December 6, 2004
Overheard Quote of the Year:
Girl #1: 'I love this song!' [upon hearing the opening strains of MAROON 5's 'She Will Be Loved' on the radio]
Girl #2: 'I'm going to see MAROON 5 tonight.'
Girl #1: 'Oh! What do they sing?'
-- Ladies and gentlemen... Girl #1, the one kind of person more depressing than someone who actually seeks out MAROON 5 and knows everything about them
The Hit & Shit List 2004: Reuben Ham looks back at this year's rock'n'roll and promptly heads back into the arms of Led Zeppelin II...
2004 – The Hits:
ELLIOTT SMITH – From A Basement On The Hill
In between 'vomiting in the kitchen sink' and feeling like he wanted to 'lie in bed all day', this man was creating the finest pop songs since his previous album Figure 8-- which, by the way, contained the finest pop songs since Abbey Road and Pet Sounds. Pondering exactly how he turned everything-being-fucked into rapturous beauty will make you miserable. Just listen: it's pop, and after sex, drugs and heaven, it's all we've got. You might as well become a scholar of it. This is, naturally, the best place to start.
ART OF FIGHTING – Second Storey
Still makes everything else seem somehow forced, trying to work a very specific, uptight angle and not quite making it. I dunno, man. I can't explain it—this is pure; ambrosial; too dusted-petal exquisite for its radio neighbours.
2004 – The Shit:
I'm not talking about SIMPLE PLAN here. I'm talking about the things I'm supposed to like, because they're quirky and affecting and substantial and 'emotional' and have the right GANG OF FOUR records and the right shoes.
MODEST MOUSE – Good News For People Who Love Bad News
It's not even that it is definitively shit. It's middling, spiky, almost-melodic cred-pop that everyone everywhere is inexplicably wetting themselves over. And if there is a baby Jesus, and if it doesn't make him sad, well... I don't want to go to heaven. I'll be over here with my copy of Junkyard and my embittered, squinty-eyed 24-year-old visage. Seriously: if you're going to write a play, and it isn't going to be as good as Hamlet, why bother at all? If you can't produce something greater than Loveless or Sgt. Pepper or Exile, why-- oh, forget it. This is why we have beer.
THE LIBERTINES – The Libertines
Apparently there's some music in here somewhere, but—omigod, the frontman smokes crack! And sometimes, he even smokes crack. When he's not smoking crack, he—fuck me! The man actually smokes crack! He's a total fucking junkie and looks all pale and sweaty and half-dead and is a modern-day minstrel and he SMOKES CRACK! He's a Rock'N'Roll Messiah!! And on top of that responsibility, he smokes crack—I mean, in addition to SMOKING CRACK all the time, he actually has the audacity to smoke cr--
I know. I read the NME too.
THE KILLERS – Hot Fuss
o sweet sin
and funny ties
neon and flesh and faintly androgynous lyrics
and shit keyboards
and a frontman whose name rhymes with 'flowers'
and he isn't balding like Brian Molko
yet
it's all so romantic
i want to die
in his arms tonight and sell my FRANZ FERDINAND records
they just leave
they always leave
me cold
now
Next Week: Positivity! The wonderful records that I unearthed from the past during 2004...
© Reuben Ham
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