2002

                Well, this is a bit better.  Quite a bit better, actually; last year there really wasn’t much to get excited about, outside of the narrow world of UK art-rock.  This year, oddly enough, it’s that art-rock that’s in short supply, while more conventional rock and hip-hop both have pretty credible resurgences.  It’s not an especially great year for rock, although probably as good as any we’ve had since maybe ’96, though hip-hop is a bit better (not that it hasn’t been consistently better than rock more years than not since ’97).  Still, at least I have more to talk about this year.

                I suppose the place to start is with the big veteran rock acts, a lot of whom play it pretty safe this year.  The biggest of the ‘90s survivors, the Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, and Oasis are settling into not-especially-ambitious grooves this year.  Of the three, Pearl Jam stretch the most, but that’s really limited to tinkering with effects pedals.  They are worth noting as one of the rare acts in this decade showing much interest in politics, to their credit.  Of course, “Bushleaguer” isn’t an especially good song, but it’s still nice to know that there’s a rock band that cares about the world beyond the more insular world of individual boy-girl stuff…  The Foos are similarly conventional musically, though it disappoints a little less than Pearl Jam, since Pearl Jam until Yield were the most experimental of the grunge bands, while the Foos and Nirvana before them were never especially sonically boundary pushing.  Speaking of grunge survivors, by the way, Mudhoney continue to resolutely not change their sound at all; at this point I’m immensely grateful, as much like when they formed back in the late 80s, they’re somehow one of the only bands playing Stooges-style ragged garage-punk, and that’s a flame that needs to be kept alive.  Oasis, meanwhile, turn in their least remarkable album to date.  Every other album of theirs (before & after) had some points (respectively: debut, expansion of sound, overreach, retreat & consolidation, comeback, and re-expansion of sound); Heathen Chemistry is the one that therefore most fits the tag “just another Oasis album.”  “She Is Love” is a low-key keeper, but the rest is solidly Oasis-by-the numbers, pleasant enough while it’s playing but utterly forgettable once it’s over.

                Other 90s survivors are also fitting this pattern of churning out solid but unremarkable retreads.  Cake have settled into a definite formula, churning out a great single or two (this year it’s “Short Skirt/Long Jacket”) but their albums remain utterly interchangeable.  Weezer are a bit better this year because they retreat to their core sound.  Last year’s Green Album pop-punk sounded a bit too calculated (and simple), but of all the comeback records, Maladroit is probably the one most likely to appeal to Blue Album fans.  “Dope Nose” even features a decidedly early-90s guitar solo (read: sounds like Dinosaur Jr.), which I remember at the time making me already nostalgic for a superior age of mainstream rock. 

                There are veterans taking more chances this year.  It probably doesn’t count, what with him being 25 years dead at the time, but Elvis Presley returns to the charts with a remix of “A Little Less Conversation,” which both is highly indebted to Moby’s Play (pre-Beatles music remixed with modern electronica) and inevitably a staple of politicians looking for campaign rally songs that will both reassure aging Boomers (it’s Elvis!  They remember him!) and suggest to the young people that the candidate is down with them (Hear those beats?  Maybe he’s not as lame as all those other politicians!).  Also pre-punk, but still very much alive and active are Rush, who have slowly moved into a more hard rock direction but somehow remain much more interesting than whatever else is left of old school prog.  King Crimson, for instance, are still around, but (like Broken Social Scene who I'll discuss below) make songs where the components are interesting but the effect is less than the sum of its parts.

Among the alt-rockers, and speaking of sum of their parts, Chris Cornell and the non-singing 3/4 of Rage Against the Machine unite to form Audioslave.  It sounds very close to what you'd expect, though recalling Badmotorfinger-era Soundgarden more than Rage.  Not bad, but a bit underwhelming from the heirs of two of the best hard rock bands of the 90s.  U2 are also back with a pair of singles, both moody and down-tempo, and both sounding more influenced by their own past than anything else.  They also sound like, but actually pale in comparison to, Coldplay, who definitively stake their claim to be THE claimants to the post-Radiohead throne.  And if there's going to be a band to serve as an alternate universe Radiohead that never goes full art-rock, you honestly could do a lot worse.  I'm not going to talk about Coldplay much going forward, as this year's is the only record of theirs I own, but they're far from terrible.  Not as ambitious as Radiohead, or even 80s U2 (their other big influence), but more interested in taking chances than most of their Bends-aping peers, like Travis or Keane (who are pleasant but slight) or Snow Patrol, who are just straight up dreadful. 

                The last 80s survivor band I have to discuss is also hands down the best this year.  Sonically, the Flaming Lips aren't too far off from where R.E.M. ended up: Brian Wilson-indebted synth-pop, but they sound much more confident in this style.  It's unexpected, I suppose, from a band that spent its first decade making ragged guitar noise, but also picks up on a strain of wide-eyed humanism that had been there from the beginning.  Yoshimi is very much in the same vein as The Soft Bulletin, but while compositionally similar, laden with chunky old-school synths, giving it a retro futurist aesthetic not too far from what's been going on in contemporary hip-hop (and probably a key factor in triggering the indie 80s revival coming up). 

                Deeper into the world of indie, the Lips' influence is very strongly felt on the Polyphonic Spree, who basically set out to remake The Soft Bulletin as performed by a hippie cult.  Also moving into big, orchestrated sounds are the Broken Social Scene, a band that I think of as being as "generic 00s indie" as they come.  The problem, basically, is that, while the individual parts are interesting (a guitar line here, a keyboard part there), they're not building to a unified whole.  So if you're listening closely, there are things to hear, but on a whole, there's not much in way of melody or hooks or emotional or propulsive kick to lift the songs.  Contrast them to Spoon, for instance, who aggressively strip out everything that doesn't clearly serve the song.  Not minimalism, exactly, as they're unafraid to expand their sound where appropriate, but rigorously tightened up into something that recalls the best of non-synth New Wave.  There are elements of Elvis Costello, Wire, and early XTC in here, along with a dose of 60s soul, finding a common thread of tight, nervy, rhythmic guitar rock.  And packaged into songs that are marvels of economy of construction.

                This year indie rock generally is starting to rediscover the joys of rhythm (non-hip-hop).  The biggest development in indie generally this year is the further growth of dance-punk, with LCD Soundsystem, who will ultimately be the scene’s biggest and best act, dropping their debut singles.  Also Out Hud, the instrumental and less interesting alter-ego of !!! have their debut; pleasant enough electro-funk, but not exactly groundbreaking.  They contrast poorly with LCD Soundsystem, who are perhaps more backward-looking, but recombining the past in interesting configurations.  It is interesting, though, that it’s only now that US indie rock acts are starting to discover dance music, as the Brits have been interested in these sounds since at least the late 80s.  The Brits are also less afraid of contemporary dance sounds than the Americans, whose dance music collections stop in the Reagan years.  At this point, the Brits are also more innovative than the Americans, whose experiments don’t go much beyond homage.  Primal Scream, for instance, while repeating themselves from their last one (for the first time in their career), continue to mine their techno-punk fusion sound, adding perhaps a bit more post-punk/goth to the mix, but creating something distinctively their own.

                Speaking of post-punk, though, this is the year that Wire, of all bands, come back.  While the last time we heard from them, Wire were drifting into New Order-lite dance-pop, a decade later they come back hard, with a fuzzed-out pummeling assault that recalls (albeit more aggressively) drone-metal acts like Isis (who are quite good this year).  It’s very good stuff, all the more so because it’s from a band that 1) is on a comeback, and 2) is coming back with a radically new sound.  I’m not sure there is any other band in the history of rock that have done what Wire do starting this year: actually make vital, essential, innovative music not only 25 years into their career, but on a comeback.  So probably the most honestly worthwhile reunion act I’ve encountered.  Their timing is phenomenal (just as the indie kids discover post-punk), but they don’t sound very much their old sound either (though closer to their punk days than their 80s dance-rock days). 

                Of course, the garage rock revival movement continues this year, bleeding into the aforementioned post-punk revival, though we’re getting down deep into the second-stringers.  The Yeah Yeah Yeahs aren’t terrible, but are yet more proof that there’s never been an underrated NYC band.  Then there are the likes of Hot Hot Heat or Interpol, which I think are more properly considered post-punk revival (certainly Interpol, who are a bit down-tempo and dour and closer to Coldplay than their hipster fans would probably admit), but in any event are revivalists, with all the lack of innovation that implies.

                Much better are things that perhaps could be mistaken for garage rock but aren’t.  The Queens of the Stone Age, for instance (featuring the return of Screaming Tree Mark Lanegan!), sound almost like a heavier Strokes on their big single this year, though the rest of the album makes it clear that they’re a classicist metal band in a Mötörhead/Judas Priest mode (that’s a good thing).  The Black Keys, similarly, understandably drew comparisons to the White Stripes, both being rust-belt blues-rock duos, but owe a lot more to the late-90s hill country blues revival than the more art-rock-abstracted Stripes.  Also, over in the UK is the beginning of what will ultimately amount to a second wave of Brit-pop, led by the Libertines.  The Libertines were understandably both taken as garage-rock revivalists (though far less mannered than any of the actual garage-rock revivalists) and immediate critical darlings, recalling not only garage-rock, but the abandon and shambolic attitude of both Brit-punk and Oasis circa their first album (when they still sounded young and hungry).  I said above that it’s sad that Mudhoney were the last band keeping the flame for Stooges-style rock & roll, and while the Libertines aren’t that, exactly, it’s nice to hear a rock band that captures the “about-to-collapse-at-any-moment” energy that the best garage/punk had (and that the garage- and post-punk-revivalists emphatically lacked).  I suppose McLusky over in Wales are not dissimilar, but too arch and preoccupied with being deliberately obnoxious to get over themselves.

                I mentioned Oasis above, but apart from them there’s not so much activity from the last wave of Brit-poppers.  Blur themselves put out only the single "Don't Bomb When You're The Bomb," which is both obliquely political and continues in the ambient electronic direction of their last single.  Graham Coxon's new album (the only proper album from the Blur camp) shows a gradual movement from the anti-pop noise rock of his last three slowly toward actual songs.  Coxon's solo albums are starting to sound a lot less like side-projects and more like an honest-to-goodness solo career.  Of course, Albarn's solo career is already off to a great start, and Gorillaz follow up their debut with two discs of ephemera, in form of a remix album and a b-sides comp.  Remix albums are almost always a waste of time, as if these versions were superior, they'd just be the actual mixes.  Laika Come Home is no exception; it's pleasant but inessential.  A similar logic applies to b-sides comps, though they can have a better success rate.  Gorillaz’s isn't vital, but has some good stuff, showing off their Specials influences. 

Cornershop do quite a bit better this year, like Gorillaz continuing to push the funk-infused pan-global pop style that began with Odelay.  Unlike Gorillaz, or their own earlier work, Cornershop aren't really pushing a fusion sound, but rather showcasing a different sound on each track.  With tracks of funk, hip-hop, glam, psychedelia, reggae, soul and the like, it's practically a concept album about summer-friendly musical styles.

It's really a shame how the rap-metal mooks gave rap-rock fusion such a bad name, as there really has been some very interesting stuff done on the boundaries of the genres.  In addition to Cornershop and Gorillaz, this year there's some fun stuff out there.  The Streets are the first real attempt at rapping in the UK we've heard since Massive Attack's debut, and to his credit, Skinner's style is entirely his own, with very little attempt to ape US hip-hoppers.  His beats are similarly not US-derivative, owing much more to UK electronica and the Specials' moody ska.  Also (surprisingly) good are Rancid side-project the Transplants, who when Tim Armstrong is toasting sound like a proper follow-up to Life Won't Wait's experimental punk.  Sadly, when their "rapper" has the mike, they sound like a caricature of suburban kids trying to sound "hard." 

There's also good stuff in the world of proper hip-hop.  A pair of classics from some established artists drop in the form of Blackalicious's Blazing Arrow and the Roots' Phrenology.  In most years, Blazing Arrow would be an easy pick for hip-hop record of the year, a soul-infused and ambitious embodiment of the Quanuum aesthetic.  But Phrenology is just outstanding, and the moment for me when the Roots really ascend to greatness, expanding beyond their soul-jazz approach to include old-school bangers, rock, spoken-word, prog, and even Bad Brains-style hardcore.  More modestly, there’s the excellent debut from the Nappy Roots, with their laid-back Stax-style funk-driven debut.  Between this record, and the new ones from Blackalicious and Cornershop, 2002 is an outstanding year for essential summer albums.

                Turning to roots-rock, there's some interesting efforts to fuse Radiohead/Blur style electronica to more roots sounds.  Gomez in the UK and Wilco in the States basically have the same approach of mixing contemporary electronica with more-or-less straightforward roots rock.  The overall effect for both, though, is closer to Scteamadelica than Kid A, more a remix of existing songs than a radical reinvention of their approach.  More conventional, but still on the indie-roots frontier are the blues-rock of Built to Spiller Doug Martsch and the Black Keys.  The Keys have much more cred for this kind of music, sounding like hardcore fans of the raw Mississippi hill blues resurgence of recent years.  Martsch sounds like more of a dilettante, though his fusion of Built to Spill's Neil Young-style sprawl with Delta blues is certainly fresher than his main band's somewhat formulaic last album.

                Also on the indie-roots line are some singer-songwriter records.  Beck's is a whiplash change from the party-funk of Midnite Vultures to the almost shockingly conventional country-folk of Sea Change.  Beck recalls Ryan Adams' Heartbreaker in being a confessional driven by acoustic guitar, though Beck sounds quite a bit more genuinely heartbroken.  Also relying heavily on solo acoustic guitar is John Darnielle, aka the Mountain Goats, who this year is a great example of "good" lo-fi.  For years, Darnielle has been putting out crudely recorded albums of his witty, catchy songs, sounding like a superior Neutral Milk Hotel.  The recordings were home 4-track quality, but always sounding like his cruddy production was a matter of necessity than aesthetics.  This year he not only puts out another of these 4-track albums, but also gets to play in a real recording studio, which results in his best album yet.

                Moving out of folk-rock, but not out of singer-songwriter territory are another excellent record from Aimee Mann and one of Elvis Costello's periodic returns to his classic form.  Also returning to his old sound, but more surprisingly, is Bruce Springsteen.  The Rising, the album, is a return to his classic 70s form, while "The Rising," the song, is an open wound of a song, perhaps the finest musical response to the Sept. 11 attacks of them all.  Neil Young also has a Sept. 11 response song, but unsurprisingly, not being from the NYC area (or DC), his isn’t nearly so personal.  The rest of Young’s Are You Passionate? is sort of Young’s attempt at soul music, and the backing band is the MGs (as in Booker T. &), but the overall sound recalls Young’s own Life more than actual soul.  But between the genre experimentation and the Life-echo, it really sounds most of all like a stray 80s Neil Young album.

Song of the Year:  I could pick a heavy, serious song, of the likes of “The Rising” or the Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize???,” but honestly, my favorite track of the year is Cornershop’s “Lessons Learned From Rocky I-III,” an incredibly lightweight but ridiculously fun piece of glam-rock, with one of the rare note-perfect guitar solos I’ve heard (in that I can’t really think of any changes that could possibly improve on it – Harrison’s solo on “Let It Be” is another of these, in a much different kind of song).

Album of the Year:  Two strong contenders.  The Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi  Battles Pink Robots, despite the goofy title is a very serious and emotionally mature look at mortality, and sonically exploratory at the same time.  The Roots’ Phrenology, meanwhile, is just an amazing move by a band that sounds ready to expand in every direction at once.  (oh, and my probable favorite (if not best) album is Cornershop’s Handcream for a Generation; it’s just so much fun that I listen to it much more than any other album from this year).

Artist Most Benefiting from Reevaluation:  The Libertines.  Having heard about the Libertines before I heard them, then only hearing them once bands they inspired had also come up, I dismissed them as the latest UK over-hyped tabloid darlings.  But they were actually really good, and a breath of fresh air in a UK scene that was lacking in proper rock & roll.

Artist Most Diminished in Reevaluation:  Bob Mould.  I respect his attempts to broaden his sound, in this case into light electronica, but it’s so far from his strengths (hard melodic punk-pop) and he’s so good at his strengths that it can’t help but pale in comparison, to say nothing of not being particularly compelling even if I’d never heard his classic stuff anyway.

Album List

Aimee Mann - Lost In Space

Audioslave - Audioslave

Bad Religion - The Process Of Belief

Beck - Sea Change

Billy Bragg - Must I Paint You A Picture?: The Essential Billy Bragg

Blackalicious - Blazing Arrow

Blur - Misc.

Bob Dylan - Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs

Bob Mould - Modulate

Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It In People

Bruce Springsteen - The Essential Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen - The Rising

Cake - Comfort Eagle

Cee-Lo Green - Closet Freak: The Best Of Cee-Lo Green The Soul Machine

Coldplay - A Rush Of Blood To The Head

Cornershop - Handcream For A Generation [Bonus Track]

Cornershop - Singles 1997-2006

Cornershop - Staging/Green P's

Dave Aaronoff & The Details - Misc.

David Bowie - Best Of Bowie

DJ Shadow - The Private Press

Doc and Merle Watson - Elementary Doctor Watson

Doug Martsch - Doug Martsch

Dropkick Murphys - Misc.

Dropkick Murphys - The Singles Collection, Vol. 2

Edwyn Collins | Orange Juice - A Casual Introduction 1981/2001

Elliott Smith - Misc.

El-P - Fantastic Damage

Elvis Costello - When I Was Cruel

Elvis Presley - Elvis 30 #1 Hits

Foo Fighters - One By One

Gomez - In Our Gun

Gorillaz - G-Sides

Gorillaz - Laika Come Home (Gorillaz Vs. Spacemonkeyz)

Gorillaz - Misc.

Graham Coxon - The Kiss Of Morning

Interpol - Turn On The Bright Lights

Isis - Oceanic

Johnny Cash - Misc.

Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around

Keith Richards - Vintage Vinos

King Crimson - In the Studio 1981-1984

LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem

LCD Soundsystem - Misc.

Manic Street Preachers - Forever Delayed

Mclusky - Mcluskyism

Nappy Roots - Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz

Neil Young - Are You Passionate?

Oasis - B-Sides

Oasis - Heathen Chemistry

Out Hud - S.T.R.E.E.T.D.A.D.

Paul Asbell - Steel String Americana

Pearl Jam - Christmas Singles

Pearl Jam - Lost Dogs

Pearl Jam - Riot Act

Postal Service - Misc.

Primal Scream - Evil Heat

Pulp - Pulpintro: The Gift Recordings

Queens Of The Stone Age - Songs for the Death

Rancid - Misc.

Rush - Retrospective 3

Spoon - Kill the Moonlight

The Black Keys - The Big Come Up

The Fall - 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong: 39 Golden Greats

The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots

The Libertines - Time For Heroes - The Best Of The Libertines

The Mekons - OOOH! (Out of Our Heads)

The Mountain Goats - All Hail West Texas

The Mountain Goats - Misc.

The Mountain Goats - Tallahassee

The New Pornographers - Mass Romantic

The Polyphonic Spree - The Beginning Stages Of...

The Ramones - Joey Ramone - Spirit In My House

The Rolling Stones - Forty Licks

The Roots - Phrenology

The Streets - Original Pirate Material

Thievery Corporation - The Richest Man In Babylon

U2 - B-Sides 1990-2000

U2 - The Best Of 1990-2000

Weezer - Maladroit

Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Wire - Read & Burn 01

Wire - Read & Burn 02

Yo La Tengo - Prisoners Of Love