the year in singles… (in rough preferential order)
- the chemical brothers, “star guitar” — more move than this american idol nation deserves, what very well might be the chemical’s simplest single ever is also their most gorgeously spangled epic. nicely complimented by a music video that ripped off my wildest dreams, but did it better.
- wilco, “i am trying to break your heart” — it opens with what sounds scarily like a robotic egg beater grazing an autoharp and only gets more desperate from there. a lushly produced representation of alcohol-induced depression. nice.
- underworld, “two months off” — in the great tradition of “cowgirl,” “pearls girl,” and “king of snake,” here is a hundred days off’s massive club anthem for straights. picture hundreds of thousands of woodstock ’99’s red-capped “show us your tits” mooks simultaneously discovering their gay side.
- khia, “my neck, my back” — utterly ridiculous, utterly shizznitty? if this is not a satire, please let’s don’t tell me. lick it now. forget her not.
- masters at work featuring stephanie mills, “latin lover” — immaculate dance production and solid jazz-soul hooks from kenny “dope” and “lil” louie. same old story.
- deep swing, “in the music” — now this here… this is probably just a househead thang. so don’t worry if the four on the floor sounds like less than the sum, rerun. just don’t swing your sun in my mix.
- thomas bangalter & dj falcon, “so much love to give” — see above entry, with a twist of testify.
- moby, “in my heart” — strange how scantly this little gem deviates from moby’s “hymn” meets “anthem” blueprint for both success in the mainstream and indifference from my own mind’s karaoke bar… somehow managing, after a decade-plus-change of vacuous pomposity, to hit the precisely right piano arpeggio. olympic closing ceremonies, timothy goebel, and a post-9/11 need for moby’s brand of sonic plastic-rapture were all waiting for this moment to arrive. it was also the year that eminem’s playpen rained wrath on the consciousness-raising liner-noter’s parade. coincidence? or was eminem just too jangled when his spot jingled?
- john mayer, “no such thing” — at first i was all like: “check out the ego on this kid.” and then i was like: “sure, but look at robbie williams. the ego is the persona.” unfortunately, mayer doesn’t appear to have williams’s sense of self-parody; mayer’s over-confidence just comes with the package. like rob thomas with talent. so tune out the solipsistic lyrics and it’s a pretty supple tune.
- ludacris, “rollout (my business)” — who’s yah house keepah, whatchu keep in dat house?
- basement jaxx, “where’s your head at” — not my favorite track off of ’01’s rooty by a long shot (a little too much gary numan, not enough prince), nor is this really an ‘02 single. but thanks to the great pringles crossover and this, the year of the rally monkey, and the “single of the year” citations surely around the corner, that’s where we land.
the year in albums… (again in rough preferential order)
- wilco, yankee hotel foxtrot — if the opening track of wilco’s quietly shattering and very seminal album is the standout track, the most representative is “poor places,” which opens on the murmuring mechanized hum of a hot city night when you’re stuck in a studio apartment with no air-conditioning and no love in your life. halfway through, a complete stranger introduces you to what gets you through your next, tough day… and then the track ends in total madness. one could loop this track over and over again and experience a panic attack.
- the roots, phrenology & n.e.r.d, in search of… — it was a sad, sad year for fans of urban hip-hop, soul, and dance music (any pleasures were illicit like khia), but a pair of wildly inventive and infectiously fun-loving (surprising for the former group) hip-hop albums prevented a massive pilgrimage to the indie rock dark side.
- the chemical brothers, come with us — first we’re supposed to surrender, and now the chemicals have the audacity to demand: “come with us?” why sure, when the music whooshes this mighty mighty. the grumbling that began with the ‘99 former album grew louder with their newest. to boot, the brothers need to work their sound out and try some new stuff. i must admit to being perplexed by this request. did no one else notice that they’ve almost completely shed the patchwork of funk samples that characterized their first two albums? i for one think it’s only made their music more immediate, as tracks like “the test” and “star guitar” make all too clear.
- crydamoure presents “waves” — the side project of daft punk’s guy-manoel de homem-christo was co-producing the crydamoure dance label (his co-punk thomas bangalter handles the equally great roule label), specializing in filtered mutant disco that’s just as apt to use an off-kilter sample of leo sayer’s “you make me feel like dancing” (in the somehow appropriately-titled and wobbly “t.i.t.t.s”) as they are to sample the usual suspects chic and chaka. here now in one spot are the wonky, coy, psycho, impolite, pointless, hardcore, fruity-fruits of their love-labor.
- soulwax, 2 many djs — for everyone who relishes that rude friction when a nirvana video on mtv2 is followed by a christina aguilera video.
- the flaming lips, yoshimi battles the pink robots — “we are the robots” meets “digital love” meets radiohead meets… oh, who am i fooling, this is a total original.
- beck, sea change — ’nuff said.
- sigur ros, ( ) — a lot of people in america got poor in ‘02. when capitalists get poorer, they get sadder. here’s an album that speaks to their lower middle-class grief, from the thinking-alterna-man’s enigma. let’s all move to iceland. they party there for a whole month. we don’t even get two weeks anymore.
- masters at work, our time is coming — compared to nuyorican soul, this is a wholly minor and uneven affair. still, aside from that masterpiece, the masters have always been less album-oriented and more of an assembly line churning out god-given house singles like each one was meant to be their swan song to the dance floor. in that respect, our time is coming adds a few more of those one-more-times to their already unimpeachable legacy.
- underworld, a hundred days off — ok, so there’s “two months off,” but outside of that, there’s a surprising r&b-fusion slant to who used to be possibly the whitest techno group within my listening loci (see armand van helden’s dissertation on trance for illumination on this topic). take out a few parts lager-lager and dust off herbie’s headhunters and you have a rough weather report in what territory this fascinating anomaly in underworld’s anthology resides.