TBTS Eustachian Ruminations, 11/18/09 Edition
As we move closer to year’s end, your humble correspondent will be reviewing the top releases of 2009. Eschewing the traditional “Top Whatever” format, we’ll just tell you about the stuff we love to listen to instead and let you make up your own mind about how good it is. In today’s installment, we’ll review two of the more collaborative albums of 2009: Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse’s Dark Night of the Soul and the latest in the series of Red Hot compilations called Dark Was the Night. Although the titles suggest otherwise, these albums are companion pieces in spirit only. But any review of 2009 indie music is incomplete without due consideration of these works.
Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse Present: Dark Night of the Soul
Many of you will know Brian Burton a.k.a. Danger Mouse from his days with Gnarls Barkley. Sparklehorse is the moniker of one Mark Linkous, who is an accomplished solo artist in his own right and gets props for me as a producer of Daniel Johnston’s Fear Yourself. Take these two artists and add in the macabre genius of film maker David Lynch and you’ve got one of the more interesting and original projects of 2009. The album is actually more of a multimedia presentation as it was conceived as a kind of soundtrack to a book of Lynch’s photography. The kicker is that Lynch only printed 5000 of the books, so if you didn’t get one in that first printing you’re out of luck. Fortunately, the album stands well enough on it’s own without one ever laying eyes on the book.
The first thing I need to let you know is that not only is the book unavailable, you can’t buy this album in stores either. The reasons for this are long and convoluted, but suffice it to say that Danger Mouse continues to have some legal differences with the record label EMI that prevent him from releasing DNOTS. But never fret, like Danger Mouse’s Grey Album, the album is available if you have a positive working relationship with the internet.
DNOTS, like much of Lynch’s film and TV work, is kind of creepy. The overall vibe is more appropriate for Halloween, despite the fact that it was released much earlier in the year. There are a number of notable collaborators, including The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne, Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle, Suzanne Vega, Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys, Vic Chesnutt, and Pixie’s frontman Frank Black. Each collaborator worked on the crafting of their song, although the bulk of the lyrics were Sparklehorse originals. Each song is a self-contained unit, but put together the collection develops a strange sense of menace that is like a good horror film: you know you’re going to get scared but you like it anyway. The music more than stands up on its own, even if you don’t know the backstory behind its making, and DNOTS is easily one of the best albums released in 2009.
Various Artists, Dark Was The Night
For almost twenty years, the Red Hot Organization has brought us musical compilations from artists that donated their time and allowed the funds from these compilations to be put toward AIDS research. The first Red Hot album, Red Hot + Blue was pretty amazing for 1990 and contained a sweet little ditty by David Byrne called “Don’t Fence Me In.” Now, in 2009, Byrne returns with a band that seems to be channeling the late 70’s Talking Heads from time to time, Dirty Projectors, and offers up one of the best songs of the year “Knotty Pine.” But that’s not all this album has to offer, not by a long shot peoples.
The bottom line is that this collection is required listening if you want to hear the best of 2009. Just about every indie rock heavyweight you can think of contributes a song and no one mails it in on this one. Thank The National’s Aaron and Bryce Dessner for the high quality of the contributions, these two accepted the challenge of producing Dark Was The Night and they delivered big time. Bon Iver’s “Brackett, WI” is another out-of-the-park hit by this year’s “it” band, and leader Justin Vernon teams up with Aaron Dessner for another beautiful tune, “Big Red Machine.” Yeasayer contributes “Tightrope”, which whets my appetite big time for their 2010 sophomore release. Grizzly Bear shows up big, giving us “Deep Blue Sea” by themselves and teaming up with Leslie Feist on “Service Bell.” The National cooks up some folky goodness with “So Far Around the Bend”, and then Bryce Dessner teams up with Antony Hegarty for “I Was Young When I Left Home.” The Asthmatic Kitty family is well represented with My Brightest Diamond performing “Feeling Good” and then MBD joining mentor Sufjan Stevens for his techno/orchestral “You Are The Blood”, which I’m sad to say is the weakest track on the album mainly due to its 10-minute plus running time. Iron & Wine also contribute what I can only call a “song fragment” in the 1:07 “Die”, but one minute of Sam Beam is better than five minutes of just about anybody else. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the Decemberists contribute one of my favorite tracks, “Sleepless.”
That was just the first disc, folks. The second disc features songs by Spoon, Arcade Fire, Beirut, My Morning Jacket, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, The New Pornographers, Yo La Tengo, Riceboy Sleeps, Andrew Bird, and a duet by Conor Oberst and Gillian Welch. Again, the weakest track is Canadian rapper Buck 65’s remix of Stevens’ “You Are the Blood”, a song that just seems doomed all the way around. But other than these small missteps, this is a truly phenomenal album. As a cross-section of the decade’s best indie rock acts, there’s no better compilation out there. If you’ve heard of some of these bands but aren’t sure you’re ready for a full-on album from one artist, I’d submit any of these songs (save Stevens’ contribution) as representative of their catalog. But most importantly, this is one heck of a fun album to listen to and I can’t give it any higher of a recommendation.
