After spending a few weeks with it, I've come to the conclusion that These New Puritans' 'Hidden' succeeds in every possible way. It delivers on the promise of single "We Want War" - and there was plenty of promise in "We Want War" - and then some in ways that I couldn't even have imagined. We're only a few weeks into 2010 but so far this is the album to beat - and it's going to take quite a bit to beat it.
And then.
Today in the mail: the UK vinyl pressing. Good lord, this thing is gorgeous: 180 gram virgin vinyl, textured outer sleeve with a thick PVC sleeve over that, printed inner sleeve, free digital download accessible even in the US - a win all around.
Now, I like listening to vinyl. I find it very aesthetically appealing and love the occasional bursts of surface noise. That said, I've never really bought in to the whole "vinyl sounds warmer/purer/truer/better" argument - I get where that line of thinking comes from but I've never really personally seen it. Perhaps it's because my hearing is pretty much shot to hell and/or the use of not exactly top of the line equipment, who knows. However - HOWEVER - the second I put the needle on this one, I totally got it.
Not to get all audiophile wankerish on you, but this. sounds. AMAZING. The beats really do sound like they're going to make your head explode. It really does have a more - ugh - full sound to it and is bringing out sounds in the mix I hadn't heard before - obviously compared to the mp3s, but even to the CD pressing.
I apologize, but damn. I can't recommend this one enough.
Oh, and "Attack Music" had better be the second single:
In trying to see if the b-sides to the These New Puritans "We Want War" 10" were available digitally in the US - hint: they're not - I came across something...not really interesting, just something.
On February 15th, No Bra will release a new single featuring a TNP remix on the b-side.
It was shit the first time around and is still shit, but good for her for hanging on. I'm not going to lie, I'm curious as to what this is all about...sort of.
As a reminder, the "big single" "Munchausen" - completely unsuitable for mixed company and, really, human consumption:
It's been a long time coming but Rhino is finally ready to release a deluxe edition of The Monkees' fifth LP - 'The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees' - to go along with the first four they gave us a few years back. Perhaps to make up for the wait - or, perhaps, so they could justify the expense - it's coming out on the Rhino Handmade imprint, which means it is really, really nice. Excessively nice, you could say.
The sessions for the album famously went on for ages and provided the group with the beginnings of many songs that would be used to fill up albums throughout the rest of their career. I'm no great Monkee historian but looking at the 88-strong track listing spread over the three discs of this thing, it appears they've covered pretty much everything worthwhile from the sessions. More importantly, we are also finally getting the long-elusive mono mix of the album - we've been told for years that it is noticeably different from the stereo mix and now we get to hear for ourselves. [Judging by the 30-second sample on the Rhino Handmade website, "Auntie's Municipal Court" - supposedly the song with the biggest differences in the mix - features more prominent percussion throughout.] You can check out the full track list there - there's a ton of good stuff. Acoustic versions of "Magnolia Simms" and "Tapioca Tundra"? A Mike vocal version of "Auntie's Municipal Court"? The 1968 versions of "Through The Looking Glass" and "Long Title: Do I Have To Do This All Over Again" so we can re-create the initial proposed running order?
01/18: These New Puritans - Hidden - 2xCD & LP [UK release - US in March]
01/25: Hadouken! - For The Masses - CD [UK release - US probably never]
02/02: [week off]
02/09 [first super Tuesday of the year]: Massive Attack - Heligoland - CD [no LP release? weak.] Sade - Soldier of Love - CD Arcadia - So Red The Rose [Deluxe Edition] - 2xCD&DVD Hot Chip - One Life Stand - CD/DVD
02/15: Pet Shop Boys - Pandemonium On Tour - DVD/CD [UK release - US release unknown] Blur - No Distance Left To Run [Documentary] & Live at Hyde Park - 2xDVD [UK release - US release unknown]
02/22: Alphabeat - Hole In My Heart - single [Sound of Arrows remix!] 02/23: Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh [I'll believe it when I see it] 02/26: La Roux - Fascination - German only single [is this still happening?]
03/01: Alphabeat - The Spell - CD [UK release - US release probably never]
03/08: Christina Aguilera - Bionic - CD [Aggie + Ladytron? I'm curious.]
03/16: The Cure - Disintegration - 2xCD/DVD [we can finally lay these Cure remasters to rest]
Also: Duran Duran - Duran Duran & Seven and the Ragged Tiger 2xCD/DVD re-issues in March
Gorillaz - Plastic Beach Battles - LP2 !!! - LP4 LCD Soundsystem - LP3 all supposedly coming in Q1.
Later on:
Elbow! School of Seven Bells! Duran Duran album whatever number we're on! Sound of Arrows debut!
Alright, let's get this show on the road. My 20 favorite albums from 2000-2009.
Aaaaaand, go!
20: Super Furry Animals - Mwng [2000] [what's Welsh for "amazing"?]
19: Jakobinarina - The First Crusade [2007] [if Ash came from Iceland - I still have no idea why I love this one so much]
18: Gravy Train!!!! - Hello Doctor [2003] [we wore our little pleated skirts and hiked them up to show our goods]
17: Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part One: Fourth World War [2008] [middle fingers proudly raised]
16: Ash - Free All Angels [2001] [this shouldn't exist, let alone be as good as it is]
15: The Hidden Cameras - Mississauga Goddam [2004] [indie-pop's very own 'Very']
14: Die Monitr Batss - Girls of War [2004] [at least someone was able to get the no-wave revival right]
13: La Roux - La Roux [2009] [are we too close to it? maybe. regardless, the album is synthpop perfection]
12: PJ Harvey - Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea [2000] [the least-PJ Harvey like album of the decade was also her finest]
11: Daníel Ágúst - Swallowed A Star [2005] ["Bambi" to the nth degree]
10: Dragonette - Galore [2007] [dirrty-girl pop done very right - marvellous]
09: The Rogers Sisters - The Invisible Deck [2006] [a consolidation of their strengths - sadly, also their swan song]
08: The Whip - X Marks Destination [2008] [the New Order of the 00's would have killed for just one of these tracks]
07: Geneva - Weather Underground [2000] [not to be like that, but where Radiohead should have gone post-OK Computer]
06: Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid [2008] [a heartbreaking work of staggering genius]
05: School of Seven Bells - Alpinisms [2008] [aural bliss]
04: Super Furry Animals - Rings Around the World [2001] [they raised the stakes so high even they couldn't answer to them]
03: Elbow - Asleep In The Back [2001] [deliciously out of time, they never sounded like this again]
02: The Breeders - Title TK [2002] [Kim Deal proves how unfair her advantage is - she did more in the two minutes of "Son of Three" than most contemporary bands can do in a lifetime]
01: The Hidden Cameras - The Smell of Our Own [2003] [duh]
I was originally trying to put together a list of my fifty favorite albums from the last decade. It seemed reasonable enough - we're talking about ten years of music after all, so it basically boiled down to my five favorite albums from each of the last ten years. Essentially. [Obviously something like the suck-fest of 2002 was going to have less and something like the amazing-ness of 2003 was going to have more...or so I thought.] So I started with a shortlist of about 75-80 albums and started weeding from there.
Once I got it down to fifty that I was happy with, it was time to start numbering. First place was obvious - and, honestly, had been decided from the second I first heard it - and the rest of the top 5 fell into place kind of nicely. Filling out a top twenty got a little tough - is this my sixteenth or seventeenth favorite album? Do I like it slightly more or slightly less than my fifteenth favorite? And so on and so forth - and then I just got tired of it and threw everything else into a pile. Also, as I was compiling I realized I had left out two albums that I couldn't say that I liked fifty other albums more than, but I also couldn't find two albums I liked slightly less to cut. So it turned into a top 52, which is an odd ball number and that made me sad.
So I did a little re-jigging of the list and came up with 33 1/3 albums - the 1/3 of an album being an EP- that I would like to round out the top 50-ish. The top 20 I came up with a pretty satisfying order, but after that it was an exercise in futility.
So for right now, I present the other 33 1/3 in order of release year - you can consider each of them my 21st favorite album of the past decade.
2000: The Bluetones - Science and Nature Primal Scream - XTRMNTR
2001: Ben Tramer - Halloween EP Björk - Vespertine Daft Punk - Discovery Destiny's Child - Survivor Sugababes - One Touch
2002: Imperial Teen - On JJ72 - I To Sky The Rogers Sisters - Purely Evil
2003: Elbow - Cast of Thousands Charlotte Hatherley - Grey Will Fade Junior Senior - D-d-don't Don't Stop The Beat
2004: PJ Harvey - Uh Huh Her The Rogers Sisters - Three Fingers Sonic Youth - Sonic Nurse
2005: Acid Casuals - Omni Duels - The Bright Lights & What I Should Have Learned Elbow - Leaders of the Free World Kaiser Chiefs - Employment Gruff Rhys - Yr Atal Genhedleath Super Furry Animals - Love Kraft
2006: Charlotte Hatherley - The Deep Blue Kasabian - Empire Robbie Williams - Rudebox
2007: Battles - Mirrored Bishop Allen - Bishop Allen & The Broken String
2008: Alphabeat - This Is Alphabeat The Breeders - Mountain Battles [album art of the decade for sure] The Kills - Midnight Boom These New Puritans - Beat Pyramid Van She - V
2009: The Boxer Rebellion - Union Pet Shop Boys - Yes
Here's the thing - there have been plenty of lists arguing a person's/group's/etc. favorite albums of the decade recently passed. [There's one coming here soon - of course - patience.] Far more interesting to me, however, are lists of albums that disappointed someone. It really brings out the snark - hooray! - and the creative way someone can write about something that failed to live up to expectations is far more interesting than something singing the praises of something else. [Pot, kettle, etc. I get it.]
So.
Ten albums that disappointed me over the past ten years. Apparently 2002 was a really, really bad year.
10: Radiohead - Kid A [2000]
Let's start with a big one, shall we? I simply don't understand how ten years removed people can still be singing the "praises" of this album. It wasn't the moment where Radiohead [and Thom Yorke in particular] turned from one of the modern eras most gifted artists into a group of whiny bitches - that would be 1998's insufferable and unwatchable "Meeting People Is Easy" documentary - but it was the musical manifestation of two years of trying way too hard to not make 'OK Computer II'. Fair play, but in the meantime they ignored almost everything that made them special in the first place and made an album of sub-Warp records cast offs, uninteresting sonic experiments and shat on one of their potentially greatest songs - "Motion Picture Soundtrack" - by, erm, soundtracking it with a dying organ and cheap choral synths.
Not that it's without its merits, of course. They did get "How To Disappear Completely" right and the electro-experiment worked in the fantastic "Idioteque" and the wonderfully paranoid "Everything In It's Right Place", but best of all was the bass-and-horn cacophony of "The National Anthem". Yes, I just listed off 2/5ths of the album, but the other 3/5ths is so horribly wretched, so terribly misguided, so just not good that it kills any good will that can be earned by those four tracks.
This is the sound of a band melting down, a band disappearing up their own collective ass, of a once mighty act falling. It's the kind of record that should have killed them, not furthered their reputation as the world's greatest band. It certainly was a game changer, that I can't argue - it made it impossible to take this band seriously anymore.
Say what you will, but 'Kid A' sucks.
09: Tori Amos - Scarlet's Walk [2002]
First there was the cheap- and rushed-sounding 'Venus: Orbiting' disc of 'To Venus And Back', but that was forgivable because it was hastily written & assembled and rush recorded on the back of a massive world tour to get out in time to pair it with a live album. Fair enough. Then there was the just plain awful 'Strange Little Girls' covers album but that was apparently a rush-job done to get out of her contract. Not really fair to fans, but fine. Do what you've gotta do.
Then comes this nonsense, a "proper" album with "proper" time spent on it, the album we were supposedly waiting for. Quite frankly, it was even worse than the two before it. More listenable than 'Strange Little Girls' perhaps, but at least that had the shock of being so awful going for it. 'Scarlet's Walk' suffers a far worse sin - it's boring. Dull dull dull.
Oh, and overlong. 'Boys For Pele' got away with being a third longer than it needed to be because it kept things interesting with the harpsichord and electronic piano experiments and mini-interludes that served as palette cleansers every once in a while. 'Scarlet's Walk' was one go-nowhere piano meandering after another, all married to a ludicrous concept about a hooker hitching across the US after 9/11. Or something like that.
It doesn't matter. If you need a good nap, put this one on.
[This one won out for the list over any other Tori Amos album in the last decade because it was the moment you had to admit she was really never coming back. I've always had more of a soft spot for 'The Beekeeper' than most, though it is pretty bad. 'American Doll Posse' could have been great with some editing and I still have no idea what to make of the nonsense that is 'Abnormally Attracted To Sin'. The less said about 'Midwinter's Graces' or whatever it was called the better.]
08: GusGus - Attention [2002]
This will be an easy one. GusGus was exactly what you thought a 4AD dance act would sound like - one foot firmly on the dance floor, another in the world of ethereal pop. My total adoration of 'Polydistortion' - and to a lesser extent 'This Is Normal' - is no secret. I wanted very much to like this album as well, but they made it very, very hard.
To be fair, it followed a complete overhaul of GusGus as an artistic collective. Now they were down to a slim four [or three, I forget] - the musical core was essentially the pre-GusGus house act T-World, fronted by new female vocalist Earth. [To be fair, former vocalist Daníel Ágúst did show up for a guest spot on "Desire" and it was just as bad.] In any case, on 'Attention' they went from something special to just another sub-par dance act in a landscape cluttered with them. Sad. They would never recover. Even sadder.
07: Sonic Youth - NYC ghosts + flowers [2000]
Let's be honest: Sonic Youth's recorded history is littered with some pretty bad ideas. That said, they generally saved their best ideas for the proper albums, so if you pretended that was the extent of their discography you were generally doing OK. Heading into 2000, though, they were in a rough spot. Their last album proper - 1998's 'A Thousand Leaves' - was a blatant attempt to re-capture 'Daydream Nation' that didn't quite work. [It wasn't bad but it certainly sits among their lesser albums at this point.] They followed that up with the well-intended but unlistenable mess of 'SYR4: Goodbye 20th Century'. They had also had a chunk of their gear stolen at a recent show and this was their first album recorded without it.
A chance to be reborn? Sure. As 21st century beat poets? Err...no thanks. The music plods, the lyrics are embarrassing even for Sonic Youth - "boys to to Jupiter/get more stupider/girls go to Mars/become rock stars"? Really? - and, well, the end result was terrible. They rebounded, truly reborn like a phoenix from the actual flames on 2002's 'Murray Street', but this will forever be a blot on a once pretty amazing album discography. [Joined at the end of the decade by the mess that was 'The Eternal'.]
06: Sigur Ros - ( ) [2002]
Where to even begin? Formless, repetitive, overly precious, trying-too-hard musical masturbation that got the "next big thing" hype so people accepted it. After the impossible beauty of 'Ágætis byrjun' this album was going to prove that album to be a fluke or to truly be an "alright start". Unfortunately - and, sadly, unsurprisingly - it proved the former, and the rest of the decade only drove that fact home. *sigh*
05: Suede - A New Morning [2002]
It's almost too easy. What were they even thinking? There is nothing - I repeat NOTHING - redeemable about this one. Even the cover art is horrendous. I can't even put it into words - the music speaks to the embarrassment itself. Nothing to see here.
04: Duran Duran - Red Carpet Massacre [2007]
What was promised was an 'Notorious' update - that's how I read it, anyways. What we got was the sound of the once "IT" band trying far too hard to once again become cool with the kids by hitching their wagon to the new "IT" producers. It could have worked alright - at the time, Justin Timberlake was essentially the Duran Duran of 2006/2007 - but for whatever reason it just didn't. They've bounced back from worse before, hopefully they've learned their lesson.
03: Pet Shop Boys - Release [2002]
Another one that could have worked alright - the Pet Shop Boys "acoustic" album, if you will, only not at all acoustic - but what we got was a cycle of incredibly weak lyrics paired with coma-inducing backing tracks. No one involved - not Neil Tennant, not Chris Lowe, not guest-guitarist Johnny Marr ['Behaviour II' this certainly is not] - was on top of their game on this one. Hell, not even at the bottom of their game - it's as if the Boys hired doppelgangers to fill in for an album while they went on holiday. Fortunately they came back in time to salvage the project with the shockingly excellent 'Disco 3' - probably the album we should have gotten in the first place - and we moved on like it was all just a bad dream.
02: Super Furry Animals - Dark Days / Light Years [2009]
Maybe it's because we're so close to the fact, but the mess that is SFA's 9th long player still stings. While there's no arguing that each album they released after 2001's 'Rings Around the World' offered increasingly diminishing returns, I never thought any of them were without their merits - 2005's 'Love Kraft' is particularly unfairly maligned - and was anxious awaiting this one.
Instead of another mini-pop masterpiece, though, we got a group of stoners releasing a string of inside jokes set to music. Great. A recent re-listen revealed what I initially thought to be true - the fantastic "Inaugural Trams" can sit comfortably alongside past glories as a fantastic SFA single, but nothing else here is worth saving. Not the 6-minute monster riff that ultimately goes nowhere of "Crazy Naked Girls", not the piss-poor "Mt.", not even the Cian led electro-fest closer "Pric" is up to any sort of high standard the band once held themselves to.
That it was continually praised as their finest record in years only made the whole thing more infuriating. A chink in the armor and hopefully nothing more, but for once I'm very apprehensive about what comes next.
01 - Björk - Volta [2007]
Fuck you, Björk. That's all I have to say about this, really.
After spending a few weeks with it, I've come to the conclusion that These New Puritans' 'Hidden' succeeds in every possible way. It delivers on the promise of single "We Want War" - and there was plenty of promise in "We Want War" - and then some in ways that I couldn't even have imagined. We're only a few weeks into 2010 but so far this is the album to beat - and it's going to take quite a bit to beat it.
