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The
Best CDs of 2002
by Sam Smith
3.4.03
As
I seem to note every year about this time, my "Best of"
lists tend to suggest their own themes, and 2k2, despite some
truly outstanding efforts from the US, UK, and the Commonwealth
of Canadia, was clearly the year of the Swedish Invasion.
Three bands from the Kingdom of Sverige – The Soundtrack of
Our Lives, Kent, and The Hellacopters – cracked the Pit's
top ten this year, and if I'd ever gotten around to picking
up the latest from Skelleftea's own Wannadies, I wonder if
there might not have been four.
All
of which raises an obvious question – how is it that a nation
famous mostly for eight-month winters, a nonexistent bikini
team, and Peter Forsberg is able to take our popular
music forms and produce better stuff than our own artists?
Hmmph. Well, I could probably go on for days there, but I
shan't. Let's just leave it at this: Sweden is lately home
to a spectacular popular music culture, and in 2002 our Nordic
brethren really showed us how it's done.
As
always, I bought about a tenth of what I wish I had been able
to afford, and apologize profusely to all the worthy bands
who might have been mentioned here had I only time enough
and a budget.
1:
Space Team Electra – Intergalactic Torch Song
Despite
the popular sense that rock artists are the poets of our time,
the truth is that most popular music lyrics don't work very
well outside the context of the music. So it's always remarkable
when you find a CD where the words, at least in places, are
capable of standing on their own. Space Team Electra's Intergalactic
Torch Song is just such a disc, owing largely to the fact
that the release began its long, winding journey to completion
a few years back as a series of poems. These powerful, sometimes
stunningly compelling words provided an infrastructure around
which singer/guitarist Myshel Prasad then set about building
some fitting tuneage. If I'm inadvertently making this sound
all arty and free-form, like some bad '60s beat poet accompanying
himself on bongos, I apologize. Fact is, Torch Song
rocks, and all the fuss about the words notwithstanding, is
every bit as spectacular musically as the band's 1998 debut,
The
Vortex Flower. It's a measure more self-conscious
artistically, perhaps, owing to the fact that Vortex Flower
was more of an all-band enterprise while Torch Song
was primarily the work of Prasad and producer Sandy Pearlman
(who has worked with the likes of Blue Oyster Cult, The Clash,
Digital Underground, to name a few). You simply must hear
this to believe it... More
on STE...
 2:
The Soundtrack of Our Lives – Behind the Music
I'm
going to begin by quoting what Jim Booth wrote to me about
this: "This is the goddamdest record I have ever heard.
It's Sgt. Pepper, Days of Future Past, Buffalo
Springfield Again, Beggar's Banquet, Pet
Sounds, The Who Sell Out, Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers'
first album, Fleetwood Mac before all the chicks, like Kiln
House, maybe, PreFlyte (The Byrds), and a bunch
of others all put into the Waring blender and so thoroughly
pureed that it sounds like all of them and none of them. I'm
gonna say this despite the danger. It reminds me of the Klaatu
album. And I mean that in a good way." Umm-hmmm. And
then some. Unless you're the sort who pays very close attention
to popular music (which is to say, you don't limit yourself
to what's on the radio) you perhaps wouldn't expect this sort
of overwhelming accomplishment by a Swedish band. But unlike
most American acts these days, Soundtrack appears to have
assimilated just about everything recorded since the mid-1960s,
and the result is something that is highly informed, completely
reverent, but not the least bit derivative. Behind the
Music is a very smart record, and one you're going
to want to listen to over and over again.
3:
Peter Gabriel – Up
There's
a small group of artists out there who are so incredibly,
consistently brilliant that their average work is better than
most people's best. So it goes for Peter Gabriel, who's latest
release (his first "real" CD in 10 years, if you
don't count live discs, soundtracks, and experimental side
projects with apes and keyboards) perhaps isn't as ground-breaking
as his first or third solo records, but is every bit as nifty
as So or Us. It's not as accessible, though
– I don't know if Gabriel has given up on radio or not, but
when pulling this disc together he was clearly not overly
concerned about generating commercial airplay. Up is
a subtle, thoughtful record, taking its own sweet time to
unfold, and if you can't make time to give it at least four
or five spins before drawing conclusions, save your money.
The one track that perhaps did have radio in mind, "The
Barry Williams Show," has been hammered by some critics
I've read, with the All Music Guide's Stephen Thomas Erlewine
dismissing it as "a ham_fisted, wrong_headed trash_TV
'satire'" that "feels utterly forced and out of
place here, as if Geffen was pleading for anything resembling
a single to add to the album." Well, maybe, but I thought
it was both lyrically hysterical (the whacking of Jerry Springer
and his ilk continues unabated for 7:16) and musically catchy
as hell. Still, it was tonally at odds with the rest of the
CD, so perhaps you dock PG a +/- for caving into The Man....
 4:
Leisure McCorkle – Jet Set Baby
I've
been a Leisure fan for a few years now, and Jet Set Baby
is his best CD yet. His tunes are about as catchy as guitar
pop gets, and his lyrics occupy an odd sort of ground – love
songs written by a man who wants love to be simple and idyllic,
yet who has read a little too much to come intellectually
uncluttered into a relationship. There are a couple moments
where I question production decisions (Jamie Hoover does a
wonderful job overall, but I can't make myself approve of
the echo track on "Like That"), and some people
think Leisure sounds a little too much like Graham Parker,
Elvis Costello, and Joe Jackson circa 1978 for his own good,
but the bottom line is you won't be able to stop humming stuff
like "She Can't Count the Stars, "Does She Really
Know?" and "Blum's Lullaby." You just won't.
More
on Leisure McCorkle...
5:
Kent – Vapen & Ammunition
Ever
since Kent’s1997 release, Isola, I’ve been arguing
that the best BritPop band going was actually Swedish. That
disc (which, thanks to a very late arrival in the US, made
The Pit’s Best of 1999 list) and their 2000 follow-up, Hagnesta
Hill, were written and recorded in English, and met with
a good deal of success, at least back in Europe. So it was
a bit surprising to see Joakim Berg and his bandmates revert
to their native Swedish tongue on the new disc. It’s hard
to argue with the result, though. Vapen & Ammunition
(“vapen” meaning “guns”) is a bit less brooding than Isola
– one might even say a little less BritPoppy. Not that there’s
anything wrong with Radiohead-style murk-rock, but it’s good
to see a group like Kent avoiding the stylistic gravity well
that a genre as substantial as indie pop can exert.
6:
Queens of the Stone Age – Songs for the Deaf
One
of the curiouser records of the year, Songs for the Deaf
sort of goes back and forth between bone-mashing, noisy stoner
rock and surprisingly catchy, noisy power pop. The first half
of the record is mostly the former, and the last half is mostly
the latter, and frankly the track arrangement baffles me.
Still, QotSA were the consensus Best of the Hard Stuff this
year, with a disc that went out of its way to please nobody
besides the artists, and still managed to please a pretty
huge array of fans and critics alike.
7:
The Hellacopters – High Visibility
The
third of our Swedish Invasion entries. Geoff Ginsberg of AMG
calls The Hellacopters “fast, extremely hard, and loud beyond
reason,” and he’s hard to argue with. Hands-down my favorite
record of the year (albeit not the best by any critical
standards), I pop High Visibility in the CD player
and I’m 17 again. This disc makes me want to crank the stereo
up to 11, roll down the windows and cruise all over town annoying
the hell out of old people. It’s like these Swedish kids grew
up listening to KISS, Skynrd, Molly Hatchet’s Flirtin’
with Disaster, and Graham Parker circa 1979 (yeah, I know,
that’s what I thought, too, but listen to "No Song Unheard"
and "No One's Gonna Do It for You" and you tell
me). I don't know – all the critics can do is talk about how
the band worships The Stooges and MC5, but I'm hearing a lot
of Jacksonville. Anyway, after spinning this CD for the 15th
straight time all I can do is wonder how in the name of Iggy
Pop any teenager looking to raise hell and piss off his parents
can possibly waste a dime on Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit when
he could be listening to The Hellacopters. Sigh.
Maybe they’re just trying to annoy me because I’m old....
8:
Feel – Feel
Scot
Sax, the driving force behind Wanderlust, has drifted in and
out of projects since the band broke up in 1998 or so (I'm
never sure of exactly when the axe fell) and he moved to LA.
Neither his solo work to this point, nor his band Bachelor
Number One, ever really nailed it for me quite like the haunting,
beautiful guitar-pop gems that inhabited the Wanderlust record.
But now Sax is fronting a new band, Feel, and finally I have
the CD I've been waiting on since 1995. At first listen I
thought the infectious "I Am the Summertime," which
originally appeared on the American Pie soundtrack
as a Bachelor Number One song, was the strongest cut on the
disc, but after a few listens the newer songs begin to assert
themselves. It's wonderful to hear an artist like Sax grow,
especially when newfound depth and expanded songsmithing skills
don't come at the expense of the exuberance that originally
attracted me to his music in the first place.
9:
Superdrag – Last Call for Vitriol
Superdrag
has evolved so much in such a comparatively short time that
I occasionally feel lost trying to chart one record and its
progression with respect to what came before it, and that
has never been more the case than with their latest. More
accomplished than the debut and less dominated by catchy (read,
radio-friendly) fare than Head Trip in Every Key and
In the Valley of Dying Stars (although those CDs apparently
weren't accessible enough for Elektra, so what do I know?),
Last Call for Vitriol actually feels to me like the
record you produce once you've spent a few years learning
your lessons about the music industry (the hard way), have
put it behind you, and made your peace with who you are and
who you want to be as an artist. Maybe the word I'm after
here is "comfortable" – John Davis and crew seem
to have found a groove that frees them to make the music they
want to make, and on their own terms. I don't like
it as much as I do Head Trip, really, because I'm a
sucker for the pop hook, but I really respect
 10:
Cockeyed Ghost – Ludlow 6:18
Adam
Marsland is the kind of musician we all wish was having more
success. He writes great songs, has a strong sense of his
own musical heritage (not a lot of guys out there these days
who even know who Todd Rundgren is), works his ass
off, tours like a madman – essentially, he lives the starving,
but dedicated artist lifestyle to the hilt. And he doesn't
whine about it, either. He sees the hand he's been dealt and
understands the deal he's made. He probably realizes that
had he been born 20 years earlier he might be living the large
life right now. Ludlow 6:18 is wonderful stuff for
the select few of us who wind up hearing his records (and
inevitably buying them). But it's also maddening – as in,
I get so mad I want to kill the entire music industry and
everybody associated with it – to hear a song like the title
track and to know that it ain't coming to a radio station
in your town. Cockeyed Ghost didn't go platinum and didn't
win any Grammies, but damn, they put out a better record than
most of the people who did. [Note: This was actually a 2001
release that I didn't get my hands on until 2k2.] More
on Cockeyed Ghost...
Honorable
Mention
Assemblage
23 – Defiance
Sadly,
I didn't hear a lot of darkbeat this year, but thanks to Mike
Smith of Fiction 8 I did get my ears around this delicious
bit of industrial dance/pop wonderfulness. I'm reminded a
lot of VNV Nation's Empires and Apoptygma Berzerk's
brilliant Welcome to Earth, with the occasional echo
of New Order 1997, as A23 strikes a near-perfect balance between
the darkly atmospheric and the up energy necessary for dancefloor
relevance.
Sneaker
Pimps – Bloodsport
Sneaker
Pimps are a very different band form the one that debuted
with Becoming X back in 1996. That CD produced an actual
hit single, "6 Underground," voiced by then-lead
singer Kelli Dayton. Dayton is now gone, and with guitarist
Chris Corner now handling most of the vocals the Pimps have
edged away from their sultry Euro trip-hop sound and into
territory that is decidedly more rock in nature – almost as
though they set out to create trip-grunge. I'm still trying
to decide how much I like the results in this instance, but
regardless, I very much appreciate the effort. Trip is a genre
that seduces a lot of artists into a certain sameness – smooth,
jazzy, driven by torchy female vox, etc. The style can benefit
from being kicked in a different direction, although it remains
to be seen whether the Sneaker Pimps wield enough influence
to make a difference.
Supreme
Beings of Leisure – Divine Operating System
While
we're on the subject of trip-hop bands with evolving styles....
LA-based SBL apparently made a conscious decision to work
the dancefloor a little harder on the new record, which is
not necessarily a bad idea, as dance-minded downbeat can be
a marvelous thing. However, Ramin Sakurai and Geri Soriano_Lightwood
(they have apparently parted ways with Rick Torres and Kiran
Shahani) decided to build their dance structures on an electronic
neo-Disco platform, and frankly, the formula wears a bit thin
for me after a couple songs (in the interest of full disclosure,
I hate the absolute hell out of Disco, so this may be clouding
my judgement). Still, if the CD is a bit less spontaneous
than the band's eponymous debut, it is nonetheless a masterwork
of smoothness and craftsmanship, and polyethnic, technophilic
SoCal audiocool just oozes from the speakers. If I had never
heard the first record, I might well like this one a lot more.
Trespassers
William – Different Stars
Trespassers
William is without question the make-out record of the year.
The Costa Mesa-based indie-pop quartet (I'm almost tempted
to call them slo-core) is primarily a vehicle for singer/songwriter
Anna_Lynne Williams, who possesses one of the most striking
voices I think I've ever heard. Her original tunes include
the plaintive, Chris Isaak-esque "Lie in the Sound"
(which you can hear
and download free so as to draw your own conclusions)
as well as an achingly beautiful cover of U2's "Love
is Blindness" that may be even prettier than the original.
Tuuli
– Here We Go
If everybody were to give this Toronto chick-pop outfit's
CD a spin there'd be a hell of a lot less chatter about The
Donnas, that's for damned sure. Unlike current flavor of the
month and cynical label put-up job Avril Lavigne, Tuuli (from
the Finnish word for fire) actually write their own songs
and play their own instruments, and the fact that all the
songs except one are about breaking up and failed relationships
just makes the trip all the more enjoyable, oddly enough.
The Bangles were never this good, and I'm not sure the Go-Go's
were, either.
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