Mirah – C’mon Miracle review

Okay, I'm digging out some of the reviews I've written that I didn't have the opportunity to post on the old site, let's start with...

Mirah – C'mon Miracle (2004, K Records)
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Mirah has a pretty Juliana Hatfield sort of voice, and she’s not afraid to frame it against both quiet, minimal songs as well as the grinding tones of songs like “Look Up!” and “The Light.” On her third album, she shows a great deal of variety and restraint at once, probably a result in part of the music-making experiment she finished previously with Ginger Brooks Takahashi titled Songs from the Black Mountain Music Project, which they recorded while tucked away in a very remote cabin in the woods.

On C'mon Miracle, there's an element of folksy storytelling infused into the lyrics, and the songs sometimes feel as if they could drift of into silence, especially towards the end of the album where the more rock-oriented songs dry up. But even though the rock element is a bit frontloaded, it's good to have those songs there to keep this album from being too light or predictable. It's what keeps me coming back to it.

Boone's Top Ten Albums of 2004

That's right, we ARE back! Patrick and I decided not to let our Top Ten Lists to overlap in order to allow more selections for readers. So as much as I love Elliott Smith's final album and the Arcade Fire, Pat had first dibs this year round. With that said...

1) Ryan Adams - Love Is Hell (Lost Highway) As Adams says in the album's opening track "Political Scientist," there's no guarantees. That's what I love about the guy; he keeps you on your toes. Real artists are fearless. They take risks. They are prepared to fall flat on their faces. Here's a guy who takes a lot of shit in the press for his erratic behavior and grandiose ambitions. But you throw any of his albums on and you'll immediately forget about the controversy often attached to his name. Stripped of his public persona, Ryan Adams has proven time and again to be an often brilliant and always passionate songwriter. In my opinion, he's one of the best musicians working today. Love Is Hell has a murky and probably exaggerated history. Adams turned in the finished album to Lost Highway, they balked at the dark and somber work and insisted Ryan record another album instead. He gave them last year's Rock N Roll and Lost Highway agreed to release Love Is Hell as two separate EPs. Apparently, they sold pretty well because Love Is Hell has finally been released as it was originally intended. Never shy about his affection for the Smiths, even discussing a Morrissey song in the studio banter on Heartbreaker's first track, it came as no surprise when Adams hired Smiths producer John Porter to oversee the recording of Hell. Unlike the glossy, candy coated rock of Roll, Hell finds Adams under dark skies recording brooding ballads, folksy Dylan inspired kiss offs, and 80s Brit pop. Those on medication for chemical imbalances should probably avoid it.

2) Animal Collective - Sung Tongs (Fat Cat) Whoa. Not sure what else to say about this one. It will make your head spin. As endlessly listenable as Broken Social Scene's You Forget It In People.

3) TV on the Radio – Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes (Touch & Go) TV on the Radio, Brooklyn's bright shining hope, hit the scene last year with their debut EP Young Liars. The attention and praise they received based on those five magnificent songs was completely justified. Their full length hits like a bolt of lightning and never lets up. When Moses climbed up on Mount Sinai and received the Ten Commandments, the experience he had was probably a lot like hearing this album for the first time. Beautiful, terrifying, mysterious, sad, exhilarating. It's all these things and more.

4) The Elected - Me First (Sub Pop) Before his death, Elliott Smith was kind enough to lend Blake Sennett, co-singer/songwriter of Rilo Kiley, some free time in his New Monkey studios. There, Blake recorded a solo album with the help of Mike (Saddle Creek) Mogis and Jimmy Tamborello of Dntel. The result is one of the year's most stunning debut albums. Lush and beautiful, this collection of spaced out, country tinged, psychedelic, folk/rock ruminations on love, loss, and growing up is endlessly addictive.

5) The Comas - Conductor (Yep Roc) Andy Herod, lead singer and songwriter for the Chapel Hill, North Carolina band The Comas, dated Dawson's Creek's Michelle Williams for a couple years and this album is his very public examination of their relationship and breakup. Herod has shed the alt-country roots of the band's previous albums and crafted a staggering piece of work that manages to be both epic and intimate at the same time.

6) Melpo Mene - Holes (Imperial) An absolutely brilliant Swedish album for fans of Belle & Sebastian, Elliott Smith, and Nick Drake. Erik Mattiasson's gentle acoustic numbers will land you on cloud nine. You can listen to sound clips at http://www.melpomene.se/.

7) The Walkmen - Bows & Arrows (Record Collection) Who would have thought that these guys could top 2002's Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone? With an appearance on The O.C., The Walkmen have finally garnered some mainstream attention. Bows & Arrows shares similarities in sound design with Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, it's a shambling masterpiece that always sounds like it's on the verge of falling apart. There's something here for everyone, from hard rockers to barroom laments.

8) Iron & Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days (Sub Pop) Sam Beam's follow up to his critically acclaimed 2002 debut The Creek Drank the Cradle is yet another beautiful collection of rolling acoustic poems. This Florida cinematography teacher still records at home but has branched out and entered the studio for about half the tracks. Beam's tales of death, rebirth, and love are impossible to shake. You'll be hard pressed to find a lovelier album to listen to after dark.

9) Unbunny - Snow Tires (A Hidden Agenda Record) The best songwriters infuse their lyrics with intimate details that make the music so personal that it often comes across as cryptic to listeners. The harder it is to pin down, the easier it is to relate to. Unbunny's songs are so deeply felt that they cease to be about singer/songwriter Jarid del Deo and they become universal. Snow Tires is everyone's heartbreak. It's about everyone's ex, everyone's lives. It's a raw and honest meditation on regret, lost love, and despair. There's much in common here with Joni Mitchell's Blue, Jackson Browne's Late for the Sky, and Beck's Sea Change. This is confessional songwriting at its finest.

10) The Killers - Hot Fuss (Island) Too trendy to include? Too good not to include. The Smiths if Morrissey was actually tapping ass instead of claiming that the last person who had seen him naked was the doctor who brought him out of his mother's womb. If you have a nightlife, this is the soundtrack. Unfortunately, I don't. But if I did, this would be it.

Note: Some of these albums are imports and difficult to find. Check out http://www.parasol.com/. They're a great online record store and carry every album on my list.

Honorable Mention...

No particular order here. Just as they're coming to mind.

Boy Omega - I Name You Isolation
Tiger Lou - Is My Head Still On?
Modest Mouse - Good News For People Who Love Bad News
Interpol - Antics
Sufjan Stevens - Seven Swans
Laakso - I Miss You, I'm Pregnant
Valet - Life On The Installment Plan
Peter, Bjorn and John - Falling Out
Kevin Tihista's Red Terror - Wake Up Captain
Dolorean - Violence in the Snowy Fields
David Fridlund - Amaterasu
Air: Talkie Walkie

Patrick C.'s Top 10 Albums of 2004

Finally, Cut the Chord is back up! Well here's the Top 10 Albums of 2004 list that I wrote way the fuck back in January.

1. Elliott Smith – From a Basement on the Hill: This would have been the album of the year in 2003. It would be the album of the year in 2005. Elliott Smith built up a collection of wonderful songs over the last few years of his life. Each one is an important moment of its own. On some of his quietest songs, like “Twilight” and “The Last Hour,” Elliott feels more fragile than ever, while on other tracks, Elliott creates rock songs more intense than even the most ardent fans, familiar even with his Heatmiser days, could have imagined. Want proof? Listen to “Shooting Star,” a pulse-pounding track standing on the precipice of chaos the whole way through (at six minutes, it’s Elliott’s longest song). It’s hardly diminishing to add that this album, which stands up right next to the rest of his collection, might just be half of what Elliott had intended to present as a final product.

2. Jude – Sarah: This was released in the very last days of 2003, I decided to still include this record because it quickly became one of the most important albums to me this year. Here’s a wonderful musician who, in no uncertain terms, got fucked by his label (not naming names...but, ahem, Maverick Records). His last record, King of Yesterday got remixed by them without Jude's involvement and they wouldn’t even let him include the songs he wanted to. So what did Jude do with his new record? He went as indie as you could go. He recorded exactly the record he wanted to on his own terms and released it without a label (it’s available at the godsend that is CDbaby.com). The album is as lush, melodic and heartfelt as Jude has ever written, and you owe it to yourself to pick it up, especially those of you who have just gotten out of a relationship.

3. The Arcade Fire – Funeral: I don’t think there’s been an album that demands such immediate reverence from its listeners since Neutral Milk Hotel’s impressive In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. However, this album not only shares some of the artistic and imagistic overtones of that album but… well, you can also dance to it. It might be that the story behind the album (the grieving process that several band members were going through during the album’s recording) infuses the album with such a sense of profundity that would not be evident otherwise, but what’s the matter with that? To a great extent, the Wrens’ album The Meadowlands was our top pick of 2003 because of the story of failure and frustration behind it, and how the knowledge of that made the album feel like both a lament of those feelings and, at the same time, a triumphant response. Sometimes tragedy begets great art, and there’s nothing exploitative about it if it’s authentic.

4. Wilco – A Ghost Is Born: You know, I got into Yankee Hotel Foxtrot after being introduced to Wilco through the documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. But I hadn’t even planned on buying the new album until a coworker happened to play it. By the time we were into the third song, the ten minute rocker “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” I was sold. It seems like Jim O’Rourke’s camaraderie has rubbed off on Jeff Tweedy, especially on songs like “Muzzle of Bees” and “Handshake Drugs,” and the melding of melody and sonic dissonance. Wilco is a band that may have started out rather ordinary, but has eventually become one of the most fascinating (and popular) indie rock bands around, with an album full of could-be classics.

5. Interpol – Antics: You know, it took me a little time to understand Antics. On first listen, there are no songs that stand out the way that some of the best songs on 2002’s Turn on the Bright Lights do. It was an album full of repetitive, similar riffs, and with few obvious high highs or low lows. After several listens though, I finally realized that this isn’t an album of individual songs. It only works as an album. Each song a variation on an increasingly addictive-theme. It may take you four listens, but you’ll eventually agree with me.

6. Hip Whips – Hip Whips: Do you ever hear an album and you can’t believe that it’s not a collection of cover songs? There is something so very familiar about Hip Whips' debut album the very first time you hear it. These are songs that seem to have always existed (or at least since the early 70’s) played with jubilance on mostly organ-driven songs.

7. Bingo Trappers – No Smoking: Finally, the follow-up to 1999’s glorious Juanita Ave., the indie rock classic that none of your friends own. Bingo Trappers have plugged in, getting away from the early-Dylan/Stones feeling of the first album and following their Velvet Underground obsession even further down the rabbit hole.

8. Moving Units – Dangerous Dreams: Already worn out your copy of Franz Ferdinand after about ten listens? Okay, now it’s time for you to pick up Dangerous Dreams for the longer-lasting experience. Here’s what you’ll get. Great bass lines, addictive drum beats, sexed-out vocals. Finally, a dance-rock album that’s more potent than Viagra.

9. The Dears – No Cities Left: Fact is, most albums, even the really good ones, only feel like a collection of songs, and not like an album. Here, the Dears have created a true album, a dense moody sum of its parts where the songs are almost inseparable, like scenes from a movie. They might play on their own, but you don’t really get it until you see the whole picture.

10. Rogue Wave – Out of the Shadow: I first heard about Rogue Wave when I learned that they were going to open for the Shins at a show that I reviewed for CTC. Little did I know that I was catching onto the band just a few months before everyone else did (upon Sub Pop’s re-release of this album). If you've wanted to find a middle ground in between the bubbly poppiness of the Shins and the quirky alt-folkiness of Wilco, well here's the band for you.

Also, I’d like to take a moment to mention the number of wonderful albums released by singer-songwriters this year that didn’t quite make it on my Top Ten, including those by Joseph Arthur, David Mead, Jim Guthrie, n.Lannon, Devendra Banhart, Adem, A.C. Newman and also the posthumous collection of Matthew Jay rarities Too Soon.

CUT THE CHORD 2005

Welcome to the new and improved Cut The Chord music review site. Our original site www.cutthechord.com has been disbanded in favor of this easy to use Blog format. This site is owned and operated by Josh Boone and Patrick C. Taylor. Stay tuned!