Top 20 of 2008: #9
9. Yeasayer - All Hour Cymbals
It's kind of hard to write about Yeasayer's debut album. I find myself running into the same problem I have writing about any world music (or, in this case, merely world-sounding music), namely that I have no context in which to place the music. I therefore can only evaluate it based on whether the music and/or the words are pleasing and meaningful to me, which if you subscribe to that theory means I would hate Lou Reed, Marnie Stern and Tom Waits. Thankfully for me, I try not to evaluate music simply based on aesthetics.
So maybe I could evaluate Yeasayer as a band using the cloak of world music to evaluate the world around them in simple terms. Being indie rockers, they probably feel a lot of pressure to be quite clever and erudite, even snarky, about evaluating the world around them. But looking at their lyrics, there's not a lot of depth there. It's stories about red caves, germs and sunrises. Hmmm....
Well, at any rate, I do love this record. You can tell they had a lot of fun making it. It's great to dance to at very loud volume. So what the hell. Who needs a reason?
It's kind of hard to write about Yeasayer's debut album. I find myself running into the same problem I have writing about any world music (or, in this case, merely world-sounding music), namely that I have no context in which to place the music. I therefore can only evaluate it based on whether the music and/or the words are pleasing and meaningful to me, which if you subscribe to that theory means I would hate Lou Reed, Marnie Stern and Tom Waits. Thankfully for me, I try not to evaluate music simply based on aesthetics.
So maybe I could evaluate Yeasayer as a band using the cloak of world music to evaluate the world around them in simple terms. Being indie rockers, they probably feel a lot of pressure to be quite clever and erudite, even snarky, about evaluating the world around them. But looking at their lyrics, there's not a lot of depth there. It's stories about red caves, germs and sunrises. Hmmm....
Well, at any rate, I do love this record. You can tell they had a lot of fun making it. It's great to dance to at very loud volume. So what the hell. Who needs a reason?
posted by Cliff at 8:39 PM
1 Comments:
Dude, I love this Yeasayer one too, but I really think it came out in late 2007?
Oh, and I wanted to tell you that I totally agree with you re: that Matthew Ryan album. I forgot I even had it, but when I saw it listed here I busted it out. I still don't think it would have fallen into my favorite 15, but thanks for the reminder about some fantastic music I forgot I had!
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