the best of beatnikindustries: albums, 2005
Mid-December means only one thing: best-of lists. It’s the beatnikindustries ten best albums of 2005 … and only four of them were released this year.
1. Spoon, Gimme Fiction. [2005]
With the advent of the iPod Era, the time of listening to an album all the way through, understanding the connections between individual tracks and the connection to the larger whole is wooly-mammoth dead.
That notwithstanding, I’ve resurrected that wooly mammoth. Spoon’s third effort, Gimme Fiction, took a while to understand, but after standout tracks like ‘Sister Jack’ and ‘The Dragon and the Beast, Adored,’ I’ve gained a new appreciation for the entire album.
Britt Daniel has this penchant for taking a track and tweaking it slightly – not too far from the original melody, but noticeably enough that you notice the difference. Say you’re rocking out to ‘Sister Jack,’ a straight-ahead piano-and-guitar rocker with a horribly catchy refrain, but as the song shifts into its outro, your head bobbing is interrupted. Oh, wait! He added a beat! Suddenly the standard 4/4 time signature of any pop song becomes an alternating 4/4, 5/4 signature! What? How are you going to bounce to this?
In any case, each track does something strange like that to you. Gimme Fiction. Spoon. It’s an earworm.
Standout tracks: ‘The Dragon and the Beast, Adored,’ ‘I Turn My Camera On,’ ‘My Mathematical Mind,’ ‘Sister Jack.’
2. Superdrag, Regretfully Yours. [1996]
When my MTV-watching was in its heyday, I fell in love with Superdrag’s single ‘Sucked Out.’ The video was set in some North By Northwest-style 1960s bungalow with exposed brick and space-age clocks, and the video’s ambience was almost as catchy as the song’s chorus. But while ‘Sucked Out’ stayed in heavy rotation in mix albums throughout the years, I never bothered to listen to the rest of the album.
This was a mistake. The album rocks.
Most of the songs are completely unlike that first single, instead trading crunchy guitars for melodic lines – but it’s still at heart a pop record, hooky riffs and all. It stands the test of time much better than other similar artists in the same era, when all production was reduced to a cheap knockoff of Nirvana’s Nevermind.
Standout tracks: ‘Cynicality,’ ‘What If You Don’t Fly.’ And ‘Sucked Out,’ too, I suppose.
3. Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine. [2005]
Say what you will about released-yet-not-released, then-rerecorded-and-released, controversy, but this is just good music.
Strangely enough, I’m not one who typically listens to the lyrics of songs – I’ve created malapropisms out of Sublime’s ‘Caress Me Down,’ changing ‘G.l. Joe kung-fu grip’ into ‘G.I. Joe kung-fu kick’ – but for some reason the lyrics are the only thing that grab me on this album. Such a distinction opens the discussion to include just Apple’s phrasing and musical talent, rather than getting into a pissing contest between the freewheeling carnival-esque Jon Brion and the more sparse, breathable Mike Elizondo versions. Either way you spin the record, you have something worth listening to for those moments of relationships just ending – or those just beginning. Or anything in between. Shit, this is just good.
As I’ve said before, ‘I make the most of it / I’m an extraordinary machine,’ Fiona says, and I agree.
Standout tracks: ‘Extraordinary Machine,’ ‘Better Version of Me,’ ‘Not About Love.’
4. Jamie Lidell, Multiply. [2005]
You’re listening to new music late at night, and you’re only half paying attention. You find a track by a drum ‘n’ bass artist on the same label as electro-noize whiz kid Aphex Twin – sure, great, give it a shot … and some Otis Redding vocals hit you from left field.
‘What the hell is going on?’ you think, as this white boy pours his heart and (surprisingly funky) soul into some track left over from a 1960s Motown session, all backed by a crack rhythm and blues band. This is Music. Even as his voice goes ragged screaming ‘take it back / ‘cause I got no control,’ he’s still channeling his inner Stax records vault. Even James Brown would call this boy funky, and that’s saying quite a bit.
The rest of the album isn’t as stellar, but it’s enjoyable nonetheless.
Standout tracks: ‘Multiply,’ ‘When I Come Back Around.’
5. M.I.A., Arular. [2005]
I loved this album for its leaked single ‘Galang,’ a song that got to me with its unfettered energy and nonsensical rhymes about razor blades and purple haze. I stuck around for pseudo-political messages about terrorism (I think) and more of that manic drive. Her sound is definitely Sri Lanka-via-London, there’s no doubt about that, and there’s also no doubt I have no idea what she’s saying. We want bucky done gun? We won? What?
But one look at the imagery in the ‘Galang’ video, with bombs going off and graffiti-ed names floating around the screen, it’s obvious that M.I.A. both loves and flaunts, to some extent, her status as the underground blog-championed music avatar of the month.
Then I saw ‘Galang’ used in a Honda Civic commercial. Damn the man. So much for anti-establishment tendencies.
Standout tracks: ‘Pull Up The People,’ ‘Bucky Done Gun, ‘Galang.’
6. Dressy Bessy, Dressy Bessy. [2003]
The inspiration for Dressy Bessy, one of the most amazing bands I discovered this year, comes from the same place as Jamie Lidell’s mind-blowing ‘Multiply.’ Not very often does a song reach through the headphones, grab you and say ‘I am your destiny,’ but it happened twice in 2005, first with Dressy Bessy’s ‘The Things That You Say That You Do,’ and later with ‘Multiply.’
The unquantifiable aspect of Dressy Bessy still remains – are there hidden subliminal messages? Is this what makes people like bands like Hanson? – but suffice that I’ve enjoyed the pop goodness that Tammy Ealom and her backing band serve up every time. Further explorations of the band’s past show that Ms. Ealom is married to the guitarist, John Hill, who is a former member of the seminal Apples In Stereo (and if I ever pick up an Apples album, it will most likely be on next year’s list).
One other side note about the band: In addition to being the show I saw most over the past year (twice), Dressy Bessy’s 2005 release Electrified was compared to Coldplay’s newest self-righteous whiny opus, X&Y, on an NPR show. Guess which one came out on top.
Hint: It wasn’t the one whose lead singer has a child named Apple.
Standout tracks: ‘Just Once More,’ ‘The Things That You Say That You Do,’ ‘Girl You Shout!’
7. Gus Gus, Polydistortion. [1997]
An album notable for its obscure ubiquity – if you’ve ever heard anything Paul Oakenfold has ever done, you’ve heard his mix of ‘Purple’ – Polydistortion has a few other little tricks up its sleeve. Most of the trippy downbeat numbers that came out of the late 1990s, anything other than, say, after Tricky’s Maxinquaye or Massive Attack’s Mezzanine, was mostly uninspired sonic mush.
Then I picked up the track ‘Believe’ and realized there was one more album to add to that canon. Sporting enough cowbell to satisfy even the most feverish Christopher Walken, ‘Believe’ is one of those tracks that makes your want to sit and nod your head. And listen to it, over and over again. It’s so chillingly downbeat that it becomes invigorating. Then you find the drumless ‘Why?’ satisfying your until-this-point-unknown need for a Hammond organ over smooth female vocals asking ‘Is this what you want?’ Listen and enjoy.
Standout tracks: ‘Gun,’ ‘Believe,’ ‘Why?’ ‘Is Jesus Your Pal?’
8. Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire, The Swimming Hour. [2001]
The 1920s must have been a great decade. There were flappers and the was jazz and people listened to ragtime music with the knowledge that yes, things were just great, thank you. Andrew Bird likes his Golden Twenties. He also likes his zydeco. And his plucked guitar. And his violin.
While working to shed his ‘I’m just a contributor to the Squirrel Nut Zippers’ image, Bird created a record full of styles, from straight-ahead rock (‘Satisfied’) to some strange silent-movie film-noir spaghetti-western soundtrack (‘Way Out West’). Not all the tracks satisfy, as he moves into ironic humor music territory best left to Frank Zappa (‘Dear Old Greenland’), but overall you’re welcome into Bird’s tour of his limitless imagination and mastery of musical styles.
Standout tracks: ‘Case In Point,’ ‘Too Long,’ ‘Way Out West,’ ‘Satisfied.’
9. DJ Kicks: Nightmares on Wax. [2000]
The problem with throwing a party is that one girl who says ‘I don’t like this stuff you’re playing. You should play something better,’ using her best whiny, daddy-fix-this voice.
Forget about listening to her, because you just found the best party album ever, and Nightmares on Wax went ahead and pre-mixed it for you. Like the DJ that he is, George Evelyn takes some of his own low-end heavy, chilled Nightmares on Wax tracks seamlessly into hip-hop party mashups of Tribe Called Quest classics (‘We on an award tour / with Muhammad my man / goin’ each and every place with the mic in my hand’) and some old jams you most likely missed (Saukrates’ ‘Ay Ay Stutter’).
Stop worrying about your party playlist and just put this on. If that whiny girl doesn’t like it, tell her to wait until the next brilliant track. If she doesn’t like that, kick her out. She has bad taste in music anyway.
Standout tracks: ‘Ay Ay Stutter,’ ‘Get On Down,’ ‘Award Tour,’ ‘Alphabet Aerobics.’
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10. Sigur Ros, ( ). [2002]
Sigur Ros was great and well and fine and hip enough to like until I attended the band’s live show.
Then I was a full-on convert to this strange, atmospheric moodiness sung in a made-up language. After a sit-down concert at the Chicago Theater, a venue nice enough to sport frescoes and sculptures, I understood why, for example, the lead singer played his guitar with a bow. I understood, for example, why the opening act used a bent saw – as in the carpentry tool – as an instrument. That reason is to create Good Music. But I only came to this realization after the crescendo of the untitled eighth track on this album, known as The Pop Song.
Jon Thor Birgisson worked himself into such a lather over the song’s 11 minutes that at its climax, after using horsehair bow on his electric guitar as if it were a violin, he began violently smashing it on the strings to create one of the most tingling live music experiences ever because he was screaming at the top of his lungs in Biblical gibberish while his drummer beat away arhythmically and the keyboards were played with smashing fists, not tinkling fingers, and some staccato approximation of a silent horror movie projected by a green strobe light assaulted you from a reflective backdrop … and the crowd was completely silent.
In short, it was a great show, and this is a good album.
Standout tracks: ‘4’ (Njosnavelin), ‘6’ (E-Bow), ‘8’ (The Pop Song).
Exhibit A: The Peas, circa 1998.
The band picked up some hopeless Kids Incorporated reject, Fergie, who immediately bastardized the sound into a hopeless call-and-response pastiche of ‘[guys] she be [her] Fergie [guys] from the crew [her] BEP’ and such. I’ll be honest: ‘Hey Mama’ was an infectious track. But the writing was on the wall and, when an NBA endorsement deal came calling, the Peas were ready to make the jump from credible, if timid, MCs to full-blown pop darlings. 
