Theme by nostrich.
Text
Honorable Mention
I do intend to finish my top 10 list of my favorite albums- I promise. I only have one more to go and I will get around to it eventually.
In the meantime here are a few honorable mentions (In no particular order)
In a Safe Place-The Album Leaf, Life of David-Michael Knott, All Understood-Buchanan, Dog Problems-Format, Water & Solutions-Far, Till We Have Faces-Noise Ratchet, The Animal Years-Josh Ritter, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill- Lauryn Hill, The Carnival-Wyclef Jean, Come On Feel the Illinoise!-Sufjan Stevens, Deloused in the Comatorium-Mars Volta, Surprise-Paul Simon, The Moon is Down-Further Seems Forever, Dear Science-TV on the Radio, Nighttiming-Coconut Records, Return of the Aquabats- The Aquabats, Songs to Burn Your Bridges By-Project 86, Robbers and Cowards-Cold War Kids, S/T- The Fire Theft, World Waits-Jeremy Enigk, Off the Wall-Michael Jackson, Pinkerton-Weezer, Relocation-Plankeye, Im Wide Awake It’s Morning- Bright Eyes
Text
My top 10 “Desert Island” albums- number 2
#2 Seven Swans- Sufjan Stevens
“Abraham, worth a righteous one.
Take up on the wood,
put it on your son.
Lake or lamb.
There is none to harm.
When the angel came,
you had raised your arm.
Abraham, put off on your son.
Take instead the ram
until Jesus comes”
Sufjan Stevens - Abraham
It wasn’t until Sufjan released his next album entitled Come on Feel the Illinoise that he garnered all of the critical attention he deserved. In fact, Illinoise was named the album of the year in 2005 by the snobby blowhards over at Pitchfork, and the top album of the decade!!! by Paste Magazine. But Illinoise is only my second favorite Sufjan album, while my favorite is Seven Swans.
Seven Swans is a stripped down folk album, especially compared to Illinoise. The standout instrument on the album, beside Sufjan’s voice, is the banjo, and the two work brilliantly together to give the album a “rootsy” feel. And even though I absolutely loathe the use of this label for art, it is certainly the most “Christian” of Sufjan’s albums, containing several biblical allusions and images (see the lyrics from the song Abraham typed out above).
I think the reason I favor this album over his others is because it served as my introduction to Sufjan. I remember first hearing of Sufjan from a top albums of 2004 list from Relevant Magazine. Shortly thereafter I headed to Fingerprints and picked up Seven Swans and before I had even finished driving back down 2nd street I was hooked. There is something so satisfying about buying an album on a whim or hunch that turns out to be brilliant. It makes you feel like a musical explorer, discovering uncharted territories.
Since that time I have seen Sufjan live two times and bought up everything he has recorded, spending countless hours enjoying his music. Like a few other albums on my top 10 list, this album was really a watershed moment in my music appreciation career, shaping my musical tastes over the last half decade. As a gift to our wedding attendees, Mariah and I created two mix CDs of music that had been significant to our relationship, and each of the CDs had a song from this album (To Be Alone With You and The Dress Looks Nice on You).
If you haven’t familiarized yourself yet with Sufjan Stevens, you are missing out. If you know Sufjan but only own Illinoise, pick up Seven Swans and thank me later.
You can buy Seven Swans on iTunes or here.
Text
My delayed New Year’s resolution
Mariah and I spent a few minutes looking through my old blog last night and it hit me that I used to be a lot better at this, or at least had a bit more energy for this when I first started. There were actually some original thoughts rather than a bunch of posts saying “hey check out this link” (although there was still plenty of that before).
So my delayed NYR is to be a better blogger. I want to complete the following four posts in the near future (not necessarily in this order):
1) I need to put down some thoughts I have been having about spirituality in the suburbs, spawned by my finally getting around to a book I have been meaning to read called Sidewalks in the Kingdom. Look for a photo of about 10 satellite TV dish receivers on the side of a building to accompany this post (it will all make sense when I finally get around to this).
2) I have been meaning to write a post explaining my blog title. Creativity and Apathy are two words that describe a lot as it relates to the interweb, blogging, my generation, and my own life. More to come.
3) and 4) I need to finish my top 10 desert island album list. I think I finished #3 so I have #2 and #1 to go. I also want to list out some honorable mentions. Heck I will give you an honorable mention now- Dog Problems by The Format. It is a great break up record that sounds like the band Queen taking a trip to the Circus. Deal with the contradictions! One of many great records just outside my top 10. Again more to come.
Text
My top 10 “Desert Island” albums- number 3
#3 Redemption’s Son- Joseph Arthur
“If you weren’t real, I would make you up”
Joseph Arthur - Honey and the Moon
Sorry for the long delay between top 10 album posts. Originally I thought it would take me about a month or two to go through all of these. I started counting back from 10 last year on September 1st, so unless I really pound out the top 2, it is going to take me longer than a year. Oh well.
My number 3 selection comes from one of my favorite artists, Joseph Arthur. Recently someone asked me what music I like and after saying that “The Beatles are my favorite band,” the first person I mentioned was Joseph Arthur. He has that “tortured soul/misunderstood genius” thing going on that a lot of great artists do. I remember when Mariah and I saw him perform at the Troubadour for the first time thinking two things: 1) during the concert I remember thinking “I want to live here. I want to get my stuff and just move into this concert” and 2) afterwards I told Mariah “I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he died of a drug overdose or suicide.”
At the time I didn’t know a ton about Joseph Arthur. I had been introduced to him by hearing his beautiful song “Honey and the Moon” on one of the soundtracks for the TV show The OC. Since the first concert at The Troub (I have seen him there 2 or 3 other times since then) I have come to realize that Joseph’s music explores a beautiful balance between the dark corners of human existence and messages of hope and faith.
Redemption’s Son as an album is a perfect example of that balance. In the title track which opens the album, Arthur describes a character who thinks “Jesus is my only friend, No one else knows who I am” and who is struggling to overcome the inherited struggles of his father:
I know I’ll never make it on the cross
Spend my days looking for what my daddy lost
He was too proud to have a boss
Sold himself out but he couldn’t afford the cost
The chorus of the song sets the tone for the entire album when Arthur asks,
Angel of love
Shine a light on us
I was born to be
Redemption’s Son
Themes of struggle followed by redemption flow through each song. In fact the last song, You’ve Been Loved forms a sort of thematic bookend with the first when it says:
It’s always hard to admit
Most days you feel like you don’t exist
Temptation sneaks past your fists
Until the devil won’t let you resist
Oblivion is what you want
But you’ve been loved
This is a rare album in that it has 16 songs (most artists seem to be trying to get away with 10 or 11 recently) and not one of the 16 songs is bad or even mediocre. One of the ways I judge an album from an artist who has released multiple albums is to say, “If I were to make a greatest hits album for this artist, how many songs from this album would appear on the greatest hits?” Joseph Arthur is a prolific musician whose discography includes 8 full length albums and 11 ep’s and I would have to put at least 6-8 songs from this album onto my Joseph Arthur greatest hits collection.
If you are interested, you can read a short review I did of my second Joseph Arthur concert at Relevant Magazine dot com
You can buy Redemption’s Son on iTunes or here, although for some strange reason the track listings are slightly different. The version I have has the track listing as shown on iTunes.
Audio with 10 plays
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]How Many Mics by The Fugees- A track from my #4 album
Text
My top 10 “Desert Island” albums- number 4
#4 The Score- Fugees
“Au contraire mon frere, don’t you even go there
Me without a mic is like a beat without a snare
I dare to tear into your ego, we go, way back
Like some ganja and palequo or colecovision
My minds make incisions in your anatomy
And I back this with deuteronomy or leviticus
God made this word, you can’t get with this
Sweet like licorice, dangerous like syphillis”
Fugees - How Many Mics?
I am not a huge hip-hop head but I love and respect the music and wish my hip-hop collection was bigger, especially after taking a class on the Theology of Hip-Hop culture at Fuller awhile back. This is my favorite hip-hop record and like many of the other records on my list there is some sentimentality with this selection.
I remember my Jr. year of high school driving down to Huntington Beach with my friend Brian and when we got there we would cruise down Main Street blaring Summertime by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince out of the speakers of his beat down car. Of course we were having fun mocking all of the people who would spend tons of money on their stereo system and drive up and down that street just to be seen and heard. On the way there and back however I remember that we would listen to the Fugees and I fell in love with this record.
As a Jr. in High School I remember loving the fact that each member of the group (Wyclef Jean, Pras Michel and Lauryn Hill) each had a very unique vocal style. I loved the covers of Bob Marley’s No Woman, No Cry and Roberta Flack’s Killing Me Softly. I loved the way that they told stories through their music and were much more socially conscious than most other rap and hip-hop my friends and I were listening to. And I loved being exposed to music that was much different than what I had grown up listening to and enjoying. My musical tastes were expanding and the Fugees were leading the way.
The album opens with How Many Mics? and Lauryn Hill’s verse on this track (lyrics above) immediately shows she is right at home with the big boys of rap. I don’t think it was until after her solo album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill came out (another great album) that I really began to appreciate her contribution to the Fugees. I was much more of a Wyclef guy back then, and of course he has gone on to have a succesful career as a solo artist and producer (his first solo record, The Carnival, is probably my second favorite hip-hop record).
The next track Ready or Not I believe was one of the singles from the album (I know they did a really elaborate music video for it) and it opens with a hauntingly eerie melody that is a sample of the Enya song Boadicea (which I didn’t know until I read a review of this album on Amazon tonight). The song is a perfect example of what made the Fugees stand out from the crowd.
Fu-Gee-La and Cowboys are also stand out tracks but the cover of Bob Marley’s No Woman, No Cry is brilliant. Wyclef would get to show off his love of reggae more on his later solo records but this cover does exactly what a good cover should do, bring the listener to a new appreciation of the original recording.
My favorite part of this record is that no matter how long it has been since I have listened to it, I can put it on and rap along with the words of the whole record, the lyrics are that ingrained into some weird synapses of my brain that were created when I was a Jr in high school in 1996.
Sadly, even though this album would go on to sell over 18 million copies, the Fugees have not recorded another album since. I would give my right arm for the group to put aside their differences and put out another record.
You can buy The Score on iTunes or here.
Audio with 2 plays
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]A song from my number 5 selection- Wilco- Jesus Etc.
Audio with 3 plays
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]I just realized I haven’t put an audio file up from my #6 selection so here is Keep Waiting by Stavesacre
Text with 1 note
My top 10 “Desert Island” albums- number 5
#5 Yankee Hotel Foxtrot- Wilco
“I want to hold you in the Bible black pre-dawn” Wilco - I am Trying to Break Your Heart
I am pretty sure I first heard about Wilco from my friend Sean, who I lived with during the summer of 2002 (the year YHF came out). I was mad that Wilco had been around forever and I hadn’t been listening to them. This album was so different than anything else I was listening to at the time. In a lot of ways it opened up a door for me to become a music snob. Most of my music library up until that point was either alternative Christian music or what I would call “High School” music, stuff that doesn’t have a shelf life of longer than 4 years, not timeless by any stretch. YHF is a timeless record. It will always be good. It can be enjoyed in any context.
I later learned about the history of this record when I saw “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” at a little indie theater in Portland, Oregon called the Bagdad with my old roommate Joe. The whole artsy experience just added to my feeling of self-importance. Seeing the documentary, which chronicles the making of the record despite the loss of two band members and label disputes, helped me to appreciate the record even more.
I eventually went out and bought Wilco’s first album entitled A.M. , which is also great but is much more rooted in the Alt-Country sound of the original band of many of Wilco’s members, Uncle Tupelo. The experimentation that is evident on YHF is part of what led Rolling Stone reviewer David Fricke to compare the record to the “garage-art splendor of The Beatles White Album.”
There isn’t a bad song on the record but Jesus Etc. is certainly a standout, and is probably in my top ten favorite songs of all time (although I am not sure I will ever get to that list).
You can buy Yankee Hotel Foxtrot on iTunes or here.
Text
My top 10 “Desert Island” albums- number 6
#6 Speakeasy- Stavesacre
“Sleepless eyes open wide, before heaven I stand again. If there’s no winning this war tonight, I was wondering if you could steady my spinning head.” Freefall (From Hand to Hand)- Stavesacre
This is somewhat of a sentimental pick. If you were to hold me to the fire, the music snob side of me would tell you there are certainly more than 5 albums that are better than Speakeasy, but then the fan in me would tell you it is hard not to root for Stavesacre.
They have been at it in the Southern California music scene for what seems like decades without ever reaching the level of commercial success that their hard work deserves. They are just recently coming out of a temporary “break-up”, having gone into radio silence for too long, only to emerge from the dead with news of another EP in the works. Truth is, when I first heard they were thinking about breaking up, I was devestated, but I couldn’t blame them. A lesser band would have given up long ago. But again Stavesacre will rise up with music, and their loyal fans will be happy to have another recording from the rockers who won’t quit.
Speakeasy is widely considered to be the band’s best record and for good reason. It represents a time when the stars were aligned for the band as a steady two guitar line-up, good solid production, and honest-to-God song writing from Mark Salomon combine to create some of the best songs the band has recorded. If you were to put together a Stavesacre greatest hits album (something the band lamely attempted to do with Collective in order to fulfill contractual obligations to Tooth and Nail), 70% of the songs would be from this record. I would argue that the first seven songs of this album (Minuteman, Sundown Motel, Keep Waiting, You Know How It Is, Rivers Underneath, Gold and Silver and Freefall (From Hand to Hand)) are all part of the band’s top 10-15 songs.
As mentioned earlier, part of what makes these songs great is the honesty of Mark Salomon. As a Christian, I appreciate a man like Mark who is transparent in his songwriting and can be genuine in his lyrics. This was perhaps the first record from a “Christian” band (man I hate that label) that I could be proud of listening to because it wasn’t sappy and bad.
For example, Mark brilliantly deals with the subject of the sometimes painfully slow and awkward timing of God, and the detractors who inevitably vocalize themselves when God seems absent, in the song Keep Waiting:
So they will open up their mouths, but really who are they
And soon enough they’ll fade away, only blind but soon they’ll have to see
Fear like a cancer spreads, how many more will drop their eyes
Lift their hands and wait to die,
and how much time to spend to see who stands
But I think I know the way, I got a promise on the mind,
and I’ll be looking for what’s mine
Sovereign stillness whispers trust in me
In just a little while
They’ll wish that they were silent
Keep waiting, I’ll be right on time
Keep waiting, I’ll be right on time
I said this is a sentimental pick for me. There are times where you might hear me say that Stavesacre is my favorite band. This of course is a question of semantics as I believe The Beatles are the best/most influential band of all time. But I root for Stavesacre like I would a sports team and I talk about them like they are a great restaurant I think you should eat at. I do neither with the widely-renowned yet long-defunct Beatles. Therefore Speakeasy has earned it’s spot at number 6 in my list the same way Stavesacre has earned it’s spot in the Southern California rock scene; by being relevant and gritty, yet surprisingly accessible.
You can buy Speakeasy on iTunes or here. I would also highly recommend Mark Salomon’s book Simplicity.
Page 1 of 2
