Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

rufus

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I cribbed the A-Z game from Largehearted Boy, but originally it’s from here via a Guided By Voices mailing list. The concept seemed like it would be an overwhelmingly easy exercise, but it definitelty wasn’t. Aside from the obvious S dilemma, i don’t own any artists whose name start with Qs, Xs, Ys, or Zs, so a combination of cheating and omission was in order.

Well, okay, i have some Ys, but i hate Pete Yorn.

  • Ani DiFranco
  • The Beatles
  • Death Cab for Cutie
  • David Bowie
  • Erin McKeown
  • Fiona Apple
  • Garbage
  • PJ Harvey
  • Hedwig and the Angry Inch
  • Joni Mitchell
  • Kaki King
  • Lisa Loeb
  • Madonna
  • Nikka Costa
  • Joan Osborne
  • Peter Mulvey
  • Rilo Kiley
  • Sarah Harmer
  • Tori Amos
  • The Velvet Underground
  • Veruca Salt
  • Rufus Wainwright
  • Andy Stochansky
  • Weezer

    You see that i’ve gone out on a limb to select a few worthies with only a single album out, and have similarly selected more than a couple whose catalogues i cherish despite giving up on their present endeavors. Unfortunately, due to our unkindly tiny alphabet, i was forced to leave off such luminaries of my collection as Garrison Starr, Lauryn Hill, No Doubt, Sheryl Crow, Sarah Shannon, Guster, Elastica, Juliana Hatfield, Elliott Smith, Mike Kovacs, Tracy Bonham, Sleater Kinney, Ben Folds Five, & Michael Jackson. Otherwise, this just about covers it.


    Maybe one night i’ll get bored and link to good resources for all of those artists. Until then, feel free to bash my taste in music and create your own lists in the comments section.

    • https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2004/01/107413705346066116/

    A Big Enough Heart Can Hold Onto Anything

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    Alison seems like someone cool enough that i should trust her taste in music, so i was very interested to read Largehearted Boy after her link to him stated “He has the same taste in music that i do, which equals great!”

    I consider myself to be a fairly open-minded music fan, but the Boy’s taste definitely veers lo-fi and out of tune. I can manage to forgive both of these traits individually, but in tandem i can’t stomach them at all. Speaking of which, witness two posts about my arch-nemesis Bright Eyes over the course of a single month. Someone really needs to teach that boy how to sing.

    Bright Eyes aside, Largehearted Boy has a Top 11 of 2003 list up, and what could be a better gauge of his (and, thus, Alison’s) taste in music? I didn’t buy a whole ton of new music last year, and The Boy’s tastes run much more indy-male-rock than my own so, not shockingly, i’m only familiar with three discs on his list.

    Lowest ranked is the Yeah Yeah Yeahs disc Fever To Tell, which was subtly disappointing … everything i had heard about them made them out to be “The Next Big Thing, but it’s mostly just girl-lead punk with fairly uncatchy screaming (i prefer The Distillers). Still, i can at least comprehend making this pick.

    More objectionable is The Shins disc, which Aim was kind enough to gift me with, at number three. Chutes Too Narrow is a listless sounding attempt at something, though i don’t know what. I keep seeing the words “Pop Masterpiece” thrown around in regards to this band, which confuses me. Does underwhelming, out-of-tune singing combined with deft acoustic strumming suddenly equal MASTERPIECE? If so, please send me the masterpiece application next year.

    (Pls. see R. Wainwright for the album i would nominate as the “pop masterpiece” released in 2003)

    Finally, at number one, is The Postal Service. Give Up is an album i wanted to like in a big way. It features vocals by Ben Gibbard (lead singer of my co-favorite indy band Death Cab for Cutie) and Jenny Lewis (co-lead singer of my co-favorite indy band Rilo Kiley). Also, it was personally recommended to me by Erin McKeown, who i hold in a very high regard. But, the album fails to claim the title of Best Indy Disc Ever that i was so ready to ascribe to it, which is perhaps attributable to its third collaborator, Jimmy Tamborello.

    Jimmy lends beats to the disc in the form of stuttering drum machine clicks and claps, which sound so tiny and far away. I don’t object to drum machines on principal, but they are supported mostly by equally far away guitars and humming synthetic organs, none of which grounds Gibbbard’s shiny half-falsetto in enough reality for me to love it the way i do in DCFC. Give Up has made for some excellent background noise, but to me it is too insubstantial sounding to qualify for a “Best Of” list in any category other than background, which made it all the more disappointing to me.

    Now that’s i’ve complained sufficiently about two albums that have been collectively bugging me for months and months, effectively lynching the poor largehearted man’s taste (though, only 3/11 of it, which isn’t all that much), i will now, as a conclusion to this rambly weblog post, admit that i am madly in love with his blog.

    Why, you ask? Because his absolute adoration of music seeps through every seam and pore and past every comma and period, and that makes his taste completely irrelevant. I wish i could convey to you my love for music, and how i allow it to surround me, and how excited it makes me, but that has never been and won’t ever become the primary focus of this page. However, i can safely say that Largehearted Boy is the nearest facsimile you will ever find, and i plan to read him constantly if only to remind myself how much joy being a fan can really bring you.

    And, well, maybe i didn’t find out too much about Alison’s taste in music, but if she even halfway empathizes with the vibe over at The Boy then i think it tastes just fine.

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    Tonight i’ve been assaulting various and sundry instant message windows with my wandering attempts at creating a list of five favorite albums of 2001. I bought more cds during this year by a factor of nearly four over any other calendar year in history, but the great majority of them were filling in blanks in my collection — that is to say, they weren’t new releases. 2001 saw me adding records by Radiohead, Weezer, Ben Folds Five, Death Cab for Cutie, Erin McKeown, Velvet Underground, Magnetic Fields, Juliana Hatfield, and many more than a dozen other artists i had never bought before. Even of the acts i just named, only four of them released new discs this year in the midst of the 27 purchases i made from their catalogues. Point being, compiling a top five involves a lot more sifting than i thought it would — and that’s still before i have to actually decide on five discs.

    The most obvious choice is Garbage’s Beautiful Garbage, which happens to be an excellent record in addition to being by my favorite band. Garbage didn’t make a record of the year, though; it’s consistently ranking on critic’s polls, but not in the top slot. I’ve honestly felt the same way about it since i bought it: it’s great, but it isn’t “best.” Something about the genre-hopping the band partakes in rubs my ears the wrong way, as if an album that at once acknowledges Phil Spector on “Can’t Cry These Tears” and Radiohead on “Nobody Loves You” while engaging in its own mischief on the instant-trash-classic “Silence is Golden” cannot possibly be my favorite of anything.

    Speaking of Radiohead… must we? Over a year after first hearing it i’ll finally acknowledge that Kid A isn’t a piece of garbage, but i still remain remarkably undecided about Amnesiac Despite featuring a more intelligible set of songs, it is definitely a less cohesive piece, and I seem to be holding that against it … i want the compelling nature of the humming “Packt” and the falling forward of “Pyramid Song” combined with the howling “Idioteque” and grooving “Optimistic.” Is the middle ground represented by the live record i have yet to get my hands on? Or, more likely, should i forget that the previous record ever happened and try to place this one in my cannon without comparison?

    If there’s any record comparison is helping its subject, it’s Photo Album by Death Cab for Cutie. Less aggressive and more cleanly produced than its predecessor, every song on it is a song in motion. It’s an album meant for a road trip, and i found myself playing it on every vehicle that got me to, around, and back from Florida with premeditation. Especially of note is the chiming “Movie Script Ending” and the biting romance-hinting travelogue “Why You’d Want to Live Here” (its having been written by someone who lives on the West Coast totally boggles me…). Photo is once painfully up-close and expertly rendered with broad enough strokes to allow a listener’s empathy. Of course, i have qualms about picking slight ten song albums by emo bands to top such a luminous collection … but i can’t very well ignore something i listened to every day for an entire month, can i?

    If we were to award spots to all of my most listened-to records, Ani and Tori would be shoes in. They aren’t. As for Tori Amos, Strange Little Girls simply just isn’t an album that distinguishes 2001 in any way. The explosion of opener “New Age,” the roiling and aggressive “Real Men,” and the title track stick out of it as incredible, but the on the whole the record is sleepy and off-its mark (as you can hear me detail at length elsewhere). Ani DiFranco isn’t so surely crossed off the list; her double-length effort is intensely personal, unexpectedly funky, and eminently arranged. At the same time, its length acts against it through Ani’s inclusion of sleepy instrumentals and a handful of wince-worthy tunes that she might not have engaged in on a shorter record. Condensed to a single LP featuring such swiftly flowing jams as “Ain’t That the Way” and “o.k.” combined with more thoughtful ballads like “Marrow” and “So What,” Revelling and Reckoning might have wound up as my favorite DiFranco disc of all time. As it stands, even its place in my yearly pantheon is uncertain.

    Ani has some stiff competition for her requisite folk-slot on my list from close associates. One threat is in the form of the Ani-produced Bitch and Animal disc Eternally Hard, which is too self-aware of its knotted sexuality and ironic lyrics to be anything but a hilarious listen. How can you dislike “Best Cock on the Block,” a sordid tale of a oft-beeped transgender and her collection of variously sized dildos? Rest assured, there’s more standard folk-fare within — albiet, rendered in bass, fiddle, djembe, and chick-rap. The second folk threat is from Erin McKeown and Peter Mulvey associate Rose Polenzani, whose self-titled disc veers from PJ Harvey stomp on one end to fluttering Joni-descended folk on the other. Sideman extraordinaire David Goodrich enhances throbbing opener “Fell” and the frollicking “Orange Crush,” but the purer acoustic songs inbetween are not quite as momentous. The missing momentum can be found carrying “Heaven Release Us” on Rose’s collaborative effort Voices on the Verge, which finds her sharing a Philadelphia studio with Erin, Beth Amsel, and Jess Klein. Voices is inconsistent by nature (Erin’s songs are mysterious in comparison to Jess’s, and Beth’s are especially plaintive) , but alluring all the same. All three of these discs easily outpace Ani when viewed as cohesive efforts, but they all have their flaws just the same.

    I suppose there’s no such thing as a flawless record, though. Right? Really, it depends on the listener’s idea of a flaw. For me, a flawless record can be flawed in its own perfection. Case and point is Leona Naess, who easily produced the most effortlessly intricate disc i bought this year in I Tried to Rock You, but You Only Roll — a collection of folk guitars, electronic blips, and sugary melodies from a performer whose debut album i just as effortlessly declared as “Fiona-esque.” But, this disc is almost too-sweet … without anything jagged to get hopelessly hooked on. Similarly, Ivy’s Long Distance is a set of songs as excellent as it is undistinguished — when i listen to it i hear it as an entire album without isolating more than a song or two as it passes me by. Ben Folds puts in a similar performance, if an opposite one: all of Rockin’ the Suburbs‘s songs are memorable, but most of them sound like they could come from entirely different albums from each other (while lacking the overall arc that Garbage’s disc has to make up for its similar problem).

    Alicia Keys’s Songs in a Minor is in a similar mess of songs, but is notable for hitting home with more hooks than the preceding. Closer still to perfection is Rufus Wainwright’s sophomore effort Poses, which suffers only from the fact that no album i own could keep up the pace that his first few songs set: “Poses” is a slice of melancholy perfection, “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk” a lurid sounding list of things he’s avoiding an indulgence in, the faux-funk of “Shadows,” and “California”s hilariously extolling the not-quite-virtues of said state. By contrast, the back half of the album floats by in a haze while i’m still caught on the vicious riffs and open-mouthed pronunciation of the first few.

    And then there are the albums i was too stupid to notice when they came out last year… Erin McKeown’s Distillation, Coldplay’s Parachutes, Sarah Harmer’s You Were Here, Andy Stochansky’s RadioFuseBox, and the aforementioned Death Cab for Cutie’s We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes — a top five in their own right. Next, there are the almost-albums from this year — the discs that didn’t quite make an impact on me. This group is lead up by the lamentably lengthless Weezer disc, the inconsistent Moulin Rouge soundtrack, and the sleepy Skin by Melissa Etheridge. And, finally, the top-five albums i’ve managed to miss: Dylan’s Love and Theft, Jewel’s This Way, Elton’s Songs From the West Coast, and the ever-intimidating Bjork’s Vespertine.


    So, somewhere in that litany of stumbling blocks, chinks in sonic armor, and laments at unremarkability are my favorite five albums of 2001. What were they?

    https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/8159365/

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    I was essentially at a loss for words, sitting at the quaint restaurant table with Lindsay and Dante trying to explain. I couldn’t figure out how i felt about New Hope… i felt like we were trapped in one of those quaint tourist trap towns and that it was like walking around in a life-sized dollhouse where nothing was real. It was more than that, though… more surreality like rose flavored ice cream that made me feel like i was in a novel somewhere other than circling around Washington’s Crossing of the Delaware.

    So, we were at dinner and Lindsay decided for me that i should have brought a notebook with me, and i’m sure that i should have because i lost everything i had meant to say. I suppose i’m just so obsessed with being in a city and being metropolitan that it seems impossible to me that people live just around the corner from these shops… selling strange musical instruments and fantastical ice cream and ultra-hot salsa only to walk back home and lay down to sleep under those same stars.

    Oh yeah, you could see stars. Everywhere. Our trip straddled Pennsylvania and New Jersey and we walked back and forth across a bridge whose wooden foot path was so worn that it seemed just like walking on a dirt road. We all wondered at once where the state lines were drawn… the middle of the river, or the middle of the bridge? I finally figured that they’d probably be indicated on old claimer’s maps, but then it came down to where exactly those hand-drawn maps would set the border in real life and we were back to where we started.

    Other things happened too, that i can’t quite put back together into the blog they were meant to be. There was an armor store that was selling arrowheads from 200bc, and i couldn’t fathom how just anybody had the right to own something that old and have it sitting in a display case with a “please inquire” pricetag on it. I kept arguing with Lindsay that nothing could taste like a rose after we first passed the ice cream shop while still in the car, and finally she just replied: “it tastes just like it smells. You can taste anything you can smell!” And that was that until i actually bought my triple scoop and the owner made me try it first because “some people taste it and then just walk out on me.” And it tasted like… rose petals. It was flavored in that subtle way that green tea ice cream is, with the ultra-dark pastel color and the taste that slides off of your tongue while you’re trying to absorb it.

    After we had walked around for a while i finally got used to the idea of everything being real, but i still can’t figure it out. It feels like it should be some tiny historical town tucked into Massachusetts because i always forget that Philadelphia is the exception to the rule of Pennsylvania and not the other way around. Everything in New Hope was vivid… all the local teenagers we saw working in the shops were like caricatures of people i know… three times as many piercings or hair twice as outrageous or poise that’s so much more postured. I realize that somehow it’s their reaction to living in a sort of suspended time where all of the shops and streets stay the same and people from outside come in to gawk, but at the same time it felt like i was looking at a catalogue of teenaged stereotypes trying to find the ones that matched my own friends.


    Of course, those are all just snippets… glimpses into my surreal afternoon, because i should have bought a notebook instead of the two cds i bought. Live and learn.

    https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/11/6883375/