:: RedHotHalos ::

Pollard's departure, Pollard's return, scary alt-country, synth-pop too catchy to ignore, alt-country as it was meant to sound, Bonoisms for a new millennium, classic punk-funk, one pissed-off chick, bombastic emo gone good, tuneful folk-country gone great.

40) Robert Pollard - Waved Out

A fun game: Listen to Bee Thousand. Listen to Waved Out's "People Are Leaving" or "Make Use" or "Showbiz Opera Walrus" (perhaps skip that one). Find any, any, sonic similarity. Sure, the sense of melody is still there, but here Pollard experiments for the first time outside of the guitar-bass-drums-occassional piano structure. Because of this, Waved Out is tough to get a handle on. But once your envelop yourself in it, it's a tough album to deny. Two words: "Wrinkled Ghost." If you haven't heard it, download it. Now. "Subspace Biographies," too.

39) Guided by Voices - Universal Truths and Cycles

Drunken Daytonians as...art-rockers? "Pretty Bombs," guitar/string quartet-jam and all, does the trick. In many ways, Truths feels like a culmination of something, although I'm not sure what. The basement flavor of earlier albums is there, in "Father Sgt. Christmas Card" and "Skin Parade." The bells and whistles of latter albums stick as well, notably on "Christian Animation Torch Carriers" and "Storm Vibrations." And, as on all GbV releases, from the studio or from the garage, it's always about the song, and here the best examples are rocker "Eureka Signs" and pop ditty "Cheyenne," which hurts my vocal chords when I hear it.

38) Richard Buckner - Since

The most amazing thing about Richard Buckner is that he's funny. The persona: scraggly, angry, guitar- wielding troubador. The reaction: giggles. Incredible. Buckner's Since is his best work to date, with his deep pipes always at the forefront. As is his custom, Buckner's lyrics can be tough to decipher, but they're always about something, and they're always evocative. Try "Faithbul Shooter," "Lucky Buzz," or the near-a capella howl of "Boys, The Night Will Bury You." (By the way, Since, is also a beautiful package: a cardboard digipack, some beautifully blurry photography, and a parchment lyric sheet that makes the album look like one epic poem. Worth the price of admission.)

37) Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs

It's been four years, and I still haven't absorbed this in full. But when it's good, it's so very good. Acoustic guitars, synth-harps, and everything in between. Male vocals, female vocals, male-female harmonies, male-male harmonies, Stephin Merritt harmonizing with himself. It's all here. And, as the title suggests, it's all about love. And there are 69 songs spread over this three-CD set. Something that has to be experienced to be understood. There are some misses here ("Love is Like Jazz," a few others), but there are some great hits ("Busby Berkeley Dreams," "Promises of Eternity," "Reno Dakota," "I Don't Believe in the Sun," many, many others). Right now, I can't remember much, but one listen and it all comes back. A triumph of songcraft that almost makes up for all the crap that Merritt puts out. Almost.

36) Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker

He's real, real talented. He's a bastard, but he's so good. His record sales don't justify his ego, although the quality of his talent might. He's annoying, but he's good. Deal with it. Heartbreaker is frustrating only because it made official the dissolution of Whiskeytown. Notable for some unbelievable backing parts courtesy of Gilliam Welch, Emmylou Harris, and Kim Richey, Heartbreaker shows how great Adams was before he got all starry-eyed and Winona-ized on us. "AMY," "Bartering Lines," and "To Be the One" might be the best tracks here. Perhaps the only album ever to open with its two weakest songs.

35) The Walkmen - Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone

Like a phoenix from the ashes, from Jonathan Fire*Eater (and their major label flop and their recording advance-turned-Marcata-Recording studio) come The Walkmen, a band that, for all their quirkiness, have no qualms about their rock star aspirations. Quite frankly, I don't know what kind of room there is for a band that writes tuneful-yet-a-bit-plodding ditties like this, but it's sure neat to see a band try to hit the big time, and do it without pretense or irony. Eveyone is quite simply a triumph. Most tracks cover the same sonic territory and feature the same strained yelps of Herman Leithauser, but all are strong. Perhaps "That's the Punch Line" and "We've Been Had" (selling Saturns nationwide!) come closest.

34) The Minutemen - Double Nickels on the Dime

Forty-three tracks in 73 minutes, and not a boring one in the bunch. Start with Mike Watt's insane basswork, sprinkle in George Hurley's pounding drumming, pile on D.Boon's frenetic guitar-whacking and add his incensed vocals and you've got an absolute classic. How many bands can claim that the strongest track is their album's 33rd? That's "This Ain't No Picnic," and now there's a festival named after it. Before Nevermind, Double Nickels on the Dime was the standard by which respectable music was judged. Might still be.

33) Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville

She's hot. She plays the guitar. She's hot. She's got a sense of melody. She's hot. She talks dirty. Real dirty. Like "Flower" dirty. And she's hot. Ahh, it was good to be a pathetic male indie-rocker in 1993, as this Chicago chick was taking over the world. Her response to the Stones' Exile on Main Street, Phair calls this an album about what it means to be a female. I felt like less of a man (A boy? Incidentally, this was in 1999.) the day I bought it. But by the first minute of "6'1"," I was nodding my head. By the middle of "Mesmerizing," I was trying to sing along with the chorus. By "Divoce Song," I was a full-fledged fan. At least of this album. Now she's working with Avril's song doctors. Hmmm.

32) Dismemberment Plan - Emergency & I

In thirty years, this band's breakup, in January of 2003, will be considered one of music's great losses. (Their 2001 effort, Change, will appear higher on the list.) After scuffling through a few album's of annoying dance-punk-funk-emo, here it all came together. Gone were the stupid lyrical meanderings of "Bra" or "The Ice of Boston," replaced by a more-confident Travis Morrison wailing through "You Are Invited" and "A Life of Possibilities." Interscope signed 'em, paid for the recording, and dropped 'em. And DeSoto released one of the breakthrough records of the 90's. Genre-bending at its best.

31) Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

Is there a better name for a production team than TwangTrust? I think not. Now this record is a bit over-produced (I'd take that over the under-production of disappointing follow-up Essence any day), but that's what wins Grammy's, at least in this case. Car Wheels is maddeningly consistent, starting with "Right in Time" and continuing all the way through closer "Jackson." Except for the over-long and overly-repetitive blues jam "Joy," this one is a winner. Stories of listening to ZZ Top, of touring the south, of visiting your criminal sweetheart in prison, of driving El Caminos. I can't relate but, in a way, Lucinda makes me wish I could.

 

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