Let’s start the new year by loving me. And these people….
5. Thom Yorke - The Eraser
It’s Thom Fucking Yorke. Stop trying to score cred points by pretending you’re over it.
This album’s greatest strength is that it’s not another grandiose Radiohead magnum opus and it has no intention of being one. In all likelihood, this will not change your life. It’s just a solid, if somewhat same-ey, album that draws from a fairly limited pool of resources; skittery laptop beats, the occasional electric guitar or bass, junky keys and (by Thom Yorke standards) dry vocals. From a career standpoint it’s pretty genius: while The World’s Greatest Band is off figuring out how to continue being The World’s Greatest Band, he puts out a somewhat polarizing album that will satiate the rave-for-world-peace faction of Radiohead’s fanbase and make the “where did all the guitars go?” dudes all the more eagerly (and vainly) await OK Computer 2K7: The Return.
The Eraser feels natural. So many side/solo projects can have an air of trying-too-hard, forced eclecticism. You know, “You can’t pigeonhole me! Look how different I can be! I’m a fucking rock’n'roll chameleon!” -type schtick. This is just a good record for the sake of being a good record.
4. Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up I Am Dreaming
It’s a beach party with old friends and bad vibes in abundance. And a crossbow.
3. Cursive - Happy Hollow
Tim Kasher is going to make a great curmudgeonly grandfather with a heart of gold. He may tell lil’ Johnny that his schoolyard crush will grow up to be an untrustworthy whore who uses sex as a weapon, but he’ll later apologize, claim to have been kidding and then buy him ice cream and take him to the Flaming Lips laser light show at the Council Bluffs planetarium.
2. Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche
I’m not going to say it’s better than Illinois…but I’m going to think it as hard as I can. I’m going to think it so fucking hard that the thought is going to take on a ghost-like form and scurry through you like Voldemort through Harry at the end of Sorcerer’s Stone.
In an interview with the ‘fork shortly before its release, Soof claimed he wasn’t certain The Avalanche was even worth putting out.
Fuck off, Stevens. You’re making everyone look bad.
1. Joanna Newsom - Ys
“It’s someone’s vision seen all the way through–sweat lost, brain racked, soul searched, and fingers calloused. I doubt we’ll hear anything as brilliant in a long, long time.”
-Jim O’Rourke
Yours,
Torquil Crossingham
p.s.: I jacked the O’Rourke quote from Arthur Magazine. Read their interview with Joanna — it’s incredible.
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January 5th, 2007 at 1:05 am
Billy Bob Thornton
Oh give me a fucking break with Thom Yorke.
Instead of being one of the people that should “Stop trying to score cred points by pretending you’re over it.” You can be one of the people that score cred points by puppy dogging everything he’s done. It’s like a magical reality show where the concept is “THOM YORKE NEEDS A YES MAN… AND YOU’RE IT!”
Your reasoning behind why it’s a great record sounds more like a justification as to why it was “An approriate time in an artists life to put out a record with these sonic values”
Which is why the record is as about as emotionally hitting as a box of tissues, made from tissues, filled with tissues, and bleeding it’s little tissue fucking blood all over the place.
Number 5? Perhaps. If we were talking about most DISSAPOINTING albums of the year.