Sean Markey |

Here they are, in order from best to ultra best:

5.) Bjork – Vespertine – 2001 

This is a very delicate album.  It isn’t in your face; it’s very tiny–deceptively so.  It’s the sky with the stars hanging in it.  It’s snowflakes under the microscope, all alien and fragile.  Bjork is very restrained here (for Bjork), except for a few exquisite moments of raw, screaming emotion.

4.) Sigur Ros – ( ) – 2002

Packaged with no information, an album name with no letters, and songs called untitled 1, untitled 2, etc., I bought the album purely for how strange it was.  Call it a gimmick if you must, but the contents of the album strike down any doubts.  It is an album of the underneath and inbetween.  There are no lyrics, just syllables.  The first half of the album is the soundtrack for a rainy funeral, the second half the sound of destruction–epic songs all over 8 minutes long, sweeping crescendos and their ravaged, strung-out aftermath.

3.) Death Cab for Cutie – Plans – 2005

Once upon a time, Death Cab recorded a very interesting, very fresh sounding album called Transaltanticism, which included an 8:00 + minute song   of the same name.  It was a smart album; it was indie with hints of pop goodness.  A few years later they dropped Plans.  Plans is an uplifting album, at times bleak, which manages to distill perfect indie-pop into each of the 11 tracks.  The ballad I Will Follow You Into the Dark is perhaps the best love song of the last 10 years, a dark and honest promise-song for the shoe-gazing, overly earnest kids-these-days of… well, these days.

2.) Mew – Frengers – 2003

Not quite Friends, Not quite Strangers = Frengers.  This mainstream debut from Danish Indie-art-rock band Mew was an event.  The songs structures shift like buildings with quicksand foundations, the lyrics are just strange enough to not exactly make sense.  The album could have been called Not Quite Normal, Not Quite Alien.  The song titles really sum up the album experience.  Some samples:

- Am I wry? No

-Snow brigade

-Eight Flew Over, One Was Destroyed

Frengers was, to my young and callow ears, a doorway to a more complicated world, a little greeting card attached to a larger gift that said “You can’t go home again.”  Or was that Thomas Wolfe?  Either way, this album was an amazing discovery.

1.) A Perfect Circle – Mer de Noms – 2000

First, a story:

Mer de Noms really changed the game for me.  Before I heard this album, I was a Metallica fanatic.  From about third grade on, I only listened to Metallica albums, went to three of their shows, wore Metallica t-shirts… you get the idea.  I was 17 when I first heard this album.  This was back in the early days of online music, and dial-up internet.  I would go to the good old cdnow.com site and listen to the 30 second samples of the songs over and over again.  I didn’t have enough money to buy the album, so I just listened to the samples.  I’m talking for HOURS.

Finally I saved enough for the album, and it just, tore my brain down and rebuilt it.  I know that sounds dramatic, but it’s also true.  I’d hear people talk about the first time they heard or saw The Beatles, or the first time they saw Star Wars IV.  This is like that.

The album is lush, but rough and dark and dirty, like an alleyway blooming with lavender or morning glories.  Each song is a story, an individual epic.  In 2000, when I first heard this album, 3 Libras was the single greatest thing I’d ever heard.  Now, at the end of 2009, it still is.  The soft acoustic guitar, the quiet vocals, the sad violins–even the drums are dripping with feeling and emotion.  Drums.  The ending is huge and sad, a great desperate longing that filled me up.

Aside from graduating college or GETTING MARRIED, one of my best memories from the aughties is going to see A Perfect Circle in Orlando, FL with my pal Clayton in 2001.  It was February, and cold as hell.  We got to the venue 8 hours early to be first in line, and thus right up at the stage (GA admission), and we were.  Not too much compared with getting to sing along with 3 Libras WITH THE ACTUAL BAND.

I was completely changed after this album.

In 10 Easy Steps

step 1: take a dope rap song.

step 2: remove original beat (or don’t)

step 3: The Verse

-Add in some background distorted guitar to make it sound thick

-A sparse, heavy beat with toms accentuating the bass.  ALTERNATE STRATEGY: A hi-hat beat with heavy snare rim-shots.

-Kick up the tom beat a bit, thereby introducing DYNAMICS into the rap genre.

step 4: The Fill

-Find one fitting drum fill to repeat before and after every chorus.

step 5: The Chorus

-Ride on the crash.  HARD.  Hit the drums as hard as you can.

-OH SNAP, crossed arm cymbal crash.

step 6: Repeat steps 3-5

- as needed

step 7: Slow head bang

-do not try without neck flexibility exercises and also neck tattoos.

step 8 Switch it up:

OH No He D’int!!11!

-Drop a punk beat in a RAP SONG.  Damn that’s sick.

step 9: Film It!:

-have a buddy capture it on a handheld

-Get in his face, then back off

-Circle the drumset.

-Aw, yeah, the behind the back view.

-And now he’s on a chair!!!

step 9: Youtube it

-throw that vid up on youtube for a million + views.

step 10: Get PAID.

And now, a disgruntled barista reviews some of the notable releases of Tuesday, November 17, 2009.

OneRepublic – Waking Up

Oops, looks like the lead singer (Ryan Tedder) used up all his good song ideas on either people. What better way to follow up a decent first record filled with catchy, urban-flavored R&B/POP than with an inaccessible, sometimes indulgent–most times boring second record. One or two decent songs (check out “Secrets”), but mostly forgettable. 

Leona Lewis – Echo

Still not Beyonce. Or Kelly Clarkson for that matter. Straight-up polished songs, just as you’d expect–the album equivalent of a hospital room, cleaned up just after the patient dies and is carted off. (Your musical taste is the dead body in this metaphor, FYI). Bonus points if you can guess which songs Tedder (see above) wrote.

Kris Allen – Self Titled

Well, it’s better than David Cook’s album.  It sounds like all of your favorite pop-rock bands.  Collect them all!  Or just play this Kris Allen album.  It’s not bad, really, the way Panda Express Chinese food isn’t awful, it just, you know, tastes bad, and is FILLING.  And more than you really needed.  And maybe one day you’ll have real Chinese food!

Fall Out Boy -Believers Never Die – Greatest Hits

From early songs filled with emo-angst up through recent songs as clever as a dancing frog.  Two new tracks on the album, make sure to check out “Alpha Dog.”  It’s like the distilled essence of Fall Out Boy.  Please dilute this song with water if it’s your first time.  Fall Out Boy is like eating hot peppers.   You don’t start with a Habanero chili; first you’ll want to eat a pepperoni, and then maybe a bell pepper.  It could be dangerous, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Until next week….

Muse is back, and their latest 11 track offering will keep your attention like a really bad car wreck that you pass after sitting in traffic for over an hour thinking to yourself this better be good, after such a long wait.  This better be spectacular–cars on their roof, in flames, the wheels still spinning.

And, Oh!  It is.

Listening to this album is like walking down the Yellow Brick Road on your way to see the wizard, and the not-quite-dead corpses of Queen, Radiohead, and Foreigner are melted together in some post-nuclear fusion, just over there in the grass.  You’ll also find the best of the Muse you know and love.

All your old friends are here!  And people you’ve never met before, so come, because it’s spectacular.