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Pop Rock Nation

Author: Pop Rock Nation

  • SonicClash Best of 2008: Greg’s Turn

    Happy New Year’s Eve, everyone. Our own Greg Harrell has passed on his own indie-tastic list of his favorites of 2008. Have a look-see, won’t you?

    20.) Atmosphere – When Life Gives You Lemons You Paint That Shit Gold

    19.) The Verve – Forth

    18.) Raphael Saadiq – The Way I See it

    17.) Ra Ra Riot – The Rhumb Line

    16.) Coldplay – Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends

    15.) Robyn – Robyn

    14.) Bloc Party – Intimacy

    13.) The Streets – Everything Is Borrowed

    12.) Shearwater – Rook

    11.) ohGr – Devils in my Details

    10.) The Mars Volta – The Bedlam In Goliath

    Were it not for a handful of shitty songs, this would easily be album of the year. “Metatron” is the greatest thing anybody recorded in 2008, and when this record’s on, it’ll give you seizures. Seriously, Curtis Mayfield could’ve written “Goliath” after a weekend of dropping acid in the desert. Occultist prog-rock doesn’t get any better.

    9.) Sigur Ros – Med Sud I Eryum Vid Spilium Endalaust

    This record is every bit as “Sigur Ros” as anything these crazy Icelandic bastards have done in the past: meaning it sounds very much like pop music from some beautiful alien civilization. Still, the band decided to throw in a few curveballs, and it definitely sounds much…earthier than anything else they’ve done, probably because the sweeping electric guitars of yore have been replaced with acoustics. Surprisingly, they pull the folky direction off beautifully. The sweet ballad “Illgresi” has made it onto just about every mixtape I’ve burned this year, “Gobbledigook” is a gleeful sprint through the woods, and the angelic explosion of “Ara batur” is just paralyzingly beautiful. I don’t know what the hell world these guys inhabit, but I’d sure like to visit it someday.

    8.) TV on the Radio – Dear Science

    Depending on whose reading this, you either have no idea who the fuck TV on the Radio is or you’ve had the brilliance of this record shoved down your throat so many times that you’re completely sick of it. So yeah, TV on the Radio experiments with dance / disco / afro-beat / new wave, everybody loves it and I’m already sick of talking about it.

    7.) Kanye West – 808s & Heartbreak

    I wasn’t as scared of this record as a lot of people were. I dug “Love Lockdown” from the get go, and figured if anyone could make a great record out of the autotune it would be Kanye. Sure enough, he proved me right. If for whatever reason you haven’t heard this yet, “808s & Heartbreak” finds Mr. West going a more somber route. Yeah, there’s singing; yeah, there’s heartbreak; yeah, there are 808s too incidentally enough. I don’t know if this as radical as some people have made it out to be, seeing as there are at least four great singles on this album, but whether you love the man or hate him, you’ve gotta respect his artistic daring. I mean, how many times has Kanye reinvented his style now? Exactly. I don’t really know where to place the sound of this record: somewhere between the “walking through the streets at night contemplating what an utter failure your life has become” sound of Burial’s last record, the catchier side of Depeche Mode and the more Eurocentric songs from “Graduation.” It’s a hell of a statement, and nobody other than Kanye West could’ve possibly made it.

    6.) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!

    Imagine “Highway 61 Revisited” plowed into the Doors’ self-titled record. “Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!” is the result.

    5.) Beck – Modern Guilt

    Beck writes a bunch of apocalyptic songs and gets Dangermouse to provide some colorful and vaguely psychedelic beats. Naturally, the result is brilliance.

    4.) Q-Tip – The Renaissance

    The only legitimately great hip-hop record released this year (“808s” is a little too leftfield to qualify as hip-hop exclusively). Q-Tip does something that not too many pioneers of the genre are willing to do: he looks forward instead of trying to plagiarize himself. The result is an excellent hip-hop medley, sometimes jazzy, sometimes soulful, always electrifying. Tip puts everybody doing this to shame so astoundingly, and so effortlessly, it’s almost humbling.

    3.) Portishead – Third
    Speaking of leftfield comebacks, holy shit this record is amazing. Considering that trip-hop (which isn’t really a genre but let’s pretend it is for a sentence) has essentially been left to fester in a ditch, I can’t say I was expecting Portishead to pull off a masterpiece. But lo and behold they did. Beth Gibbons sounds as lovely as ever, and the other two guys still know how to convert dank and despair into beauty. From the shimmering “Hunter” to the bubbling “Rip” to the foggy “Small,” there’s not a bad song here. Proof that your musical idols aren’t always content to just sit on their asses and exploit their legacies.

    2.) Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago

    The sound of a white wolf pawing at the moon. Music don’t get much sadder and wintry than this.

    1.) Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid

    How the hell have these guys not blown up yet? Seriously, “Grounds for Divorce” alone should have made them a household name. Well, unless Judd Apatow decides to use one of their songs to promote his next movie, I guess these guys are gonna have to remain a secret. “The Seldom Seen Kid” goes everywhere: one track you’re soaring through space, the next you’re getting stretched through a funhouse mirror. One minute you’re sitting on top of a skyscraper, the next you’re walking past a friend’s grave. And so on. Guy Garvey is an absolutely brilliant songwriter, and the lyrics wash through you as if the feelings were your own. As a singer, he’s capable of evoking both the tenderness of Chris Martin and the swagger of Peter Gabriel (who I guess could be tender too but…um…). If you’ve yet to hear this, then look up the dazzling “Mirrorball.” If that song doesn’t move you then I don’t want to share the same…planet as you. Get out.

  • Lightning Isn’t Striking Twice for Soulja Boy

    Picture (c) by Niko203
    Picture (c) by Niko203

    You know, in a sense, it is quite a surprise Soulja Boy is still around, a year after he scored one of the biggest digital singles of all time: the triple-platinum juggernaut, “Crank Dat (Soulja Boy).” At a time when every other ringtone rapper who emerged in 2007—the same year as he—has gone the way of the Beta tape, Soulja Boy lingers on like a turd in a latrine that has just been flushed. When was the last time you heard from Rich Boy, MIMS, the Shop Boyz, Huey and Baby Boy? What, you’re still thinking about it?

    Blame it all on the 700,000-plus people who purchased Soulja Boy’s full-length debut (which I believe was one of the worst rap albums of 2007); the fact that he scored two follow-up Billboard Hot 100 singles in “Soulja Girl” (#32) and “Yahhh!” (#48); and the dubious assistance he provided V.I.C. in being a ringtone hit-maker like himself (He appears as a co-producer and in the video for “Get Silly”). Soulja Boy just wasn’t going away.

    But by the end of this year, however, it has become apparent that Soulja Boy has become more famous (or more accurately, infamous), for his exploits outside the studio than in it. With no inane, simplistic singles to pester the public with, the wiry teenager has become hip-hop’s favorite punching bag for everything that fans perceive is wrong with the genre these days. (Only Lil’ Wayne rivals him in this regard. And is 50 Cent still alive?) If Ice-T is not telling him that he needs to feast on a certain delicate part of the male anatomy, he is proving why he should consider upgrading his intellectual faculties by thanking slavemasters—if for nothing else apart from donning metaphorical, glimmering equivalents of the devices that bound his ancestors in captivity.

    And don’t get me started on the e-thugs who litter the comment boards of hip-hop sites everywhere, verbally pummeling him with some of the coarsest words known to Man.

    I don’t see that changing with the release of Soulja Boy’s sophomore album, iSouljaBoyTellEm. There’s the album title: What’s with the self-obsession? Remove the “i” and add the “dot com” to it, and it is the exact titular replica of his debut. Is this guy so bereft of imagination that he cannot even come up a remarkably different title? Yeah, you’re Soulja Boy! We got it, like, a gazillion times already!

    Maybe that is indicative of what to expect from the album, which I fear—and I shudder greatly when I think of this—is even worse than the one that preceded it. And maybe, just maybe, the high level of derision for Soulja Boy will be commensurate with his work’s commercial reception from this point onward. It’s already happening. How many people know that Soulja Boy has dropped four singles already for his latest project? Heck, it only took a browsing of BET—which, in my humble estimation, is one of the most abominable TV channels currently in existence—for me to realize that “Bird Walk” was out. And was I surprised that it attempts to be a pathetic copy of “Crank Dat” (down to the “Youuuuuuu” refrain and dance-oriented vibe), let alone stalled at #40 and #19 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and Hop Rap Tracks charts respectively?

    If you bet 20 bucks that I was, better hand over the dough to your buddy right now.

    But ultimately, in another sense, you know what? It’s about time this happened. For all his campaigning to have his new album go platinum the first week, I’d be supremely surprised if this guy sells more than 50,000 copies.

    Word of advice to Soulja Boy: You might want to hold on to your money a little more preciously. At least you have an idea of the fact that lightning will not strike twice.

    And get an education.

  • In Memoriam: Miriam Makeba (1932-2008)

    Befittingly, Miriam Zenzi Makeba—Grammy Award-winning songstress from South Africa, the “Empress of African Song,” Mama Afrika herself—died as she lived: on stage, and for a noble cause. After concluding a performance at a concert near Caserta, Italy—interestingly enough, supporting a writer opposing the oldest crime organization in the country—she collapsed and succumbed to a heart attack. She was 76 years of age.

    Makeba needs the rest, for her entire life was characterized by struggle—by being in a three-decade exile from her homeland South Africa for speaking out against apartheid; by watching her record deals and tours cancelled as the consequence for marrying radical civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael; by being in prison with her herbalist mother…while still in utero. And Makeba singing became her conduit of struggle. Blessed with a calming, assuring tone that exuded confidence and doggedness, she found her calling in singing, right from the moment she was a child at a training institute in Pretoria, South Africa. From there, she would only soar higher: performing to exclusively black audiences with The Manhattan Brothers in the 1950s; formed her own group, The Sylarks; starred in the anti-apartheid Come Back, Africain 1959; and, of course, her collaborations with Harry Belafonte in the United States, forever linking the struggles of people of African descent everywhere.

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