Music Countdown #4-3: Close Your Eyes

After spending a whole post on Isis, I have reached the top four.  What is different between recent entries and the top four is that I probably wouldn't count any of these bands among my top 10 or so.  Now I really like all of these bands, and I own multiples albums by almost all of them, but none of them reached that level of sustained greatness, at least in my own eyes (#4 is close, but a 22-year hiatus makes it tough for me to think of them as a favorite band). 

#4 Sometimes - My Bloody Valentine



The music website Pitchfork is often maligned for being elitist and pedantic.  I agree with these assertions in that it sometimes seem like some bands are disliked just to be "cool."  Thus, Pitchfork is generally at its best when it celebrates that which it loves the most.  The yearly and decade-ly countdowns of the best music are some of the most valuable and yet concise summaries about the subject anywhere.  One such piece that I have discovered a lot of music through is the countdown of the top 100 albums of the 1990s.  That article is as good of a guide through a great decade of music as you will find anywhere.*

*To build suspense, the top two songs on this list come from albums on the list.

Of course, just because I like the list doesn't mean that I don't have a few disagreements.  The most notable difference between my views and Pitchfork's happen to come at the very top of the list.  My Bloody Valentine's magnum opus Loveless comes in at #2 behind Radiohead's OK Computer.  While I really like OK Computer, I don't consider it Radiohead's best work, and I certainly don't like it as much as Loveless.  However, the mere ordering of these two records doesn't really bother me as much as the comments made about the difference.  In the blurb accompanying the #1 album, Pitchfork basically says that its #2 album isn't all that good:

"Loveless, a masterpiece of form and noise, impresses the brain like stylized photography. Surely, it is breathtaking. It provides the senses with a romantic, heightened ideal of music, experienced through an unbreakable medium. The sound overwhelms to such an extent that multiple listens are unnecessary and taxing. OK Computer, in contrast, sounds crystalline and livable-- a true, enterable aural landscape packaged with press-delivered mythology describing its creation."

This line of thinking is could be a case of the writer being a little full of himself, but I also think there is a fundamental difference of opinion between us that goes beyond fancy-pants writing (Since I have fairly different musical tastes from most of my friends, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the reasons for these differences, so I am pretty good at figuring this out at this point).  Whereas many of the Pitchfork writers put heavy weighting into where a piece of music fits within culture as a whole, I am more likely to judge a work solely on its own merits.  Thus, when Pitchfork ranks OK Computer #1 in part because it is seen as "the last great album," they are looking from more of a historian's viewpoint.  Given that I don't share the same thinking about music, I would disagree with them.  However, I do see the value in such a viewpoint.  In fact, given that Pitchfork is a large collective of multiple writers with a large following, I would expect them to espouse more of a macro view of that which they write about.  All that said, I still think Loveless is the best record of the 90's both because it is great and I haven't heard anything else quite like it.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot the song itself:  "Sometimes" is a really good song (and covers of it are also really good).  It's so good that I wanted it to be Ad and my's first dance song at our wedding.  But, she made the sort of valid point that it isn't very danceable, and we compromised on a wonderful Neutral Milk Hotel song.  I guess it all worked out.
  
#3 Untitled VIII - Sigur Ros



In a previous post, I made the case for music without lyrics.  At the same time, I have populated the majority of my list with songs with lyrics.  The #3 song on my list introduces the rare third category: music with "lyrics."

The majority of Sigur Ros work features vocals sung in Icelandic (they have also dabbled in English recently).  Their third album () is a notable outlier in that all of the vocals are sung in a made-up language which the band calls "Hopelandic."  This undecipherable tongue can be viewed primarily in one of two ways.  One way is to truly think of Hopelandic as a well thought out language that has some specific meaning that only the band knows.  Two, given the context (the blank name of the album, untitled songs, and nearly empty album art) one could understand Hopelandic as the band simply using vocals as another instrument.

As you might guess, I very much agree with the second line of thinking.  I see Sigur Ros' disposal of a discernible message to be a commentary on how specific language can be unnecessary when trying to communicate an emotion.  As "Untitled VIII" might be the most soaring and emotional song I've ever heard, this seems to fit well.  "Untitled VIII" works not just because of the odd vocals and the bombastic guitar work, but also because of how well crafted the song is.  The first section is beautiful but timid.  This sets up the gradual build of the second part perfectly.  And of course, the ending is just the bees knees.  In all, Sigur Ros managed to write one of the best songs about hope and love ever without ever mentioning them explicitly; that makes this song worthy of #3.