The Tris McCall Report
two early-blooming "best of 2003" lists:
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Top ten musical responses to the War With Everybody.
10. Kevin Devine, "Ballgame" (from Make The Clocks Move)
A very singular and personal reflection made more potent by Devine's impassioned and completely sympathetic performance, "Ballgame" is really about the massive communication gap between people who oppose the war and those for whom it seems a natural consequence of world events. Devine shouts because he can't translate his dismay into language that will be meaningful to the departing soldier, and he recognizes this. It's this recognition that saddens him, upsets him just as much as the prospect of losing his friend to the military machine.
9. Liam Lynch, "United States Of Whatever"
Intended as a joke, it ended up reading as an assault on kneejerk patriotism and a kind of celebration of conscientious objection. The emphasis, after all, is on the word "my." Homegrown freaks and weirdos can take this nation, if we all stand together.
8. Fleetwood Mac, "Peacekeeper"
The most sophisticated song about the Iraq War wasn't exactly a protest: as a matter of fact, it's possible to read "Peacekeeper" as a kind of tacit acknowledgement that military intervention will always be necessary. In a year when generally good writers from John Mellencamp ("To Washington") to Clint Black (the admittedly hilarious "I Raq And Roll") contributed rhetorically empty emotional appeals to national sentimentality, Lindsay Buckingham's rueful meditation on the nature of peace stood out for its poise as much as its poetry.
7. Blur, "Out Of Time," "Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club"
Despite the incorporation of Middle Eastern musical elements, Think Tank didn't make the one-world political statement Damon Albarn probably intended. Nonetheless, the inescapable news-weariness of "Out Of Time" takes on a disturbing valence when coupled with the cryptic chorus, flung like a grenade from an unnamed desert, of "Moroccan Peoples": "if we go and blow it up/then we will disappear." Gulp.
6. Outkast, "War," "Love Hater"
Andre 3000 is supposed to be the profound Outkast, but it's Big Boi who gets in this season's most punishing shots on the Bush administration. With accusations thrown in a flurry like uppercuts, "War" skitters from the election of 2000 to Operation Anaconda to Fred Hampton with a relentless associative logic reminiscent of BDP at its best. And no matter how misguided current Iraq policy might be, at least it got Big Boi mad enough to drop his famous pimp-cool and geekily rhyme "soldiers" with "smell the Folgers." Small comfort, I know, but I'll take what I can get.
5. Sander Hicks, "Sarcoxie War Song," "In Desperation You Go So Far"
Never one to pull punches, White Collar Crime lead vocalist Sander Hicks branched out on his own with two direct, deep, and precise articulations of outrage. "In Desperation You Go So Far," written in remembrance of Fortunate Son author J.H. Hatfield, is at once elegaic, inspiring, and heartbreaking, and ought to be played every morning in the offices of the 9/11 Commission, just to reaffirm their commitment to ferreting out the truth.
4. R.E.M., "The Final Straw"
Michael Stipe's approach to topical songs has often been saccharine, but here I have to give him his props: alone among the big download-friendly pop stars (including the usually dependable Beastie Boys), he gave us the only protest piece that didn't feel like it was dashed off in twenty minutes. The ache in this song is real, and Stipe makes fear of his own encroaching hatred palpable. He's still prone to slipping into cliché, but I'm willing to let it slide in the long shadow of lines like "what silenced me is written into law." That's the sort of profound whininess we depend on R.E.M. for.
3. Metric, "Succexy," (from Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?)
Conflating sex, alcohol, big guns, couch potato-ism, the lure of spectator thrills and automobile culture into one economical three-minute broadside, "Succexy" remains the deepest, most troubling, and most jarring song yet written about the current conflict. "Let's drink to the military" sings Emily Haines, her incisive Cyndi Lauper-on-smart-drugs voice scalding with sarcasm, before diving into the disturbing chorus with desperate abandon. Scary, fascinating, profound.
2. The Decemberists, "The Soldiering Life"
I doubt Colin Meloy even intends his brilliant, panoramic World War I story as critique; he's far too wrapped up -- and wonderfully so -- in the sensual detail of the battlefield to pull the camera back and examine wider patterns. But if you believe, as many radical feminists do, that war is little more than a big homosocial get-down, you couldn't find a more convincing articulation than "The Soldiering Life"; four minutes of fantastic combat erotica, punctuated by a horn fanfare that rips into space like love itself. The final slippage from "our rifles blaze away" to "we blaze away": a nice, subtle move from the nicest, subtlest lyricist of 2003.
1. Belle & Sebastian, "If You Find Yourself Caught In Love"
Let me get it on the record right now that "cheering the other team" is gauche; this isn't a soccer match, Murdoch. Also, marvelling at the random beauty of a simple village girl is not a little exploitative. But he's right, it's a hell of a lot better than blowing her head off, and "why should she be the one who's killed?" isn't a question that's easily dismissed. By saying outright what plenty of activists whisper in private, Murdoch has fashioned the boldest and gutsiest statement of the year, and, in the process created room for real responses and frank talk. And putting his seditious declamation in the context of a gospel song -- one featuring real religious devotion -- was a masterstroke. Next time somebody calls B&S wimps, refer them here, and remind them again that these Scottish rockers have always had the balls to say ugly and potentially unpopular stuff to get their often polemical points across.
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Top five musical representations of New York City.
5. Fannypack, So Stylistic
The Black Album and Get Rich Or Die Trying bring out a New York City bathed in cinematic tropes; at times it feels like it's the movies that are the referent rather than the streets. Not here. Fannypack might not be able to rhyme worth a damn, but their Brooklyn is explosive, multicultural, weirdly hostile but capable of flashes of love, exuberant, dangerously young. In 2003, this felt about right.
4. Black Moustache, "Uh, I'm A Clone," "Hot Monkey, Hot Ass"
Spencer Product, though, isn't a Brooklyn teenager -- he's a club veteran, he's seen the battle of rock and roll firsthand, and he's here to tell us about it. Not exactly Jim Carroll, he still ventures from night spot to night spot, sending us back dispatches and caustic reflections from a world smothered in fashion. Gritty, profane, oily, slick with sweat from pavements, cloudy like the condensation inside a bar glass.
3. Gangstarr, "Werdz From The Ghetto Child," "Deadly Habitz"
Not quite so wonderfully paranoid as Moment Of Truth, on The Ownerz streetwise Guru is still looking over his shoulder, down every alley, in every doorway with the apprehension of the recently-jumped. He's a tough guy, but not so insensitive that he can't breathe in the details of the city; his stories are articulate, multifaceted, angry, defensive. And DJ Premier's kinetic samplescapes have become as defining a trope of New York music as anything that ever came off the Broadway stage. You hear those scratches, you know where you are: Brooklyn, USA.
2. Elvis Costello, "Fallen," "I'm In The Mood Again" (from North)
Breathtaking, gorgeous songs from a cold, rainwashed Manhattan autumn. It's amazing how, with only a few lyrical details and that wonderfully inflective voice, Costello manages to make his personal drama stand in for the rebirth and resilience of New York City. But hey, that's why he's the champ, and everybody else has been playing catch-up for the last thirty years.
1. Milton, "In The City" (from Milton/Scenes From The Interior)
A limitless outpouring of love for the downtown -- the hipsters and the dive bars, and the… oh, hell, Milton details it all much better than I can. One of the greatest New York songs in a city full of great New York songs, "In The City" captures the ambition, the relentless activity, the spectator's feeling of insignificance, and, most importantly, his accompanying drive to make the streets his own. If you're a New Yorker and you haven't heard this yet, do yourself a favor, pal. And if you're an out-of-towner and you don't, upon hearing this song, immediately and desperately wish you were walking on Stanton Street, well, you're probably best off in the boonies.
you, my brother in arms, i'd rather you e-mail me than let you come to harm.