Okay, technically I suppose I’m a few weeks late on the whole midyear thing (July 2nd was the actual midpoint), but at this stage in the game trying to come up with a short list of my favorite albums — when there’s so many yet to listen to — is a dizzying prospect.  Seriously, each week seems to bring a new gem — either one that I’m catching up with or waiting on to be released — that deservedly warrants my attention.  I’m not complaining — such is the nature of this type of list — but, hey, ultimately it’s going to be incomplete.

Thus far, 2009 is shaping up to be an intriguing musical year, and with the exception of a couple of albums, most of these releases are from established artists several albums into their careers; representing a type of songwriting that’s about further honing and synthesizing musical ideas that have already been there.  For the most part, this means there are no radical shifts in style other than, perhaps, towards the more “accessible”.  But that’s not necessarily a bad thing — we’re still talking art here.

In tackling this list, I chose to forgo the standard 1 through 10 thing and went with an alphabetical one instead.  As I said above, the list is incomplete and, truthfully, I’m just too lazy to try to nail down something so fluid.  Call it a copout if you want, but, trust me, we’ll all be better for it in the end.  Besides, you’ll get your ranked top 10 list at the end of the year.

In the meantime, if you haven’t already, I highly recommend you pick up some of these albums.

The best albums of 2009… so far:

Amadou and Miriam: Welcome to Mali

The back story behind this husband and wife duo from Mali is the stuff of Hollywood rock biopics and the music on Welcome to Mali makes them absolutely deserving of one.  In many ways, this record begins and ends with Amadou’s virtuoso guitar playing, combining traditional Malian blues and other African elements with Western rock.  But if there’s a sweeter, more achingly sincere voice than Miriam’s on any other record this year, I’d like to hear it, and ultimately that’s what one takes away from this breathtaking album.

Andrew Bird: Noble Beast/Useless Creatures

This album was released in two versions; the standard Noble Beast and the deluxe Noble Beast/Useless Creatures. And while I love the standard version Noble Beast (and perhaps it would have made this list regardless), the deluxe two disc version, with the instrumental Useless Creatures, is revelatory — capturing everything that Andrew Bird is about.  Of course, Noble Beast is still filled with Bird’s love of words for words sake quixotic lyrics, but here they seem to be accompanied by a surer sense of melody, making the odd word combinations resonate in ways they haven’t before.  Every time I hear the lines from the song “Masterswarm”; “So they took me to the hospital, they put my body through a scan/what they saw there would impress them all, for inside me grows a man”, riding on the back of its rising melody, I want to melt.  I can’t tell you why exactly, but I understand what he means.

Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavilion

A friend of mine said upon hearing this record, “this is the first Beach Boys’ album I’ve ever liked”. And I understand where he’s coming from. It’s impossible to listen to Merriweather Post Pavilion and not hear the best ideas and elements of that seminal group. But it also must be said, this sounds nothing like a Beach Boys’ record. Animal Collective have indeed decided to explore a more pop aesthetic on Merriweather, focusing on Panda Bear’s melodic vocal harmonies and sensibilities, while foregoing instinctual forays into discordance and horror, but the term “pop”, as it applies to Animal Collective, is a relative one. Densely layered and transcendent, this is nothing short of a masterwork.

Beirut: March of the Zapotec & Realpeople: Holland

I don’t know, maybe I just have a soft spot for Balkan infused song stylings filtered through Oaxacan brass bands, but damn, if this isn’t another inspired delivery by Zach Condon’s Beirut.  But that’s only the half of it — literally — as Beirut technically makes up only half of this record, the other half goes to Condon’s electro-indie endeavor, Realpeople.  Two EPs, with two different aesthetics, merged into one record, this really shouldn’t have worked as well as it does.  But with Condon’s mournful voice as the through line and the brilliant “My Night with the Prostitute from Marseille” bridging the two projects, it’s a very satisfying journey that works in spades.

Bill Callahan: Sometimes I Wish I Were an Eagle

Sublime.  Contemplative.  Beautiful.  Purposeful.  Dark.  All these are apt descriptions for ex-Smog singer Bill Callahan’s new solo effort.  Orchestrated in a way his previous band never was — or attempted to be — the storytelling and arrangements of these songs suit Callahan’s deep melancholic voice perfectly.  Like last year’s For Emma, Forever Ago by Bon Iver, this is a haunting, personal record that lingers long after it’s finished playing.

The Decemberists: The Hazards of Love

If there are two things as a music fan I’ve had trouble wrapping my head around over the years it would be prog rock and Jethro Tull… no, wait, there’s a third, rock operas.  Now if you told me in 2009 that one of my favorite records would have elements of all three (some more than others), I would’ve dismissed your suggestion outright.  But if you then told me it would be a Decemberists’ album, well, the conversation would’ve lasted a little bit longer.  Even still, the fact that the record is as good as it is, is a bit of a surprise;  heavy, crunching guitars, ridiculously rocked out vocals from My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden and repeating motifs, it’s a hell of a ride that gets better upon repeated visits.  And, yes, there’s some sort of story.

Dirty Projectors: Bitte Orca

To say that everything that’s going on here is a bit dizzying, is to undersell what the Dirty Projectors are all about.  In fact, the band throws more at a single song, than most artists do over a career; orch pop, R&B, electronica, chamber choir, you name it.  Is it a mess?  Well, that depends on how you like your pop… err… art pop.  If you’re looking to hook onto a melody or rhythm for an entire song, I suggest you look elsewhere.  But if you’re willing to let go — let the ideas (yes, ideas, it often feels a bit brainy) lead you through these, arguably, delicious nine gems, then you’re in for quite a treat.  Download “Useful Chamber” and if you like what you hear, the rest of the album will surely work for you.

Fanfarlo: Reservoir

Another Swede responsible for great indie rock?  Well, yeah.  Throwing everything into the mix — pianos, mandolins, violins, trumpets, toys and traditional bass, drums and guitars — lead Fanfarlo songwriter Simon Balthazar has created one of the best orch pop records you probably haven’t heard.  Why some records take off and others don’t, it’s hard to say, but with production by Peter Katis (The National, Interpol), you’d have thought this would have.

Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest

All right, you get it, I’ve got a particular soft spot for meandering, midtempo, throw every instrument you can think of into the production mix pop.  And while you may want to keep that in mind in regards to my opinion about Veckatimest, it doesn’t change the fact that this is a brilliant, lovely record. Opening with the sprawling America-esqe “Southern Point” and then moving on to, arguably, one of the best singles of the year, “Two Weeks”, you know what you’re going to get within the first eight minutes — an album of meticulously produced, well thought out pop songs.

Loney, Dear: Dear John

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the album has two of my favorite songs of the year, “Airport Surroundings” and “I Was Only Going Out”, and while it isn’t Loney, Dear’s best (that would be Loney Noir), it is an affecting collection of songs about sorrow and longing. Oh, and just in case the significance of the title Dear John, slipped past you, multi-instrumentalist Emil Svanänen (Loney, Dear himself) is looking to work a few things out.  Which is fine, because Dear John is well worth the wallow.  A folk-techno hybrid of sorts, this is a slightly new direction for the band.

Mos Def: The Ecstatic

As much as I love Mos Def the renaissance man, his music so far this decade has been inconsistent at best.  Which is all the more reason why The Ecstatic leaves me… well… ecstatic — it bumps.  Funky, loose, poignant (and perhaps a little lazy at times), Mos has something to say that’s worth listening to and thankfully he has the beats and sounds to deliver it over.  Working with the likes of J Dilla, Madlib, Mr. Flash, Oh No, Slick Rick, ex-Black Star partner Talib Kwelli and others, seems to make for an inspired work environment.

Phoenix: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Another band on this list that has taken what they’ve done so well in the past and perfected it 2009.  Pure power pop electro fun, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, represents the best in sugary songcraft.  Deceptively simple and catchy, it might be easy to dismiss this record as lightweight.  But don’t let your desire to dance or the seductive hook-into-your-brain melodies fool you, there’s a whole mess of romantic angst going on here as well. I mean, c’mon, they’re French.

Serge Gainsbourg: Histoire De Melody Nelson

First, let me throw out a couple of caveats in regards to this one: 1).  I don’t speak French.  And 2).  This was originally released in 1968.  In regards to the first, this hardly matters when it comes to Gainsbourg — especially this record — all you need to know (and believe me there won’t be any confusion about it) is that machismo and sexuality are what he’s going for (surprise surprise).  As to the second, well, until this year, the album has essentially been out of print and unavailable to all but the most committed of crate divers.  So caveats aside, what do we have?  A funky, dripping, sexy album that’s as hip now as it no doubt was then.

Travis Callison: Free

For good or for bad, a lot of contemporary pop music is either somewhat saccharine or filled with angst.  And while obviously I don’t have a problem with either, Free is neither of these things.  Blending elements of hip-hop, electro, soul and the best elements of modern folk, Travis Callison isn’t entirely creating new sonic landscapes, but rather new messages… and that, in its ambition alone, makes this record exciting.  Callison’s guitar playing certainly owes much to Hendrix, but only in the way hip-hop owes something to jazz — definitely worth checking out.  Download it for free here.

Wilco: Wilco (The Album)

Stylistically, Wilco (The Band) has always been a bit slippery to pin down, but with Wilco (The Album) and Sky Blue Sky before it, a definite sound is starting to emerge.  Feeling like a 1970s post-Nixon era drive down the PCH (or what I imagine that would be like), most everything on this LP would fit nicely onto 70s AOR radio.  But that said, there’s nothing nostalgic about the songwriting (see “Bull Black Nova”), but rather an attention to craft that comes from a seasoned band clearly in sync and at the top of their game.  I mean, really, how else can you explain the audacity and success of a rock song with the lyrics “everlasting love” that wasn’t penned by Bryan Adams or Celine Dion for the closing credits of a romantic Hollywood blockbuster?  You can’t.  And that’s what makes Wilco (the band) and Wilco (The Album) such a rewarding experience.

Honorable mentions:
Fever Ray: Fever Ray, Neko Case: Middle Cyclone, K’ naan: Troubadour, St. Vincent: Actor, Röyksopp: Junior, Dan Deacon: Bromst, Junior Boys: Begone Dull Care, Telefon Tel Aviv: Immolate Yourself, Japandroids: Post-Nothing, Red Hot Compilation: Dark Was the Night, Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Its Blitz, White Rabbits: It’s Frightening, Woods: Songs of Shame, the dodos, Time to Die

pau.

So on Monday I went to the hospital for a scheduled CT myelogram (think spinal tap) and a whole lot of waiting around on gurneys, in empty hallways counting holes in acoustic ceiling tiles (more on why in a later post).  And while I enjoy all the pomp and circumstance of having a 20 gauge needle put into my spine and then injected with an iodine-based dye while strapped to a table tilted head down at a 45° angle as much as the next person, I can probably think of one or two other things I’d rather be doing on an 85° Berkeley day… like, oh, I don’t know, not having a 20 gauge needle put into my spine and then injected with iodine-based dye while strapped to a table tilted head down at a 45° angle.  Call me crazy, but I’m just wired like that.

Still, like so many things in life, it’s not always about the size of the needle, but rather the size of the heart, and yesterday, my heart had an opportunity to swell again by at least two more sizes.  Hospitals, it seems, have that effect on me.  But it’s not really hospitals — personally I prefer to be nowhere around them — no, it’s really more a matter of what I’m able to see while I’m there — outside the backless gown, if you will.

From the beginning, I thought the day would be no big deal; check in, get prepped, get spiked, get scanned, lay flat, go home.  Simple.  But my mom, in her unchecked sensitivity and love, felt she would’ve been remiss in her motherly duties if she didn’t let me know just what kind of test I was actually having:

Her: “You know this is a serious exam don’t you?

Me: “Uh, yeah?”

Her: “Well, let me just send you a couple of links so you can see what it’s all about, just in case”.

Now, I know a lot of people out there subscribe to the whole “ignorance is bliss” thing, and while I’m not one of those subscription holders, I will cop to the adage that sometimes “less is more”, and in this case it especially applies to myelograms*.  In other words, go in cold, you’ll be a whole lot happier if you do.

Anyway, long story short; given the unfiltered, straight dope presented on those websites — and because my parents are just that cool — my mom and dad wanted to fly up to Berkeley to be with me for the exam.  Now you’re starting to see where I’m going with this, aren’t you?  And though I didn’t think it was necessary, I do enjoy their company and if a needle in the back facilitates that, well, then, far be it from me argue the point.

But as I said above, sometimes it’s not about the size of the needle; and what was most huge about the day — besides my mom waiting seven hours with my anxious dog, all the good thoughts from all over penetrating those reinforced steel walls, the cool nurse who chatted with me for an hour and a half while I was in recovery, my two friends shifting their schedules around to help me out — was my dad driving my battery challenged car over 100 miles to nowhere in the 90° plus heat without air conditioning after they woke up at three in the morning to catch a flight north, so that my car would be charged up enough to be smogged and then registered**.

Big, no?

But wait, here’s the kicker (and a lesson for humanity about how we should all be, what we’re all capable of); when he came down to see me in the basement post-op recovery room as I was being discharged, he was nothing but smiles — no sign of fatigue, no grumpiness, not a single complaint about what he’d just done***, not a word about it, just his sweet, patient, kind smile, and a “well kid, are you ready to go?”.  And, wow, I gotta tell ya, my heart at that moment couldn’t have been more expansive. My pop is an amazing father, to be sure, but more than that, he’s an exceptional human being who continually surprises.

Now I can give you a thousand and one reasons why I think this is so and where I think it comes from, but really, it’s hardly important — to know him is to love him and that’s enough.  Is he flawless?  That depends on your understanding of what that means — politically he can move a bit further to the left (but then so could most everyone else in SoCal) — but he continues to grow more patient, kind and loving with each passing day. And this is beautiful when you consider how full of these three things he already is.

And there you have it, a CT myelogram, while not exactly a ride you’re gonna see at Disneyland anytime soon, is like everything else in life — neither good nor bad — an open door in which opportunity — of all sorts — can be had.

Footnotes:

*This actually applies to most medical referencing on the Internet.  If you don’t believe me, try putting in the symptoms for the common cold and you might find that you have the Ebola virus.  I’m just saying, exercise your Google health searches with caution.

**Seems crazy, I know, but I don’t drive and neither do any of my friends.  It’s Berkeley, after all, and this is a town of bikes and public transportation.  So why do I have the van, you ask?  Well, believe it or not, it does occasionally come in handy, i.e. trips to the Sierra to ski.

***This, incidentally is really nothing compared everything he’s selflessly done since I’ve known him.

pau.

In Berkeley, there are roughly 5 days out of the year where the nighttime temperature gets to be around 70°.  Generally, even in summer, as soon as the sun goes down the mercury drops to about 50° or less.  If you live here, you’ve grown accustomed to it and accept the fact that if you wear shorts and a T-shirt during the day, you’re gonna be changing into something else later on; a scarf, a jacket, snowboard gear.  Which goes a long way in explaining why people in this town get so giddy and out of their minds when this particular meteorological anomaly occurs — we’re bursting at the seams with appreciation.

But while warm summer nights in Berkeley may be a rarity, an amazing show by Wilco at the Greek is not.  In fact, outside of their native Chicago, the band seems to be at home here like nowhere else.  They have the place dialed in in a way few bands do and the sound at the venue never sounds better than when they take the stage — from their melodic folk to the electronic dissonance, every nuance, every drum hit is clear.  Having been together now for several years, this current incarnation of the band is tight and almost feels familial, both in the way they interact with each other and the audience.  There’s a swing to the music now that feels improvisational, transcendent and oddly a little funky — coloring their hard to pin down style with an even broader palette.

By definition, this leg of the tour has been rather unconventional given that the band is supporting a new album that has yet to be released (Wilco (the album) drops June 30).  But for me, at least, this made the night all the more interesting.  I purposely chose not to listen to a streamed version of the album online (a difficult challenge I might add) so that the new material could hit me without the support of familiarity — songs would either work or they wouldn’t.  Thankfully, as it turned out, they did, especially “Bull Black Nova”, which moved and grinded melodically as well as anything Tweedy and the band has written to date.

In many ways, the evening felt like a party; from the sing-alongs during “A Shot in the Arm”, “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart”, “California Stars”, “Jesus Etc.” (and, well, almost everything in their back catalog), to Tweedy’s inspired and hilarious Janis Joplin meets Marvin Gaye falsetto on “Hate It Here”, to Tweedy’s son coming on stage dressed head to toe in tie-dye, to the sweet dedication to his wife, to the new material the band seemed absolutely energized to play, to lead guitarist Nels Cline’s now seemingly traditional red pants, to the jammed out version of “I’m the Man That Loves You” that closed out the pre-encore part of the show — all of it seemed to suggest a certain type of feeling running through the band and everyone in the audience.

All this said — and while it was indeed a brilliant 2 1/2 hour set of music — where everything came together and demonstrated why Wilco, especially this incarnation, is so compelling live, was during their final number of the night, “Hoodoo Voodoo”, a song off the Woody Guthrie inspired project with Billy Bragg, Mermaid Avenue.  Blissfully funked out and complete with goofy, albeit heart exploding, dueling lead guitars, it was a breathtaking and joyous way to end the evening, and a fitting wink to the opening “Wilco (The Song)”.  Of course, they could’ve closed things out with the obvious deeply grooved “Spiders (Kidsmoke)”, complete with Tweedy sharing his guitar with the audience, and all would have been more than right in Berkeley, but they didn’t and, well, what more can you say than this, wow – a 70° starry night, 8000 bouncing souls and a band that loves you.

Okkervil River opened the show to a near capacity crowd with a near perfect 45 minute set that included songs from several of their records.  Some of the standouts: “Pop Lie”, “John Allen Smith Sails”, “Plus Ones” and “Lost Coastlines”.  The band truly provided for a great double bill.

Wilco setlist:

Wilco (The Song)
Muzzle Of Bees
A Shot In The Arm
At Least That’s What You Said
Bull Black Nova
You Are My Face
Deeper Down
I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
One Wing
Radio Cure
Impossible Germany
California Stars
I Can’t Stand It
Jesus, Etc.
Handshake Drugs
Hate It Here
Walken
I’m The Man Who Loves You

Encore

You Never Know
The Late Greats
Box Full Of Letters
Misuderstood
Spiders (Kidsmoke)
Hoodoo Voodoo

pau.