2007 that was (by Tim)

Chris Brown - Dreamer

http://www.sendspace.com/file/1q6e44

The realisation that Chris was maybe the pop star of the year dawned on me quite slowly. Partly that’s because he’s risen to this position by default – no other pop star really had a sustained run of greatness throughout the year that might challenge him (Mariah’s a possible exception, but even then she felt less epochal this year than a couple of years back). Partly it’s that he led off his new album with its worst single, the only-kinda-good club track “Kiss Kiss” which (like most songs featuring T-Pain) really felt like a T-Pain song. And partly it’s that I was slow to warm to his other big singles. “No Air”, his duet with Jordin, is of course one of the greatest songs of the year, but that could be chalked up to Jordin’s efforts. And like most people I talked to, I found the glutinous acoustic ballad “With You” a bit too sugary and limp to begin with, while the neo-trance fireworks of “Forever” seemed pretty but insubstantial. The former won me over through sustained radio exposure, the latter via its particularly inspired recontextualisation in a dance routine on So You Think You Can Dance US. It’s only recently that I’ve been able to recognise just how much I love this guy, such that the maudlin “Superman" (his new duet with Keri Hilson) immediately tugs at my heartstrings whereas before I probably would have dismissed it as overwrought.

Undiluted regard is the necessary mindset with which to approach “Dreamer”, the track Chris cut in tribute to the Olympics. In a manner remarkably similar to Beyonce’s subsequent “Halo”, it combines massive end-of-the-world churning synthesisers with inspirational piano vamps straight from mid-eighties stadium rock (think “Don’t Stop Believing”) and typical 2008 R&B Sturm und Drang percussion. But in a lesser singer’s hands all this would be for naught, especially given the song’s slightly nauseous aspirational optimism. What pushes this over the top is Chris singing with that sort of effortless inhuman clarity that marks him out amidst all the other much more obviously embodied male R&B singers (like, even Ne-Yo can’t aspire to this sort of universalism, though he brings other stuff to the table). This is why Chris works so well with ever-so-slight autotuning on his vocals: it gives him a preternatural quality, like some sympathetic higher being sent to observe and then redeem the human race. In the chorus he divides into a scary multitude of auto-harmonising existential cheer squads, and this manoeuvre is executed with a ridiculous seriousness that probably spelt doom for any hopes of this becoming a popular song. Predictably, I love it.

Lyrically this is some high-stakes (if incomprehensible) stuff: “High speed/like I’m racing/it’s like lightning/sky is blazing/but you’ve lost your way/you’ve been led astray/are there better days/for my Fallen Dreamer?” Narrative is jettisoned in favour of a hearty engagement with the Big Themes (made explicit in the spoken word intro: “Live… or die… I just gotta believe”), which is as it should be – pop usually can’t capture big themes coherently without reducing them to triteness. A poetic incoherence is pretty much always the preferred route, and Chris’ almost religious invocation of emblems of the struggle for survival gives “Dreamer” a kind of accommodating flexibility: even if it was written for Michael Phelps it very easily becomes my personal prop for making it out of bed in the morning.

There's several more yet to be written. Many of the above were written several months ago, if they now seem a bit odd. There's also been a lot of cross-plundering with comments made here, reviews wtc.

haha oh shit i completely forgot that fbook group existed - sorry tim!! i did mean to contribute to it but fbook never lets you know when groups are updated. i pretty much wholeheartedly agree/disagree in all the predictable places. 2008 has been so good, my top 10 tracks currently numbers 88.

should have linked animal collective to a rickroll, but otherwise great stuff as always -- one of the most interesting things to me tho is when u mention listening to fela kuti bcuz on ILM i generally pretty much just associate your posts with new music (a good thing mostly as it keeps me glass-is-half-full about a lot of stuff id otherwise avoid) and ive always found it kind of interesting to get what your context is w/ a lot of older stuff (haha totally crazy that i remember this but i THINK i remember you dropping Disco Inferno in a write-up of a petey pablo song once)

fyi just for future reference it seems like zshare links get dropped pretty quickly now even if it says its still available to download it wont let you get the song on a few of these

i'm pretty sure that's a specific problem with newer zshare links (hence the switch to sendspace on newer posts) - the above links should predate it but if there's any broken links people let me know and I will fix.

The reference to Fela Kuti is a bit of a lie if only because (in typical ILM fashion) I've also fallen hard for Steely Dan this year, after having Aja for years and barely listening to it. Listened to a lot of Rickie Lee Jones, too, but i already liked her a lot. I don't like the slight air of defensiveness that saying "i've been listening to Fela" gives off actually... The impetus for noting it was more that Fela (and Steely) and Taylor Swift (though more her first album than "Love Story") were the music that hit receptors I don't think I'd used much if at all previously. In a lot of ways afrobeat and country-pop are asking for critical articulations of enjoyment that are almost diametrically opposed.

Yeah I think the Petey Pablo thing was "Get On Dis Motorcycle", the sample on which sounds a fair amount like a Disco Inferno track which does a similar trick. I used to make those kinds of "Destiny's Child = Mouse on Mars!" comparisons a lot more. I try to avoid it if i can these days because it usually implies that it's the comparison that validates the worth of whatever yr reviewing.

Whereas the truth (in this case) is that in retrospect the Disco Inferno track sounds like it's trying to work out how to be the Petey Pablo track (sans rapping obv)... An example of the influence flowing backwards effect that mark s used to talk about, if it didn't seem so lolworthy to talk about DI and PP in those terms.

As a general rule I think it's a good idea to be very cautious when trying to write about old and well-known music you're just getting into. Me on Fela or Steely Dan would be tedious and wrong for the most part.

Some writers use that naivete to be better/fresher/more clearsighted than well-versed critics, but I think that's a rare skill. In fact I'm having trouble thinking of anyone offhand.

ha yeah i didnt mean you needed to defend it, sorry --i found it more interesting just for providing a context for what you listened to and i think at the time i was just sorta seeing your writing in some kind of pop-centered universe so it just gave me a clue as to what dimensions you were working in musically --

whats most interesting about actual-serious-ilm music posts to me is its as much about knowing the writer as knowing the music -- an example is guys like dan perry who has a musical background and just knowing that fact helps me 'get' where hes coming from sometimes -- occasionally in ways i think are just wrong, i.e. "this person cannot sing" and im like "thats not the point" (sorry Dan for using u as a rhetorical example here) but other times in ways that help me better articulate what it is that makes music 'work' (or not work) for me.

Anyway point about that paragraph is that i think understanding the context a writer is coming from a lot of times is interesting and informs so much of how people on here write about music and what they bring to the discussion

n-e wayz im drunk and its like 630AM here sunday morning so im out ____

um also sorry for not googleproofing dan's name --

yeah that was my self-criticism kicking into gear there not me responding to you so much. i do find all of that stuff interesting w/r/t other posters here, like when I see you or vahid talking about jazz...

I use Dan in the same rhetorical manner. Sorry dan!

so rad. thanks tim.

argh totally stymied by zshare - 1) i click download, then 2) click download again, then 3) it tells me to wait for 20 seconds which i do, then 4) a "download" link appears, which i click, taking me back to (2) with no downloading ever actually happening

tried in safari and firefox both

same here, with safari and firefox too. It would be great to re-up these, Tim; last year your picks were among the best things I heard this year.

yeah those zshare links are expired/broken

ya not working!!

still, awesome job again...

yeah the zshare links dont work

zshare doesn't allow you to use it if you have ad-blocking on

are some of you not getting directed to the page which tells you this? just a thought

speaking of which, I can be bothered so rarely to download individual mp3s anymore

that muxtape thing mostly passed me by but having got the general gist, wouldn't that be ideal for something like this?

a streaming playlist of all this would be so rad.

Great stuff Tim, as always. But just wondering, I understand AC's My Girls lyrics to be like this:
"I don't mean to seem like I care about material things like a social status / I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls"

status being stats

Tim you rule.

zshare is broken, btw. pretty sure those links aren't dead. it's just the adblocking/popup detection (which is lame in the first place), doesn't work consistently. i have turned off both and I still get stuck in the same loop as Tracer. would be great if someone who can get at the zshare files could upload them all to mediafire or sendspace.

same here, all plugins turned off, don't work

yeah, zshare usually works for me but isn't there.

was wanting to listen to "I wake up early in the morning, to play my con-con-congo" :(

most of those can be found on, like, itunes or similar

i recommend googling the song's name + rapidshare

xpost. they can also be found on soulseek or whatever, but when i was reading tim's bits i was hoping to have the thing down in 30 seconds and listen to it. I is lazy.

the zshare thing should be able to be worked around by right-click/"save target as"

I will upload these to sendspace over the next few days.

Great reading, Tim. What is the name of the Facebook group these are appearing on?

thanks tim!

This thread is so good I almost feel like it should be funded by private donations! Thanks for going out of your way, a lot of this stuff slipped under my radar, I kindof love end-of-years for catchup.

thanks Tim, looking forward to hearing these and re-reading - loved it last year too.

Pnau (who provide it’s, um, instrumentalist I suppose

The other half of Pnau was involved too, he just doesn't have his face airbrushed on the front cover.

nah the zshare links dont work

Jesus dudes, none of these tracks are particularly hard to get hold of if you want to hear them.

(NB - we aren't really meant to allow linking to full MP3s of commercially available music. I've been turning a blind eye here because Tim is Tim and doing sterling work promoting this stuff, but any future links responding to "anyone got that Aeroplane track?" or similar will be deleted).

Tim surely you don't prefer the original 'Fascination' to the Bimbo Jones and Linus Loves remixes

i notice there's a Van She Tech remix of 'Walking On A Dream', as if they read my mind...

the underwhelming “What’s It Gonna Be” by Platinum & H20.

also surprising! maybe it helps if you see the video

"I've been turning a blind eye here because Tim is Tim"

Appreciated! However if you'd prefer I'm happy to just syndicate the write-ups and let people e-mail me or join the facebook group for the download links - let me know if so.

The Facebook Group (which will continue into 2009, perhaps with a name change) is called "Strictly The Best: The 2008 Glamourous Pop Club". I made it quasi-private so I'm not sure if it comes up in searches. Feel free to send me a message on facebook asking for an invite.

hahaha Tim of course you've been getting into Steely Dan and Rickie Lee Jones--you like the Ne-Yo album! it's a '70s singer-songwriter album!

should have been a TIM @ KFC . EDU thread

his zshare links wda worked

(great stuff as usual tim, I'm only messing)

Motorcitysoul – Change You
http://www.sendspace.com/file/v9je9e

I’ve written several times of late about the resurgence of “deep house” as a determining stylistic principle in (the classy end of) dance music. This was a big thing last year too, and was responsible for lots of my favourite music of 2007 (stuff from Henrick Schwarz, Matt Johns, Dennis Ferrer), but this year it began to feel like THE THING in dance music. My interest has fallen off quite a bit, and I’ve provided several different theories as to why this is the case. But the key issue is probably that 2008 was classy dance music’s least ‘pop’ year in ages: lots of minimal (though no longer “minimal”), barely inflected “quality” productions so full of “soul” that there was no room left for a tune, so “deep” that all topographical dynamism gets smothered, all made by “cats” so jive that a positive reaction from plebian suburban, adolescent, gay, drug-using and/or female audiences would be rejected with distaste even if it was possible. I really don’t like the notion of “quality” anything in dance music: it suggests a reliability that is born of an aversion to making mistakes. Pop versions of dance music meanwhile tend to flirt with disaster, as they jump from the safe ground of niche stylistic affectation, across the yawning chasm of middlebrow crossover and towards widespread acceptance and adulation amongst people who don’t even know what rhodes keys are, let alone how to make them sound good in a house track. (NB. I'm not trying to suggest a "quality"/"pop" either/or here)

“Change You” is a nice exception to this trend, although for all of that a fairly middlebrow one; perhaps Motorcitysoul are as “quality” as my dance music listening tends to get these days. What marks this out is that it’s faux-US House in the broadest sense rather than the narrowest, less about getting a certain bass sound and more about the aching melodrama of its smooth male diva performance. It starts out fairly unobtrusively, its slowly morphing one-note synth bass pulse and nonchalant tenor vocal suggesting a tune happy to lounge in light-coloured calico pants in the afternoon sun. How it changes is obscured by one of those curious tricks of repetition that is hard to catch even when you’re listening for it. At about four minutes in, the groove is stripped back to a (relatively) intense staccato pulse while the diva sighs in a new melody: “Love has always been like this/a whispered prayer beneath a kiss…” In a pop tune this would be the middle-eight, and in a dance remix of a pop tune it would be the ostentatious breakdown which coincides with that middle-eight, when you realise that the song you’ve happily been dancing and singing along to is actually skating across a paper-thin surface covering a void of existential uncertainty.

House can capture this bigness of emotion with restrained gestures through an adjusted economy of scale, with even relatively mild expansions in the terrain of the groove suddenly evoking a sense of destabilisation or loss of identity. In “Change You” the shift in register moves from relaxed confidence (I imagine a game of unhurried, subtle flirtation) to a kind of barely concealed, urgent desperation, the groove’s imperceptible immersion into cavernous bass and tense bleeps resembling beads of sweat on a nonchalant pokerface. By itself this would be just about enough; what makes “Change You” magical is the way this is wrapped around the smooth diva’s performance, as he unwittingly sinks from his master’s perch and finds himself the slave of his own game of desire. Like Sade’s “No Ordinary Love”, this is mood music on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

New link for Aeroplane's "Whispers":

http://www.sendspace.com/file/nxnckk

Geeneus ft. Katy B – As I
http://www.sendspace.com/file/4hx06s

Possibly my biggest regret (among several) with regard to the year end lists contributed to Pitchfork, In Press etc. was my failure to adequately rate this absolute gem of a poppy UK funky house tune – certainly one of my absolute favourites of last year. One interesting thing about UK funky is how, perhaps due to the absence of a clearly identifiable sonic marker that would form the equivalent of the 2-step beat for UK garage, it’s gradually developed a much more distinct, treasurable homegrown song-style (in retrospect, UK Garage never really did this – perhaps because it never had to). So many of the great UK funky female vocal anthems – “Do You Mind”, “Mr. Seduction”, “Make Your Move”, “Tell Me” etc. – fall within strictly circumscribed parameters: very young, girly sounding singers, performances pitched exactly midway between R&B reserve and house diva histrionics, all driven by a sex-frenzied hunger that is entirely its own. Oh, and lyrics that surprise with their scrupulous formalist perfection.

On “As I”, the rhyming is almost decadently perfect: “I tried to put my finger on the time/when I started to see you in a different light/did it creep into my mind?/Or did you give me a sign?/I ain’t sure…/When your hand brushes past mine like that/did you mean to or was it an accident?/I wish that you’d do it again/so that I could feel your skin/once more…” There’s a… tightness to funky’s songwriting which marks it out from most vocal house, which usually draws a sharp line between the tension-building verses and the all-bases-go release of the choruses. In funky, the jump from the verses to the choruses is actually quite subtle, a very slight ramping up of the air of tension that is always already hovering close to fever pitch.

The music, of course, is delectable and irresistible, the usual perky funky beat moulding itself to ravey yet feminine soft-centered synth chords, like T99’s “Anaesthesia” or Nasty Habits’ “Dark Angel” remade as an unabashed singalong pop anthem. Plus the icing of the cake: that strange cantering beat that sprints across the end of every eighth’s bar (I like to pretend this is Geeneus’ sly response to Simon Reynolds’ complaint that too many funky rhythms have the awkward gait of a horse). In terms of context, “As I” wins for being a superlative demonstration of funky’s openness to whatever idea works. But context would be nothing without the seductive, sumptuous swing of its galloping groove, or the swooning desperation of Katy’s desire.

hey tim, do you think you could re-up that veronicas song

I am so good 2 U:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/vzw9qz

thx u