Music - Best of 2004
Made for These Times
by Nick Bollinger, Jon Bywater, Jim Pinckney and Ian Dando
Continued from page 1...
3. ESPERS, Espers (Locust Music).
In a year where quirky folk music got a lot of attention, Espers stand out as classicists. This relatively strait-laced, homage-like album gets at the elegance and peace of the best of the era it emulates – predominantly British folk circa 1970. The Philadelphia group start from a slightly icy, straight-backed, chamber music sound. Such school-music-room simplicity as autoharp and recorder is central to an embroidery of dulcimers, guitars, chimes and other extras. From here, sheets of fuzztone and a tone generator quietly lead us deeper into the psychedelic forest than wackier experiments ever could.
4. END OF THE CENTURY: The Story of the Ramones, directed by Michael Gramaglia and Jim Fields.
Johnny Ramone shows up in this straightforward but excellent rockumentary as shrewd and brutal, a right-wing, working-class New Yorker, who aside from being a brilliant guitarist, was the man who drove the Ramones, his unbetterable band, for better and, perhaps, into the ground. It’s joyous and grim, a classically rock’n’roll story. He died in September: R.I.P. Joey, Dee Dee, Johnny.
5. 76/77, Cobra Killer (Monika).
Smarter and more enduring listening than almost any other electropunk, Cobra Killer still have the glamour and the manic energy that that flavour is all about. From the drily antagonistic “Let’s Have a Problem” to “I’m Finished”, 76/77 burns with the intoxicating energy of alcohol, oestrogen and brains.
6. TOO MUCH GUITAR, Reigning Sound (In the Red).
No one much has heard of Dan Penn’s Nobody’s Fool or Sir Douglas Quintet Plus 2 either, but those are the high benchmarks of Southern, blue-eyed soul to which this noisy garage-rock album comfortably measures up. An online interview has the lead singer, Greg Cartwright, specify his humble ambition to make a record someone would be excited to find at a garage sale one day. This one means he already has.
7. OPEN SESAME, Shaft (Lil’ Chief).
Fans of this Auckland act will have known at least half of the songs on this, their debut album, by heart years ago. And they’ll still like them. This finely crafted disc presents Shaft’s strangely normal songbook and it’s as fresh as if it were plucked out of the air yesterday.
8. THE THIRD UNHEARD: Connecticut Hip Hop 1979-1983, Various artists (Stone’s Throw).
About a million years before Pharrell, Outkast and the Roots ruled the roost, around 1979, stacks of homemade records looped the breaks and busted rhymes in a way that now sounds better than ever. Hopefully heralding the start of a new, more careful archiving of the tiny labels that released cuts by such as the scene stars here, Pookey Blow and Mr Magic, this regional survey avoids the rather random, “Block Party Breaks” type approach to hip-hop history, and critically beats down on the lazy, NYC-centric Sugarhill Gang orthodoxy about this early era.
9. ALL TIMES THROUGH PARADISE, the Saints (EMI).
Having hit upon the 70s punk recipe all on their own, in Brisbane, arguably earlier than the Damned or the Ramones (helped by Australia’s own Coloured Balls and the sharpie scene, perhaps), the Saints made one of the best rock records of all time, I’m Stranded. That LP, the other two they managed during their first and fieriest incarnation, a live show from ’77, indeed every scrap they recorded between ’76 and ’78, has never sounded crisper than on this meticulously produced set.
10. I COULD DESTROY YOU WITH A SINGLE THOUGHT, Kraus (try PO Box 1320, Dunedin).
The superpowered arrogance of the title matches the pains taken to craft this 10-track instrumental album, somewhere between a pop Moog record and the harshest no wave. Short melodic and rhythmic figures are worked hard into the knife edge between queasy claustrophobia and rigorous brilliance. By turns evoking glam rock and cold wave, Kraus takes up the Crude aesthetic and makes the most exciting contribution in a while to the local underground.
BY JIM PINCKNEY
1. MORE CREATION, Lennie Hibbert (Studio One).
As band leader of the celebrated Alpha Boys School in the 60s, vibes specialist, multi-instrumentalist and arranger Lennie Hibbert mentored many of Jamaica’s greatest musicians. His second, extraordinary album of gentle rocksteady and Caribbean jazz has long been unavailable, and is quite simply without compare. The passing of label founder Clement “Sir Coxsone” Dodd this year makes it even more fitting that this diverse and unique album should finally get a decent issue.
2. THE GREY ALBUM, Danger Mouse & Jay-Z (download).
Swiftly curtailed by heavy-handed action from EMI’s lawyers, the combination of the a cappellas from Jay-Z’s farewell The Black Album and the Beatles’ “White Album”, superbly disassembled, justified the media hoopla. Most mash-ups and bootlegs have a short shelf life, but this skilfully crafted musical mismatch is a great deal more than just postmodern pranksterism.
3. SOUTHERN LIGHTS, SJD (Round Trip Mars).
Well, I have to claim self-interest, as this album is on my own label, but the critical and public acclaim speaks for itself. Sean Donnelly firmly steps onwards and upwards from 2001’s Lost Soul Music with assistance from his own band, Victoria Kelly, David Kilgour, Don McGlashan, Angus McNaughton and others.
4. FREE THE BEES, the Bees (Virgin).
