The Infernal Bridegroom

2011-05-19T08:17:00.000-07:00

15 Favorite Songs of 2010

2010-12-30T18:16:00.001-08:00

I haven't written in here in a while, but there's really nothing like the notion of listing to get me back. I've put together a list of - in case you didn't read the title - my fifteen favorite songs of the last year with a few little blurbs about each. Enjoy!

15. Eminem - "Love The Way You Lie", Recovery

I love him. I know some people don't, but I do. I'm one of those people who'd argue that he's one of the only artists with a major record label deal anymore. Even I have to admit I was a little surprised when I was putting this list together and this song kept coming back up, but the cinematography in this video is really fantastic. (I'm a cinematography junkie.) Also, you could film Megan Fox doing dishes for two hours and I'd watch it.

14. Flying Lotus - "MmmHmm", Cosmogramma

This is seriously one of the most beautiful albums I've heard in years, but its structure doesn't really lend itself to "single" logic when you're putting together a list like this. Except for this song. And it's pretty much perfect - all dancey and trippy and bizarre. The video's basically the same.

13. CocoRosie - "Lemonade", Grey Oceans

One of my friends was my concert-high dealer this year (more on that later), and he lovingly took me to see CocoRosie when they were in town this summer. I've always liked them, but I've never gotten into them as much as some of my friends have. The concert totally made sense of it all, though. I finally got it. This is easily my favorite song off their latest album, and the video's amazing. There's something about those kids in the ship that actually turned up in some of my dreams during the last quarter at school. No idea why. I love that.

12. Midlake - "Rulers, Ruling All Things", The Courage Of Others

This list could really easily be my "Favorite Albums of 2010" as well. This is a great one. Tim Smith apparently filmed the video himself while the band was on tour in Sweden. Midlake with a super 8 camera in Sweden. I think that sounds like heaven. Which is probably why the video ends up looking like what I'd imagine heaven to look like.

11. Tamaryn - "Love Fade", The Waves

I lucked into Tamaryn just by hanging out in my favorite record shop and coming across her over the loudspeakers. (Just one of the many reasons why I still encourage everyone I know to buy albums instead of just downloading them...) Anyone who knows my musical taste will instantly figure out why I fell in love with her. Swirly guitars? Girlishly whispered vocals? Sound like it was recorded underwater? Check, check and check. And it doesn't hurt that her video looks like something you'd see projected onto the ceiling in Warhol's factory.

10. Lights Out Asia - "Currents Meet The Tide", In The Days Of Jupiter

I saw this video before I heard the whole album, which doesn't happen often these days. Typically I get into songs first, then albums and then I'll eventually get around to seeing if there are any videos online. But I have a friend who has excellent taste and posted this on one of his pages somewhere, and I thought I was watching - and hearing - the inside of my head.

9. Katy Perry - "Firework", Teenage Dream

It's superpop. I know. But I'm gay and cheery and it makes my skin go all chilly. I have a severe aversion to cleverness and aloofness. I have no patience for it. I love a good touch of irony every now and then, but no one's really doing irony any more as much as they're just being brats. So I really revel in a good, sincere, happy pop song. If you're the kind of person who sneers at happy music just because it's happy... Well, I still wish you a happy New Year. You need it.

8. Peter Gabriel - "My Body Is A Cage", Scratch My Back

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person I know who doesn't pass out with giddiness every time Arcade Fire puts something out. I like them plenty, but I don't get the Radiohead-level obsession they inspire. I always feel a little left out. I haven't really gotten into anything they've done since "In The Backseat" (which is, granted, one of the best songs I've ever heard in my life). But I think it must be the performances and production that keeps me at arm's length, because I totally concede that their songwriting is amazing.

This Peter Gabriel album got a lot of flack from purists who despise the idea of anyone doing covers of their favorite songs. I've always thought that music was supposed to be covered. I mean, this whole ownership (read: copyright) thing is a reasonably modern introduction in the millenia-long history of music, so I'm still not entirely on board with the idea that anyone owns any one song. I know that I've written some songs that literally take longer to play than they took to write. The songs I've written just haven't presented themselves to me in a way that has led me to believe that I own them nearly as much as they own me.

That said, I think this is a gorgeous cover of a gorgeously written song from a gorgeous cover album by a gorgeous artist. There's not a video for it, but I've listened to this song on repeat for hours this year. I figure it can stand on its own without a whole lot of visuals.

7. Natalie Merchant - "Nursery Rhyme Of Innocence And Experience", Leave Your Sleep

I'm a freako for folk music, and this album is a really amazing feat in folk music study. The lyrics for each song are 19th century American poems that Merchant put to her own music. It sounds like it would be a huge mess, but it's excellent. I've listened to Natalie Merchant longer than anyone else. Seriously. I was ten when I got into 10,000 Maniacs in fifth grade. She's done very little (not "nothing" but "very little") that I haven't loved, and after all this time her newest album is my favorite thing she's done yet.

Suggestion: If you're thinking of getting the album, spend the extra few bucks and get the deluxe version. I have no idea why they decided to sequence some of the best songs off of the shorter, non-deluxe version, but they did.

6. Goldfrapp - "Alive", Head First

Goldfrapp does everything perfectly. Every album they've made has been perfect. Everything that she wears has been perfect. This video is perfect. It's like a Bonnie Tyler video directed by David DeCoteau based on an Anne Rice novel starring mulitple Olivia Newton Johns. How is that not perfect?

5. Shearwater - "Hidden Lakes", The Golden Archipelago

The first time I heard this song - this whole album, actually - it was like I was hearing an album that I've heard before in a childhood dream. There's a dazzling, murky depth to the entire thing that feels so incredibly resonant. I tried writing about the album earlier this year, and I found myself struggling to pinpoint exactly what it was doing that turned me inside out so. I still haven't, so you'll just have to see for yourself.

4. Kylie Minogue - "All The Lovers", Aphrodite

This song makes me happy. This video makes me happy. I keep watching it. I've been watching it about once a week since May. I don't feel any need to apologize for this.

3. iamamiwhoami - "y"

There's been loads of speculation over what the hell this group (if it's even a group and not just Jonna Lee) is doing. There's no album. For a long time Lee wouldn't even admit that she was even in the group to begin with. But their videos are ridiculously beautiful, and the songs are that kind of icily melodic avant-garde pop that gets me really excited. This is my personal favorite of the videos and songs they've put out over the last year or so, but everything they've done is amazing and worth checking out.

2. Janelle Monáe - "Tightrope" and/or "Cold War", The ArchAndroid

I can't pick between these two songs. They're both excellent and entirely different. This is easily one of the two best albums that came out this year, hands down. Brave and experimental, focused and intelligent, sincere and raw. Janelle Monáe was my gospel this year, and I took it upon myself to convert as many people as I could get my hands on. Both of these videos are genius - "Cold War" for its full-frontal, emotionally constricted approach to an otherwise hyper and energetic song; "Tightrope" for its design schematics, choreography, fun quotient and bizarre Harry-Potter-by-way-of-OutKast-by-way-of-Wes-Anderson production quality.

(The video for "Cold War" allows embedding while the video for "Tightrope" inexplicably doesn't, so one video's here for watching and you'll have to follow the link above (or here) for the other.)

1. Jónsi, "Go Do", Go

Jónsi's live show was the other that I was lucky enough to get to see this year (thanks also to my aforementioned concert buddy), and... I honestly don't have the words. As an artist of sorts myself, I've always "enjoyed" concerts but I've never been truly moved by one until Jónsi's. And I don't know that I'll ever be able to explain entirely why. Which I think is a good sign. Suffice it to say that I was in a bit of a slump, artistically-speaking, and I walked away from the show simultaneously intimidated and invigorated beyond description. I felt like I'd spent the last two hours listening to my own head.

To me, Go is a gorgeous, amazing, life-altering album. Listening to it is the closest thing to listening to life. No exaggeration. Sigur Rós has been one of my favorite bands, but Go just blows me away. I can't listen to just one song from it. It just grabs me by some invisible organ that we don't have a name for and drags me outside. I can't get enough of it.

Monet's Rouen Cathedral

2010-02-24T00:15:00.000-08:00

My painting teacher turned me on to Monet's impressions of the Rouen Cathedral in class today. I'm working on a snowscape that uses a lot of the same palette, and I'm hoping I can pull some inspiration from the series. It's pretty amazing.

In the late 1890s, he created around thirty pieces, all of the cathedral (the tallest building in the world until about ten years prior to his series) at different times of day, as a study of both the facade and how light plays with structure. They're all totally breathtaking, but this is my absolute favorite. The fog is so soft and chilly. Just the hint of the rose window pulls the structure out of the void.

Totally brilliant.

You can see the whole series here.

As a mostly unrelated footnote, Rouen Cathedral is also notable for being, among other things, where Richard I of England's lion heart was finally buried.

100 Favorite Albums, 2000-2010

2010-02-22T21:59:00.000-08:00

I'm deeply entrenched in a new schedule, new interests, new foci, new obsessions, and new socks. So I figured, what better way to celebrate and simultaneously propel than to take a glance into the priory. And, since I'm more than a little bit of a sucker for lists (which will become ecstatically and painfully clear on this site), why not build a gargantuan list of my favorite albums of the last decade?

There is no reason.

No matter what you may think, there is no reason in the world.

So here I present my one hundred favorite albums of the last decade. Keep an eye here for more.

xoxo

100. Miss Kittin, Batbox

99. Cut Copy, In Ghost Colours

98. Mandalay, Solace

97. The Teenagers, Reality Check

96. The Cool Kids, Bake Sale

95. The Blow, Paper Television

94. In The Mood For Love

93. She & Him, Volume One

92. Radiohead, Kid A

91. Air, The Virgin Suicides

90. The Decemberists, Picaresque

89. Hedwig And The Angry Inch

88. David Byrne, Grown Backwards

87. Tanya Donelly, Beautysleep

86. David Byrne, Look Into The Eyeball

85. Sondre Lerche, Duper Sessions

84. Ólafur Arnalds, Eulogy For Evolution

83. Dirty Projectors, Bitte Orca

82. LCD Soundsystem, Sound Of Silver

81. Cursive, The Ugly Organ

80. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend

79. M83, Digital Shades

78. José González, In Our Nature

77. Goldfrapp, Seventh Tree

76. Neko Case, Middle Cyclone

75. John Legend, Evolver

74. Tom Waits, Real Gone

73. Brian Eno & David Byrne, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

72. Kanye West, Graduation

71. Daedelus, Love To Make Music To

70. Throwing Muses, Throwing Muses

69. Morrissey, Ringleader Of The Tormentors

68. Le Tigre, This Island

67. Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man

66. Yelle, Pop-Up

65. Björk, Medúlla

64. Múm, Summer Make Good

63. The Polyphonic Spree, The Beginning Stages Of...

62. Damien Rice, O

61. Múm, Yesterday Was Dramatic Today Is OK

60. Solange, Sol-Angel & The Hadley St. Dreams

59. Prefuse 73, Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian

58. Hercules And Love Affair, Hercules And Love Affair

57. Rihanna, Good Girl Gone Bad

56. Iron & Wine, The Shepherd's Dog

55. Sigur Rós, Takk...

54. Marie Antoinette

53. Iron & Wine, Around The Well

52. Karen O & The Kids, Where The Wild Things Are

51. Kanye West, 808s & Heartbreak

50. Justice, †

49. Prefuse 73, One Word Extinguisher

48. The Album Leaf, Into The Blue Again

47. Gorillaz, Gorillaz

46. The Bird And The Bee, Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future

45. Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, 100 Days, 100 Nights

44. Kristin Hersh, The Grotto

43. Annie Lennox, Songs Of Mass Destruction

42. Sondre Lerche, Two Way Monologue

41. Natalie Merchant, Motherland

40. Bright Eyes, Lifted Or The Story Is In The Soil, Keep Your Ear To The
Ground

39. Joanna Newsom, The Milk-Eyed Mender

38. School Of Seven Bells, Alpinisms

37. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago

36. Department Of Eagles, In Ear Park

35. The Devil Whale, Like Paraders

34. El Perro Del Mar, El Perro Del Mar

33. Sondre Lerche, Faces Down

32. Annie Lennox, Bare

31. Kristin Hersh, Sunny Border Blue

30. M83, Before The Dawn Heals Us

29. John Legend, Get Lifted

28. Morrissey, You Are The Quarry

27. Noah And The Whale, Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down

26. Tom Waits, Alice

25. Goldfrapp, Supernature

24. Cat Power, You Are Free

23. Neon Neon, Stainless Style

22. Pretty Girls Make Graves, Élan Vital

21. Yoko Ono, Yes, I'm A Witch

20. Sufjan Stevens, Illinois

19. The Acorn, Glory Hope Mountain

18. Sigur Rós, Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust

17. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart

16. M83, Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts

15. Crystal Castles, Crystal Castles

14. The Tallboys, Rubber Dolly

13. Kristin Hersh, Learn To Sing Like A Star

12. Morrissey, Years Of Refusal

11. Kate Bush, Aerial

10. The Books, Lost And Safe

9. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes

8. The Bird And The Bee, The Bird And The Bee

7. Émilie Simon, The Flower Book

6. Iron & Wine, Our Endless Numbered Days

5. Múm, Finally We Are No One

4. M83, Saturdays = Youth

3. Björk, Vespertine

2. Sigur Rós, ( )

1. Tom Waits, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards