It’s a shame Eminem got drawn into the same media narrative as Fred Durst and those nu-metal eggheads. While Limp Bizkit couldn’t help their stupidity, Eminem offers a far richer, more intelligent and disturbing critique of contemporary cultural stupidity. There’s real substance to his caricature. Moreover, there’s very little in pop-lore to compare to the way Eminem imagined a persona and let his life and his persona intermingle. Not just himself, but his wife, kid, mother, producer… they all play parts in the storylines he sets out. It’s way more involved than Bowie being Ziggy. And nobody comes out looking good. In that way he’s more like an Andy Kauffman than any musician. It’s no surprise the media (every bit as thick as Eminem portrays ‘em) couldn’t see the difference.
But anyway it’s supported by great, catchy songs – hip hop as ultramodern pop music (for 2000 that is). And Eminem is a great rapper – I say this as something who knows nothing of the form and mainly hears hip hop as great instrumentals with somebody talking all over them. But the wordplay, the humor, the insane train of thought juxtapositions – I really dig it. To me the closest relative to something like ‘The real Slim Shady’ is Dylan on ‘Bringing it all back home’.
Edit: What I’m saying is, Eminem controls this record and its characters like a novelist. When they’re being whiny or obnoxious, it’s in the script, and when the whole thing skips out of control on ‘Kim’ – a brutal script of partner violence, Eminem succumbs to the same crimes as Stan at the beginning of the record -, it’s a really effective, chilling climax. I find it genuinely unsettling.
At its best: Stan, The real Slim Shady, Amityville, Kim, The kids
114. Ian Anderson: Secret language of birds
I don’t suppose anyone would suggest this as your first Ian Anderson album, but it happened to be mine (and still only). It actually worked well. Anderson’s folk is miles more folk than other British rock/folk artists. I swear I can smell the medieval modes. But that’s not the overall impression you take with you. It actually sounds much like its cover: a wildly colorful travel diary from some tropical/imaginary land. More like journalism or adventure story, than your average singer-songwriter spilling his guts. I’m all for it.
At its best: The secret language of birds, The little flower girl, A better moon, Sanctuary
113. Ghazal: Moon rise over the silk road
At the beginning the kemantche (a stringed instrument played with a bow) and sitar circle around each other, each taking time to formulate long melodies while the other recedes or provides a drone. After a couple of minutes they start adding to each other’s sentences. At five minutes all of a sudden they lock in. There’s a very brief, wonderful, fiery passage and then we’re into the song. A voice (one of the two instrumentalists, a third musician?) sings one verse of what sounds like a song that must’ve always existed. Then they improvise instrumentally on the melody. Another couple of minutes later, the tabla falls in and it’s off into another dimension. Out of meditation follows something ecstatic, like an out of body experience. The music eventually slows way down and disappears. Those are the dual moods (meditative, out of body) that inform the two long songs that make up the bulk of this album (both 20 minutes+). One invariably leads to the other. I don’t know my Indian music from my Persian music (do you?), so I don’t know if this is true to traditional music (as some reviews claim) or actually a daring meld of two traditions in a contemporary, exploratory vein. It’s more traditional than ‘Within you without you’, but it sounds like an adventure to me. I first got interested in this kind of droning, endless Eastern music, from reading the late Robert Palmer’s (the music critic, not the musician) articles (there’s a great collection called ‘Blues and chaos’ which has been a recent eye-opener for me). Yes, I know he writes mostly about Jajouka and Morocco which is nowhere near India (so actually I don’t know my Indian from my Persian from my Moroccan), but all the time reading it, without having heard any Jajoukan music, it made me think about the very few Ravi Shankar performances I’ve heard. It seemed to me that all of the descriptions could easily be transposed to fit Indian music. And that’s the music it made me want to open myself up to.
The length of the tracks matters, it’s music to really give yourself up to, let yourself dissolve into its patterns. That’s why the other track on the album (in between the two long excursions), at barely 8 minutes, feels like a throwaway jingle, I can’t get into it. ‘Besh’no az Nay’, the other epic, is structurally almost identical to the first one. It begins with a long, meditative duet between the two stringed instruments. The two musicians, if that’s possible, seem even more telepathic this time round. After about 8 minutes the percussion (a tombak this time, it says in the credits) drops in and adds a rolling current. Shortly after there’s singing again, a lone, stately voice that sings with authority and dignity. He’s deeply immersed in the drone and the rhythm. The pauses between sentences grow longer and longer until you can’t really tell where the instrumental improvisations take over again. There’s no build up like the first epic, but it’s also like leaving your body. Twenty minutes pass like no time at all.
At its best: Fire in my heart, Besh’ no az Nay
112. Emmylou Harris: Red dirt girl
Writing her first album of originals, Emmylou Harris used the opportunity to create an album of hushed songs of longing and regret, but mostly of memories. Memories of the life she’d led, of the lives she hadn’t lived, memories of her family and loved ones and of herself. What all of this musically has to do with country anymore is a valid question, with those folk and singer-songwriter chord structures and the familiar ‘hollow church’ production of Lanois student Malcolm Burn. But spiritually, it’s all about redemption and what could be more country than that?
At its best: The pearl, Michelangelo, J’ai fait tout, Hour of gold 111. Spring heel jack: Disappeared
There are a number of records in this style in the list, a mix of electronica, jazz and other exotic musics. What can I say? I like it and it was a good year for the genre. For Spring Heel Jack electronica means surprisingly heavy beats and pulsing bass lines (the first few seconds I always wonder if I haven’t put on that industrial record by mistake – then I remember I don’t have any), jazz means electric Miles echoing trumpet and the other exotic musics betray a love of spy movie soundtracks. It’s an aggressive mix at times – though the trumpet on ‘Trouble & Luck’ is very ‘It’s about that time’, mostly this stuff is running the voodoo down in the 21st century. But as the record progresses, they allow subtlety to seep in here and there – a wise decision. It makes for a well-balanced record, disorientating adrenalin at the start and still life later on. Of course, last track ‘Wolfing’ pulls out all the stops again for a surprise ride through the outer regions of noir excitement – it works marvellously.
I don’t think the genre lived very long after 2000 (maybe I’ll find out for sure in a future project?), but at its best it showed a genuinely new place, a combination that certainly sounded ‘different’ to me, that both jazz and electronica could go. But maybe it was too much, a real head on collision between the two with neither side giving an inch. I’ve heard a lot of jazz with subtle electronica touches since, electronica has gone in different directions (folktronica, new ambient music…). There’s been great music on both sides, but this is something else still. Well, I like it a lot.
At its best: Mit wut, Disappeared 1, Trouble & Luck, To die a little, Disappeared 2
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