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ARISE!

Our Nation's Capitol

And I'm back.

Thanks to some flattering nudges from my friends, I'm dusting off my blogging suit and getting back to the "world wide internet." My wordsmithing and photographing has declined sharply ever since I finished off my Homage to Brasilia; and in the interest of staying sharp, I'm launching Jedthousand-four in hopes that I'll remain sufficiently motivated to update it with photography, thoughts, criticism and observations on a weekly basis.

I've done a lot, and a lot has happened to me in the past four months. I sometimes feel like my life is turned up to 11, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Much like Lil' Bow Wow's transformation into the statelier Bow Wow, I suddenly find my confidence blooming and my vision becoming clearer. This maturation really started to show itself when I got a job with benefits back in October. It then began to set in when I spread my wings and left my parents' basement to live with some friends in DC. Now, I have since quit said job with benefits and I work (with more benefits) as an administrative assistant at USAID in the Office of Democracy and Governance. So, that's all well and good, but the really exciting thing is that, like Bow Wow, I find myself rollin' with some really interesting people. I'm constantly impressed by my friends, family and co-workers. I learn a lot from them, and I hope I can distill some of the ideas that I glean from them into articles on this page.

I'll start things off, however, with something entirely personal: a list of my favorite albums from the past year. This is not a top [insert arbitrary number here] list, nor is it limited to albums released in 2003. Instead, it is a list of the albums that I discovered throughout the year regardless of when they were recorded, nothing more, and nothing less.

Destroyer - Streethawk: A Seduction (2001)

Destroyer's Dan Bejar is my artist of the year. Sub-Pop's singles club sent me a Destroyer 7" back in 2002 that won me over immediately. Then a friend bought Destroyer's 2002 release, This Night. Then I bought Streethawk: A Seduction, and KA-POW. If I had bought it on vinyl, I would have worn it out by now. I had ripped the mp3's of the album and lent the CD to a friend who temporarily lost it. Despite having the mp3's, I bought the album again. That's right, you read correctly, I bought the album twice. The album is so good that it needs to be physically owned, even in this online music store era, when songs are nothing more than information that no longer need be tethered to a disc or artwork.

Oh, but the music. Some of my friends are reminded of Bowie, many critics compare Destroyer to Robyn Hitchcock, I'm reminded of the classic rock era revered by Happy Gilmore. But all I really know is that these are songs that are terrifyingly catchy, brutally simple, and forever perplexing. I have no idea what Dan "Destroyer" Bejar is ever singing about. I now own all of his albums except for This Night, and the mystery of Bejar's politics, morals, sexuality and influences is no clearer to me now that it was when I first laid the needle on that Sup-Pop 7". But then again, perhaps there's a clue on that 7". The A-side is called "The Music Lovers," and I guess those are the people that Destroyer performs for. If you love music, the rest is irrelevant. You should listen to Destroyer.

Pinback - This is a Pinback CD (1999)

Nothing sounds quite like Pinback. Any review of their albums will brief you on their lineage: two lads in San Diego, one's a bizarrely-superb (superbly-bizarre) bassist, the other is a video game loving popsmith, both boast extensive indie-rock pedigrees, they get together for a side project which manages to become better than any of their previous bands (combined). Word on the street is that they record all of the stuff at home and edit it on one of the guys' laptop.

Here's how it happened for me though: I had heard of Pinback from the great Will Sartain, but I never looked into them until my friend's high schoolin' sister handed me a hashed CD-R of Blue Screen Life. I copied the CD-R and quickly fell in love with the first song: "Offline PK." Then, whilst in Vietnam, I found a bootleg CD-R of This is a Pinback CD in a music store, an excellent album which is made cosmically spectacular by tracks like "Tripoli" and "Loro." I saw Pinback play at the Black Cat in April and bought their tour exclusive EP, "Arrive Having Eaten." The four tracks on the EP have been in heavy rotation ever since. Pinback spent some time being the band that I was most excited about in 2003. I wanted everyone to hear them, and I still do. It's not too often that I find a band that makes me hurt so good.

Wrens - The Meadowlands (2003)

I'm a fan of corporations. I think they're totally awesome and I'm convinced that the vast majority of corporations are not involved in sinister plots to destroy the environment, exploit children or make everything worse for everybody in the world. HOWEVER, I sometimes wonder how a band like The Wrens isn't bigger than it currently is and if conspiring stuffed suits aren't responsible for it. The Meadowlands is a piece of awesomeness that should have dropped like a trillion megaton bomb on all of the whiny diary reading hipsters of the world, but it didn't and I can't figure out why. It doesn't make sense. The songs rock harder, emote more fully, have better lyrics, are sincere and legitimately edgy. There's no gimmick The Wrens, their palette is the same as everyone else's: volume, guitars, drums, harmonizing vocals, and pianos.

Their secret is their years of experience. Their songs aren't about breakups, they're about divorce. They don't sing about hating summer jobs, they sing about legitimate ennui brought on by years of dejection. The Meadowlands is a monument of emotion that could never have been written by the youngsters that dominate the indie scene. The majesty of the album derives from the beauty that they extract from such frustrated feelings. The second track, "Happy," tells its divorce story lyrically and musically in such a way that makes me want to fall in love, fall out of love, get divorced and plummet headfirst into the exquisite pain that the Wrens have created on the track. I can't feel it enough.

Black Dice - Beaches and Canyons (2002)

Is it 2002's best album? Perhaps, but it's hard to tell because it can't be compared to anything else. Beaches and Canyons was given to me by a friend in December of 2002. The album made its way onto my iPod and into the shuffling queue of songs that accompanied me through the winter. I suppose the album is best when listened to as a whole, but I was introduced to it as individual tracks took turns scaring me, hypnotizing me, throat chopping me. There's nothing like it. It's all noise, all the time. It's not "music." They aren't "songs." It's not all played with "instruments." It's the kind of stuff that makes me wonder why I like it so much. Like Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol. II, it's an album that takes time to understand, but pays off big in the end. The five tracks make up an hour of chimes, undistinguishable guitars, tribal drums, gentle tides, echoing screams, and the sound that you hear when you stick your head in lava. Convinced?

Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It in People (2003)

An essentially flawless album. I started listening to it in Real Audio snippets from the band's site in February, promptly ordered it from Canada, and spun the thing out of control for the rest of the year. I lifted my voice in praise of its production, its loudness, its mood, its glory. I cast this pearl before whomever I saw fit and I never apologized for it. It's a spectacular piece of work, worth all of the praise that it's received. I even compared it to Achtung Baby and OK Computer for its ability to mesh intensely experimental production with perfectly accessibly rock songs. I admit, my passion has faded a bit since February, but I still never tire of listening to this album: rocking out to it, air drumming to it, and pretending to have seizures throughout. If I were forced to listen to any song so loud that it would make me deaf, it would be "Stars and Sons" off of this magnum opus.

M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts (2003)

Take the anthemic synth sound that opens Van Halen's "Jump" (I believe it's called "synth lead II"), play a chord with this sound on your keyboard. Then invite several thousand friends over with their keyboards and have them do the same thing. Continue on some sort of drawn-out tense chord progression and add some killer wailing guitar, occasional muffled vocals, and drums. Record an album of this and enclose it in really cumbersome packaging with a brilliant cover. That's a shoddy recipe for this album.

I guess I don't know how to sell this one. Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts is overwhelming, overflowing, and almost suffocating at times. I'm never sure who will appreciate this album because it's so strange, but it's won over many a friend of mine. In case you're like me and will buy anything that is compared to My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, allow me to say that it's a lot like Loveless in scope, grandeur, and emotion.

Postal Service - Give Up (2003)

This album reminds me why New Order was so great. Machine-assisted pop songs that you can totally dance to AND sing along to! I gave a copy of Give Up to a friend of mine before I dragged him to see them on tour back in the spring. He was hooked after the show, but he later confessed that he was initially confused by the "happy gay s#%@" that I had pushed on him when I gave him the album. I understand where he was coming from. Vocalist Ben Gibbard can be too earnest for a lot of people (myself included), but learning to appreciate what he does pays off big. His lyrics are painfully open at times, but he somehow convinces me that he's not faking it and they're so nice to sing along to. Oh, and it bears repeating: you can dance to it too.

Microphones - The Glow Pt. II (2001)

Visionary. Everything about this album is probably unlike anything you've ever seen or heard. The artwork, the vocals, the arrangement of the songs, the instrumentation and the mood are entirely unique. The man behind The Microphones is Phil Elvrum, friend of nature. This is another album that took me off guard and required me to listen carefully to understand it. There are moments when the songs seem too simple, the themes too naïve, but I'm convinced that they're not simple, that they're not naïve. They are instead human and vulnerable, pure and endearing. I love this album in a way that albums normally don't receive love. Nothing apologizes for its flaws, and it's missteps aren't stylistic, they're real, just like a person's. It's hard to describe, maybe you should just feel its shape for yourself.

Manitoba - Up In Flames (2003)

I was just about to sell my copy of Manitoba's Start Breaking My Heart, when I heard that this sophomore album was a masterpiece. I held on to Start Breaking My Heart fearing that I hadn't given it the chance it deserved, and I purchased Up in Flames. While Start Breaking My Heart relies more on soft glitches and subdued tones to wash its listeners in a cool bath, Up in Flames immediately bursts into horns, vocals, strumming guitars and live drums that swirl around the listener like so much blissful summer wind, complete with the smell of forests, mowed lawns, and honey. It's a dizzying trip that only gets better as I revisit it. I got to see Manitoba perform in November, and there's one very important thing that should be said about that show: 2 drum sets at the front of the stage.

Radiohead - Hail to the Thief (2003)

"2+2=5," "Go to Sleep," "Where I End and You Begin," "We Suck Young Blood," "There There," "I Will," "Scatterbrain," "A Wolf at the Door." I need not say more. This is an astounding album. Radiohead is in a tough position. Their greatness is taken for granted and it's easy to hesitate to laud them (I know I do), but this album is another step forward for modern music and modern man. The quintet continue to refine their own distinct sound on Hail to the Thief by writing songs that incorporate their catalog into a perfect stew of the sounds that they've pioneered and perfected throughout their career.