The Best Our Favorite National Albums of 2006
In Which The Flagpole Music Department Realizes That Yes, There Is Music Beyond Our Borders, And Lists 20 Albums That Kept Us Going Throughout The Year
originally published December 27, 2006
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TV on the Radio
Return to Cookie Mountain
If the members of TV on the Radio were students at Hogwarts rather than a New York art-rock band, right about now they'd be excited about the Triwizard Tournament and about to have their name inexplicably arise from the Goblet of Fire. But in terms of progress and talent, they'd be ready to take on Voldemort already. It's been barely three years since the release of the Young Liars debut EP, and it seems like magic that the band can be this good this quickly. 2004's Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes never quite gelled as a whole album, but after a two-year deep breath, Return to Cookie Mountain exploded onto the scene this year. The soul first demonstrated on Young Liars' cover of The Pixies' "Mr. Grieves" is still the focal point of the band, but the kaleidoscopic pallet has deepened impressively. Straddling so many genres is hard work, but TV on the Radio makes it look easy. Expelliarmus, y'all!
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Belle & Sebastian
The Life Pursuit
Rarely does a band so explicitly model the process of growing up. Belle & Sebastian started off clinging to its mother's skirt, shy but cute, then went through a gawky puberty of half-successful and half-embarrassing experimentation. The Life Pursuit is the band all growed up: maybe not as charming as it once was, but with more than enough self-confidence to make up for it. B&S reinterprets glam's legacy by ignoring hair metal entirely and coming up with something… not better, but thrillingly different, as if the stringently observed genre divisions of the '70s never existed. Belle & Sebastian made a party album, and it's fantastic.
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Art Brut
Bang Bang Rock & Roll
Like most good things, at first Art Brut seemed to be a joke. A well-delivered joke, sure, but kinda uncommitted: the hot new MP3 with a funny name. On the album, though, Art Brut kids for real. In the first song, nerd pinup Eddie Argos yells, "And yes, this is my singing voice / it's not irony, it's not rock 'n' roll / we're just talking / to the kids," a breathtaking quadruple axle of a lyric that packs three different levels of meaning into four lines and declares its commitment, as all great jokes do, to truth. The best rock album released in America this year.
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Califone
Roots & Crowns
Obfuscation versus revelation. Future versus past. Bloody blues-folk versus hypermodern electricity. Stark simplicity versus deep complexity. Spooky versus optimistic. If lines were drawn between polar opposites, the intersection of any number of contrary forces would chart the location of Chicago's Califone. A seriously deep journey through numerous spectra, Roots & Crowns is the strangest album Califone has created. It also may be the best.
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Lupe Fiasco
Food & Liquor
From the over-hyped (Rhymefest) to the unnecessarily obtuse (k-os) to the where'd-all-that-talent-go (Kelis) to the dull and predictable (um… the rest of it), 2006 was a pretty low point for both mainstream and underground hip hop. But writing here at the tail end of 2006, it's hard to imagine this Chicago rapper's "Kick, Push" - the summer breakout paean to young skateboarders in love - feeling any less open, liberating and smooth even given several more months to think about it. The album does have its low points, but they're mitigated by the luscious Jill Scott collab of "Daydreamin'" (which at times calls to mind Massive Attack's "Daydreaming") and the truly entertaining EC Comics-inspired zombie-gangsta tale "The Cool." Here's hoping Lupe Fiasco's boldly structured yet low-key rapping style sticks.
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Grizzly Bear
Yellow House
Pretty, sparkly. Mommy, can I keep it? A couple of years ago, there was considerable buzz over little ol' Grizzly Bear's bedroom recording Horn of Plenty. The debut was even reissued with a bonus disc of who's-who remixes. The hype was all a bit much, but when sophomore effort Yellow House was released on Warp, eyebrows shot up. Grizzly Bear is now a quartet rather than a single dude in super lo-fi mode, and this is one of the most consistently enthralling records of '06. It's the perfect sunshiny summer record, but it permeates with autumnal melancholy. Weaving the laptop textures into the folk-pop to infinitely greater effect than on the debut; each of the 10 tracks shines with its own wonder. If Brian Wilson were in his prime today, he'd be encouraged to be a little depressed, and the result might be as mystifying as Yellow House.
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Clint Mansell
The Fountain soundtrack
Are there any other composers today whose film scores are so immediately identifiable? John Williams, Ennio Morricone, Danny Elfman… Clint Mansell's name belongs alongside theirs. Recruiting the Kronos Quartet and Scot rock act Mogwai to perform his orchestrations, Mansell has created the most purely emotional and moving piece of music this year. Of course, it wouldn't have been possible without Darren Aronofsky's transcendently compelling film, but even alone the music conveys the same mystery, awe and emotion as The Fountain's rich imagery. Remarkable.
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Junior Boys
So This is Goodbye
For spending your time kind of dancing, kind of making out. Hot on the heels of 2004's surprisingly awesome debut Last Exit, synth-pop duo Junior Boys returned this year with So This is Goodbye. Again, a surprise: this one's even better. The music's so fascinating because it's cold and mechanical, but at the same time silky and smooth. The best of this style achieves just that, but Junior Boys makes it sound so damned easy. Meticulous beats and synth squiggles make the perfect bed for Jeremy Greenspan's modest vocals. It's difficult to describe why a genre that's been mined so deeply (and generically) sounds so fresh here, but robots have served as seducers all year. This stuff should be all over the radio. Sigh.
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Final Fantasy
He Poos Clouds
In an era where serious-seeming bands trade their signifiers of importance for papal indulgences - "Please ignore our commerciality and pretend we are a shared secret when you write about us for your website or print publication!" - Final Fantasy's Owen Pallett records complex art music in a purist way and releases it via an artists' collective without ever taking himself too seriously. He constructs strings and pianos around songs about computer games, gentrification and angry infatuation. It's doubtful any other album this year was as well-thought-out, or as inspirational. This is the sort of adventurous music that gets cited as an influence far into the future, and these are the kinds of stories that stick with you for just as long.
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Camera Obscura
Let's Get Out of This Country
This is a great non-Christmas Christmas album. It has nothing to do with the reason for the season, but it evokes pinpoints of colored light in the dark through its sharpness and occasional dusky organ music. Tracyanne Campbell sings strongly both in favor of her right to eventual heartbreak (because the path there is so sweet) and her right to let a love go easily, and the background of strings, twangs and hums reaches too far back in its nostalgia to be truly twee.
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Sparklehorse
Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain
You might have at some point in the past several years thought, "Yeah, I like Sparklehorse, but I'm kinda done with it. I've got three albums, and that's enough." But then you might've (should've) heard Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain, the first album from Mark Linkous in almost five years. And then you would've realized you were wrong. Linkous has always been skilled at combining grimy, jagged noises with uptempo, fuzzy and nervy pop, and the new album is no different. Arpeggio-heavy, it sounds a little like the Beatles worked through a meat grinder and then refracted through a prism.
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Gnarls Barkley
St. Elsewhere
The monster track "Crazy" has come out of so many cell phones this year that everybody's close to sick of it, but we're all just as much to blame for keeping the album in our stereos for a good part of this year. Joining forces with Atlanta's Cee-Lo Green was the best move Danger Mouse has made since splicing Jay-Z and the Beatles. Dripping with soul and both members' characteristic goofiness, St. Elsewhere hops and jumps with all the right vibes. It'd be easy to go on about "Crazy" and its 2.5 minutes of elated perfection - turn to the feature in this issue for that - but the best news is still that the remainder of the album, particularly the ebullient "Smiley Faces" and the vivid "Just a Thought," holds up surprisingly well. Even André 3000 is probably jealous of Gnarls Barkley.
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Growing
Color Wheel
Every now and then, a genre-defining album comes along. A Daydream Nation or Loveless that takes everything that came before it, breaks all the rules and produces a mind-bending phoenix. In the world of abstract guitar music, Color Wheel is that record. Joe Denardo and Kevin Doria have restlessly taken Growing to an entirely new plane. Building on the power-drone, near-metal riffage and restive beauty of their earlier releases, the two now function as visionaries, playing off of one another like jazz veterans. The music segues seamlessly, shifting from gorgeous picked melodies pureed by effects pedals to sculpted noise to pure drifting bliss to realms previously unknown. "Fancy Period" alone makes this album of the year and features too many jaw-dropping elements to list here. But above all, Color Wheel blends hypnotism and rocking out in a way never quite heard before.
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Man Man
Six Demon Bag
The best thing about Man Man's Six Demon Bag is that listening to it transports anyone who was at Team Clermont's Summer Festival earlier this year back to that electrifying 45-minute set. The members of this Philadelphia six-piece performed in tennis clothes and war paint and swung nonstop through their Beefhearty, Zappafied tunes, complete with two drummers positioned at the front of the stage to face one another and leap off their stools in unison mid-song. It felt like what might have happened if six apes had been zapped by an evolvo-ray, turned into men, spent years at work on a pirate ship and then decided to start a band.
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Scissor Sisters
Ta-Dah!
The Scissor Sisters became the only actual successes of the much-lauded New York scene by getting Britain to fall in love with them, and they reciprocated on their sophomore release by ditching New York's gritty sensuality for something more British, polished and poetic. This makes it harder to love, but don't mistake its distance for coldness: there's passion here, but for life rather than living. The surfaces groove and soothe, but dig beneath the surface and you'll find a complex celebration of melancholy. It's a different experience than their all-killer debut, but there are few other albums that you can both dance to and put on after a funeral.
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Liars
Drum's Not Dead
After going way over the music industry's heads with 2004's They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, Liars returned this year with a masterpiece. Drum's Not Dead features everything that made the band interesting, but now there is stunning cohesion and superior songwriting. Bold statement: It is here that the former New Yorkers (now based in Kingston, Jamaica) truly surpassed their progenitors. Yes, it's true, Liars is now a better band than the Pop Group, Gang of Four, Cabaret Voltaire, et al. Pounding tribalism and monolithic, monotone incantations pair up with grainy Radioheadesque numbers. Most of the album locks into a mid-tempo groove and grinds away deliciously, but then there are stunning moments that shock you out of the reverie. "The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack" is easily song of the year, and proof that Liars can break your heart.
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Nick Cave & Warren Ellis
The Proposition soundtrack
Bummed that Nick Cave's recent albums have sunken into schmaltzy, pedestrian lyricism? Turn no further than the moody, evocative soundtrack to brutal Australian cowboy flick The Proposition, for which Cave also wrote the screenplay. The former Birthday Party powerhouse recruited his longtime collaborator Warren Ellis (violinist for The Dirty Three and Cave's Bad Seeds) and they wrote the haunting score together, with Cave on piano and vocals (although "moans and whispers" might be a better credit) and Ellis on violin, loops and samples. Other Dirty Three folks show up occasionally, but the focus here is on Ellis' searing bow work, a perfectly subtle complement to the dustiness of eroded lands. (And a Western score that doesn't simply ape Morricone? Finally!)
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Boris
Pink
Bloody head, lovely blood. The countdown to the release of Japanese every-metal trio Boris' collaboration with mighty and evil doom-drone act Sunn O))) filled much of the year. When the momentous day finally came, Altar was definitely worth the wait, yet the superior album had been in the CD player for months. Pink is Boris' Dark Side of the Moon, meaning that it should be the record to vastly expand the respected band's fanbase. Stoner metal, sludge, doom metal - it's all still in the formula in spades, but now the band has mastered focusing its powers into a most destructive death ray. Flirting with shoegaze and ambience, Pink is a behemoth of a melting pot, horned head and shoulders above any other metal release this year. Hell, don't even call it metal. Call it everything that rocks in every way you can be rocked.
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Snowglobe
Oxytocin
Best album title ever. Oxytocin is the hormone some gland shoots into your brain to make you feel happy and satisfied post-coitally (as well as at some other key times), promoting increase in trust and social bonding. The scientific advance that made it available aurally must have been under-publicized, but someone must have come up with that invention, as this album’s full of it. The lyrics often belie the feeling of the best hug ever that the harmonies promote, but we can ignore those and wrap ourselves up in the pure mathematical beauty of the sounds.
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Girl Talk
Night Ripper
Mixing ain't easy, but Gregg Gillis, AKA Girl Talk, makes it look that way. He constructs maximalist mashups, hundred of pieces crammed into 16 songs that flow together in a mix greater than the sum of its parts. Instead of the easy jokes or shallowly transgressive kitsch that most mashups trade in, Gillis makes difficult music you can dance to, accumulating micromeanings in the collision of bits and the spaces between them, and it's absolutely thrilling. Night Ripper seems either too easy or too hard to be one of the year's best, but the energy it creates can't be denied.
The Best Our Favorite Local Albums of 2006
In Which The Flagpole Music Department Takes A Break From Applying Objective Words To Subjective Art And Just Tells You Which 10 Local Albums Got The Most Play 'Round The Office
originally published December 27, 2006
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Dark Meat
Universal Indians
What a difference a year makes! And what surprises one can yield! Let's rewind to this time in 2005: Dark Meat was a new band and more a rumor than any kind of functioning force in the music scene. You could count the number of shows it had played on one hand and still have a finger or two left over to point at bands who showed more promise for 2006.
Dark Meat borrows from garage rock, punk, R&B and free jazz, but the band is its own mescaline-and-tequila-fueled beast. It doesn't sound precisely like any of the forms that precede it; it sounds like them all. (And it sounds like right now; who knows if a family with almost 20 hard-partying, creative and individualistic members can keep things together for another album. Who knows if they even need to?)
Universal Indians is cathartic, swaggering, optimistic, completely mad and uninhibited. And yet, it is cohesive and of one voice in a way that the band's live shows sometimes aren't. Universal Indians knows when to rein in the chaos and focus on the core strength of Dark Meat: boil it all down, strain out the sinew and gristle and hair, and it's solid, classic rock and roll. But build it all back up again - add the horns, tambourines, double drumming, harmonized vocals, soulful shout-outs and psychedelicized dream-fever lyrics - and you have something colossal and matchless.
Oh, and make sure to add the unhinged way McHugh lets the word "cigarette!" erupt from somewhere dark, deep and desperate… It just about captures everything that's vital, visceral and exciting about rock and roll.
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Ice Cream Socialists
Belles & Missiles
For any jaded consumer of indie rock, Ice Cream Socialists gives off an orange-alert kinda glow. The members are cutesy and precocious and use strings and piano in rock arrangements. But then, they're also fantastic. The debut album Belles & Missiles (see what I mean?) is a dancing dragon constantly shedding its skin and occasionally unfurling its wings and flying around for a bit. There are 10 songs and only one cracks three minutes, but you wouldn't know it unless you checked the track listing. And despite their juvenile mien, they can't hold themselves back from rocking out, or from throwing in harmonies that hit you like a stiff wind. There's some amazing talent at work here, and some great songs, so shield your eyes from the glow and give them a shot. They've unexpectedly created one of the most charming and rewarding records of the year.
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Tin Cup Prophette
Liar and the Thief
One of the things the Flagpole music staff values highly is originality. There are a number of bands in town playing, for instance, bluesy bar-rock stuff, or indie-rock stuff, or mainstream rock stuff, and they're completely capable but not particularly original. That's why Athens artists like Tin Cup Prophette's Amanda Kapousouz (and others like Geoff Reacher or Russian Spy Camera who almost made this list) are prized so highly. In its many fertile years, the local scene hadn't heard much like Kapousouz's swoony, looping violin tracks, structured percussion and hazy vocals. This debut disc is beautiful and definitely a keeper, and hopefully it's the first in a long line of successes.
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Casper & the Cookies
The Optimist's Club
Album titles are nice as framing devices, but even better as points of comparison. Casper & the Cookies went from the immediate, declamatory Oh! in 2004 to this year's The Optimist's Club: still looking on the bright side of life, but more a world-view and less a moment in time. And so the album took a while to fully reveal itself, sneaking up on you until it seized your full attention and revealed its charms. Here you'll find songs that really tell stories, both lyrically and musically - songs that are bittersweet and compelling and utterly unlike anything else in 2006.
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Elf Power
Back to the Web
The instrumentation of Elf Power's newest songs, drawing on English folk, Middle Eastern and gypsy traditions, remains enchanting while retaining Andrew Rieger's signature ringing guitar choruses. Back to the Web achieves a fine synthesis of the driving pop-rock of the band's last two albums and the more ruminative folk that's always been an Elf Power undercurrent. More than anything, though, it's nice that a band so comfortably within the indie-rock community feels able to nod towards a variety of past sounds that other bands might avoid. Back to the Web works unequivocally as both the band's major-label debut and as another step in its consistently intriguing evolution.
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Cinemechanica
The Martial Arts
Heavy, intricate music can be for more than just guitar nerds, and Cinemechanica ably proves how: the band works as a whole unit, rather than making the mistake of many young bands who eagerly write separate parts to highlight individual members (and their egos). Cinemechanica tempers its mathematical precision with the understanding of an ultimate need to rock; nods towards more palatable acts like Les Savy Fav let Cinemechanica peddle the intricate punk of The Martial Arts to audiences who would otherwise dismiss a genre so easily lost to dudish wankery.
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Music Hates You
Send More Paramedics
Aggressive without being a caricature, Music Hates You converted many to its brand of dirt-meta… wait, what's that? Shit, it's coming right at us! Quick! Quick! Move to the le… auuggh! Sonofa… WHAM! Nononono, get out of the…SMACK! gasp gasp gasp Oh-god-no-wait-don't-hit-me-with-that… oof! Send More Paramedics is the sound of your ass getting kicked by music.
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Liz Durrett
The Mezzanine
Liz Durrett's debut album Husk hinted last year at a lot of potential. The Mezzanine delivered on that promise with gauzy voice and minimal guitar intact but more confident and pointed, and the album suggested several divergent possibility's for the singer's future. We hope she explores them all, particularly the compellingly uptempo sound of "Cup on the Counter." Gorgeous.
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Venice is Sinking
Sorry About the Flowers
For much of the talent in this overcrowded town, the biggest obstacle out there is simply being heard. It's hard enough to pry audiences away from their friends' bands' shows, and harder still to get them to drop some cash for an album. So Venice is Sinking made the novel and surprisingly unrepeated move of offering its debut full-length free to any who came to their CD release show at the 40 Watt. Is it any surprise that the band is now able to bridge audiences and captivate any number with its viola-fueled, flowing folk-pop?
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Titans of Filth
Best Behavior EP
There comes a point in the process of growing up when you can not only appreciate the comedy of awkwardness (when you’re no longer so raw from experiencing it firsthand as an adolescent) but also its gut-twisting gorgeousness. That is, Lolita would not be Lolita if she were fully poised, adult and formed. The five-song Best Behavior EP Titans of Filth put out this year had that quality of trembling, freckled oddness that doesn’t yet know it’s much prettier than the lipsticked blonde currently attracting all the attention in the room. Will these guys blossom completely? And do we even want them to, when shy glances through a fringe of unevenly trimmed bangs are so much more appealing than an expensive haircut and an ability to make eye contact.
Everything In Its Place
Atlanta's Manchester Orchestra Seems Poised To Have An Even Bigger Year
originally published December 27, 2006
Manchester Orchestra
The dark hardwood floors were peppered with colorful confetti, glitter and silver balloons. The bleachers were empty. A band was playing on one end of the room with mic stands sporting red bows and speakers lined in garland. A small crowd gathered in front of the band, slowly bobbing their heads and moving their bodies with the music. The scene looked and felt more like a high-school dance than a rock-and-roll show. But it was actually the latter that brought some Emory University students and a handful of local residents to campus on a recent and freezing (literally) Friday night.
The middle act in a three-band bill, Manchester Orchestra took the floor and immediately captured the audience. It was difficult to ignore the fact that this six-man outfit - Andy Hull (vocals, guitar), John Dance (guitar), Robert McDowell (guitar), Jonathan Corley (bass), Chris Freeman (keyboards, percussion) and Jeremiah Edmond (drums) - had something that makes people immediately take notice. And that night was no exception.
The Atlanta band rolled through several songs from its new album I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child smoothly and with solid execution. Hull’s vocals were effortless. The music sounded familiar but hard to place, reminiscent of several musicians that the band has probably never heard, much less been able to take influence from. It's a fresh take on pop-leaning indie-rock, and there's a lot in Manchester Orchestra's sound that'll appeal to fans of Grandaddy, Pedro the Lion and Death Cab For Cutie, for instance. Throughout the set, the band relied on a well-developed sense of humor (Hull introduced “I Can Barely Breathe” with “It’s a song about an asthma attack…”), its songwriting skills, and its ability to perform like a band with much more experience than these guys actually have. Ending with “Golden Ticket,” Manchester Orchestra wrapped up what proved to be a strong showing, and one that likely won them a handful of folks to add to an already loyal following in the Atlanta area.
Neither an orchestra nor hailing from Manchester, the band was so named due to Hull’s early obsession with Morrissey and the random friends that Hull would have play with him when he was starting out. The name has misguided many, from concert organizers who inquire where the band’s violins (and the rest of the members) are upon arrival, to the South by Southwest organizers who put the band on a bill with five U.K. bands this past March.
Manchester Orchestra is the brainchild of 20-year-old Hull, who started the band a couple of years ago, playing churches and battle of the bands competitions. Everything changed when an associate publisher of Paste saw Hull perform and urged him to put high school on hold and record an album. Hull took the advice, home-schooled himself for his senior year of high school and hit the studio. That album never really saw the light of day, nor would any of the other Manchester Orchestra recordings that followed until the band put out the rougher EP You Brainstorm, I Brainstorm, But Brilliance Needs a Good Editor last year. I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child was released this past October, and now with a proper full-length in tow, Manchester Orchestra is ready to move forward.
Today, Hull is the only original member of Manchester Orchestra and he can boast of the fact that the band has had 20 different musicians come and go over the last two years. “The schooling system has been a plague on our band,” Hull explains. “Generally, people who are great musicians think it’s really fun to be in a band, so they’ll stop going to school and college and they’ll be in a band and realize it’s really, really hard and it’s not glamorous and it totally sucks and you have to continue to feed off the small little things that you’re thrown by the gods of music in order to maintain happiness. So, we’ve lost a whole lot to school.”
“Plus some to girls,” adds Corley.
Keeping their fingers crossed that the current lineup is compatible and solid, the members of Manchester Orchestra are looking forward as they finish what has turned out to be a great year. With some still in their teens and the rest in their early 20s, the members have a lot to learn, even though when speaking with Hull it’s as if you’re talking to a seasoned musician; he's poised, level-headed and knowledgeable about how Manchester Orchestra should proceed. After more than 120 shows in 2006, including gigs at Lollapalooza and South by Southwest, this young band has already learned a thing or to.
“Do not be selfish,” Hull insists is the most important thing he's learned about being in a band. “Always put every member of the band’s needs in front of your own and if they do the same, everyone stays completely happy. It’s so important to not be selfish. It’s so important to not think that you’re doing something better than somebody else in the band. The only way a band works is if every member thinks that the other member is doing something that they’re not able to do. That’s what we had to learn, to completely respect and honor everything that that person does because you don’t have the ability to do it.”
Despite the hype, their youth and the blow of moving through 20 bandmembers in two years, the guys have kept their heads up and maintained their momentum. It’s refreshing to see a band so young that carries itself with so much poise, maturity and intelligence. These guys aren’t looking to run out and sign with the first label that will throw money at them. They want to sign a deal that’s right for them and on their own terms.
Such ideals will help Manchester Orchestra transition into 2007, as this coming year has a lot in store. Plans are to tackle around 240 shows, including a U.K. tour in January and an outing with the current emo-gods of Brand New at some point. Add on to that the search for the perfect record label and Manchester Orchestra has a busy year ahead.
Hull says he has a plan mapped out for the new year. “[There will be] a continual growth,” he explains. “[We’ll] continue to have fun and continue to stay at a place where we’re just thankful of where we are. We’re just happy to be here and play a ton of shows and hopefully go with a label that is respectful of us and we’re respectful of them and they can be part of our family and we can be part of theirs. That’s our biggest thing. And to have as much fun as we possibly can, because at the end of the day, we’re doing a band for our life, like, that’s ridiculously awesome! Even if we suck, it’s still cool that we’re able to do it.”
WHO: Manchester Orchestra, The New Frontiers
WHERE: Tasty World
WHEN: Wednesday, January 3
HOW MUCH: $5
Widespread Panic
Why No Other Song In 2006 Could Touch Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy"
originally published December 27, 2006
In 1968, Italy's Reverberi brothers Gianfranco and Gian Piero, students of the great Ennio Morricone and possessors of the kind of destiny-shaping last name usually reserved for Jedi, composed the score for Preparati la Bara! (Prepare a Coffin!), one of dozens of unofficial sequels to the spaghetti western Django. The film's theme song, "Nel Cimitero di Tucson," was a minor-key march in the vein of Morricone's best, its insistent bassline and melancholy brass evoking a romantic view of the West, yet one where death was a constant presence.
Over the next three decades, Preparati la Bara! and "Nel Cimitero di Tucson" joined thousands of other movies on the scrap heap of obscurity, that vast repository haunted by obsessive collectors who treasure their limited-release German DVDs, and no one else. That is, until late 2005, when a track from the much-anticipated (in certain circles) Cee-Lo/ Danger Mouse collaboration found its way onto the usual spots on the Internet. That instantly familiar martial bassline was now joined by four-on-the-floor drums, the horns were replaced with strings, and the melody was carried by the voice of insanity itself.
Patrick Dean
When Gnarls Barkley’s "Crazy" was officially released in the United Kingdom earlier this year, it became the first single to ever reach No. 1 based solely on downloads; when it hit American shores, its spot as Song of the Summer was already assured. Gnarls Barkley arrived with the surest sign of success in 2006: there was a backlash before the album even hit stores. How big was "Crazy" in 2006? The band pulled the single from U.K. shelves after 11 weeks, for fear that listeners would get sick of it.
From Film Score to Ubiquity
“Crazy” was inescapable this year, playing everywhere you went - on the radio (pretty much every format except country), in clubs and bars, from cell phones, and from the stage at the live shows of dozens, if not hundreds, of bands. If you saw a concert this year, there’s a good chance you heard a band other than Gnarls Barkley play “Crazy.” There seemed to be a mania among musicians for covering “Crazy,” kicked off by Paris Hilton announcing in May that she was delaying her debut album to include her own version of the song (though that, alas, never materialized). Soon, MP3 blogs were flooded with “Crazy” covers - from Nelly Furtado, Greg Dulli’s Twilight Singers, Brit newcomers The Kooks and Ray Lamontagne - and bands from The Raconteurs to Murder Beach to Of Montreal to Bryan freakin’ Adams were adding the song to their repertoires.
My initial plan here was to answer the question “Why is everybody covering ‘Crazy?’” but in the course of scouring the web for MP3s and doing research, I came across a piece written by Jody Rosen for Slate on Sept. 7 titled “Crazy for ‘Crazy,’” which handily answered that same question, and in language eerily similar to my own (you’ll be forgiven for thinking the preceding paragraphs are a “cover” of Rosen’s intro). What to do, I thought - my point had already been made for me, and three months earlier, no less. But in a way, that’s appropriate - one of the shared characteristics of all the “Crazy” covers is their subservience to the source material. The most radical reinterpretation was probably The Twilight Singers’, and their main innovation was to slow it down a bit and make piano the dominant instrument. None of the artists have owned the song, the way Jeff Buckley took “Hallelujah” from Leonard Cohen, or the way Cat Power's Chan Marshall remade “Satisfaction” in her own image. To be fair, none of the artists covering “Crazy” seemed to be too interested in owning the song; they’re all just borrowing it for a while. (Although when Marshall performed "Crazy" at the 40 Watt last month, she came close.)
Most covers these days are done for one of a few reasons: to pay homage to a favorite (frequently obscure) artist, to expose new facets of a well-known song, or to make an ironic goof on a hit. These reasons often overlap; see, for example, Ben Gibbard’s takes on Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” which seem to mean very different things to him and to his audiences. But the “Crazy” covers don’t easily fit into those categories. Gnarls Barkley is too new and too popular to be some obscure favorite, and the covers are neither ironic nor particularly revelatory, because “Crazy,” to put it bluntly, isn’t a piece of crap; its strengths and pleasures are evident in the original, and the original is still the best version of the song.
Brilliance In Simplicity
Perhaps the cover mania is a result of a sort of widespread relief or amazement that a couple of dudes like Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo, both dripping with underground cred, made a Top-40 smash. Maybe music blogs and YouTube were a factor, each new cover begetting two more through endless digital connections. Or maybe the artists just couldn’t help themselves. Music can still be a virus; the right song can rewire your brain. And “Crazy” rewired a lot of brains this year.
I find it kind of odd to say that Gnarls Barkley’s version is the best, because when I first heard “Crazy,” I thought it was a demo; the only way the song could be simpler is if it were Fergie’s “London Bridge.” The Reverberi sample, largely unmessed-with, does most of the heavy lifting, and the drum part is something I could probably play. The song is built on repetition of the same uncomplicated five-chord pattern, which only changes twice (the beginnings of the second and third verses), and even then, it’s the same chords, just rearranged. There isn’t even a bridge. But in popular music, simpler is usually better, and it’s that simplicity that makes “Crazy” an irresistible cover choice - you can play those chords on any instrument you’ve got lying around.
“Crazy” might be the first song to inspire such widespread covering that’s built so heavily on a sample, which is pretty interesting; but as Rosen noted, Danger Mouse puts that sample to use as melody, and not as rhythm, which is increasingly rare these days. But the melody is not just in the sample, it’s in the vocals, and it’s the interplay between the two that gives “Crazy” its magic. Anybody can strum the chords, but nobody has yet equaled Cee-Lo’s weird, almost throwaway performance. His phrasing is so conversational that it seems like he’s making up the words as he goes along, yet it’s precise and perfectly matched to the music. Listen to a few of the covers; the singers who imitate Cee-Lo’s phrasing don’t match up, and those who try something new end up sounding wrong. They just don’t have as much soul as the Soul Machine.
All Covered Up
And that brings us to this: Look at the list of artists who’ve covered the song - they’re all white. Go hit YouTube and look at the kids playing “Crazy” in their bedrooms - they’re all white, too. The only mention I can find of a black artist covering the song is Trey Lorenz, a backup singer for Mariah Carey who sang it during Carey's costume changes on her 2006 tour. And though “Crazy” charted on seven U.S. Billboard charts, in addition to the Hot 100, its lowest peak was on the Hot R&B/ Hip-Hop Songs chart, at No. 53 (by comparison, it hit No. 8 on Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks, No. 7 on Modern Rock Tracks, and No. 2 on the Hot 100). This from a group whose members are both black musicians with roots in hip hop. I’m not suggesting it’s always true that black artist = black audience, but in the world of mainstream radio, this (and its Caucasian and Latin corollaries) is usually the case. As an anecdotal example, “Crazy” is one of the few songs by black artists that I can remember getting airplay on modern-rock juggernaut like LA's KROQ or Atlanta's 99X in the past few years (the others: Jay-Z’s “99 Problems,” Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” and some old Cypress Hill).
More anecdotal evidence (based on, you know, hanging out with people) suggests that “Crazy” resonates with just about every listener, regardless of race, but there are reasons to believe otherwise. In an Apr. 17 review of St. Elsewhere that I’m pretty sure is only about 25-percent joking, hip hop blogger and XXL columnist Byron Crawford dismissed “Crazy” as “The 2006 version of [insert the name of something that became inexplicably popular on the Internet and also in foreign countries]. Or am I missing something?”
“Crazy” simply doesn’t sound like modern R&B and hip hop. What it sounds like is soul, but not neo-soul; it’s soul like they used to make, but with the added benefit of 40 more years of technology and music by which to be influenced. Though it doesn’t sound old-fashioned, “Crazy” has more in common with Sam & Dave than Ghostface Killah; it sounds more like the kind of R&B that influenced modern rock than like modern R&B.
That might explain why there are so many covers, and why they’re largely from white artists: “Crazy” is comfortable. Jack White has been covering “Crazy” on tour with The Raconteurs; if you arranged his repertoire of covers with both that band and The White Stripes by date of original recording, you’d probably have to go all the way back to Son House to find the second-most recent song by a black artist. White artists have been performing and recording black music since recorded audio was invented, but it’s been harder to do in recent years. The old Pat Boone template of making an R&B hit palatable for white audiences doesn’t cut it when black music is popular music.
Black and White
“There’s just no way to do a serious cover of, say, Jay-Z’s ‘Izzo,’” says Rosen, which is true, but there’s more to it than that - any white artist attempting such a cover is going to sound inauthentic at best and offensive at worst. It’s not just a matter of hip hop songwriting being built on rhythm instead of melody. Hip hop is still largely a product of a specific culture that white America hasn’t managed to (completely) co-opt yet. And what’s more, most hip hop is inextricably linked to the performer, more so than most rock; rappers might be the only artists who are assumed to be always telling the truth. (And that logically leads us to one answer to why there aren’t more black artists covering “Crazy.” When was the last time a rapper covered anything? Mix-tape remixes, like the one with Joe Budden rapping over the “Crazy” instrumental, are what hip hop artists do instead of covers.)
Nerdy white guys like Dynamite Hack and Ben Folds can tackle N.W.A., and props to those guys for finding some lovely melodies in “Boyz-N-The-Hood” and “Bitches Ain’t Shit,” but at the end of the day, it’s a comedy routine, “enlightened” post-racist white dudes dropping N-bombs for the cheap thrill of it. And that’s not even mentioning the technical aspect of hip hop; part of the appeal of listening to Jay-Z is actually hearing him rap, and any indie rocker who tries to imitate his flow is going to be living down the inevitable debacle for years.
Things aren’t much better with contemporary R&B. Folks like Bonnie "Prince" Billy and The Mountain Goats have attempted works from the R. Kelly oeuvre, but when you strip away the vocal gymnastics and the production and put the songs in a rock context, what you’re left with are lyrics that embarrass you even as they’re coming out of your mouth. So when a DJ and an MC put together a song with vaguely smart lyrics, a chord progression you can play on an acoustic guitar, and bundles of art-project mystique, white artists are going to jump all over it. The same thing happened three years ago, on a somewhat smaller scale, with “Hey Ya!,” though people got sick of doing that a lot sooner.
All Together Now
Like “Hey Ya!” before it, “Crazy” will soon be put away for a while, to be replaced by some new musical phenomenon that demands fealty be paid in the form of awkward digital videos and joyous main-stage encores. And there, finally, is the real reason, the best reason, for the “Crazy” Class of 2006.
Covering “Crazy” was like tapping into this vast reservoir of shared energy just waiting to be unleashed. Crowds went nuts for any band that played it. As sappy as it sounds, covering the song was a way of bringing everybody together for three minutes. It was the kind of communal experience that doesn’t happen very much in our fractured popular culture, and all the more precious for it. For a few months there, covering “Crazy” made you a priest in the briefest of religions.
Take Out Your Earplugs If You Can't Hear Me
Flagpole Readers Respond To The 2006 Music Survey
originally published December 27, 2006
Which local album from 2006 was your favorite?
Venice Is Sinking's Sorry About the Flowers is the most gorgeous, breathtaking record of the year… in Athens or anywhere else. Just listen to tracks like "Tours" and "Undecided" - the vibrant, dreamy sound of the recording, the beautiful male/ female vocal interplay, anchored by concise, inventive drumming and draped in haunting cello drones… I'll be listening to this record for years. [Steve LaBate]
Beyond Tomorrow's album was my favorite because they managed to make a label-quality album full of catchy Top 40 pop-rock hits, all on an indie/shoestring budget. I also liked it because it's one of the few albums coming out at Athens that isn't country, jam band or crappy, pretentious indie garbage. [PT Umphress]
Cinemechanica's The Martial Arts. The raw and unbridled power that Cinemechanica pours forward in this melodic and spastic union of technicality and soul burnt me to the core… in a good way. [Mason Savage]
It's a tie between Music Hates You and Cinemechanica. [Producer] Andy Baker can make drums sound so awesome I would buy the Candlebox reunion album if he did the drums for it. These are also the two best live acts in town. [Chris Garcia]
Elf Power's Back to the Web. They've come a long, long way from their start, and the work they've put in to get to where they are shows. [Craig Lieske]
Beyond Tomorrow's Beyond Tomorrow. Super catchy and really fun to listen to. [Lindsey Stier]
The Winter Sounds album was really clean-cut and was the only album this year that just flat-out surprised me. I didn't know the band previously and just heard the record and really liked it. [Will Kiser]
Dubconscious' Realization - a very close second to Music Hates You - because they finally managed to duplicate their intense live shows on disc. The production is basically perfect and their long jammed-out songs finally get the recording they deserve. [Greg Knauft]
The Martial Arts destroys my face every time I listen to it. It is so good. It has all the intensity of a symphony. With guitars! [Kevan Williams]
Tell us about one of the best live shows you saw this year.
Modern Skirts at AthFest… it was in the rain and amazing! [Meg Pend]
As far as local bands, I'd have to say Bob Hay & the Jolly Beggars at Go Bar. It was super cold, but a fun show to catch. [Mike Turner]
Bubba Sparxxx at the Georgia Theatre. It was the only rap concert I've ever been to and it was awesome. [Luke Rogers]
Tin Cup Prophette opening for the Modern Skirts. She truly blew me away. [Mason Savage]
The rollicking Sleepy Horses' Lunch Paper show at AthFest was energizing, mesmerizing and a marked change from the earlier performances I'd seen by the same band. The musicians were all in sync, and the packed crowd couldn't take their eyes and ears off that teensy little stage. [Janet Geddis]
I loved the Flagpole Music Awards, it was my first night out in Athens. [Heather Gamboa]
The Empties at Farm 255. Small, intimate venue with a small crowd. [Rachel Bailey]
The Dumps put on an amazing show at the Georgia Theatre. They were tight and just awesome!!! [Mark T. Weathersby]
I loved seeing Butch Walker & The Let's Go Out Tonights at Legion Field. Butch and his band had such great energy and really interacted with the crowd. I always love when performers involve the audience in the show, it makes for a great experience. [Courtney Agualo]
My friends and I had a blast in the front row of the Beck show at the Georgia Theatre. Between the great music, the energy of "dancey guy," as we liked to call him and the bandmember look-alike puppets changing instruments along with the bandmembers, it was a very memorable event. [Tina Ridley]
Liz Durrett, Matthew Houck, Jason Molina and Ray Raposa at Flicker on Dec. 4. Four singer-songwriters onstage = beautiful. [Kristen Ashley]
My first show after moving to Athens was Cinemechanica, Iron Hero and We Versus the Shark in February, so after that show I was like, "Wow, I made the right choice by moving to Athens." [Mike White]
How about one of the worst?
Modern Skirts, September at the 40 Watt. Too crowded, and not a good set. [Meg Pend]
Holiday wasn't too impressive. I think they are a little cocky to be not so rocky. [Mel Vickery]
Modern Skirts didn't live up to the hype at one of their 40 Watt shows. [Andy Turner]
Boulevard and Pushbutton, 40 Watt, spring. Pushbutton's alright, but Boulevard is music for dudes who borrow their girlfriends' jeans and wear scarves in April. [Matt Hudgins]
Apples in Stereo at Popfest. The headliner of the whole festival was the worst thing I saw that day. [Sean Bennett]
Dark Meat at the Flagpole Music Awards. [Montez Nash]
The setup of the Wilco show at the Classic Center was awful. [Mary Beth Justus]
What do you hope to see happen in local music in 2007?
More killer tuneage, more bands getting out on the road to spread the gospel. [Ben Clack]
Athens musicians, stop moving to New York. [Sloan Simpson]
I'd like to see Athens get more of the shows that we tend to lose to Atlanta on a weekly basis. [Mike Turner]
Telenovela finally putting out an album! [Max Martin]
More outdoor shows, and more daylight shows. In that same vein, I'd love to have some more venues that offer shows earlier in the evening so that I have the opportunity to go home before 1 or 2 a.m. [Janet Geddis]
More unification amongst all the different groups and genres. Less attitude and snobbery from the hipsters. [Taylor Northern]
More affordable, solid shows at the Melting Point. [Sean Bennett]
Georgia Theatre get some serious TLC: sanitize, scrub, scrape and rejuvenate! [Tina Ridley]
More naked bodies, less rap. [Jon Bird]
Ginger Envelope gets signed. Makes it big. Buys a small town in southwest TX. We all move there and become an autonomous state surrounded by a physical border of 20-foot San Pedro cacti. [Claire Campbell]
Upping the giving a shit/ not giving a shit quotient. [Mercer West]
I'd love to see the return of (although expensive) thought-provoking, artistic, visually appealing concert posters. We went through a little wave a really amazing ones a few years ago, but unfortunately it's dropped off a little in the past year. [Will Kiser]
AthFest needs to bring in some big names to create a buzz. Come for those bands, stay for the local bands. Also, there is probably a better time of the year for AthFest. [Mark Ellers]
I hope local music breaks big-time so the whole scene is taken over by creepy A&R men from major labels and thousands of talentless assholes coming to "Make It Big" as part of the "Athens Sound." [Matt Hudgins]
More bands. Every year, thousands of new students come to the University. I want to see some of these kids getting serious about making great music. I'd also like to see bands sticking with it more. Athens is such a transient town, and it seems many of the best bands break up as people come in and out of school and the town. I hope to see many jobs quit and classes dropped in the name of focusing on music. This is a call to the next generation to ruin your life for music - it will be worth it. [Robert Gunn]
Readers' Top 10 Local Albums of 2006
Drive-By Truckers A Blessing and A Curse
R.E.M. And I Feel Fine: Best of the I.R.S. Years 1982–1987
Dark Meat Universal Indians
Cinemechanica The Martial Arts
Beyond Tomorrow Beyond Tomorrow
Elf Power Back to the Web
Iron Hero Safe as Houses
Widespread Panic Earth to America
Dubconscious Realization
An Epic At Best There Will Be Rain
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