“Something to Live For,” Ella Fitzgerald with the Duke Ellington Orchestra
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Ella Fitzgerald
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2012
Edit: My beau-frère Piers made a Rdio playlist of (almost all of) the songs below. If you don’t mind signing up for things, you can listen to it here!
This is the year I became a dad, voted for Jill Stein, learned to drive, fell in love with Wall of Sound Records, rode my bike crosswise across the city three days a week for work, discovered old-timers like Lefty Frizzell, Carroll Thompson, Coleman Hawkins, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, the Soul Stirrers, and the Clean, and listened to new music ardently, locally, and indulgently. Here’s my musical story, A to Z, January to December.
Albums: Sweat through your cardigan
Jherek Bischoff, Composed. The jam of our house’s cloudy June. Grand and unfussy and moving. Full of great singers singing words secondary to their timbres against the timbres of violin and rolling drum.
Mark Eitzel, Don’t Be a Stranger. I sometimes forget about singer-songwriter music! His close-mic’d, cracked voice against the gentle production is bliss, throwing into relief lyrics like “I did not mean to scare your sad little brat” and “I control my arms and my legs and my hands and my hair and my face, like I’m holding a gun in a video game.”
Mount Eerie, Clear Moon/Ocean Roar.
Nas, Life Is Good. Lots of smart people have called “Accident Murderers,” “NASTY,” and “The Don” returns to form and I agree; still, I replay it most often not for the singles but for the deliberate throwback Eric B/New Jack ease of the album tracks. Plenty of MCs have sounded great on this kind of spry, jazzy stuff, but Guru couldn’t rap like this; hell, even Rakim couldn’t rap like this.
Swans, The Seer. Odin’s housecleaning music. At first listen I resisted the macho gigantism– the moments I like least feel like the charge on Helm’s Deep— but I’m now crazy about the ambition, the thunder-and-light-speed. Plus Karen O’s Gira impression.
THEESatisfaction, awE naturalE. Some critics hated on this record because they couldn’t understand why two poets would make a groove album instead of a voice album. But those critics are idiots!
Voices from the Lake, Voices from the Lake. A pure midnight half-submerged live humid stir and hum. Wish it never ended. My spell of the year.
Your Heart Breaks, Harsh Tokes and Bong Jokes. Songs fans have heard Clyde play for years given a show-up-tune-up-and-roll-tape recording.
Songs: Imagination is more important than knowledge
Paul Baribeau, “Eight Letters.”
Big Boi, “Lines (feat. A$AP Rocky and Phantogram),” “Thom Pettie (feat. Killer Mike and Little Dragon)”: I concede, this record’s joy and sex and weirdness did not stir me up quite like Sir Lucious, so what?
Jherek Bischoff, “Insomnia, Death and the Sea (feat. Dawn McCarthy),” “Your Ghost (feat. Craig Wedren).”
Chairlift, “I Belong in Your Arms.”
Clams Casino, from Instrumental Mixtape Vol. 2: I love all the beats he made for A$AP Rocky with Rocky’s (sorry) atrocious rapping removed.
Mac DeMarco, “Ode to Viceroy.”
Mark Eitzel, “I Love You but You’re Dead.”
Earth, “A Multiplicity of Doors“: Saw the release show for this record two weeks before Finn was born; Jupiter and Venus came out together every night, our camellia bloomed, and everything seemed to lean enormously toward life.
Fabulous Diamonds, “Lothario“: Spent a dollar on this song for its circling-the-sun-drain sort of vitality and endlessness.
Four Tet, “Pyramid“: That’s a Jennifer Lopez sample!
Nils Frahm, “Keep“: A dream: the only song off Felt you don’t need headphones and solitude for.
Fresh Espresso, “Hush.”
Guided by Voices, “Class Clown Spots a UFO,” “God Loves Us,” “Keep It in Motion,” “The Challenge Is Much More,” “Waving at Airplanes,” “Waking Up the Stars“: Didn’t hear their middle reunion record, didn’t think much of the first, enjoyed most of the last, happy with these as the gold-plated keepers.
Damien Jurado, “Museum of Flight“: Heard this one during layoff week. Instantly fell in love in my drafty cube.
Killer Mike, “Untitled (feat. Scar)”: Mike’s ‘big beast’ voice and El-P’s square-edged digital beats made this record too much for me to throw on, except for this one. Word to the ladies.
Lapalux, “Moments (ft. Py).”
Lone, “Lying in the Reeds.”
Lower Dens, “Propagation.” Swans and Jana Hunter probably get their organic produce at the same haunted-forest farmer’s market.
Mount Eerie, “House Shape” and “Pale Lights.” Flattened by the latter sitting on the dirty church floor at Unknown, two chords that seemed like they’d never stop, through an actual smoke machine and a storm sunset blood-purple and bubbling out the high windows! The center songs of their respective records.
Nas, “Cherry Wine (feat. Amy Winehouse),” “Daughters,” “Reach Out (feat. Mary J. Blige).”
of Montreal, “Dour Percentage“: The only keeper off a record I felt let down by, too much mannered ugliness in the music, not enough fun Batailley lamprey-unicorn sex…
Amanda Palmer & Grand Theft Orchestra, “Want It Back“: The stickiest one off of this exploding autoerotic cannibal of a record.
Jai Paul, “Jasmine“: This song feels like someone blowing incense smoke on you.
Shed, “Day After.”
Unnatural Helpers, “Hate Your Teachers.” My three favorite chords.
Usher, “Climax“: You know this one, right?
Your Heart Breaks, “Blood Brothers”: Up the wolf dykes!
With a shoutout to all the presumably great records I didn’t get a chance to listen to this year because I’m too busy or because my baby hated them or because everyone who uses the library got to them ahead of me or because I was too broke to buy them: Converge’s All We Love…, Sun Araw’s collaboration with the Congos, Bat For Lashes’ Haunted Man and Corin Tucker’s Kill My Blues. See you in 2013!
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2011
Albums: ‘Don’t take my life away’
Jenny Hval and Braids are faith-placements, here because my ears still find more to peel back in them each time I listen: here because I might become crazy about them. tUnE-yArDs is sheer fucking joy. The Caretaker and Tim Hecker are poles of ambient: shared-historic and private-modern, ballroomy and grimy, reverie and 5 am wakefulness. The wife and I love the Weeknd. I’m basically a happy person. But if Dust to Digital’s Opika Pende had been the only new music I’d heard this year, I’d still be a happy person.
Opika Pende: Africa at 78 RPM
Braids, Native Speaker
The Caretaker, An Empty Bliss beyond This World
Tim Hecker, Ravedeath, 1972
Jenny Hval, Viscera
St. Vincent, Strange Mercy
tUnE-yArDs, W H O K I L L
The Weeknd, House of Balloons
Songs: ‘love ’em but can’t trust ’em’
Men with echoey guitars and bad voices singing great melodies with a kind of ardent seriousness (Withered Hand, the Bats, the War on Drugs, Comet Gain). Longass dance songs (Junior Boys, Gang Gang Dance). Two Nas appearances, the hell with the haters who say he’s out of steam, just listen. Is Jamie XX cool now? I wonder what Danny Brown is like as a person. The E-40 song makes me wish I could drive. Didn’t have a dirty-guitar record I loved all the way through but the songs by Forgetters, True Widow (‘stonegaze’?), No Joy, Craig Wedren, Mogwai (the riff that eats itself) and Defiance OH are good loud. Or (clean, Franco-y) Fool’s Good for a guitar hook for an imaginary barbecue. Speaking of guitars, Delicate Steve. Thanks for reading!
The Bats, “Fingers of Dawn”
Beyonce, “Countdown”
Blue Scholars, “Lumiere”
Danny Brown, “Pac Blood”
Bill Callahan, “Baby’s Breath”
Comet Gain, “Clang of the Concrete Swans,” “Ballad for Frankie Machine”
The Creole Choir of Cuba, “La Mal de Travay”
Defiance, Ohio, “Hairpool”
Delicate Steve, “Butterfly”
DJ Quik, “Nobody (feat. Suga Free)”
E-40, “That Candy Paint (feat. Bun B and Slim Thug)”
Elbow, “Lippy Kids”
Fool’s Gold, “The Dive”
Forgetters, “The Night Accelerates”
Foster the People, “Helena Beat”
Eleanor Friedberger, “Roosevelt Island”
Gang Gang Dance, “Glass Jar”
Junior Boys, “Banana Ripple”
Mamani Keita, “Gagner l’Argent Français”
A Lull, “Weapons for War”
Lykke Li, “I Follow Rivers”
Laura Marling, “Sophia”
Mogwai, “Rano Pano”
Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire, “Huzzah! (remix feat. Despot, Das Racist, Danny Brown & El-P)”
Nas, “Nasty”
No Joy, “Heedless”
Raekwon, “Rich & Black (feat. Nas)”
Royal Bangs, “Fireball”
Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie XX, “I’ll Take Care of You”
Shabazz Palaces, “Swerve”
The Smith Westerns, “All Die Young”
St. Vincent, “Cruel”
Thunder & Lightning, “Hourglass Figure”
True Widow, “Skull Eyes”
tUnE-yArDs, “Bizness” and “Riotriot”
The War on Drugs, “Comin’ Through”
Craig Wedren, “Cupid”
The Weeknd, “House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls,” “Wicked Games”
Withered Hand, “Religious Songs”
The Young Evils, “Get Over It”
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Canons as Such
As a big reader and a complete fanatic about music, I’ve wondered why I don’t really like Top Ten lists, or statements of “essential works.” Canons aren’t something I’ve given up: I spent college telling people how I’d read Ulysses (not a lie); at the end of every year, I work my way through year’s-best lists of indie rock, African pop reissues, and basement noise squalls; I read or at least tried every book on my professor Mary Jo Bang’s recommended-in-2009 poetry and avant-garde theatre list. But I don’t enjoy consuming canons, I don’t like the trying-to-get-it feeling I get in the presence of art I’m told is great or important, and I don’t like trading my appetites for tastes.
So—what does a canon suppose? What’s the difference between, say, a mixtape and Harold Bloom’s Western Canon?
Canons are a stance, an intellectual flex and assertion in a world just as status-conscious as, say, the halls of Congress or a boy’s locker room. A cultural institution names what’s important to make itself important; it creates a synthesis to imply extremes (“we consider art from here to here”) then establish itself as a mediating center. The larger part of canonizing consists of nods toward tokens or toward those-too-important-to-ignore; the rest consists of conveying impressiveness, seriousness, breadth.
It seems lists are more trustworthy when they’re for and from someone. If my student asks me what to read next, I tell her eight things and encourage her to eat them, spit them out, demand answers of them, and marry them. Instead of placing you at a center, a good list (anything—a mixtape, the top-rated things on your Goodreads, a photocopied course packet) can show how lost and enamored you feel. It also exposes your limits, putting less vertical distance between yourself and the folks you’re sharing with.
The thing is, even simple eclecticism (like: today at my desk I’ve played Mbilia Bel, Thank You, and Nicki Minaj, but I’m not telling anybody about it, except you!) isn’t a virtue on its own. Part of a “comprehensive” canon is to demonstrate the cultural capital you’ve accrued: look how cosmopolitan I am. It also fosters the polite liberal-politics notion that the “answer’s in the middle,” between two strong positions. If a later Bloom includes both Billy and Girl and Washington Square in his temple of texts, he’s charting your middle path, teaching moderation-by-example. Too, in local culture, list-making is political, a curated set of mutually beneficial relationships: I gain status by calling attention to you, you gain influence by my calling-attention. (And I’ll maybe curate a festival for you, and my forty other best friends, making you famous or dead-to-the-world in the guise of reviewing you.)
The question is, how can an outlet for opinion make itself part of a community rather than a gatekeeper for one?
…And, well, shit, at the end of all this high-toned talk of mine, I still do like a few lists. The website Tiny Mixtapes is musically narrow and can be prickly in their approach to more “pop”-leaning art, but they feel like lovers, gourmands at the table instead of gourmets. You can see the thread—emotion, sprawl, extremity—connecting their love of the Dardenne Brothers, Big Boi, Zs. (They’re on the edge of being crate-diggers, offerers rather than critics.)
Annnnnd Robert Christgau, the rock critic, is cheerful, prejudiced, and unserene (compare the difference in tone between his Consumer Guide reviews of Randy Newman and of, say, XTC). And eclectic: His favorite album of 2009 was Brad Paisley’s, of 2008 was Franco’s, his favorite album of the decade was M.I.A.’s, his favorite single of the decade was James McMurtry’s. “I’ve been resisting the hipper-than-thou for four decades. But still it beckons.”
How about for you? How do you share something like taste?
2010
Albums: “not a hobby, it’s my life”
Ghana Special: Modern Highlife Afro-sounds & Ghanaian Blues 1968-81
Stroke: Songs for Chris Knox
Big Boi, Sir Lucious Leftfoot… The Son of Chico Dusty
Franco & Tout Puissant OK Jazz, Francophonic Vol. 2: 1980-1989
Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba, I Speak Fula
Sean McCann, Open Resolve
Joanna Newsom, Have One on Me
Shabazz Palaces, Shabazz Palaces
Sufjan Stevens, The Age of Adz
Kurt Weisman, Orange
Songs: “your favorite MC’s favorite MC”
Erykah Badu, Jump Up in the Air and Stay There (feat. Lil Wayne & Bilal)
Lloyd Banks, Beamer, Benz, or Bentley (feat. Fabolous)
Big Boi, Shutterbugg (feat. Cutty), Lookin’ for Ya (feat. Andre 3000), Hustle Blood (feat. Jaime Foxx)
Chromatics, Circled Sun
Cloud Nothings, Leave You Forever
E-40, All I Need
Earth, Divine and Bright (feat. Kurt Cobain)
Jay Electronica, Exhibit C and Shiny Suit Theory (feat. Jay-Z)
Flying Lotus, Do the Astral Plane
Jeff Mangum, Sign the Dotted Line
Janelle Monae, Tightrope (feat. Big Boi)
The Mint Chicks, Crush
Joanna Newsom, ’81, Does Not Suffice
OFF!, Upside Down
of Montreal, Like a Tourist
Doug Paisley, Don’t Make Me Wait
Robyn, Cry When You Get Older and Fembot
Guilty Simpson, Drums
Spoon, Out Go the Lights
Marnie Stern, For Ash
Sufjan Stevens, The Age of Adz
Superchunk, My Gap Feels Weird
Laura Veirs, July Flame
Kurt Vile, In My Time
Kurt Weisman, New Blueberry Song
Kanye West, Monster (feat. Rick Ross, Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj & Bon Iver)
Xiu Xiu, Dear God, I Hate Myself
Yellow Swans, Limited Space
Signed, sealed—
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I’ll Never Forget You
I have to admit, I hated how much I loved Hüsker Dü. I spent my whole late adolescence put off by and hooked on their melodies, sour-and-sweet, the trebly, overwhelming wash of Bob Mould’s guitar. Zen Arcade—their double-LP hardcore-and-more concept record—jumped out to me between Human League and Janice Ian CDs at the satellite branch of the Everett Library, scuffed but still playable, when I was fourteen. Who was that music librarian? “Something I learned today, black and white is always gray.”
I took Zen Arcade home and listened to it on a C90 cassette, with their cover of “Eight Miles High” appended to fill the tape’s last minutes, every day for about four years. The music felt like me and it felt like my hometown: Zen Arcade’s screaming and the compression and chiming guitar, the spasms of psychedelia and the long acid jam at the end of Side 4, the gorgeous melodies, felt as big to me as my teenage emotional life, when getting off the local bus I’d get overwhelmed—by nothing, by a pine tree or knocked-over mailbox—you know that teenage time when people slipped notes in lockers, smoked out behind their jobs, and handwrote letters.
“Spilled my guts, you just threw them away.” If home had been Brooklyn or Arcata it might have been different, but Everett, where I lived from eight to eighteen, was teeming around the edges, gray and hollowed-out-feeling in the middle. Punk rock, especially the sheet-metal noisemakers, seemed to fit our county: noise stripmall-white, rolling out of my ears over the hills and sagging tract houses and strawberry farms near Highway 2 and rising up to the overcast. There were times I couldn’t stand it: “Somewhere satisfaction has no name.” Even the gray- and crayon-colors of Zen Arcade‘s cover felt like me and the land. Now, ten years after I moved away, I only listen to Hüsker Dü when a similar big-self mood fills my heart and I feel like nothing but that wash will match me, or meet me. It’s not often.
(And, just for the record, I only listen to them on record: never remastered and never really mastered all that well to begin with, the album sound compressed and remote anywhere but on LP through a good, dirty set of speakers. Never decide anything in good taste, only in good appetite. Over and out!)
Jay Aquinas Thompson 
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