BEST ALBUMS OF 2009: #8 (tie): SLAYER “World Painted Blood” / SUNN O))) “Monoliths and Dimensions”
SLAYER
World Painted Blood
(American/Columbia)
Available on CD, 180-gram LP, iTunes and AmazonMP3
SUNN O)))
Monoliths and Dimensions
(Southern Lord)
Available on CD, 180-gram double LP, iTunes, AmazonMP3 and eMusic
First of all, the Slayer record is a Slayer record. You’re either going to buy it or you’re not. They’ve been the most consistent band in terms of personnel (only the drum chair has gone through turmoil a few times), and ever since founding member Dave Lombardo resumed his place behind the aforementioned instrument, fuggedaboutit. Nothing is ever going to out-heavy their classic Reign In Blood, but this came so close that it was breathing down that album’s neck.
If you want heavier than even that, here’s your new favorite band: Sunn O))). Live, they’re just two guys with robes, downtuned Les Pauls letting out droning riffs, and a shitload of vintage tube amps turned up to 20 (they’re probably the only band I know of that has their own branded earplugs!) and ready to reconfigure your DNA after the first two chords. While that’s a set up that some armchair amateur wannabe critics love to mock (do a search for the band on YouTube and you’ll see quite a few parody videos), it makes for some intense music. With this new release, the band adds to their studio sound with a female choir, horns (including Sun Ra Arkestra veteran Julian Priester), strings, and sometime Mayhem lead vocalist Attila Csihar. Best listened to in a dark room late at night – or when it’s morning and you don’t want it to be morning yet. And don’t be surprised if it puts a smile on your face. This was my first Sunn O))) album ever, and it won’t be my last. And if that’s not convincing enough of an endorsement of this album for you, let Anthony Fantano from the video blog The Needle Drop explain further:
BEST ALBUMS OF 2009: #9: ACE FREHLEY “Anomaly”
ACE FREHLEY
Anomaly
(Bronx Born)
Available on CD, double-LP, iTunes and AmazonMP3
It’s amusing how Gene Simmons must have thought that laying Wal-Mart’s money on the line would result in Kiss’s best album ever in the hype that led up to Sonic Boom (which did make it into Billboard’s Top 5, despite the fact that, as noted when I reviewed the album, it’s a rather weak effort that’s only a shade or two better than their previous two studio releases, the boring Carnival of Souls and the quick-buck-fake-reunion exercise Psycho Circus). As revealed a month prior to Sonic Boom’s artistic bust, Ace Frehley had something more valuable to lay on the line with his first solo studio album in twenty years: his balls and his word. And he delivered simply by putting the music first. The result? A reminder of the one element that attracted a great deal of people to Kiss in the first place – as well as of the fact that you can stick a six-figure salary, a few Les Paul guitars, and a Space Ace cosplay kit into the hands of a former hair-band failure turned Gene Simmons lackey, but he’ll never play, sing, or write even a fourth as good as one Paul Daniel Frehley. Or in other words, this was a repeat of how badass Ace’s first solo album in more ways than one – he outshined his (now-former) bandmates yet again.
BEST ALBUMS OF 2009: #10 (tie): MEAT PUPPETS “Sewn Together” / GIRLS GENERATION “Genie: The Second Mini-Album”
MEAT PUPPETS
Sewn Together
(Megaforce)
Available on CD, colored-vinyl LP, iTunes and AmazonMP3
GIRLS GENERATION (SDSN)
Genie: The Second Mini-Album
(SM Entertainment)
Available on CD
One of the reasons this year’s list took me awhile to finalize is because there were some albums I simply couldn’t bring myself to cut out of the list. This installment is one of the most extreme cases.
The Pups’ first album since brothers/founding members Curt and Cris Kirkwood reconvened, Rise To Your Knees (Anodyne, 2007), was a nice restart, but wasn’t completely up to the level of their classic back catalog. This time around, however, the group returned with all cylinders firing, recalling much of their glory days (Up On The Sun, Mirage, Too High To Die, Huevos) without breaking as much of a sweat. The album’s title seems more indicative of the band’s unlikely label for this release (the more metal-oriented Megaforce label) than for the state of the band’s lineup, which is playing like they never left in the first place.
As for the group known in their native Korea as So Nyeo Shi Dae: K-Pop isn’t something that I ever seriously delved into, and to be honest, I still really haven’t, except for this particular band (via the recommendation of my female counterpart, Vee from PinkWota.com). Genie, their current EP, got me hooked in with the title track and went from there. Besides the very catchy title song, the shameless 80’s pop of “Girlfriend” and the Strauss-interpoating “My Child” are the EP’s other high watermarks that had me going back and getting the rest of the group’s back catalog, which didn’t hook me as quickly as this EP did. But that’s OK, because if this EP is their current creative high point, then that’s enough to have me looking forward to future releases from them.
BEST ALBUMS OF 2009: The Introduction
The tradition continues. For the fourth year in a row, I’m listing the albums that for me musically defined 2009. Unlike last year, when the posts for this series were so damn irregular, I’m sticking to a more regular schedule and am actually going to cram in ten pieces between now and Christmas Eve… which means that at some point there’s liable to be a day or two when I put installments up within minutes of each other.
For those of you that remember the previous three years of the best-of list from here and from this blog’s predecessor, you know that there’s going to be a mix of primarily J-Pop and Western music. You also may remember that on at least two of those three occasions, Morning Musume’s then-current studio albums held the top spots (the first time being when Rainbow 7 was in a three-way tie for first with Panic! At The Disco and The Game.
It’s anybody’s ball game this year. I’ve had my list for this series written down in a Word file for at least a week, and now is the time to unleash it. The first few installments for this year-end series are already completed and the rest are in their draft phases as we speak, so things are going to be a little busier and more on time than before. There’s also a tentative Best Singles of 2009 that is in a rough stage draft right now (which in this case means I have a bunch of candidates sitting in an iTunes playlist), but that may be a bonus installment more than anything if it gets completed. For now, stay tuned – I’m already doing the final edit and the HTML coding on the #10 and #9 installments, and those will be up within hours… maybe even within an hour of this post going up.
This Week’s Entry In The About Fucking Time Department…
From the Detroit Free Press:
No fun? Yes, fun!
After failing to move past the nomination ballot seven times since becoming eligible in the mid-‘90s, legendary Michigan band the Stooges has made the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it was announced this morning.
The group, formed in Ann Arbor in 1967 by singer Iggy Stooge/Pop (born James Osterberg) and brothers Ron and Scott Asheton and Dave Alexander, is considered one of the most influential of its time — an era that was among the fertile in Michigan’s storied music history, producing contemporaries like the MC5, Bob Seger and Ted Nugent.
The Stooges were in many ways the ugly stepchild of that scene, never widely popular even in their heyday. But the band — creator of hard-rock templates such as “I Wanna Be Your Dog” and “No Fun,” — later came to be seen as spiritual and musical godfathers for legions of punk and alternative bands. Nirvana, Sonic Youth and the White Stripes are among those who’ve cited the influence of the band’s grinding, grimy sound and bored — and often nihilistic — perspective.
The Stooges had been broken up for nearly 30 years when Iggy and the Ashetons reformed in 2003, winning wide acclaim for a series of live shows, and even a gig backing Madonna when she was inducted into the Rock Hall in 2008.
The sad footnote to the coming induction is that guitarist Ron Asheton died in January at his home in Ann Arbor of natural causes. By several accounts, he was the Stooge who was most desiring of the respect that only came his way long after the Stooges had disbanded.
“We’ve been rejected seven times, and we would have set a record, I think, if it happened again,” Iggy Pop told Rolling Stone of the band’s election. “It started to feel like Charlie Brown and the football. I had about two hours of a strong emotional reaction after hearing the news. It felt like vindication. Then I kind of scratched my head and thought, ‘Am I still cool? Or is that over now?’ ”
The list of other bands to be inducted at ceremonies in New York on March 15 couldn’t provide much more contrast with the Stooges: artsy progressive rockers Genesis, Swedish pop kings ABBA, harmonizing rockers the Hollies and ska-reggae star Jimmy Cliff.
James Williamson, the other Stooges guitarist (he played guitar on Raw Power while Ron Asheton played bass) added his own view on the long-overdue induction on his Facebook page:
“Tonight I’ll be raising a glass to an awful lot of people…secretly I believe we were chosen to balance the choice of ABBA getting in…I do take some pride in getting in over KISS, but am saddened that the great singer/songwriter Laura Nyro wasn’t selected although she was hardly ‘rock and roll’, but then she`d have to stand in line on the point.”
Five Years Ago, I Fell In Love…
Five years ago on this day, I took a young woman named Tara Welsh out on our first date together. We went to see National Treasure.
I had first discovered her as the result of a bored-during-lunch-at-work search through LiveJournal for people in my area and my own age there in October of that year, communicated with her through Yahoo! Messenger for awhile, and first saw her face to face at the KMart photo lab she worked at on Black Friday. What is funny is, I had discovered the day before via one of her LJ posts that she lived three blocks down a side street from me.
Three years later, on Christmas Eve 2007, I proposed to her. In less than seven months, on June 26, 2010, we finally tie the knot.
Looking back to our first date itself, much of it resembled the lyrics of a certain Tanpopo song from what I consider to be their true classic lineup of Kaori Iida, Mari Yaguchi, Ai Kago and Rika Ishikawa or as I call it after close to six years of following Morning Musume, the Johnson/Marippe/Aibon/Charmy lineup (derived from each members’ nicknames). Tara is not a fan of J-pop by any stretch, but when I showed her the lyrics a little later on, she too was amused at how much the song’s storyline resembled our first night out. So, in honor of a night five years ago that altered both of our lives for the better, here’s that particular Tanpopo song, their classic “Koi Wo Shichaimashita” (“I Fell In Love”)
I love you, Tara. <3
