20 2009 Songs Worth Listening To

This is by no means an authorative list. Just some songs that have gotten me through the year...

1. Phoenix: “1901”--
Hard to pick just one song (they all could have been singles) from their incredible album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, but if I had to, this is the one. “1901” isn’t even a summer song, it is summer--the hot temperatures, green leaves, snow cones, all of that. You will yell “hey ey ey ey ey ey!” multiple times.
2. Grizzly Bear: “Two Weeks”--
The chamber pop artists dropped an incredibly accessible breakthrough single to let us all know that yes, it is on. Layered and sneakily intricate keyboards are capped by a series of “oh oh oh oh oh oh’s” that will be stuck in my head until judgment day, the song is refinement personified.
3. Passion Pit: “Little Secrets”--
THE feel good jam of the year. Makes me want to dance, donate to charities, and seize life with both hands.
4. Dead Man’s Bones: “Pa Pa Power”--
A contradiction of a song with cautiously optimistic keyboards and a children’s choir singing “We will not destroy you.” In other words, a song for our times.
5. Yeah Yeah Yeahs: “Soft Shock”--
Like watching the sunrise of staying out all night.
6. Julian Casablancas: “11th Dimension”--
Even against an electronic backdrop, Casablancas still rocks. I defy you not to dance when listening to this song.
7. Raekwon feat. Ghostface Killa and Cappadona: “10 Bricks”--
Never has coke rap been so cinematic, rarely has it been so good. The Chef still has the goods, baked or otherwise.
8. Thom Yorke: “Hearing Damage”--
Possibly the best song of his solo career.
9. UGK: “Da Game Been Good to Me”--
Sounds HUGE--like John Wayne rollin’ on dubs. A fitting way to see Pimp C off.
10. Big Pink: “Dominos”--
Rarely is a song good enough to make me think that maybe--just maybe--90’s pop wasn’t that bad.
11. Kid Cudi w/ Ratatat and MGMT: “Pursuit of Happiness”--
“Day and Night” may have gotten most of the shine, but “Pursuit of Happiness” is definitely the best song from Man on the Moon. I’m still not sold on the Kid, but this song is pop brilliance.
12. Major Lazer: “Hold the Line”
Diplo and Switch persist in pushing dancehall music to a strange and very good place.
13. St. Vincent: “The Strangers”
I saw Annie Clark (and co.) open for Andrew Bird earlier this year. You may be surprised at which set I enjoyed more.
14. Bon Iver: “Bracket, WI”--
Justin Vernon’s personal, isolated music manages to be compelling in an almost religious fashion.
15. Blitzen Trapper: “Silver Moon”--
Sounds like Bruce Springsteen should have.
16. Fanfarlo: “The Walls are Coming Down”--
Owes a pretty significant debt to similarly string-heavy indie bands; a stirring achievement nonetheless.
17. Jay Z: “Young Forever”--
Jigga comes to terms with his mortality…ish. The only truly good song on BP3 aside from “Empire State of Mind.”
18. Grizzly Bear feat. Feist/Grizzly Bear feat. Victoria Legrand: “Service Bell”/“Slow Life”--
I feel okay putting Grizzly Bear on the list twice since these songs aren’t from their breakout album, Veckatimest. What can I say? When they’re on, they’re on. Oh, and the female help they get on these two tracks doesn’t hurt.
19. Freddie Gibbs: “Boxframe Cadillac”--
Perhaps the hungriest dude in the rap game. I’d love to see what he can do over better production.
20. The National: “So Far Around the Bend”--
No one does melancholy better.

More Floems

Meter is a scary thing, man. First one is an heroic couplet, second one is blank verse. If you write em, might as well put em out there, feel me?

Tenure

“An eminent authority,” they said.
“Well-spoken, well-regarded, clear of head.”

Knees knocking, cane resounding up the path,
he monologues with himself in gasping laughs;
confused interrogators want to know
about theories formed 40 years ago.

His airtight thoughts have come unmoored and drift
to distant shores; he leaves his pupils bored.
New scholars call his system incomplete;
he’s not aware that there are foes to meet.

I saw him on the lawn, briefcase in hand,
discussing Hegel with the cleaning man.
Gesticulating, clawing at the air,
his wounded genius bleeding everywhere.

A hatchet, matchbook, a few other necessary items and a minor accident

A pile of discarded cartilage
below the stubborn jutting granite face
lies coated with congealed greys, reds and browns.
He apes the fiercely fading canopy;
a stranger’s doomed endemical attempts.
The glut moon peers between the leaves hungrily;
clouds move to shield him, deus ex machina,
the orb continues casing the hillside.
It frames the forests' messy pallet which hides
its ominous reds within yellow hues,
concealing stillborn bristling fields below.
The hoary crops all gone grey and grave-like,
stalks trampled, snapping in irregular lines,
The hollow’s wails meet him from all sides.

Fallish Things

I'm taking a poetry class. Dr. Tate is attempting to teach us to fit our clumsy pieces into meter. It's an interesting exercise. The first one is a sestina and the second was an english sonnet, but I switched the lines around 'cause I thought it read better that way. Read, critique, skim, whatever...

I went to meet the neighbors but no one was home…

I drove slow on an autumn afternoon
down avenues where tires rarely tread,
towards a hidden house that I once knew,
inside a maze of dusty roads long dead.

Down avenues where tires rarely tread
the fallen phone lines tangled up in briar.
Inside a maze of dusty roads long dead,
all hemmed by rotten posts and rusty wire.

The fallen phone lines tangled up in briar.
Each plot a fading 40 acre dream,
All hemmed by rotten posts and rusty wire.
Once painted homes now tangled, greyish green.

Each lot a fading 40 acre dream
the lawns are smaller than I remember.
Once painted homes are tangled, greyish green,
their timbered skeletons all dismembered.

My lawn is smaller than I remember,
The windows broken, siding shifting down:
a timbered skeleton all dismembered.
Beneath the elms my rope-swing sits in the ground.

The windows broken, siding shifting down
outside a hidden house that I once knew.
Beneath the elms my rope-swing sat in the ground;
I drove slow on an autumn afternoon.


















I may have overcomplicated matters…

We all became enveloped in the din,
light flamed through the door, framed me from within.
I stepped outside and lit a cigarette,
I stepped outside, became a silhouette.

I slipped like shadow down the broken street,
dissolved my self for shadows I might meet.
The summer sentinels rustling at me,
an ember bobbing underneath the leaves.

I’m buzzed and bumbling on a summer night,
each empty window seemingly a slight.
Wide-eyed and willing, darting past dark homes.
The census assures me I’m not alone.

A child shouted at me from his room:
“Hey guy! Don’t you know smoking’s bad for you?”