Part III -- Numbers 50-41:
*Note: When hyperlinking videos, we go with whatever is commercial-free, when possible, so if the choice is between the official video with a commercial or something some dude put together on a computer in his dorm but with no advertisement, we link to the latter. So we apologize in advance for the crap quality of some of the videos but the music is what we're trying to share anyway.
50. havoc and bright lights
Alanis Morissette
This would have been a pretty decent EP. As an LP, it's just a beating. There are about six songs on the second half of this album that sound all but indistinguishable from one another. In this collection, as usual, you get Morissette's excellent vocabulary. You also get, as usual, her penchant for overusing it, at times trying just a little too hard to cram cleverness into every nook and cranny, painting herself into a lyrical corner from which she is unable to smoothly extricate herself.
She takes a dip into hip hop on bonus track jekyll and hyde, to good effect but is smart enough to relegate this foray to the add-on material. Standout track woman down is Alanis at her angry best and is far and away her best song in over a decade. For the better part of the album though, she's pretty happy with where she is in life.
Unfortunately, it turns out that Happy Alanis just isn't all that interesting.
49. Battle Born
The Killers
If we gave you the requisite ability and an assignment to write, perform and produce the next Killers album, this is what you would turn in.Soaring choruses, nods to Springsteen and lots 'o synth.
That doesn't make it a bad album at all. Just a predictable one.
Ad if you're The Killers, that is the worst thing someone can say about your album. Take our favorite track, Miss Atomic Bomb. We think it's a solid song. Is there anything in it you've not already heard?
We didn't think so.
In the end, no matter how well he performs them, a three-trick pony will eventually bore you.
48. Tuskegee
Lionel Richie
Lionel Richie has always had a little country in him. Stuck on You hit Number 1 on the Country chart long before the latest wave of migration to Nashville, which has seen the likes of Ernie Halter and Dave Stewart put a little twang in their tunes.On this album, Richie teams up with Country artists on 13 of his biggest hits, with mixed results.
The positive: Richie allows for interpretation of his songs and you can actually tell these are remakes and not simply him singing the song like he always does, next to someone singing with an accent. Some really good pairings and fresh, interesting takes result. Blake Shelton and Tim McGraw put in solid performances and we would pay to listen to Darius Rucker sing the damned phone book, so we loved his update of Stuck on You.
The negative: It took them about a decade to catch up to hip hop but almost everything out of Nashville these days is auto-tuned and the majority of the artists' vocals have been absolutely smothered in it. In that sense, it sounds like an authentic modern country album. That also means it sounds like computerized shit. Also, when doing one of these kinds of albums, you just don't touch your most popular songs. Shania Twain, the mother of country auto-tune, never even had a chance. How in the hell was she supposed to improve on Diana Ross' part of Endless Love? The poor thing -- she actually tried to, as opposed to just taking it in another direction. Jennifer Nettles, on the other hand, knocked it out of the park with Hello. Also a negative, Kenny Rogers' voice is about as mangled as his plastic surgery and what the hell is Jimmy Buffett doing on this album -- hell, any album?
Our favorite track: Just for You (92), with Billy Currington
47. The Hurt & The Healer
MercyMe
We're not real big on Christian music, as it tends to go in one of two directions: touchy-feely praise-fest or thrasher metal with a message. The former makes us uncomfortable and the latter is usually just not well executed.MercyMe straddles the line of getting their message across while still delivering enjoyable music better than most. The challenge they faced with this record was that it is the followup to the phenomenal The Generous Mr. Lovewell -- their Thriller. Following up the best material of one's career is the most difficult task a band ever faces. Are they still trending upward or was the last one the peak? And where to go from here?
They end up delivering a pretty solid album that probably should rank higher, were we not to compare it to Generous. Musically, the record just doesn't stand up to its predecessor but in a very real way we identify with this album more. It definitely feels more Catholic than anything we've heard from them. There is a lot of challenging of authority here. A lot of stubbornness. Even some outright rebellion and it starts right out of the chute, on lead track You Know Better. What follows is 42 minutes of asking the tough questions not only of the protagonist but of God Himself.
We find many Protestant Christians to be of the, "shut up and obey" variety, whereas we were raised to believe that not only is questioning of our beliefs acceptable -- it is the only way by which one can ever come to true faith. While all Christians may believe that, many behave as though exposure to anything other than absolute reaffirmation is tantamount to sacrilege. We personally find that close-mindedness counterproductive to the discernment process. Far be it from us though to claim superiority of belief. We all do the best we can to understand that which, by definition, cannot be understood. It just happens that some go the route of closing their minds off to any ideas that challenge what they say they believe.
This album is for the rest of us. The ones who think, "wait a minute -- I likedoing this. I enjoy this thing You call a vice. Why should I listen to You?" The one who resists, knowing in the end, we're gonna fall on our ass without Him but still go that route anyway, knowing the, "I told you so" will be a loving one. In that sense, this is a great album. It tells what we feel to be the true story of being a Christian, that of questioning, resisting, falling, failing and continuing on what is not a destination but the most sacred of journeys.
46. Sweet Tooth
The Blind Pets
We walked into the Doublewide in Dallas one night and these guys were playing. They had shitty sound equipment but a pretty rabid following and they weren't altogether terrible. At the table near the door you could get an actual LP and a code for a digital download of their current album for ten bucks. Hellz yeah!These guys are at the stage in their life as a band where they have tasted a bit of success in their local town (Austin), have made inroads to surrounding cities (Dallas, Houston) and will either explode in next few years and go big time or be a "local fan favorite" and nothing more, for the duration of their time together.
They have a good, dirty, interesting sound that we think has potential and they do an excellent job of recreating it in the studio. Whether anyone outside of Texas and Louisiana ever hears it, we'll know in a few years.
Our favorite track: Signature Move (91)
45. Songs of Anrachy: Vol 2
Music from the Television Show
Sons of Anarchy is one of our favorite television programs. Creator Kurt Sutter has said he thinks of the music they use as another character and it shows. Rarely have we seen such seamless blending of music and story. Be it a nugget from lesser-known artists such as Scala & Kloacny Brothers or Noah Gunderson, something from Jane's Addiction or a song performed by a cast member, it seems the only requirement is that the song fit the material. Almost invariably it does, which makes this much more than the typical, "musical selections from..." album but instead a true compliment to the series. The music grabs us and places us in the moment every bit as much as the images on the screen. Sometimes more so.Or favorite track: To Sir with Love, performed by cast member Katey Sagal & what amounts to the SoA house band The Forest Rangers.
44. Covers, Vol. 1
Bayside
How much do we like this EP?
It's an EP -- and an EP of covers at that -- and it's still almost in the Top 40 for the entire year. Hell, it's not even the first album in this countdown with that name and it's ranked this high. Not convinced? Well it has a Billy Joel cover and we don't even think it's the best song on the record!Bayside would like to think of themselves as punk but they're really not. They're punk in the sense that Green Day or the Killers are, which is to say -- they're not.
Still, they rip through five songs in a little over 14 minutes and every one of them is great. We had to do some research to be sure Oliver's Army isn't racist and were completely caught off-guard by Runaway, the original of which we never liked. One aspect of Bayside not really being punk is that these songs are performed devoid of the usual cheeky irony you'd get from a punk band covering the likes of Joel and The Ronettes. They actually sound like they like this material. Whether that was some really good acting or not, if this were a full-on LP, it would be flirting with the Top 10.
Our favorite track: Be My Baby
43. Chimes of Freedom
The Music of Bob Dylan, Benefiting Amnesty International
We've alluded to our recent affection for the music of old guys whose earlier stuff we've never really appreciated. Bob Dylan is the perfect example of this. His last five albums have been fantastic yet, until the last decade or so, we've wanted nothing to do with him or his music. This collection, 76 covers in length with proceeds going to Amnesty International, was a really good opportunity to explore Dylan's catalogue and see if we do, in fact like his older material.
Since there were no recording sessions specifically for this -- the selections are culled from performances over the last 30 years or so -- it's about what you'd expect in terms of quality: some good (My Chemical Romance/Desolation Row) , some bad (Sinead O'Connor/Property of Jesus), some forgettable (Adele/Make You Feel My Love) and some truly regrettable (K'nann/With God on Our Side). At times it's like a bad drag show, with too many artists trying to "be" Bob Dylan and not being very passable. Then you stumble upon someone who says to hell with it and does their own thing, creating something like Evan Rachel Wood's stunning
I'd Have You Anytime (79)*.
We'd have liked to have seen some more off-the-wall stuff, like a Kanye cover or something in Spanish but most artists played it pretty close to the vest. (Even the Ziggy Marley cover of Blowin' in the Wind wasn't reggae). Still, the general lack of innovation with regard to interpretation probably gave us a better idea of the music itself than had a more interesting collection been put together. So that leaves us with the question -- are we just now realizing we've liked Bob Dylan all along or are we just fans of his new stuff.
It's definitely the latter. For the most part, the material on this album just doesn't speak to us. For us, music is a visceral experience. We want it to reach down into our soul and make us a different person for having heard it. And listening to this and thinking about what it means, we think we've uncovered a big part of the reason for our recent dalliance with the Senior Circuit. It's all about the age.
When we were a pissed off kid, ripped out of his happy Philadelphia existence, replanted in South Carolina at the age of 15, only to watch his dad die 13 months later, we did what most kids did and still do -- we turned to our music. Back in the mid-1980s, teen sensations were the exception, not the rule. For every Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, there were literally hundreds of Billy Joels and Huey Lewises. The guys who wrote the songs that explored love and life and feeling and loss were mostly in their 30s and 40s. They had actual life experience to write about and we consumed all we could.
Fast-forward to today and we think we're still looking to music for guidance. And while there are some exceptional writers who are younger than us, (Colin Meloy and Alex Turner stand out in particular), the fact is, we're just not gonna look to a teenager as the voice of our generation. So we turn to the likes of Leonard Cohen, Robert Plant and Bob Dylan to be our sages. In at least the case of the latte- most, he only became relevant to us when he outlasted most of his contemporaries and spoke to the 40-something us, after having lived this part of his life already.
*Here's a cool mini-documentary on the making of Wood's track.
42. Celebration Day
Led Zeppelin
Which of course leads us into a new Led Zeppelin album -- and the first we've ever purchased.We really dig what Robert Plant has been doing lately and his Fabulous Shape Shifters album, which will appear a bit later on in this countdown, includes some of his stuff from his time with the band that made him famous. And we kinda liked what we were hearing. So, when this album popped up as an iTunes pre order, we scooped it up. It's a live album recorded during their one-off reunion concert in 2007, at London's O2 Arena.
Clearly we're familiar with the band's biggest hits. How could one not be? Still, traditionally, not only have we not been fans -- we've outright disliked Led Zeppelin. But this is a really good live album. The musicianship is solid and Plant continues to be in good voice. Now, being new to our exploration here, we checked with some longtime fans and were assured that this is definitely a good album, from the perspective of a Zeppelin fan. That being the case, we feel it to be a good primer to their catalogue. We're intrigued.
Our favorite track: We're gonna go with For Your Life, as while introducing it, Plant advised the audience that the band had never performed it live before, so it's the closest thing to a new song we're gonna get.
41. Silver & Gold
Sufjan Stevens
Christmas albums are, by and large, crap. They are a way for artists to play out the string on a contract without having to go the live album route or it's a way for them (or more-often their label) to milk the audience when they just don't have anything new to share.In order to be good a Christmas album, a record has to have one of three things going for it: it has to be funny, it has to be over-the-top-transcendent-good (if a traditional Christmas album) or it has to be weird. Original material is also a big bonus, if it's any good.
This album hits on the third. Sufjan Stevens is always good for weird songs, in the very best, interesting, "where the hell did that come from -- play it again dude" kind of way. Plus, at like 13 bucks for 59 songs, it's a steal.
Stevens is one of those dudes that is always writing and, most of the time, is recording stuff on the fly (this is his second Christmas treasure trove, a followup to 2006's Songs for Christmas, which had 42 tunes on it). The results are always interesting. We'll give him that.
On this album, he takes on the standards, such as Silent Night, Jingle Bellset al and mixes in some really interesting original material. He dashes off an a capella Ah Holy Jesus in a minute flat, while a few songs later, he goes 15-and-a-half minutes on The Child with a Star on His Head, a Baby-Jesus-meets-John-Wayne-and-they-jam-with-Willie kinda thing. Good times.
Our favorite track: Lumberjack Christmas/No One Can Save You from Christmases Past.
Up Next: Numbers 40-31. Previous: 75-61, 60-51
thanku so much for sharing all this info
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