LOGANMIX2001: Everything Hits At Once

2001 in a nutshell: The White Stripes caused such a scandal with the instrumentally sparse White Blood Cells that some random dude on the internet went all Phil Spector and unsolicitedly added base-lines to the entire album. It is a pity that music fan-edits never caught on.

Top 10 [with the occasional comments]:


10. Ladytron - 604

9. Four Tet - Pause

8. The Strokes - Is This It?

7. New Order - Get Ready

Ready for some iconoclasm? Get Ready is New Order's best album, front to back. No qualifiers. Sure, it may not have the relevance or dizzying highs of earlier efforts, but deep cuts like the Massive Attack circa Mezzanine styled "Vicious Streak" and the acoustic(!) "Run Wild" make Get Ready the most consistent record in the No catalogue. And it rocks -- not necessarily a descriptor that first comes to mind when describing New Order. Unsurprisingly, the only weakness is Bernard Sumner's lyrics which more than a few times slide uncomfortably from innocuously vague (i.e. "Close Range" : "How can I ever make you understand / you've got the world right in your hands.") to distracting clunky (i.e. "Crystal" : "Here comes love / it's like honey / you can't buy it with money.") But I guess that is a part of the New Order charm, particularly as Sumner has slipped into the narrative persona of Old Uncle Barney with his pearls of avuncular wisdom for naive up-and-comers. And well, the less said about the Billy Corgan and Bobby Gillespie cameos, the better. But I challenge any of you to put on "Slow Jam" and not nod along in agreement with pint in hand to the rousing chorus that might be the perfect summation of the entire New Order discography: "To hit enough to miss / I can't get enough this."


6. Spoon - Girls Can Tell

5. Björk - Vespertine

4. Tim Hecker - Haunt Me, Haunt Me Do It Again

Structured ambient might seem like an odd contradiction of terms. Traditionally, ambient focuses on tone and atmosphere; it is the kind of music that envelops you like a descending fog: incidental and aimless. Structured ambient, in contrast, conveys the impression of being crafted, of having some diffuse narrative or meaning. While Brian Eno famously categorized ambient music as inducing calm and a space to think, Tim Hecker is more interested in investigating geographical and emotional frontiers through texture and glitch. Listening to Haunt Me, Haunt Me Do It Again is like overhearing a stranger scanning radio frequencies on an ancient transistor radio, only to linger briefly on melodies buried among the interference. A distorted snippet of a pop song and Regis Philbin's voice (yes, that Regis Philbin) are the only reminders of a nudiustertian world among a wilderness of static.


3. Stars Of The Lid - The Tired Sounds Of

2. The Faint - Danse Macabre

The 2009 Ladytron and The Faint co-headlining tour was a fitting capstone to the 00's synthpop revival as the two bands were the veritable Darwin and Wallace of the retro-futurism movement. But while Ladytron were situated in England, which never forgot electronic pop music (Blur's "Girls & Boys" was released at the high-water mark of grunge), The Faint had everything working against them: they were stuck in Omaha making new-wave throwbacks during the 90s (need I mention that Conor Oberst was also briefly a member of the band?). Perhaps the bands' respective musical environments had other unintended consequences. Ladytron's first two albums feel like singles collections masquerading as albums (you could lop off most of the backhalf of 604 and not miss a thing) - a natural byproduct of England's more thriving CD single culture. Danse Macabre, in contrast, is a taught and conceptually focused album, clocking in at just 9 songs and 35 minutes. Somebody told me the album was loosely based off Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal. Although I can find no evidence to corroborate this story, I like to think the rumor is true because Danse Macabre finds Todd Baechle's lyrics at their most fertile: instead of fixating on bodily functions, he sublimates his sexual impulses through imagery of modernist decadence and the death drive. Tragically, the same cannot be said about the woeful follow-up album. Just as the synthpop revival reached its chart-topping nadir in 2004 with The Killer's "Somebody Told Me," The Faint returned with the embarrassing and cluttered Wet From Birth, annihilating any hope the band would rescue the movement from Brandon Flowers. Meanwhile, Ladytron disappeared from the scene only to reemerge triumphantly a few years later after rediscovering guitars.


1. Radiohead - Amnesiac

On my 19th birthday, I bought the special edition of Amnesiac. It is a curious artifact: a red hardback book (just like the one on the album cover) with a penchant for getting lost. Never quite fitting in with the rest of my jewel cases, the book would go missing for years on end. Usually it would reappear during a big move along with all of sorts of other totems and fetishes from the past. Intentionally or not, the book has formed a harmonious unity between content and form: Thom Yorke himself best described the sound of Amnesiac as "like finding an old chest in someone's attic with all these notes and maps and drawings and descriptions of going to a place you cannot remember."

Let's go down the waterfall, think about the good times and never look back:

LOGANMIX2001: Everything Hits At Once

1. Out Of The Races And Onto The Tracks - The Rapture [Out Of The Races And Onto The Tracks]
2. Fell In Love With A Girl - The White Stripes [White Blood Cells]
3. The Modern Age - The Strokes [Is This It?]
4. Juxtaposed With U - Super Furry Animals [Rings Around The World]
5. One More Time (Radio Edit) - Daft Punk [One More Time Single]
6. Romeo (Radio Edit) - Basement Jaxx [Romeo Single]
7. Clint Eastwood - Gorillaz [Gorillaz]
8. I Might Be Wrong - Radiohead [Amnesiac]
9. Another Breakfast With You - Ladytron [604]
10. Glass Danse - The Faint [Danse Macabre]
11. Emerge - Fischerspooner [#1]
12. (This Is) The Dream Of Evan And Chan - Dntel [Life Is Full Of Possibilities]
13. It's Not Up To You - Bjork [Vespertine]
14. Crystal - New Order [Get Ready]
15. Prog - Pinback [Blue Screen Life]
16. Following Through - The Dismemberment Plan [Change]
17. The Weight Of My Words (Four Tet Remix) - Kings Of Convenience [Versus]
18. Everything Hits At Once - Spoon [Girls Can Tell]