Album of the Year 2011

A quick post: It’s time to declare my favorite album that came out in 2011.  The winner is:

The King is Dead–The Decemberists.  A beautiful collection of beautiful songs.  It came out the first few weeks of 2011, and there was nothing I came back to as much.

Bonus Award: Best Album I Discovered in 2011 that Actually Came Out Earlier: Rend Collective Experiment–Organic Family Hymnal.  These guys are golden–seriously, of all the artists I’ve seen, these guys most make me want to say, “Be my friend.”  They are incredible live.  The CD is also great, but give it time to grow on you.  Can’t wait for the new album–six days!!!!!

You Should Watch Some Old Movies

You should watch some old movies.

You should.  We tend to stereotype the old black and whites as being too old-fashioned to relate to, with overdramatic acting, cheesy effects, melodramatic stories, and just boring and inferior to modern day cinema.  Sometimes, that stereotype seems true.

But Hollywood was then just as it is now–capable of churning out loads of failures, utter garbage, at the same time as making films that can be watched over and over again, and stick with you.

Ah, but you say, I’ve tried old movies, and didn’t like them.  Well, maybe you didn’t see the right ones.  So here’s a list of old films I think just about anyone can enjoy or appreciate.  You should go track them down.  Now.

COMEDY

The General (1927)–The General is a silent classic by Buster Keaton, one of the three greatest and most famous of the comedians of that era, alongside Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd.  Charlie Chaplin may be the more famous, but most critics now consider Keaton to be superior, and I agree.

Chaplin’s films are often filmed with a stationary camera, with Chaplin doing his routines, playing out his story, in front of it, as if we are just watching a recorded version of a stage show.  But Keaton tapped into all the tricks of the new film technologies, and his camera moves.  Chaplin is often overly sentimental; Keaton tends to avoid that, and the result is that some things are just funnier–witness the treatment of his dream girl in the second half of The General, as she is thrown around, squashed under piles of barrels, sat upon, etc.

Keaton was also more acrobatic, and there are several moments in The General that make me genuinely laugh.  But if you don’t believe me yet, consider this: I showed this film to a group of American teenagers who didn’t want to watch a silent film at all, and they laughed.  That’s saying something.  (Not sure what…but something.)

The General is based on a real incident from the Civil War, in which some Union troops went undercover to steal a Confederate train engine (The General).  In the film, Keaton is the train’s engineer, and when his train is stolen with his dream girl inside, he gives chase to rescue his train and his woman.  Eventually the chase heads the other direction, as he steals the engine back and the Union soldiers chase him.  Their adventures on the tracks lead to numerous sight gags and stunts, with much of the humour built around the accidental ways in which Keaton manages to get himself out of being killed.

Duck Soup (1933)–Just six years later we’re in full talking-film mode, and this is probably the Marx Brothers masterpiece.  It is lean and quick, unlike some of their other classics that feel overly bloated by songs and musical performances.  All four brothers are here–Groucho, as the President of the land of Freedonia, Harpo and Chico as spies, and Zeppo…doing whatever it is Zeppo did.

The main three brothers play to their strengths, with Groucho firing off one-liners left and right, Harpo playing the silent trickster to the fullness, and Chico ever the snide one with the Italian accent.  There are classic moments all over the place, the highlights including the lemonade stand sequence and the Harpo/Groucho mirror standoff, a bit that would be imitated and recreated for years to come, but not likely done better than here, where Groucho’s residence has been invaded by spies Chico and Harpo, both dressed like him in an effort to throw others off of what’s happening.  A mirror smashes, and the result is this:

A classic.

To Be Or Not To Be (1942): Now this is a gutsy movie.  A satire, a screwball comedy against Nazism made in part by Jewish actors, including star Jack Benny, right in the middle of World War II.  The plot concerns a group of actors in Poland who end up using their skills to help track a Germany spy, but what transpires is a sort of madcap, comical, 40s Mission Impossible, with characters going undercover, mistaken identities, and so on.  Mel Brooks later remade it, but it didn’t need it (and the remake adds nothing.)

This film is really different from the previous two on the list.  Whereas The General uses the plot to set up clever sight gags and dead-panning from Keaton, and Duck Soup uses a loose plot the just set the Marx Brothers loose in chaos, the humour in this film is entirely situational.  The laughs come from the tensions of the situation, and are plot driven, which was not how many of the earlier comedies worked.  This is screen comedy separating a bit from its vaudeville roots and instead embracing what the Broadway stage plays did well.

A really clever film, including one moment on an airplane right at the end that caused both me and Ira to lose it completely.  And remember, when you have nothing to say in an awkward moment: So, they call me Concentration Camp Erhardt?

DRAMA

Citizen Kane (1941) Okay, so I’m not going to win any points for originality here, but there is a reason that this is largely considered the greatest American film ever made.  The film tells the story of a reporter interviewing people who crossed paths with recently deceased newspaper mogul Charles Foster Kane (a very thinly disguised version of real newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst) in an attempt to discover what Kane meant by his last word: “Rosebud.”  But the film becomes even more fascinating when one learns the story of the two men most concerned with its making–the young genius Orson Welles, who would himself later go on a Kane-like path of self-destruction, and Hearst, who opposed the film strongly enough that he attempted to buy and destroy every copy.  Many editions of the DVD come with a really good documentary about these two men, and it is worth watching before viewing the film, in order to understand how scathing, how brazen Welles was being.

Thank God he didn’t.

Not only is it helpful to understand that, but you also have to understand that many of the cinematic tricks Kane pulls in this film–the angles, the transitions (like the one going in from the rain through the roof of  the club into the interview with Kane’s ex), the mirror shots, etc–are tricks he and his crew came up with.  They weren’t done in cinema before that, not to that degree.  And in that sense, Kane is groundbreaking.

It is also extraordinarily acted, not least by Welles himself in the titular role, a role requiring the then-24 year old to play a 19 year old Kane and a 60-something year old Kane.  Biting, emotional, clever, innovative, and insightful, Kane is a masterpiece, one to be studied over and over again.

(One extra note I like: I really appreciate the story structure.  You basically see the entire story in the first 10 minutes through the newsreel.  And the same time, you learn very little.  The rest of the movie, interview by interview, flashback by flashback, reveals that same story from different angles.)

Casablanca (1942): Another stereotype.  Whereas Citizen Kane is in some ways an art film, not one you pop in for entertainment but one you soak in and chew over, Casablanca is the ultimate Hollywood movie.  In my opinion, the film’s greatest strength is its script–tight plotting, extremely witty, and full of classic lines (“Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.”  ”Round up the usual suspects!”  ”This may be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”  What’s ironic is that the script was thrown together, pages being constantly re-written during filming,  plot turns and character arcs added and modified and taken away left and right.  That usually doesn’t work.  It shouldn’t  work.  But with Casablanca it works brilliantly.

The star of the show, of course, is Humphrey Bogart as bar owner Rick, playing his emotions close to the vest for most of the film, as cool as a cucumber.  (When a Nazi commander is trying to intimidate Rick by showing him the complete dossier the Nazis have on Rick’s life, Rick glances at it, unimpressed, and says, “Are my eyes really brown?”)  But the vast cast of supporting characters is also excellent, from the great Peter Lorre playing that creepy Peter Lorre stereotype, Claude Rains as charmingly corrupt Inspector Renault, down to subsidiary characters like Karl the barkeep.

Its story is pure melodrama–a love triangle set in Casablanca, Morocco during a time in the war when people went there to escape to America and often got stuck. And at times the melodrama plays a little cheesy to modern eyes.  But there is intricacy here–part of the fun is watching the side characters and what happens with them.  There is thriller-like tension, wartime dramatics, a spy story in the first 20 minutes, lots of jokes (if you pay attention) and a somewhat surprising ending.  My favourite scene is probably the battle of National Anthems that takes place in Rick’s bar between some German soldiers singing a Third Reich hymn and political leader Victor Laszlo leading the orchestra in French anthem Le Marseille.  A cracking good piece of old-time Hollywood at its best.

HOW ABOUT A MUSICAL?

Singing in the Rain (1952)–Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor and Debbie Reynolds star in this musical comedy.  Everyone knows the title song and can probably even picture Gene in his raincoat and galoshes strolling down the street singing that melody.  But if that’s as much as you know, you’re missing out.

The film is actually a comedic look at the awkward transition Hollywood went through in going from silent films to “talkies.”  Gene Kelly plays a silent film hero who hates the (admittedly obnoxious and villainous) woman who he is always in love with on the silver screen, Lina Lomont.  When talking pictures become popular (the film they watch at the party in which a professor demonstrates talking pictures is an exaggerated parody of a real film), the studio decides to make their most popular screen duo film a talking picture.  The only problem: Lina’s voice is awful.

Much of the detail in plot about that transition from silent to talking is quite close to how it really went for some studios, but the film knows how to draw comedy out of that.  There are also some brilliant musical numbers–”Make ‘Em Laugh” is a highlight alongside the title song–and as usual for Hollywood and Broadway musicals, most of the good numbers are stacked in the first half, while the second veers into some weird places, not quite plot-related, to pad the film out a bit.  But all in all, definitely worth a viewing.

AND MAYBE SOMETHING NOT IN ENGLISH?

Le Grande Illusion (1937) – Le Grande Illusion is one of two main masterpieces by French director Jean Renoir, son of the famous painter.  It tells the story of a group of French soldiers taken as prisoners of war during the WWI, their friendships, escape attempts, and coping mechanisms for surviving a bleak situation.  Though it comes from the 30s, it feels much more modern to me, both in performance and cinematography.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Spielberg had studied the movie, for some of the shots and close-ups on faces remind of me of Spielberg’s style.

It’s a film that mixes humour and tension in surprising ways, with a stronger sense of characterisation than most films of that era.  Some of the characters may be broad archetypes, but the performances make them real (including one from the great and tragic Erich von Stroheim)–from the stodgy but honourable commander to the comic relief soldier, the good-looking hero, and so on.  And one can’t talk about the film without questioning what the title refers to. What is the big illusion?  Is it the line between borders, as the last shot suggests?  Is it the class lines humanity draws between itself, a theme that runs through the film?  There are many options.

All in all, Le Grande Illusion  is not only one of my favourite films of the 30s and 40s, but is also one of my top foreign language pictures of all time.

HONOURABLE MENTION FOR AN AUTEUR

Billy Wilder: That almost wraps up this entry on old movies, begun a year and a half ago, but before I wrap I want to suggest a director to check out, and that is Billy Wilder.  (If you want to go foreign, try some Kurosawa.)  Billy Wilder had a long career in Hollywood, and though his films, even the comedies, tend to be a bit acerbic, he is definitely worth a try.  One of my favourite things about the films I’ve seen by him is that every one of them tend to build to a very simple climax and end with a killer closing line.  (“Well, nobody’s perfect.”  ”Shut up and deal.”  ”Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”)

I’ve seen five Wilders (off the top of my head), and I can say this: skip Witness for the Prosecution, which left a bad taste in my mouth.  Head straight for the American Film Institute’s number one comedy of all time, Some Like It Hot, in which Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon must dress as women in an all-girl traveling jazz band in order to hide from the mafia, who want to kill them for witnessing a crime, only to be distracted by the presence of Marilyn Monroe as the band’s singer.

If you like that, and are also interested in Hollywood history, check out Sunset Boulevard, a dark tragi-comedy about a washed-up silent film star trying to keep her fame to the point of murder.  Look for a cameo by Buster Keaton and a supporting role by von Stroheim.  The Apartment is also pretty good, despite its dark subject matter.  One of the more influential directors of the last 75 years, you should definitely know some Billy Wilder.

Pick something on the list that sounds interesting!  Watch an old movie!  And comment below on anything I missed–what’s your favourite old film?

2011: A Year in Gigs

It’s been a year and half since I updated this blog.  Life happened.  A second child was born, we added a discipleship and church-planting training school to our already huge list of responsibilities, and time and/or energy to sit and talk about stuff I like disappeared.

But I have a little time now, and some motivation.  You see, 2011 was the Year of Gigs.

Live music is just about my favourite leisure activity.  I love nearly everything about it–the build up to the first song, guessing the setlist, the banter.  Live music, as long as its played by people who know how…well, there’s just nothing like it.  But it is expensive to see established bands, and not many come to Sheffield that fit my style, and so in 2010 I saw a grand total of ZERO concerts.  This was not acceptable to me, so in 2011 I vowed to get to a gig or two.

As it happened, I saw several.  And it was awesome.  So this here is my review of the gigs of the year–highlights, low points, rankings.  Why should you care?  I don’t know.  That’s up to you, really.

In order that I saw them, here’s the list of headliners: The Decemberists, Sufjan Stevens, Foy Vance, Coldplay, Greenbelt Festival (including Rend Collective, Gungor, Gordon Gano and the Ryans, and LZ7)  Iona, Rend Collective Experiment

The Decemberists–I saw them at the O2 in Leeds.  It came about when, basically, I completely failed to get tickets to see Mumford & Sons in Dublin.  Seriously, I was online when the tickets went on sale, followed a bad link to the wrong website, and by the time I found the right one, it was sold out.  Like 90 seconds in.  I was heartbroken.  And The Decemberists were touring the UK in support of their January album release The King Is Dead.  (Could they not have released in, you know, December?)  So as a consolation prize, I bought two tickets to that.

I had heard a couple of Decemberists album before, having bought Hazards of Love on a whim after a stressful trip to IKEA one Monday.  I liked, but didn’t love.  But The King Is Dead…well, that could be my album of the year for 2011.  Whereas the previous record was a proper concept album, telling a complete story, The King Is Dead is a highly song-focused record.  It’s a collection of songs, and whereas previous records had emphasized the prog rock and other nods to British music, this album stylistically is born entirely out of Americana.  It is 10 beautiful tracks, and so I was excited to see them play some live.

The opening act was a band called Blind Pilot.  They were good.  A bit melancholy, but you have to like any band that has their own vibraphone player.  I enjoyed them enough to download at least one song.

Then it was time for The Decemberists.  Their show opened with a humorously relaxing pre-recorded message from the mayor of Portland, inviting us to picture the band as figures approaching us on a forest road, preparing to tell us a good yarn or two.  They opened with “Shiny”, from their debut album years earlier.  I’d never heard it before.  That led straight into the glorious “Down By the Water” from The King Is Dead.  And that was the structure for the evening.  Frontman Colin Meloy bantered humorously between songs, and they alternated between chunks from the new album and older cuts, going from folk to progressive rock and back with ease.

It was weird (Sample song lyric: “This is the story of your gypsy uncle…”) and brilliant, and it was good to be back at a live venue again.

Set Highlights: The Bagman’s Gambit, a weird tale about falling in love with a Soviet-era spy, and a song I’d never heard before.  This Is Why We Fight, from the new record.  And the gorgeous June Hymn, also from the new record.

Set Low Point: Leeds was the only venue during their entire UK tour that did NOT get the live staple Mariner’s Revenge Song during the encore.  I had been so looking forward to it.  Instead we got the so-so Sons and Daughters.  Oh well.  Someday…

Sufjan Stevens–Okay, so I was a little bit excited for this one.  Seeing Sufjan live was on my dreams list.  Seriously.  While I likely would have preferred to see him tour Illinois, I knew that seeing him on The Age of Adz tour would be something special.  It’s a bizarre album and really complicated to pull of live.

We waited outside the O2 in Manchester for approximately six days.  Finally, they started letting people in.  We were pretty far back, and by the time we shuffled in, the opening act, label-mate DM Stith, had already started playing his songs, acoustic numbers with live loop recording used to build songs layer by layer.

And he only played like 3 songs!  And before we knew it, Sufjan was on.  He opened with a stunning live rendition of “Seven Swans.”  I can’t even describe it, so…

Glowing costumes.  A screen behind the band and one in front, making 3D animations, in this case of constellations forming and collapsing.  A huge set.  A huge band–2 full drum kits, 2 back-up singer/dancer/aerobic exercise performers, Sufjan, DM Stith as his ghost vocalist and organist, 2 guitarists, bass, a horn section.  Choreographed hand motions.  ANGEL WINGS!

And that was just the first song.  Sufjan followed a pattern relatively similar to the Decemberists.  He’d play a weird, disturbing, cacophonous full-band song from the new album, and then come to the front of the stage and play something acoustic by himself.  The great thing was that I’d been following the setlists since he started the tour, and Manchester got by far the best show (and one of the longest) on the tour to that date.  Not only did we get, for the first time on that tour, his cover of REM’s “The One I Love,” but we also got for the first time live in 3 years his song “Sister”, which happens to be one of my favourites.  It was a stripped down version, sure, but still magical.  Though I connected on a personal level more with some gigs later in the year, this was by far the most intense and spectacular performance.

Did I mention he played for 2 1/2 hours?

Set Highlights: Too many to mention, but probably the opener (Seven Swans), Sister, the 25-minute album-highlight opus Impossible Soul, which starts and ends acoustic but whose middle involves auto-tune and Sufjan dressed as a disco-ball, and the encores of Casmir Pulaski Day and Chicago.  The word epic doesn’t cover it.

Set Low Points: Um…the few hecklers?  (Less talk, more rock?  Really?)  The unplanned big bang that scared the band during the last bit of Impossible Soul?  The probably-connected 12 minute wait for the encore?

Foy Vance: Okay, so this gig was somewhat spontaneous.  Foy was playing at a small but very cool club in Leeds, and about eight of us drove up to see him.

There were a couple of opening bands; the first one did nothing for me, and the second one was pretty good but slightly arrogant.  Finally Foy came out.  That voice.  Wow…I mean, that voice.  That man is talented.  What he does, building loops on that acoustic guitar and using his voice, is just incredible.  It was a musically solid night.

But it was also a confusing night.  For a couple of reasons.  First, the setlist.  Basically, he played for 90 minutes and only managed to sing I think 3 songs from any of his recordings, one being the encore.   So no one knew most of the songs.

But more than that, it was Foy’s state.  Talking to Dustin afterwards, we decided it was a little like watching a man proclaim and then lose his faith in God, live on stage, while becoming slightly more drunk.  Losing it, then regaining it, then wrestling with it angrily, then proclaiming it again, and so on…Foy spoke about the death of his father, and it was obvious that this weighed heavily on him.  It was obvious that he was, in many ways, broken.  It was just unsettling to watch all of that unfold live on stage, and though the night was musically excellent, I left with mixed feelings.  But in the end, I mostly loved it.

Set Highlight: Well, I knew almost none of the songs.  But there was one about the days of the week that was epically cool.  (Guy gets drunk on Saturday, on Sunday ends up in church, etc.)  And Indiscriminate Act of Kindness is beautiful.

Set Low Point: Again, I didn’t know the songs, but I could do without the swearing, though somehow its less offensive coming from an Irish mouth.  How does that work?

Coldplay: We won tickets to Coldplay’s night at the annual iTunes festival, held for a month at a small(ish) venue in London each summer.  I was very excited to see one of the world’s biggest bands in a small, comparatively intimate setting, and for free, but in some ways the gig was a disappointment.

Part of that was my fault.  Since I love concerts, I like to know what to expect, so I usually follow a band’s setlists as they tour.  Setlist.fm is a great website for this.  The Decemberists and Sufjan were both mixing up the list each night, so I went in with a general idea of what kinds of things were being played, but I was still going to be surprised at the specifics.  Coldplay, however, was touring on basically the same setlist each and every night, so there wasn’t really room for surprise.

The other negative thing, sadly, was the setting itself.  Seeing them in a small place was pretty awesome, and for awhile it looked like we weren’t going to even get in, so there was a large group of us absolutely thrilled to be in there.  But they were also professionally recording it to broadcast highlights on the web, and so there was a ring of crane cams and other recording equipment that broke the room in two.  And unfortunately, we were on the outside of that ring.  And with us on the outside of the ring were a bunch of people who didn’t care, talking their way through the gig, barely aware that a Coldplay concert was happening.  With the equipment obscuring our view and connection, and all the chatter around us, it was hard to engage.

That’s not Coldplay’s fault.  They definitely played a strong set and were excellent live.  Chris Martin’s energy is unmatched, and the guys play well together.  So while it is the most disappointing gig of the year, it was still also a lot of fun.

Set Highlights: Viva La Vida, which I consider one of the best songs ever written, and, surprisingly, Every Teardrop is a Waterfall.  Hearing that tune live made me realise its slight Irish flavour–it comes across as sort of a jig!

Greenbelt Festival, including: Rend Collective Experiment, LZ7, Gordon Gano and the Ryans, Gungor: Greenbelt is…not like anything I’ve ever experienced.  Held annually at Cheltenham Racecourse, attended by roughly 20,000 people. Greenbelt is just plain weird.  There’s no other way around it.  If a Christian arts festival and a hippie activism conference had a baby, it would begin to look like Greenbelt.  Or, if a group of Christians put on a non-Christian festival one the same grounds that a group of non-Christians were trying to put on a Christian festival, you’d get Greenbelt.  Where else can you hear Palestinian protest music alongside screening of thought-provoking films alongside a passionate, Spirit-led worship time alongside belly-dancing lessons?

Anyway, I saw several live bands during this: Rend Collective Experiment twice and Gungor (sort of) once were the key ones, and I caught snippets of other gigs, including LZ7 and Gordon Gano & the Ryans.

I went to a worship set led by Rend Collective as well as a more gig-like set on the main stage.  The worship set was possibly the live music highlight of the year for me.  Not only was the presence of God just amazing in the room, and I spent the hour just enjoying Him, but I fell in love with these guys.  Seriously, I can’t think of a more humble, approachable, authentic group of musicians working today.  And they’re good–far more musical than the stereotypical worship band.

The other band I was there to see was Gungor, and in reality it turned out to only be Michael and Lisa Gungor without their full band.  Instead, they were playing with hired musicians, a talented bunch that they met for the first time on stage that day.  Given that they only had 10 minutes of rehearsal, it was a great set.  But during the band’s first song, a guy from the festival marched on stage and set down a clock that began ticking down from 39 minutes.  39 minutes!  At Greenbelt, speakers get more time than bands.  But despite all that, they were somehow musically tight and some songs came to life in ways they didn’t on CD.

In addition, I caught LZ7 on the main stage, who were fun if you like that sort of teenage dance-hop, and Gordon Gano & The Ryans.  If you don’t know the name Gordon Gano, it’s likely you know the voice, and this is his new band.  They did play some tunes by his old band, so that this, this actually happened:

Festival Highlights: Hearing Rend Collective’s “Build Your Kingdom Here” for the 1st and 2nd time; meeting with God at their worship set; Gungor’s renditions of “Dry Bones” and “Call Me Out”.

Festival Low Point: The Rend’s main stage set was only 25 minutes long.  Lame!

Iona–My parents came to visit in October, and I was browsing online one day before that and happened to see that a. Iona had a new album and b. they were doing a small tour that brought them within 90 minutes of our house on the day my parents arrived.  My dad loves Iona, and rightly so, so we treated them to a concert.

The venue was a church auditorium specifically built for things like this.  There was no opening act.  I had only just gotten the new album after reading a couple of reviews that really sold me on it, despite the fact that I haven’t liked their last couple of records.  And the reviews were right: their new double-CD is their best album in over a decade, and the veteran Celtic prog-rockers gave a tight, breathtaking nearly 3 hour show.

It’s sad there were only 200 people or so there.  Iona is a band that deserves a much bigger audience.  They are musically innovative and complex–one of my favourite songs has a breathtaking instrumental interlude in 11/8 time–they are fine musicians, each playing multiple instruments, and their songs are epic, gorgeous, and inspiring.

Set Highlights: The lead singer dedicated a song to my dad.  My wife won a CD in a dance-off.  They played Irish jigs!  And the aforementioned song in 11/8 (Bi-Se I Mo Shuil)!  And the opening song, which also opens the new album.  So, so epic, all of it.

Set Low Point: I don’t love the White Horse song.  Or the violin instrumental.

Rend Collective Experiment–saw them twice more, once at Cliff College, once at Worship Central.  Yeah, they continued to grow on me, and at Cliff College announced a new album January 9!  We seriously considered flying or driving to one of the album release parties.  Would have been worth it, but we couldn’t work it out.

So, here’s to a year in gigs.  Hopefully soon I’ll post my “Old Movies” entry that I started 18 months ago.  Merry Christmas.  What’s the best concert you saw this last year?

My 11 Favourite Bands or Artists of All Time

Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve written anything on here.  Traveling and the simple busy-ness of life have been factors, and frankly, I haven’t been inspired.  There is a half-completed entry on old movies that has sat for months, and other than that, nothing’s really grabbed me.

Until now.  Some new album releases and a documentary have inspired me to think about music, and specifically what bands really mean a lot to me.  I am a sucker for lists (I recently actually bought a copy of HM Magazine because it had a breakdown of the Top 100 Christian Rock Albums of all time–a list that is actually kind of preposterous), so I started challenging myself to decide on my ten favourite bands ever.  About 2/3 of it was easy, the last third quite challenging, and I thought I’d share the list with you!

A couple of things: 1. This is in no particular order.  I can’t rank these guys, or if I did, it’d be a ranking that’d be constantly changing.

2. I am in no way saying that these are the 10 best bands of all time.  There’s no way these are the ten best or most talented.  These are just the ten that mean the most to me.

3. To make the list, the band had to still mean a lot to me.  That is, it can’t be a band that I once really dug and no longer ever listen to, or an artist whose sound hasn’t dated well.  This disqualifies some good artists whose music just has not stuck with me.  Or perhaps I still love them, but only for one album or one era.  Whatever the reason, they just didn’t make the cut–my experiences with them or they way they influence my life and worldview just wasn’t strong enough.  So sorry, I love you Steve Taylor, and O.C. Supertones, and Bob Dylan and the Beatles, or the 77s, but you’re not on here.

4. There are a lot of artists I currently love who could edge out one of these bands in the next few years.  But they just haven’t quite made it yet.  People like the David Crowder Band, Switchfoot, Relient K, mewithoutYou…sorry, you’re not here either.

Basically, each of these eleven artists have earned such high standing with me that whatever they try next, if they’re still around, I will give a shot.  They have done something so amazing that they have earned a permanent place in the sense that I will follow them their whole career.  Even if their next work sucks, I will still keep an ear out for everything that comes after.  I can’t promise that about a lot of artists.

Okay, so with each of these, I’ll give a brief word as to how they made the list, and then give some essentials for your perusal.  Again, in no particular order:

1. U2–I’ll get the obvious out of the way first.  I almost feel bad about putting them on here, but come on, they’re U2.  Where The Streets Have No Name.  Beautiful Day.  Moment of Surrender.  Acrobat.  Please.  I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.  Magnificent.  All Because of You.  Love Is Blindness.  Do I need to go on?  I won’t bother listing essentials here.

2. The Choir–For a long time, I considered these guys my favourite group of all time.  In the late 80s and early 90s, they were waayyy ahead of their time–the Circle Slide album, which I’ve written about before, carved its own niche of originality in alternative music, not to mention being years ahead of the Christian music of that era.  It is rare for any band to have a chain of albums as amazing as the Choir’s run that started with Chase the Kangaroo, continuing through Wide-Eyed Wonder, Circle Slide, Speckled Bird, and Free-Flying Soul, an underrated classic.  And they are still making music, a new album about every four years or so.  They’ve just released Burning Like the Midnight Sun, and it has some amazing tracks on it.  Ethereal yet raw and honest, romantic, sentimental, worshipful, beautiful–The Choir does what they do better than anyone else.  No one comes close.

And those lyrics, so full of beautiful imagery: “When I close my eyes, will I see blue skies?”  ”Tie your shoelaces to my shoelaces/I’ll tie a rope to a tree”  ”I call to You with one lung exploded from breathing the dust of the earth”  Bless you, Steve Hindalong.

Defining Moment for me: The Circle Slide shows, where they’d open with “Blue Skies” and “Restore My Soul” and had the gall to cover “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?”

Essential Records: Circle Slide, Free-Flying Soul

3. Waterdeep–So, I saw Don and Lori open for Caedmon’s Call at the Ferrell Center, their acoustic duet swallowed by the hugeness of the space.  But there was still enough in the songs to make me buy Sink or Swim, about half of which I absolutely loved, (who wouldn’t love a song called “I’m Afraid That I’m Not Supposed to Be This Way”) and half of which made me cringe.  (I hate what I call “Coffee Shop Lyrics”, meaning pretentious lyrics that sound like bad poetry heard at a college-town coffee shop.  And “I woke up from a strange rain and it was dreaming outside” is my prime example of that concept.  Blech.)

So then they were playing a show at University Baptist, full band.  And I went.  And they blew my mind.  Seriously–one of the best live bands I’d ever seen.  They could jam, and their was a passion, energy, and humour that was just incredible.  Let me say it again: they.  could.  jam.  They played mostly songs from To Chase Away the Birds, adding this incredibly cool section to “Razor Light”.  I will admit…for awhile, I wished I was Don Chaffer.

I love this bands lyrics, especially in the old days.  They were so good at telling stories about real people and their need for God, in songs like “Sweet River Roll”, “Walls and Tall Shadows”, “He Will Come.”

And who can’t relate to these two pieces: “I am so often deterred from my actual intent/By distractions in a cellophane wrap/And a cruel voice that taunts me when I open them up/To find just one more box full of crap/It’s where you’re mocked when you abstain and cursed when you give in/It’s all a game that’s impossible to beat/But there’s a peaceful refrain that God will sing in your brain/When you put the nails to your hands and your feet.”(From “If You Wanna Be Free”)

Or this one: “I think about myself so much/It kind of makes me ill/I probably oughta let my cup/Not just fill up, but overfill” (From “Whether or Not”)

Now, I’m not as keen on the last three albums as I was on the stuff before, but I saw them live about two years ago, and they did manage to bring some of the new stuff to life, including this great Lori performance of “Oh.”

Defining Moment: The concert at University Baptist, the outdoor spontaneous show at Cornerstone, and the Cornerstone jam session the following year.  Oh, and the concert Lauren Roberts filmed for me at Highland.  It’s glorious.

Essential Recordings: This is easy–start with Live at the New Earth, and then make sure to pick up Everyone’s Beautiful, To Chase Away the Birds, Sink Or Swim, Waterdeep Worship…and then everything else.

4. Five Iron Frenzy–This is the band that inspired me to write this post.  What I want to do right now more than anything is sit down with Reese Roper, ask the man some questions, and then give him a big hug.  Because I seriously feel like we are two peas in a pod.  Yes, I have a man crush.

What can I say about Five Iron?  I just got finished watching the three hour documentary, “The Rise and Fall of Five Iron Frenzy” and am nearly done with all the bonus features.  It is a relatively thorough document, made by lead man Roper himself, chronicling the nine years this band existed.  My only complaint about the film is that I feel he could have gone deeper–he skirts on issues the band dealt with and then doesn’t explore them, even mentioning twice how they felt stuck between the Christian and secular industries, neither of whom could fully accept or understand them, without really exploring what that meant or what could be done.  But really, the film is a love letter to these nine years of his life, including loads of concert footage and candid comments from everyone in the band.

And Five Iron means so much to me.  I remember how I heard them–I’d gotten into ska through picking up the first Supertones album, and was at Family Bookstore in the mall where they had this little machine previewing coming albums.  It mentioned on there the upcoming debut from Five Iron Frenzy, and that I’d like it if I liked the Supertones, and so I gave it a listen.  The song was “Cool Enough For You”, and it was definitely ska, but it also had this original voice to it, and this slight Latin influence in the horns, that immediately distinguished it from the Supertones.

Eight years and at least five concerts later, Ira and I were at their final show in Texas on their farewell tour.  It was something we just had to be at, and I was sad not to be able to go to the actual last show.  This DVD release blessedly includes that show in its entirety, including all the thank-yous and the worship time at the end.

What was it about Five Iron for me?  What keeps me coming back?  Well, I’d say it was the way Five Iron managed to maintain a sense of fun and humour while simultaneously glorifying and worshiping God and exploring all sorts of issues.  Take what may be their best album, their final record The End Is Near.  There are songs of worship and thanksgiving, a track criticising the materialistic spirit of America, another track warning about the over-influence of the media, and joke songs about Reese dealing with ageing and the need to play video games.  Other times they’d hit on the historical treatment of Native Americans or the pain of breaking up with a fiance.  And with every album, originality, compassion, and a desire for God.

Watching the final concert moved me.  Roper’s words to the crowd before launching into their final song, the classic Every New Day, was moving, and his vocal performance on that song topped anything he’d done before.

As goofy and weird as they could sometimes be, with their 6 second songs and their rock operas about pants, I love these guys.  I miss them.  They were one of the greats.  The Untimely Death of Brad, indeed…

And one day, I will sing “You Can’t Handle This” before a live audience.  I hope.

Defining Moment: Probably the first time I saw them live, when no one knew what they looked like, so they opened for themselves as another band called Naked Fish, with everyone playing the wrong instruments.  Hilarious.

Essential Records: Probably need to start with Our Newest Album Ever, then The End Is Near, with its absolutely epic and never-performed-live closing track, “On Distant Shores,” possibly the best song Five Iron ever wrote.  I should say that at least half the band considers their best album to be Five Iron Frenzy 2: Electric Boogaloo, though that one is uneven to me.

5. Sufjan Stevens–Sufjan, the ever-evolving, complicated Sufjan.  So, I bought Come On Feel the Illinoise, and put it in the CD player.  And it was weird.  I did not get it.  But so many had written about how amazing it was, so I kept it in there.

After literally 2 whole months, it suddenly clicked.  And now I consider it one of the best albums of all time.  Sure, he’s a bit twee, a bit pithy at times, but he is undeniably a creative and original voice, experimenting with rhythm and instrumentation, combing various styles–pop, baroque, electronica–into new and weird way.  And lyrically, he’s no joke.  A poet, both weird and earnest, and it all culminates with the Illinoise album.  To top that off, he went and recorded what I consider to be the best Christmas album (really 5 EPs) ever done.  And then he released the Castanets remake “There Is the Blood” on the Dark Was the Night compilation, and his orchestral piece about the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and it was clear he was trying even newer things and heading new directions.  I’ve heard bootlegs of some of his new live stuff, and it is weird, but he’s earned his place.  I long to see this guy in concert.  And that voice…

Defining Moment: The one-two punch of “Chicago” and “Casmir Pulaski Day” on Illinoise.  Once they both got in me, it was all over.

Essential Recordings: Come on Feel the Illinoise, Christmas Album, Seven Swans, his track on Dark Was the Night

6. Sigur Ros–I was teaching at TCA, and one of my more eclectic students commented about Sigur Ros, who I had heard of before but not listened to.  She said that they were like worship to her.  That intrigued me.  So on a whim and a desire to get something new, I put their album Takk on my Christmas wish list.  And my parents bought it.

And it was worship.  I found the first half so stunning that I immediately went after their back catalogue.  The album () accompanied us on our drive around the Grand Canyon.  The video for “Hoppipolla” found its way to my iPod, and the gorgeous documentary “Heima” brought them to a new level.  And then came the long and unpronounceable naked people album, whose 7th track caused me to literally gasp the first time it came on the stereo.  Gorgeous stuff, and on certain moods definitely inspires worship.

Defining Moment: Listening to tracks 3, 4 and 8 of () while approaching the Grand Canyon.

Essential Recordings: Takk, (), Hvarf/Heim, and Med Sud…

7. L.A. Symphony–A hip-hop collective that should have broken big alongside the  Black-Eyed Peas, who they collaborated with in the early days in the clubs of L.A. and San Diego.  But they were Christians and they had label issues, and their breakthrough album was never released.  They turned that disappointment and pain into works of art, and used their rap to process those places of pain and reach the healing and forgiveness God had for them.  Each of the main Emcees, including Sharlok Poems, Joey the Jerk, Pigeon John, Flynn, Uno Mas, and Cookbook had their own style and personality, and they made some funny, moving, and unique hip-hop that should have earned them a better crowd.

Defining Moment: Hearing clips of Pigeon John’s first solo album; seeing the guys perform with Chris Mann at 2 AM on a work night.

Essential Recordings: The End Is Now, Baloney EP, and the not-available Call It What You Want.  Disappear Here and Pigeon John’s solo stuff are also excellent.

8. House of Heroes–It’s weird to put these guys on this list, but I feel they deserve it.  They are the newest and youngest band to be on here.  Their first album had some strong moments, with an amazing opening track called “Buckets for Bullet Wounds”, but for the most part was unoriginal alternative rock.  There was a three or four year gap before their next album came out, but the buzz about it was above the stratosphere.  So I bought it.  That album, The End is Not the End, was my favourite record of 2008 and has its own blog entry on this site.

So now they’ve just released Suburba, continuing their trend of releasing albums built around themes, this one being growing up in the suburbs.  And just like the previous one, it takes awhile to grow on you.  I didn’t like The End at first, and I didn’t like Suburba at first.  But what I’ve found is that after about 5 listens, the songs begin to stick to you like glue.  And though Suburba isn’t quite as good as the previous album (to top it would have been a near-impossible feat), it is still pretty amazing and offers a masterclass in how to do back ground vocals.  I’m serious.  The BGVs on Suburba are astounding–so many group vocals and chants and “ooh aah”s that get stuck in your head and won’t leave.  I love it.

Defining Moment: One song: “Code Name: Raven”

Essential Recordings: Well, I just told you.

9. Mute Math–This is my biggest hesitancy on this list, and the only reason its on here is because of the live show these guys do.  Usually I think a live show is improved by knowing the albums, but in this case the albums are improved by seeing the live show.  I haven’t seen them on the Armistice tour, and I don’t yet love that album, but I wonder…

Seriously, my favourite live band.  Experiments in controlled chaos is how I’d describe them.  I saw them probably four times on the same tour, and every show was different, with improvs on different songs and new arrangements of familiar tunes.  Go see them live if you don’t mind having your mind blown.

Defining Moment: Seeing them at Six Flags opening for Switchfoot.  Had low expectations that soon turned to goose bumps.  And that was a festival crowd, a hard thing for these guys to play to.  Blew my mind.

Essential Recording: Self-titled album.

10. Derek Webb–Derek’s post Caedmon’s career is staggeringly awesome.  He hasn’t made a stinker yet, though I don’t fully get The Mission Bell. I love his lyrics, the way he forces you to think, and the fact that none of his five solo studio albums sound alike.  I’m tired, so I’m making this short, but…buy yourself some Derek Webb.  His most underappreciated album  would probably be I See Things Upside-Down, including it’s stark and beautiful closer in which you learn that the title of the album isn’t a boast but a meek confession.  And I for one love Stockholm Syndrome

Defining Moment: Hearing “Wedding Dress” for the first time.  And listening to each record for the first time.

Essential Recordings: Stockholm Syndrome, I See Things Upside-Down, Mockinbird I am also enjoying the Democracy Volume 1 covers.

11. Rich Mullins–Rich.  What can one say about Rich.  He’s kind of like U2 in that I just need to name songs: The Color Green.  Awesome God.  Ready For the Storm.  Everywhere I Go.  Bound to Come Some Trouble.  Peace.  Here in America.  Boy Like Me/Man Like You.  Screen Door.  And tons more.

Defining Moment: I have 3: My best friend at Baylor playing for me “Who God is Gonna Use” on his acoustic.  I liked it.

2. Seeing him play live in Missouri.  Tank top and shorts, a full band, and his dog that keeps wandering out on to the stage.  Got to meet him.

3. I’d heard a rumour he’d been killed, and I didn’t want to believe.  I walked into Sunday night church, and Rich was playing over the speakers.  I knew it was true.  My stomach fell.

Okay, bedtime.  Thanks for reading!

Lost: The Final(e) Analysis: Unanswered Questions and the Flash Sideways

Over a year ago I posted a blog in which I argued that Lost was the finest show ever produced for television.  This past week, that show completed its run, and I wanted to revisit the question of Lost, its success, its value, and evaluate everything in terms of how it ended.  Needless to say, if you haven’t yet seen how it ended, go watch it and stop reading this.

Was Lost perfect? Ha.  Not by a long shot.

Was the 6th Season everything it needed to be?  Again, not by a long shot.  In some ways, it is the rockiest season, with really high highs and a few too many placeholder episodes or frustrating moments.

I still, however, maintain that Lost was television at its best.  It was a bold show, unlike anything that had come before it, with a vast cast of fascinating characters put in a bizarre and mysterious situation.  It used that plot to launch into deep (and at times only apparently deep) discussions on a myriad of themes: faith vs. science, grace vs. law, philosophy, redemption, leadership, the nature of Truth.  I have never seen a show quite so ambitious in its scope.

It walked a very, very thin line between character-driven story and plot-driven story.  Many people got hooked on that first season because of the mystery–or should I say mysteries–and when the answers to those mysteries didn’t come quick enough, they bailed on the show.  Others got too confused by all the mysteries and held on because of the characters.  And where you fall in this camp, I suspect, will determine how satisfied you were with the 6th season.

Ah, the 6th season.  This season had a lot riding on it.  The seemingly omni-present producers made comments about “finally letting you unwrap the present we’ve been holding onto for these six years.”  Everything seemed to indicate that the 6th season would be full of resolution to the mysteries.  The 5th season finale introduced us to Jacob and his brother, and a lot of the plot suddenly became clear.

The introduction of Jacob and his brother (in scripts referred to as Samuel, but never on the show) was a smart move.  This is what it felt like to me: we were putting together an 1000 piece puzzle.  Season 1 was the border.  Season 2 filled in bits in one corner, primarily about the Dharma Initiative.  Season 3 filled in another corner, about the Others.  Seasons 4 and 5 filled in all sorts of random bits, but there was still a huge chunk of the middle missing, keeping us from telling what were looking at.  Jacob and Samuel turned out to be that middle piece.

But as the season progressed, they actually introduced new mysteries, answered a few, and kept many things in the dark.  And in interviews they started talking about how many questions would remain unanswered, that they would only address things pertinent to the situations of the characters.  That kind of made me mad for awhile, but after seeing the finale, it makes sense to me.

So count the rest of this as a defense of Season 6 and a final analysis of the legacy of this amazing show.  It’s not a blind defense–there are things I want to openly complain about, honestly–but a defense nonetheless.  Let’s start with:

QUESTIONS: ANSWERED AND UNANSWERED

You can’t approach Lost like a traditional mystery.  If you do, you’ll be disappointed by its conclusion.  A traditional mystery centers around one or two questions, and the main characters are trying to solve those puzzles, or keep them from being solved.  Think “Who killed Laura Palmer?” Or think “Who among us is the murderer?”

Lost was not this kind of mystery.  The characters were in a situation where mysterious things were happening, but the clarifying of those things was never, for the most part, their main objective.  It was never, for the characters, about finding out, “Why is there a monster here?”  For Jack, Kate, and most of the rest of the survivors, the question was one of, “How will we survive?  How will we get off this island?  How will we be at peace with each other?”  And perhaps the most important question for them was this: How will the issues of our broken pasts help us or hinder us from surviving and getting along with everyone else here?  That was really the theme.

So when questions were answered, they usually led to more questions.  Because the nature of the answers wasn’t a solution to something.  Think about it–most of the questions of Lost turned out to be answered by history.  The island had a long and vast history, of which we only ever saw pieces.  We saw a couple of thousand years ago, when a woman raised two sons and caused great damage to the spiritual dynamic of the island.  We saw much of the history of the Dharma Initiative, and of the Black Rock, and the drug smugglers, and the Others that Jacob brought to the island.  It was all island history, but much of the time the actual history was not important to the characters we were linking to.  Or rather, that history only became important as its ramifications impacted our survivors.

But an answer dealing with history always has more information behind it.  If you watch any other mystery, or any piece of fiction dealing with anything, really, there will be loads of information you don’t know.  And you don’t know because it’s not relevant to the story at hand.  It just feels more relevant in Lost because we’re in a foreign and exotic and weird world.  So we want more explanation.  But more explanation may not be necessary.

Lest you think I am using that reasoning as an excuse for some of the sloppy writing, read on.

In the days following the finale, loads of websites released funny or thorough or bitter lists of unanswered questions.  I looked at some of these lists, and then I started to get mad.  So I’d like to address the issue of unanswered questions just a bit more.  It seems that the questions from these lists can be divided into three categories.  Now these do have some overlap, but I think they are helpful anyway.

1) Questions That Were Actually Answered: You Just Didn’t Get It

One of Lost’s most risky techniques, especially in our day and age, was telling a story in which a lot of important information was given in subtle ways.  In the background.  Between the lines.  Through logical inference.  There are many questions I’ve heard people say, “But what about that?” and I’ve thought “Actually, that was answered.  But not through someone saying, “Oh, this is blah blah blah because blah blah blah.”  They answered through showing us.”

An example I’ve seen on multiple lists: Why were there polar bears on the island?  The answer: The Dharma Initiative did experiments on all sorts of animals, but when they were killed off, many of the animals escaped.  If you dig a little further into some of the online content, you’d even discover that they were experimenting on animals to see if they could cause them to live in environments other than the ones they were normally suitable for.

Others in this category to me include questions that you could make inferences about based on the Jacob situation.  One thing that bothered me was that the Dharma Initiative sometimes used Jacob/Others-influenced terms or iconography–the presence of Jacob’s name in their brainwashing video, the Egyptian symbols inside the Hatch.  But based on Jacob’s far-reaching influence, I could make an inference that the whole reason Dharma even discovered the island in the first place was because Jacob had influenced at least some of the leaders.  He allowed it.

2) Questions That Are, in Fact, Irrelevant: One of the lists contained this question: “Who wrote Kate to tell her that her mother was sick in the hospital?”  I think this falls into the Jack’s Tattoo’s category of questions that never occurred to me.  The producers insist that another common one fits this category: “What happened to Ben’s friend/childhood love Annie?”

And I’d like to address one that fits as a combination of these first two categories: Why was Walt special?  This question seems to me to be irrelevant.  Do you wonder, “Why can Hurley and Miles see the dead?”  An explanation of how or why Walt was able to do the things he could to with his emotions gets us dangerously close to “midichlorian territory” (more on that below.)

However, much about Walt was answered.  Walt was special, as were Locke, Miles, Hurley, and others.  It seemed like he could influence things, animals especially, and did so when he was emotional.  And maybe his whole character was there just to introduce to us the concept that there are people in this Lost universe that are “special”, that have unusual abilities.  Why did there need to be anything more?

The Others were taking children–any they could get.  We’d later find out that this was because they were unable to have children of their own, and they wanted to keep them safe, protect them from harm, and continue their society somehow.  So they came for Walt.  But they weren’t aware of his powers, and they couldn’t handle them, so they gave him back to Michael and sent him away.

So I feel like many of the questions fall into one of these two categories.

BUT…3) Questions that Should Have Been Answered

And this is my one major criticism of Lost.  When a story presents a lot of mysterious things, and continues to introduce them as things of importance to understanding the situation, it is as if that story is making you a promise: “we’re intentionally not explaining this now, but it will be explained later.  It seems weird, but there is an explanation.”  And there were a handful of things that Lost seemed to promise to explain to me that it never got around to.  Here are some of my big ones:

1. What is the deal with Horace Goodspeed’s cabin, that seemingly housed the Man in Black for awhile, as if he was trapped?

2. What was Ben’s “magic box”?

3. Eloise Hawking–why was she able to sort of stand outside of time and see the truth of things so often?  Or better put: what was up with her?

4. A minor one that’s always bothered me: Why would Charles Widmore want to have Nadia killed?

And this is where I feel Season Six stumbles.  Because in the beginning, it introduces us to The Temple, a place we’ve heard about since Season 3.  And there’s that whole thing with Sayid–he’s dunked in the cloudy water, he’s tested for being evil, he resurrects from the dead, he supposedly has no soul, etc etc.  There is supposedly a sickness that Claire also has…And then none of it is ever clarified or explained, and suddenly Sayid and Claire can both choose good again.

That kind of thing makes me mad, because it is just sloppy and mean to introduce something in your last year that makes no sense and then not clarify it.  The producers often defend this move by saying, “No one likes the midichlorian explanation of the Force in the Star Wars prequels.  If we explained everything, it would get dull and lose the mystery.  You wouldn’t like it.”  I think this is a stupid defense, for two reasons:

1. No one was ever asking, “What makes up the Force?”  So it was answering a question no one asked.

2. There’s a logical fallacy called “Either-Or”, in which something is framed in terms of only two choices–either this, or that–when really there might be more.  I have heard TV writers use this defense before (Amy S-P from Gilmore Girls used it to defend the storyline about Luke having a daughter), and it is stupid.  What they are saying is, “Either we don’t give you answers, or we give you answers that are lame and that you won’t like.”  I think that’s ridiculous.  Some answers are satisfying.  You could give us more of those.  Or maybe the truth is that you don’t know the answer yourself to all these questions.

But as I evaluate the show, I find there are less of these kinds of questions than I might expect.

Now, on to the other controversial thing about the last year: The Flash Sideways.

Season 5 ended with the attempt to change the future with an atomic bomb.  Did it succeed?  We’ll never know.  What we do know is that much of the 6th season was filled with what was called the Flash Sideways, in which we see our beloved characters living in LA right after Oceanic Flight 815, as if they had never crashed.  But enough details about their lives were different to indicate that this wasn’t the same universe.

The finale revealed that this Flash Sideways actually takes place long after all the characters are dead.  It is a sort of Purgatory world, in which the characters don’t remember their island pasts but, in my interpretation at least, continue to work on their redemption, the character issues that have plagued them for so long.  And at the right time, Desmond comes along and helps trigger them all waking up, remembering who they are and their island past, and then all stepping together from Purgatory into a beautiful heavenly light, a real afterlife.

Was this triggered by Jughead?  I don’t think it was, but I don’t know.  How did they get there?  How did they create the place?  What happens to the people killed there?  Was this afterlife given to them as a gift from the powerful Light Under the Island?  I don’t know, and honestly, the more you try to suss that out, the less sense it makes.  So don’t.

But this finale, with them all going into the light together, divided people.  It made some people angry, and some found it beautiful.  I found it absolutely beautiful.  It was, honestly, a stunning and bold way to wrap up the show, and a work of art.

My favourite moment of the finale right here.  Makes me cry nearly every time:

Man, just as an aside, can I say that these two actors act the heck out of this scene?  Their faces…seriously, Michael Emerson’s reaction to Locke’s forgiveness, and the shifts his face goes through before he even speaks…blow me away.

Was this a satisfying way to go?  For me, it was.  It completes the redemption of all these characters.  It brings them to a place of reward once they have completed it, and that reward includes each other.  It includes the community they built.  I suspect Ben is now going to go off and complete his own (I wonder what woke him up?), maybe even gathering his own group to go to that church, including Widmore, Rousseau, Alex…Karl?  Maybe.

But some people hated it.  They felt it too hokey and sentimental, and felt the finale did not answer enough questions.

Perhaps, for those people, the season would have been more satisfying had the Flash Sideways been entirely removed.  There would be no flashes; the entire season would focus on the battle between Jacob’s people and Fake Locke.  I’d say this would give more time to answer questions, but I feel the sixth season dragged a bit as it was–they were stalling a lot of the time, spending too much time in the temple, or moving characters around without anything happening.  The fact is, they didn’t want to or maybe know how to answer everything.

But anyway, remove the Flash Sideways and you’re left with the island battle story.  Would the finale have been satisfying?  With Jack dead, Hurley and Ben left to rule, everyone else escaped?  (Incidentally, the world knows that Ajira plain went missing, with the Oceanic Six on it.  What are they going to think when it reappears, after being gone a week or so, with Kate and then some people that weren’t even on the plane to begin with?  With Widmore dead, who’s going to cover that one up?)

No, such a finaly would have still been exciting, but I think it would have lacked closure.  That would have just been the end.  So I am glad the producers decided to give us the gift of Sun and Jin reawakening, of Jack embracing his father and embracing Locke in the church, of Charlie’s return.  Jack’s entrance to the church cut with Jack’s death walk.  That’s what it was: closure.

I think some people were waiting for everything, every plot strand, to magically click together.  And it didn’t, not in the way expected, but I think that what they gave us was just as bold and rewarding. So thanks, cast, crew, producers.  I don’t fully trust you, but you still made a work of genius, a work of art.

Anyone want to join me as we start over?

THE FINAL WORD:

Favourite Season: 4

Least Favourite Season: blaspheme I know, but 1.  Too slow for me, too vague and not sure where it’s going.  Runner’s up: First half of Season 3, selected episodes from Season 6.

Best Episodes From Each Season:

1: Walkabout, Exodus Pt 1 & 2

2: Man of Science/Man of Faith, The 23rd Psalm

3: Flashes Before Your Eyes, Through the Looking Glass

4: Wow, so many…um, Confirmed Dead, The Constant, The Shape of Things to Come

5: Because You Left, The Incident, The Life & Death of Jeremy Bentham

6: LA X, Dr. Linus, Happily Ever After, The Candidate, The End (to be fair, I remember more of these vividly because they are so fresh.  But I really dig Ben’s redemption arc.)

And, now that Lost is gone, what is the best show currently on TV?

Hmmm…Start at about minute 3 of this clip for the answer:

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Review

Confession time: I love magic.

I love books about magic, films about magic, and even some actual magicians.

There are those in my line of work who would say I shouldn’t.  And some of their concerns are right on.  I fully believe that there is a world higher than the natural one–a supernatural world.  I believe it, in part, because I have experienced it in action, undeniably.  And there can be an unhealthy fascination with aspects of it.  It does have a dark side.

But nonetheless, I have always loved stuff about magic.  That could be fictional magicians or wizards doing spells that couldn’t possibly exist, or it could be actual magicians, performing sleight-of-hand or mental manipulation tricks.  Think of both Harry Potter and The Illusionist.

As a kid, I used to practice magic tricks, checking this one book out from the library over and over.  Had my own magic set.  My parents took me to see magicians from time to time.  I’ve always loved it.

Not a big fan of the modern illusionist.  I find them a bit creepy and flashy in ways magicians shouldn’t be.  David Blaine does nothing for me and I give him zero attention.  I much prefer the classic showman style, who is both classy and witty in his presentation.  Think Ricky Jay.  Steve Cohen in NYC.  Those are my kind of magicians.

I don’t know what draws me.  Maybe it’s the fact that magicians in stories are usually in command of their worlds in ways others around them aren’t.  Maybe it’s the fact that, unlike most modern fantasy, which seems both stuck in a rut and ridiculously unreal, stories about magic bring the supernatural and the natural world we experience daily together.  Kind of like I would like my life to do.

Anyway.  Been on a bit of a magic kick lately in my reading.  Rereading the Harry Potter novels.  Read The Magicians, a novel on some top ten lists from 2009.  (Despicable main character, intense novel, needlessly trashy, don’t recommend it.)  Am wanting to reread Carter Beats the Devil.

And I just finished tackling Susanna Clarke’s 2004 debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. The 780 page epic is so well-constructed, so diverse, and just so good that I can’t recommend any striving novelist read it, as it will make you just want to give up.

Imagine, if you will, The Prestige as co-written by Jane Austen & Charles Dickens being fed ideas by Neil Gaiman.  That’s this book.

I will try to summarize: the book is written in that 19th century British tone, a pastiche of Austen, Dickens, and probably some others.  The story takes place in the early 1800s in an England in which the art of magic was once widely practiced but has faded into mere history and theory since the disappearance of John Uskglass, the greatest magician in English history.  Groups of stodgy old men gather in halls to discuss magic, and call themselves theoretical magicians, focusing on its history and theory.

This all changes dramatically by the appearance of a practical magician, Mr. Gilbert Norrell, who promises to demonstrate that magic is real if the theoretical magicians all promise to give up their hobby.  They do, skeptical of Norrell, and then Norrell causes all the statues in York Cathedral to come to life and speak.

Norrell soon moves to London with the goal of restoring the place of English magic as a gentleman’s pursuit.  The problem is that Norrell is a very secretive and, well, boring person, and his intentions towards magic are both dull and controlling.  He wants to restore English magic on his terms alone, and those terms include the seemingly contradictory idea that he be the only magician.  No one else is good enough.

The demands of London society soon dictate that he prove himself by performing an actual task of magic.  When a local politician’s new wife suddenly dies, Norrell is suddenly called upon to provide this proof by raising her from the dead.  Norrell does so by calling on the help of a faerie, historically known as the deceptive and reluctant assistants to magicians.  Norrell himself speaks out against the use of faeries and tells no one of this incident in which he talks the faerie into raising the Lady Pole.  The deal they strike states that Lady Pole will live till 75 but that the faerie will own her for half her life.  Norrell is tricked; the faerie means he will own Lady Pole at night, and every night the Lady is forced into faerie land where she must dance the night away.

Soon we meet Jonathan Strange, who in character is the opposite of Norrell.  Whereas Norrell is controlling and reluctant, Strange is impulsive but charismatic.  During the course of the novel, Strange becomes the main protagonist, at first becoming Norrell’s tutor and later adversary.  Strange cannot help but do magic, giving in more and more into temptations to try stronger and stronger magic.  He is hired by the government to help Wellington fight Napoleon.  He attempts to bring sanity to the mad King of England.

Their main disagreement comes down to their feelings about John Uskglass, the Raven King and greatest magician ever.  Norrell hopes to wipe his influence out of modern magic; Strange feels that if you do that, you will wipe magic out altogether.  The third section of the novel concerns this mysterious figure.

And so on.  If I were to spoil any more here, it would give away many of the delights of the plot’s many twists and turns.  So instead of doing that, I’ll give you a handful of reasons I loved this book, and one or two critiques:

1. The Story–Even 30 pages or so from the end, I had no idea how this novel would end.  Clarke weaves together many strands and characters into a great finale, and I love a book that is unpredictable.

2. The prose–Clarke is a genius at shifting moods.  Some sections feel fascinatingly expository, including the many footnotes referring to magical tomes that exist only in the universe of the book.  Others are dark and scary.  Others have tremendous wit.  One chapter might feel tremendously tense or ominous, the next like something out of a comedy of manners.  Her use of description is spare in needed places and rich in others.  The shifting of moods is extremely effective throughout the book, adding to the difficulty in predicting exactly where the piece will land.

3. The Characters–I love both of the main characters in this book.  Norrell continually made me laugh by his stubbornness, and I saw myself in Strange’s impulsiveness.  But the side characters also fascinate: Stephen Black, the servant the faerie becomes enamored with; Vinculus, the mysterious prophet-magician; Drawlight and Childermass, assistants to Norrell who meet wildly different ends, and many others.

My only complaint, I’d say–and this is one echoed by others–is that the first 300 pages are a bit slow.  ”300 pages” and “slow” sounds like a worse combination than it really was, and I understand why she made some of the choices she makes in those opening 300 pages.  It does seem to me, however, that this could have been trimmed a bit.  I had heard about the opening before I read the book, and decided to persevere through it, and I’m glad I did.  Somewhere around the 300 mark, I was really getting sucked in, and I read the last 500 pages at least twice as fast as I did the first 300.

To close: it’s a good book.  If magic and the supernatural don’t bother you, you should give it a shot.  Let me know what you think.

Dear Matt Thiessen (of Relient K)

Dear Matt Thiessen,

I am not your core audience.  I’m probably not the guy you’re targeting when you make an album.  I’m 36, I’ve a wife and a kid, and I live in England.  Most people think of Relient K as a band for teenagers, semi-angsty Christian kids–people like that.

And perhaps you started out that way.  You were, after all, only in high school when your band first started performing.  And your first sort of breakthrough album featured songs about cell phones and mood rings.  Teenager stuff.

But I hadn’t heard you at that point, aside from one track on a 5 Minute Walk sampler.

Then I went back to being a high school teacher, and dang if my kids didn’t love them some Relient K.  I’m a music junkie, and I like using music to connect and relate, so one year, just before going on a trip with some students to New York City, I bought your newest album.  It was on sale, I figured I’d like it some and be able to make some connections with some kids through that.

That album was the Five Score and Seven Years Ago album.  It was pretty good.  I digested small bits of it on the plane ride  and on the subways.

Then, while exploring the Natural History museum by myself–all the kids had scattered throughout the building–I decided to finish off the album.  And in this one hall where the fake Easter Island statue is (like the one in Night at the Museum), “Deathbed” came on.  Clocking in at 11 minutes, the song is a 1st person account of a man’s life story as he lies on his deathbed and encounters Jesus.  And it is amazing, musically, lyrically, emotionally.  Your vocal performance on that song is powerful, and the instrumentation complements each section beautifully.  I was hooked.

Next came the Christmas album, which fights Sufjan Stevens every Christmas for prominence in my CD player.  It’s so good, and “I Celebrate the Day” gets me every time I hear it.  It’s the one Christmas song I continue to listen to throughout the year.

So, wow, I thought, I kind of like these Relient K guys.  So I went back, got the aforementioned record with “Mood Rings” on it.  And, well….it’s okay.  Clearly you’ve grown in many ways.  Then I bought, again on sale, the cleverly named collection The Birds and The B-Sides, including The Nashville Tennis EP. Listened to it a few times, put it on the shelf.

A year goes by.  Christmas 2009 hits.  The Christmas album is on constant rotation.  New Years comes along, and I feel bad for keeping it in, but I’m still in this Relient K mood, so I decide to play the Birds album until I know it well enough to make a better call on it.

And then I can’t stop listening to it.  It is, particularly the first half, brilliant.  It is a new style for the band.  Much of the pop punk is gone, replaced by acoustic and alternative songs with all mixture of influences and melodies.

Well, Matt, you ask, what of our new album?  What of Forget and Not Slow Down, the album of tracks you wrote while isolated in some cabin somewhere during the period of time after a broken engagement?

Well, did I mention I live in England?  New music of the Christian-related variety isn’t always easy to come by, and when it is, it’s expensive.  So I asked for the CD for Christmas.  Could’ve downloaded, but with some bands I like the hard copy.  And our Christmas presents didn’t come till mid-January, by which point the Birds album had been in constant rotation.

So it came.  I listened to it.  And I heard your suffering, your process of working through the pain of this broken engagement, the desire to understand and honour the other person in that equation while still being honest with all the feelings and confusion.

It’s nearly a masterpiece.  I hope you continue to top yourself, Matt, but if you retire with this as your best album, you’ve done more than many bands.  Out of your suffering came some art.  Rob Bell would be proud.

I know it’s new for you and a lot of your old fans may have a hard time adjusting.  But you’re not a teenager anymore, and this album shows a maturity and depth.  It’s got the best lyrics you’ve ever written.  And I read about the production, how you, for the first time, weren’t using electronic tricks like loops–everything is recorded in a very organic way, and it shows on the album’s sound.

Granted, it takes a little while to get going.  As you know, since you recorded the album, there are really only 10 songs here, even though there are 15 tracks.  The extra five belong mostly to outros, usually slowing down the previous song or expanding on its theme.  And none of these are stinkers–no fillers.  This is a lean album.

That being said, most of the strongest tunes are in the latter half.  The first two songs are very good, but not great–the title track, and “I Don’t Need a Soul”, both fitting nicely into your pop-punk repertoire.   I’m not sure if you meant the double entendre in that latter title, but it had never occurred to me that there are two possible meanings to that phrase until I heard this song.

Then comes “Candlelight.”  Doesn’t sound much like anything you’ve done before.  It’s very bouncy–the guitars feel….the only word I can think of is jangly, which isn’t even a word.  It’s not a dance track per se, but never before has a Relient K song made me want to dance.  There is a slight undercurrent of bitterness to the song, though the lyrics seem to be positive.  Well done.  Great tune.

After that we get “Part of It”, with the guitar and bass taking turns backing up the verses.  Another strong but not great song, but I like the line “if the nightmare ever does unfold, perspective is a lovely hand to hold.”  Helpful thoughts for the heartbroken.

Then comes “Therapy.”  Stylistically, there isn’t a ton new in this song, but man, what a song.  Not too surprised it made the concert rounds during the winter tour.  It, in many ways, sums up what this whole album is about–it’s therapy for you.  There is a raw and painful honesty in your vocal performance here, Matt–I think this song is coming from your gut, especially the line, “This is just therapy, cause you won’t take my calls and that means God’s the only one that’s left here listening.”

“Over It” sounds like something from the Nashville EP or even the Christmas album.  It’s vaguely like a ballad, or a piano based pop song, maybe like you’re channeling Ben Folds for a bit.  Not my favourite on the album, but not a bad song–as I said, there aren’t any bad songs here.

And from here until the end it’s all gold, starting with “Sahara”, a haunting, heavy-hitting rocker.  And I love the “Oasis” outro that ends it.  That’s followed by “Savannah”.  I’m not sure what that intro is played on–it could be just an acoustic guitar, but I wouldn’t be shocked to find out it was a cello or some other stringed instrument.  Similar in style to “Candlelight,” this is a “roll down the window and cruise the interstate” song.   Everything here works–the lyrics, the melody, the arrangement.  Strong drumming exploring a range of sounds.  Love, love, love this song.

The “Baby” outro is bittersweet.  Makes me tear up a little…

Then comes “If You Believe Me,” which blends so well with the last song, the double track “This is the End (If You Want It)”.  The intro feels like you’re coming to some sort of conclusion to this whole chapter of your life…you’re beginning to sum up what you want to say to your ex-fiance.  You are exposing your heart at the same time as giving her credit and freedom to be herself.  ”If you believe me, we could stand the test of time like no one else/ If you believe me, it means you have to disbelieve yourself.”  I have been in that exact place, Matt.  Really.  I have.  February 1997.  Through…most of the rest of 1997.  Ultimately, she believed herself instead of me.  This is an amazing track.

And it’s followed by that double-tracked closer, which is probably the best song you’ve ever written, and the best singing you’ve ever done.  The thrashing, relentless guitar over the first half, the haunting piano undergirding the same melody on the 2nd half.  The lyrics.  When I listen to this song, I feel like I’m holding my breath all the way through, until the last lines are song and you–whether in experience or by faith–have overcome and come home.

Matt, I’m not entirely sure who this album is for besides yourself.  Maybe for other jilted lovers trying to come to terms.  Almost nothing in it applies to my life as it is right now.  But still, you’ve gotten under my skin with a work of heart and a work of art exploring the suffering you’ve experienced over this past year.  It ends with a note of hard-earned hope.

Thank you.  My thoughts are with you. Thanks for sharing your pain and your journey with us.

I don’t know that you’ll ever read this, but in the aforementioned 1997 incident, weeks after the relationship came crashing down I ran into my pastor.  My pastor is a very driven, very spiritual man–very in touch with God and a man responsible for ministries all over the world.  So I expected something really profound from him when he asked me about the end of this relationship.  He put his hand on my shoulder, looked at me, and said, “Time heals all wounds, if you let it.”  And that was it.  And he was right.

God bless.  Can’t wait for the next album.

My 12 Favourite Singles of 2009

Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve written anything here, but I’m back with some new resolve.  Sort of.  I am resolving that writing is going to be more of a part of my life in 2010, because it’s supposed to be.  I am CALLED to write in some way.  I want my main focus to be songwriting–I’m looking to take a class, and have several ideas in the works–but as music is my deepest passion these days, at least in regards to the arts, I feel like writing about music is also a valid outlet.  So I am.

The music business has changed a lot over the last decade.  At first, I didn’t like the changes–the rise of the MP3 player and online downloading seemed like a bad thing to me.  Because at heart, I love the album–the concept of a band putting out a complete unified collection of songs–and feared that these innovations would be the death of the album.

And they have wounded the album–some artists are loathe to release them now–but in other ways they have strengthened the album.  For an album to make it, there has to be less filler.  Or a stronger concept creating the necessity for a whole album.

I recently went through a massive project of cleaning out my iPod of filler.  I’d say about 65 or 70% of my music collection was on my iPod, and it was getting full.  Well, after several months, some 850 songs are gone, and there are very few complete albums.  Some albums did get a pass.  Dark Side of the Moon, for example.  You can’t break that up.  My favourite of last year, The End is Not the End by House of Heroes also is left in my iPod in full.

But with so much music to listen to, so little time to do it, what with work and being a father and husband and, well, life, I don’t have that much time for listening to stuff I don’t like, or listening to stuff because it’s “important” or “acclaimed.”  I like what I like.  Get over it.

With that in mind, instead of doing a best album of the year list, I thought I’d pay some honour to the song.  (Although, in case you’re interested, I think my winner for the year would be the mewithoutYou album I mentioned in an earlier post) The 3 to…9 minute complete unit of music, with a beginning, middle, and end, a verse and chorus and bridge.  You can like part of an album and still want to listen to it, but it’s hard to only like part of a song and give it any attention.  So here we go–the 12 Best Songs of 2009–1 per month.

Now.  A word about the process here.  I scrolled through my iPod looking at recent additions.  Some 32 bands made the nominee list, some with multiple tracks.  I’m going to list them all below.  Know that some were disqualified since they turned out to be released in late 2008.  I had to be somewhat ruthless in not adding older songs I only discovered this year (sorry, Misty Edwards).  We have to be disciplined here.  Here is the list, followed by the actual top twelve, in ascending order.

Anathallo–The River* Avett Brothers–I and Love and You

Bon Iver–Blood Bank Brooke Fraser–Albertine*

Christafari–Boomshots Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip–Letter from God*

David Crowder Band–How He Loves Us, and We are Loved

The Decemberists–The Rake’s Song Derek Webb–What Matters More

Family Force 5–Carol of the Bells, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas

Fanfarlo–The Walls are Coming Down Flynn Adam–Dishes

Foy Vance–Indiscriminate Act of Kindness*

Grouch & Eligh–All In Ian McIntosh–You Are Holy, Faithful

Jars of Clay–Boys (Lesson One), Headphones, Scenic Routs

John Waller–Our God Reigns Here Justin Rizzo–Tree*

K’Naan–Waving Flag Knine–You Better, But…He Said

mewithoutYou–The Fox, the Crow and The Cookie; Bullet to Binary (Part 2)

Mutemath–Backfire; Pins and Needles

needtobreathe–Stones Under Rushing Water; Girl from Tennessee

Owl City–Fireflies Thom Yorke–All for the Best

Regina Spektor–Laughing With Rootbeer–Pink Limousine, So Good

She & Him–Lotta Love Sufjan Stevens–You are the Blood, The Sleeping Red Wolves

Tye Tribbett–Bless the Lord * U2–Moment of Surrender

The Welcome Wagon–Sold! To the Nice Rich Man*

Those with an asterisk were disqualified due to their release date.

This was hard.  It was relatively easy to get it down to 16.  But 12?  Four gems had to go.  So with that in mind, here are my Top 12 Songs of 2009.  (The 4 cut songs, by the way, are tracks by Christafari, Ian McIntosh, Rootbeer, Regina Spektor, and John Waller.  But you really really really really really need to go hear that John Waller song, because it is the most aggressive worship track I’ve ever heard, and if this were my “Top 10 Intercession Songs Ever” it would be in the top 5.)

12) The Rake’s Song–from the Decemberists’ opus, “Hazards of Love.”  The most instantly catchy song on this list, though it’s mainly just two chords.  Not heard it?  Here’s an idea: get it, and play it once or twice in the background while you do something else.  See if it doesn’t instantly get stuck in your head.  Now, go back and listen to or read the words.  Feel appalled at yourself for finding it so catchy.  Console your guilty conscience with the knowledge that it is one of the villains of the story talking, and that he later gets his just desserts.

11) Waving Flag–K’naan is a Somali-born hip-hop artist, though he has spent many of his years in less-threatening Canada.  The first time I heard this song was on the podcast of a live performance from South by Southwest music festival.  And it struck me instantly, mainly because–and this is the best word I can use to describe it–it is so anthemic.  The album had just come out before that performance, so who knows how many had heard that song before, but that chorus, that killer hook, is so simple and so singable that you’d think he was leading the crowd in a chorus of Stand By Me.

10) I and Love and You–Okay, Steve Tarter, you win.  A couple of years ago Steve Tarter pointed me towards the Avett Brothers, a bluegrass…ish…group that includes some actual brothers.  On the earlier works, the band liked to try and mesh other musical styles into the bluegrass template, whether it be hip-hop (Talk on Indolence) or hard rock breakdowns on “Emotionalism”‘s tracks.  For this, their major label debut, they brought on board Rick Rubin, who stripped back some of their wilder tendencies and focused on song craft.  I haven’t heard the whole album, but this song is just beautiful.  It does everything a song should do–it sticks to your bones, gets in your head, and you feel the emotions of the song and how they relate to your life even though the lyrics might not.  It makes me want to own a car again so I can drive down the…er, motorway with the windows rolled down pretending I’m heading to Brooklyn.  Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.

9) How He Loves Us–David Crowder Band’s “Church Music” is an experiment that doesn’t quite reach the heights it aspires to.  I want to love it as a whole, but I don’t.  I get lost in the last third.  I’ve listened to it tons of times and can’t seem to remember how the last few songs go.  That said, there are some standout moments.  ”We Are Loved” is a strong entry, but this cover of the modern worship standard is a cut above.  It is sparse–the instrumentation, especially at the beginning, is pared back, with at first nothing more than an effects-laden piano and David’s voice.  At least, that’s what you think at first.  But listen to it again, with some nice speakers or on headphones.  Throughout the entire track, in the background, is the sound of a crowd of people all talking.  It only runs through this song.  And somehow that murmur adds a whole dimension to the track.  It gives one the subtle sense of the singer, isolated and alone, but secure and full in the love of God.  It adds a dimension of sadness–just a hint–to the song, a vulnerability, that improves the song.

Incidentally, there is no “sloppy wet kiss” in this version.  We are instead treated to an “unforeseen kiss.”  Some would far prefer that lyric.

8. Tie: But…He Said, You Better: Knine, a rapper you’ve never heard of, put out a free mixtape this year called “Knine Presents Robots Have Feelings Too”.  I downloaded it based upon a strong review in a highly cynical publication–one that doesn’t give strong reviews, especially to music related to Christianity, easily.  And I was blown away.

So you might think I’m cheating to put both of his nominees on this list.  But it’s my list, so get over it.  And I have a reason: there seem to be two things running through this album–a deeply reverent, faith-filled declaration about life, and the craft of a clever, witty, and playful wordsmith.  The former track illustrates the first, in which Knine raps about different messages we’ve probably heard about ourselves or life, and then tells what the Word says in its place.  The whole thing is brilliant.  The latter track is both silly and tough, in which Knine lists a bunch of people and things you could add to your army trying to defeat Knine and still be totally fruitless in your attack.  ”You better have a way to get in touch with Darth Vader/Better have some ‘gators, better yet some Gladiators.”  ”You better have a sniper and he better have a plan/ You better have every Taliban in Afghanistan.”  Indeed.

7) All For the Best–Thom Yorke.  This track is a cover, from an album of covers by indie artist Mark Mulcahy to raise money for him after his wife passed, leaving him to raise two children on his own.  No idea who Mark is, and have never heard any of his songs before.  But I love the mix of this song–the way it sounds like another Yorke electronic experiment at the beginning, but then those organic clacking drumsticks and electric guitar interrupt the proceedings, complimented by Yorke harmonizing with himself.

6) Moment of Surrender–U2.  Bono’s live performance of this song was the vocal performance of the night, maybe of the year for me.  Definitely the best performance of any of the new songs.  This track, which seemingly tells a story about a man encountering God at an ATM machine, isn’t quite like any other U2 song.  Clocking in at 7:00, bluesy, passionate, this is a slow-cook number that deserves quite a bit more attention that it got.

5) What Matters More–Derek Webb’s controversial Stockholm Syndrome record is a masterpiece, one that grows on me more and more.  I keep coming back to it and discovering new things whenever I do.  The only complaint I have is the presence of two tracks with nearly identical writing structures–both are good, but both are dependent on the trick of ironic metaphors (i.e. “It’s like a crime scene without the blood…” etc.), and it’s a trick that wares thin for me after one song.  But anyway, this song, the one that caused much of the big disagreement with his label, is the centrepiece thematically for the record.

Forget the noise over the swear word and all that.  Listen to the song.  This record is Derek’s experimentation with electronica, and this is one of the more successful albums in that regard on the album.  But listen to the words, too: “You say you always treat people like you like to be/ I guess you love being hated for your sexuality”.  This is an important message, a strong indictment, but one I feel is delivered with love.  The key words to notice are “brother” and “sister”.  It not only deals with the attitude of the Christian to the homosexual, but also with the mixing of church and politics.  It is an important song on an important record.

4) Boys (Lesson One)–Jars of Clay is one of the most underrated bands of our day.  Everyone knows their first album, but very few have been patient with their newer stuff, which is unfortunate because their last two have been their best two, hands down.  This song comes from “The Long Fall Back to Earth”, an album concerned with relationships, particularly marriage and parenting.  It is also a collection of strong and emotional singles addressing day to day life in a powerful way.

And this is maybe my favourite song from it, partially because I am a parent, and in it, the singer addresses his songs with life advice.  The opening line sucks me right in and the song has me: “Lesson One: do not hide/Lesson Two: there are right ways to fight.”  I mean, right there in those lines is a myriad of deep and hard won wisdom every father needs to pass on to his sons.  What do weak men do?  They hide, or they fight battles they don’t need to in ways they shouldn’t.  Sentimental, maybe slightly sappy?  Yes.  Guess what.  I don’t care.  ”There will be liars and thieves who take from you/Not to undermine the consequence, but you are not what you do.”  Man, this song…

3) Flynn–Dishes. This is just a great single, deserving hit status.  Okay, it’s a relatively straightforward hip-hop track about the simple ways a man can love his girl.  Nothing too original from Flynn of the LA Symphony.  But I defy you to listen to it and not want to hear it again, to listen to it and not be tempted to learn it to sing to your wife or girlfriend.   Go ahead.  Try.

2) The Fox, the Crow, and the Cookie–I don’t know why I love this song so much.  It tells a Sufi parable about a crow whose pride causes him to lost the cookie he stole to a clever fox.  And then it goes off at the end into these weird metaphors about heaven that the crow appears to be speaking, and I can’t figure out what it all means.  And really, the whole song is only four chords, although it feels like it has about 4000 words.  Believe me, I’ve tried learning it.  I like that I had to use the dictionary.  (Cordivae?  Canzanet?)  But combine it with maybe my favourite music video ever (and incidentally, I like the mix on the video better than on the CD), and you have some truly original music.  I want to perform this song live.

1) You Are the Blood–Sufjan Stevens.  Hmmm…..kind of surprised this ended up at number one, given that I can only ever make it through about the first six minutes…but what six minutes of bliss!  Sufjan, Sufjan.

Sufjan Stevens is the artist of the decade.  If, for some sick reason, I had to give up all CDs acquired in the first decade of the 2000s minus one, the first one that jumps into my head to keep is the Illinois album.  But we hadn’t heard from him in a couple of years, and there was danger that, despite his innovation, he’d get stuck in an oboe-and-banjo laden rut.

2009 saw Sufjan’s return, however, with two different solutions to this dilemma.  On the one hand was The BQE–a CD of basically modern classical composed in honour of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.  Sufjan takes what he does, takes some lessons from Philip Glass, and turns into something new, though decidedly Sufjan.  If you had played me the album without telling me the artist, I still would have known instantly, though there are no sung words on the album.

On the other hand, this track from the compilation “Dark Was the Night”, itself a cover of a song by another Asthamtic Kitty band, the Castanets, finds Sufjan trying a whole new thing.  Or maybe it could be said he’s trying a little bit of everything.  Haunting, beautiful, electric, acoustic, and the kitchen sink, all in about nine minutes of peace matched up with controlled chaos.  It is my choice for the best song of 2009.

Your turn!

The Prisoner: We Are All in the Village

“Where am I?”

“In the Village.”

“What do you want?”

“We want information.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“That would be telling….We want information.  Information.  Information.”

“You won’t get it.”

“By hook or by crook, we will.”

“Who are you?”

“The new Number Two.”

“Who is Number One?”

“You are Number Six.”

“I am not a number.  I am a free man!”

Thus began nearly every episode of classic British TV show, “The Prisoner”, created by and starring the late Patrick McGoohan, most recognizable to this generation as the evil king in Braveheart.  The show, a startling dark satire about the Cold War, politics, the identify of man and his relationship to society, was absolutely groundbreaking.  It feels like what might happen if G.K. Chesterton, in a really cynical mood, decided to write a James Bond novel immediately after hearing the story of Alice in Wonderland for the first time.  I first saw it shortly after finishing college, when I discovered that the local library in Waco had copies of many episodes.  I had heard references to it hear and there in years before that, and my curiosity was piqued.

I was instantly hooked, and devoured all 17 episodes as fast as I could get my hands on them.  And I still remember the day I finally got to see the finale, a hard to come-by episode.  In its last two hours, the highly-philosophical show abandons most attempt at traditional television and storytelling and explodes into almost purely symbolic dialogue and images.  Put another way, the finale follows a thread of a story but is possibly one of the most unsettling things ever written and broadcast.  When it was over, I sat on the couch, shocked, unable to move for probably 15 minutes or so.

The show is largely hailed as one of the true masterpieces of the TV age, and has been highly influential.  The Simpsons parodied the show twice, and the producers of Lost acknowledge the debt they have to the show, this year even giving Sawyer a Prisoner-signature line: “Be seeing you!”  A “reimagining” comes out this fall, with Sir Ian McKellan and Jim Caviezel.

Lately, I’ve been in a Prisoner mood again, thanks largely to my recent visit to Portmierion, the resort in northern Wales where much of the series was shot.  Portmierion IS “The Village”, and I have racked my brains trying to think of another real place that has become such an iconic part of a piece of visual media.  I mean, certain locations in New York City are important to many films, but I can’t think of a single place so tied to a single piece.  Here’s a look:

The opening credits show us a man determinedly quitting his job.  The setting and manor suggest he is quitting a sensitive, important job–perhaps he is a spy?  Why he is quitting is unclear, but he is upset and determined.  He goes home, is in the midst of packing for some long-awaited vacation when a mysterious man in a dark suit walks to his front door and pumps gas through the keyhole.  The newly-resigned man is knocked out.  He awakens, confused, in what seems to be his own apartment, but when he looks out the window he sees a bright and odd village instead of his busy London street.  He is in The Village, where no one is known by name but instead by number.  He is Number 6.  Number 2 is in charge.  Number 2 wants to know why he resigned.  Number 6 wants to escape.  There are hints of a Number 1 behind everything.  Nearly every week, there is a new Number 2, trying a new tactic to break Number 6.

As I said before, behind the plot there is commentary and satire on a man’s relationship to society, with key questions about individuality, personal freedom, the relationship to communtiy, education, politics, art, power, and many other ideas which would dominate the turmoil of the 60s.

Patrick McGoohan, who created the show as well as starred in it, said that there were only 7 episodes he wanted to do, and thus 7 that stuck to the core of his basic idea.  His network wanted more, and a deal was struck to make 17.

The first 13 of the 17 can be broken up into three basic plots.  Sometimes all three are present, sometimes just one.

1. Number Two tries a new tactic to break Number 6.

2.  Number 6 tries to break, humiliate, or outfox Number 2.

3. Number 6 tries to escape.

Then the last four episodes are a bit odd.  One is a western.  Another is a very entertaining spy story taking place back in the real world.  This episode was made in response to criticisms that the show was too intellectual and thus too confusing for the average viewer.  So McGoohan made a goofy, simple spy story, and at the end it is revealed that the story is a tale that The Prisoner is telling a group of children.  At the end he looks straight into the camera and says, “Good night–to children everywhere,” thus calling his critics a group of children.

And then we get to the two-part finale, which as I mentioned before are deeply weird.  Don’t believe me?  Try this clip from part one:

Number Two has forced Number Six to revert to his childhood self in an attempt to pinpoint the moment at which he became so rebellious, and is attempting to get him to confess why he resigned from his job while in that mindset.  But you wouldn’t get that from the clip (skip to the last minute to see the weirdest part).  Context and a study of the dialogue would help it make a bit more sense…but it’s still pretty insane.  And the last hour is even weirder, as Number Six is given the chance to lead a trial over some other numbers, one of whom is obsessed with singing a song based on the Valley of Dry Bones parable from Ezekiel.

Most of my favorite episodes fall outside McGoohan’s “7 Pure Episodes.”  The seven key ones tend to be just a bit stranger, with plots that kind of meander in order to make a point about art or politics or whatever.  The ones that fall outside those seven tend to adhere to more traditional television rules and are therefore more easily entertaining.  Not necessarily a good thing, but TV shouldn’t always be work (I think if you’re going to watch it it should give you something worthwhile most of the time, though.)  Some of those favorites include “A,B,C” in which the new Number Two induces Six into a dream state, and make that dream state enact a fictional party in which he is supposed to encounter three people (A B or C) who might have enticed him to retire.  Six, after a time, realizes what has happened and takes back his dreams in a thrilling climax.

Another favorite is “Hammer into Anvil”, in which Six decides to break a Two he finds particularly despicable.  Here’s a clip, just so you can see that the dialogue on a typical episode was a bit more normal:

I also like “Schizoid Man” and “Change of Mind”, but my favorite is probably the last hour, because it is so stunning, and the statement he makes about the fallenness of man so clear and powerful.  And a bit unexpected.  We are all prisoners, but what does freedom mean?

Do a bit of research on The Prisoner and you’ll find I’m not just blowing smoke.  Look past the dated look of the cinematography and the weirdness that at times borders on silly.  You’ll be glad you did.

Be seeing you!

The Best Records of the First Half of 2009

Well, we’re halfway through the year, and so it’s time to look back and ramble on a bit about the albums that I loved in the first half of this year.  There are some surprises here…at least I’m surprised.  Some amazing stuff so far!  So let’s jump in:

Best Album of 2009 So Far: mewithoutYou: “it’s all crazy!  it’s all false!  it’s all a dream! it’s alright!”

This record may very well end up being the best of the entire year.  It has taken me completely by surprise and has gotten under my skin.  mewithoutYou is somewhat of an anomaly for music associated with Christians, because they are actually original; I don’t know anyone who sounds like them.  They continue to morph from album to album, trying something different each time, but each CD featuring that unique mix of group chants, screaming, talk-singing, and complex lyrics and storytelling that the band has developed.  Some albums are heavier than others.

I have only jumped on the mewithoutYou train in the last two albums.  Brother, Sister is really good, and features some deeply catchy and affecting tracks, but with this new CD they really outdid themselves.  Gone are most of the crunchy guitars, replaced with folk arrangements that might be sung around a campfire if they didn’t have so many lyrics and big words.  And this combination of their unique talk-sing rock with folk sensibilities and folk tales from different cultural traditions has produced the most memorable musical experience of the year.  Everyone needs to get this album.

A warning first: these are not cookie-cutter Christian lyrics.  You may find some things offensive.  One song, dealing with temptation, produces a very vivid image about lust involving the term “birth canal.”  And the final song could fit as a sort of youth sing-along worship tune if it weren’t for the fact that many people would have a hard time with the band’s use of the term “Allah” for God.  (No, they’re not Muslims.)

Some stand-out tracks: “every thought a Thought of You”, the reggae-tinged opener.  ”the Fox, the Crow, and the Cookie” based on an old fable about pride, which I really want to perform live someday, and which has an amazingly creative video that you can see here:

http://music-mix.ew.com/2009/06/mewithoutyou-the-fox-the-crow-and-the-cookie-exclusive.html

Also, I absolutely love “bullet to Binary (part two)” which starts as some sort of story about vegetables talking to each other and then transitions into this brilliant “reap what you sow” chant, including this line, “We all know we’re going to reap what we sow/so may we old-fashionably suggest/the unmarried not undress/we all know we’re going to reap what we sow.”  I don’t undersstand what “Timothy hay” is about, but it’s quite catchy.  ”Cattail Down” is nice with its “You’re everyone else” chant, and the closer about Allah is also quite nice.  But none of the ones in-between are bad either.

Thought-provoking, emotional, catchy, and original, mewithoutYou’s latest may end up being the album of the year.

Best Random Indie Album I am Surprised I Own: The Decemberists–Hazards of Love–This is the biggest surprise on my list, simply because I had heard the Decemberists before, including this entire album performed live on the NPR podcast from sxsw, and hadn’t really gotten into it much.

So why did I buy it?  Well…let’s see.  We’d been in the UK a month.  We finally found a place to live and got someone to take us to IKEA where we researched furniture options, only to return to Sheffield and find out we could not order online most of what we wanted.  Which meant another trip.  And no one wanted to take us.

So on bank holiday in early April, I caught a train to the station nearest the IKEA.  And discovered I was still three miles away or so.  On bank holiday, with little transport.  Finally found a bus station and took the bus to IKEA.  Did my shopping, paid for home delivery, and realized that this trip, to a place 45 minutes away by car, where I actually spent an hour of time doing what needed doing, was going to take about eight hours because of train scheduling.  So I was feeling frustrated and went into the nearby hmv with a £2-off coupon from the McDonalds Monopoly contest that I’d found on the ground, and decided “I’m going to buy a CD.”  And I picked that one.

So it was a “make myself feel better” buy.

I’m not proud.

But the music itself: Hazards of Love tells a story…that I’m not entirely clear on.  There’s a beautiful maiden, and there’s love, and pregnancy, and a shape-shifter, and a guy who kills little kids, and a weird queen, and the ghost of those kids, and in the end the lovers drown.  Okay.  It somehow comes across and not-too pretentious.  Well…mostly.  I mean, the first couple of minutes of the CD are basically complete silence…

But I love concept albums–I love when all the songs link together in some way, and I love the mix of  musical styles here, which makes for some haunting melodies.   The entire first 10 tracks are pretty amazing, but I do get a bit distracted for the last seven, as melody lines are repeated and ideas reprised seemingly ad infinitum. The guitar playing is perfect, and guest vocalists like Shara Worden from My Brightest Diamond definitely shine.  And it takes a special talent to write a song with lyrics as horrific as “The Rake’s Song” that is really catchy and sticks in your head before you realize what it’s about.  (To be fair, it is the villain singing.)  So, Decemberists.  You’re weird, but I like you.   Highlights: A Bower Scene, Won’t Want for Love, Rake’s Song

Best Album That Would Probably Have Been on Here No Matter What, Knowing Me: U2–No Line on the Horizon

Granted, I’m a huge U2 fan, and so they’d have had to release like, I don’t know, an entire album of remixes of “Mofo” to disappoint me.  And the reviews from this album have been all over the place: Paste, which named How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb their album of the year back in 2004 or 5, gave it a pretty mediocre dismissal, but a couple of UK music magazines called it the best U2 album since Achtung, Baby, handing it 5 star reviews.

I tend towards the latter opinion here.  I never was a huge fan of U2′s 90s period weirdness, and though I understand the statement behind it, I think they went too far.  All That You Can’t Leave Behind had some absolutely stellar songs on it, but…forgive me…after the first five tracks, it’s kind of boring.  I rarely go back to those songs.  Atomic Bomb is a more lively collection of tracks, and I think stands up better than most people give it credit.  It was, though, nothing that groundbreaking.

What No Line does so well is combining all of the different U2 eras into one package.  They play to their strengths without sacrificing experimentation.  Instead of just trying something new for new’s sake, or just trying to be what everyone expects, they’ve decided to be themselves as they try something new.  A combination of approaches.

It is an album that demands multiple listens.  It has layers, both sonically and lyrically.  I dig the lyrics on this record more than recent U2 albums.  The title track, opening the CD, is an adequate opener that…I don’t understand.  Track 2, Magnificent, is just that and is a great example of classic Edge riffing.  And I have to say, one thing about this record is that The Edge is cut loose for the first time in a long while!  There are solos!  Lots of them!  And they’re good!

Track 3, Moment of Surrender, clocks in at 7 minutes and tells a story about a guy who seems to meet God while at an ATM machine.  I think.  It has a bluesy, slow burn to it and is quite new for U2 in several ways.  Love this track.

Next comes Unknown Caller, which is weird but good, followed by I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight, which is a pop song (as opposed to the previous rock tunes), and a catchy one at that.

Next is Get On Your Boots, which I think was a lousy choice for an opening single, but somehow, placed here in the middle of the record, the song is saved.  It just works better in the flow instead of isolated as a single.

Stand Up Comedy would be easy to pass over but I think you need to give it another shot.  Some great lyrics: “Stop helping God across the road like a little old lady.”

Fez–Morocco or whatever this is called is the album’s low point.  I’m not sure what they were going for, but…they didn’t get there.

White as Snow–A genuine ballad, like Love is Blindness but more wordy, is quite nice.

The albums two closers, Breathe and Cedars of Lebanon, are both classics.  The former is a weird guitar-heavy track where Bono does this fast speak thing, and the latter is an interesting closer, as much of the album speaks of hope and second chances and this is a pretty grim song.  But it works, and No Line is an overall strong album.

Best Rap Album With a Hit Single that Deserves to go Viral But Never Will: Rootbeer EP

The history of L.A. Symphony is a moving one to me.  A group of guys from the West Coast who banded together to do high-quality underground rap, and do it well, with a common bond of faith in Christ but a goal to be a bit more…let’s say…artistic than the average “Christian rap” album.  Friends with the Black Eyed Peas, discovered by an up and coming record label with a lot of money from a worldwide hit ready to make the Symphony stars.  The dream shattered when the label is bought out and the breakthrough album shelved.  Members drift away, CDs are released with dark thoughts…and then the guys come through it, faith and creativity stronger though the fame completely eluding them.

Two of those guys, Flynn Atkins and Pigeon John, have teamed up to form Rootbeer and have released a five song eponymous EP.  I love Pigeon John–his solo albums are probably my favorite hip-hop out there–and surprisingly, teaming him up with Flynn was actually a brilliant idea.  Every song on the EP is great, but the big single is “Pink Limousines,” which deserves to be a worldwide dance-club hit.  The track starts off with this sort of African bongo beat, but in the last minute the beat morphs for the last chorus, and I defy you not to jump up and down.

Similarly, Flynn has been putting out some small solo EPs on Gotee every couple of months, and I have to say I love, love, love the Dishes EP.  I could tell you what the song is about, but I’d rather quote the chorus: “I do the dishes/You know I love you/Take out the trash/you know I love you/Save all my kisses/You know I love you/My love’s like that, love’s like that.”  I sing it to Ira a lot.

Best Compilation “Dark Was the Night”

The line-up of this CD reads like an indie fan’s dream festival line-up.   Put together for the Red Hot charity, which brings AIDS/HIV education and awareness around the world, this two disc set features all brand-new tracks by such luminaries as The National, My Brightest Diamond, Bon Iver, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Sufjan Stevens, members of Sigur Ros, and many others.  Members of bands team up for new songs–like Feist and Ben Gibbard of Death Cab.  And though I must confess I’ve never actually gotten through the whole thing–it is long–it  is a worthy cause and full of some solid songwriting.  If you know me, you’ll know the best thing about it for me is the existence of a new Sufjan Stevens track.  New music from him has been hard to come by the past couple of years, but here he contributes a nine minute opus called “You are the Blood.”  I believe it’s a cover, but he makes it his own.  He manages to do something entirely new while still sounding like Sufjan–which should be encouraging to those who fear that he might begin to repeat himself.  The song has heavy techno beats and ominous vocals and is beautiful and haunting and worth the price of the album itself.  But then, so are most of the rest of the songs.

Best “Speaking of Sufjan Stevens” Record–Welcome to the Welcome Wagon

So, technically this came out late last year, but it right at Christmas after everyone had already bought gifts, so no one really heard it until January.  The Welcome Wagon is the work of a Brooklyn pastor and his wife…and Sufjan Stevens.  It is made up of modernized versions of songs from a particular denomination’s hymnal and tradition, and some diverse covers–Danielson Familie, The Smiths, Velvet Underground.  It sounds like the brainchild of Sufjan without actually being him.  And it will make you very, very happy.  You can’t really listen to “But For You Who Fear My Name” with all the hand-clapping or “Sold! To the Nice Rich Man” and its deft lyrical turns without smiling.  I just don’t think you can.  You’ll want to sing along.

To be frank, I only really dig half the album, but that half I LOVE.  Not a huge fan of the songs with female lead, for the most part.  But I’ve never liked the Smiths, and the Smiths cover (“Half a Man”) is great!  They are coming to the UK for like one show and I’m sad I’m going to miss it.  Get this record!

So there are some of the great moments of 2009 so far.  With new Derek Webb and Mute Math records coming soon, there might be some stiff competition for best of the year. (Actually, I’ve heard the Derek Webb, and it may just make the latter half best-of.)  But if you want something new, I’ve just given you some things to try.  Enjoy!