Albums of the Decade

We just found out the decade is coming to an end. Dan and I wouldn't have even known, except Amanda Palmer tweeted that her record (That's right...I still say "record") was named to a best albums of the decade list. I totally agree, and not just because Amanda Palmer haunts my dreams. My sleeping dreams. Not my waking "I-am-a-practicing-Surrealist-and-therefore-all-I-undertake-assumes-a-certain-dreamlike-aspect" dreams. That would mean she were actually present somehow in my life. Which was briefly true when I went to see her at the Troubadour here in LA. She wore this pink kind of top-thing and...

Sorry. I'm back.

Ok, so "Who Killed Amanda Palmer" was on this list of the decade's best albums. But the other albums on there were like Jay Z & Linkin Park, Justin Timberlake, Panic at the Disco, and I was like "Damn, dude. I could make a better top-ten list than that." And then after like three days, Dan was like "Oh crap, we have a blog." That was about ten minutes ago, so here I am.

Best Albums of the Decade (in no order):
1. Unearthed by Johnny Cash
Every disc in this 5-disc collection could stand on its own just as ably as any of his American releases. And you may be like "Johnny Cash, I though you were Surrealists?" to which I respond: The biggest hit country music legend Johnny Cash had in the last decade of his career was a Nine Inch Nails song.

2. Who Killed Amanda Palmer by Amanda Palmer
The Dresden Dolls put out two amazing albums before Amanda Palmer wandered out on her own. I thought "I guess I'll buy it, but that drummer in The Dresden Dolls is really good..." Now I don't even remember his name, that's how good her solo record is. Plus, lots of Velvet Underground references, and that never hurts.

3. Blood Money by Tom Waits
Maybe I should like Alice more, since Alice in Wonderland is one of those pre-Surrealism Surrealist landmarks, but I don't. I like this one more. And I even like it more than Orphans, though that and it's entire disk of weird spoken word jokes and readings and ramblings runs a close second.

4. Only Just Beginning by Jason Webley
He has Surrealer albums, and more diverse albums, and more ambitious albums, but none more beautiful. Everyone should buy this album.

5. Hidden Hands of a Sadist Nation by Darkest Hour
Their next album, Undoing Ruin, was proclaimed the metal album of the decade even before it came out, but Undoing Ruin and later albums introduced the kind of vocals that all those whiny emo kids now fronting metal bands use. Listen, if I want to hear somebody sing, I'll listen to somebody else on this list (especially #6). If I want to listen to metal, I want Tomas Lindberg, formerly of At the Gates, yelling at me during the first track. Hidden Hands... it is.

6. The Reminder by Feist
She went on the Stephen Colbert show and dressed him up in that little blue dress she wore in the iPod commercial. That alone would merit inclusion on this list. But there's also the amazing album she put out, too, which, inexplicably changes the name of the Nina Simone standard "See-Line Woman" to "Sealion," which is kinda fun and also kinda a head-scratcher.

7. The Dust of Retreat by Margot and the Nuclear So-and-Sos
I wanted to not like this album, because they seem kind of whiny, too (see distaste for, referenced in #5, above), but instead it wound up on my albums of the decade list. I know they prefer their follow-up Animal!, and I'll pop in either Animal! or Not Animal from time to time too, but The Dust of Retreat has a timeless haunted quaility tied up in it's extravagently orchestrated indie pop songs that their later releases don't quite reach.

8. O Brother Where Art Thou Soundtrack
No secret that we like the Coen Brothers, but I can't say I'd ever given rootsy folk music a real hearing before this album. This single release did more for American roots music than any event since the Civil War.

9. In Rainbows by Radiohead
I was tempted to put this on the list just because of their distribution model (and their subsequent tight-lipped stance as to the results of the model), but that wouldn't be fair. As much as I enjoy Radiohead's odd digitial wanderings in the desert, this was the most cohesive release of theirs since OK Computer, and earns it's inclusion on this list and several others by its own merits, and not just for the social-industrial deconstructionalist dialogues it launched.

10. The Milk-Eyed Mender by Joanna Newsom
Still don't know what the title means, still don't care. No record in history has ever made me wish so desperately to know a harpist. Her follow-up Ys was more lush, more ambitious, and more epic, with track times running in double-digit minutes, but somehow Joanna Newsom putting her odd Applachia vocals and harp-and-harpsichord musical stamp on traditional song structures felt the more daring of the two things. Lots of people we know also leave the room when I put it on, which makes me a little sad, but also strokes my Surrealer-than-thou self-image.

That's it. Many of you may be disappointed that this list is in many ways so conventional (What?!? No Merzbox?!? you may be asking), but Dan can make his own list if he wants to and shut up about mine, already.

Vince out.

ART WE LIKE: Amanda Palmer

Red hair, occasional corpse paint, piano, Velvet Underground references, sexually ambiguous song lyrics, a flattened German city = Vince has a crush.

Ok, so I guess there's "Art we like" and then "Artists we like" and I guess they usually overlap, but it's important to point out that they don't have to. For instance: Lee Majors. Lee Majors was The Fall Guy, therefore Lee Majors is awesome. He does not, to my knowledge, have anything to do with Surrealism. Yet he remains awesome.

Amanda Palmer, on the other hand, seems to be building up some pretty impeccable Surrealist credentials. First, she's half of the punk-cabaret band The Dresden Dolls, where she plays piano and sings with a guy playing drums. Right, we know. Cabarets were real big until like 1930, and punk came along, say, around 1970, so there never was a punk cabaret, but now we know what one would've been like, had there been one, thanks to Ms. Palmer. If Kurt Weill and Johnny Rotten had had a band, this would've been it. I mean, it's not Morton Feldman, but it's pretty Surreal.

But this fall, Ms. Palmer put out her first solo record, Who Killed Amanda Palmer (no question mark), and to commemorate the release of it, she seems to be creating her own little world. In addition to the album, there are exhaustive online production notes, a series of videos that go with each song but somehow weave together into a coherent-ish narrative, and a forthcoming book by Neil Gaiman that, as I understand it, is back-dated to something like 1964. Why? Because it's friggin' Surreal. Come on.



And, on the album, she sampled this video (which, while we're at it, we'll give Surrealist props to James Bewley, too, who created this whole Strindberg and Helium thing):



I haven't even mentioned that she's friends with Jason Webley, who plays accordion and who we also like, and she seems, you know, fun. So, yes. I admit it. I have a little bit of a crush on Amanda Palmer. But she's also Surreal.

So it's ok.

Vince out.