Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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Krisis’s Recommended Music of 2010 – An Introduction

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The prohibitive critical favorite LP of the year was Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. It was certainly twisted, but I didn't think it was as beautiful as everyone made it out to be.

All this month Crushing Krisis will highlight my recommended albums of 2010.

(Only one of the albums pictured in this post is recommended by me; the others are the #1s from various other web outlets. Stay tuned to find out.)

I love listening to music, maybe more than I love playing it. I’ve been a music collector ever since I hoarded Madonna 45s and Jem cassette tapes as a child. Of my 20,000+ song iTunes collection, I rate over a quarter of it as four or five stars – meaning I could stream a 24/7 all-hits personal radio station for fifteen days with no repeated tracks.

Amazon's #2 LP was Arcade Fire's fantastic The Suburbs, which placed behind the Mumford & Sons album that actually came out in 2009. WTG, Amazon.

As a huge music fan, when each year reaches its close I always want to issue a “Best Albums of the Year” list. Yet, I never feel like I’ve heard enough releases to offer a definitive retrospective.

For that matter, has anyone – or, any group of anyones – really heard enough albums in a single year to compile a “Best of” list? It seems improbable, because for all intents you can safely assume that an infinite number of records are released each year.

Don’t believe me? Check the 2010 top albums chart on Rate Your Music (RYM), an obsessively detailed music discography site I’ve used religiously since 2002 to track my collection. Even with all of the metal filtered out (RYM’s critical sentiment skews heavily to Scandinavian death-metal epics), the top LPs list extends beyond 1,000 albums without dipping below three stars. The no-metal Top 2010 EPs chart is similarly 1,000-deep.

Pitchfork had LCD Soundsystems's This Is Happening behind Kanye. Every song was too long.

For a single listener to make it through all of those 2,000 releases (optionally including the 500+ omitted metal releases, if they were so inclined) they would have to listen to over five new releases a day, every day, all year. To get that down to less than one album a day, you’d need an editorial team of at least six with no overlapping listens.

Neither equation takes into account re-listening for pleasure or, heaven forbid, listening to music from years prior.

MetaCritic had Janelle Monae's The ArchAndroid a hair behind Kanye in critical sentiment. I'm still not entirely sure what to think about it.

Even using Amazon’s Best of 2010 center to review the 100 best LPs of 2010 and 50 albums you might have missed is a huge time commitment – and they’ve narrowed it down to a manageable rate of three albums a week! Also, those lists don’t emerge until December.

My point is, even leaving aside matters of subjective taste, there is no such thing as a definitive “Best of” list. Not in Rolling Stone. Not on Pitchfork. Hell, even RYM‘s obsessive charts compiled by a cast of thousands left off my top LPs of  both 2008 and 2010.

Taylor Swift had 2010's best-selling album on Amazon with Speak Now. I thought it was okay; I preferred Fearless.

For 2010 I drew inspiration from one of my long-time blog heroes, Andre Torrez. Andre swore off all pre-2010 music starting in February, and spent the entire year listening solely to new releases and documenting his experience.

Rate Your Music has Agalloch's Marrow of the Spirit in a virtual tie with Kanye for #1. It's actually pretty interesting, for symphonic black folk metal.

I could never commit to that regimen (Hello, an entire year with no Madonna? Not likely.), but I took his ambition to heart. The point of the exercise was to absorb new music constantly without solely relying on the filter of radio or critics. Would my 1:4 “I love it” ratio hold up if I listened far outside of my normal comfort zone?

By trolling Ameoba Music’s release calendar and keeping an eye on trends on Rate Your Music I wound up hearing nearly 200 albums in 2010. I can’t tell you what the best ones were – from the captions in this post you can see I don’t entirely agree with a lot of the critical sentiment.

However, I do know what I can unequivocally recommend through my personal filter of loving pop and valuing quality songwriting, and I’ll blog about those releases all this month.

Crushing On: Fashion Scarves

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In Urban Outfitters this fall with Sarah Cooley I had the urge to buy scarves.

I have to be careful not to cross over from "fashionable" to "douchebag" with my scarf-wearing, as I am not handsome enough to pull off douchebag. Touché, Mr. Pitt.

I don’t know what came over me. I own plenty of scarves. At least six. And these scarves were light – hardly appropriate for winter outdoor travels.

Nonetheless, I bought two and began alternating them every few days at work. We’re on the casual side of business, so have forsaken ties – but, my neck can feel a little nude with just an open collar.Since my scarves were light-weight and contained pleasing colors, I’d leave them on when I hung up my jacket to ward off the chill of our conference room.

Given my penchant for Kenneth Cole accessories I would have been remiss not to buy at least one scarf there.

Then the compliments began amassing, and I knew I had struck personal fashion gold.

As a kid I hated scarves, but I think that’s because no one taught me a good way to tie them that would keep my neck warm.

Could this be the spring look of my fashion-forward future?

Now I know a few knots, and they’re a practical addition to my wardrobe rather than a useless tie that costs about the same. They help to offset all of the solid colors I wear, and also make me less self-conscious about doing weird things with my neck.

I am now actively aquiring additional scarves to round out my repertoire. I may even stage an exploratory mission to the land of ascots.

I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do once the weather warms up.

Crushing On: The Hunger

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The first book I ever read was a children's version of Dracula, so I'm sure you can understand if I find all this Twilight business to be a bit annoying.

I think vampires could possibly be on their way to wane. It’s hard for me to be sure, as I am generally oblivious to their ebbing in and out of favor, having loved them since age six.

Age six was when I read my first book as I sit on my front porch in the summer sun. That book was Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Seriously. It was an abridged version for kids, and the few extremely terrifying dreams that I still remember were a small price to pay for a lifelong love of reading.

By the time of my reading of Dracula I was already an established David Bowie fan, so please understand that (a) I was not your typical six-year-old, and (b) I might have loved 1983’s The Hunger even more at age six than I did this weekend.

As opposed to his stunt-casting in many films, David Bowie is actually the perfect person to play this character.

Have you heard of this movie? It’s insane. From a novel of the same name, it’s like a retroactive Lynchian remake of Black Swan with literal vampires instead of metaphorical birds, where David Bowie and Susan Sarandon split Portman’s part (complete with homoerotic touches), but replace her ballet dancing with cello playing and smoking cigarettes, respectively.

The Hunger is exactly as disorienting, awesome, and disturbing as that description suggests.

In one of his strongest cinematic turns, David Bowie plays an androgynous vampire musician who is a little touchy about getting older – so, essentially, he is playing himself. Catherine Deneuve is his sire and very long-term domestic partner, as well as a sex enthusiast and classical pianist who is a dead ringer for Lady Gaga.

As the pair begin to fret over Bowie’s gray hairs, they independently obsess over Susan Sarandon, a young doctor trying to unlock the secret of aging by experimenting on some very temperamental monkeys. When the two of them aren’t busy fucking and killing (usually in that order, but not exclusively) the swingers they pick up from the local goth club they teach music to an adorable neighbor girl.

This movie … words just fail me. From the first minute it’s both disgusting and gorgeous. It’s beautifully sparse, with lingering shots that made me gasp and short, clipped dialog that’s hardly necessary. Honestly, it would work almost as well as a silent film. Unlike a lot of movies from the early eighties, it does not feel dated to me – the only hints of its age are electronic music cues and perhaps an overuse of slow motion.

Most importantly, every time The Hunger reached a point where E and I exclaimed “wouldn’t it be awesome if x” or “surely they’re not going to x” that exact thing happened. We’re talking about three of the most transgressive plot twists I have seen on film outside of shock/horror movie.

I mean – yes, this was shocking and horrifying – but on the whole it was more of a sexually-charged arthouse flick than it was Saw.

Did I mention David Bowie AS A CELLO-PLAYING VAMPIRE? Oh, and, if I may be a total dude for a brief moment (maybe the first ever on CK): the breasts of a young Susan Sarandon.

The current vampire craze has resulted in talk of a remake, but there is no way it could be as erotic and thought-provoking in the present day. Even with Lady Gaga.

I might need to buy a copy.

Crushing On: Silk Soy Nog

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I always found eggnog to be a fairly terrifying topic of noshery. Sure, it’s like an instant milkshake, but the thing making it shakey is raw eggs.

Denise wore me down.

Denise is Gina’s mother, effectively my aunt at this point. I’ve been attending, playing, and now co-hosting her holiday party for ten years now, and every year she proffers several carafes full of egg nog along with a plentiful array of liquors to spike said nog with.

After several years she wore me down. I had my first sip of egg nog. AND LOVED IT, as I was both afraid and certain that I would. It’s like spicy little milkshake that won’t freeze your throat if you greedily gulp it – what’s not to love? My particular favorite brand is Southern Comfort, which has a particular spiceness that invites the alcohol of the same name to be added to the concoction.

The thing is (and, as alluded to above) eggnog is as terrifying as it is tasty. I wouldn’t drink raw eggs in any other setting, so why do it here? Also, though nog is charmingly suggested in half-cup portions (think of those wee holiday-party cups), I don’t drink anything in half-cup portions – certainly not anything that resembles a milkshake. And, in 8oz settings, eggnog is as deadly as it is full of holiday cheer.

Enter my beloved former boss Carol. I was going through a particularly militant/petulant phase of veganism at the time, so for her annual holiday cavalcade of food she brought me a carton of Silk Soy Nog.

Not only was it just as tasty as the real, eggy thing, but witness the nutritional head-to-head:

SoCoNog SilkSoyNog
Peter-Sized Serving 1 Cup 1 Cup
Calories (from fat) 400 (130) 180 (40)
Saturated Fat 50% 0%
Cholesterol 44% 0%
Squickiness from consuming
raw eggs not even concealed by
being whipped into fluffy ice cream?		 YES, very None whatsoever

Advantage: Silk Soy Nog

I’ve never looked back at the real deal. Which reminds me – I need to pick up some Soy Nog for the Shubin Theatre Holiday Revue on Saturday,  featuring Arcati Crisis as well as the highest holiday-decor:square-footage ratio I’ve ever witnessed inside of a habitable structure.

Crushing On: Robyn’s Body Talk, pt. 1

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The covers of all three of Robyn's Body Talk mini-LPs (explicitly NOT EPs, according to her), plus the full length LP. Let's talk about how much I want to bite the awesome concept from BTp2 for my next demo cover?

Articles are starting to crop up calling 2010 “The Year of Pop.”

I am totally okay with that, because this year pop has had depth. It’s not just crossover hits from other genres. It’s not just prefab boy bands and girly girls. No. In 2010 pop was music created by auteurs, no different than singer-songwriters or rock bands.

Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Kanye West – hell, even slutty Kesha and Bieber with his lady-hair – these are pop artist who have an unusually high amount of investment and control in their music compared to the pop artists of five or ten years ago.

Which brings me to Robyn.

Those of you from the 90s might know her mostly as the singer of “Show Me Love.” I complete eschewed pop at the time, so I have no idea about that. Hearing it now for the first time it sounds adjacent to TLC. All I know is that I’ve seen her name around for the past several years, and then somehow I wound up watching this video…

… and I was like – alright, that’s a decent song. I dig the clear Cyndi Lauper influence on the vocals. I dig the the relatively unprocessed, clear vocals over thrumming synth bass.

That was it. No further thoughts at the time. No urge to buy the song.

Then, in a spree of catching up on 2010 albums, one of my dear readers (and friends) recommended I check out Robyn’s Body Talk releases – effectively, three separate mini-LPs that she collected into one monster pop release. So, I grabbed Body Talk, Pt. 1 and played it while I caught up on some reading.

Hole. Eee. Shit. I was putting my book down every three minutes to check out the name of the next song.

“Don’t Fxxxxx’ Tell Me What To Do” is hilarious and deadly catchy. “Fembot” and “Dancing On My Own” stand up against the Gaga powerhouses of 2009. “Dancehall Queen” and “None of Dem” cop a reggae vibe without transgressing against Robyn’s synth pop. Then, “Hang With Me”…

… no words. I love huge pop songs deconstructed to simple elements, the acoustic piano, strings, and electronic burbles on that song killed me. And, this is a song she LEFT OFF the fuller Body Talk – or, at least, it’s the full synth version that appears there, not this lovely stripped-down take.

Needless to say, Robyn is going to be making an appearance on my 2010 Recommended Music list. Until then, check out Body Talk, Pt. 1 and consider grabbing a ticket for her February 3rd show at the Electric Factory so I won’t be dancing on my own.

See what I did there?