically heard it before this year. But those who've heard the remastered version of Iggy & the Stooges' Raw Power (Columbia/Legacy) would probably agree with me that it's an entirely different album altogether. I'd always figured that the recording I'd made years ago from my friend's CD was just a bad dub, what with the electric guitar so freaking loud that it pierced your skull while the rest of the band seemed awfully quiet. Turns out to have been a classic example of Not My Fault. With a remastering job that finally fits the pieces with one another (though the thing is still loud as God will allow), you can actually hear all the mayhem that's going on in this album, which bears the exact same relationship to punk that John the Baptist bore to Jesus. Plus, anything that finally brings "Search and Destroy" to its full greatness is fine by me. All the purists whining about the ruination of a great album are deluded and, by now, probably deafened by tinnitus. They get what they deserve. |
As for movies, I'm going to break with my recent tradition and pick something that hasn't been unanimously canonized (partly because, well, there hasn't been any unanimous canonization this year). Eyes Wide Shut ? A fascinating last film from my bar-none favorite director but ultimately, I think, a failure. Being John Malkovich? Unbelievably good, but that's not it. The Green Mile? A very good adaptation of a very good book, but it sticks so closely to its source material that it doesn't quite take off on its own (fantastic casting of John Coffey, though). Dogma ? Funny and moving, but damn, Kevin Smith needs to find someone else to direct his screenplays. Man In The Moon? It's hard to get excited about a movie with no real plot and a main character who doesn't develop in the least (though that may be the point). Magnolia? Hasn't opened here yet. And although it's not quite my choice for best movie of the year, I must at least mention Tom Tykwer's incredible Run Lola Run, which takes its plot from any of countless post-Pulp Fiction botched-crime capers and its concept directly from an episode of Twilight Zone and whose execution is so flabbergastingly original that you've never seen anything like it that didn't have the word "Sega" emblazoned across its haunches. Tykwer gave us the movie that Sliding Doors wanted to be and Trainspotting thought it was.
No, my movie pick this year is actually a tie, which surprised me only because one of them has been the front-runner for so long that I'm frankly shocked that anything was able to catch up with it. In a year where I've seen a lot of animated films (three of which, interestingly, involved the marvelous Minnie Driver), two stand out in a big, big way. In this corner, you have the fantastic Toy Story 2, which looks wonderful, of course, and is the sequel to a wonderful movie, of course, and is so much deeper and more original than its predecessor (we're talking about a movie that deals with issues of abandonment, pride in one's work, sacrifice for the greater good and even, I think, adoption) that I'm a little stunned that kids get it at all. All this plus Joan Cusack, who delivers what I'm convinced is the only truly Oscar-worthy voiceover performance in movie history. In the other corner, you have its perfect complement, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut , which so completely blindsided me that I had to see it again a week later just to make sure I wasn't delusional in thinking it was so good (I wasn't). It was poorly animated, decidedly low-rent, aggressively self-referential and brilliant. Unafraid to take on major political targets (both within the film industry and without), it made an appeal for parents to get involved not with issues that concern their kids but with the kids themselves. Entertainment Weekly called it "the century's last great movie musical," and anyone who's seen as many of those as I have (you can blame my sister) has to agree. Hell, the fact that it was a musical (which didn't dawn on me until Mrs. Broslovski's first song, the title of which I won't divulge in case you haven't seen it, since it gives away a huge plot point) is about 50% of its greatness. Those who find it vulgar (not to say "obscene") would do well to remember the mantra of Mel Brooks: "My movies rise below vulgarity." And while I know there's no way in Hell, I smile at the very thought of "Shut Your Fucking Face, Uncle Fucka" being nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song in some alternate universe.