Category Archives: Top Ten Albums of 2000-2009

Top Ten Albums of 2000-2009: #4 – Fever To Tell

Posted on 10 January, 2012 | Leave a comment

We continue counting down my top ten albums of the last decade, with the debut album of a certain bass-eschewing triple-word three-piece – the highest placing release by an American act on the list.

#4
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Fever To Tell
[2003]

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever To Tell

Yeah Yeah Yeahs first appeared in 2001 or so, riding the wave of interest in the supposed new-new-wave scene that had sprung up around The Strokes and their highly successful first album Is This It. They didn’t have a full-length album of their own at the time – just a five-song, self-titled EP, which caused quite a few folk to question the level of hype that surrounded them. There were accused of being all style and image – just a troika of poseurs.

That EP was fantastic though. Not that I heard it at the time. I did read about the minor controversy when BBC allowed ‘Bang’ to be played uncensored on daytime radio. (The chorus consists of Karen O repeating: “As a fuck, son, you suck.” - apparently the manager told the Beeb that she was singing “as a funk song you suck”.) I also missed out on the follow year’s three-song EP, Machine, with its fantastic, all-too-overlooked title title track.

It is possible – nay, probable – that my first experience of hearing the band was seeing the video of the first single from Fever to Tell on TV.

But it didn’t stick in my mind, so let’s pretend it didn’t happen.

My first experience of hearing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs occurred on trip to the United States in the summer of 2003 – my first and, thus far, only trip across the Atlantic. First stop was Boston – and it wasn’t long before I found myself in a music shop (or “record store”). One of the first things to surprise and amaze me was a fairly obvious, but foreign to Ireland, technological innovation: listening posts with barcode readers. You scan the CD and you have a listen. Simple, but brilliant. (I’d later find the same thing in Japan, but I still have never ever seen it in Ireland.)

And it was very near one of these magical listening posts that I saw the brash, in-your-face, violent cover art of Fever to Tell. If they were only style and no substance, at least the style stuff was interesting.

I plopped on the headphones. Scanned the disc. And was greeted by some effects-laden guitar harmonics. Then some pounding drums. Then a little sly hint of some other, louder guitars, ushering in a cocksure female vocal. Then feedback. Then riff. Then a break. Then “HEY!”:

I don’t think I even listened past that first song. I just went and bought it. If I’d kept listening I would have gotten a blast of that first single I somehow managed to ignore before. Listening to the song now, it seems inconceivable that it could not have generated some interest. Even after the hundredth listen, ‘Date with the Night’ still grabs you by the fucking balls:

I didn’t get to give the album a full listen until I got back to Ireland. It didn’t take me very long to get into it, though. The songs were short, sharp and to the point. The first five songs fly by in less than thirteen minutes. Each visceral – both musically and lyrically. Sexual too.

The sixth song changed the game in two minutes. That song, ‘Pin’, also released as the album’s second single, traded in the aggression for something more playful and melodic. Poppy, even. Maybe:

On all of these songs, the setup – just vocals, guitar and drums – allowed each member of the band to shine, without treading on each other’s toes. (Not unlike how The White Stripes, more indirect beneficiaries of The Strokes’ success, operated – although in their case, one person was responsible for two of the three elements). Karen O’s had incredible presence. I know that quality is usually described when talking about live performers, but with her you can hear it on the recording (though she seems to have plenty of presence live too…). Brian Chase’s drumming somehow managed have both a light touch and raw power. And Nick Zinner’s guitar work was very literally music to my ears. None of what he plays is superfluous. Every bit of sound he rings out, whether it’s a distinct note or sheer noise, is essential.

Getting back to the album… after ‘Pin’ popped things up, the album got a bit darker. ‘Cold Light’ and ‘No No No’ remain my least favourite songs on the album. But they’re a necessary part of the running order – taking the album down a more off-beat route before revealing its trump card(s).

With the possible exception of ‘Our Time’, Nothing on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Machine EPs really hinted at a softer side. But that’s what comes right to the fore for most of the final third of the album. The last song on the track list, ‘Modern Romance’ and the CD’s hidden track, ‘Poor Song’, are both contenders for the slow set. The former a gentle lilting number, the latter a drunken, end-of-the-night, hold-each-other-up stagger.

The real jewel, of course, was the song – and the video – that made the band:

You can’t ignore the greatness of the song. And on the album, especially after the relative dirge of ‘No No No’, it commands your attention. And I know that I should only really be talking about the music, since it’s the album I’m praising. But that video – it’s impossible to deny. A simple performance set-up, with only some coloured lighting and a couple of lens flares to embellish it. All the power comes through Karen O. She’s absolutely incredible in it.

Song and video together, ‘Maps’ probably remains the band’s finest moment.

But when I do manage to abstract the song from the audio-visual combination, although I still love it, it wouldn’t be my pick of the album. For a bit, that honour went to ‘Tick’. Appearing in that blitz of songs on the first half of the album, it’s undoubtedly the most urgent on the album:

Alas, its reign at the top was, though not as short as the song itself, quite brief.

I said a few paragraphs ago that the soft side of the band came to the fore for most of the album’s final third. That qualification was because one of those later songs was not soft at all. Coming right between ‘Maps’ and ‘Modern Romance’, this song ensured that the album did not fade out quietly. And released as the fourth and final single, ‘Y Control’ gave the band’s Fever to Tell ”cycle” a blistering send off:

(I could only find the uncut/uncensored version of Spike Jonze’s video, which is a shame – the censored version worked a lot better.)

‘Y Control’ takes the energy of the earlier tracks on the album – even mirroring the harmonics of the first track ‘Rich’ with a siren-like looping guitar line – but adds to it the depth of the latter half of the disc. And taking the best elements of the album, it manages to pull them together without diminishing either. Indeed, it creates something even better. It does everything right.

Even when I go back and watch that ‘Maps’ video, when it gets to the end – my main feeling is one of disappointment, because it doesn’t follow through on that retained mini-segue into the next song and just cuts off instead.

But I’m getting a bit nitpicky now…

Overall, the album is a powerhouse. The band would go on to do very different things with the following albums. And not without success. But there’s something about the energy of Fever to Tell that makes it stick with you more instantaneously – and more indelibly – than its successors could achieve.

I don’t love them like I love you.

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Tagged Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Top Ten Albums of 2000-2009: #5 – They Were Wrong, So We Drowned

Posted on 14 September, 2011 | Leave a comment

Into the top half of my list of top ten albums of the last decade with undoubtedly the weirdest one of the bunch.

#5
Liars
They Were Wrong, So We Drowned
[2004]

Liars - They Were Wrong, So We Drowned

Before their second album appeared, Liars were kind of tagged with that “dance-punk” label, along with The Rapture, !!!, Radio 4 and so on. Listening to their first album, They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top, you can see why. The rhythm section had that tight, danceable groove. But there was definitely something a lot stranger and noisier going on.

This was made overwhelmingly clear in that album’s monumental last track ‘This Dust Makes That Mud’. It prowls menacingly for eight minutes, throwing in odd noises along the way. And then it locks into a short loop that repeats and repeats and repeats and repeats and repeats for another twenty-two minutes! It’s like an endurance test – the original, hipster Non-Stop Nyan Cat. I remember first listening to that song and – a couple of minutes into the looping part – wondering if I was going mad, or if my portable CD-player (those were the days, eh?) was broken.

There was a similar thing when I had They Were Wrong, So We Drowned playing while some friends and I played poker. The second track, ‘Steam Rose from the Lifeless Cloak’, came on and Ken asked if the CD was skipping. That track, though indeed repetitive, actually has more dynamic stuff going on in its looping. It’s also a much more merciful two minutes and fifty seconds.

In general They Were Wrong… is definitely more of a “difficult” listen than its predecessor. It’s noisier, more abrasive and just a whole lot stranger. And it wasn’t particularly danceable. The key reason for this was the departure of the first album’s bassist and drummer. Out went the locked-groove rhythm section and in came the more primitive, tribal stylings of Julian Gross. This caused a major shift in the sound of the band. Far more emphasis was now placed on texture rather than structure.

This shift was amplified by the band’s decision to make this a so-called “concept album”. The concept, in this case, was witches and witchcraft on the Brocken mountain in Germany. This, in turn, went hand-in-hand with the decision to record the album in the woods of New Jersey. The result was a collection of very earthy, visceral and spooky sounds and lyrics . Many reviews at the time billed it as a kind of musical equivalent to The Blair Witch Project. This association was not inappropriate.

I think all this is exemplified well in the video (directed by singer Angus Andrew’s then-girlfriend, Karen O) for the album’s second single ‘We Fenced Other Gardens with the Bones of Our Own’:

The notion of the concept album is frequently derided as being a whole load of pretentious bollocks. And often concept albums are. But one good thing about them is that they, almost necessarily, are cohesive pieces of work. The same themes run through the songs and help to tie it all together. And They Were Wrong… does this very well. It almost feels like getting lost in the woods, enveloped by these unknown sounds you’re unsure of whether to trust or not, before stumbling across some group of hooded figures performing a ritual sacrifice around a fire. Or something.

If there’s one song that sticks out slightly, it’s track three, ‘There’s Always Room on the Broom’. It’s probably the closest thing on the album to their earlier work – with more of a bouncier rhythm to it. Perhaps this is why it was chosen as the first single. But it’s still fairly insane. The main riff is gratingly noisy and the lyrics are bizarre. When I first came across it I was pretty baffled. And this was in no way helped by the erratic, epileptic video I was seeing:

The fact that this was at about two o’clock in the morning and I was watching the television in a completely darkened room in an empty house probably enhanced the confusion. It was crazy, but I absolutely loved it. The main riff sounded so wrong, but worked all the better because of it. And the playful-but-spooky chanting and ooh-ing – utilized through out the album – lodged itself in my head.

Having read about the recording in the woods and the story behind the album in advance, I was very eager to listen to it. And when I finally did, I was not disappointed.

Seeing them live for the first time, in May 2005, while they were touring this album, I was also quite excited. Though I was not entirely sure how they were going to translate the album to the stage. But they did. Brilliantly. That was, up till then, the best live performance I had ever seen. And very very very few gigs have impressed me even nearly as much since.

I think memories of that show probably unfairly influenced my decision to include the album the list. Many would argue that Liars’ follow-up to it, Drum’s Not Dead, is superior. And they’d have a point. Drum’s Not Dead is more fully-realized, more well-rounded and, heck, the individual songs are probably better. But it doesn’t have the boldness, the rawness or the purity of They Were Wrong, So We Drowned. …Which is probably just a real snobby, hipster-y, I-prefer-their-earlier-stuff kind of statement, I know. It’s probably just a bad habit I have – giving more value to the works that break the most ground, rather than the follow-ups that build on them: Fear of Music over Remain in Light, Pi over Requiem for a Dream, etc.

Or, yeah, maybe it’s because of that gig… But still, I don’t think it’s necessarily terrible to give extra credit to an album for what it achieved – on top of how it actually sounds. (I have a feeling I have in a previous post, or will in a future one, almost directly contradict myself on that – making some kind of good-music-is-just-music-that-sounds-good type of statement. Oh well…)

When I saw Liars live for the second time, in August 2010, when they were touring their fifth album, Sisterworld, they peppered their set with songs from Drum’s Not Dead - and even played one from the first album. But the highlight of the show – and the only time it really came close to that May 2005 – was the very last song of the evening, when they played the opening track from They Were Wrong…, ‘Broken Witch’. There really is nothing like ending a gig with the audience screaming “BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD!”.

(this video is from a different 2010 performance, but you get the idea…)

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Tagged Liars

Top Ten Albums of 2000-2009: #6 – White Blood Cells

Posted on 21 July, 2011 | Leave a comment

Number 6 on my top ten albums of the last decade list: the first and best of the two White Stripes albums I got to know.

#6
The White Stripes
White Blood Cells
[2001]

The White Stripes - White Blood Cells

My first encounter with The White Stripes’ music occurred late on a Friday night in early November 2001. It was when this graced my television screen:

Prior to this I was mildly familiar with them. Not from hearing either of their first two albums, which I hadn’t – and still haven’t. No, at this point I had read a fair bit about them: their lack of a bass player; about their strict dress code; the exact nature of their mysterious relationship. Each a gimmick to a certain extent, I suppose. But they did the trick: creating an awareness. Not enough of an awareness for me to go out and get any of their music, but enough for me to sit up and pay attention when they came on. Of course, even if I’d been completely unfamiliar with them, I imagine I’d have sat up and paid attention a few seconds into the song. It was raw. It was quick. It was short – all you want from a song, really.

A few months later, the world was treated to this piece of Gondry-shaped Lego-utilizing genius:

Brilliant. And quicker. And shorter – ‘Fell in Love With a Girl’ is one minute and fifty seconds long. That’s all you really need. Okay, so that’s one of the shortest songs on White Blood Cells, but the longest is still only 3:39. A quick calculation tells me that… the average song-length on the album is two minutes, thirty-one(-and-a-half) seconds. The brevity just added to the “limited” nature of the album. Most of these limitations were self-imposed: “no bass, no blues, no guitar solos, no slide guitar, no cover songs, no other musicians.” [source] The album was recorded in only three days, too. “We tried to rush this as much as possible to make [the sound] really tense. And it seemed to work.” [source] All this did work, ensures a great deal of cohesion in sound and arrangements. At the time, I thought this restrictive approach was really cool. I’d later learn first hand how useful and inspiring it can be as well.

Still though, I hadn’t actually heard the entire album when the ‘Fell in Love With a Girl’ video came out. Nor had I heard it by Friday, 28 June, 2002, when I saw them play at the Rock Werchter Festival in Belgium. Though I was interested in seeing them play, my main motivation for being at that stage at that time was to claim a spot for when Sonic Youth came on. Still, I was suitably impressed by The White Stripes. And, I’m sure, it was at that point, I resolved to go and get the album eventually.

I never did, though, because soon after, my little sister (12 or 13 at the time) ended up getting it! She was also the one who got their fourth album, Elephant, when it came out. So, yeah, I’ve never actually gone and got a White Stripes album by myself.

That never stopped me from enjoying White Blood Cells though. And I enjoyed it – and continue to enjoy it – ferociously. As I said before, none of its songs outstay their welcomes. Right away, each song gets straight to the point, makes its point, then moves aside for the next song to do its thing. That’s not to say the songs are without substance. Just because they’re short, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot in them. Take ‘The Union Forever’ – it fits an entire film into it. ‘We’re Going to Be Friends’, though playful and twee, captures the essence of childhood nostalgia. ‘I’m Finding It Harder to Be a Gentleman’ – I’m sure I’ve said it dozens of times on this blog already, but I’m never really too interested in lyrics – but, lyrically, what a song! Even ‘Little Room’, with its thrashing drums, lack of guitar and wordless warbling, perfectly encapsulates a mental state that affects everyone. The lack of clutter definitely allowed the words more space to work themselves into my brain. And Jack White’s voice made sure they stayed in there.

Best of all was the very first song on the album, ‘Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground’. Which was released as the album’s third single and also got a fantastic Michel Gondry video:

That little scream of feedback, followed by that growling riff – what a way to kick off an album. But the song balances these heavy elements with sweet lilting verses and lines like “every breath that is in your lungs is a tiny little gift to me”. The song is so good, it seems they decided to use it again on their next album!

Yes.

That next album, the aforementioned Elephant, was good – often great. But it wasn’t as consistently brilliant as White Blood Cells. Their final two albums – like their first two – I never actually listened to. I have no idea why. I didn’t suddenly turn against the band – and it’s not like they drastically changed what they were about. I even went to see the Under Great White Northern Lights film in the cinema and thoroughly enjoyed it. We just seemed to part ways. Which is sad, now that they’re gone for good. Perhaps I will get albums five and six now. The thing is, I already know they’re going to be very good. But are they going to be White Blood Cells good? That’s the “problem” (that one every act wishes they had) with releasing incredible albums like this. It invariable becomes this yardstick against which its successors are judged. It, often unfairly, raises expectations. And with a band like The White Stripes, whose M.O. is doesn’t really seem to change a whole lot between albums, differences in quality cannot be shielded by differences in styles and techniques.

But that’s a brave move – one that deserves respect. More respect than I’ve given the band. Yes, I think I’ll give those two a listen too. Perhaps one (or both) might appear on a revised future version of this list. And I should probably give those first two albums a go too.

For now though…

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Posted in Top Ten Albums of 2000-2009

Tagged White Stripes

Top Ten Albums of 2000-2009: #7 – Two Suns

Posted on 14 June, 2011 | Leave a comment

And so we get to number 7 on my top ten albums of the last decade. This time it’s another British female artist of Asian extraction: Natasha Khan – a.k.a. Bat for Lashes. Unlike M.I.A.’s debut, this album – Khan’s second – is quite ethereal and otherworldly, something reflected quite literally in its lyrical content and imagery. Even its title…

#7
Bat for Lashes
Two Suns
[2009]

Bat for Lashes - Two Suns

No matter how many times we learn that appearances and first impressions can be deceiving – often from our own experiences – we still regularly end up judging books by their covers. Perhaps some do it more than others. I don’t know whereabouts in the cover-judging spectrum I’d fall, but I do know it’s what I did when had my first encountered with Ms Khan in March 2009.

Had I not moved to Japan in 2006, chances are I would have come across Bat for Lashes earlier, sometime during the life-cycle of her first album Fur and Gold. It seems the majority of people came to know her through that album’s fourth single ‘What’s a Girl to Do?’ and its stupendously good video. But that slipped me by. A quick Gmail search reveals two separate mentions of her from two friends (Jeremy M. and Mike B.V.) in early 2008, which I obviously did not follow-up on. Had I done so at the time, would I have reacted differently? Who knows.

What was my reaction? Well, as I said, this was in March 2009, just after the video for ‘Daniel’, the first single from Two Suns was released. I saw it mentioned – in a positive light – on some music site. So I decided I’d have a look:

How long did you last before moving to this sentence? Okay, well, you’re probably already familiar with it. I think I lasted about 30 seconds before I turned it off. I took what now seems like a highly irrational instantaneous dislike to the video and to the artist. Perhaps it wasn’t that irrational, but it was still pretty bad. I didn’t even give her a chance. What turned me off was, well, just about everything you see in that first half-minute: the hoodie with the logo, the slow revealing pan around her, her hair, the way she looked up at the camera. It just felt so… ugh. She instantly struck me as having some kind of gothy vibe – and goth stuff is always going to be fairly pants, right?

You’ll notice that my reaction was all based on the visual. The song had even barely started at that point. Could I really have dismissed it so quickly? Granted, it didn’t do anything to grab my attention – or divert my attention from how stupid it looked. [It's possibly worth mentioning that the video edit of the song and the album version have significantly different intros. The album one is better, but I doubt it would've done much better, either.] So, I was pretty much done with Bat for Lashes. Or so I thought.

I can be unfairly dismissive of something with very little justification. However, this can be counteracted with my susceptibility to the Internet hype-machine. Not that I’m going to instantly love everything the blogs love (not that susceptible), but if everyone is talking about something – and saying good things – I’m bound to give it more attention than I would otherwise. That’s only natural. Thus, the buzz around Two Suns caused me to reconsider my initial snap judgement. Rather than revisit the ‘Daniel’ video, though, I decided to isolate sound from vision and gave the actual album a listen. And the very first track, ‘Glass’, just blew me away:

It is an absolutely astonishing song. Starting with just her voice singing a biblical verse, the sounds of the city wash up around her and the percussion comes in, distant at first. And as she sings about finding “a thousand crystal towers” and “a hundred emerald cities”, these eerie, glassy sounds pierce the air around her. Then the bass kicks in and the drums pick up. It’s a phenomenal introduction, building and building till the snare drum finally comes, kicking in the chorus as her voice shoots up. Incredible. What’s great is that, although the song has so much power, it’s still very restrained – never over the top, in spite of the fantastical lyrics and the crazy sounds.

I actually didn’t get to the rest of the album for a while, as I went back and re-listened to that first song several times. I eventually played the whole thing through. None of the songs grabbed me quite as completely as ‘Glass’ had. But I could feel it had legs. I was even able to get past the 0:30 mark in ‘Daniel’! But yeah, the album went into heavy rotation for me, straight away. I found my first week with it on my Last.fm stats: looks like this.

I found some of the songs to be slower burners than others. But these often became more rewarding because of it. One track, in particular, took a while to get into, but then became my favourite – and probably still holds that position for me: track six, ‘Siren Song’. There are 11 songs on the record, so this puts it smack bang in the middle. And it does hold it all together. The album is very much about duality: it’s called Two Suns; there are songs called ‘Moon and Moon’ and ‘Two Planets’; and Khan inhabits two characters – the dark-haired, natural Natasha and the icy blonde femme fatale, Pearl. The majority of the songs lean towards one or the other of the characters, but ‘Siren Song’ is a direct clash between them:

The song’s first verse is delicate, mostly just sparse piano notes and solo vocals, “till the siren comes calling” in the chorus part, which becomes more tense, grander, bolder as Pearl’s “blonde curls slice through your heart”. We get a respite with a second verse, which has some sweet harmonizing backing vocals, but is still very fragile. And when Pearl returns, she’s bigger than before. Chaotic drums come in, crashing all around as she explains that “it won’t be long until you’re running… ’cause [she's] evil”. Devastating.

I’m somewhat amused at the fact that I’ve focused on the use of alter-egos and the mythical images and such. This is exactly the kind of stuff I don’t go for. Maybe I really was just brainwashed by all those good reviews. I was just compelled to like it… Anyway, for a visual representation of this duality at play you can (if you don’t have the album sleeve at hand – Natasha on one side, Pearl on the other), you can check out the video for the second single, ’Pearl’s Dream’:

The duality concept really does permeate almost every aspect of the album. You could split the songs into Natasha and Pearl songs. But, on a more simple level, there are the slow songs and the more uptempo numbers. It’s hardly a novel idea to have half the songs on an album be fast and the other half not, but the execution here – the sequencing of the tracks and the quality of the songs themselves – is outstanding. Everything is tied together, even though the individual components could – in another context – come across as wildly disparate. Compare ‘Two Planets’ with ‘The Big Sleep’. The former is a tribal almost-rave-like song, while the latter is a haunting elegy, with Khan duetting with Scott Walker. Had they been directly side-by-side, I think the difference would be too jarring. But with ‘Travelling Woman’ positioned perfectly between them, it all comes together. Just like the whole album.

I’ll leave you with the video for the third single/track two, ’Sleep Alone’. Just because I didn’t mention it anywhere above, doesn’t mean I don’t love it, because I do. It’s great. Anyway, till next time…

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Tagged Bat for Lashes

Top Ten Albums of 2000-2009: #8 – Arular

Posted on 28 April, 2011 | Leave a comment

The third installment in this series, in which I count down my list of best albums of the last decade. Coming in with bang at number 8, it’s that feisty firebrand, Ms Maya Arulpragasam and her eminent first album.

#8
M.I.A.
Arular
[2005]

I wrote before about how a mutual appreciation for music formed the basis of one friendship in my life. Another friendship, I could possibly put down to a mutual appreciation for just one song in particular. Okay, well, it was more like two songs, really, but still…

In October 2006, just a couple of months after I moved to Nagasaki, some fellow JET Programme participants and I went on a long weekend road trip organized by our regional representatives. (The trip itself was highly eventful and I could probably write a few hundred words on how great it was, but I’m already on a tangent here and I need to stop going wildly off-topic in these posts.) One of the party members was an American girl named Lizzie, who was based on Fukue, the largest of the Gotō Islands. On the first night of the trip, we bonded over the Tom Tom Club’s ‘Genius of Love’. When it wasn’t available on the karaoke machine in the bar we went to in Shimonoseki that night, we put on that hit that sampled it and sang the original parts over it.

The next day, while staying at a campsite in Akiyoshidai, we cemented that bond with our shared love of this track:

The start of a great friendship indeed. The following year, she was transferred from Fukue to Isahaya, a 30-minute train journey from Nagasaki and many good times were had, including some musical collaboration: memorably, Lizzie provided vocals to the quasi-lead single from my second album and then helped me make a video for it in her apartment. Again, veering off-topic, here – but I got some self-promotion in there, so I’ll let it slide…

But let’s rewind. I was first alerted to M.I.A. – most likely by Pitchfork or some other, hipster-y hype-y website – in early 2005. Arular had just been released, I believe, and there was a huge buzz surrounding her (in those hipster-y hype-y circles, at least). Actually, there had been a bit of buzz for a while about her, with her receiving a deal of attention for her Piracy Funds Terrorism mixtape. Indeed, ‘Galang’ had already been around for a while. As had ‘Sunshowers’:

Semi-digression: ‘Sunshowers’ was the first song Lizzie or I found on karaoke systems in Japan. She was in Fukuoka and discovered it there, then sent me a picture taken with her phone of some of the lyrics on the screen. I don’t think ‘Galang’ or any other Arular tracks ever showed up any karaoke places I ever went to. The next to appear wasn’t until the autumn of 2007, when ‘Jimmy’ was released as the first single (in Japan anyway) from her second album, Kala. ‘Jimmy’ was actually really successful over there – it went to number 5 or 4 in the singles chart. ‘Paper Planes’ inevitably got on to the karaoke machines too, but it didn’t trouble the charts as much there.

But yes: 2005; M.I.A; first album buzz. I took the bait and downloaded (tut tut) the album, ripped from the US CD release. I loved it – and so I went out and bought the (UK) CD. And here’s the tricky part: they had slightly different tracklists. Now, the differences were slight enough, I suppose (and would later provide a running joke between Lizzie and me) – but this kind of thing kind of annoys me. I don’t know exactly why. I think it’s something to do with the idea that a studio album should have a kind of fixed, definitive place in an artist’s canon. Like, if the studio wants to release a deluxe version with bonus tracks on the end, whatever – not really a fan of the practice, but at least it leaves the original, artist-intended sequence intact, allowing the album to be properly appreciated/judged as a singular piece of work. (Though inevitably, there are those for whom the bonus track is just part of the album. I remember scolding another friend for saying he really liked “the last song” on Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Show Your Bones, when he was actually talking about the bonus track, ‘Deja Vu’. Not that the bonus track is terrible or anything, but the real last song, ‘Turn Into’, is such a brilliant album closer. It ties the whole thing up beautifully.)

So the existence of the differing tracklists poses a little bit of trouble. Well, maybe not. It seems like the tracklist of the UK release – which came out a month or so after the US one – has won out in the end. Previous talk of trouble with samples would suggest that the absence of ‘URAQT’ on the earlier US release was purely a legal thing. But that still doesn’t explain the two other differences: the replacement of one of the skits with another and the movement of ‘Sunshowers’ from just before ‘Galang’ at the end to track four. This change ticked me off. On one hand, it just seemed so arbitrary. On the other, more cynical hand, it felt like the studio just didn’t want both singles so late in the album and pulled one of them up near the front. Who knows. Perhaps that was the way M.I.A. herself always wanted it. But the thing is, it doesn’t work as well. The original tracklist just flowed better. Also, ‘URAQT’ isn’t very good. It kind of lets the album down.

Wow, two big paragraphs bitching about minor change to the running order! Go petty me! Okay, I’m over it at this stage. Let’s get on with the album itself.

The album itself fucking kicks ass. At the time, I’d heard nothing like it. Still, in fact, I haven’t really heard anything like it. Sure, I’ve heard things which clearly inspired Arular, but the particular combination/clash of sounds, themes and attitudes on display here remain quite unique. And quite brilliant. Like XTRMNTR, this album took me out of my usual, alternative rock comfort zone and challenged me. And I loved it. A big part of my love for Arular was the way you could dance to it. I’d always loved dancing – not that I was a particularly good dancer at all: my technique, inspired by the rock and pop music I would find myself dancing to, would mostly involve jumping up and down, sometimes shifting weight from one foot to the other. But you just couldn’t do that with this album. These songs just had grooves that commanded you to sway and swagger. Take ‘Bingo’, possibly my favourite track on the album. It has such a swing. You just have to bend your knees, move your hips and roll your shoulders. It would actually be nigh on impossible to pogo this song:

That playful bounce is present throughout most of the songs – though perhaps not quite as lilting as on that track. First “proper” song, ‘Pull Up The People’ is a bit more tense and choppy, though still has a rallying call-to-arms feel. But it’s not nearly as aggressive or as in your face as track three (on both tracklists): ‘Bucky Done Gun’. This song, later released as the third single of the album, is a standout and a half. Definitely the most brazen song on the album, it manages to be bold without being abrasive. Some of the criticism of M.I.A.’s third album, Maya, seemed to centre on it being sonically harsh. Perhaps these critics felt she crossed a line on that album she managed to walk with a song like ‘Bucky’. When I eventually saw M.I.A. for the first time in Dublin last year – having been unable to see her when she toured Kala in Japan (even though a few friends I’d introduced to her got to go and ended up partying with her after the show. Grr.) – it was when she dropped ‘Bucky Done Gun’, a few songs into the set, that it all kicked off big style. It’s just a monster of a tune.

The other songs all fall between the bounce of ‘Bingo’ and the brass of ‘Bucky’. Closer to the former you’ve got songs like ‘Amazon’ and the aforementioned ‘Sunshowers’. On the more audacious side there are ‘Fire, Fire’ and ’10 Dollar’. But the tone does not vary erratically – and the “voice” is consistent throughout. And, like I said, you can dance to it all.

Both versions come to a close the ‘Galang’, which we already know is a stomper of a song, capable of forging friendships between people from different continents – living in a third continent. And then there’s ‘M.I.A.’ – the “hidden” or “secret” track. Where do I stand on those? In general, I don’t really see the point. I could kind of understand if everyone was still listening to vinyl records and there would be more of an actual element of surprise. But, with digital formats, most players will clearly reveal that there’s something added on the end of the last track. Although, in this case, because ‘M.I.A.’ is not preceded by a huge silent gap, people could potentially look at the timecodes and think, “Oh wow, a seven-minute version of ‘Galang’ – deadly!” I mean, if the track is an integral part of the album, why not give it its own track? If it’s not… why not give it its own track???

Actually, I think ‘M.I.A.’ is a good way to end the album. It’s sparse and simple, but – very directly – sums up Arulpragasam and what she’s about. Or at least, what she was claiming to be about back then. Only problem is: it’s not that danceable! And I somehow doubt it could inspire as many friendships as ‘Galang’ can. You never know, though!

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Posted in Top Ten Albums of 2000-2009

Tagged M.I.A.

Category Archives: Top Ten Albums of 2000-2009

Top Ten Albums of 2000-2009: #4 – Fever To Tell

Top Ten Albums of 2000-2009: #5 – They Were Wrong, So We Drowned

Top Ten Albums of 2000-2009: #6 – White Blood Cells

Top Ten Albums of 2000-2009: #7 – Two Suns

Top Ten Albums of 2000-2009: #8 – Arular

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