Crappy the Smart-Assed Toilet

Speaking of things that just have to be said…

There’s something wrong with the world when you can download an entire season of That’s So Fucking Raven from the iTunes Music Store, yet there is not a single song by Drive Like Jehu available.

Drive Like Jehu and Yank Crime were two of the most important rock albums of the entire 1990s. They should not be forgotten, and whether it’s an oversight, or a creative/money dispute, there is a kid somewhere, faithfully paying up while trying to expand his/her iPod’s musical horizons. That kid won’t know that s/he’s missing something major, because it’s not there for the downloading.

Oh well, at least you can still find the hard copies at Insound and Amazon.

(And while we’re lecturing like a wheezingly boring, crusty old punk, why the hell is Slint’s Tweez on iTMS, and not Spiderland or the Slint EP? Just asking…).

When we asked the rhetorical question, “Does anybody really still watch the Grammy awards?” a few posts down, we didn’t mean, in any way, to suggest that anyone ought to be watching American Idol instead. Criminy, a second straight episode of Lost that felt like it was the fourth-place entry in some middle school fanfic competition was bad enough. But American Idol? Wasn’t there an episode of Tricycling with Former Disney Channel Stars for you people to watch, or something?

Does anybody really still watch the Grammy awards? Seriously, after looking over the list of nominees, it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that, in the age of the iPod, a group that’s torn between whether to crown Mariah Carey, Paul McCartney or U2 for the finest musical output of the past year, will be handing one of them (or Gwen Stefani, or Kanye West) a trophy with an antique gramophone as its icon.

So we’ve decided to hand out our own version of 2005 musical awards. Ones that actually recognize some sort of musical achievement, as opposed to payola-driven airplay and moved units. We’ll call them the “Buddies“, in honor of our beloved, deafness-inducing earbuds. In the process, we’ll have to dispose of some of the decrepit Grammy categories (mainly because there are a number we just don’t listen to). But here goes:

Album of the Year: This one’s a bit problematic, since we rarely buy albums in one shot anymore (Mars Volta, Death Cab, Franz Ferdinand, Decemberists, Belle & Sebasiatan and Sufjan Stevens in the past year, as we recall). Of these, we’d nominate the following two:
- Sufjan Stevens: Illinois
- The Decemberists: Picaresque
Winner: The Decemberists. Tough choice, both albums contain many standout tracks. But we think Colin Meloy and friends’ effort is the one that plays better as an album. Picaresque has a broader array of narratives, while Sufjan, by design, is stuck in one state. We’d call it a tie, but someone ought to win, and we have a feeling Sufjan will come out ahead somewhere else.

Single of the Year: Unlike the album category, this one is much more competitive. In fact, it’s extremely difficult to even get it down to five or six songs. But we’ll try, in alphabetical order:
- “Formed a Band” - Art Brut
- “Banquet” - Bloc Party
- “Poison Oak” - Bright Eyes
- “Hey Now Now” - The Cloud Room
- “For Real” - Okkervil River
- “Casimir Pulaski Day” - Sufjan Stevens
(Honorable mentions: “Be Gentle With Me” - The Boy Least Likely To, “Requiem for O.M.M.2″ - Of Montreal, “The Lord God Bird” - Sufjan Stevens, and “The Engine Driver” - The Decemberists)
A 3-3 split. Light vs. dark. UK vs. US (okay, that one’s 2-4). Should we just shut up and dance/play, or should we broodingly explore the consequences of loss? So many conflicting emotions. Honestly, any one of the six would be a fine choice, but we have to decide somehow. So for a preliminary cut, we’ll stick with the dark side, and Art Brut, Bloc Party and the Cloud Room: thanks for lightening up our otherwise leaden mood, but you’re out. So for the final three, do we go with Will Sheff’s slow-building rock anger, or Conor and Sufjan’s more quiet meditations on early death? Well, if you know us, you’d know we’re absolute suckers for the latter (sorry Will, great song, though). Of the final two, “Poison Oak” is the more tightly focused, but “Casimir” gets extra credit for throwing newfound agnostic deity-questioning into the mix.
Winner: (tie) Bright Eyes and Sufjan Stevens. Screw it, we can’t decide (can’t decide, anything). Share nicely, boys.

Newcomer of the Year: This has always been a point of contention with the Grammys, where multi-albumed artists are continually tagged as “new.” We’ve done our best to nominate only acts who actually had a first U.S. album release in 2005. There were a lot of bands from whom there was at least one great song (we’re looking at you, The Cloud Room and Arctic Monkeys), so we raised the bar to two great songs for this list (that we’ve heard, which is entirely arbitrary). But here are five we really like:
- Art Brut
- The Boy Least Likely To
- The Rakes
- Silversun Pickups
- The Spinto Band
A fair selection of different styles here, but for us, the main battle is between Art Brut and The Boy Least Likely To. And as much as we love “Formed A Band” and “Emily Kane,” Art Brut has had a lot more exposure. So we’ll have to vote for the tinkling-toy-piano-wielding underdogs. Be gentle with them:
Winner: The Boy Least Likely To.

We had plans for other categories (Best Song Featuring Banjo, Best Beard in an Indie Rock Band), but hey, our attention span is only so long.

Once again, since nobody asked, we went ahead and made an iTunes Music Store iMix of the singles we’d rank among the top songs of 2005. It’s creatively titled Crappy’s List 2005. We’re sure you’ll be as thrilled with the contents as you are with the title.

Note that, due to iTunes not being a complete repository of all music, some songs that should be in the mix aren’t listed. These are: Jeniferever’s “You Only Move Twice,” Oktober People’s “The Sky Is Falling” (highly recommended), Ponce De Leon’s “Snap Goes the Gator Jaw” (strongly recommended), Pretendo’s “Harbor” (because we miss Creedle), and Sufjan Stevens’s “The Lord God Bird” (also highly recommended, but available for free from NPR).

In the arms race of car commercials with indie pop/ electronic soundtracks, the new Civic ad would seem to have the edge. What’s next, Toyota pumping out The Faint as they pimp the new Prius?

Although it is amusing to watch Honda mix semi-hallucinatory, eco-themed visuals with a song ostensibly about nuclear holocaust. But as long as their checks to Jimmy Tamborello and Ben Gibbard don’t bounce, we guess that’s their problem.

We’re not sure who’s to blame here, Hollywood Records or the iTunes Music Store, but someone surely is.

If we recall correctly, the soundtrack to Thumbsucker was originally planned to be an album of covers by Elliott Smith. But as Elliott’s final days swiftly took him downhill, then away from us forever, the project was taken over by Tim DeLaughter (and Polyphonic Spree). The result, released today, is primarily a Polyphonic Spree album, with Smith covers of Big Star’s “Thirteen” and Cat Stevens’ “Trouble,” along with Elliott’s own “Let’s Get Lost.” Plus 20 tracks by Tim DeLaughter and Polyphonic Spree.

Now, we don’t really care much one way or the other for the Spree’s music. We’re sure it’s fine, if you happen to like that sort of thing. We don’t, but we do like Elliott Smith. A lot, in fact. And for some reason, his songs (along with a 30-minute Spree track) are the only ones on this album that are not available for individual purchase, but are for sale by “album only.” Did we miss something? Wasn’t the whole point of individual song sales so that you didn’t get stuck paying $12 for two songs you want (plus one you like, but already own)?

Not that we’d encourage anyone to illegally fileshare, rip a streamed version, or download these tracks from MP3 blogs of course. Someone, probably Hollywood Records, is doing a fine job of that, all by themselves.

True, they are on EMI. But don’t bands usually have to get popular before they sell out?

To continue our series of musical reports that nobody expressed a particular interest in reading, we look at two hot-off-the-iTunes indie pop/rock singles: Editors‘ “Munich” and Death Cab for Cutie’s (gasp) major label debut, “Soul Meets Body.” We should probably say “listen to” rather than “look at,” but for reasons you’ll soon discover, we’d rather not.

For Editors, the first question that arises is: Why? What possessed them to make a song that sounds exactly like (and yet largely missing the point of) Interpol? The second verse features chiming, staccato guitars, lifted directly from “PDA,” while throughout the vocals seem a bit, well, xeroxed. Perhaps that’s because Editors’ Tom Smith is trying desperately to be Paul Banks (who himself was trying to be David Bowie, but whatever). Oh well, since Interpol stole a Birmingham band’s sound on “Say Hello to Angels,” we suppose it’s appropriate that some Brummies should try to steal it back (although the sound they ended up with is, regrettably, not the Smiths’). Still, a semi-decent song, so long as you can ignore its illicit provenance.

We’re a little less sure whether reports of Death Cab’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. There’s at least some truth to suspicions that DCFC’s transformation into Major Label Rock Product will be less than auspicious. Our initial reaction was a lot like Pitchfork’s (link above). While PF’s Jason Crock heard the mandolins as “Losing My Religion”-era REM (which - thanks a lot! - is a chilling audio image we can not soon erase, much as we’d like to), we focused on the machine-like drums, falsely lively beat, lifeless vocals and general over-orchestration, and heard the limp product of mid-’90s New Order. Either way, not pretty, especially since we were previously of the belief that Ben Gibbard could do no wrong, musically speaking.

But on about the fifth listen we were able to overlook the tepid opening minute-plus, and hear traces of the old Death Cab (while not the Barsuk version, at least the Matador one). On the bridges, when the mandolins and bass drop out, and you’re left with Gibbard’s falsetto and Chris Walla’s guitar arpeggios (and those robotic drums), you can still hear the chemistry that made this band what it was. But if this is the Big Single, we have to worry what the rest of the album will bring.

We hate to bring this parallel up, since we’ve struggled mightily to ignore it, since we first noticed that “For What Reason” stole the chorus melody from “In Too Deep.” We’d even convinced ourselves that Postal Service’s “Against All Odds” was partially listenable (of course, the subtraction of Phil Collins from the equation goes a long way towards that). But now we to face up to it: Death Cab for Cutie is in danger of becoming (shudder) Genesis. And we’re not talking the prog-era, Peter Gabriel band, we’re talking the 1986, “Phil Collins Superstar” edition. Like Death Cab, that band had also evolved from critically-lauded lads with a cult following to Mainstream Rock Stars, while also juggling a similarly successful Front Man’s Side Project. For Invisible Touch, Genesis dialed it in, slathered on the cheese, and made a ton of money. What will Gibbard, Walla and company do, with Atlantic money to spend? We’re a bit afraid to find out.

(Note: this post is a public service, intended to break up the monotony of Survivor: Guatemala-related nonsense).

We are pleased to announce that we finally learned how to announce Sufjan Stevens’s first name today, because WOXY.com generously played the brilliant track, “Casimir Pulaski Day,” off of Sufjan’s new Illinois album (that and they back-announced the artist’s name). It’s pronounced SOOF-yan. (Or at least, we’re pretty sure it is, since we Googled after that, to make sure). See also his brilliant song for NPR, “The Lord God Bird.”

We now return you to your regularly scheduled drivel.

Any listmaker is going to take abuse. And for the most part, SPIN does a decent job with their new list of the top 100 albums from 1985-2005, although we’d quibble that in their effort to select only albums that “stand the test of time,” they ought more accurately to call it 1985-2001, or so. But they generally hit big albums, and select the best from the artists they pick. There are, of course, some bizarre inclusions, such as an overabundance of 1990s hip-hop (seriously, in SPIN’s entire existence, has a single person, anywhere in the world, actually purchased a copy to read about hip-hop?) and glaring omissions. That’s where we come in.

The “WTF?!” list:
#8 - Prince’s Sign o’ the Times. Come on, we’re just as sad as you that Purple Rain came out in 1984, but that’s not a valid reason to give a lifetime achievement award to this clunker. Move Slint’s Spiderland up here from #94 (!) and maybe we can talk.
#11 - U2’s Achtung Baby. That’s right, never mind that Joshua Tree (1987) was their last semi-listenable album. And it’s all well and good that U2 wanted to reinvent their tired arena-rock schtick. But this, and all subsequent U2 output, still sucks.
#53 - Rage Against the Machine’s The Battle of Los Angeles. There are already two Public Enemy albums on the list. Pathetic attempts to mine PE’s sound for cash aren’t statements of artistic prowess.
#85 - R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People. Wait, there’s no Lifes Rich Pageant (1986)? Ok, they must have gone with Document (1987) then, right? Nein. Hell, even the commercial cashing in of Green (1988)? Nope. Oooookay.

The “I must have missed it somewhere, I’ll go back and re-read” list:
(As in, where the hell was… in alphabetical order)
- Archers of Loaf, Icky Mettle (1993) and/or Vee Vee (1995)
- Death Cab for Cutie, We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes (2000)
- Drive Like Jehu, Drive Like Jehu (1993) and/or Yank Crime (1994)
- The Jesus Lizard, Liar (1992)
- Pedro the Lion, It’s Hard to Find A Friend (1998)
- The Shins, Oh, Inverted World (2001)
- Superchunk, No Pocky for Kitty (1991)
- Tortoise, Tortoise (1994)

Maybe these problems will be remedied by the time SPIN gets around to figuring out it’s “last 50 years” issue. But since they’re still running the painfully uninteresting “real-life rock tales” on the back page, we won’t hold our breath.