Tag: writing

Best Record of 2001: Day 61

by KevinLeave a Comment on Best Record of 2001: Day 61

Lovage vs. Unwound

Good morning!

Today we’re taking a quick look at records from Unwound and Lovage.

Mike Patton contains multitudes. For every weird or abrasive track he’s been on (i.e. anything by Mr. Bungle), there’s been an equal number of straight up rockers, ballads, or smoothed out tracks.

He’s also no stranger to concept albums (see again: Mr. Bungle). Nor is Nathaniel Merriweather aka Dan the Automator, aka one half of Handsome Boy Modeling School. The two of them team up with singer Jennifer Charles and Kid Koala to record the one and only Lovage release, Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By.

The record’s as low key as you might assume, with a lovesexy vibe, some sensuous beats, and Cinemax-level lyrics. It’s also a record that attempts to straddle the line between sincerity and comedic irony. You can’t go more than a verse or two without tripping over a double entendre. it’s louche all the way down, including the cover art inspired by none other that Serge Gainsbourg’s Nᵒ 2 LP.

Sometimes it works, sometimes the punchline fails to land. Did we really need yet another fucking record with skits in it? Long time readers may recall that this is a pet peeve of mine, and in the land rush to CDs taking place in the early aughts, somebody somewhere thought this would be a great way to fill out the newly available space on LPs (Spoiler: It’s not). “Love that Lovage, Baby” at least has Damon Albarn on it, so there’s that, I ’spose. And it borrows heavily from Donna Summer’s Love to Love You, which is great. Nevertheless…

(exhale)

Going the other way, the chemistry between Patton and Charles gets harder to ignore with each track. Is this a bit they’re both really committed to? Maybe it started out that way and blossomed into something real? Beats me, but it’s smoldering like lava the whole way through the record. Even at the end on “Archie and Veronica,” which is about (*checks notes)… banging a corpse?! Okay then.

All that aside, the record’s real superpower are the beats. When it comes to taking samples and building a soundscape, Dan the Automator is one of the best to ever do it.

Shame that Lovage was a one-and-done project. The premise only has so much runway, but these three (and friends along for the ride) are clearly in their element and having a good time. And with a title like this how could they not be? You were expecting a dirge?

You know that internet trend where someone’ll post “Don’t ask me to explain it, but…”?

Yeah. I don’t know how to explain it, but Leaves Turn Inside You couldn’t have come from anywhere but where it did. It’s extremely Olympia-coded and feels like the latest model to roll off the K-Records factory floor. That’s neither derogatory nor regressive.

I happen to like that sound and Unwound’s got it for days.

There is a certain melancholic detachment that comes with existing in a place where it rains a lot. I don’t mean the overt, back of hand on forehead type stuff. It’s just how a lot of PNW’ers are (I say this as a native). Whether it’s the minutes-long drone on “We Invent You” that kicks things off, or the icy synths (synths! from Olympia!) on “Treachery” that reframes things, that mood is all over the record and well, it fits.

For all the jangle (again: Olympia) and subtle vocals, there’s an undercurrent of tension that the listener can never quite shake—this is not something to play when you’re out on the water with the boys! But it is something you’ll want to have close by when you’re in the mood for something brooding and engaging in equal measure. It’s heavy without feeling oppressive.

In ’01 I was in a dead era as far as going to shows, but I could swear I’d seen them before. there was an time where I basically lived at the X-Ray Cafe and they had a ton of shows there in ’91-’92. Surely I’d been there for one of ’em? I wish I could remember! Time seems to have faded my memory (along with my hearing). No matter. Unwound is a great PNW band and Leaves Turn Inside You is an easy record to fall in love with. Just don’t ask me to explain it.

Bottom Line:  After a few days of records not quite landing, we’ve arrived at what’ll be a tough call for me. Lovage strikes me as the sort of band we’d listen to on the way to see Unwound. On my bracket I cheaped out and went for the latter as they’re the higher seed. My vote today? I honestly don’t know. It’s gonna be a game time decision…

Any thoughts on either of these records? Agree/disagree with my take? Sound off in the comments!

A Good Band Is Easy To Kill

by KevinLeave a Comment on A Good Band Is Easy To Kill

Best Record of 2001 Day 58: The story of an unappreciated pop masterpiece and the demise of a great band that never got their due.

Cover art courtesy of Velocette Records

Good morning!

For the last guest post in Round 1, Matty C takes the wheel and shares his take on Beulah’s The Coast Is Never Clear.

If you ask him, Matt Carlson will likely answer that he’s “a musician.” That’s of course very true-I’ve been lucky enough to hear him play. But he’s also a writer, podcaster, hosts a radio show, runs a record label, and more. And that doesn’t even touch on the work he does here on the platform with What Am I Making. If you ask me, he’s someone who’s work you should check out- there’s something there for everyone.

The words—and work— below the jump are all his, and I’m beyond grateful he let me share this article with everyone! I think you’ll dig it. When you’re done here, please be sure to check out more of his work!

KA—

2001 was a pretty damned good year in music.

The charts were littered with a variety of styles from Radiohead, Jay Z, The Weezer, and more. There were breakout records from The Strokes, Aaliyah, The White Stripes and The Shins. Radiohead’s Amnesiac topped many best of lists for the year.

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It was an exciting time of variety and energy. There was bandwidth for all of these records to coexist with one another in a vibrant ecosystem of diversity and experimentation.

Your local college station very liked played new songs from Low, Nick Cave, Bob Dylan, Missy Elliott, Gorillaz and Muse. It feels like a lifetime ago.

Seeing this landscape for sounds getting attention in 2001 makes it all the more puzzling how a record as brilliant as Beulah’s The Coast Is Never Clear could be missed in its own time, and then simply forgotten.

Beulah first came to prominence in the indie rock boom of the mid to late-nineties. Formed in San Francisco, CA by Miles Kurosky and Bill Swan, the band forged a sound from the sun soaked harmonies of The Beach Boys, syrupy melodies and the voice of an unreliable narrator weaving us through the California twilight at the end of the century.

Robert Schneider of Apples In Stereo heard a cassette of some early demos and offered to master the band’s first album Handsome Western States, which was released in 1997.

The lo-fi affair was a nice debut effort, but was bolstered by Schneider’s connection to the Elephant 6 Collective, and the blossoming success of Elephant 6 label mates, Neutral Milk Hotel. The connection with Elephant 6 would stick for better or worse, despite the fact that Schneider mastering the album and a 7” single were band’s only affiliation with the legendary collective.

The follow up, a decidedly more mid-fi sounding effort, When Your Heartstrings Break arrived in 1999. In addition to better sonic quality, there was a leveling up in the songwriting and arrangements on this second record. Instead of a sophomore slump, Beulah seemed to be surging.

Lost Classics: Beulah "When Your Heartstrings Break" - Magnet Magazine

The opening strains of Hello Resolven set the scene of The Coast Is Never Clear in cinematic fashion. Sickly sweet strings and a ghostly ethereal bell ring out to the vocal refrain,

“Wake up the king/Wake up the queen/Everybody laugh, everybody sing/It’s over . . . it’s over.”

What follows is a Southern California sunshine record that feels as though it were ghost written by Raymond Chandler. Despite overt poppiness oozing from nearly every note and arrangement, The Coast Is Never Clear is the perfect example of what Tom Waits once called, “Beautiful melodies telling me terrible things”.

Perhaps the best example of this can be found in the chorus of album highlight, Gene Autry. The song is ostensibly the tale of a journey to the west coast in a quest for self discovery and renewal. What follows is a conclusion summed up by the hooky chorus, “The city spreads out, just like a cut vein/Everybody drowns sad and lonely, alright”.

We can change the scenery but we cannot change the core of ourselves by relocation alone. The echoes of loneliness and desperation are littered within the words of these songs, all while the grooves pour out easy to swallow melodies and harmony.

On A Good Man Is Easy To Kill, Kurosky sings,

And when they cut out your lung
You said we could all breathe easy
The hole swallowed your heart
When they drilled holes in your skull
And screwed that halo to your head
Did you think you could fly?

It’s hard to know if the song is about Kurosky’s own personal health struggles, of which he has had many, or if this the tale of a friend, a partner, or complete fiction. In the end, it’s a song of survival and refusal to go quietly into that good night. Something Beulah is also struggling to do. Maybe the band itself is the hole in the heart.

The song title is of course a nod to the great southern gothic master Flannery O’Connor, and her famous story, A Good Man Is Hard To Find. Much like O’Connor, lyricist Kurosky takes a normal form, and turns it on its head.

For O’Connor the form was the short story. For Beulah, it’s a sunny pop song inflected with a stark honesty and darkness that is both jarring and easy to overlook. It’s a crafty way to deliver a brilliant and multileveled work. It’s also easy to miss just how brilliant it actually is.

After some label mergers, and various corporate machinations, Velocette Records released The Coast Is Never Clear in America on the auspicious date of September 11, 2001.

It’s unlikely that the unfortunate timing of the album’s release led to its under—appreciated status, but it cannot have helped. It was also lost in a sea of great records by bands with more momentum and greater resources than Beulah.

While this record holds its own against great albums of the era like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, The Soft Bulletin and And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, this was a band without the necessary foundation in place and the proper amount of luck and resources to get their just desserts.

The film A Good Band Is Easy To Kill is an unflinching, but fascinating look at the final tour for Beulah. The tour takes place in the wake of the band releasing their fourth and final album, Yoko. It’s a make or break moment for Kurosky, Swan and co.

Spoiler alert: They don’t make it.

It’s a great look at a very good band making terrific records and still not being able to make it work. And this was in a time when it was far easier to make it as an independent musician than it is a quarter century later.

Kurosky went gone on to release an excellent solo record called The Desert of Shallow Effects in 2010, but Beulah has remained dormant since 2004. There has been recent talk of a follow up to that record on varying social media accounts, but nothing has surfaced as yet.

As a songwriter and singer, I am in awe of The Coast Is Never Clear. It’s a masterwork of storytelling, soundscapes and songwriting. It’s a record I wish I had been a part of. My band The Stick Arounds even recorded a version of Gene Autry and we play it often at our live shows.

They say that “if you build it, they will come”. Beulah is living proof that they might not, but it’s worth building it anyway.

Cheers,

Matty C

Thank you again to Matty for today’s post! Please be sure to check out more of his work over at What Am I Making! Any thoughts on this record? Agree/disagree with his take? Sound off in the comments!

Check out the full bracket here.

Info on the tourney, voting, and more is here.

Amnesiac: Radiohead’s Fractured Aftershock to Kid A

by KevinLeave a Comment on Amnesiac: Radiohead’s Fractured Aftershock to Kid A

Best Record of 2001: Day 57

Cover art courtesy of EMI Records.

Good morning!

We’re in for a treat today, as Sam Colt takes the wheel and shares his take on Radiohead’s Amnesiac LP.

If you’ve been here for a minute, you’ve seen Sam’s work before. He and I did a Top 100 Series, are part of a group that shares our year-end lists, and, of course, have a monthly series on, well, whatever we find interesting.

You likely also know my feelings on Radiohead, and Sam’s quest to get me to come around on them. The TL;DR for new folks: he loves ‘em, and I don’t. But he’s also a helluva writer I’m lucky to get to “collab” with every month, and for as much as I give the band shi*t, I can’t think of anyone who’ll give the record its due more than him.

The words—and work— below the jump are all his, and I’m beyond grateful he let me share this with everyone! I think you’ll dig it, too. When you’re done here, please be sure to check out more of his work at This Is a Newsletter!

KA—

Supposedly made up of tracks that were recorded during the Kid A sessions, Amnesiac has been derisively called “Kid B,” and while there’s some truth to that statement, it’s also underselling the album a bit. In the aftermath of releasing a decade-defining alt-rock masterpiece, Radiohead spent years tearing apart their sound, reconstructing it, then found themselves with a deluge of material once the pieces started to fall into place. Kid A was the spearhead of their reinvention, carefully assembled as a statement of intent—one of alienation, disillusionment, and paranoia in an increasingly digitized and atomized world.

As a companion album, Amnesiac is the schizophrenic inverse: While it’s not Frankenstein-ed out of discards, it does serve as a catch-all repository for everything that didn’t suit the more controlled tracklist of its predecessor. The band once described Kid A as the equivalent of starting a forest fire from a great distance, while Amnesiac is standing at the center of the blaze. This is certainly not an immediately appealing album like The Bends or In Rainbows, but it pushes Kid A’s electronic experimentation to more anxious lengths. Amnesiac fills the vacant, desolate void within Kid A with a harrowing and offbeat freneticism. It’s more of a dark nebula than a shining star, reminiscent of Joy Division’s Closer, David Bowie’s Low, or other atmospheres of gloom.



For a band with an impeccable record of providing quality album openers, “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box” is particularly noteworthy, kicking off with these clanging hollow percussions and cold, desperate synths before Thom Yorke’s droning voice repeats “I’m a reasonable man, get off my case.” The transition to “Pyramid Song” is a bit jarring, but it’s an all-time Radiohead track; disquietly haunting and depressingly beautiful, and the way it descends with ghostly falsettos and ethereal strings is spine-tingling. With its razor-sharp groove, “I Might Be Wrong” is Radiohead’s interpretation of dance music, a nerve-wracking, anxiety-inducing bassline complemented by a jerky, jangling guitar riff. “Knives Out” is somewhat of an olive branch to everyone who thought the band had abandoned guitars completely, but because of its relative normality, it sounds the most alien of any track on Amnesiac, despite it being an odd endless rush forward without a chorus and seemingly beginning mid-riff.



Some of this is Radiohead at their least compromising. The backing track for “Like Spinning Plates” is a backmasked version of another song that hasn’t been released yet, and Yorke’s rising vocals syncopate with the abstract soundscape, making it feel apocalyptic and strikingly moving. “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors” is the skeletal backing track as an attempt to record the already-fabled “True Love Waits,” but with all its melody stripped out so it sounds like a robot repeatedly banging its head against a wall. The jazz-tinged “You and Whose Army?” and “Dollars and Cents” have crescendos that carry the same gloomy power as OK Computer but reshaped into something more of a free-form jam sesh.



Amnesiac isn’t necessarily a challenging album as much as it’s disorganized and dense, flipping itself around and over its head with every subsequent song, taking you through the gamut of Radiohead’s different sounds. There’s no convenient cohesive harmony, just a collection of screams colliding into one another and forging a new context through the cacophony. It pulls the listener from one extreme to the other without pause, except for the interlude “Hunting Bears,” which offers a moment of quiet amid the maelstrom.

This album certainly deserves at least some of the criticisms directed towards it. It’s an unhinged mess that swings wildly in quality, endlessly compared against its big brother and losing in obvious ways. But even a lesser Radiohead project—it ranks sixth in my personal rankings—is still a very good album. Even at its most alienating, meandering, or downright messy, much of it is perversely interesting and positively bewildering, making for an enjoyable and revelatory listen.

Amnesiac isn’t really a grower as much as it’s a grab bag of fragmented ideas that offers something different each time you put your hand in it. It’s the release that most explicitly states that Radiohead was done with being a straightforward rock band, or anything other than some guys trying to make the most interesting soundtrack that reflects the tenor of its time.

Bottom Line: Amnesiac is the #6 seed in this tourney, and is up against Whiskeytown’s Pneumonia, which sits at #123. I might not like Radiohead, but I am a fan of a sure thing. Thom Yorke & co it is.

Thank you again to Sam for today’s post! Please be sure to check out more of his work over at This Is a Newsletter!

Any thoughts on this record? Agree/disagree with Sam’s take? Sound off in the comments!

Check out the full bracket here.

Info on the tourney, voting, and more is here.

As always, thanks for being here.

KA—

Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

by KevinLeave a Comment on Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

In All Things Must Pass, the bittersweet post-mortem of Tower Records, they eventually come to the part of the story when the wheels really started to fall off.

The part where the banks come in and decide they know what’s best — that they know more than those who spent their lives building the chain.

Like every other takeover of a sinking ship, a few of the wrong things got tossed overboard. Things that are deemed superfluous, but mean a lot to a lot of people.

In aviation, that usually means outsourcing the ground handling or ticket counters. In the case of Tower Records, it was the scrapping of their in-house Pulse magazine. A magazine my music nerd friends and I used to ride our bikes across town to get copies of. A magazine whose every word we’d pore over.

Why am I writing an elegy for a long-gone magazine?

Because one of the best parts of Pulse was its Desert Island Discs feature. In each issue, they’d ask people to imagine being marooned, and what they’d want the soundtrack to be. We’d read every word in the magazine, but only after skipping to this first. Every list either confirmed that someone had the best taste ever or that they were a heretic. In those days, there was no middle ground.

And maybe that’s the allure of these sorts of exercises. The rush of confirmation or incredulity is tough to resist. To paraphrase Rick James: judgment is a helluva drug.

But so too is making these lists. The decision…The indecision… Did I make the right picks? Is this really what I’d want? What would the people back home think? Did I bring something that’ll make me sing loud enough to get the attention of a passing trawler? How does a record player work in a place with no power?

Tell me, what do you think?

KA—

On to the music…

A couple of my choices are on here, but I also love the idea that my next pick could be right around the corner. I know it sounds a bit silly, but to me that’s exciting.

Side A is tracks 1-19. Side B is tracks 20-39.

Other sources: Apple | Qobuz | YouTube Music|

Now it’s your turn.

Any new releases or shows you’re looking forward to? Whatcha got? Share your thoughts in the comments!

A Quick Look at ‘White Blood Cells’ at 25

by KevinLeave a Comment on A Quick Look at ‘White Blood Cells’ at 25

Best Record of 2001: Day 49

Cover art courtesy of Sympathy For the record Industry

Good morning!
Today we’re taking a quick look at The White Stripes’ White Blood Cells

I catch myself whenever I hear Seven Nation Army ring out from the soccer stand. What a song to co-opt! How odd that a band that’s not exactly obsessed with fame still has 1000s of people singing that song 20+ years on. Is there anyone else in that rarified air? My bemusement aside, Elephant is a solid record. How so much sound can come from two people is beyond me, but here we are. Other than some backing vocals, it really is just the two of them. Meg White’s drumming is simple (and simple is never easy), and Jack White’s guitar (and piano) take us from soccer stand fodder to swamp flats on tracks like “I Want to be the Boy to Warm Your Mother’s Heart.” It’s a no-skips record, even if not everything would sound good being yelled from a terrace.

If Elephant is what put the duo on the map, White Blood Cells is what lays the groundwork. I can almost guarantee at some point today someone will work “masterpiece” into the discourse or refer to it as art. The latter is true- all music is art. The former? Mmmm…I don’t know.

Fair play to “Fell In Love with a Girl “; it’s one of the best singles we’ve come across in Round 1. It’s loud, euphoric, and the kind of messy that says, “I want you to think this didn’t take any effort, but we spent days making it that way.” That sort of disheveled sound taps the same roots that DBT’s Southern Rock Opera did earlier in the week, as well as the likes of MC5 (which, I mean, sure. The White Stripes are from Detroit after all.)

Contrived or not, that simplicity works here—and as mentioned above— simple is never easy. Ask your favorite drummer. As a reformed one myself, I never miss a chance to defend Meg White from people that say “she’s not that good.” First, she’s more talented than 99.99999% of the people that say this, and second, see above. Playing a rudimentary style is easy…for about a minute. Doing it consistently and in a way that matches Jack White’s all-over-the-place stylings is anything but.

Did people do this with VU’s Moe Tucker? Maybe, but I doubt it. Look, I can be as snarky as anyone, but the boo boys can fuck off into the sun with all that.

(Exhale)

The sneering hipster take from Serious Music People ™ is that the basic, stripped-down style is a deficit. Really, it’s their superpower. Sometimes you just want some teeth and something that’s unapologetically loud…. even tracks like “I’m Finding It Harder to Be a Gentleman” and “The Same Boy You’ve Always Known” both of which which, I guess, count as slower tracks here, still have a little intentional grit and edge to ‘em. “We’re Going to Be Friends” is a bit too twee for this record, but people love it, so (Kanye shrug).

This band has always been polarizing, mostly, I think, because their records bring out the worst in the Rock Guy™ and Hipster tribes. So be it. In the meantime, with its mix of blues-y tracks and face melters, White Blood Cells will still be a punchy record that locked in the pair’s style.

Bottom Line: This is the #3 seed in the tourney, and I can’t see it slowing down anytime before Round 4 where it’ll likely face off against Kylie Minogue. Today it’s up against Squarepusher, who seem like almost an afterthought in comparison. Took the safe bet on this one; my bracket pick and vote will be for White Blood Cells.

Any thoughts on either of these records? Agree/disagree with my take? Sound off in the comments!

A Quick Look at Guided by Voices’ ‘Isolation Drills’ LP

by KevinLeave a Comment on A Quick Look at Guided by Voices’ ‘Isolation Drills’ LP

Best Record of 2001: Day 44

Cover art courtesy of TVT records

Good morning!

Today we’re taking a look at Guided by Voices 2001 LP Isolation Drills.

The glad girls only wanna get you high.

I couldn’t tell you the first time I heard GBV. There was no revelation, no epiphany the way there might’ve been with other bands. It just seems like they’ve always sorta been there, and if i’m honest, that’s kinda how I like it.

In one of my year-end issues, I joked that if we go more than six months without a GBV release, something must be horribly wrong.

I was only half kidding.

The band’s prolific output- or Robert Pollard’s- is no secret. An entire media empire could be built by simply dissecting each record in order.

Indeed, if you want a podcast that goes through most of the band’s catalog—it ended in 2020, so it’s missing, like, 13-14 records— you can start here.

The GBV discography is lengthy, but there’s no shortage of twists and turns along the way. That’s good for variety- and if you are planning a GBV media empire, it will mean no lack of flamethrower takes about each song/release.

In 2001, the phrase hot take didn’t exist yet, but music opinion(s) sure did. And views regarding Isolation Drills were generally positive. If anything, it’s a consistent record.

That’s not meant as a backhanded compliment. GBV can be varied, but sometimes squishing every style onto one record is regressive. With this release, we had a solid long player that did well to keep Pollard from bouncing around too much like a sonic superball.

Helping rein that in was this record’s lineup-specifically ex-Breeders drummer Jim MacPherson. The rhythm section often finds a way to get lost on these records, but this time is different.

To be clear, this is still a guitar-driven poppy record, the treble is set to 11, and the vocals are tailor-made to sing along with in the car. Or in a park…and a bunch of did just that in Milwakuee’s Humboldt Park a couple of summers ago.

Photo by author

When was their breakthrough? What’s their best record? These are the sorts of shibboleths record nerds live for. There’s not nearly enough bandwidth on the world wide web to tackle this, but I’d say by ’01 they were already very much on their way and Isolation Drills is one of their best

For my money, Glad Girls is damn near the poppiest track Pollard ever came up with, but you could make a plausible argument for Fair Touching, Chasing Heather Crazy, and Brides Have Hit Glass. And that’s just this record

The glad girls are alright. And that’s my hot take.

Bottom Line: This is up against They Might Be Giants’ Mink Car. TMBG have their own set of rabid fans, and Chase Roper has an entire newsletter dedicated to their work. If you’re at all interested and/or curious about their sounds, Kiss Me, Son of Blog should be your next stop.

Any thoughts on either of these records? Agree/disagree with my take? Sound off in the comments!

Gorillaz, Clearlake, and the Blur of Reality

by KevinLeave a Comment on Gorillaz, Clearlake, and the Blur of Reality

Best Record of 2001: Day 41

Good morning!

Today we’re taking a look at Gorillaz’ self-titled debut as it faces off against Clearlake’s Lido.

Note: As many of you saw, I recently wrote about a Best Record of 2001 challenge and noted that I’d be writing some of these up.

The plan is to do quick hits on each first-round matchup and post them directly to the page. Some will be longer, some won’t, and some might just be a handful of sentences. There’ll probably be a few typos. We’ll also have a few guest posts along the way, so make sure to stay tuned for those!

Check ’em out and let me know your thoughts! Chin wags & hot takes welcome! Sharing and restacks always appreciated.

KA—

In an era where AI blurs the line between what’s real and what isn’t, a band of cartoon avatars feels almost quaint. But in 2001, this was all wild-frontier kind of stuff, even if we knew the voices behind the characters. Damon Albarn had seen massive success in Blur, while Del Tha Funky Homosapien had given the world one of the most lethal earworms in the form of “Dobalina.” As part of Cibo Matto, Miho Hatori was also a bit of a cult figure. So yeah, plenty of firepower and street cred in equal measure.

Things kick off with the steady groove of “Re-Hash,” and quickly establish that this is not a Blur record, or a Del or Cibo Matto record, for that matter, but it is a collective effort. And of course, we have to talk about “Clint Eastwood,” the track that put them on the map. The blending of Albarn’s vocals with Del’s and the beat, which, if memory serves, came from the demo mode of a Casio keyboard, made for a fantastic on-ramp for most of us.

“19-2000” is also an all-timer, but for my money, the real star here is “Rock the House” (another Del feature). It’s a dance-floor filler. There’s also plenty of dub and other spacey vibes in every corner of the record, which leads to its biggest fault: for all the highs, there’s an equal amount of not-so-high stuff. This is a 15-track record that could have very easily been a 9- or 10-track masterpiece. With that much talent in one space, it was bound to happen.

Still, the good far outweighs the bad. We know the heights the band will reach later with tracks like “On Melancholy Hill” and “Dare.” But none of that happens without the noodling and adventuring taking place here. It’s a little rough around the edges, but ultimately this is a solid debut from a collective finding its footing.

With Lido, Clearlake seems to have found theirs, which ironically sounds not a little like Blur and later-era Beatles. And with Sunday Evening, maybe a little like Portishead? Maybe that’s just me. Maybe I’m overthinking it. No matter. This was supposed to represent the next wave of Britpop, but people want Parklife or the snotty fury of Oasis. They come close with “Something to Look Forward to” (this writer’s favorite on the record), but mostly this is atmospheric, woozy music with Jason Pegg’s vocals over the top. It’s an aesthetic that only comes from living somewhere that sees a lot of rain. It’s appealing enough, but not something I can see myself returning to.

Bottom Line: Gorillaz are seeded 7th here, and going up against #122 seems unfair. Part of me wants to vote for Clearlake just to see what happens, but as maudlin as the record can get, I’m not sure they’d appreciate a pity vote. Bracket pick and vote are both going to 2-D, Murdoc, Noodle, and Russel.

Any thoughts on either of these records? Agree/disagree with my take? Sound off in the comments!

Aaliyah’s Red Album: A Break Out Record Frozen in Time.

by KevinLeave a Comment on Aaliyah’s Red Album: A Break Out Record Frozen in Time.

Best Record of 2001: Day 37

Good morning!

Today we’re taking a look at Aaliyah’s self-titled record, aka “The Red Album.”

Note: As many of you saw, I recently wrote about a Best Record of 2001 challengeand noted that I’d be writing some of these up.

The plan is to do quick hits on each first-round matchup and post them directly to the page. Some will be longer, some won’t, and some might just be a handful of sentences. There’ll probably be a few typos. We’ll also have a few guest posts along the way, so make sure to stay tuned for those!

Check ’em out and let me know your thoughts! Chin wags & hot takes welcome! Sharing and restacks always appreciated.

KA—

On August 25, 2001, a small plane crashed just after takeoff in the Bahamas, killing all 9 aboard. This event would likely have been lost to time had one Aaliyah Dana Haughton not been on the manifest.

In aviation, there are multiple layers of safety (the Swiss cheese approach). The idea being that if there is a hole somewhere, there’s another layer to stop things from getting through. Acting as one of those layers is a large part of my day job. It almost always works- there’s a reason we get to complain about things like bad food and long check-in lines and not planes falling out of the sky. There’s never just one single point of failure. But when the holes line up, disaster is usually inevitable. And in late August in Marsh Harbour, they did just that. I don’t want to go too inside baseball here, but almost everything that could go wrong here did. It’s maddening, tbh. If there’s a silver lining, it’s that this incident now serves as a great example of what not to do when it comes to flight safety and demonstrating preventive practices.

Just a few weeks prior, Aaliyah’s self-titled third album dropped. It was a turning point: a record poised to expand her reach beyond R&B’s borders. We didn’t know it yet, but it would also turn out to be the last we’d hear from her, the album now frozen in time as her final statement.

Working closely with Timbaland, Missy Elliott, and Static Major, Aaliyah leans into a hybrid of hip-hop, electropop, and soul. On this record, she’s cast off the New Jack Swing shackles of her previous two records (and R. Kelly, too, for that matter). “We Need a Resolution” wastes no time setting the tone—its stuttering rhythms and negative space give her voice room to glide. Elsewhere, “Rock the Boat” (they were returning from the video shoot when the crash occurred) slows things down into a lush, quiet storm anthem. It’s an all-timer, IMO. These two tracks are the album’s high points—both unmistakably “Aaliyah” and suggest an even greater artistic leap looming on the horizon. In a lot of ways, this reminds me of Janet Jackson’s “Control” album, right down to the red background on the cover.

Elsewhere, the record can feel uneven. There are stretches where the songwriting doesn’t quite match the sophisticated production (you can only pen songs about f**king so many different ways), and a few tracks blur together.

That said, it still makes for a compelling listen. Tracks like “I Can Be” experiment with distorted guitars and fragmented vocal loops, while “It’s Whatever” drifts into airy, soul. The record’s willingness to push at genre boundaries is undeniable—even when the results don’t fully land. I appreciate that she never feels like she has to oversell anything. She’s here, she’s singing, and that’s the deal.

Her death, just weeks after the album’s release, inevitably colors how it’s heard. Aaliyah captures an artist at an early peak, but I couldn’t help but think “what if?” while listening. In another universe, this would have been her breakout album- a statement record, if you will. Instead, it marks the end of life and a career cut down way too soon.

Bottom Line: This is up against Hope Sandoval. Both have incredible voices, and on paper, Sandoval would be my pick on the strength of her duet with The Jesus and Mary Chain alone. but the Red Album makes a compelling case. My bracket pick went to the late Ms. Haughton. My vote? Well, I’m not sure yet…

Any thoughts on either of these records? Agree/disagree with my takes? Which one of these would you vote for? Sound off in the comments!

What’re You Listening To?

by KevinLeave a Comment on What’re You Listening To?

The 2-lane highway from Portland’s western suburbs to the Oregon Coast was exactly 72 miles.

It usually took about an hour and a half. It was a little faster if traffic was light and we were in a fast car. Or a little longer if we were in my friend Matt’s VW bus. It never bothered us, though.

It’s hard to be in a hurry when the sun’s out and you’re with your friends.

No one ever felt the need to check their watch while moseying through the Coast Range listening to Bob Marley.

At this point, Marley’s “Legend” compilation record is the default reggae record. Even if you can’t name a single other title or artist, you invariably at least know this one. Released posthumously, it’s the best-selling reggae record of all time, racking up millions of copies sold as of this writing. At least a dozen of those sales were from us.

Is there any other record so closely associated with it’s genre?

Most of us wound up going deeper into Marley’s discography, but like so many others, “Legend” was our on-ramp to his music. There we’d be, singing, “Every little thing’s gonna be all right,” while the bus wheezed and gasped, struggling to carry us over the hills. We sang “get up stand up” and would wind up doing just that through the years. The Bush family derisively referred to Portland as “Little Beirut.” We wore it as a badge of honor.

But over on the left side of the map, those concerns were a million miles away- our only worries being gas money and hitting spots like Indian Beach.

Today, we remember Marley on the 45th anniversary of his passing.

Four decades plus is a long time to have been gone from this life, yet Marley’s music & vision resonate now more than ever.

If we want every little thing to be all right, we need to get up and stand up.

This week’s list has factory fresh tracks from BODEGA, Nightbus, Onesie, and Taxi Girls, and well as the usual sonic comfort food and deep cuts.

Side A is tracks 1-14 (ends with “The Barbeque Party”). Side B is tracks 15-27.

On to the music…

KA—

Other sources: Apple | Qobuz | YouTube Music |


Now it’s your turn.

Any new releases or shows you’re looking forward to? Whatcha got? Share your thoughts in the comments!