2010 will likely be remembered by fans of popular music as the halcyon year for the broadly defined independent music scene that has commanded the greatest share of critical attention over the last eight years. It saw career-defining releases from bands as diverse as The National and Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Spoon and The Books. Meanwhile, still-evolving artists like Janelle Monáe, Flying Lotus, and Kanye West suggested new paths for the development of hip-hop and soul. Great albums were released at a rate that was virtually impossible for listeners to match. Obsessive fans were left lamenting the dozens of worthwhile releases they missed. In light of the music of 2010, drafting a Best-of list seems like an attempt to bottle lightning.

Here, then, is a rudimentary list of the Best Albums of 2010. The first 25 are numbered. The latter 25 are not. I feel that more than 50 albums deserve special mention this year, but the same organizational principle that first compels such obsessive feats as these lists also compels that they be kept tidy.

Note: I am also including a list of prominent artists who collaborate on each of these albums, under the heading Scenecest.

1. Arcade Fire -- The Suburbs: What can be said about this album that hasn’t already been said? That it somehow maintains compositional elegance despite its emotional nakedness? That it manages to tell a story through song without relying on discrete, named characters or operatic self-indulgence? That its long passages of relative quiet are as devastating and compelling as its handful of brutal, confrontational anthems? Six years ago, Arcade Fire made the best album I have ever heard. Even if they hadn’t made Funeral, The Suburbs would place Arcade Fire among the first rank of artists recording today. Scencest: Featuring Owen Pallett.

2. Janelle Monáe -- The ArchAndroid: Ms. Monáe debuted with both persona and artistic voice fully developed in 2007 with the Metropolis: The Chase Suite EP, but neither critics nor mainstream listeners seemed to notice. But those who did notice began buzzing early about her first full-length album, so the public was primed when it was finally released earlier this year. The album transcends the hype. It’s an eclectic masterpiece. Monáe redefines each style she approaches, from Stevie Wonder-esque wide-eyed soul to crunk to psychedelic pop. There hasn’t been a record this simultaneously bold and brilliant since OutKast’s Stankonia, and this one’s worst songs are quite a bit better than that album’s. At the beginning of 2010, most listeners had no idea who Janelle Monáe was; now, many of us believe she can do anything. Scenecest: Featuring Big Boi and of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes.

3. The National -- High Violet: The main criticism of High Violet is that it’s just The National doing what The National always does. That’s true, but they’re doing it better than they ever have before. There’s hardly a scene, let alone a band, that has produced a song as powerful as “Bloodbuzz Ohio.” What’s incredible is that there isn’t a single song on this album that isn’t close to as good as that one. Someday, I may very well decide that I like High Violet more than any other album from this year. Or from the coming decade. This is heart-pounding, fist-pumping, utterly vital music, and you owe it to yourself to hear it. Scenecest: Featuring Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry, Sufjan Stevens, and Nico Muhly.

4. Kanye West -- My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy: Janelle Monáe’s genre-breaking concept album isn’t even the most ambitious record of 2010; that honor belongs to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Kanye promised that this would be his return to hip-hop; it is, but this is a different kind of hip-hop than has ever existed before. Here he blends old-school rap, Native Tongues, Wu-Tang, Motown, robosoul, psychedelic rock, indie rock, mainstream R&B, and electronic music to create an utterly original sound. Though it’s an album-length exploration of the darkest corners of West’s psyche, it nevertheless abounds with delightful jokes and off-kilter observations. All of West’s angst and humor finally comes together at the album’s climax in the finest couplet of his career: “If we die in each other’s arms,/We’ll still get laid in the afterlife.” Scenecest: Featuring Justin Vernon, Gil Scott-Heron, John Legend, Raekwon, Nicki Minaj, Swizz Beats, The RZA, Pusha T, Rihanna, Jay-Z, Rick Ross, and Kid Cudi. Also, on one track, background vocals by Elton John, Alicia Keys, Drake, The Dream, Dwele, Fergie, and approximately everyone else on the planet.

5. Spoon - Transference: Plenty of critics dismissed Transference as Spoon’s first stylistic retrogression. This is not the case. Transference is Spoon stripped of its flesh- grotesque, broken, and horrible. It’s fitting that the band would choose this brazen, damaged sound for a collection of songs exploring the collapse of meaning, whether in relationships (the masterful “Out Go the Lights” and “Written in Reverse”) or even material reality (“The Mystery Zone”). Transference is Spoon’s richest, most compelling album, one that merges the experimentalism of “The Ghost of You Lingers” and “Paper Tiger” with the propulsive rock and roll of “Jonathan Fisk” on very nearly every track. The lone exception, “Goodnight Laura,” is a piano ballad worthy of Revolver-era Paul McCartney. Spoon isn’t moving backward; it’s going back in time, to a time when rock music was still supposed to be dangerous.

6. Deerhunter -- Halcyon Digest: Halcyon Digest is not quite the front-to-back stunner that 2008’s Microcastle/Weird Era, Cont’d was, but, slowly, it proves to be just as satisfying. Here, Bradford Cox and company opt for minimal arrangements and foregrounded vocal melodies. The result is a shoegaze soul masterpiece. It’s all as beautiful and fragile as the tenderest moments on Weird Era, Cont’d, but it’s catchy, too. And when the Jay Reatard tribute “He Would Have Laughed” ends in the middle of a phrase, it’s heartbreaking.

7. Cee Lo Green -- The Lady Killer: Having emptied his closet of most of its demons on Gnarls Barkley’s The Odd Couple, Green gives this record over to having, and showing us, a damn good time. But it wouldn’t be a Cee Lo party if a serial killer or two didn’t show up- dressed to the nines, of course. Scenecest: Featuring Philip Bailey of Earth, Wind, and Fire, and, apparently, Tommy Lee on drums.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc0mxOXbWIU

8. Flying Lotus -- Cosmogramma: The album’s title suggests a street vernacular for outer space, and so does the music. Flying Lotus collapses worlds into a blinding sonic supernova whose brilliance it will take years to fully perceive. Forget the new millennium- this is hip-hop for the year 3000. Scenecest: Featuring Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, because the year 3000 is his natural habitat, and Ravi Coltrane, because he’s Flying Lotus’s cousin.

9. Broken Social Scene -- Forgiveness Rock Record: The extroverted opposite of You Forgot It in People’s navel-gazing. BSS is back, and it wants to fuck your face. Let it. Scenecest: Is Broken Social Scene ever anything but a scene orgy? The usual suspects are all here, but this time they brought along Spiral Stairs and Sebastien Granger.

10. Titus Andronicus -- The Monitor: The Monitor opens with an Abraham Lincoln quote stating that “[a]s a nation of free men, we will live forever, or die by suicide.” The moral failures of 150 years of American history weigh on the head of hopeless New Jersey firebrand Patrick Stickles, who shouts in rebuttal, “Tramps like us, baby we were born to die!” This is rock and roll that will rattle your guts and tear at your soul, but it won’t let you lower your fist for a second. Scenecest: Featuring The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn, Vivian Girls’ Cassie Ramone, Double Dagger’s Nolan Strals, and the poet Okey Canfield Chenoweth as historical personages, and members of Deer Tick, The Felice Brothers, Hallelujah the Hills, Ponytail, Spider Bags, and Wye Oak doing who the fuck knows what.

11. The Roots -- How I Got Over: After releasing a string of increasingly stunning politically incendiary hardcore hip-hop albums, The Roots shocked just about everyone by becoming Jimmy Fallon’s house band. How I Got Over reveals that decision to have been brilliant: This heartbroken, symphonic soul-rap masterpiece owes nearly as much to Fallon’s indie rock musical guests as to Native Tongues. Scenecest: Featuring My Morning Jacket/Monsters of Folk’s Jim James, Joanna Newsom, the women of Dirty Projectors, undersung virtuoso rapper Blu, John Legend, Little Brother’s Phonte, Patty Crash, and regular Roots collaborators P.O.R.N., Dice Raw, Truck North, and Peedi Peedi.

12. The Books -- The Way Out: In the words of The Books’ Nick Zammuto, the band’s music “isn’t really about us, it’s more about what we find.” What they have found is the world, and what they have made is a collage of its beautiful secrets.

13. Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings -- I Learned The Hard Way: While Cee Lo and Janelle Monáe take soul into a brave new world, Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings maintain the one it came from. The songs on I Learned the Hard Way, the band’s best album, aren’t great because they’re retro; they’re great because they’re timeless.

14. Big Boi -- Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty: OutKast might not be back yet, but that hardly matters when you’re listening to Sir Luscious Left Foot. This is a crystal-clear signal from the dark star at the heart of Stankonia. Scenecest: Featuring Janelle Monáe, Jaime Foxx, T.I., George Clinton, Cutty, Khujo Goodie, Sleepy Brown, Yelawolf, Too Short, Sam Chris, B.o.B., Gucci Mane, Vonnegutt, and a beat from some alien called 3000.

15. Antony and The Johnsons -- Swanlights: Backed by the loveliest arrangements of his recording career, Antony sings the songs the Celestial Choir will sing when it finally gets bored of “Hosanna”s. Scenecest: Featuring Björk, Nico Muhly, The London Symphony Orchestra, and the Danish National Chamber Orchestra.

16. Gorillaz -- Plastic Beach: Damon Albarn’s return to his cartoon band comes with a label’s worth of collaborators in place of a coproducer, but this is somehow the most cohesive, consistently stunning Gorillaz record. Laments about commodification have never been this much fun. Scenecest: Featuring Mos Def, Little Dragon’s Yukimi Nagano, Bobby Womack, De La Soul, The Fall’s Mark E. Smith, Lou Reed, Snoop Dogg, The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, The Clash’s Mick Jones and Paul Simonon, Bashy, Kano, sinfonia VIVA, Gruff Rhys, and The Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music.

17. Curren$y -- Pilot Talk II: If the main narrative to emerge from the hip-hop released in 2010 was about the reclamation of old-school values using contemporary techniques, Curren$y and producer Ski Beatz might have been its protagonists. Pilot Talk II is one of the leanest, most stylistically dazzling, most laid back hip-hop records in years. Scenecest: For an emcee who didn’t get much hype until this year, Curren$y lined up an impressive roster of collaborators on his Pilot Talk albums. This one features Raekwon, Young Roddy, Trademark da Skydiver, Dom Kennedy, McKenzie Eddy, and Fiend.

18. LCD Soundsystem -- This Is Happening: After having analyzed his scene on LCD Soundsystem’s self-titled debut, and himself on Sound of Silver, James Murphy sets his critical eye on human relationships. The results are often as lacerating, hilarious, sexy, and touching as anything the band has done- and dig the Bowie influence!

19. Grinderman -- Grinderman 2: Critics are calling this Nick Cave’s “dirty old man” album. They’re wrong. Grinderman 2 isn’t filthy, it’s feral.

20. Zola Jesus -- Stridulum: Nika Danilova makes loneliness feel like the cause of the war in Heaven. This may be the first 20 minute EP to sound like an epic.

21. Dessa -- A Badly Broken Code: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy gets all the press, but A Badly Broken Code may be the most surprising, barrier-breaking hip-hop album of 2010. Doomtree’s secret weapon has finally gone public. Scenecest: As Dessa is a member of one of the most sprawling hip-hop collectives in the US, you might think this would be a collaborative effort, but Dessa’s is nearly the only voice on the album. Still, Doomtree’s house producers- Lazerbeak, Paper Tiger, Cecil Otter, and MK Larada- all contribute beats, and Matthew Santos sings the hook on the haunting “The Chaconne.”

22. Frightened Rabbit -- The Winter of Mixed Drinks: Scott Hutchison’s spiritual rebirth is dramatized with baptismal imagery and ecstatic power chords on this passionate follow-up to the classic The Midnight Organ Fight. Critic’s note: This would have ranked even higher if the mixer hadn’t been as enthusiastic as the band- this whole thing plays at eleven, whether you want it to or not. Get the vinyl and make your own lossless file if you can.

23. Sufjan Stevens -- The Age of Adz: Tired of exploring America, Stevens decided to spend some years exploring himself. His dissatisfaction with what he found there became the basis for this fascinating album-length deconstruction of his ego. Sufjan and Kanye should tour together. Scenecest: Featuring My Brightest Diamond’s Shana Worden and, supposedly, some or all of The National.

24. The Walkmen -- Lisbon: Like 2008’s You & Me, Lisbon sounds like music half-remembered from a long-ago party, with the thoughts that accompany that music for lyrics. Listening to it is like watching a man cry while he stares at a faded photograph- intimate, uncomfortable, and deeply, unconsciously moving.

25. Drive-By Truckers -- The Big To-Do: Drive-By Truckers have spent the last decade crafting finely wrought story-songs about the goings-on in the dark corners of American society. The Big To-Do may not be their best album, but it’s still one of the richest records released this year.

Girls -- Broken Dreams Club

Owen Pallett -- Heartland

Ghostface Killah -- Apollo Kids

Marnie Stern -- Marnie Stern

Caribou -- Swim

These New Puritans -- Hidden

No Age -- Everything in Between

The Black Keys -- Brothers

New Pornographers -- Together

Delorean -- Subiza

Galactic -- Ya-Ka-May

Moools -- Weather Sketch Modified

Das Racist -- Sit Down, Man

Gil Scott-Heron -- I’m New Here

Superchunk -- Majesty Shredding

Sleigh Bells -- Treats

Erykah Badu -- New Amerykah Part 2: The Return of the Ankh

Ted Leo and The Pharmacists -- The Brutalist Bricks

These New Puritans -- Hidden

Four Tet -- There Is Love In You

Gonjasufi -- A Sufi And A Killer

Madlib -- Medicine Show #3: Beat Konducta in Africa

Yeasayer -- Odd Blood

Maximum Balloon -- Maximum Balloon

Maps & Atlases -- Perch Patchwork

As is customary for those of the blogging persuasion, I have fashioned a list which ranks my favorite records of the year. Beyond the usual “these are my personal favorites” caveat, let me say this: my memory is not what it once was, and I probably missed a few things that I listened to a lot in the earlier part of the year. But I think I caught the most important stuff. To wit:

10. The Gaslight Anthem -- American Slang
These guys have been known to take heat for pilfering from better bands’ back catalogs, but this was the most purely pleasurable release of the year for me -- relative nutritional value notwithstanding. TGA improve upon the basic foundation they built on their first two records, moving further in a pure roots rock direction. Which is fine with me; the numbers here that lean more heavily on the pop-punk format that was once the band’s bread-and-butter get old the quickest, while interesting detours like “The Diamond Church Street Choir” propel American Slang into “classic” territory. And the title track, invigorating and heartbreaking in equal measure, sounded better than anything else this year while barreling down the highway at ludicrously unsafe speeds.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBfvkow7IiY

9. Rick Ross -- Teflon Don
It’s not often that I long for a luxury vehicle, but Teflon Don just doesn’t sound the same pouring out of the cheap system in my ’96 Honda. This is a record that demands the finest audio technology -- it’s the opposite of a headphones album. This is music you just gotta share with everybody within a city block; it was my go-to jam whenever I wanted to feel young, black, and rich for an hour. It also rendered all the accusations about Ross’s authenticity (or lack thereof) totally moot. Do you feel this? Of course you feel this. It’s fucking huge.

8. Motion City Soundtrack -- My Dinosaur Life
Just as the rest of their middle-aged emo compatriots were getting dropped by the major labels that signed them in the mid-aughts, MCS up and signed to one. Then they made possibly the best record of their career, a widescreen epic about getting dumped, going crazy, and falling asleep to Veronica Mars. My Dinosaur Life surveys the wreckage of a damaged life with clarity and honesty, shying away from neither uncomfortable insight nor big pop hooks; it’s a beautiful dark twisted fantasy for sixteen year olds who dream about finally becoming emotionally numb. But it’s also the single best reason I heard this year for keeping the faith.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC_HwM5nSYU

7. Wolf Parade -- Expo 86
The best part of any Wolf Parade song is the moment when you finally unlock the warped logic of it and figure out a way to live inside the noise; Expo 86 offers thirteen such sonic puzzles, of varying degrees of difficulty, and you’re forced to play, to wrestle, until Spencer Krug is screaming “I’ve got you / Until you’re gone!” Now that the band is on a hiatus that will probably prove permanent, we can look back and study exactly what went wrong, why these guys never exploded the way they should’ve. Expo 86 finds Wolf Parade clicking again, after the somewhat bungled At Mount Zoomer; they’re loose and free but still on an organic path of rock convention, busting out huge choruses and thorny instrumental interplay. This is a confusing record, an uneven record, a record that offers no easy answers for the difficult questions posed. But the truth is there, in the grooves; you just need to hang out long enough for that shit to reveal itself.

6. Deerhunter -- Halcyon Digest
It’s easy to poke fun at Bradford Cox when he, for instance, releases four albums of demos in a single week; a mammoth feat of ear-pleasing, to be sure, but also an act of almost unbelievable indulgence. Fact is, the guy earned it; “Helicopter,” this record’s centerpiece, is the hands-down best song of the year, and also the saddest, and the most beautiful, and the most troubling. Cox has overcome the inherent shyness of his physical condition and truly unleashed the beast within; luckily for us, the beast is really cool and compassionate and makes heart-breakingly awesome rock albums. Halcyon Digest is the most cohesive thing Deerhunter has yet released; it cannot be broken into chunks or segments, it must be devoured whole, like Zeus’s cock.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5RzpPrOd-4

5. Welcome To Ashley -- Beyond The Pale
Sometimes a record feels like a gift; Beyond The Pale comes wrapped in a brown paper bag, grease spots rapidly forming. It’s the freshest and sharpest thing to come from Chicago in awhile, blending moody new wave bass lines with rambunctiously open guitar lines that recall REM at their most mysterious and wild. The critical ingredient, though, is Coley Kennedy’s voice, wide and deep and imperial; I could listen to the guy’s stories all night long. Beyond The Pale delivers everything you could realistically expect a rock record recorded in 48 hours on analog tape to deliver, and more -- the disc opens with the huge, balls-out “fuck you” of “What A Day It Was For Dying,” ends with the anguished whimper of “End Of The Line,” and in the middle we get pure lust (“Thursday Afternoon”), romantic comedy (“I Love Monday Mornings”), and stories from the scene (“The Catbird Seat”). And it’s all set to tough barroom rock that doesn’t skimp on chiming tunefulness. The band somehow combine petulance and wisdom in the same basic kernel of humanity, and it is wondrous magic to witness -- especially live.

4. The National -- High Violet
If Boxer didn’t make you sad enough, you’ll love High Violet -- it’s the year’s most satisfying comedown record, buzzing with glitchy accents but grounded by warmth and sadness. I didn’t initially take to the record’s kitchen-sink approach, and I still prefer the National when they strip their music down to its essential humanity (see: “Gospel,” from Boxer) and just let melancholy subsume them. But High Violet is a triumph in its own right -- it’s more lighter-waver than fist-pumper, with big ballads that feel ocean-deep and detail-rich while remaining universal. The National were set for a big coming-out party with this record, but they decided on a funeral instead. The result is darkly intoxicating.

3. Arcade Fire -- The Suburbs
Arcade Fire don’t do small; they refuse to whisper when they can yell, and most of the songs here feel archetypal, like they were fashioned directly from the original Rock Blueprint. The Suburbs is overlong, and it all gets a bit samey in the middle. But when these guys hit, they hit harder than most anybody else -- witness the Abba-on-steroids that is “Empty Room,” or the sweet-but-furious “We Used To Wait.” And the penultimate track, “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains),” is positively apocalyptic in its breadth and power. Probably the bougiest record of the year, but also the most comforting; Arcade’s Fire greatest achievement, thus far, has been to consistently deliver slightly off-kilter records that don’t do everything they’re supposed to but come off like masterpieces anyway. The Suburbs might be their finest hour yet.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0L6ZFhZVOx0

2. Kanye West -- My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Between the songs presented here and over the course of his free G.O.O.D. Friday series, this was Kanye’s year -- again. Every time this dude steps out, he does something new and completely changes the face of hip hop. Could this be the first truly “adult” rap record? I would argue so, and not just because of the Prince-esque guitar smeared all over it, or the compositional maturity of “All Of The Lights” and “Lost In The World.” My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy presents a fully-formed portrait of the artist as a libertine in (almost) total thrall to his id, but it also comments (smartly and hilariously) on issues of power, relationships, and race. With the exception of “fake humility,” is there anything Mr. West can’t do?

1. LCD Soundsystem -- This Is Happening
My fascination with James Murphy has grown exponentially stronger as he’s rolled out more material; the dance-punk of his first album was good for a few Busched up laughs, Sound Of Silver offered an alternate theory of growing older at the exact moment I started thinking about that kind of shit, and now This Is Happening captures the coked-out, red-eyed zeitgeist of 2010 better than any other record this year. The simplest and most immediate pleasures offered here require no explanation -- the synth explosion a few minutes into “Dance Yrself Clean” is an excellent primer on the power of dance music, and the moment in “You Wanted A Hit” when the slinky, moody intro crossfades into the real beat remains breathlessly exciting even after 1000 plays. But this would just be a great dance record without the electric heartbeat powering “All I Want,” “I Can Change,” and “Home” -- probably the three most affecting songs Murphy has yet penned. Is this the end of LCD Soundsystem? Probably. Could they have gone out on a higher note? Unlikely.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xT6cdfP_cM

Honorable Mentions

Drake -- Thank Me Later This could’ve been a classic -- contrary to popular hater myths, dude is actually a gifted rapper and singer. Thank Me Later is a bit “meh,” thanks mostly to a weird sense of pacing that puts too many slow songs up front and beats that are too smooth for their own good. But the sheer amount of introspection here is promising, both because this is a hip-hop record and because, once Drake grows up and has a little more self to examine, the results will probably be flat-out amazing.

Kid Cudi -- Man On The Moon 2: The Legend Of Mr. Rager The final three songs here make a case for the rest of the record as deliberate, highly-stylized ugliness with a purpose -- it’s only at the end, when Cudi finds himself all alone and wondering when he became a ghost, that all of the coked-and-weeded madness becomes retroactively poignant and borderline tragic. I don’t know if this guy is full of shit or what, but why would anybody pretend to be this sad?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICaTsTkBPV8

Nicki Minaj -- Pink Friday Am I disappointed that this is more Robyn than Rah Digga? Of course. But it’s a pretty good fake dance album all the same, and “Dear Old Nicki” uses its corniness in important ways, revealing a vulnerable side to Ms. Minaj that just makes her fierce motherfuckin’-MONSTER stuff all the more impressive and, frankly, frightening.

The Walkmen -- Lisbon This would’ve made my top 10 proper if the National hadn’t dropped such a dazzler; I’ve always felt the two bands are kin in some elemental sad-white-guy way. Lisbon is another more-than-solid entry in the Walkmen’s catalog -- it builds on the strengths they’ve previously displayed while being paced better and featuring a few welcome doses of levity. There’s not one stand-out song here to rival “Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone” or “The Rat,” but these guys have officially established themselves as one of the premiere “album” bands of our generation. Lisbon is the very satisfying sum of some really magnificent parts.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn6kgnshjvo

Alkaline Trio -- This Addiction Eh -- I’m contractually obligated to enjoy this stuff. Are Alkaline Trio getting better or worse as they age? Their seventh albums delivers this answer: they are staying the same. The band promised to get back to the basics, like they always do, and this time they delivered: 11 ace pop-punk numbers with zero filler. And a couple of these tracks (“Dorothy,” “This Addiction,” “Kick Rocks”) actually stand with the Trio’s best work.

Vampire Weekend -- Contra Haters be damned; Vampire Weekend got bigger and better in 2010, starting the year off perfectly with this collection of horchata-fueled bangers. Contra features better songs than the debut but struggled to match the thrill of discovery, and I would say these guys came closer than we had any right to expect. And the band weathered the inevitable backlash admirably, actually daring to grow more obnoxiously upper class in their lyrics and poise.

MGMT -- Congratulations With the notable exception of the unwieldy, nearly unlistenable “Siberian Breaks,” MGMT’s material was weirder, cooler, and just plain better this time around; instead of centering the album around a few really great songs, the decidedly hip duo elected to create an entire record of album tracks. Was it a test for all the people that hopped their bandwagon on the strength of “Kids”? Or are these guys just really that eccentric? Hard to say. But it worked, for the most part.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB7IAXrCkO8

THE BEST SINGLE OF 2010

• Cee Lo Green – “Fuck You.” If you didn’t get this song stuck in your head for at least a few weeks after it premiered on the Internet, there is something fundamentally wrong with you.  It has a genuine joie de vivre that is rarely seen in pop music, and damn if it isn’t fun as hell to sing along to.  I have a feeling this song will be turning up in karaoke bars for years to come.  Let’s just hope it’s this version and not the radio-friendly edit.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc0mxOXbWIU

THE WORST SINGLE OF 2010

• Cee Lo Green – “Forget You.” What do you do if you have a track that’s catching like wildfire but too profane to play on the radio or TV?  Sanitize it by turning “fuck” into “forget.”  Then Gwyneth Paltrow can sing it on Glee and ruin it for everybody!  This bowdlerized version of the song sucks all the fun and joy from it and leaves it on the side of the road like a sex crime victim, helpless and broken. Every time I hear it, I’m like “Fuck you.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fq_MDgEzRM

THE FIVE BEST ALBUMS OF 2010

1. Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. I didn’t see this one coming.  I hadn’t been a Kanye fan since Graduation, and like many others I find the level of hubris in his public persona to be more than a little off-putting.  Frankly, he’s just not the most likeable guy.  But when I listened to this album for the first time, it blew me away.  And it has continued to blow me away every time I’ve listened to it since then.  It’s ambitious, bombastic, decadent, and surprisingly emotional.  It is the album of someone whose back was against the ropes so he came out swinging.  There are no apologies here and no half measures.  It’s simply a great album from a supremely self-confident artist.
2. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs. Before My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy came long, I was entirely certain that The Suburbs would be my album of the year.  It’s one of those albums that came along at just the right time for me, mirroring much of the suburban angst and ennui that I had been feeling in my personal life.  It’s an album that is deeply pessimistic without being cynical, and just upbeat enough to not let its underlying themes utterly crush the listener.  It is an enjoyable listen from start to finish with little to no filler.  Although purists probably still stick with Funeral as their top pick, The Suburbs has become my favorite Arcade Fire album yet.
3. The National – High Violet. Whereas The Suburbs pulls its punches a bit by keeping the instrumentals consistently more upbeat than the lyrics, High Violet makes no apologies for being an utterly downbeat, sad sack album.  The National have never been known for their sunny dispositions, and High Violet won’t change anyone’s mind on that.  They are great at what they do, though, and what they do is make music that you can listen to while drinking whiskey and feeling sorry for yourself.
4. The Walkmen – Lisbon. For times when you want to spend a few hours with your buddies drinking whiskey but not feeling like a sad sack, you really can’t go wrong with Lisbon.  Whereas High Violet is for the nights where you lose track of your limit and wake up sick the next morning, full of regret and remorse, Lisbon is for quiet nights out where you reminisce about good times and toast to the future.  The Walkmen rarely disappoint, but this album finds them in top form.  It is easily their best release since Bows + Arrows.
5. Yeasayer – Odd Blood. Albums that come out at the beginning of the year often seem to get overlooked at the end of the year.  Judging by some of the other “best of” lists I’ve read so far, this is one of those albums.  You’d be hard-pressed to find another album that sounds quite like it, though.  It’s quirky, unique, and surprisingly catchy.  It’s been ten months since its release and I still get “Ambling Alp” stuck in my head now and then.  If you missed Odd Blood earlier in the year, go pick it up now.

THE FIVE MOST DISAPPOINTING ALBUMS OF 2010

1. Sufjan Stevens – The Age of Adz. People who hated the twee preciousness of Illinois were downright ecstatic that he all but abandoned it for his sometimes difficult, often atonal follow-up.  But you know what?  I like the twee preciousness of Illinois, and the lush instrumentation, and the fact that listening to “Casimir Pulaski Day” still makes me a little teary-eyed.  The Age of Adz is a decent enough album, and kudos to Stevens for not just retreading his earlier work, but in the end it just did not reach the level of greatness of its predecessor.
2. Weezer – Death to False Metal. I keep trying to like new Weezer albums, and they just keep being awful.  This year we got the one, two punch of their newest effort, Hurley, followed by a collection of tracks from the discard pile, Death to False Metal.  I had some hope for the latter.  Perhaps there would be some hidden gems from the Pinkerton era (a.k.a. the last time they were relevant).  Alas, it was not to be.  This disc is an utter turd.
3. Frightened Rabbit – The Winter of Mixed Drinks. This album has some really strong songs on it.  Unfortunately, they are buried under some of the worst production of the year.  Frightened Rabbit have become unfortunate victims of the loudness war.  Every instrument on this album is dialed up to 11, and the result is that I can’t listen to more than a couple tracks without getting a headache.  That approach might work for hip-hop or hard rock, but not here.  It’s a damn shame, because The Winter of Mixed Drinks could have been so much better.
4. Matt & Kim – Sidewalks. Matt and Kim’s sophomore effort, Grand, was one of my favorite albums of 2009.  It was upbeat, catchy, and had an endearing, DIY charm to it.  Unfortunately, much of that charm was lost in the transition to the more polished, radio-friendly production of Sidewalks.  It’s not a terrible album, but after a couple of listens I haven’t had any desire to pop it back in my CD player.
5. Nicki Minaj – Pink Friday. Nicki Minaj has been steadily building steam in the last few years, between some memorable turns on mix tapes and a fantastic, over-the-top performance in Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.  Then her first album came out and… yawn.  It was yet another lesson in how artists that sound good on mixtapes don’t necessarily translate well to full album format (see also: Wale’s Attention Deficit).

Greetings. Welcome to In The Virtual Stacks. This new column will allow me to waste the part of my free time that can’t be smoked or masturbated away -- a leisurely cruise into my iTunes library, warts and all. (Probably significantly more warts than you were expecting, given the nature of the project.) So let’s get it right in:

AV Talk -- September Music Wrap Up

Pop-culture Illuminati The AV Club offer a monthly music-focused podcast; this is the most recent episode. I listened to it this morning in the hours between waking and actually rising to make coffee, and, to be honest, I wasn’t really paying attention. It’s generally interesting and sometimes even amusing (the July episode, in which the co-hosts got surprisingly fired up about Arcade Fire maybe not being the best band of all time, is a personal favorite) but they spend too much time talking about boring indie bands like Guided By Voices.

Welcome To Ashley -- Absent Man EP

(We’re going alphabetically by album title.) Welcome To Ashley is my favorite Chicago band. They sound like Old 97s drinking beer while listening to the Smiths. And Coley Kennedy sings better than pretty much anybody else. Absent Man is not my favorite thing by them (that would be their most recent disc, Beyond The Pale) but it contains two of the band’s best songs: “Nothing But Grey Skies Ahead” (the video of which is embedded below) and “Bang, You’re Dead” both showcase the band’s most appealing facets -- the warm guitar, the moody bass, Kennedy’s rich voice. This is like $4 on iTunes so you’d have to basically be retarded not to get it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8yJSjfh42E

Jenny Lewis -- Acid Tongue

This is not Jenny Lewis’s best solo album; that would be Rabbit Fur Coat, a record that doesn’t get nearly enough credit for how haunting and wonderful it is. But then, people also underrate Rilo Kiley -- a band that easily blow most of their contemporaries away in terms of pure songcraft and musicianship. Acid Tongue is busier and more upbeat than Rabbit Fur Coat, with unnecessary guest appearances from Elvis Costello and Lewis’s boyfriend (among others). It does contain a few of Lewis’s best songs: “Pretty Bird,” “Godspeed,” and “Sing A Song For Them” are all perfect in the grand sweet/sad Lewis tradition, but the more self-consciously “rootsy” stuff comes off forced and inconsequential. Acid Tongue remains likable despite its rough patches, due mostly to Lewis’s natural charms and a delightfully old-fashioned analog feel (which extends even to the album’s graceful packaging). Not a bad record, but there’s too much filler and it’s not depressing enough.

The Smashing Pumpkins -- Adore

This is surprisingly not terrible, despite the absence of Jimmy Chamberlin, but it’s longer than shit! I’m about halfway through it right now and I feel like taking a break to go do something entertaining -- like dusting behind my refrigerator. A little bit of synthy Corgan goodness goes a long way, and Adore sucks whenever it tries to rock. But the Pumpkins were always brilliant in swoon mode, and the record offers a lot of that: “The Tale Of Dusty & Pistol Pete” might be the least-grating song Corgan has ever written. This is a great choice for falling asleep if you’re already tired of that Postal Service record, but I can’t imagine myself sitting with it for long periods and investigating its crevices -- it’s a little too smooth and bland for that. Pumpkins going quiet-electro is essentially the same as the Eagles doing light disco. If the latter scenario is something you might be interested in, Adore is currently slow-rolling right down your alley. (Update: “For Martha” is definitely the band’s best song, eclipsing even “1979″ and “Mayonaise.”)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dwXYAqy-HI

Tune in next week for: Tool, a Smashing Pumpkins box set, Aerosmith, and California Wives.

Artist: The Clash
Album: Cut the Crap
Aftermath: The Clash broke up and, worse, made everyone think this is a good thing. Thankfully, I was born later that year, allowing the world this time and place for reflection on the Clash’s last days.

Strictly judging from their music, there was no reason for The Clash to call it quits after Combat Rock. They’d had a couple hits on a critically well-received album. Maybe they weren’t the same band that delivered the classic London Calling to the world anymore, but they were a sturdy punk band willing to dabble in different styles and try new things. Things were different behind the scenes, though, as interpersonal turmoil led to guitarist Mick Jones being ousted by lead singer Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon. It was a major change to the band’s songwriting core, but Joe Strummer was behind many of the band’s best-known output, right?

Right. But the tank was empty by the time of Cut the Crap. It shows. Overall, the production reflects desperate desires to do something new, to stay relevant, to experiment a little and to his the sales charts. Choruses are multi-tracked to sound like massive arenas singing along, but it comes off as a sad production trick. Worse, it muddles the lyrics and emphasizes how hookless many of the album’s songs are. If someone would actually want to sing along to these songs (they wouldn’t), the lyrics would be tough to decipher. Previously, The Clash’s dabbling into music genres was organic, as “Police and Thieves” belonged next to “Garage Band,” or ”The Magnificent Seven” worked on the same album as “Hitsville UK.” On Cut the Crap, though, everything sounds like a cluttered mess. The opening track, “Dictator,” is a perfect example of this. Initially, it sounds like a reggae song vocally, with arena rock drums and 80s synths laid over. As though that wasn’t enough, African percussion is lightly sprinkled haphazardly throughout. It’s a mess.

It doesn’t get better as this lack of focus affects almost every song. “We Are The Clash” thumps along and tries to be an anthem for the band, but by the end, I was less sure of who The Clash are than when the song began. With all the personnel changes, it made sense, in a way, to try to create a statement of purpose for the band. Unfortunately, The Clash already had nearly a decade’s worth of great songs that summarized them, whether “London Calling” or “London’s Burning” or songs that don’t even have “London” in the title. “We Are the Clash” can’t come close to measuring up.

Despite being The Clash’s worst album by far, though, Cut The Crap is not a terrible album. It’s still possible to hear the spark that got them to the top of the punk scene and beyond in some songs. “This Is England” is the best example, a song that tries to be an anthem and succeeds. It laborious stomp is filled with so much gravitas, every other song on this album, even the good ones, feel timid in comparison. The chorus is memorably simple; the whole thing is appropriate for arenas. Less successful but still interested is “Cool Under Heat,” a messily-produced song that nearly, maybe, almost, has something resembling a groove.

Then there are the songs where The Clash appear to try to appeal to their strengths, like “Dirty Punk” and “Movers and Shakers.” The former sounds like an attempt to update the classic Clash sound of their first two albums, but with the 80s arena rock sound. It’s notable for being a sad reminder that this is far from The Clash of their prime when not even this can be effortless. “Movers and Shakers” sounds like a Combat Rock leftover with some saxophone added it because what’s the point in even looking at the recipe, really.

The 80s were a strangely toxic time for a lot of classic bands, as we’ll see throughout this series. The Clash fell victim to this, despite being younger than, say, The Stones, and it killed them as a band. The production dates Cut the Crap badly, but the self-consciousness and lack of direction finish the job. With the exception of “This Is England,” the one truly great song, the best Cut the Crap songs are more or less “salvageable,” rather than necessarily “good.” In a lot of ways, this was the first Joe Strummer solo album, as the melding of punk and world music would become more solid later, specifically on his album Streetcore. Here, though, he is still trying to get out from under the umbrella of The Clash’s legacy, yet uncharacteristically too timid to work on his own just yet.

Other Holding On Too Longs:
The Replacements – All Shook Down
Aerosmith – Just Push Play
Sly & The Family Stone – Small Talk
Black Sabbath – Technical Ecstacy
The Who – It’s Hard

Now that MTV has about as much to do with music as KFC has to do with Kentucky, the Internet has become our primary source for music videos. With the Internet, though, there is no filter. It’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Well here, dear friends, is the chaff. It’s your penance for a lifetime of sins: Music Video Hell.

By now, my hatred of Owl City is pretty well-documented. But did you know that I also loathe Zack Snyder, whom I consider to be the single most overrated film director of our time? That title used to belong to M. Night Shyamalan, but the moviegoing public has finally wised up to how terrible his movies are. Zack Snyder still somehow gets kudos, though, for his terrible Dawn of the Dead remake (zombies shouldn’t run, end of story), the thinly-veiled ode to war that was 300 (“Freedom isn’t free!”), and the vapid, soulless adaptation of Watchmen that should piss off any fan of the original graphic novel.

Imagine, then, how my bowels quaked when I was sent this video by my intrepid editor, Mr. Oswald Hobbes. It allows me to indulge in two of my passions: hating Owl City and hating Zack Snyder. For you see, “To the Sky” by Owl City is from the motion picture soundtrack for the Snyder-directed Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. I’m not sure if they used any criteria for selecting Owl City for the soundtrack other than the fact that the movie is about owls and film studio executives are unimaginative assholes but hoo boy, there sure are a lot of computer-animated owls flying around in this turgid piece of shit.

To give you an idea of why I choke on my own bile at the mere mention of Owl City, I would like to share with you some of the lyrics for this song: “Bird’s eye view, awake the stars ‘cause they’re all around you. Wide eyes will always brighten the blue.” Are you still with me? Good. I know that was painful, but I wouldn’t want you to think that there is not a solid foundation for my seething hatred. I am, I like to believe, a reasonable man. Not only are those lyrics insipid, the grammar is fucking terrible. I realize that the extra syllable of “awaken” would throw off the meter of this abomination, but worse things could happen. For instance: the entire rest of the song.

I truly hope that Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole will be the turning point for Zack Snyder’s career, the point where—much like Shyamalan’s The Happening—people finally walk out of the movie theater and say to their loved ones, “Wow, that really fucking sucked.” Unfortunately, though, this movie is aimed toward younger audiences, and for some reason we don’t hold the movie studios to any standard of quality whatsoever when it comes to kids’ movies. I mean, take a look at Beverly Hills Chihuahua or Marmaduke or any other movie with a talking dog in it. As long as the movie does not have graphic depictions of rape or cannibalism, parents will pretty much let it slide.

So, I fear we will have to wait until Sucker Punch for a real shot of Snyder’s career going down the toilet. Have you seen the trailer for that abomination? It’s like something a troubled 15 year-old boy doodled in his Biology notebook. Until then, maybe this awful, awful music video will sow the seeds of an anti- Snyder backlash. After all, the kind of 18-24 year-old male in the target audience of 300 and Watchmen probably is not too into Owl City. They will go to see Legend of the Guardians hoping for overly-stylized bloodshed soundtracked by tedious cock rock, and what they will get is a kids’ movie about talking owls soundtracked by effete, syrupy awfulness.

Well hello there? How was your summer? Before you answer “fine,” I would advise you to stop and consider how fucking bitching a summer I had. I went on a road trip with 4 of my bros – Tongue, Bud, Steve, and Cork. We drove all the way across the country in my 2001 Dodge Neon. It was fucking awesome. We got super fucked up and wasted and hung out in all these cool college towns. I was going to try and write some columns while I was on the road, but I was too busy getting laiidddd fuck yeah.

Dear Ask A Person

I think my husband is cheating on me. He leaves on “business trips” for 2-3 nights at a time at least once a month, during which it’s always a hassle for me to even get him on the phone. He says he loves me, but I’m worried that I’m not sexually attractive enough for him anymore ever since I was diagnosed with lung cancer. What do I do?

Sad, Worried

Dear S, W,

Holy shit, you know what you just reminded me of? I was in Memphis, TN on my road trip and Cork walked up to this chick in this bar and was like “your hair looks like a wig.” Sure enough he tugged on her hair and it came off! You didn’t put a location in your email, was that you? Holy shit I hope not. If so, sorry! It was hilarious though.

Dear Ask A Person

My wife and I recently had our first child. We’ve been together for several years, and we knew we wanted to start a family. But I don’t think either of us were prepared for just how taxing a newborn baby can be. He’s totally healthy, but for whatever reason he is a seemingly-perpetual crier, keeping us both awake all but maybe an hour or so a night, if we’re lucky. This would be bad enough, but manageable – but lately my wife has been saying some pretty troubling things. Just to give one example, last night she said something along the lines of “if I just squeeze Michael hard enough, he’ll stop crying.” I’ve done a lot of research on Post-Partum Depression on the internet, but I’m still not sure what to do. I don’t think my wife would ever do anything to hurt our son, but I’d obviously never be able to forgive myself if something did happen because I didn’t get her the help she needed. What do I do?

Anonymous

Dear A,

This should cheer you up: When we were in Arizona to see the Grand Canyon, we stopped at a Cracker Barrel for lunch. My buddy Tongue took one of those toy parrots that repeat whatever you say into the bathroom and left it there. We stood outside the door listening for like 5 minutes. It mostly just picked up flushing sounds, but it was still hilarious. Are you on Facebook? I took a bunch of pictures on the trip, but you have to be my friend on there to see them.

Dear Ask A Person

How loud do you have to shout at a hot chick walking her dog to get her to blow you?

Likes To Party!!!

Dear LTP!!!,

FUCKING STEVE, is that you?? We so need to go on another road trip, dude.

Artist: Prince
Album: Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic
Aftermath: After a period of wilderness-wandering (a jazz-funk Jehovah’s Witness album that I am convinced is unduly underrated, a 3-CD live album that replicated much of that album), Prince’s attempts to rejoin the mainstream have been mostly of the “Hey, remember when I dominated the ’80s?” variety, rather than the “I can still make a hit if I wanted to” attitude he displays here. Prince hasn’t had a guest on any of his studio albums since.

The duets album is a time-honored tradition,but it’s also been a way toward veteran career rejuvenation since Santana jointed with Rob Thomas (for a musical revolution!). Oops, sorry. Just consider the Jerry Lee Lewis Mean Old Man review a cousin to this entry. Following the blockbuster success of that album, Mick Jagger’s Goddess in the Doorway (easily a Cut the Crap-qualified album if Jagger’s solo career matched his Rolling Stones career) borrowed some ideas from it. Santana, unsurprisingly, went back to the well for two more albums. Later, Al Green packed Lay It Down with the best in modern soul. But most frustrating and interesting of these albums was Prince’s attempt to capitalize on the millennial celebration he coincidentally created in 1983, “1999.”

Prince is generally a loner. Even if his album is credited to “Prince & [The Revolution, New Power Generation],” his ideas and style are at the forefront. His bands have individual flavors and stretch out in concert, but on albums they generally don’t get their time to shine. Their world is self-contained and dependent on their chemistry. The idea of Prince sharing the spotlight with other famous people, then, is exciting. Unfortunately, Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic might be evidence that it’s not as interesting to Prince as it is to everyone else.

But, of course, Prince is always going to do things his way, which is either a problem or one of the greatest strengths of this album. Unlike Santana, he does not bend to the will of his collaborators. His song featuring Chuck D, “Undisputed,” probably could have existed without this album and without Chuck D. Strangely, Chuck D’s rap is not much better than the kind of verses that Prince sprinkled around his early ’90s albums, featuring much worse lyricists. It’s a repetitive song built around a boring drum loop, which is a description that fits many of these songs.

The other hip-hop inflected song, “Hot Wit U,” features Eve (remember her?), and is unfortunately a knockoff of “Gett Off.” “Hot Wit U,” though, is staid, and rather chaste. Indeed, this album coincided with Prince’s spiritual rejuvenation as a Jehovah’s Witness; so the sense of lustful abandon his audience knew him for is missing. Lyrics like “I wanna get you underneath the cream/and to the marshmallow” sound mild compared to the kinds of things floating around radio in the same time period, even if “multicolored lights and an ocean view” sound tempting.

This push and pull between old Prince and new is one of Rave’s strangest qualities. It’s a strange album all over, too. Example: why would an album released in 1999 feature a moment of silence for Miles Davis, who died in 1991? Davis deserves all the accolades he gets, but Prince’s tribute raises the questions of “why now?” and “why 4 seconds of silence at track 4?” But, the weirdest aspect of the project is Sheryl Crow. Not her inclusion in general, but her relative ubiquity. Aside from backup duties on “Baby Knows” (one of the catchier songs), a cover of her “Every Day is a Winding Road” is here, too. No one has ever heard that song and asked for a funky cover, and indeed, it is a painful experiment killing six minutes on an overlong album.

Not all is lost, though: “So Far So Pleased” is an effervescent duet with Gwen Stefani that happens to work as a chaste kind of sexy. It foreshadows Stefani’s “Cool” years later. His collaboration with Ani DiFranco, “I Love You, But I Don’t Trust You Anymore,” might be one of his best ballads of the decade. It’s a quiet lonely ballad that shows off Prince’s formidable falsetto better than anything else on this set.

Otherwise, the solo Prince songs are undone his lack of engagement. The opening track is a leftover from the late ’80s; one might expect better from something written during his early creative streak. Aside from the vocals trying maybe too hard, the music feels stilted. It’s stiff and mechanical, very unlike other music he’s created alone. It’s an aesthetic that carries on throughout, whether it’s the limp ballad “Man O’War,” or the groove-less, hook-less spiritual rap “Strange but True.”

Then, the album ends on a high note, with a bonus track. “Pretty Man” (feat. Maceo Parker) is an overt James Brown homage: looser, funkier and funnier than the 60-minutes of straight-faced slog that precedes it. The audible difference between that track and listed closer, the tepid “Wherever U Go, Whatever U Do,” really emphasizes the problems with the majority of the record. At heart, Prince would probably rather be aping James Brown than consciously gunning for pop charts, but here he is, for whatever reason, doing a Sheryl Crow cover and shoehorning Eve into for a rap verse. It’s the forced nature of the guest spots, too, in that nothing about Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic feels organic. It’s fitting that an artist as eclectic as Prince would find the sour spot between letting the guest run amok and resting too hard on his laurels.

Also, that album cover is atrocious.

Addendum:
Prince is an artist with many “worst album” choices. Briefly, I’d like to say why this one was more interesting to write about than the two I’d say are worse:

• New Power Soul: technically a New Power Generation album. Shares some problems with Rave in that he doesn’t quite give himself over completely to his collaborators, resulting in predicable scraps like “Mad Sex.”
• NEWS: Nobody gives Elvis Costello guff for his forays into classical; nobody should acknowledge that Prince is the most boring jazz fusion musician of all time.

CUT THE CRAP: The Rebound
Artist: Van Halen
Album: Van Halen III
Aftermath: Over 10 years later, we’re still waiting on a new Van Halen album. Frontman of the album Gary Cherone disappears off the face the earth. David Lee Roth returns for a nostalgia tour that ignores 15 years of the band’s catalog.

In 1986, Van Halen pulled a magic trick with 5150, their first album after switching original frontman David Lee Roth for Sammy Hagar. Now, I’m no “Van Hagar” apologist, but 5150 pointed to a more synth oriented future that continued in the same direction as Roth’s last album with the group, 1984. It’s not an all-time classic, but it’s a respectable bundle of music with nearly all of the best Van Hagar singles. Van Halen maintained a level of success throughout the ’80s.

What happened after that? Dwindling returns on their investment, as guitarist Eddie Van Halen struggled to maintain creative energy and sought respectability past being one of best guitarists ever by being increasingly pretentious and elaborate about his music and its arrangements. Also: troubles with substance abuse and in-fighting in the band. Cut to 1996, and the band dumps Hagar. They reunite with Roth for a quick fling then dump him.

By this point, you have to understand, Van Halen thinks it’s done with those blonde-haired party boys. They’re always handsome and funny at first, but then they just become obnoxious and annoying. Van Halen needs someone different. Someone stable, who can provide lead vocals for longer than six years. And so the band is at a party, and across the room Extreme is there. They get to talking; they get to flirting. Extreme’s lead singer reminds Van Halen a little of Hagar, but maybe more willing to commit. He was in Extreme for 10 years! Van Halen takes Gary Cherone by the hand, and they head into Van Halen’s studio.

The result of that coupling is Van Halen III. This album is a rebound, mis-matched parties masturbating each other messily. Gary Cherone gets a band, Van Halen gets a guy who can probably sing Hagar’s songs (and presumably the guy who so sings like Hagar can sing like Hagar singing like Roth, right?). But Van Halen had some shit to work out within themselves before they could get back into the swing of things. No songs here are memorable.

Most of the blame has to fall into Eddie Van Halen’s lap. His bid to be known as more than a guy who played great guitar on “Everybody Wants Some” and other songs about doin’ it translates here into cluttered tracks filled with multiple layers of guitar, multi-part structures, and no identifiable riffs or hooks. The best comparison is a lead guitarist who strikes out to go solo, feels like he was underrated in the context of a group, and spills every idea he has into every song. So, you get “Dirty Water Dog,” a song built around some skillful finger picking that almost sounds like a Cherone wailing over some nondescript guitar solo. The songs of Van Halen III are barely discernible from one another, aside from the acoustic guitar showcase that opens it and the Eddie-sung closer.

I suspect Hagar couldn’t make much of these songs, but Cherone doesn’t help. He really, really sounds like Hagar. Except he sounds like Hagar on the chorus of “Dreams,” that soaring, epic “Hiiiigher and hiiiiiiigher!” part, but hoarser. His ad-libbed “Yeah yeah!”s and “Come on!”s sound like desperate cries for more energy from this clinical set. The gonzo fun of Roth and Hagar’s powerful vocals are greatly missing, leaving mostly the latter’s worst features and an off-putting brand of seriousness. It’s a difficult balance to take things seriously and write lyrics like “If I cannot kiss you from afar/Press against your lips, taste the sweetness/Of your breath.”

In essence, the entire band feels out of its element. It was the ’90s, so maybe Eddie felt self-conscious that no one was doing the guitar heroics thing in the post-grunge landscape. It’s a match that sounds like it could work, and indeed it’s easy to imagine this band playing the old songs. In reality, though, everyone involved seems like they’re forcing themselves to make the changes work. It was probably an inevitable growing pain that this album was Cherone’s only contribution to the band’s catalog.

After a mess like this, the only place to go was to clean up and either become something new or reunite with David Lee Roth, whose first love bond with the group was so pure everyone knew it was right.

Other rebounds:
Red Hot Chili Peppers – One Hot Minute

(Contrary to what you see on Assault, we still have time to lovingly peruse our old music collections. With that in mind, Jere has fired up his iPod, set it to “random album” and reviewed the first three things that pop up. We call it Assault Shrapnel, where nothing is off-limits and you don’t know what’ll hit you!)

The Who -- Face Dances
“Disappointing” might be the most apt description of this album. After the refreshing blast of “You Better You Bet” and “Don’t Let Go the Coat,” it quickly dissolves into the unmemorable “Cache Cache.” Most dispiriting is the fact that John Entwistle’s voice is in terrible shape -- thin, worn-out -- on “The Quiet One.” His songwriting acumen doesn’t fare much better. The onset of early ’80s production turns their once-muscular synths into melodic crutches for (arguably) the first boring Who album. It’s not all down spots, though. Aside from “You Better You Bet,” “How Can You Do It Alone” is a jaunty bit of pop-rock and “Another Tricky Day” is a much slept-on closer. Strangely, it seems like the passing of Keith Moon decreased their ambitions; this album is fairly humble, a trait that hardly describes The Who at their best.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvWwtfKiGUk

Led Zeppelin -- The BBC Sessions
For a long time, this was the best live album Zeppelin fans had. Maybe you don’t need three versions of “Communication Breakdown,” two of “You Shook Me” and two of “I Can’t Quit You Baby” all on the same disc, but I know one fifteen year old boy who thought these performances were amazing and just different enough to justify having them all. That said, this is definitely an area mostly reserved for hardcore fans, neither capturing the full grandeur of their concerts (as on How the West Was Won) and, again, containing so many repeated songs as to feel tedious. It does have a live version of “Dazed and Confused” that lasts less than an eternity, though (…plus another version that’s about 18 minutes slog, err, I mean, long), which is kind of a novelty. Plus, a couple covers aren’t available elsewhere and are better novelties.

P.S. Why does it seem that there aren’t any official-release-worthy concerts of latter day Zeppelin? All the live albums seem to wrap around, at latest, Houses of the Holy. Their concert DVD (not that awful movie, the other one) has some, but seriously -- not a single full soundboard-quality show from their last tour? I know, (I have bootlegs) they weren’t so great on that tour, but it doesn’t take a Mick Jagger to market the shit out of “The first official live version of ‘Kashmir’!”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfwLUkzKx9k

Bob Dylan -- Shot of Love
It’s strange that this week’s Shrapnel is three classic rock giants’ lesser-known albums. Bob Dylan’s Shot of Love completes his “Christian” trilogy in a way that points to Dylan shaking loose from the dogmatic lyricism of Saved and from religious music in general. “Every Grain of Sand” is simply a gorgeous hymn. It was improved years later by Emmylou Harris, but the base is here. Elsewhere, Lenny Bruce gets a ballad mourning his death, and “The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar” is the kind of bluesy shuffle you’d imagine Dylan can do in his sleep. It’s still good, though, and musically Dylan and his band are much more awake than they’d been on Saved. Aside from “Every Grain of Sand” and “Property of Jesus,” nothing here is memorable. It makes for a great gem for anyone wanting something that approaches Slow Train Coming in terms of Christian music, however small that audience may be.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMGsEq-Vn3w

The other day a funny thing happened. I had just parked my car in the Meijer parking lot and I was ready to run in and grab the pints of ice cream that I came for, but then a song started playing and it was so good that I re-settled in my seat, lit another cigarette, and turned it up. I felt like a bit of a douche, listening to Best Coast by myself late at night in a parking lot. But, seriously:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXEyLTz18w4

We talked about Crazy For You, Best Coast’s debut full-length, a little bit on the most recent episode of Audio Assault (gratuitous plug), but I wanted to talk a little more about it here. I was a casual fan of the band’s pre-CFY output but, on the whole, somewhat unimpressed -- didn’t Vivian Girls do this, and a bunch of other bands that sound like Vivian Girls? Isn’t this washed-out style of lo-fi grrrl-pop a little played out by this point? I still think it is, but what Best Coast do is pretty far removed from what the cool kids are doing in Brooklyn. There’s a tangible sadness to these songs, a melancholy so deep that it becomes totally compelling if you let it envelop you.

Part of me feels like I’m cheating by listening to Best Coast -- I stole this record. Should I go pay $12 for it at Best Buy? I had a very difficult moment this week when I found out the new Jenny Lewis record (Jenny and Johnny, actually, but we all know what the people are paying for, right?) was released on Tuesday. I barely miss fishing Pirate Bay and pulling in ten records a week; I never had time to listen to all that, and it was distracting. What I really miss is the actual theft; getting a new record the day it comes out (or, realistically, a few weeks prior) when my bank account is distinctly short in the bones department. Getting music free like that -- consuming it like a normal consumer, sans the one commercially important part of the process, removes all the stress from being a music fan. I have a much easier time accepting an album for what it is when I don’t have anything tangibly invested in it. I know that’s lazy and wrong, but I’m poor. And I love music.

In the end, there are just too many options to ever be satisfied with any choice -- this is, coincidentally, what I think will actually be the undoing of our civilization. I was researching barbarism last night and one of the key traits of barbarism is increased leisure time. If you log on to Twitter in the middle of the workday, you will discover very quickly that all anybody has these days is leisure time. All of this luxury has made us barbaric again, but I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing -- not doing much of anything allows us plenty of time to go all deep-focus on our personalities and cultivate the eccentricities that make us individuals. That is the awesome part of the modern age. The drawback is that the things most people are naturally interested in are trivial and stupid.

To wit: I have the free time to write a weekly column about not listening to music. But I feel like this is the only way to truly rebel against a society that prizes infinite options; instead of grabbing handfuls of everything in sight and sorting it out later, I’m forcing myself to ask questions (of, uh, myself) and deciding what is important enough to spend money on. Money is everything; without money, we quite literally die. Capitalism is trying to destroy us by offering so much fare to spend our hard-earned sawbucks on; cherry-picking the best stuff, the stuff that’s actually worth engaging with, is equivalent to brewing a pot of coffee at home instead of spending three dollars on a cup of joe at Starbucks. The most satisfying word in my vocabulary is “no,” and I’m finding a lot of honest joy in using it hundreds of times a day.

But, wrapping up on the Best Coast tip: I don’t like Beth Cosentino’s music despite the references to weed and talking felines. I love Best Coast because of that stuff -- because it’s personal, and feels fragile. And, what the fuck -- who among us here hasn’t gotten high and tried to communicate with our pets? This recent wave of lo-fi stuff reminds me of what I loved about singer-songwriters when I was going through my singer-songwriter phase, and it’s also the stuff I love about watching stand-up comedy or bullshitting with my friends over a case of beer. With all of our major problems so far out of reach (the war, the oil spill, the Tea Party) and so impossible to correct in any way from an individual stance, we’re forced to examine the mundane details of life -- the stuff that frustrates us every day that we know we’ll never be able to change.

For instance, the employee bathroom at my workplace has an exposed sewer drain in the floor, and from that hole the smell of ripe feces rises like a phoenix from the ashes of the last ten dumping crimes to occur there. The bathroom always smells terrible, and my ten-cup-a-day coffee habit forces me to visit this wasteland on an extremely regular basis. The smell will never leave, regardless of how much bleach I pour down the drain or how many air-fresheners the cleaning crew installs; I wake up in the morning and I know I’m going to smell everybody’s excrement multiple times during the day. I have no control over the situation, short of quitting my job and getting evicted from my apartment. If somebody wrote a song about a shitty-smelling bathroom, that would become my favorite song, and I would pay money to own it. I would listen to it everyday. Sometimes I wish that drain could talk.

Records I enjoyed the “old-fashioned” way:

• The Beatles -- Let It Be*
• Led Zeppelin -- II
• The Police -- Synchronicity

Records I wanted to download:

• Jenny And Johnny -- I’m Having Fun Now**

*Let It Be will serve as the primary focus of next week’s WUTW installment -- I have a lot to say about my favorite Beatles record.
** I will purchase this when funds become available next week and probably discuss it.

Now that MTV has about as much to do with music as KFC has to do with Kentucky, the Internet has become our primary source for music videos. With the Internet, though, there is no filter. It’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Well here, rocketeers, is the chaff. It’s your penance for a lifetime of sins: Music Video Hell.

I don’t understand homophobia. Conservatives seem to think there is this malicious, underground movement of homosexuals that want to turn our children into sodomites and force us to wear designer clothes and get pedicures. Homosexuals aren’t any more unified or diabolically clever than heterosexuals, though. Case in point: the video for “Rocket to Uranus,” a song that is about as subtle as a cock-slap to the face. If there were some sort of poofta illuminati pulling the strings of the liberal media, wouldn’t they have been embarrassed enough to stop this video from happening? And yet Perez Hilton still has not been mysteriously assassinated by a sniper wearing assless chaps. It does not add up.

This is by far the dumbest music video I have seen all year. Given how prevalent Katy Perry has been this year, that’s quite a statement. The song, if you haven’t figured it out by now, IS ABOUT ANAL SEX. You see, they are using “Uranus” as a double-entendre, much as you may have done in your middle school astronomy class. The difference is that you moved on to funnier jokes years ago. That makes you more discerning than the Vengaboys and Perez Hilton.

“Surely there must be something else to the song besides an endless series of references to rectal invasion,” you are saying to yourself, “some deeper meaning.” No. There is a spaceship that looks like a dick and balls. There is a guy’s face appearing out of a vaguely rectal cavity in some sort of planetoid (perhaps the titular Uranus?). There is Hilton declaring, “Uranus is so pretty, it feels like home.” There is no deeper meaning. This is a shallow, unfunny, turgid song with a garish, headache-inducing, awful video.

There is a very narrow demographic that this video is appealing to: gays who are depressingly vapid and the girls who think they’re hi-lar-ious. Perez Hilton is the Stepin Fetchit of the gay community, gladly indulging in every negative stereotype ever perpetuated against homosexual men. He is also proof positive, though, that there is not some united front of sinister queers who are out to take over society. If there were, they would have secreted him off to their underground lair and beaten him to death with a giant dildo.

You always have great bands: bands who rise in the public consciousness to great heights until they embarrass themselves and their art with a misstep, or at least one that gets remembered poorly by public opinion. It is to these albums that Cutting the Crap is dedicated. My primary goal is to give a fair shake to albums that get shat upon. At the very least, I’d like to write about the ways the great musicians have gone astray.

Each week, I’ll tackle an album whose street cred is only slightly better-valued than an MC Hammer pog and explore if it deserves its reputation and how albums get that reputation. It’s important to note that these aren’t albums I specifically dislike, but albums that don’t get as much respect as the bands that made them. To make this distinction, I’m partially reliant on Allmusic.com, talking to other music fans, and shit I’ve gathered about artists’ discographies over the years.

Here’s the preliminary list of bad artists moves I’m covering:
(Actual albums are a surprise)
The new hire
Poor fan service
The youth movement
The comeback as setback
The outside interference
The glory days

What would our lives be like without music? This is what I think about. My life, obviously, would be different; I wouldn’t be writing this. I’d probably watch a lot more TV, and that’s what actually set me to thinking about this in the first place. This past Saturday I planted myself in front of the tube for a three hour slop-block consisting of two episodes of Jersey Shore and one episode of Teen Mom; I ate fudge bars while I did this, and I bathed in my own shame afterwards. I should’ve never gotten cable; the amount of time I’ve wasted with the television over the last few weeks would make Matt Roush puke in disgust. (Compelled to mention: I also watch “smart” TV shows like Mad Men but I get mostly the same feeling from them, albeit a bit tempered by protective layers of quality and craftsmanship.)

But I love TV; it’s the easiest, most addictive form of entertainment. There’s no commitment. A record, on the other hand, demands that you sit and stare at the wall for an hour. (This is why music always sounds better when you’re high.) I was a very picky listener until I started jamming through iTunes on my laptop while I surfed the internet; I have a much higher tolerance for unusual-sounding stuff if it’s safely in the background. Listening like this is giving up on getting anything out of the experience before the first note is even played, though. You wouldn’t read a book while having a conversation with your friends on Twitter and adding movies to your Netflix instant queue -- or you might, but you’d be hard-pressed to engage in a discussion about the book’s themes afterward.

A lot of modern music is built for this resigned listening approach -- I present the chill wave genre as proof. When I listen to Neon Indian at work while I’m trying to concentrate, I get a massive fucking headache. Neon Indian songs are meant to be enjoyed in the dark while you smoke a joint and download hip hop mixtapes. It’s glitchy electronic wallpaper that makes your futuristic life seem interesting during the moments when nothing is happening; heard in the analog confines of a real world situation, it’s just irritating. Time passes better with a band like the Hold Steady who caress your pleasure centers with big dumb hooks.

Some smart bands are coming at music from both angles; the new Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. EP Horse Power overcomes the initial distasteful note their name strikes, and they do it by goosing simple pop songs with sound effects. I can’t tell if they’re the new Tapes ‘n Tapes or the new Barenaked Ladies; I’m having a fine time studying the evidence for clues. In a way they’re a refreshing reminder of early-naughts buzz bands like Ambulance LTD -- the guys that made old school soft rock but dressed it up like Elliott Smith on his way to the Oscars. I don’t think a band called Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. could ever write a song that I would call my favorite song, but they’re pretty good at making songs that I can listen to while I drink light beer on my patio and laugh at kids who fall off their skateboards.

The more time I spend away from my computer, the better my life is. The less time I watch TV, the better my life is. These are the conclusions I’ve come to after a weekend of actively avoiding baser forms of entertainment and focusing on the simple joy of sitting in my apartment and listening to records. Time feels a lot kinder, pressures seem a lot gentler, everything is looser and more enjoyable. When people argue about the definition of “art,” I think of a great song and the way it transcends the everydayness of a tedious moment, the slight shimmer of reality colliding with beauty.

Records I enjoyed the “old-fashioned” way:

• Stevie Nicks -- Bella Donna. Fleetwood Mac have always represented the ultimate in California cocaine rock to me, even though they started as a weird British blues band. I think I confused them with Pink Floyd when I was a child, to be honest. But Bella Donna out-L.A.’s even Rumours, in my opinion; maybe because I actually bought it in L.A. while on vacation, or it might be because this is exactly what you’d imagine Nicks herself listening to while Don Henley does lines off her shawl. Nicks’s singing is beyond good, bordering on “life-altering” -- your girlfriend might do your laundry, but she isn’t Stevie Nicks.
• Bob Dylan -- Greatest Hits, Vol. 2. Why does harmonica sound so much better on wax? The DualDisc remastered versions of Dylan’s landmark records that they released a few years ago revealed a lot of vocal nuance, but the harp-work was ear-piercing. The sound is much warmer on this perennial garage sale staple; I think I paid 25 cents for this and I would take it to a desert island with me. Not if I was stranded, per se, but for a vacation, definitely.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OZ9F3NTvzY

Records I wanted to download:

• The Sword -- Warp Riders. I gave these guys a shot because Lars Ulrich said they were heavy; I bought their second album for half price during the great Circuit City meltdown of ’09. The generic repetitiveness of their riffs is a two-sided dagger; they’re reliable but boring. But maybe they’ve taken another step in their evolution -- this could be one I spend ten bucks on at Best Buy.
• Eels -- Tomorrow Morning. I lost interest in these guys the day I bought Beautiful Freak and discovered that the guy called himself “E.” He seems to have transcended his one MTV hit but I’ve never given his work the attention it probably deserves. I’d download this and listen to the first half; can’t see allocating any portion of my paycheck to it.
• !!! -- Strange Weather, Isn’t It? I purchased one of their songs from iTunes three years ago; I really enjoyed it. If I downloaded this, there’s a 50% chance it’d become my favorite thing this year. But the opposite is that I would hate it, so I can’t justify sacrificing any coin. These decisions are relatively easy with the hindsight of two years spent listening to over-hyped crap, but I could be genuinely missing something with this one. My finger itches.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2yy141q8HQ

(Contrary to what you see on Assault, we still have time to lovingly peruse our old music collections. With that in mind, Jere has fired up his iPod, set it to “random album” and reviewed the first three things that pop up. We call it Assault Shrapnel, where nothing is off-limits and you don’t know what’ll hit you!)

U2 -- The Best of 1990 -- 2000 (The B-Sides)

This collection may be among the least essential things imaginable. U2′s run in the ’90s was not quite dire (my overall favorite U2 album is Achtung Baby, after all), but it was inconsistent. One reason for this was their attempts at integrating dance music into their sound. And, of course, with dance comes remixes. This CD is filled with so many remixes, each one more bland than the last. Oh, and “Electrical Storm,” which was presented inasppiness is a Warm Gun,” which is worse than the entire I Am Sam soundtrack combined and doubled.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTNefEWOTNk

Elvis Presley -- 2nd to None

A haphazard collection, intended as a sequel to 30 #1 Hits. That collection hit on the bare-bone basics while missing some essential tracks -- “Viva Las Vegas,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” “That’s Alright Mama” among them -- so this compilation was an inevitability. Elvis is not an artist with a lack of great material, either. Unfortunately, rushing through Presley’s entire career has the effect of rushing everything. It’s the opposite problem of Jerry Lee Lewis’ Sun Essentials from the last Assault Shrapnel; there’s no unifying factor to this collection other than “throw in a bunch of Elvis songs and stop when you get to 70 minutes.” Ultimately, some of the songs don’t stack up. For every couple gems like “Kentucky Rain” and “I Forget to Remember to Forget,” there’s a novelty like “Rock a Hula Baby.” The Paul Oakenfold remix of “Rubberneckin’” doesn’t help.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC7-NzEK9xY

Pearl Jam -- Vs.

Pearl Jam is a band that strikes me as one I should like more than I do, yet never can. Consistently, they give me 3-4 songs to love on a given album, they are a spectacular live band, and they never come off as lazy. I’d give every Pearl Jam album a B+ at best (Vs.) and at worst, a B. I know, I’m not specifically writing about Vs., their second album, but I can never invest myself fully into them.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIgfYVq5Y5A

Now that MTV has about as much to do with music as KFC has to do with Kentucky, the Internet has become our primary source for music videos. With the Internet, though, there is no filter. It’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Well here, drinkers of both tea and coffee, is the chaff. It’s your penance for a lifetime of sins: Music Video Hell.

OK, so there’s been a whole lot of talk over the last couple of weeks about the “Mosque” (it’s actually a community center) that is planned to be built “at Ground Zero” (it’s actually several blocks away). It seems to have really laid bare the ugly undercurrent of racism that has been permeating the United States since Obama got elected. No, I’m not blaming Obama. I’m blaming the racist, redneck pieces of shit who are so afraid of losing their majority status in the United States that they feel the need to resort to spreading ridiculous “birther” conspiracies about our President, declaring that anyone in Arizona with brown skin is probably an illegal immigrant, and lumping all Muslims in with the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11.

Music Video Hell was created as a humor column, and I’m sorry that the angry-to-funny ratio in this particular installment is unusually high, but I am just getting fed up with this bullshit. I don’t want my daughter growing up in a country where one in five Americans think President Obama is a Muslim based on nothing but the wild accusations of a few Tea Partiers. People need to engage in some critical thinking and not just regurgitate whatever talking points Fox News (or MSNBC, for that matter) happens to be feeding to them in a given week.

There have been far more attacks on American soil by domestic, Christian terrorists than by Muslims either native or foreign-born. Would anyone object to a church being built near the site of the Oklahoma City bombing? No. It’s a lot easier to point the finger at the mysterious, Islamic bogeyman, though. And hey, if the President of the United States says that Muslims are just as entitled to freedom of speech and religion as the rest of us, why then he must be one of them! After all, just look at the color of his skin!

OK, so let’s get to the video itself, because that’s what this column is about. The song sounds like an amateur rendition of a late-era Toby Keith ballad as re-interpreted by David Duke and his $20 Casio keyboard. I absolutely loathe Toby Keith but this makes him look like a card-carrying member of the ACLU by comparison, and a musical genius to boot. “We gotta stop the mosque at ground zero,” the lyrics tell us. “It’s thumbing its nose at all the victims and heroes.” Accompanying the grade school-level rhyme scheme and shimmering synthesizer is a PowerPoint collage of 9/11 scenes interspersed with shots of right-wing crazies waving around their protest signs. I’ve long been an opponent of PowerPoint and its deleterious effect on modern communication, and this video makes a pretty strong case for me.

“God help us retain the honor and trust,” the lyrics continue, “for all the families that have suffered so damn much.” And you’d better believe that at that moment, there is an image of a firefighter with an American flag transposed over him. This video sinks just that low in its obvious, crass jingoism. It almost parodies itself at that point, seeming more like a Mr. Show sketch than an actual thing.

This video just sucks on so many levels and makes me angry down to the very core of my being. This isn’t the harmless stupidity of a video from hacks like Dirty Hair or The Maine. This is vile, hateful stupidity. Next time I’ll get back to focusing on shitty corporate bands and wacky Internet memes, but right now I just want to hold my copy of the Bill of Rights and cry myself to sleep.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaQBrTROj2w

Have corrupted files corrupted our souls? I started downloading music in earnest two years ago, discarding my strict previous policy about “supporting the artists.” Instead of music arriving to my ears in a slow, methodical dribble, I was suddenly flooded. I could listen to virtually everything Pitchfork reviewed; I could find rarities and b-sides with just a little legwork where once there would’ve been frustrated quests and exorbitant shipping prices. I was finally in the loop.

The sheer joy of endless music to discover mutated into delirious tedium after, oh, a week. Where before I was always on the prowl for the next band that could strike a match and set my perennially gasoline-drenched heart ablaze, I now slogged through hours of shitty-sounding mp3s wondering if the fire had permanently gone out. These days I feel bad if I listen to anything more than three times – something else, something new, is waiting just around the corner. There’s no time to waste.

I’m tired of spinning my wheels. I don’t want to just hear music, I want to actively listen to it. What I do now is more akin to skimming than close reading, and it disgusts me. Beyond that, nothing sounds good; my ears are closed to the warped stream of noise constantly bombarding them, and I’ve reached a new level of cynicism and existential despair that has rendered me unable to write about music for weeks now.

This process of rediscovery started a week before Arcade Fire released their latest album, The Suburbs. I received a download link from an associate and dug in immediately, my whole being set a-tremble with anticipation. Much like everyone else on the planet, few bands mean more to me than Arcade Fire – Funeral, their first full-length, transformed my interest in indie rock into a full-on obsession, and the follow up Neon Bible forever changed the way I appreciated music. I was able to look past the egregiously bad production and burrow into the songs within, and it filled me with hope at a time when it seemed like the lights were going out on the world.

But I didn’t get anything from The Suburbs for the first week I listened to it. And I listened to it a lot. I couldn’t understand the deep meaning that everyone ascribed to it. When I picked up a physical copy at Best Buy on the official release date, however, that changed – I cranked it up on the stereo, relaxed with the lyric sheet, and the experience was fucking magical. By the time “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” rolled in on those huge synth lines, I was moved to tears. And the experience lasted all day – I cried and listened to Arcade Fire and wondered what the fuck ever happened to my love for music.

I want that love back, and so this is what I’m doing: no more downloading. I will only listen to music that I’ve purchased or was sent to me by artists/labels – occasionally I might even flip on the radio and try to deduce what’s happening on FM these days. I will resist the urge to even look at other blogs, let alone read their reviews; trolling the internet leads to spending an entire week on bands like Sleigh Bells and then forgetting them a week later when a Best Coast record leaks. (Anybody remember Sleigh Bells and Best Coast? Those were the days!) I purchased a composition notebook and a special pen for the express purpose of taking notes while I listen to music. Instead of straight bullshitting 300 words so I can get to the “smoking weed and playing Guitar Hero” portion of my day, I will attempt to actually think critically.

This column will function as a diary for the experiment and also as a receptacle for general ideas about music and perhaps even reviews of classic stuff that once moved me the same way The Suburbs did. I’m listening to a vinyl copy of Born In The U.S.A. that I picked up for $3 at the local record store, and “I”m On Fire” just flipped my love switch for the millionth time.

I’m not sure how long this will take; instead of imposing an artificial time limit on it, let’s say I’ll never illegally download music again, and I’ll keep hammering away at this until it doesn’t hurt anymore and I’ve learned a few new things about the same old music that I’ve always cherished. My name is Oswald Hobbes, I’m a download addict, and this is my first day of sobriety.

The best way to put Scott Pilgrim vs The World into words:

1. take this review (or any)

2. Remove spaces between words

3. Place exclamation points between every word; between every syllable if a word is more than 4 syllables long

Voila!

Scott Pilgrim vs The World is ostensibly an Edgar Wright-directed movie based on Brian Lee O’Malley’s comic about the titular character finding new love in one Ramona Flowers and fighting her 7 evil exes. Really, it’s a frame to hang a bunch of funny jokes, epic scenes, quirky characters, moments, pop culture references, and general amusements. Everything moves so blazingly fast, there’s literally not a moment to spare luxuriating with these characters, which is kind of rare for a comedy. If nothing else, it’s unique, even compared to the comic upon which it’s based. It’s an intoxicating rush, this movie. Even when it’s not perfect, Wright has hit on something delightful here.

I ate a bigass pack of Twizzlers during the movie. Even without that, I would’ve felt like I crammed my face full of candy.The screen pops with bright colors, and this is the second movie this summer (after Inception) that manages some mind-blowing visuals without the crutch of 3D. All the unrealistic stuff – the comic-esque action lines and onomatopoeia, sudden and unexplained kung-fu fight sequences, sword fights, ninjas – all feel organic to this movie’s world. To question “Why does the Vegan have telekinetic powers?” is to miss the point that it’s silly enough to make sense in the world of this movie.

Unsurprisingly for a movie based on a six-comic series, the pacing is awkward. The first twenty minutes, before the evil exes stuff, moves swiftly: scenes change suddenly; geographic locations transition nonsensically yet to a wonderful effect; a scene might start literal and end a state of mind. When the actual meat of the movie – those evil exes! – kicks in, the movie slows down considerably, giving the overall film a top-heavy feeling. Packing by necessity six fights into the same movie (a pair of exes are twins) makes all of them feel less consequential (hilarious as they each individually are). This was never going to be Way of the Dragon or anything, but the movie ignores the metaphor of fighting the exes to value jokes above all else.

That said, those jokes are pretty consistently amusing considering they come flying at the audience, several every minute. One-liners are everywhere, popups provide background and commentary, physical gags, censorship gags… It’s all in here, and the cast carries all of it adroitly.

Michael Cera plays Scott Pilgrim as the Michael Cera of the public’s imagination: awkward, charming, utterly adorable, definitely dumb with optional utter stupidity for a little extra (here it’s set to “yes, full stupidity”). His (main) love Ramona Flowers is played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead with great guarded vulnerability. There’s not much for her to do aside from explain background for the exes, look mortified when they show up, and treat Cera’s aloofness with amusement. Still, she holds down the role believably and sympathetically. Or, at least, as believable as one can be in a movie where another character literally gets the highlights punched out of her hair.

All of this would be nowhere without the supporting cast. Most notably, Kieran Culkin steals all his scenes as Scott’s gay roommate Wallace. In a movie where you can miss a million things because every scene is packed so tightly with plot, allusions, and jokes, he brings attention to himself effortlessly. Same can be said for Brandon Routh, who’s shown himself to be a hilarious supporting actor in comedies. Something tells me Superman Returns would have been greatly improved if it was lighter-hearted.

Strangely, though, it’s Ellen Wong as Knives Chau that arguably is the movie’s emotional center, or at least the film works hard to make you feel really, really bad for her. As Scott’s “fake 17-year-old girlfriend,” Pre-Ramona, she gets dumped early and spends most of the rest of the movie getting dumped on, mostly as Scott’s too chickenshit to really talk to her after the breakup or when her favorite band ignores her. It’s in these moments, where the camera lingers on the absolutely crushed look on her face, that the movie works on an emotional level.

In fact, it’s the movie’s lone touch of subtlety that Scott’s exes, periphery characters all, get the most time to emote. It’s an acknowledgment that this is Pilgrim’s story and that we’re ignoring reality for the sake of fun. Similarly, these moments hint at something more grounded and real happening to these characters. But then, it’s more fun to see people exploding into coins and fighting; it was a smart decision to not dwell.

As for the fighting, bravo to the fight choreographers and Wright’s directing. Even with the editing and fighting style being fast-paced, the audience can actually follow the action. Each fight has its own flavor, too, which I won’t spoil by explaining. Suffice to say each ex is easily identifiable with a fitting fight to match. Wisely, none of the fights are given that much weight because, c’mon, like Scott’s not going to get to Evil Ex #7, Gideon Graves (played by Jason Schwarzmann’s time-tested and perfected smarmy motherfucker persona). It’s the right choice, though just once I’d like to see a movie where the protagonist has to fight ten guys and gets killed by the fifth.

Here at Assault, we’re primarily a music site, so I will comment on that. The score is ingenious, using 8-bit sounds to create ambiance. The bands sound perfect for what they are: Sex Bob-Omb crackles like a garage band of young people. The Clash at the Demonhead, singing a song donated by Metric, sound like pros on the rise. Music is yet another stylistic flourish that this movie gets right.

Hyper-kinetic movies like this one are not for everybody. Two years ago, Speed Racer faced a similar conundrum and turned up a minor cult movie (even if it’s a one-man cult that only includes this reviewer). Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is stronger, though, with a more eager-to-please disposition that relies on its humor to make up to demolishing the audience’s brains with its density of sheer things happening. It’s a delightful kind of demolition, though, and artful in its construction. There’s something miraculous in the way it packs so much into so little space. Even if it’s not an unequivocal success, that’s something worth admiring that makes the movie well worth seeing.

B-B-B-BONUS TRACK: COMIC NERD CRITIQUES

So, I’ve also read the Scott Pilgrim comic, but I tried to stay away from comparing the two in the main review. Here are the stray observations (SPOILERS ahead, also nerdfuckery):

• “The book is better than the movie” is a cliche that is vaguely true here. The comics have the time to stretch out; what takes approximately a week (maybe less) in the movie takes about a year in the comic. Scott and Ramona make more sense, and when their relationship exits the honeymoon phase, it holds more weight.
• Similarly, the central themes of baggage, jealousy and badly-ended romances are stronger in the comics. While the main focus is Scott’s gauntlet through Ramona’s exes, it mirrors Ramona having to fight Knives and Scott’s ex, Envy.
• The movie one-ups the books by not even trying to explain the subspace, where Ramona travels through Scott’s head.
• It’s fascinating where the plots of the books and movie differ, yet certain lines (“He has a way of getting into my head”) show up in both.
• +25 for getting my favorite line from volume 4 – “You had a sexy phase?” – into the movie.

Now that MTV has about as much to do with music as KFC has to do with Kentucky, the Internet has become our primary source for music videos. With the Internet, though, there is no filter. It’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Well here, ninjas and Juggalos, is the chaff. It’s your penance for a lifetime of sins: Music Video Hell.

Being a parent is easy. Lots of people do it. All it takes is forgetting to wear a jimmy hat. Being a good parent is just about the most difficult thing in the world. Most people don’t get it right. That’s why strippers, reality television, and Juggalos exist. What happens when one of the original members of the Insane Clown Posse has a kid? It makes me feel like the best father in the world. I’m not a perfect parent. Far from it. But when I watch Violent J’s progeny slapping wrestlers around and posing with guys in evil clown makeup in the video for “Bad Bad Man,” I feel like I’ve mostly made pretty good parental decisions.

Violent JJ was five years old when this video was made (which was not too long ago). Five years old. Think about that while you watch this atrocity. If you’re a parent, that should really piss you off. If you’re not a parent, it’s probably just silly and ridiculous. Either way, there’s really no way this kid is going to grow up to be normal. More likely than not, he’ll end up appearing on A&E in a show called Growing Up Juggalo, in which he yells at his now aged father (who is still in full psycho clown regalia) to turn down the stereo while he tries to study how the fuck magnets work for his remedial science class. Then he’ll flip out and rob a convenience store for money to finance his meth habit.

Showbiz parents are really the worst. They give their kids awful names like “Apple” and “Moxie CrimeFighter” and drive them into careers that are at best only a shadow of what their parents accomplished. When what their parents (or at least one of them) accomplished is to dress up like extras from Killer Klowns from Outer Space and rap about drinking Faygo and killing people, there are bound to be years of therapy and self-medication ahead. That’s why I mostly just feel bad for Violent JJ. His showbiz name is barely even distinguishable from his father’s. Maybe my dire predictions for him will prove wrong and when he reaches his adolescent rebellion phase he’ll study physics and listen to classical music in retaliation for years of being dragged along to the Gathering of the Juggalos. Watching this video, though, I’m not filled with an overwhelming sense of optimism.

Now that MTV has about as much to do with music as KFC has to do with Kentucky, the Internet has become our primary source for music videos. With the Internet, though, there is no filter. It’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Well here, Adams and Eves, is the chaff. It’s your penance for a lifetime of sins: Music Video Hell.

Throughout rock ‘n’ roll history there have been bands named after places. You’ve got your Boston, your Kansas, your Asia. You know what you don’t see, though? Band names like The Boston, The Kansas or The Asia. Why? Because that would be pretty fucking presumptuous. Well, that’s where The Maine comes in. Not only does their band name flip the bird to our country’s 23rd state, it is made even more insulting by the fact that they are actually from Arizona. Arizona! I’m fairly certain there isn’t a state in the Union less like Maine than Arizona.

Oh, and also: they suck. Their music is the sort of turgid bullshit one finds while listening to ear-raping Clear Channel radio stations that have names like The Rock 105 FM or Modern Rock WKRM. It’s bland, corporate pop-punk that could only have been conceived in a board room by a bunch of old white guys asking themselves, “What do the young, hip kids like to ‘rock out’ to these days?” I guarantee that at least one of their songs will eventually be used during a training sequence in a feel-good movie about a destitute, paraplegic orphan with mild autism who overcomes the odds to become football’s greatest hero.

The protagonist of the provocatively-titled “Inside of You” is not paraplegic, but he certainly has other obstacles to overcome. For instance: he appears to be in some sort of pedophile Gomorrah, populated by a leering old man and a roving band of hedonistic fetishists. The video begins in black and white with the young boy weathering the inappropriate touching of the aforementioned old man while sitting on the front stoop of his house. He then wanders around a group of adults, desperate to tell them about the terrifying encounter he just had, but they are all either deaf to his pleas or eager to engage in inappropriate touching of their own. Yearning for escape, he gazes out his window through a kaleidoscopic spyglass made out of a couple toilet paper rolls (such is his poverty), hoping to find a better place. Instead, he witnesses a wild orgy orchestrated by the members of The Maine dressed like escapees from Stanley Kubrick’s nightmares.

The lead singer, John O’Callaghan, sings “I can’t get inside of you,” and in the context of what’s going on in the video, it comes off like the desperate plea of a drunken pederast. Well, I assume the drunkenness on account of his Irish surname. He does this while dressed in an outfit that looks like something the Mad Hatter would have worn had he gone to an all-boys Catholic school as a child. This is not a man I would let my own child anywhere near, but some parents do awful things to advance their child’s acting career.

At the end of the video, the toilet paper roll kaleidoscope breaks and the young boy is heartbroken. Now that he has seen the lascivious pleasures that await him in adulthood, how can he return to the hum-drum world of his current existence? There is a glimmer of hope, though, when some of the evil magic held captive by this device escapes, and the boy is confronted with a now-colorized girl offering him… what is that, a scrotum? Upon first viewing I thought it was an apple, like some sort of Adam and Eve shit. Now I don’t know what it is. And really, that sums up this video as a whole: I don’t know what it is, but it vaguely resembles a scrotum.