I never thought the day would come when these words would pass my lips (or fingertips, as it were), but in the interest of full honesty…
Avatar makes me forgive James Cameron for Titanic.
That is all.
I love the December year-in-review rituals. Looking back at critics’ picks for the best music, books, and movies of the year, I’m usually reminded of a few gems I’d already forgotten, and prodded again to check out the ones I overlooked. And this year, we’ve got the bonus round: the best of the decade lists. These aren’t just a look back at great art; they’re also little time capsules. The past decade was an eventful one for me, with a huge amount of personal metamorphosis set against a backdrop of change, heartbreak, and new beginnings. So to make my selections for the best music of the last ten years is also to reflect on why some of those records were so important to me in the first place. The music stands alone, to be sure, but the context amplifies the bitter and the sweet in each.
I’m using Paste Magazine‘s list as my jumping-off place. Since the demise (in print) of No Depression, Paste has become perhaps my favorite newsstand source for good entertainment writing. In the print edition, they’ve picked the top 25; on the web, they’ve got a top 50 for your perusing (and listening!–you can stream every album from Paste’s site) pleasure.
While I’m happy to see the likes of Loretta Lynn (Van Lear Rose), Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova (Once soundtrack), The Jayhawks (Rainy Day Music), Iron and Wine (Our Endless Numbered Days–though I would pick The Shepherd’s Dog, if it had to be just one. Genius, beautiful genius.), Bon Iver (For Emma, Forever Ago), Drive By Truckers (Decoration Day), and Over the Rhine (Ohio) get places at the table in the longer web list, there are a few glaring omissions I’d like to rectify in the top 25.
We agree on quite a few–Sigur Rós (delicious, melodic, gibberish), Ryan Adams (I’m hoping one day they can combine his DNA with Rhett Miller’s from his Old 97′s days… I’d kidnap that baby and make it sing to me all day long.), Beck (Mellow Gold made me want to pat you on the head. Sea Change makes me want to kiss you on the mouth.), Gillian Welch (who wears a crown and carries a scepter, in my version of real life), The White Stripes (I can’t decide whether I want to break Jack White, or just break stuff with him…), Arcade Fire (holy moly, kids!), and Wilco (’nuff said) absolutely earned a spot on this list.
A few more–The Shins, The National, Josh Ritter, Spoon, The Avett Brothers–are good, but a little surprising for best of the decade accolades. But, then again, you probably have heard of most of the bands I really like, so clearly I’m underqualified to make these sorts of determinations. My obscure-taste-o-meter registers far too low to count with the cool kids.
I am surprised at the number of times I shrugged and said Meh–Vampire Weekend, The Decemberists, Bright Eyes, and Rufus Wainwright, I’m looking at you. (Do you hearing that quiet ripping sound? That’s me being stripped of my hipster credentials…)
And color me completely unsurprised, but it still chafed a little to see Sufjan Stevens in the #1 slot. Sure, he’s darling, and he plays the banjo, and he puts out nifty, ambitious concept albums, but I just don’t get all the fawning. And, really… when you title your songs things like, “The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You’re Going to Have to Leave Now, or, ‘I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!’”, you just make me kinda want to punch you in the face.
So I’ll just chalk it up to Sujfan-koolaid-induced delusions when I consider all the fantastic music the good folks over at Paste forgot when cooking up this little list…
Old Crow Medicine Show / OCMS (2004) Remember the scene in High Fidelity when Barry is terrorizing the customer about not owning the Jesus and Mary Chain album? (“I can’t believe you don’t own this fucking record! That’s insane! Jesus!”) I think I said much those same words to my magazine when first reading this issue. People might have stared, but, really, there is no excuse for overlooking OCMS. With razor-sharp harmonies and foot-stomping beats, these fellas might be singlehandedly responsible for turning the cool kids on to some old-timey sounds. I first heard this record riding shotgun down a pass in the Colorado Rockies, after drowning my car in a creek outside Crested Butte. My traveling companion said something along the lines of, “You gotta hear this” and dialed in the last track. “Wagon Wheel” was a revelation. I made him play it twice, and my love affair with this band was a foregone conclusion.
Cat Power / You Are Free (2003). Low-key is hard to do well, and Cat Power is one who knows how. Christ, the woman added a horn section on her next album, and I somehow still felt like I was on morphine (but, you know, in a good way). I came across this record when I was housesitting for people with better taste in music than mine, and in the days before I owned a computer or an iPod (so “borrowing” it was not an option). It stayed with me until I bought my own copy a few years later. It’s good for bathtub listening, when the house is quiet. “Good Woman” is one of the simplest, most honest, soul-cracking songs I know.
Okkervil River / Black Sheep Boy (2005). I don’t know what they put in the water over there in Texas, but it’s good for growing songwriters. “A Stone” is yearning, perfect. “Black” is the happiest, spitting-mad song you’ll ever hear. Melancholic and euphoric–one of the few records that’s good for drinking and for bike riding.
Joe Henry / Fuse (1999). (Yeah, yeah… technically this is a 90′s record. But if Paste is counting from ’99, so am I. So there.) I first saw Joe Henry at an in-store show at the Record Exchange in Blacksburg, VA, in 1993 or so. I was at Tech for some academic bowl thing or another (it’s okay, you can laugh), and felt very cosmopolitan when I managed to find my way from campus to a record store in the booming metropolis of Blacksburg. At the time, I had very little idea what good music might be, but this man, those songs, that voice, those plaid pants… He caught my attention. His entire catalogue is impressive–melding country and jazz and synth and making something more out of those parts–but this remains my favorite. “Skin and Teeth” and “Like She Was a Hammer” are the sort of songs every weird girl wishes were written for her.
Neko Case / Furnace Room Lullaby (2000). Another one that inspired me to sternly query the magazine’s pages in public. How?! On?! Earth?! Do?! You?! Leave?! Out?! Neko?!?!?! Hearing Neko Case sing is a total-body experience, something you feel in your skin, your bones, your every cell. Neko’s voice is like touching your tongue to a 9-volt battery, like drinking Bowmore Darkest, like that first delicious stretch after you wake up on a day off. I would listen to this woman sing the phone book. After you listen to this record’s title track, you would too.
Ray LaMontagne / Trouble (2004). Ray’s songwriting would be enough on its own–the man can lay down some lines that will stop you cold. But it’s his voice that captured me from the first track of this record. He’s like a male version of Neko, chain-smoking, with a whiskey flask in one hand and lit sparklers in the other. When that gravelly, gruff, grey voice sings, “A man needs something he can hold on to / A nine-pound hammer, or a woman like you,” you might just swoon, too. Transfixing.
PJ Harvey / Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000). Ms Polly Jean has spent the last 15 years or so quietly proving that one does not actually have to have a cock out to rock out. “This Is Love” caused pictures to rattle off my apartment wall, once upon a time.
Were I to make a mix tape for myself (remember those?) to commemorate this decade, these folks would surely be on it. The case would be decorated with a sassafras leaf, cactus spines, a high-up and wide-open sunset, and dog hair. And I’d play it again on January 1, 2020, while I was planning the next one. It would still stand up–that’s how these things are.
This, in a nutshell, is why Jenna’s blog is permanently linked over there in the sidebar. I recognize this place she’s talking about, and I’ve been on a twenty-year quest to get back to it. Have a read, and leave a kind word or three in the comments–the girl needs ‘em right now.
Today, morning didn’t break so much as crumble into being. The clouds are a thick meringue cap fitted tightly over the sky, coaxed into a dull glow by the sunrise. I’m in a time of transition over here, as the blog silence attests. Among many changes, I start a new work schedule very soon, which requires me to rise by 3:30, to pedal away from the house at 4:00 (yes, AM). It’s an obscene, absurd hour to start one’s day, particularly when livestock are not involved. But what I do for a paycheck comes with, as I’ve said before, strange hours and even stranger people. So this morning I set my alarm for far earlier than an average day off should start. I’m trying to mitigate the shock to my system by changing a few days ahead of time.
I aimed for 6:00.
I managed 7:00.
Baby steps. There’s a lesson in kindness and self-forgiveness, for me anyway, in damn near everything I do. Taking an extra hour to sleep on a dark, cloudy day off is not a moral failing. I’m learning these things, if ever-so-slowly.
It’s become part of our cultural cachet to collectively detest mornings. We all make the same jokes about coffee and snooze buttons and having a case of the Mondays so often that they’ve become fact. Poor morning–she gets such a bad rap, and for what? Because we all stayed up too late watching the decidedly un-funny local news, followed by a few mostly un-funny monologues and tepid celebrity interviews? Because we traded one more late-nite Bud Lite for witnessing the sunrise?
As with most of my fellow Modern humans, I’ve had a long and conflicted relationship with mornings, stemming directly from my long and conflicted relationship with sleep. I stay up too late, and hunger after more shuteye. (An interesting thing: Ayurveda teaches that different times of day–among many other things–are governed by different active principles or biologic energies, called doshas. The hours of 10-2, AM and PM, are when Pitta–the Fire principle–is dominant. Ever stayed up past 10 and then suddenly felt too awake to go to sleep? Next thing you know, it’s 2 o’clock, and you’re wondering where the time went… That’s Pitta, and I’ve fallen into that specific trap more times than I can count.) I stay up too late, and in college I developed a passionate love affair with my snooze button. That demonic little device propagated many more bad habits–I’d hit it once or twice or ten times, then roll out of bed with just enough time to brush my teeth, clatter down the fire escape, and slide into class right at 8. Breakfast went out the window, as did any sort of gentle morning ritual. Starting the day became a frenzied, fraught thing, not a smooth transition from sleep to wake. It’s a disservice I continued showing myself for the next decade or so.
Add to that years and years of walking around feeling like I had lead-lined bones and a cranium full of cotton–all connected to a deranged thyroid and gut–and you’ve got a gal who loves her some sleep and is rarely treated right by it. Sleep was like an abusive ex–always so attractive, so promising. Occasionally delivered the goods–and when the goods were good, they were gooooooooood–but more often served up cold shoulders and insults and dark circles under the eyes. We had illicit quickies, sleep and I–I would leave the office for lunch, but instead of eating, I’d park the car somewhere quiet and sleep for an hour. So I had lots of little mornings–unhappy awakenings tearing me from a sleep I couldn’t get enough of to a day I wasn’t really prepared for. When disturbed physiology and bad habits collide, that snowball can pick up more speed than you’d imagine.
So I’ve laid down quite the foundation for being yet another Not A Morning Person. But here’s the thing: I love early mornings. I love the sunrise, and the change that comes over the world when it happens. The quiet giving way in increments–one birdsong, then two, then ten. The last fading to pastel at the horizon, just before the yellow yolk of the sun goes to work on dew or frost or mist. I love mornings. I’ve just never learned to love getting up so I can actually experience them.
Today was a start, if a meager one. I pulled myself out from under the weight of quilts and down, and watched two inky crows skim across the dull pearl of the sky. It was a simple, silent wonder, a visual haiku that instantly reminded me why the alarm clock can be my friend, not my archenemy. I zipped up another layer against the cold house, and said, “Good morning” to myself. It will take some convincing, some practice, but I’m hoping that I can say those words to myself every day and mean it. Sure, I will probably always rather be burrowed into the warm den of my bed instead of riding over the cold, pre-dawn streets of this town, but I’m trying to steer clear of grumbling and griping territory, and just watch for those crows, look at that sky.
Bah, humbug!
People are funny about their holidays. The man friend is at wit’s end hearing the now-ritual complaint from customers during their over-the-counter small talk about how stressed they are with holiday preparations.
How long they’ve been shopping.
How tired of shopping they are.
How crowded the stores were.
How they still have so much to do before Christmas.
It is, of course, considered impolite to point out that all of this stress is both voluntary and self-induced, and could easily be avoided. He’s already dismayed one too many strangers by truthfully answering last month’s How was your Thanksgiving? chitchat. (Apparently, spending Turkey Day alone, sans gluttony, drunkenness, family drama, or the Macy’s parade–and liking it–is nigh unto heretical and might even be illegal in several states.) He’s pretty adept at dodging the usual Christmas questions, giving honest yet inoffensive answers to the usual questions:
Nope, got no shopping left (ignoring that there never was any shopping to start with).
Yep, sure do have holiday plans (they look a lot like his Thanksgiving plans, and involve not a whit of tree, wrapping paper, gifts, ham, carols, lights, extended family, Secret Santas, or chestnut roasting. Okay, maybe ham, but the rest of it is right out).
Sure, I’m looking forward to Christmas (because it’s one of only two days in the entire year that he’s guaranteed a day off).
It’s a funny little game to have to play, but you find that you really do have to play it, or risk inducing an entirely disproportionate level of indignation and disapproval from complete strangers. Tell someone in an utterly neutral, non-confrontational tone that you don’t do Christmas, and their immediate reaction (after they determine that you’re not simply of another religious persuasion) is get their hackles up. It’s astonishing how consistently this happens. I can only surmise that folks are so defensive of their consumer orgy and its attendant stresses because they realize, at least on some level, how utterly unnecessary it all is, and perhaps feel a little ashamed to keep perpetuating it, year after year.
I know at this point that I’m supposed to say something like, “Far be it from me to judge others” and give the masses a pass on their American-style, super-sized Christmas because it’s ostensibly about joy and peace and whatnot, but I find I’m losing my social filter as I get older, so instead I’ll say a few other things:
I absolutely don’t approve of the viral frenzy that induces otherwise rational people to descend like locusts upon any establishment that has ever used the word “doorbuster” in its advertising.
I don’t approve of bartering small electronics and expensive toys for children’s approval.
I don’t approve of wasting more food than most of the world’s citizens see in a year, just because you thought your table should look like that picture you saw in Martha Stewart’s Guide to Conspicuous Consumption for Upwardly Mobile White People.
I don’t approve of buying shit for people you barely know simply because spending money on someone is the only way you’ve learned to express like, love, neighborliness, you-work-in-the-next-cubicle-ness, we’re-related-by-marriage-ness, or I-can’t-even-remember-how-you-got-on-my-Christmas-list-but-it-might-be-rude-to-cross-you-off-ness. This behavior merely encourages the proliferation of themed giftboxes containing low-grade cocoa, novelty coffee mugs, plastic ornaments, and potpourri that will end up scenting the interior of a city-issued trash barrel.
I don’t approve of the small mountains of trash lining the curb the week after The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year has passed.
I also recognize that my approval is utterly irrelevant to most other people.
But just because I can be crotchety and judgmental, don’t have a tree, bought no gifts this year, didn’t string lights on anything, and disavow that Jesus Christ was any more divine than you or I doesn’t mean I’m a completely hopeless misanthrope. Here’s what I do approve:
Luminarias, and any lights that don’t blink
Judy Garland singing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
Gifts given at any time of year, if given out of no sense of obligation
The Rudolph special
Hanging heirloom ornaments, and retelling their stories
Pushing cloves into oranges, scenting the whole house
The shadows the tree lights make on the ceiling, filtered through the branches
Peace on Earth, when it’s more than just a phrase on a card
A crackling fire, warming the ones I love
A mug of tea, snow on the ground, and the smell of evergreen
Paperwhites
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and this classic:
See, I really am just a sap in surly clothing.
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Posted in Commentary + Philosophy
Tagged christmas, consumerism