4. Animal Collective "My Girls" (2009)

I began working on this list right around the time Merriweather Post Pavilion was released. I caved and bought the album after reading the rapturous reviews it was getting. Listening to the record a few times, I was immediately intrigued by its first single, "My Girls." It's a slow-burn song, like the rest of MPP. But as I compiled my list, it worked its way into my mind. I've probably listened to the song a few hundred times now, so I feel comfortable making the next statement. "My Girls" is brilliant. Utterly, utterly brilliant.

A caveat: I am not a fan of avant-garde music. But "My Girls" (or MPP, for that matter) is not avante-garde, no matter what is said of it. It is pop music dismantled and put back together. At first it sounds structureless, which is why it invites the avante-garde label and why it is so slow-burn. Actually, its structure is fugal, repeating elements and themes until they bore their way into your ear, never to escape.

"My Girls" is an example of how, in music, the right element at the right time can cause unadulterated joy in the listener. Here it's a well-timed hand clap, or an exuberant "wooooo," that does the trick. What at first appears to be a cacophony of sound becomes a glorious cacophony of sound.

Brian Wilson casts a wide shadow in music nowadays, especially over this list. But "My Girls" is an example of how a band can channel Wilson while pushing the sound further, and in Animal Collective's case, into the cosmos.

Click here to view the entire list.

Happy Birthday, Cultural Minefield!

One year old today.

5. PJ Harvey "This Is Love" (2000)

On the surface, "This Is Love" is Polly Harvey's most unabashedly happy song on an album full of them. Yet Harvey performs it with an almost malevolent ferocity. Even in love, Polly is not short on passion and theatricality.

"This Is Love" begins with one of PJ Harvey's best lyrics:

I can't believe life's so complex, when I just wanna sit here and watch you undress.

It's a remarkable line for an artist who has previously seemed tortured by life's complexity. Harvey goes on to chase her man-prey around a table, her head burning with lust. This is love? It sounds more like raging desire.

The music is as straightforward and accessible as PJ Harvey gets. A charging bass hook gives the song its menacing pounce, while her guitar shimmers with lovely arpeggios. Above it all, Polly roars like a lioness in heat.

It should be noted that "This Is Love" is the second song from Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea to make this list. It only goes to show the album's embarrassment of riches, and how high PJ Harvey towers over her peers when she's at her best.

Click here to view the entire list.

PJ Harvey - This Is Love
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6. Loretta Lynn (feat. Jack White) "Portland, Oregon" (2004)

Jack White dedicated the White Stripes' second record, White Blood Cells, to Loretta Lynn. His admiration for Lynn is taken to its logical conclusion on "Portland, Oregon," a song about a septuagenarian cougar and a young buck meeting over sloe gin fizz and getting it on. The song somehow avoids being creepy, despite the extreme age gap of the duettists. In fact, it's the quintessential celebratory one-night-stand song, completely devoid of regret or shame.

Forget Conway Twitty, Jack White has become Lynn's partner in crime and, in her words, her "forever friend". "Portland, Oregon" begins with a meandering Jack White intro, but when the song kicks in, it's clear that Lynn has been reinvigorated by her collaboration with the White Stripe. In fact, White's garage rock aesthetic only heightens the outlaw country of Loretta Lynn.

Loretta Lynn hasn't been this relevant since the late 1970s, and it's not only thanks to Jack White. Her voice is as strong as ever, and she's been making some killer music. Few artists produce such amazing work at such an old age, especially not music this youthful.

Click here to view the entire list.

Is Radiohead Overrated?

I've said so before, with regard to Kid A and Amnesiac. I love Radiohead, but this article in Spin makes some good points:

They're the vanguard of music, a post-rock think tank, the absolute state of the art.

They've also been righteous, giving a confused music world a moral center. So we sit, wearing headphones and frozen grins, and continue denying that guilty, nagging feeling that actually, in some ways, when you think about it…Radiohead kinda blow.

Few, save for Liam or Noel Gallagher, dare speak this heresy aloud, instead couching it in longings for a "back-to-basics" album or a "return to form," despite the fact that Radiohead are at their critical and commercial peak. Civil (by Internet standards) discussions reside on Yahoo message boards with titles like "Why Did Radiohead Become Dull and Boring?" But while such almost apologetic criticism typically hides online or at water coolers, sometimes the elephant isn't in the room, but onstage.

At last year's All Points West festival, as their thin, stubbly faces filled massive video screens, Radiohead began their set with In Rainbows' "15 Step": an open-ended groove with a quirky electro beat, two-chord motif, and airy, abstract singing. Then they did the 2001 song "Morning Bell/Amnesiac": an open-ended groove with a quirky electro beat, two-chord motif, and airy, abstract singing. Then they kept going, one groovy tone poem into another, masterfully weaving beats, sound-washes, and misty vocals into an immersive experience of sound, light, pattern, rhythm, and utter, paralyzing boredom. By the encore, it was obvious what Radiohead had become: an exceptionally well-dressed jam band. That you can't even dance to.

Yowch.

The Wealth of Nations

Daron Acemoglu, channeling Paul Collier, has an excellent primer on development economics in this month's Esquire. A highlight is Acemoglu's comparison of Jeffrey Sachs and Jared Diamond to Montesquieu:

You can chart the search for a theory of inequality to the French political philosopher Montesquieu, who in the mid-eighteenth century came up with a very simple explanation: People in hot places are inherently lazy. Other no less sweeping explanations soon followed: Could it be that Max Weber's Protestant work ethic is the true driver of economic success? Or perhaps the richest countries are those that were former British colonies? Or maybe it's as simple as tracing which nations have the largest populations of European descent? The problem with all of these theories is that while they superficially fit some specific cases, others radically disprove them. [...]

And yet while Sachs and Diamond offer good insight into certain aspects of poverty, they share something in common with Montesquieu and others who followed: They ignore incentives. People need incentives to invest and prosper; they need to know that if they work hard, they can make money and actually keep that money. And the key to ensuring those incentives is sound institutions — the rule of law and security and a governing system that offers opportunities to achieve and innovate. That's what determines the haves from the have-nots — not geography or weather or technology or disease or ethnicity.

Put simply: Fix incentives and you will fix poverty. And if you wish to fix institutions, you have to fix governments.

Easier said than done, but true nonetheless.

The Wire: 100 Greatest Quotes

What a show.



(HT Radley Balko)