The year is 2001. The setting is Kingston, Ontario, a beautiful old town with bitterly cold winters and chilling winds, located at the tip of Lake Ontario.
Your author, a 19 year old first year student, is tucked away in a small dorm room on the 6th floor of Vic Hall. It’s the beginning of the self discovery period of his life and the soundtrack is powered by an ethernet connection and #DSP on IRC.
Atmosphere, Aesop Rock, El-P, Sunny Day Real Estate, and the like made management of the 4 gb hd difficult.
Songs appeared. Life happened.
One day Saul Williams made an appearance, receiving a cautious greeting. The album, Amethyst Rock Star, was hard to define. Was it spoken word? Was it rap? Was it rock? Whatever it was, it was intense. It challenged. It pushed. And it advanced.
This year Saul Williams reentered my life. An album produced by Trent Reznor and released under a pay-what-you-want model, it was clear that Williams continued to advance. Art forms, business models, and trains of thought.
Williams and Reznor did an exceptional job with the album and it delivers strongest when listened to in its entirety. Here’s Raise to be Lowered, a rallying song (”To through away the pen and pad and simply be the poem”) that gives you a good taste of what Williams is about and my 10th top song of the year.
Time to blow the dust off of this thing and revisit the songs that provided the soundtrack for 2007. Remember the rules:
1) Albums are dead. Tracks are all that matter.
2) It doesn’t have to be a song from this year. I had to discover it this year.
We’ll start the countdown tomorrow. “Sophomore jinx leading to unfulfilled expectations” captures one personal music theme for 2007. Bands who dominated ear drums in years past released sophomore albums that failed to leave a mark. Bloc Party’s A Weekend in the City and Hard-Fi’s Once Upon A Time In The West disappointed.
Were my expectations incorrectly set following superb debut albums? Doubt it.
Here’s a link to Bloc Party’s song, I Still Remember. It’s ok. Check out Hard-Fi’s disappointing lead single, Suburban Knights (get it!?).
What type of top list starts out with songs that disappointed? When it’s a major theme of my musical year it’s important to share
Guilty pleasure? Sure, but one of my favourite albums of all time is Atmosphere’s Sad Clown Bad Dub 3 - hip hop set against live instrumentation is a rich experience.
Sunset Rubdown (no, not a massage parlor in Mississauga) is my newest addiction. First discovered on the wonderfully rich AjiSignal - a place blogging site for indie music - I’ve fallen in love with the album and have recommended it to everyone I can.
There’s a line in the Pitchfork review that is so true and explains how Random Spirit Lover almost forces me to break one of my rules of new music:
Random Spirit Lover’s songs have verses, choruses, and bridges like most other pop/rock songs, but they’re so architecturally complex and harmoniously joined that the boundaries between them become erased. In a song-driven era, Sunset Rubdown is making a strong case for the album.
Check out the album, if you like indie rock you’ll like the album (there’s a reason it’s at the top of my Music of the Moment widget).
I’ve tried to listen to other music. Really. I just haven’t had much success. Lately it’s been nothing but Jamie T and the new album from the Arctic Monkeys.
