A Year of Music

Yeah, it’s so played out it’s like the Bible, and yeah, saying it’s probably my favorite record of my youth (maybe of all time, if I had an all-time favorite) marks me as a 30-something sensi white boy as surely as the fact that I know Nation of Ulysses were once the Sassiest Band in America, but I will still admit that My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless makes me very happy after having heard it hundreds – thousands – of times. “Only Shallow” is the best lead song on any album I’ve heard, with its chugging rhythm (Colm may be one of the most comically inept drummers of the early 90s – although on the evidence presented on the album who knows, because Kevin is reputed to have completely resequenced the drums in post-production – but the combination of him and Bilinda got the job done), seasick piles of lurching synths and guitars weaving in and out of sync with each other, and Bilinda’s sweet, waiflike croon mumbling filthy nothings over the top.

Someday they’ll put out a remixed and remastered version of this album; of this I have no doubt (although please, for the love of all that is unholy, no “Deluxe Edition”! Moreso than with most classic albums, tacking bonus tracks and outtakes onto the end would just diminish the perfection of the thing itself). My hope is that they leave Kevin’s unrivaled engineering and mixing alone, boost the dynamic range, and bring out the bass, because I’ve always felt there’s a monster rock album lurking under all the gooey sheets of noise everyone loves so much. This record was like a supernova, burning out what created it and setting everyone else’s expectations for what came after unsatisfiably high, but man, it was so worth it.

Also, I love my sweet baby, yes I do. But she already knew that.

Stuck in my head this morning: "Swingboat Yawning", the lead track from Rollerskate Skinny's second album, Horsedrawn Wishes. Horsedrawn Wishes is a strange extrusion of echoing beats, aimlessly wandering melodies, mooing guitars, overpressured psychedelia, and lyrics that make no goddamned sense at all, and "Swingboat Yawning" is of a piece with the rest of the album. The album's strangeness and consistency has weird consequences, because when I hear any song from this album in my head, it almost imperceptibly shades into any of a number of other songs (in particular "Swab the Temples" and "Speed to my Side" – two of the most brilliantly deranged pop songs I've heard) on the album.

Horsedrawn Wishes is like an ornate Brian Wilson album informed by My Bloody Valentine's noisy excesses (Jimi Shields, Kevin Shields' brother, was in Rollerskate Skinny), only made on a shoestring budget. Rollerskate Skinny get compared to Mercury Rev, the Flaming Lips or Spiritualized when anybody mentions them at all – they haven't been a going concern for quite a while – but this album sounds mostly like itself. I love it but it always makes me feel a little creeped out and queasy after I listen to it, due to its swaying, seasick nature.