News flash! We are currently on Day Three of Tiny Mix Tape’s “Favorite 100 Albums of 2000-2009″ feature,” which editor Mr. P and his smurfs are unveiling in suspenseful little increments of 20 albums per day. I won’t post my own submission to the list here, but let me just say that recalling the albums that defined the earlier part of the last decade for me was one heck of a head-scratch down memory lane. There was a time, for instance, when my favorite thing to do on Friday afternoons was listen to Is This It? on repeat at my friend Antonia’s parents’ house and then walk past this storefront on East 7th Street where Julian and Fabrizio could invariably be spotted chomping on pizzas and playing Super Mario. Ah, youth!
In any case, I think TMT’s decision to speak of “Favorite” albums here–rather than “Top” albums, or “Best” albums–is pretty indicative of the publication’s penchant for NOT simply rehashing what we all expect to hear. Or worse: looking back over the “biggest” albums of the decade and unreflectingly conflating “most popular” or “highest grossing” with “highest quality,” because that is just so much easier. One interesting factoid about the magazine’s 2009 year-end list (which was tallied into the decade list) is that it was formerly divided into a general indie rock list and a “Eureka” list, reserved for the staff’s more left-of-center favorites. Maybe it’s just a testament to our times, or maybe to the changing composition of the TMT staff over the years, but there was so much overlap between the two lists this past year that the staff was forced to combine them! That alone, I think, should provide some explanation for what you see here.
Following the lead of fellow TMT-er Elliott Sharp from Biomusicosophy (which is definitely one of my favorite new music blogs), I thought I would repost the blurbs I wrote for two of the albums I was really delighted to discover in the annals of TMT decade-land. #80: Flower-Corsano Duo, The Radiant Mirror, [Textile; 2007]
When we first gave it a spin, The Radiant Mirror sounded nothing like the coldhearted deconstruction of form that its cover image — a man physically extracting rectangular blocks from his skull — had promised. Perhaps drummer Chris Corsano and his signature pitter-patter could be said to prance around the very space where an actual rock beat might have otherwise materialized. And maybe Mick Flower and his curious Japan Banjo (a cross between a dulcimer and an autoharp, puffed up on pickups and effects) could be said to defy our Western expectations of harmonic suspension and resolution in a return to the paradoxes of drone, cornerstone of the Indian raga: dynamic stasis, transcendent groundedness. But our overall impression of this strange new music — “avant-garde” only nominally, because we didn’t have the words to describe it yet — was not one of subtraction, but of a warm and loving addition, of two musicians earnestly listening and responding to one another to build us a 37-minute moment of pure, flickering euphoria. Without even seeming to try, the result surprised us as one of our decade’s greatest crossover records; it simply made our bodies rejoice.
#61: Sleep, Dopesmoker [Tee Pee; 2003]
“If yooz highly influenced by another band’s sound, there are two methods for forming your band. You can apologise and have a sense of humour about it, or you can be so much more full on than your predecessors that you surpass them by the second LP.” Julian Cope’s much-quoted essay on Dopesmoker, released posthumously in 2003 by the 90s stoner doom metal outfit Sleep, rightly aligned these dreadlocked miscreants with the second approach to appropriation. Like contemporaries sunn 0))) and OM, Sleep took a pop musical idiom that was already larger than life — classic 70s baroque metal, minted by Black Sabbath in Britain, then Pentagram in the States — magnified it through massive amounts of marijuana consumption, and landed on a sound that was shockingly millenial. Dopesmoker didn’t just sound like a heavy metal apocalypse; it dissected that apocalypse as a sum of ingrained musical associations, elongating and bending and repeating them into abstraction. Built upon down-tuned guitar lunges as thickset and horrifying as Buzz Osbourne’s own neck, this one-track shuttle to eternity easily provided months of meditation fodder — luckily, not only for those ready to “Drop out of life with bong in hand/ Follow the smoke to the riff-filled land,” as bassist Al Cisneros intoned.
Words: Emilie Friedlander
Tags: Chris Corsano, Corsano-Flower Duo, Decade Lists, Dopesmoker, Julian Cope, Mick Flower, Mr. P, Sleep, Tee Pee, Textile, The Radiant Mirror, Tiny Mix Tapes, Year-End Lists
even though i agree as little with the TMT list as with any other, the TMT list is still the only one i respect. for the “favorite” reason you mention, and for just feeling broader, bolder, and more open minded in general. still, it is funny how offended i can feel when i see something on a list like this that i think is total garbage! got to shake it off
but yeah, only list ive found myself recommending to others.
Thanks for your comment. I am not really a big fan of lists in general (especially ranked ones) but it’s really good to see a larger indie rock publication that feels like it actually has to BELIEVE in the albums its repping on order to rep them–and be able to explain why.
TMT is certainly the most interesting list. The obsessive compulsive in me is a little split on the validity of Dopesmoker. Even though it didn’t come out until ‘03, its basically an extended version of material that was recorded and unofficially released in the late 90s. Very nice write-ups, regardless.
Hey. Yeah, I was aware of this when I voted for the album and I’m pretty sure all the other people who voted for it were too, seeing as compiling a decade list involves a lot of date-checking. Don’t think it’s such a biggie, ’cause 2003 was the year when it touched the most people. I will admit thought that I probably should have at least mentioned this in my write-up! 200 words is a challenge, indeed!
Flower-Corsano Duo is soo killer. I thought it was cool that you had both #80 and #61, which meant that you opened and closed the day. Sweet luck. Thanks for shouting out my blog. I’ve been drinking a bit much recently which means that my posts have been sucking, random hippie videos and depressing, post-dumped gibberish.
I am sure that everyone who listens to Dopesmoker is aware of its history, and I think it’s valid for inclusion on an 00’s list, but Sleep will always be a 90’s innovator band in that genre – like Kyuss and Earth. The 00’s belonged to Om, Sunn0))), and High on Fire as far as pushing that sound forward. Flower-Corsano duo is one of the greatest things ever. They are coming back again in April for some scattered East Coast dates: http://www.cor-sano.com/live.shtml .
I still agree with what I said above even now that all 100 have been posted. I def like this list and will be referring to it in the future when I want to remember the decade. That is saying a lot considering that nothing from my top five of the decade made the list:
Yellow Swans “At All Ends”
Sightings “Through The Panama”
Captain Ahab “After The Rain My Heart Still Dreams”
Kill Me Tomorrow “Garbage Man & the Prostitute”
Unwound “Leaves Turn Inside You”
and no surprise the Animal Collective made the list twice, but an event that changed my life was getting the Hollinndagain LP the first time they toured through CA, coming home, and listening to it over and over again till the sun came up.