McNutt Against the Music

I haven’t been a very good music blogger this year.

I don’t know what it was about 2008, but life seemed to revolve around everything except my record collection. Whether it was busy days at work trying to get my new job up and running, or the incessant drone of CNN’s election coverage playing in the background, events overran soundscapes time and time again. A few weeks ago, I sat down to start putting together my year-end lists – similar to last year – and found myself struggling, both with finding enough “singles” or “albums” worthy of attention and also finding enough to say about them to make the whole ordeal worthwhile. After pondering my situation for a bit, I came up with a solution:

I’m taking 2008 back. In mixtape form.

Why So Serious? represents my best efforts to recontextualize the 2008 soundtrack, to pierce together the art-to-life connections that I so miserably failed to form on my own this year. Instead of merely providing a list of my favourite songs this year, I’ve taken 17 of the best and reshaped them into an 80-minute playlist that flows through some of the major events, pop culture touchstones and musical highlights of the past 12 months.

To achieve this, every track in Why So Serious? has been uniquely edited to work within the mix. For some songs, this may mean a smoother transition from one track to the next. For others, it may be the interweaving of audio samples and soundbites to place them solidly within the year that was. For a few tracks – including a forthcoming ode to the recent Canadian political drama – the original songs have been rebuilt from scratch or slammed up against one another to form something new and hopefully enjoyable.

So without further ado, here are the songs, along with my thoughts and reflections on why I chose them and how they fit snugly into the 2008.

Stats
- Length: 3:27
- Originally released on: Accelerate (April 1, 2008)
- Samples: “Yes We Can: North Carolina” (BarackObama.com) and “In the New Year” by the Walkmen.

The future’s ours and you don’t even rate a footnote…

I’m not a “movement” guy, for a number of reasons. I’m cynical, for one. I’m a crank, for another. Most importantly, though, is that I’m a critic. I’ve an observer’s eyes, an analyst’s mind and a writer’s hand, but my brain is wired in such a way that it uses those powers at a distance, almost never on the front lines. I want to understand, and I want to help others understand, but I tend to have little interest in turning that understanding into action. I write manifests, not manifestos, so to speak.

So how do I explain my emotional investment in the improbable, incredible presidential campaign of Barack Obama? If you’ve been reading the blog, you’ll have charted my transition from quiet observer to full-blown “Hope-ium” addict over the course of the year. Never before have I been so inspired by a political figure from my own lifetime. For the first time I can recall, I was willing to put aside my doubts, my quibbles and my misgivings and admit that I didn’t just support a candidate – I believed in one. And he wasn’t even running in my own country!

There are lots of reasons why I, and so many other young people, believed in Barack Obama. But if I had to single out one to highlight, it would be the powerful way in which he represented and communicated the concept of “the bridge.” See, if progress is the journey between our present state and the future in which we want to live, it’s not enough to simply describe the two worlds. Focusing only on the present lack vision; dwelling on a better future sounds idealistic and out of touch.

A great leader, one looking to start a movement, connects the two. They bring idealism into a dark present, and calm utopian daydreams with tempered realism. Most importantly, they build bridges: connecting turns of phrase with figures of speech that blur the line between the two worlds. They talk about concrete details and actionable items not as boiler-plate, but as a logical starting point on the journey. They draw a map that leads from anger to hope, from sadness to joy, from yesterday to tomorrow.

This mixtape contains a number of songs that play off of the Obama phenomenon in some way. But there was never any question to me that “Living Well Is the Best Revenge” was the only way this mix could start, because there was no one song this year that so perfectly summed up what the Obama campaign meant to me (sorry, will.i.am).

There’s a sneer that drives the song along, from the first fuzzed-up jangle of the chords through to Michael Stipe’s final cold-throated scream that brings the track to its end. There’s a lot of anger in the mix here, which feels appropriate: if nothing else, the events of the past eight years should damn well earn the anger of progressives and liberals across the world whose reality has been taken from them. But anger alone doesn’t get you anywhere (or win elections for that matter – see 2004). Anger needs a bridge to hope.

Here, it’s in the singalong-worthy chorus. It’s in the glorious Mike Mills backup vocals. Most importantly, though, it’s in the raspy vocal chords of Mr. Stipe that the future takes shape. Every turn of anger is transformed into a statement of progress, of optimism: don’t turn your talking points on me / history will set me free. This is not a sunshine and rainbows tomorrow; when Stipe sings about forgiving but not forgetting, he’s talking about a future that chooses not to be ignorant of the mistakes that have been made along the way. A future founded not on lofty rhetoric alone, but one crafted in the fierce urgency of now. A future built on bridges.

Both this song and the Obama campaign signal a turning point for those of us who have spent much of our young political lives disappointed. We’ve tried anger, and we’ve reached its dead ends. Our marches in the streets, our angry songs…the short term catharsis they brought only led right back to where we started. I believed in Barack Obama because he spoke to me about the need to channel that anger, that disappointment, into something worth fighting for. Because on November 4, America proved Michael Stipe right: living well truly is the best revenge of all.

Download: R.E.M. – “Living Well is the Best Revenge (Yes We Did)”

Stats
- Length: 4:43
- Originally released on: Day & Age (November 4, 2008)
- Samples: “Yes We Can: North Carolina” (BarackObama.com), “President-Elect Barack Obama in Chicago” (Barackobama.com) and “Obama at the Alfred E. Smith dinner” (MSNBC).

You’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea / You better look it over before you make that leap…

The first time that I heard “Spaceman” in full was at The Killers’ headline set at Montreal’s Osheaga festival in August. It was the only new song the band played that night, but I was immediately taken with the vocal melody, which I thought eclipsed anything on the hit-and-miss Sam’s Town. Looking back now at a YouTube performance from that show, though, it’s clear just how much a work in progress that first taste really was.

And this is why despite their crippling flaws – Brandon Flowers’ vocal shortcomings, a lack of sonic certainty, ridiculous visions of grandeur far exceeding their grasp – I have to admit that I’m thankful for The Killers’ existence. Somebody has to stick up for great pop music in this day and age,* and I’d rather it be them than, say, Max Martin and Dr. Luke.

* I read through this post four times before I noticed this awful, movie-critic worthy pun that I unknowingly placed here. I’m so disgusted with my subconscious right now that I’m sharing my pain with you. Misery loves company.

In the hip hop era, pop music has been almost exclusively the domain of the svengali producer who, either as faceless manipulator or public icon, finds malleable pop vessels and sends them soaring into the stratosphere. But there has always been a place in the annals of music for pop bands, self-made and self-constructed, whose commitment to the hook triumphs over all. I shouldn’t have to always choose between Radiohead and Britney; a pop-lovers’ soul should have some sort of middle ground on which to rest. So much of the music that I listen to aims at being the new post-Rubber Soul Beatles, which is cool, but the world needs pre-Rubber Soul Beatles too.

The Killers are no Beatles, obviously. They’re probably not even a great band, what with their crippling inconsistency. But at their best, they have a knack for pop hooks and thus far have written a handful of this decade’s best. The secret of “Spaceman’s” success is that it’s so ambitious in its quest for pop infamy that it keeps trying when most other songs would just give up.

Think about it: how many other bands would just stop at that great vocal melody I heard in Montreal? Just leave on the simple bassline, the repetitive guitar strum and release “Spaceman” to the world? Your local bar band would give their left kidneys and/or their bassist for a hook like that. But not the Killers. They have to find MORE hooks to shove into the song: a reworked bass riff, a synthesizer assault, a piano-only chorus refrain and, to top it off, a chorus of “OH OH OH OHs” to start and end the track.

In my imagination, I can picture those chants being the last thing added to the song, since they’re absent from all the live versions prior to October. I imagine the band sitting down with their producer, Stuart Price, to go over the track. I see them counting through the song’s three or four massive hooks and reacting not with satisfaction, but with discontentment. They’re greedy – they want MORE. So someone – let’s say, oh, the drummer – decides that a little chant might seal the deal. So back to the microphone Brandon Flowers goes and proceeds to stuff yet another seemingly unnecessary but, in actuality, TOTALLY necessary hook into the song.

This is excess. This is madness. This is great pop music.

Download: The Killers – “Spaceman” (Man from Krypton)

Stats
- Length: 5:52
- Originally released on: Weezer (The Red Album) (June 3, 2008)
- Samples: “Celeb” (JohnMcCain.com), Applause

If you don’t like it, you can shove it / But you don’t like it, you love it…

The pop world is not flat.

My favourite quote from the movie Ghost World is where Enid, the film’s protagonist, ironically sneers that a performance at her high school prom was “so bad that it went past good and back to bad again.” I’ve repeated this line countless times in the years since, not to mean and condescending as Enid did, but because I genuinely believe its conceit: that when it comes to art – in particular, pop art – quality is a cyclical concept, not a linear concept one.

When a song, for example, reaches the edge of awfulness, it doesn’t fall off never to be heard from again. It rolls down the other side towards genuine awesomeness, a ride made all the more smooth with the sweet grease of irony easing the burn. Unfortunately, it can skid too far and continue onwards: through bad, through good, through bad again, through good again, and so-forth.

(This can also work for a song reaching the edge of awesomeness, but it’s a little more complicated because the consequences of something being “so awesome it’s awful” are quite different. But that’s a subject for another time).

The catch is that everyone’s quality cycle is a different size and shape; everyone has their own tolerance for art of the awesomely awful variety. Which is why some people might consider “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived” as one of the year’s worst songs.

I, clearly, disagree.

Some undoubtedly will hear echos of “Beverly Hills” – the nadir of the band’s woeful post-Matt Sharp material – in the lyrics’ wish fulfillment and immediately tune out. Others who keep listening will come across the absurd Queen-esque falsettos and shut off the track. And I bet a good chunk of everyone else will stop listening when the outlandish spoken-word interlude cuts in, where Rivers riffs on Shakespeare before talking about bodies being “all up on his behind.”

All of this is ridiculous. Some of it is awful. It’s also AWESOME.

I’ll admit, I didn’t quite know what to make of the track at first. There’s so much bonkers crammed into its six minutes that it really can’t be comprehended on a single listen, let alone a few. Ultimately, though, the sheer volume of crazy is the core of the song’s appeal. If it was just lyrically excess or musical excess at play, the whole thing would probably end up pretty awful. But like multiplying two negatives together, the excesses come together into a wonderful, unbelievably excessive whole.

I could probably just leave it at that, but I feel like I need to make a case for “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived,” as more than just a guilty pleasure. In part, it’s because the song marks the first time in over a decade that Weezer – one of my favourite bands during my teenage years – don’t sound like they’re overthinking things. On the contrary; Weezer sound like they’re actually having fun here, in contrast to the cold calculation of Maladroit and Make Believe. Listen to the way Rivers’ voice as he screams Heyyyy this is what I like / Cut my heart with a modern spike. Check out that rolling piano backing him as he says he can take on anybody. And what about the catharsis of the final, sped-up rock-off on the chorus?

Rivers may have laboured endlessly over how this glorious monstrosity came together, but not unlike Dr. Frankenstein, the working parts of his final creation make it truly, vibrantly alive. Some might find the result horrifying. To me, it’s brilliant.

Download: Weezer – “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived” (The Biggest Celebrity in the World)

Stats
- Length: 3:43
- Originally released on: Midnight Boom (March 10, 2008)
- Samples: Applause, Queens of the Stone Age – “No One Knows.”

I swear our chant is crashing in my mind…

This Fall, an old friend of mine was in town that I hadn’t seen in several years, so we met at a local pub for a drink and catch-up. Back when we were both in high school, we shared a similar taste in music (more or less) and most of our conversations in the time since have focused on our record collections. So it was a bit of a surprise to me to hear that he had given up on rock music and spent most of his time listening to classical.

His reasons? That he had grown weary of popular music’s incessant focus on image over the music itself. He was tired of the fact that a rock song’s greatness is intrinsically tied to who’s performing it: how they’re dressed, how they perform it, etc. The beauty of classical music, he argued, is that it’s the composer that gets the attention, and their creations can be recreated by orchestras around the world and still have the same impact. It’s the substance that’s the focus, not the style.

He’s right, of course, but the reason why I remain a committed devotee of pop/rock music (in its broadest sense) is because style is an inseparable component of the genre’s substance. A band’s image, their performances, their sexuality…this isn’t value-added, it’s an integral part of the experience. It’s one of the reasons why rock and roll has survived so well through all the turmoil of the past 60 years: its post-modern foundation means it’s malleable to shifts in public opinion and different technology trends, far more-so than most “popular” forms of art.

The Kills prove this point perfectly. Their third album, Midnight Boom, is full of solid songs, but would they really work as well without the minimalist production? Without the pure sex that drips from the voice of Allison Mosshart? Without the unique combination of electronic beats with throat-cutting guitar?

The answer’s no. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Image matters too, often as much as the production. I had the pleasure of seeing The Kills twice this year – the first was outside on a beautiful summer day in Montreal, the second was in an adorably grungy club in Brooklyn, New York. And the two shows were like day and night (literally). It was the first show that finally brought me to the band, although their name had been bandied about in my circles for some time. It was a fantastic performance that really won over the crowd…but it was still a beautiful summer afternoon.

New York was a little more like it. The band’s raw edge and grungy sexuality plays perfectly in a club where the walls are black, the few chairs uncomfortable and the bartenders pour their whisky stiff. When Mosshart leans out over her microphone into the crowd while Jamie Hince lashes into his guitar on a small, wooden stage, the performance and setting are every bit as important as the (few) notes they play.

“Black Balloon” is one of the two moments on Midnight Boom where the duo pulls things back a notch, but if anything it’s the album’s strongest aesthetic statement. Listen closely to the way the drum tracks stick mostly to handclaps and what sounds like a trash can. Pay attention to how the bass track adds an acoustic guitar without drawing attention to it. Things stay small, minimal and raw, but add a pathos and beauty quite different from the rest of the album’s guitar punk. Is there a lot of substance here? Depends on your point of view. It has a simple lyric, very little development as a song and the thing amounts to something, like, three or four chords.

But that’s not exactly the point, is it?

Download: The Kills’ “Black Balloon” (The Weather’s Way)

Stats
Length: 3:08
Originally released on: Stay Positive (July 15, 2008)
Samples: Queens of the Stone Age – “No One Knows,” Ella Fitzgerald – “Summertime,” DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince – “Summertime,” Kid Rock – “All Summer Long,” New Kids on the Block – “Summertime.”

We’ll put it back together, raise up a giant ladder / with love and trust and friends and hammers…

No one understands summer. Let alone pop musicians.

I’ve never quite appreciated why it is that we think of summertime as a time to be lazy, to “relax.” Down time? A break? Who needs it! Summer is the most ambitious of all the four seasons. The warm weather inspires us to think outside of the box – and outside of the office – to try and find new prospects for world domination.

Planning trips…organizing barbeques…camping extravaganzas…finding new friends… …drinking beers…stealing hearts…

This takes work. Lots of it. It’s just a different sort of work, and a different sort of satisfaction. All too often the other nine months are devoted to reinforcing the pocketbook. Summertime is about reinforcing the soul, the spirit, the rock and roll’r inside each of us. A great summer isn’t spent on one’s rear end – a great summer should be constructive.

Craig Finn understands this. With “Constructive Summer,” he’s built a seasonal anthem that almost immediately wipes the floor with the lesser-rans trying to mooch off the middle months of the calendar (a theme I tried to get across with the radio dial edit I introduce the track with). He has no intention of spending his summer months waiting for something to happen to him – he’s going to MAKE summer happen. He’s going to raise up ladders. He’s going to drink on water towers. He’s going to BUILD something this summer.

But what takes “Constructive Summer” to another level is the sadness buried just under the adolescent joy at the surface. Its protagonist’s quest to be productive sits against the backdrop of a dying mill town, and the song’s juxtaposition between youthful enthusiasm and restless desperation drives every chord to its next change. Jesus, school…these don’t provide any escape from the hopeless future ahead.

But there’s Joe Strummer’s raspy rage. And there’s beer. Most of all, though there’s his friends – his “double whisky, coke, no ice,” his “drums on lust for life” banging out on four toms. Time and time again he repeats how he’s going to build something this summer, how the season is his “annual reminder that we can all be something bigger,” but his visions of grandeur amount to little more than a teenage boozefest with his buddies.

But it’s something.

With “Constructive Summer,” Finn manages to somehow convey the desperation and joy in equal measure, with neither seeming odd next to the other. Verse by verse they dance with one another, responding to each other’s extremes with extremes of their own. The friendship gets stronger as the sadness spreads. The ties bind tighter as the heartache grows deeper. And the band drives on.

Download: The Hold Steady – “Constructive Summer” (Radio Static)

Stats
Length: 3:47
Originally released on: Narrow Stairs (May 13, 2008)
Samples: Radiohead – “Exit Music (For a Film),” Cartoon bell sample

But once it starts it’s harder to tell them apart…

The first rule of songwriting is simple: write what you know. And when most of us start putting pen to paper, the thing we know the most about is ourselves.

There are countless songwriters who have made entire careers writing about themselves. Mostly, these people live interesting lives. For those of us a little more mundane and boring, we have two choices to avoid succumbing to woeful self-indulgence: find a way to make the ordinary extraordinary – a challenging task at the best of times – or learn to write stories about other people.

At first, I was terrible at this. The whole reason why I started writing instead of stories when I was a teenager is that I don’t get “characters.” I can’t imagine where they start, where the end and the space in between. I can never picture the changes they go through over the course of the story I’m trying to tell. I don’t see epiphanies, or realizations, or reunions. I see static.

I blamed all this on my hatred of “characters,” but my ire was misplaced. What I really couldn’t work with was plot.

I found this out when, in the course of one night, I penned a song/poem entitled “New Fictions.” It was about two pickpockets in New York City who donate their spoils to a downtown church where they live in the balcony, obsessing over Old West mythology (it made a lot more sense when you read it, really). It was a breakthrough for me because I realized that I didn’t need to solve these characters’ problems in four and a half minutes. I could introduce their problem – in this case, existential dread – and explore it without resolution. In a song, it’s the sketch that matters.

Aside from the fact that it’s an unbelievably catchy pop song, I think this is one of the reasons why I’m so fond of “Long Division” in particular, and much of Narrow Stairs in general. It feels like the record where Ben Gibbard breaks himself of the shackles of “I” and “we” and really explores his stories from a different perspective. Tracks like “Cath…” and “Grapevine Fires” keep distance from their characters, but they’re no less riveting; if anything, they gain something from their narrator’s arm’s-length observations.

In “Long Division,” Gibbard gives us only the slightest glimpse into his protagonist and his relationship, but says a world with them. From the division metaphor at the song’s core, to the description of memories as paper, there’s a pathetic quality to the experience, one without a single scent of resolution. The song seems to end mid-fight, mid-issue. Some may find the lack of conclusion frustrating, but I find it liberating. The whole reason I hate dealing with plot in the first place is that life rarely works out in narrative form. Sometimes, the end just isn’t worth telling or knowing. Sometimes, it just doesn’t factor out.

Download: Death Cab for Cutie – “Long Division” (Number Cruncher)

Stats
- Length: 4:58
- Originally released on: Conor Oberst(August 6, 2008)
- Samples: McCain – Fundamentals of Economy Strong, Reuters – “Financial Meltdown timeline”

While I, and many Canadians, spent much of 2008 following Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, the financial crisis that enabled his substantial electoral victory was probably the much more significant event of the year, and its impact will probably be felt throughout much of the next four or five years. And yet, while I could tell you every intricate detail about the campaign, I feel like I know next to nothing about the economic madness that’s swept the United States this past year.

Oh I know the Coles Notes version: the impact of sub-prime lending, the way that consumer behaviour reinforces a drive towards a recession, what a recession means…but I don’t understand how this all ties together into something that affects everyone from the smallest business to the largest auto company.

It’s funny, I’ve spent the past few years pondering the idea of financial investment, given that I actually have an income now and all. And every time I got into the bank, I got scared shitless. Oh I have an RRSP, and actually put a decent amount of money in it, but the rest of the investment game always felt a bit like magic or trickery to me, or some kind of twisted gambling. There’s something of my grandfather in me, I think – from what I’ve been told, he loved the physicality of money, the sense that this $100 bill in front of him represented his labour (plus, he loved throwing around $100 bills). It’s tangible, real.

Though it was released a couple of months before the bottom fell out, and though it has nothing ostensibly to do with the economy other than a few metaphors, Conor Oberst’s “Lenders in the Temple” – from the Bright Eyes’ vocalist’s self-titled record with the Mystic Valley Band – always felt like the right note to soundtrack the Wall Street collapse. The collusion between spirituality and money, its brooding sense of apocalypse, the beautiful and powerful (paper tigers, crystal cities) proving to be nothing more than vacant facades…

But the core of the song is an overwhelming sense of sadness, which feels apt. For all the newsprint and television coverage focused on how “angry” people are, those hit hardest by the economy usually respond by expressing an overwhelming helplessness. They make pick a token enemy – “if you loved me, then that’s your fault” – but the real enemies of a recession are so effuse, so vaporous, that it’s often difficult to focus on them to achieve any sort of action. Invisible CEOs? Faceless Wall Street bankers? Instead, broken people turn inward.

There’s an emptiness to “Lenders in the Temple,” from the drug-induced hook-up stories of its protagonist tells, to the lonely nights watching infomercials in the living room. And though Oberst may never have intended the song to dwell on economics, it feels fitting to pair that emptyness it with a plain, matter-of-fact newscast on the recession, and with John McCain’s famous, tragic reaction to the matter. The media, the maverick…they all turn to vapour.

Download: Conor Oberst – “Lenders in the Temple” (Sound Fundamentals)

Stats
- Length: 3:36
- Originally released on: The ‘59 Sound (August 19, 2008)
- Samples: Iron & Wine – “Such Great Heights”

No they ain’t supposed to die on a Saturday night…

Dierdre didn’t die on a Saturday night. But that didn’t make it any fairer.

Since graduating from my public relations program in 2006, I’ve lost two of my classmates to cancer. The first, Lynn, was fighting her fight before the program ended, and was consciously aware of how little time she had left. Her passing was sad, but not sudden. Dierdre’s, though, was a shock. In writing this post, I went back through the email thread of notices and updates I received on her condition – the entire timeline from the news of her leukemia to her funeral was a month.

I was never really close to D, certainly not as much so as some of my other classmates. But her death shook me up, probably more than I cared to admit or show at the time. This was the first time that a friend, a contemporary of mine, had passed away. That experience brings with it a whole slew of unwelcome existential questions, the sort of things that it’s easier to just not think of than to try and confront.

I try not to think about them. But they come rushing back when my iTunes randomly shuffles to Iron & Wine’s version of “Such Great Heights,” which a trio of musicians so beautifully recreated at D’s funeral. And they linger in between the reverb lining the blistering chords in the Gaslilght Anthem’s “The ‘59 Sound.”

It was my friend Adam who introduced me to the latter band, saying that they sounded as if Springsteen had decided to become a punk rocker. I thought the song was catchy, but was put off by the bluntness of the lyrics. It seemed too obvious, too describe death in such seemingly obvious terms. But as the year went on, I kept coming back to the song over and over again.

Maybe it’s because Dierdre was a punk rocker at heart. Maybe “The ‘59 Sound” was helping me blast out something. Maybe it had nothing to do with D at all. But there was something in the song’s questions and its lack of answers that rang with me, like an echo from the past, reverberating.

Download: The Gaslight Anthem – “The ‘59 Sound” (For Lost Friends)

Stats
Length: 4:10
Originally released on: Oracular Spectacular (digital release October 2, 2007; physical release January 22, 2008)
Samples: Corey Delaney Party Liaison

I’m feeling rough, I’m feeling raw, I’m in the prime of my life…

Irony is hard.

One of the most difficult aspects of living in the 21st century is going to be figuring out when people are serious and when they’re being facetious. I know that I, for one, am culpable in creating this awkward world, but even I can sometimes get taken off-guard and mistake irony for sincerity.

Take, for example, “Time to Pretend,” from MGMT’s debut record. Though it’s hardly the most original song in the world, its distortion-filled shoegazing pop is instantly endearing and worthy of your best indie-dance living room wobble. But man oh man, did I ever get tripped up over the lyric.

The song’s first verse is self-indulgent wish fulfillment, fantasizing about coke, heroin and models for wives; having fun, living fast, dying young. I didn’t hear the song until the band had broken huge, so the passage always struck me the wrong way. It felt as it could really be the band’s mantra – the ridiculous, mushroom-binge outfits on their album cover certainly didn’t help matters.

Then comes verse two, which is this incredibly stupid fantasy about childhood, recollecting about playing with the dog, missing the family, and more. It feels like an idiot’s version of childhood, without a hint of subtlety or reality. This offended me even more – was I really supposed to buy into this?

It wasn’t until months later that I finally clued in: these two fantasies are SUPPOSED to be ridiculous. What seemed like a celebration of these idiocies transformed into a send-up of them, pairing them together and amplifying their absurdity against one another. That awareness gives a sadness to the song that I didn’t expect to find. Its protagonists can’t find anything remotely tangible and real in their present lives, and dream of a stupid future and an idealized past. In their misguided sense of fate, they stay stuck in between, dancing all the while.

It’s that sense of joy and sadness that led me to add Australian party icon Corey Worthington to the track, whose TV appearance became a viral sensation earlier this year. It seemed…appropriate, somehow.

Download: MGMT – “Time to Pretend” (Famous Sunglasses Edition)

Stats
Length: 3:02
Originally released on: Distortion (January 15, 2008)
Samples: Katy Perry – “I Kissed a Girl”

I want to be a brothel worker, I’ve always been treated like one…

Oh, how I wanted desperately to include Katy Perry’s ubiquitous, same-sex spit-swapping anthem on this mix. Never mind the fact that it’s an incomparably manufactured pop song; it said volumes about where North American culture sat with homosexuality this year, about a country where a song about kissing another girl could be a number one hit but where draconian gay marriage bans pass in state after state. But alas, it felt completely out of place alongside the rest of the tracks I had laid out for Why So Serious.

Besides, how could include “I Kissed a Girl” in lieu of the year’s best hedonistic anthem? As a song, “The Nun’s Litany” is arguably even more provocative, but has a depth Katy Perry could only dream of.

The song’s lyrical hook is that it’s sung by a nun, which is in itself fascinating. Our popular concept of the “sisterhood” is so archaic that a nun who’s even aware of these sexual professions is immediately surprising. But smartly, the song doesn’t dwell on the idea, using it subtlety instead: note, for example, the reference to “you” in the first verse (God?)

But there’s so much more going on here. There are references to a strained relationship with the character’s mother; was it her matriarch that forced her into the service of God? Then there’s the spin-the-bottle reference: is this woman pushing 30 or 40, finally regretting that she has never truly experienced a sexual life? My favourite line in the song is where she talks about becoming a dominatrix, “which isn’t like me but I can dream,” she says. What sort of life would this woman be living if she wasn’t a nun? The song leaves me desperate to know more about this woman.

Throughout the year, Fields’ songwriter Stephen Merritt performed the song solo, but as much as I appreciate his affection for gender-bending, my favourite version is the Shirley Simms-sung album version. She’s the star of Distortion, and this is her standout, delivering each wistful verse with the perfect balance of joy and sadness. She takes what could be an incredibly silly lyric, and with each note builds a character that leaves the listener hungry for more.

Download: The Magnetic Fields – “The Nun’s Litany” (Heavenly Hedonism)

Stats
Length: 6:08
Originally released on: Dear Science (September 23, 2008)
Samples: Tunde Adebimpe – “Unknown Legend” (Neil Young cover, from the Rachel Getting Married soundtrack)

Oh take my hand sweet, complete your release unbury your feet…

I don’t do a year-end movies list, mainly because so many of the year’s best movies come out just in time for Oscar consideration and don’t end up in theatres here in Halifax until sometimes late January. But if I did, I expect Rachel Getting Married would end up pretty high on my list; based on what I’ve seen so far, probably only The Dark Knight would rank higher.

The film’s centrepiece is Anne Hatheway’s fantastic performance, but what lingered with me afterwards wasn’t just the emotionally devastating family drama that drives the film’s narrative; it was the amazingly musical wedding that surrounds it. Rachel, played by Rosemary DeWitt, is marrying a musician named Sidney, played by TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe. As such, the entire wedding is full of live music, with a plethora of Sidney’s friends soundtracking every moment of the exceptional weekend. All of it is captured by director Jonathan Demme’s floating, documentary-style camera, giving a “fly on the wall” feel that leaves one feeling like an honoured guest at this amazing experience.

And yet, for all the mariachi bands and rock outlets that show up in the film, the film’s most gripping musical moment is where Adembimpe performs an acapella version of Neil Young’s “Unknown Legend,” a ballad dedicated to a woman full of life, mystery and wonder. It was so memorable a moment for me that I felt compelled to add it to Why So Serious? as the conclusion of TV on the Radio’s “Family Tree” – perhaps the year’s other notably beautiful musical moment.

Aside from the fact that they share the same vocalist, it makes sense for such a lingering longing to outro the heartbreakingly tragic lyric of “Family Tree.” The lyric is just obtuse enough to be open to interpretation, but whether its use of “gallows’ is metaphorical or literal, its character’s romance is fleeting and forbidden. Hearts are haunted and full of nightmares; blood flows to keep evil young; graves are prepared.

And yet, there is passion beneath the sadness. Love shakes off halos, marriage releases feet from their shackles. It’s not the most original set of ideas in the world, but since when has love ever been unique? It’s the music that sells the poetry, with its haunting, ringing piano riff growing into a full instrumentation that then fades out in echo, with its legend destined to remain unknown to the world. Undoubtedly one of the year’s best tracks.

Download: TV on the Radio – “Dear Science” (Unknown Legends)

Stats
Length: 5:08
Originally released on: The Dark Knight Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (July 15, 2008)
Samples: Far, far too many to mention. Contains speeches from: Heath Ledger, Peter Mansbridge, Stephen Harper, Jim Flaherty, Stephane Dion, Michael Ignatieff, Jack Layton, Keith Boag and more.

You were a schemer…you had plans…and look where that got you…

So yeah…I’m pretty excited about this one.

Out of all the tracks on Why So Serious, the title track has been the most work by a good margin. It’s also the track where my quest to recontextualize 2008 reaches its apex, taking one of the year’s defining pieces of music – The Dark Knight soundtrack – and mashing it against the most exciting developments in Canadian politics in years.

I had thought about including “Why So Serious” – the brilliantly chaotic theme that introduces the Joker in The Dark Knight’s opening caper – as part of this mixtape project since the beginning. Unfortunately, the fact that it was a nine-minute instrumental meant it was likely destined for the outcast pile. Or so it was, until an evening spent watching CBC Newsworld in the wake of the news that Canada’s opposition parties were considering overthrowing the Conservative government and forming a new coalition. I can’t remember who it was, but someone on the tee-vee described the situation as “anarchy.”

A light bulb went off.

I immediately started scouring YouTube in two directions. While I was digging up the major Joker speeches from The Dark Knight, I was simultaneously trying to find and and every political soundbite that could allow me to tell the story of the mesmerizing madness that was ensuing. As the real-world story unfolded – the economic update, the vote delay, the coalition agreement, the addresses to the nation – I updated the track accordingly. I couldn’t get to everything (Iggy’s coronation in particular feels rushed, although I suppose that’s fitting) but I had to time events to the intricacies of the track: the escalating tension, the blistering rock beats, the relative moments of calm.

Though I supported the coalition – albeit more out of principle than anything – this Dark Knight/Canadian politics mashup doesn’t take sides. It presents everyone involved as the schemers they were, all cascading towards a scenario that none of them saw coming until it was far too late to stop it.

It’s the perfect match to the Joker’s love of chaos and disorder, his devilish cackle at the flawed plans of man. The mix returns the character to its inspiration: instead an orchestrator of madness, the Joker becomes the jester of the Canadian Parliament, pointing out all the flaws of the King and his Court. And having a good laugh at their expense.

Someone get that clown a politics show…

Download: Hans Zimmer, James Horner and the 40th Canadian Parliament – “Why So Serious” (Canadian Anarchy Remix)

Stats
Length: 3:39
Originally released on: (original version) Vampire Weekend (January 29, 2008)
Samples: Nick and Norah Clip – “You’re My Musical Soulmate”

Do you want to, like you know I do…

I confess that I’m not much of a remix guy. They tend to oscillate between two extremes: either changing so much of the track that it loses all connection to the original piece, or adding so little new that the whole thing feels pointless. But I’ve got to hand it to the cheeky newcomers in Vampire Weekend for their smart choices of collaborations this year. In addition to letting Chromeo turn “The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance” into an electro-pop ditty and allowing Hot Chip and Peter Gabriel to tackle “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa,” the latter track also was transformed into this synth-pop reworking by French band the Teenagers.

I’m not certain if I prefer this version or the original. On first listen, “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” was actually among my least favourite songs on Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut, mostly because of how repetitive it is. Over time, though, the glorious keyboard riff won me over, with the support of the wonderfully retro music video.

But the Teenagers remix fits better within the mixtape, I think. More importantly, it feels like it better reflects the 80’s vibe I got from the music video, which is in part what inspired me to pair the track with sound clips from Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, a throwback to an era of great teen movies and probably my cinema guilty pleasure of the year (if one believes in guilty pleasures).

Nick and Norah does absolutely nothing unique as a movie, but does it so well that I forgive its lack of originality. Part of its appeal is its leads, as both Kat Dennings and Michael Cera are charming as all hell. Part of it is the soundtrack, to which Vampire Weekend are contributors. But mostly, I think I was a sucker for the film because its “one night adventure” motif taps into something I feel tends to slowly die our when our teenage years come to an end.

As responsibilities replace risk taking, our willingness to venture out into the downtown, to stay up late and see where the night takes us, diminishes. The kinds of spontaneous experiences that defined my undergrad years never quite seem to repeat themselves now that I’m older. Everyone seems to prefer to choose calculation over chance, comfort over unknown consequence, and going to bed early instead of confronting the midnight boom.

I’m not blameless in this; I’m as guilty as anyone else. But spontaneous adventures seem so rare these days that I can’t help but be nostalgic for them, and can’t help but be drawn in by a film that so idealistically and entertainingly presents them. So consider this track an ode to teenage quests, however misguided they may be.

Download: Vampire Weekend – “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa Teenagers Remix” (Infinite Playlist)
Stats
Length: 4:15
Originally found on: Med Su I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endulaust (June 24, 2008)
Samples: Slumdog Millionaire trailer

It seems that not all artists and their representation are as welcoming of my work as, say, R.E.M. were (whose people actually featured this blog on the band’s website two weeks ago). As such, this is not my original track 14. Those of you lucky enough to have the “director’s cut” of the mixtape can hear my original vision for this slot, but for the rest of you: don’t worry, I’m more than pleased with my substitute.

I needed something that not only fit perfectly in the vacant space, but that linked to something else worthwhile about 2008. Thankfully, I just saw Danny Boyle’s brilliant Slumdog Millionaire on Friday night, a glorious rush of a film that’s still bouncing around in my brain and dancing in my heart 48 hours later. And as I was working on my album’s list last night I was reminded of the few moments of glorious rush on Sigur Ros’ Med Su I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endulaust. And that the Slumdog Millionaire trailer made brilliant use of the band’s “Hoppipolla.”

It’s funny how wonderfully global the whole operation feels. Here’s a film set and shot in India, made with a British director, with musical assistance from a Brit whose family is from Sri Lanka (that would be M.I.A.) and yet, somehow the soaring strings and cathartic percussion of a bunch of blokes from Iceland feels a perfect fit. At their best (and not their proggy worst), Sigur Ros sound timeless, spaceless, nation-less. To their fans, their “foreignness” isn’t a weakness but a strength – it leaves the band detached from any one sound or scene. They remain an effervescent rush, and a more than worthy substitute addition to Why So Serious.

Download: Sigur Ros – “Inní mér syngur vitleysingur” (It Is Written)

Stats
Length: 4:35
Originally released on: Missiles (October 20, 2008)
Samples: none

Just speak the words, ‘been down here from up above’…

My good buddy Adam has dramatically revamped his blogging presence these past couple of months and is currently running through his own entertaining year-end countdown at History Happens at Night. While our tastes share some crossover, we come at music from very different backgrounds and often have good fun bickering back and forth about, say, the merits of post-OK Computer Radiohead or Chinese Democracy.

Where we might agree, I think, is that often the best pop music is bold and big, and swings not for the very cheapest of the cheap seats. And that’s one of the reason why I’ve always had a soft spot for hyper-romance as a musical motif, because what it lacks in gritty realism it makes up for in sheer ambition (either sonic or rhetorical).

To that end, I’ve come to view Montreal’s Stars and the Dears as two sides of a similar coin. Both present views of politics and love that are brash, unashamedly passionate and subtle as a sledgehammer, but they too come from very different perspectives. Stars, who I had the pleasure of seeing twice this year, choose to venture off into various realms of indie pop. The Dears, in contrast, have a proggy foundation that can sometimes be their greatest asset and their greatest weakness.

On “Meltdown in A Major,” it’s certainly an asset. The band wisely avoids overstuffing the song, letting its cascading keyboard and Murray Lightburn’s smoky voice hold down the fort at first before growing into a full synth-driven ballad. While some might be expecting the song to explode at some point, the fact that it holds back is, to me, its greatest charm. On past Dears’ records the band would be desperate to rock out, to blast the eardrums off with a wall of distortion. But here, the slow decent into noise feels a better fit for a hyper-romance more insular and reflective. The song’s progression is so effective that this is the one track that I’ve barely touched in Why So Serious, choosing only to blur its outro into the song that follows.

What’s more, there’s an interesting juxtaposition between the certainty of the outro lyric – “even though people think you’re wrong / I know you’re onto something” – with the lack of sonic footing. It’s as if our subject is repeating it ad nauseam because if he doesn’t, it suddenly won’t be true; his certainty will have faded into the wall of noise behind him and his makeshift faith will have been torn apart again.

Download: The Dears – “Meltdown in A Major” (Drunk in the Streets)

Stats
Length: 9:51
Originally released on: At Mount Zoomer (June 17, 2008)
Samples: Too many to mention.

As if you didn’t know that it would sting…

One of the more unwelcome aspects of 2008’s musical experience were the number of follow-up records that disappointed; the bands who broke through on their last release that couldn’t quite match the same dizzying heights. I’ll be addressing a few of them when I post my albums list later this week, but At Mount Zoomer, Wolf Parade’s second full-length, certainly falls into the category.

Maybe it’s that the band didn’t have the chance to construct the record across a series of EPs like they did with Apologies to the Queen Mary. But I kind of feel like my issue with the record is its inability to reconcile its parts into a unified whole. I’m a huge fan of both Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug and their respective projects (Krug’s Sunset Rubdown claimed my top album of 2006, no less), but what I loved about Apologies was that it felt like these two divergent songwriters were finding common ground.

At Mount Zoomer lacks that “meeting in the middle” vibe. Boeckner is more game than Krug, to my ears; Krug submits one song that is so completely indistinguishable from Sunset Rubdown that it’s somewhat distressing. Without that sense of collaboration, the whole record just feels like a slightly off-beat exercise.

That is, until “Kissing the Beehive.”

FINALLY, my ears rang out with glee. The one true Boeckner/Krug collaboration on the record almost makes the preceding 30 minutes worth it, because in more than 10 glorious minutes lies everything I love about Wolf Parade: the manic verses, the rolling synthesizers, the gritty guitar slashes, the twinkling melodies. As the two vocalists trade lines, their individual quirks start to mesh together and play off one another, escalating with every measure of music they mash up against. Each movement references back to its predecessors until it all comes crashing together in a chaotic, sprawling final act that loses itself in its own climax like nothing else released this year.

It’s a climax so massive that there’s no other place that “Kissing the Beehive” could live on this mixtape save for the penultimate track. Recognizing this, I’ve taken the opportunity presented by the song’s instrumental-only final movement to bid farewell to 2008 in a sonic blur: a collection of memorable sound bites, clips and news events unaddressed by the rest of the mixtape.

I have to admit to feeling a bit uneasy about how prominently I placed Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s famous “god damn America” clip, but it seems a fitting: when placed with the song’s gigantic final seconds, it pairs two of 2008’s most unfiltered, unbound moments together in chaotic, glorious harmony. It’s like bidding a cathartic farewell to everything maddening about the previous 365 days.

And good riddance to it.

Download: Wolf Parade – “Kissing the Beehive” (Unfiltered, Uncensored)

Stats
Length: 4:46
Originally released on: You & Me (August 19, 2008)
Samples: “Auld Lang Syne”

You took our sweet time and finally I opened my eyes…

I’m copping out on this one. And for that, I apologize.

You see, when exploring the 17 songs that make up Why So Serious, I’ve tried to strike a balance between analysing the songs themselves and providing a bit of personal context as to why they meant something to me this past year. They’ve hardly been the most insightful things I’ve ever written, but for the most part I think I’ve succeeded in meeting my modest goals.

But now, at the very end, I find this balance unsustainable. Because to explain to you why “In the New Year” fits here would require a level of self-confession that would threaten to produce the single most “emo” post in the history of McNutt Against the Music. And I’m not willing to do that to you, dear reader.

So you’ll have to be content with knowing that “In the New Year” holds this special place on Why So Serious for more reasons than just its title; that its measured reflection paired with rambling passion feels like an apt note on which to bring 2008 to a close. Hopefully I don’t have to tell you why the song is among the year’s most notable: one listen to its incomparable keyboard riff should do that just fine.

See you in the new year, indeed.

Download: The Walkmen – “In the New Year” (Long, Long Ago)