Maybe It's Just Late...

...But 2008 is feeling like the weirdest damn year (at least this early in it) I can think of. I mean just LOOK at my friggin' top eight albums:

Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)
Black Mountain - In the Future
Efdemin - s/t
Dolly Parton - Backwoods Barbie
Britta Persson - Kill Hollywood Me
September - s/t
Taylor Swift - Live from SoHo EP
V/A - Step Up 2 OST

I mean, just look at that for a second. WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT.

What is going on in this Erykah Badu album? Everything at once? I described it privately like this: "Having a tough time parsing the new Erykah Badu album. I'm not really familiar with her other stuff, except for a few songs they've played on the radio, but this shit is NUTS. Like 8-minute soul jams w/ cyborg ambiance mixed with "America is fucked" slam poetry + Parliament-style group party theatrics."

And I'm still having a tough time with it on third-fourth listen, and several more to a few tracks. There are so many cakes being had and eaten I start to think I'm not liking it and then realize that it's just DATA OVERLOAD. And actually the production is damn near understated in some parts (I'm listening to "Soldier" right now, a flute pattern repeated and only two or three Badus, as opposed to the dozen-plus on some of the crazier tracks) so the data's not just coming from stuff. I'm just...trying to figure this thing out, and it's coiled in on itself so tightly it feels impenetrable until you just sit down with the thing and go moment to moment -- like untying a giant ball of knots. I dunno, this album excites and scares the shit out of me. Still not sure if I like it, but I think it'll probably keep growing on me.

Why do I suddenly really like Black Mountain when they do the MORE BORING version of the impeccable but kinda wooden trad-rock genuflection I didn't particularly like to begin with on their self-titled album? How the hell did I even find this thing? I don't remember acquiring it. Anyway, it's obviously not boring, I think they just found some classic rock pastiche that fit them a little better, plus no incongruous indie-pop novelty false starts. (Have they even had any other albums since the one with "Modern Music" on it?)

So can I just buy one Dial Records album a year and never have to worry about minimal-techno-the-genre again? Efdemin's Pantha du Prince sequel is pretty great, like he just got the baton and went with it.

Holy crap, Dolly Parton just put out a really good album. I know fuck-all about Dolly Parton, but this is pretty much perfect -- I love her Fine Young Cannibals cover, I love her bread 'n' butter ballads ("I Will Always Hate Roses," "Made of Stone") and her pseudo-edgy country empowerment ("Love from Shinola," "Backwoods Barbie") and sweet Christ, even....uh, sweet Christ. "Jesus and Gravity," in which Jesus lifts her up but gravity keeps her feet on the ground, is really charming and funny. And tongue-in-cheek about just about everything except how great Jesus is. It's like required reading for wannabe Xtian country/rock/pop crossover people revving up for the Disney Incubator.

Britta Persson might be the Marit Larsen with a regrettable case o' mushmouth, because every time I use my decoder ring to figure out what the hell she might be saying, it's like brilliant. "You look like a mirror to me / I'm not saying that I think you're ugly, just hard to look at." She doesn't use the contraction (it's "I am" not "I'm") I just want to give a sense of her sharp comedic timing which of course she buries in the HUGE LAYER OF MUD that is her (nice so whateva) voice.

I mean for god's sake, what if there are more lines in that song ("At 7") worth hearing that I'll have to spend another fifteen listens figuring out?? It'd be like finding [famous person]'s final manuscript of [legendary lost work] only to find that someone has spilled [dark liquid] on it! I do say! My my! Tut tut!

And WTF is up with this totally samey cheese-central SEPTEMBER album, mentioned some time ago by Jessica Poptastic I think and my loving it, seemingly because the production is so barely-interesting that I've actually found personality in a singer about as devoid of human characteristics as Girls Aloud or some such blank-ass group?

And WTF is up with my considering counting a LIVE EP of Taylor Swift's material which I've listened to since 2006 just to prove to Jane Dark that one reason some critics didn't vote Taylor country alb of 2007 was because they hadn't clicked by the end of 2006 and figured they just missed the boat on that one? And then perversely REFUSED to figure out where she'd be on a 2007 list (probably after Britney and before Miranda Lambert?) if included? And then thought, well, this "Umbrella" cover is pretty great and I love her solo version of "Place in This World" and like how her delivery loosens up with each passing chorus in "Our Song" (which I think she also does on the album but I can't remember because I can't FIND the damn thing anywhere so this EP is all the Taylor I have except for "Barnyard Song" which is totally a freestyle session she did for some radio station and YES I'm going to go ahead and call her the Eminem of teen starlet mainstream country).

And WTF is up with the Step Up 2 soundtrack being so good. Oh wait, least surprising inclusion on my list. Which is kind of surprising! This album is as close to hitting the broad side of a barn that sez ENJOYABLE on it as you can get, but I wouldn't expect it to act as, like, comfort food. In fact I expected to slowly delete/scatter the thing into shuffle oblivion but I've listened to it as an album quite a bit.

And WTF is up with so many albums being so immediately ingratiating with such pitifully low aims that I just know I'm never ever ever ever going to listen to them again except for two or three songs? A list that includes the Feeling and Lykke Li and Magnetic Fields and...uh, YEASAYER, which is nice for reading. I think that makes Erykah my album of the year by default, because whatever the hell it is, it certainly doesn't lack ambition. SERIOUSLY, how hard are some of these people really trying? If they don't watch it I'm gonna create a special MUMBLECORE section for idiots who think that mild competence plus lowered expectations plus head-in-bellybutton equals something that deserves more than ten minutes of anyone's time. Wait, make it five minutes for actual mumblecore, just enough time for Cute Indie Girl to unconsciously stick her tongue out like my retarded cat for the first time.