Writing about music – or any art – should be, or could be (on some base level) about identifying what works in that way (I listened to Guns ‘N Roses Use Your Illusion records in one marathon 2 1/2 hour trial, and it’s amazing how a fifth of those songs just feel right, and the rest are filler), and then failing at trying to describe the ecstasy of something like “I’ve Just Seen a Face” or Radiohead’s “Let Down.” Or maybe just the second part works – if you spend any time at all trying to describe the ecstatic, then you must know it is worthwhile.

So that’s one thing I was thinking about. The other was California.

Maybe my film-centric obsession – and all this music talk is, fittingly, related to a movie – meant that Hollywood and California stood for a place of dreams, failed or otherwise. It had its mythology and its heroes and, for me, they were all film – United Artists being founded by the unreal triumvirate of Fairbanks/Pickford/Griffith; knowing the names for the silent stars’ estates; the role of Kansas and Dorothy; all these things. What I somehow ignored was how so many artists flock here – almost out of obligation, it seems. Nobody but wide-eyed actresses ever seem excited about the move to Los Angeles; the tone of people here is often that of a forlorn resignation. “I’m happy, so why go elsewhere?”

But really, why come here in the first place? California is the last, and maybe the only-ever, outpost of inter-American immigration (if I can define it as such a thing). The Europeans came to New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia; the Mexicans emigrated through the border from San Diego to Brownsville, the Scandinavians went to the upper Midwest and the Germans to the hills of the Midwest and the Latin Americans to Florida – some correspondence of land and climate to the place they know.

California is a kind of paradise, if only in that it offers so much to so many, but the chief draw was to the Midwest. A nice plot of land, auto-based culture, some of the best weather in the world, the allure of dreams but also of the strong, small communities of home (often overlooked in the outsider’s skeptic view of Santa Monica/Beverly Hills/West Hollywood). Modern architecture loved Los Angeles as a playground for new ideas (and with plenty of space and money); presidents started to come from the state and the place blossomed as a location for artists, thinkers, hippies, recluses, whatever. I am absolutely treading water at this point because I don’t know how to best enter my point…

I would never have moved here if my career didn’t force it, which might be why I wonder this: why do musicians want to be here? And, the real point – why do they all sing about it?

Songs about the dream of moving to California, about hating California, about loving it, about visiting, about the land and the dreams and the movies and the industry and all this – it seems like every band has a “California moment,” or a California song. It’s an easy place to have an opinion on – easier, even, than New York, which is defended with such hostility that you have to put in years before you have a “real” opinion on it. No city should be so hard to understand. It’s a place with a shitload of people.

So is California, and nobody here pretends to understand it. In maybe the most recently well-known “California,” Phantom Planet painted it with summery guitars and the funny hope of a line like “California here we come, right back where we started from.” It’s important to try and remember this song pre-The O.C., which was a wonderful match for it from a historical standpoint but, I’m afraid, serves to critically devalue this rather perfect document of a most “California” band.

The musical scenes “California” is best known for spawning – and let’s be real, “California” is almost always a stand-in for “Los Angeles;” songs about the Bay Area tend to be specific – are (no order), surf rock, hair metal, Byrds-era Laurel Canyon twang, rap (by virtue of NWA alone), and maybe the music industry version of “A Star is Born” with the careers of Middle Americans-cum-po stars (Britney). It’s also important to remember Merle Haggard came out of Bakersfield and Johnny Cash’s best albums were set in California prisons.

Metal is a particularly interesting prism to view the state’s role in music – can you believe how sloppy and poorly constructed this is? – in so much as those bands showed up on the Sunset Strip, very few of them were from California. Axl Rose was from Indiana, but he wanted to be in Los Angeles. The scene was a construct of a hope to find a place to connect with like-minded people, and a lot of them. I recently read about Rivers Cuomo’s early years as a metalhead; him and his Connecticut-based buddies moved to Hollywood to make it here. The record labels were here, sure, so the money and fame might be as well – even if Cheap Trick formed in Rockford – but moreover it’s the role of the state as a destination. I will stop at “a piece of mind,” as that sounds stupid, but one might get the point.

Using the very scientific method of typing “California” into my iTunes – I once did this for an essay on “heartbreak” – I pulled down about 15 songs that mean something to me. There are many more that are just “about” California, but I’m especially drawn to the ones that have it in the title – that aren’t willing to hide it; that are baldly Cali. As mentioned earlier, Phantom Planet is a top one; a funny relative is the slowcore band Low’s “California” off their interesting The Great Destroyer - it sounds like Low covering Phantom Planet, surely a sentence few could imagine. But it’s similarly sunny in power chords. Low – who hail from Minnesota – are, perhaps unsurprisingly, attracted to the weather. “And though it breaks your heart/We had to sell the farm/Back to California where it’s warm…it’s warm, it’s warm.” Straight up Midwest right there.

Josh Ritter does the same thing on his 2003 “California.” “Going out to California, gonna let the water warm my clothes – I’m alone but I’m not lonely. Gonna trade the weather fo the Western coast.” He also says “don’t say the trip’s been done a hundred thousand times/cause this one is mine.” It’s a beautiful sentiment – almost setting him up for failure; California/Los Angeles as a place of restoration.

I have a Tom Petty “California” from the weirdly durable She’s the One soundtrack – it opens with “California’s been good to me/Hope it don’t fall into the sea,” echoing the doomsday dreams of Tool and other bands who want Arizona to be the new coast. Again: “Sometimes you got to save yourself – it ain’t like anywhere else.” Come here to find who you are – like the warmth, the ocean, and the other dreamers will save you.

I recently rediscovered the alternative-rock band Wax’s “California,” which is most famous for an awesomely simple Spike Jonze video. There’s a little more anger in here, but the song is very funny – the singer is moving to California to get away from a girl. By the third verse he is wondering “Why did I move to Southern California?” which is the punishing refrain that ends the song – it was a mistake to leave the girl behind.

Part of what precipitated this – other than inventing a “California” song of my own for my fake rock band – was the “California” by the Pitchfork-hyped EMA. It’s the best song on her album, which I found to be a bit of a bore. “Fuck California, you made me boring” is her first line – which I kind of love, capturing the complacency that can exist here. From there the song is a bit of a confessional, a little too talky and the Eno-like sonics are far more interesting than EMA’s poetry.

That’s actually it for my “California” songs that I care about. I won’t draw a consensus yet. I’ve got “California Zephyr,” from the Jay Farrar/Ben Gibbard Jack Kerouac album, but that actually refers to San Francisco (and, specifically, the train that takes you from Chicago to San Francisco); though it might echo something of the journey so many take to be here (and the lyrics are culled from Kerouac). Kathleen Edwards has a crushing song called “Goodnight, California” which hurts too much to quote beyond the first verse “You know what I wish? It was just you and me sitting in this corner bar. You could tell me how you are.” It’s too raw beyond that, and is more California-set, to really explore with any sort of critical distance.

The Roadside Graves did a great album of alt-country/Byrds-like songs that referred to moving west and called it Nobody Will Know Where You’ve Been, which may refer to the dropping of a past and clear identity; among them were the catchy “West Coast” and “If California Didn’t End,” which has the line “If California didn’t end, you’d still be driving around.” Joanna Newsom’s triple-album Have One On Me was recorded in and around Big Sur, so we have to take “In California” as non-Los Angeles – yet the whole album functions well for a kind of weird coastal take on the state in sound and lyrics. Newsom is especially attracted to nature in a way that is unique – though it can drive a listener crazy who tries to get through all of that record.

Led Zeppelin, in the most classic fashion mentioned on this list, wrote “Going to California,” mixing that California-60s sound with their Tolkien-mysticism and the inevitable gallop of a group of British guys going as far west as they can without looking out of place. Then again, Zep was going to the Marmont to do horrible things to groupies, but we can ignore that. But “someone told me there’s a girl out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair.” For Robert Plant, California is love.

Punk has X’s “Los Angeles” (and, less specifically, Black Flag and the entire SST label, which in some way led to Orange County punk, which is about a different side of California I am too lazy to explore now) (and much later, X’s John Doe would collaborate with Kathleen Edwards on the great and apparently True Blood-featured “Golden State“); surf rock had all the great Beach Boys songs (and later David Lee Roth covers with AMAZING videos). The Decemberists’ have a terrific, if somewhat skeptical, song called “Los Angeles, I’m Yours” that is slightly more loving than Ben Gibbard’s (for Death Cab for Cutie) hateful but catchy “Why’d You Want to Live Here.” The Decemberists also gave California highways some love with “California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade.” And, of course, the elder Albert Hammond’s “It Never Rains in Southern California,” which can stand in for all the CSNY/Jackson Browne/whatever stuff going on in AOR of the 1970s. And it’s about weather. He also talks about flying, which must have been a thing in the past – Zeppelin was always worried about airplanes, which is funny.

And, totally unrelated to this conversation but not, I just discovered Frank Black’s “Olé Mulholland,” which is an educational song about William Mulholland and the water politics of the city – a more truthful and correct audio version of Chinatown. Awesome.

In 1998 Wilco and the Brit Billy Bragg re-recorded some Woody Guthrie songs, including “California Stars” – at that point, maybe the most perfect summation of Jay Bennett-era Wilco, even if they didn’t write the song. Guthrie’s song, obviously, refers to the era of the state that the dreamers dream of – the 1930s, when he arrived and was a success. There’s hope here, too – “So I’d give this world just to dream a dream with you on our bed of California stars.” There’s work, too – “I’d love to feel your hand touching mine and tell me why I must keep working on ” – the hope, dreams, and promise of California are all-told in a perfect dream. The song’s incredible rhythm (and Jeff Tweedy’s pointed delivery) make it endless and beautiful. It’s probably my favorite California song.

Because even if I don’t want to be here, I know that I am here, and whatever “it” is that I want to do is going to be made possible by this place – these people, this energy, this city, this infrastructure. Things both logical and intangible. It happens to be warm, and most people are nice, and you get to listen to music in your car, but really it promises some kind of perfection and harmony. Whether or not someone achieves it is the test of California, but it is almost always worth a shot.

At a time in my life when I felt similar to now – late summer 2009, just prior to the start of this never-maintained blog – somebody turned me onto the Antlers’ Hospice. It was a hard album to consume at once – they were often compared to Arcade Fire for their occasional towering indie anthems that brought simple instruments and frontman Peter Silberman raw, emotional voice into a concept album about death – why, I just described Funeral. But there were only two great songs on Hospice; one of them, “Two,” will be on the Time-Life USB cards that commemorate this era in music. It’s a majestic, wonderful, completely perfect song; at once chugging with energy, catchy, symphonic in composition and affecting in its lyrics that sometimes seem to be about anorexia, other times the frailty of death, maybe schizophrenia, and always the trial of love. The verses are things of beauty. “Well no one’s gonna fix it for us, no one can,” Silberman sings; later, the devastation of “Two people living in one small room…two ways to tell the story, no one worries…two silver rings on our fingers in a hurry…two people believing that I’m the one to blame…”

It’s one of the best, the sort of song a band probably writes on accident because you could never plan something this wonderful.

SO: to Burst Apart, the band’s “electronic” second album, per the effective PR blitz. It’s a misnomer – they instead recontextualize how you can use “electronics” by laying repetitive synth/guitar patterns in a song’s opening and building upon them – much like “Two.” We begin with the imminently listenable, simple, and yet-to-be boring “I Don’t Want Love.” The lyrics sound like they’re about love; but they read much darker – it’s either a song about rough sex, domestic abuse, or (more likely) some kind of middle ground. Let’s start our “breakup” album (as I read it that way) with “You wanna climb up the stairs – I wanna push you back down/But I let you inside so you can push me around.” Silberman sings “I don’t want love, I don’t want love.” It’s terribly sad, and yet the clean guitar of the chorus speaks to some hope.

“French Exit” begins with a more recognizable synth sound; it feels warmer, even a bit homey. Then again: the very title of the song refers to bailing on someone without saying goodbye; another unhappy encounter. The band adds the ornamentation until the paralyzing final line: “Don’t bother trying to fix my heart.” Through some emotional weight, the same crescendo of synths that’s played since the intro now sounds far heavier – dance music infused with the reality of dialogue and drama. It kills.

“Parentheses” sounds more like a rock band, with an echoey, almost “When the Levee Breaks”-style drum and Silberman indulging in a falsetto that works only if you remember it from Hospice – or if you want to imagine what a superfan of Radiohead might make of “Climbing up the Walls” and it’s famous multi-tracked string section. The guitar that highlights the song doesn’t appear until the halfway point, but it’s OK Computer like whoa. I’m less drawn to this song and more pushed away – the sketches of imagery here are less affecting, but the sonics carry us well into “No Widows,” the pinnacle of the album’s near-flawless first half. Again, a familiar synth line carries us into Silberman’s voice – it’s at this moment the listener realizes these songs function as a sort of suite of pain, souped-up with the blue synths the Antlers seem to have discovered on this record. When Silberman yearns “When they shake, say the wings won’t break” as the song builds and crashes on strings of synthesizers, I’m confronted by a desire to sing along like I know what the fuck he means. That, in its incongruity, is pop music. Even he knows it’s nonsense, but the shape of his voice and the sound of the words and the imagery and the energy going on is a special dynamite. “No perfect love above, no punishment below” – sure, a couplet about heaven and hell; but really it’s a bit about life now. Whatever Silberman (or the narrator – remembering that Hospice was weirdly reported as autobiographical or not, I will assume he has characters he employs) is feeling is urgent and somehow more than music.

Maybe it’s good, then, that the next track, “Rolled Together,” languishes a bit too long allowing us to recover from the stillness of the first four songs. Some vaguely choral voices sing “Rolled together with a burning paper heart” over and over, stopping only to say “Pulled together but about to burst apart” – vocalizing the title at the halfway point is no accident; a relationship drawn tensely – and all about sex.

The next song makes that clear from its title – “Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out,” which I have been told is dreamspeak for impotency, bad sex, or any number of things. I’m not sure which to believe but I’ll assume its bad and/or violent sex, since that seems to be what most of this is. “And one dumb night I’ll take you out to the bar we’ve both blacked out – one dumb night two bad decisions don’t divide to cancel out.” But we have the familiar post-chorus rhythms to get us back into the structure of those majestic opening songs. A louder ending leads to “Tiptoe,” likely added to calm (like “Rolled Together”) and to maybe get this painful, weirdly listenable record to an even ten songs. A soft sax solo plays, mocking the drama at play.

“Hounds” is beautiful. It plays like a Bedhead song. It feels like a song about love; about being sorry, about being jealous. “They want to think for you, pour drinks into you” Silberman coos, “They want to look at you while I look everywhere for you.” I goosebump typing it. “I want to sever you, defend against you. I want to speak for you – as if I know what you’ll do” are the closing lines as the album has it’s most Hospice-y moment yet – a swell of saxophone and 80s synth that builds well beyond the loveliness at the beginning. We realize the electronics might have been evil – this might be pure.

“Corsicana” furthers that, opening with a muted piano. Around a metaphor of a house burning (I think – I don’t pretend to understand this) Silberman gets out the finest metaphor of his album – nearly screaming it – “We should shut that window we both left open now!” referring in some physical sense to the “sparks” outside that might be dooming our couple [amazing how there's never any question this record is about a couple, despite not specifying gender once]. “We lost our chance to run – now the door’s too hot to touch – we should hold our breaths with mouths together now,” a fairly emo image of a fiery death that might speak to a goth influence that made Burst Apart possible. It’s only a few steps away from The Cure, after all.

I could see a lot of people hating the album’s last song, which attempts another synecdoche beginning with the title “Putting the Dog to Sleep” and tries to offset the material with 60s-teen death drama guitar strums. The opening line “Prove to me I’m not gonna die alone” would seem to pick up right where “Corsicana” left off. But he moves to the titular dog, which seems real and not a metaphor – “don’t lie to me if you’re putting the dog to sleep,” drawing in some issue of trust. He merges them awkwardly “my trust in you is a dog with a broken leg – tendons too torn to beg for you to let me back in,” with our narrator on the outside.

It is clumsy, to be sure; but it’s no less affecting. And in the violence of the song’s imagery, and the sentiment we hold for animals, and for weakness and those we love, it’s near impossible to reach the final calls of “Put your trust in me – I’m not gonna die alone…I don’t think so” as a mantra of hope, the last line one of the few moments of pleasant doubt on the whole record.

It’s divided between the pain and something like love; if there is a narrative, it’s the opposite of a break-up album – a restructuring of something like The Streets’ A Grand Don’t Come For Free – where our narrator leaves a destructive relationship for something that might work out – or maybe they salvage the original, remember what it was they loved about each other anyway. A break-up record that ends with the couple together – this is the Antlers’ dissonance at work.

At no point do I feel Burst Apart is actually pretentious, even though picking any of the paragraphs here would make it seem that way (and intellectually I know they are). The band is certainly too serious – which is part of why I enjoy the sloppiness of the final song – but for the listener, the joy Burst Apart is the space between the sonics and the lyrics. There’s something original going on in Silberman’s provocations and the beauty underneath, and its cumulative effect is wanting to restart the record as soon as it ends – as if that will make life somehow a little easier.

1. LACMA’s two nights of Jan Troell back in January, a cumulative 7 hours spent watching the incredible THE EMIGRANTS and THE NEW LAND alone on weekend nights. I’m proud to say this.

2. HOW THE WEST WAS WON in true Cinerama at the Arclight.

3. THE PHANTOM LADY at the New Bev. Siodmak lives!

4. A night of Jim Henson’s commercials and shorts at the Silent Movie Theater

5. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS at midnight at the Vista.

6. 2012′s “escape from LA” sequence

7. Sobbing through UP a third time

8. SILENT LIGHT (technically a 2008 release, but astonishing enough I might count it on 2010 too).

9. An impromptu DRAG ME TO HELL/ANVIL double feature

10. THE HANGOVER in the California desert

11. (reserved for AVATAR love)

Music?

Dinosaur Jr., Farm

Is there a precedent for this? A group of guys with nothing to prove getting old and somehow getting better? I feel weird saying I think Farm is my favorite Dinosaur album, but it seems to get at what they tried to do with those early classics without resorting to so much trickery. No better example than listening to “Said the People,” which climaxes with a second guitar solo before returning to its ho-hum verse. Right as you realize the song is creeping toward the 6 minute mark, J Mascis hits you with the greatest guitar solo of the year—the sort of bend and pull that reminds you why the guitar is such an emotive, powerful instrument. “Plans” “Pieces” “Said the People” “I Don’t Wanna Go There” and the 90s alt-rock-lite “See You”—put a gun to my head and this is the best album of the year.

Camera Obscura, My Maudlin Career

I feel like I’ve processed why I love My Maudlin Career so much that I will just quote a friend: “I don’t understand why they play the keyboards so hard on the title track, but its why I love this album so much.”

Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion

As unoriginal as they come, and it’s probably my least favorite of these ten. That said…well, I don’t know. It’s such an easy sell, like Kid A as the album of the aughts: this is where music was supposedly heading, some kind of hip-hop/tribal/indie/danceable melange, like the rave sequence in The Matrix Reloaded. It’s also convenient for describing Animal Collective and their realization of what we, the smart consumers, have always known: pop songs rule (I remember well a Pitchfork writer saying that listening to Animal Collective was like watching a group of kids discover their instruments and slowly grow into their talents, which is either condescending or boring. It also sort of seems right). At any rate, I hold that the band peaked with Feels, which I think was the last time they toured with real instruments before Geologist’s samples became the backbone of the sound. Strawberry Jam features two of their greatest songs and several I forget, and MPP will be remembered, to the band’s detriment, as their pop peak. As for what it sounded like (and not what it meant–and believe me, this is an album we will remember more for meaning than sound), it was a terrific listen highlighted by the fascinating “In the Flowers” and the sentimental “Summertime Clothes” and “Bluish.” 

The xx, The xx

Simplicity is a major concern of mine, which I often undo in long paragraphs about the merits of bands with names like Animal Collective. So hearing The xx for the first time became about the following: (1) they sound like Young Marble Giants (2) they are in their late teens/early 20s? (3) they sound really great and, finally, (4) they understand the sort of thing it takes bands several albums to understand: just be simple. wakka wakka. The proof is in the pudding: delicate lyrics about videotaping “Big Love” work perfectly against sparely plucked guitar notes, a drum machine, and slightly charged boy/girl banter. If you’re going to copy a band, Young Marble Giants are a weird one to go after; to do it this well makes me prefer this to Colossal Youth. Just saying.

Neko Case, Middle Cyclone

A latecomer to my list, Ms. Case–who once locked eyes with me in the way lovers often do (I then informed her she was standing in human waste)–sings with such brash weirdness, and imbues strange phrases with drama (“and heaven will smell like the airport!), and finally offers narratives I think I can understand. This is my favorite of her records.

Fever Ray, Fever Ray

The next two will be about genius. Karin Dreijer Andersson is the sister from The Knife and the woman behind Fever Ray. If the Knife is “haunted house” as Pitchfork said–honestly, a really good made up genre–then Fever Ray is the mischievous ghost. That does a little to explain the otherworldliness of Andersson’s voice, especially when processed to sound like a dude, but what makes this stick is the attention to detail and the wonderful sounds that exist. Whatever chord pulses during the chorus of “Seven”–you know, the one about dishwashing tablets–gets at this better than I can describe.

Sunset Rubdown, Dragonslayer and its kid sister, Handsome Furs’ Face Control

For like 3 weeks I listened to nothing but Dragonslayer and Tom Petty, and I listened to them while I walked around New York. Like Neko and Fever Ray, Spencer Krug wraps the peculiar in passion and his own natural appeal–the result is the strongest front-to-back album he’s ever made (and just to be clear, he’s been part of 8 major releases in the last 4 years). I could write more but it deserves its own essay. Similarly, Dan Boeckner, the other half of the Wolf Parade hydra, improved on his side project’s (with wife Alexei Perry) debut with songs like “Radio Kaliningrad,” “All We Want, Baby, Is Everything” and “I’m Confused”–like The xx, the Furs are about getting the most out of a little. They’re almost as good.

The Lonely Island, Incredibad

I wish I was more important, as that’s the only way I think I could really express how much “I” appreciate “I’m On A Boat.” You know, if Petraeus or somebody wrote what I would say about the song, it might have some legitimacy. What I would say is that I think it’s one of the finest songs of the last few years, at once a great send-up of music trends while also embracing (and never mocking) the very things its lampooning. There’s a reason that kind of music works, and its because “I’m On A Boat” gets you fired up. It’s also because Akiva Schaffer and Andy Samberg and T-Pain know how serious they must to be–that is, really serious. One wink and the gig is up. A great beat, too: honestly, this thing might outlive us all. The rest of Incredibad comes close with well-produced songs that happen to be funny some of the time. Something of an underrated gem, I guess.

The Flaming Lips, Embryonic

One of the great artistic statements by any band who doesn’t have to make any more statements. Honestly, Embryonic’s primal buzz was such an out-of-left-field departure from the iconic sound the Lips honed over the last ten years–and given their advanced age, as the core of the band has been together for almost 25 years–this is even more dramatic than the “departures” Radiohead made at the beginning of the decade. Radiohead’s game has always been about change, to an extent; the Lips seemed happy to just entertain in a dizzying, populist fashion. Then, Embryonic. I’ve written below about it, and I still marvel.

Morgan and I recounted the conversation. “Is it wrong that I think anyone who thinks I’m attractive is fundamentally incorrect?”

“Absolutely not,” he says. “If a girl told me she thought I was hot, I would actually be less attracted to her because she would then be stupid.”

“I feel the same way,” I said. “Nobody has told me I’ve looked good since late 2003.”

“Hey, you’re a fine-looking guy.”

“You too, but you know I love you like a brother Morgan—I know I’m not ‘hot,’ nor are you.”

“Of course not.”

This feels like a backwards bromance moment. I shudder at the word and the actual feeling.

“So if she thinks I’m good-looking, do I take that to the bank?”

“Do you think she’s wrong?”

“Yes.”

“But it felt good to be complimented..?”

I don’t hesitate. “Totally. It felt fucking great. It worked.”

“So are you willing to be with someone if they adore just one element of your life, be it your writing, your movies, your bald spot, your jawline, your knowledge of American geography, or your sign?”

“I would not date a girl just because she liked that I was a Capricorn.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Because then she would be shallow?”

“No, because she would be fickle.”

He stares through me.

“It wouldn’t work out.”

“But if she thought you looked good?”

“Look at me—I’m unremarkable. All I have is ‘personality,’ and even that can be dicey.”

“So yes?”

“So no.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. She wasn’t that cute.”

Deep, thoughtful sighs on both sides of the room now.

“Then what’d you say back when she said you were cute?”

“I lied, terribly. I said ‘I think you’re not bad, either.’”

“What the hell else could you say?”

“What the hell else could I say?..! I mean, ideally I could steer the conversation away for a few beats, then return with what might seem like an isolated compliment about her attractiveness, but she probably would have thought I was lying then, too, and that I had worked too hard for it.”

“Did she know you were lying?”

“Totally. I think she felt I should have said something first.”

“Should you have?”

“That would have been lying.”

Hm.

“This must have been a terrible moment in your life.”

“Yesterday! I got so scared I shivered like a child.” I’ve written about distance and time and I need specifics to be clear, and I don’t want to give them. “In Between Days” would be emo, so I took to “Close to Me.” Here’s a song beloved by emo kids and hip-hop artists the world over; maybe even jazz people like that there’s a saxophone in it. The thing is you gotta move; heels gotta bounce and faces have gotta be made. Maybe then we can dance to the Cure, to the unlikely clicks of “Close to Me,” to Robert Smith trying to explain for the umpteenth time the joy of a night in love the way he does so well.

Those nights only happen two-three times a year, with the rest spent exhausted from it or wondering how to make it happen again. Lightning in a bottle. Robert Smith made it happen, by my count, 6 times: “Friday I’m in Love,” “Just Like Heaven,” “Close to Me,” “The Lovecats,” “In Between Days,” and “Mint Car.” Those are just the greatest hits. He more than offset them with songs like “Lovesong” and “Lullaby,” the antidote to joy. Wearing make-up as a way to hide your love of love is actually really smart.

Then again, “Close to Me” can also be read as something really sad. The close to a painful day, where sleep (alone) can’t come quickly. Whatever the message, the beat is what gets ya. Like hip hop.

Though I saw Precious first, The Blind Side had me reeling with such white guilt I can barely figure out how to feel. It was almost like watching a Von Trier film in how I had to separate my strong, innate emotional response with a detached look at how the filmmakers were pulling my strings and, you know, what they were really saying—because I know racism when I see it, yes I do!

My theater was sold out and smelled like turkey, given how all 200+ people at the 7:15 showing here in Missouri had come straight from Thanksgiving dinner. It was a predominantly white crowd. When Oher is first introduced, he’s a gentle giant being coddled by the nice white conservative Christians in Memphis. The opportunistic football coach, the skeptical teachers, the one-who-believes-in-him—because, of course, Oher is actually really smart (an important plot point). He’s just somehow unable to express his intelligence because he simply doesn’t know how. Michael Lewis’ book that served as the source material here is really well-adapted, but I’m not sure why writer/director John Lee Hancock left out the fascinating explanation of how Oher developed—he simply lacked an understanding of how to even learn, due to myriad developmental problems (also key is how Hancock sweetens Oher’s mother, who is something of a devil in the book/real life).

When we first see Oher being shunned on the playground by little girls—nasty, racist, Christian, conservative Southern girls, we assume—I mean, whew. In Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, there’s an story somebody (I forget who, but I think it was Eleanor Coppola) says about George Lucas. Apparently, Lucas said to get an audience to emote was as simple as showing a kitten about to be killed. Hey, it stings ’cause it’s true. And during The Blind Side, I had to sort out if I was moved by the bumbling, mute, massive Oher because he is so tragic or if he is tragic because he is black and I am white and privileged and my life far more resembles that of the Touhy family that takes him in. Were Oher a big white guy, we’d have a different movie here—albeit a movie that has been made before. Herzog’s The Enigma of Kasper Hauser is about (sorta) the same thing, a movie of considerable emotional depth that is smart enough to know a life without youth or family will always be moving.

Sandra Bullock is terrific in a deceptively difficult role as Leigh Anne. She is helped by smart costume and make-up: she’s glossy, garish, and materialistic. The film has a “great” “Hollywood” joke that flopped on my crowd: when Oher’s tutor (Kathy Bates) is first speaking with Leigh Anne, she drops the bomb that she’s a Democrat. A few scenes later, the joke is paid off when Leigh Anne tells her husband that she had a black son before she ever met a Democrat. Yuk yuk yuk. Middle America done gone and got served! What sucks about the joke is the Tuohy’s actually are Republicans (I read the book) and they’re not terrible people (unless!…you think they are racist). I don’t mean to stand up for the Grand Ol’ Party, but I cannot recall a movie Republican not named Abe Lincoln who not been obsessed with money, power, or sublimated sexual desires. What the Tuohy’s are: a family that eats dinner while watching TV, eat Taco Bell all the time (incredible), drive flashy cars, avoid the bad part of town and eat expensive salads. I actually found it to be a loving, critical, and altogether accurate representation of the conservative Midwestern experience. 

What I suppose I’m trying to say is this: The Blind Side is not racist because it is a true story and it is accurately told (my main knocks on the film, by the way, would be its total lack of imagination and the clumsiness of new scenes Hancock creates, most of them involving the actual football scenes and Hancock trying to force Leigh Anne into the action). The goal for Hancock was to make a story so compelling it transcends race—his hook is that Oher is fine all along, its the Tuohy’s who need their world changed. Oher is the rock, the base for white people to realize their own self-worth. Were the roles reversed and the Tuohy’s black and wealthy and Oher white—well, how would we sort through that? My head hurts.

Alright, so Precious. Precious has opening credits that are purposefully misspelled, a bizarre decision I still struggle with. It seems like a subtle way to indicate that Precious (the character) is unintelligent, but that is done away with in the very first scene where she tells us how much she enjoys math class and how much she likes her (white) math teacher. Then we’re shown the first of many fantasy sequences of Precious living some kind of MTV glam lifestyle, shooting videos and winning awards and walking red carpets. 5-year-old’s could write this kind of characterization.

Anyway, it is important that Precious is actually good at math. Both her and Oher are not stupid—education is still paramount, so even if you come from a broken home and don’t have the background (or even the desire) to be intelligent, some kind of talent is better than none. We can get behind smart people.

Precious goes home to Mo’Nique, who lives in a disturbing Harlem apartment (the film is set in the late 80s). I once laughed at a poster I won of Mo’Nique’s comedy Phat Girls because, well, that’s what I thought I was supposed to do (and what black audiences were supposed to do). I guess people are famous for a reason: Mo’Nique is tremendous in this movie the way actresses can actually be good—you know, rising above the material and bringing a clear creative edge and voice to the story. I’ll get to this.

I want to stop and focus on is food. There are three separate conversations in Precious about McDonald’s, with Precious and her unintelligent friends discussing their love for the chain while others (among them Lenny Kravitz as a nurse) expound on how unhealthy it is. Fried food is used repeatedly as an insert edit, even framing a rape scene (if I remember correctly). Director Lee Daniels has a clear aversion to unhealthy eating; on some level he’s almost suggesting it’s a cause of Precious’ state (same goes for welfare—getting there).

And in The Blind Side? Bullock brings home T. Bell to her kids, and there is no condescension, no commentary, no nothing. It’s dinner. AND her husband owns over 80 Yum! franchises in the Memphis area. To Lee Daniels, he is the devil! Look, I don’t mean to justify the food at McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, KFC, and other fast food places. It’s not my favorite thing to eat, and unlike other Californians I don’t have the short-sightedness to view In ‘N Out as a dramatically healthier alternative (spend some time in LA and you learn going to In ‘N Out is like announcing you’re on a new diet). But the responsibility is in the eater, not the establishment—the only way to fault fast food is for being so cheap. Guess what—shitty food is cheap (unless you’re growing it yourself). And before I get into an argument about capitalism with myself, I will move on.

Precious has been raped repeatedly by her father, bearing her one child (with Down’s Syndrome) and she’s pregnant with another. That actually reads heavier than it is; the rape scene is thankfully “unoriginal”—by which I mean Daniels’ is smart enough to shoot rape like we’ve seen it before, a horrible unspeakable act thats effects are shown dramatically rather than exploitatively (what’s up Gasper Noe). Mo’Nique is cheating to get her welfare, and it’s got her willfully trapped at home with The $100,000 Pyramid on TV. I dug the movie’s approach to the issue of welfare, which was smart and realistic about the benefits and perils of the service. It’s a crutch and a way-of-life to Mo’Nique; at the end its the way out for Precious. Good stuff.

The film won a big audience at Sundance, and now it has been “presented” by Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry. Daniels himself is black. So this is a movie by black people about how terrible life is for one black  woman: how should I feel? Thankful this isn’t my life? Empathize with her story, and experience it the way I would any other? “White” guilt, embodied in the muted skin tones of Precious’ 3 heroes: Paula Patton, Lenny Kravitz, and Mariah Carey? Is that her way out?

I’m reading too into this, and on purpose. Precious is an okay movie masquerading as a really good one. It’s stunning scenes are too few, but it’s sense of life and willingness to hang out in its second half are admirable. It is manipulative in exactly the way The Blind Side is—and that’s practically a Disney film. It’s just more blunt.

Late in the movie, Precious—played well by Gabourey Sidibe, though a lot of that may come from her incredible presence—learns something upsetting. In a classroom scene with Paula Patton, she breaks down and starts crying. Daniels puts his camera close on Sidibe so her massive, mountainous face fills the frame. They use the image in the trailer; it’s hard to convey how powerful this was. I didn’t cry—I didn’t need to, the story wasn’t about me. It’s about that girl, and how she is real.

Then Mo’Nique. Her final scene is written like the best of melodrama, a slice of exploitative evil that will give us catharsis and Precious some closure. You know what Mo’Nique does here? It’s like watching a basketball player take his game to another level. Let’s use former Laker Trevor Ariza as a convoluted example. Hypothetical but close to true: In last years Finals, Ariza comes on the court before a game; you know that’s Ariza. You know he’s good, but he’s young and a little raw. Throughout the game you’re watching him get a few dunks, make some nice assists, maybe throw a pass away or airball a three-pointer while falling out of bounds. At halftime he has 12 points. Respectable.

He’s absent for the third quarter and most of the fourth, but suddenly he makes back-to-back threes…gets a crucial steal…buries some clutch free throws against the home crowd. Kobe Bryant’s on the bench and Trevor Ariza has 26 points—what’s happening here? We’re watching history! And THEN Ariza becomes the go-to crunch-time guy. He brings the ball down the court, time winding down. You’re thinking: is Trevor Ariza going to win this game? Will I remember him for this? Will he score a monster contract with the Rockets next season because of what I’m about to see? And then Ariza drains a three with a hand in his face, and a star is born.

That last sequence—when we realize Trevor Ariza is really good—that actually happens in Mo’Nique’s final scene. She takes hammy material and barks and cries in such a way we come to feel for her. We’re almost convinced that her evil is okay. The root of Precious’ pain is not because she is black—it is because of this woman and her man. Mo’Nique plays with her eyes, the tilt of her head, the traction of her skin—and she does it all seated—in a three-minute sequence where she misses the game-winning trey and we still know she’s the star.

I’m no longer saying anything about race in these films—just conceding that they’re both fairly well-made stories that hint at other ideas. I don’t know if I prefer this or the sort of race-blind nonsense like Law-Abiding Citizen, where Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler’s relationship had everything to do with who they were and nothing to do with the color of their skin. Is that the ideal for movies in America? I certainly will never reconcile my disappointment with this country and race. There’s nothing in the past I can change, and this country is smart enough to evolve (black president!) that it might go away. We don’t pretend slavery never happened—and we’re only starting to seriously consider as a nation the plight of the Native Americans from 1600 until 1940 (and beyond, really). [by the way, that shit where people feel like they have to remind us that Thanksgiving celebrates the raping of the American soil by Europeans really drives me crazy. Maybe that's because I hear about it so much from self-satisfied friends, but I think it has more to do with their focus being that specific instance of land-raping rather than the centuries-long struggle Native Americans have dealt with in Canada and America by all Europeans and "settlers" whenever the natives interrupted progress.]

I suppose I’m trying to say that white guilt comes to me (and possibly to “us”) because we know we can’t change the past and we can’t change things right now. And most of the time we’re not the ones actually doing the changing. When Leigh Anne Tuohy accidentally does change a life, we need to remember it’s a person and not a black person. When Precious discovers independence, it’s because she’s maturing and not because she’s black. The art of good storytelling is making these sorts of things possible; it’s just up to me to sort out how I feel in fewer than 2400 words.

What’s that Cure song, “Pictures of You?” yes, yes, that is the song, obviously. Took two decades too long for Kodak or whatever other company advertises film these days to set an advert to it. I’m listening to it, over and over.

My roommate says he hates the passage of time, which means no pictures anywhere: on his phone, his computer, his desk. At first I found this bizarre–what do we save in the fire, after all?–before slowly coming around to his way of thinking.

Pictures can create memories and ruin them all the same, and like most things I write about, I feel this has been covered more profoundly by so many others I’ve read and spoken to. Memory, though, is shit: I have a picture of me and my sisters in Hawaii when I was in the 8th grade, and that is the only visual image I have from that week.

I have those weird non-memories. That same trip to Hawaii, I had a dream that my father wasn’t my father. I remember images from that dream (and it’s sequel, where my sister Holly was not my dad’s daughter either. Horrible night there). I remember using a phone card to call a girl because we didn’t have cell phones, and Hawaii was like Europe. That image is of staring at the hotel phone and punching in a 12-digit number; by the end of the trip I had that number memorized. Worked from pay phones, too. I remember stealing glances at the nudie postcards in the AB store and I remember what the waterslide looked like in our hotel. Can I draw any of these? No, but I have them. Do I remember the basketball games we attended? Just the gym and the guy screaming at the SEC ref calling the Mizzou game.

I force myself to take pictures, but they’re all from a distance–none are meaningful, few show any kind of intimacy. Instead I prefer a detached awareness of the image-making, save when I’m taking the shot–then I leave plenty of negative space on the top or push my subjects all the way to the right of frame. Skies are pretty things to compare pretty people against. Disposable cameras, with their grainy 800-speed film and one-shot flash give photographs the sort of shit fidelity they’re supposed to have. Have Walgreens scan it in-store and the additional debris on your Facebook uploads reeks of even more (actual) authenticity. I’d scan them myself but it takes too long. Besides, red-eye removal and low-light photography look unnatural, even in capturing what man could barely freeze even ten years ago.

I saw a picture of myself the other day where I am sharing a moment with somebody. Lots of pictures of me, and lots of pictures I take, indicate a relationship with the photographer. I have a handful of pictures of my friend Lindsey (hi) looking past the lens with a mix of contempt, amusement, and admiration. Without seeing me or knowing anything about me, you know what the picture is about: us.

I don’t want to describe the picture of me and somebody else, because it’s too weird to me–somehow too naked–as if the photograph is showing something that doesn’t exist. Reality is difficult to hide, but fairly easy to create: ‘pictures of you’ are my business. The complexity of faces, eyes, necks, eyebrows, cross-eyes, nosehairs, posture, hairstyles, hats, chapped lips and sunburns bespeak more about people than we’d ever verbally admit. So we hold onto pictures–or, as I used to do, we try to throw them away–to do what: remind us of who and what we were, who was important and where we were and why we were there? These are all contextual. “Eyes are the window to the soul;” bullshit; I’ve seen plenty of necks that told a story. But eyes, opened or close, rarely lie.

I thought the first Twilight was a little lifeless, but the characters in New Moon are taken seriously by director Chris Weitz, and my normal complaints about high schoolers not looking like high schoolers (hello, An Education) are moot. These actors actually are near high school age, and those that aren’t are supposed to be immortal. Besides that, they actually behave like enlightened high school kids, and somehow I buy it. When Bella is screaming in her bed because she misses the vampire Edward, it’s both because she’s heartbroken and also maybe because he’s haunting her dreams. It’s surprisingly raw, powerful stuff.

I liked three things  in particular about New Moon: a hilarious, out-of-nowhere spoof sequence when Bella, Jacob, and some other guy go to the movies and the unique and soon-to-be-dated indie rock soundtrack–Thom Yorke’s haunting “Hearing Damage” scores a somewhat incredible chase scene, while a Lykke Li track plays under the Twilight saga’s clumsy version of Citizen Kane‘s breakfast scene–and finally, the reason everyone loves Twilight: this is a great love story.

The original Twilight wasn’t a great love story; there was hardly any conflict (save from the whole mortal/immortal thing, natch). But with the introduction of Jacob, I finally get why people love this so much. It’s hard not to take sides, depending on how you feel about love. And it’s a legitimately difficult decision Bella has to make.

Consider me a proud member of Team Jacob. Taylor Lautner is an awkward actor who is SEVENTEEN–that must be capitalized–who seems to actually improve as the film goes on and his character evolves (literally). Jacob offers tangible friendship and love; he is of Bella’s age, he is saddled by immense love for her and also imbued with a sense of sacrifice. He is Native American, a minority never, ever considered in mainstream American cinema this sensibly–that’s worth repeating again, never portrayed–and who knows he is second fiddle to the cooler Edward.

What’s weird is how Jacob embodies both the physical characteristics we associate with hunks–he is chiseled and striking–while Edward seems to have a more lean, hipster-like body combined with an otherworldly face. Edward is beautiful the way models are now; Jacob is how models used to be (except, you know, Indian). Besides the aforementioned movie-going scene, there’s a great moment in Jacob’s car where he admits that he should have slowed down a motorcycle-restoration project with Bella so he could spend more time with her (trust me, this seems fine in the film). Bella, in turn, says she would have come up with some other activity. It’s just a wonderfully underwritten scene, perfectly conveying the sort of indirect admission of liking somebody that we all experience.

Contrast this with Edward–her love with him is natural, passionate, and star-crossed (Romeo and Juliet appears next to Bella when we first see her; later Edward quotes from memory some lines while watching the Zeffirelli film in English class, a nice dose of reality). It is the kind of love you can’t help, the kind of love you can’t describe, and the first Twilight did a horrible job of explaining this. Much better is New Moon‘s surprising decision to almost completely drop Edward from the proceedings, except in stilted, phony apparitions that appear to Bella whenever she tries to kill herself (a hilarious ongoing joke in these films is how Bella is some kind of immortal anyway–in New Moon, she has a papercut, is thrown into a mirror, flies off a motorcycle into a rock, and is thrown by crashing waves into a rock face–all of them met with Kristen Stewart’s flippant dismissal of injury).

I may need more time to better sum up the dichotomy, but its something like this: a relationship with Jacob is something Bella will have to work at; it’s something that would never be perfect but it would be love. A dramatic point is made by fellow werewolf Sam, who attacked his fiance (!) during a fight, permanently scarring the right side of her face. “But they made it work,” Jacob suggests–this is a weird way to justify domestic violence, but it’s also indicative of the struggles actual relationships undergo.

Edward, however, provides impossible, problemless love–again, except for that whole mortal/immortal problem. That’s not an issue any of us ever need to worry about, and maybe the fantasy of love with someone as beautiful, selfless, weirdly sexy, and caring as Edward is what makes grown women swoon and young girls scream. I don’t know–to me, the Bella-Edward thing smacks of pathetic dreaming in a world where love with a werewolf seems far more realistic and appealing (to me). That said, Edward is very likable–particularly in a final scene with Jacob–and he seems to actually know what will happen, giving him a clarity I find intriguing.

Of course, at the end of the day, Bella is only 18, and maybe it’s a joke of the movie that she is simply too young to know what true love is (or to recalibrate her worldview according to heartbreak). Closing in on 26, I am nowhere near as mature as Bella or as committed to the search for true love (and shit, I’m trying pretty hard as it is).

I do have one final thought on Edward and Bella that disturbs me. Edward is 109 years old, but he looks to be in the vicinity of 18. Is old age defined by experience or appearance? Obviously Twilight’s vampires have sharpened faculties and are not affected by the onsets of old age, both physical and mental. But doesn’t Edward have 91 years of life experience that Bella does not? I mean, let’s use a real example–I’m 26, and I’m sure there are 19-year-olds who look as old (or older) than me. Hell, New Moon‘s gorgeous Ashley Greene was 21 when the film was shot, and she looks a good 27, 28. If I met Ashley Greene, I would surely feel older than her, despite her appearance, and for a short while I imagine this would be an irreconcilable difference (other foreseeable problems with that relationship: her being famous, me not having a job, me generating just an insane amount of jealousy at the widespread distribution of her image). Obviously as we grow older the experience gap shortens–a marriage between a 40-year-old and 50-year-old makes far more sense than one between a 20-year-old and a 30-year-old–but that’s precisely the point: we learn so much about ourselves from 16-28, and then we make that decision that shit, I want kids, and we fall in love on cue and have kids. Or we don’t want kids and just continue on (I’m trying to predict my own demographic, liberal, college-educated people working in major cities), thinking that happiness comes from our own personal freedom.

Whew. Forgive that tangent. Remember Edward? He is 91 years wiser, with 91 more years of love and loss and pain. Robert Pattinson actually conveys this pretty well (I’m going to give credit to Weitz, who again seems to take these characters at face value rather than as images, which is what Twilight director Catherine Hardwick did), and Edward seems to know that what he has with Bella might be a lark. But because he commits to it, it seems more like true love–like he really has waited 109 years to find someone like Bella. It still feels a bit like pedophilia–like Edward is corrupting her–which is part of why I want her to be with Jacob, to experience these things how they actually are with someone she can grow up with in a normal way. The tragedy is that Edward and Bella can’t be together unless she’s immortal, which is an even larger tragedy. I’m currently working on a vampire story with a man who thinks everyone wants to be immortal, which is such a fundamental misunderstanding of life that I’m finding even the most basic work for him impossible.

Now I’m all worked up about this. I need to stop. I won’t see New Moon again, nor will I read the books. But I will make a point to see Eclipse in June, and I suppose that’s something.

Neon Neon, Stainless Style

So Boom Bip and Gruff Rhys from the Super Furry Animals spend a few years on a side project, which does triple duty as an impressionist biography of hotshot car designer John DeLorean, a survey of 1980s culture and music, and a banger of a dance record. It is the first album to earn the label “Eighties.” No other era is referenced, by name, as a genre the way people off-handedly pledge their love to the Me Decade; everything from Journey to Boy George to Peter Gabriel to OMD to The Smiths might be referred to as “Eighties.” But this is the real thing, even if it’s from 2008.

What makes Stainless Style so memorable is the emotional core they wring from DeLorean’s life. Much of it is in Rhys’ voice, as vulnerable as ever, but the idiosyncratic musical choices are pitch-perfect and vibrant in each song. To wit: the remarkable synth line in “Raquel;” the whips in the chorus of “I Told Her On Alderaan;” the fine punctuation of “Dream Cars,” packing a wallop with every hit; the in-too-deep danger of “Belfast.” The hip-hop songs don’t work nearly as well as the Rhys tracks, a stubborn decision that I feel hurts the album while still, somehow, being totally necessary—like the cocaine period every major artist seemed to hit in the 80s. Warts and all, this was the most surprising and engaging CD I heard this year.

Cut Copy, In Ghost Colours

“Feel the Love” opens in medias res, like we’ve stumbled onto a James Murphy-curated greatest hits collection from 2020 documenting the aughts flirtation with dance-rock. Australia’s Cut Copy is the paragon, justifying/leavening LCD Soundsystem’s reverence for the form with the actual thing—songs with guitars, keyboards, live drums, vocoder, and a mix of unbridled rock bravado and party-starting hand-claps. No measure of music was as impossible to ignore as the final 90 seconds of “So Haunted,” which performs the neat trick of being so irresistible one cannot dance poorly to it—the song merely compensates. What set In Ghost Colours apart was its sequencing: though the first half is predictably excellent, the album’s second half is welcomed by “Hearts on Fire,” the band’s standard, and “Far Away” and “Strangers in the Wind” have a vibrant pulse and wistfulness.

The cliche when discussing the emotional impact of dance and/or electronic music is to say that, despite using such “inorganic” instruments like keyboards and synthesizers, the artist creates something that sounds “natural” or “organic,” Whole Foods-inspired buzzwords for “real.” Well, I call bullshit. The lasting lesson of In Ghost Colours is music this good doesn’t need to be explained and it can’t be described.

Kathleen Edwards, Asking For Flowers

I’ve peppered my list with platitudes, but none is truer than Edwards’ “I Make The Dough, You Get the Glory” as Song of the Year. A lovely steel guitar jam, Edwards drops pop culture references willy nilly but not without careful consideration—and in describing the disconnect of a relationship with a band member (maybe between Edwards and amiable friend/Blue Rodeo front man Jim Cuddy, who appears as a villain in the song’s memorable video), the shout-outs become straight-up profound. Nothing tops the comparison of “You’re the Great One, I’m Marty McSorley;” itself a relationship of the highest complexity—never forget that when signing with the Kings, Gretzky said he would go only if they signed the ugly brute McSorley as well.

The rest of the album captivated—”Sure as Shit” justified its profanity, “The Cheapest Key” was a blast, and “Buffalo” was border-control drama, Canada-style. Edwards has claimed the Whiskeytown albums as an influence, and she nails the best part of that group in her whimsy and pop-oriented country songs that indicate both a specific place and a specific past.

The Helio Sequence, Keep Your Eyes Ahead

Keep Your Eyes Ahead sounds like a break-up album from two relationships ago: just far enough away to give a healthy distance that’s really covering for the mistakes you made. “Lately, I don’t think of you at all,” are the first words Brandon Summers sings, clearly lying. The duo improved upon the occasionally messy electronics/guitar combination that’s plagued their past albums, producing an album on par with the Postal Service’s Give Up, which has become the Thriller of the genre.

Wolf Parade, At Mount Zoomer/Okkervil River, The Stand-Ins

Every song is rewarding if you listen to it enough. Your mind sets up its own expectations that the song always fulfills, even if it’s bad. I remember coming to love Sting’s “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You” solely from Top 40 heavy rotation. Still do love it, really.

Both At Mount Zoomer and The Stand-Ins were albums following (can I say it?) modern classics, Apologies to the Queen Mary and The Stage Names, respectively. Both seemed unremarkable on first listen but, as albums often do, have rewarded those who’ve stuck with them. And while that would either suggest the superiority of the artist—how could you possibly understand the genius of Spencer Krug on one listen?—I think, on both records, it was simply not fulfilling listeners expectations.

Each song on At Mount Zoomer was a city unto itself, uncompromising and spiky. But each song was loaded with avenues and alleys and secrets, even the behemoth “Kissing the Beehive,” which I’ve listened to dozens of times and find that it’s 11 minutes still pass in about 6. “Fine Young Cannibals” was another highlight, featuring what I think was the finest guitar solo of 2008. 

The Stand-Ins sounded unremarkable, maybe even disappointing. But, lo and behold, the obvious happened and The Stand-Ins became as indispensable as anything else the band’s released (and their last two albums were doozies). “Lost Coastlines” was fine, but “Singer Songwriter” explodes with Will Sheff’s voice, “Starry Stairs” has a memorable horn section, “Blue Tulip” is the now-standard Sheff-screaming-at-the-stars song, and the melodies of the final three songs are lovely, delicate, and damn near perfect.

Much fuss was made this year of Charlie Kaufman’s latest meta-cinematic mindfuck Synecdoche, New York. I found the movie impenetrable and its layering frustrating, deriving meaning simply by taking risks where they didn’t matter. Sheff, on the other hand, bests Kaufman with one lyric from “On Tour With Zykos”: “I was supposed to be writing the most beautiful poems/And completely revealing divine mysteries of cloaks/I can’t say that I’m feeling all that much at 27 years old.” For his ambitious Stage Names/Stand-Ins film, Sheff pitched a sonic meta-movie that worked even with his shortcomings.

The Dodos, Visiter

2008 was about songs within larger statements: all of the albums I loved this year had a mission statement, either intended by the artist or imposed by me—it really didn’t matter. Visiter was the hardest to crack, at times sounding like the Byrds/America/Fleetwood Mac-inspired harmonies of Fleet Foxes, Midlake, etc.; or maybe that dreaded freak folk term, or maybe precious pop like the Magnetic Fields or Belle and Sebastian.

The thread here was in the album’s simplicity: like fellow 2008 breakout act No Age, The Dodos use a minimum of instruments and a pair of voices. Like No Age, The Dodos seem more into drilling originality from their limitations; but unlike No Age, who rock their influences hard, their world is intimate, private, and a little weird.

Bottomless Pit, Hammer of the Gods

One of Silkworm’s many strengths was their professionalism, which also served as something of a detriment: each record was uniformly solid, serious and fun; if it ain’t broke, why fix it.

After the impossibly bleak passing of drummer Michael Dahlquist in a car accident in 2005, Silkworm’s Tim Midgett and Andy Cohen formed Bottomless Pit. The music on Hammer of the Gods wasn’t all that different from Silkworm’s finer work, but it came, at least for this listener, emotionally loaded from Dahlquist’s death. Opener “The Cardinal Movements” uses repetitive guitar motifs and Midgett’s flat voice to disarming effect, hypnotizing before crushing: “Sometimes it’s best just to lay in bed,” he says, a profound piece of advice. No song seems explictly about Dahlquist, but sometimes loss manifests itself everywhere.

The War on Drugs, Wagonwheel Blues

The virtuosic “Arms Like Boulders” sets the bar impossibly high for The War on Drugs’ Secretly Canadian debut. Lead singer Adam Granduciel follows his proverbial Bob Dylan into the rabbit hole, letting loose a stream-of-consciousness that holds up to the songs’ Phil Spector-meets-The Band wall-of-sound. The organ-heavy “Needle In Your Eye” is like space rock, “Taking the Farm” is like folk music, and the whole thing roams like a rock and roll wolf.

Guns N’ Roses, Chinese Democracy

For all that’s been written about Chinese Democracy with far more authority on Axl Rose and GNR than I can claim, I rarely see the phrase “comeback album.” This seems to me a silent confirmation that Axl Rose is exactly the tortured, singular artist he perceives himself as being—no comeback necessary. And Chinese Democracy is, among many things, the sound of perfection to at least one man.

And beyond all the backstory, of course, are the songs, several of which are completely wonderful. Rose’s voice is entirely intact, and remarkable songs like “Better” trace a fine melody through the trappings of 90s hard rock. This is the core of the album—a song about waiting 17 years to release music, and suffering the indignation of others (perhaps justifiably so) for your stubbornness and narcissism. “No one ever told me when I was alone/they just thought I’d know better,” he whines, carrying an unexpectedly emotional melody with that voice, which still sounds great. Clearly, we learn from “Better,” Chinese Democracy is the story of a fallen genius’ struggles, and there’s a sadness there that is impossible to ignore.

Klosterman was the first who made me realize whatever it was I was trying to write at 20 was somehow okay. You can write first person if that’s how you’re meant to write. For Klosterman and Simmons, it’s the only way. Klosterman’s non-contrarian contrarian streak—he has an incredible habit of laying out arguments, then laying out what you think is the normal intelligent liberal reaction, then acknowledging its validity while also discounting it in favor of his (sometimes) revelatory interpretation. Whatever: with Klosterman, it was more an incredible overlap of interests and opinions. Reading Eating the Dinosaur means I have to see how Klosterman is as distraught over laugh tracks as I am; that he views the beauty of football for exactly the reasons I do (I could have written the damn essay myself); that he admires Shane Carruth’s Primer; that he’s as fascinated by the failure of Chris Gaines as I once was.

I’ll get back to Klosterman. All three guys write in a way I feel uncomfortable calling “casual,” as that would mean it’s too tossed-off (like everything I’ve written on this nascent non-blog, which I just looked through and is plagued with embarrassing typos I’ll never fix). There’s an obvious genius in Gladwell’s approach to choosing his subject matter and in Simmons’ approach to sports (The Book of Basketball, if it’s anything, is a guide to why the team matters more than the individual), but there’s also a joy in their language. I can’t explain it, and sometimes I tire of having to explain why I like or should like certain writers/musicians/filmmakers. The Book of Basketball was one of the most enjoyable reads I’ve ever had. Another great read? All The King’s Men, my desert island book. But honestly, the massive blocks of Robert Penn Warren’s dense poetry can be frustrating as much as they’re inspiring. Bergman can be a trial, but Wayne’s World is always, always a delight. And I’m not saying anything new here.

I have read Pitchfork every day since January 2003. Back then, as I uncovered the many jewels that used to exist on the site (many of their top writers have left, though they still employ the best and most serious-minded critics), I decided I would read the site every day until they gave a new album a 10.0. This seemed like a win-win and a good way to date my college-era music listening. Pitchfork is the best music site–honestly, there’s no comparison–and I’ve never gravitated toward blogs, instead preferring multiple voices and different critics for different types of music. Other music sites feature wonderful, original writers–Cokemachineglow, some on Popmatters, and so forth–but they lack the workmanlike consistency and content of Pitchfork. Argument, over.

Anyway, Pitchfork hasn’t given a new album a 10.0 in 7 years and I wouldn’t be surprised if they never did. Even more frustrating is the sense that if a 10.0 was brewing, I would know about it because of Pitchfork’s own hype (the news section); so I’ll never really get to experience again that incredible morning when they gave the Arcade Fire record a 9.7. Out of nowhere–and this. And here’s the other thing about Pitchfork–they’re usually right. The Best New Music section has only a handful of duds, and even when the site overlooks something (in recent years they’ve given short shrift to The National, Okkervil River, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, and Why?, among others) they’re quick to admit fault—and it’s never revisionist, instead just a “one of our writers thought Black Sheep Boy was really fucking good but for some reason we made it the 3rd review of that date and it drifted into obscurity despite being an essential album of the 2000s”). 

What I’m trying to get at here is explain why I like criticism and why I hate it. A Pitchfork writer once wrote of the opening track on Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky (which they underrated) featured “a [Nels] Cline solo that’s straight-up Weather Channel Local on the 8s.” Go listen to the song, “Either Way.”

Guess what–that writer absolutely nailed that description. When you read the truth—when you read an opinion that happens to be creative and inarguably correct—that’s the beauty and art in criticism. It doesn’t happen often

On the other hand, merely consuming culture (new and old, good and bad) and dissecting it can be joyless, boring, or (in my own case) repetitive and ultimately a little destructive. I spent years writing movie reviews because I thought about movies a lot, moving from valuing things like acting and effects to a movie’s plot twists and intellectual ideas to director oeuvres’ and revisionist history and lost classics and whatever else. The more I made movies, the sillier criticism seemed as the things I valued as a filmmaker became my obsessions. Now I tend to write the worst kind of criticism—I’ve always liked most everything (movies, music, people, cities), and tried to explain why I liked it. These days, on this blog, I try to boil everything down to “Hey, I really liked this because it was simple and real and emotive and made me feel something, either in my brain or in my heart or on my skin. Good work everybody.” That’s not very interesting.

It’s cyclical, I suppose, these things, and it’s probably best that I don’t think about academia and instead attempt to have the sort of working life I need. If anything, Klosterman reminds me that he does what he does better than I ever could—and by virtue of existing, he means I never have to do that. Not sure what to make of this, but maybe this is why I should edit myself. It is so boring being boring.