This has been a ridiculously good year for music already. Here are the leftovers of the first quarter stuff, and the stuff from the second quarter that’s stacking up quickly.  Mixes 2 and 3 will be up this week, or at the latest, early next week.  Bonus: if you put them in your iPhone, they look like this.

If it’s not immediately evident, I hope to do this again sometime in July, then again in October.  Stuff that doesn’t make it within each quarter can always get slotted in later.  As I’ve been doing the last four years, in late December I’ll cull the best of the lot, and probably some new stuff.

Mix 1: “In A Matter of Time” | 192k | 47:10 | 64.9mb (scroll down for tracks/words)

1. James Blake “The Bells Sketch” (Hessle) I don’t think a lot of people know what to do with a track like this, and that’s understandable.  It glosses more as an installation piece than mp3 of music; an immersive, seemingly unpredictable soul sound-surround.  It’s tough, you have to sort of spar with it, interrogate it as it goes, maybe wonder what’s being left out and what that stuff would sound like as its own song.  It’s worth it, very much so.
2. Balam Acab “See Birds” (Myspace) From the Department of Witch-House, or “drag,” or whatever post-dubstep lure drawer people are dropping it in.  It’s spooky, like Blake, but more formalist at the same time, more of a recognizable shape.  Its creator is more or less unknown–for the moment, at least.  I wouldn’t expect that anonymity to last long, though, you know?  People can’t deal with not knowing the identity of the person making their music.
3. Nicki Minaj “Saxon” (Young Money)  A pretty good mixtape, a great collaboration with your boss, a welter of misunderstandings about who or what she actually is.  Nicki Minaj is on her way to pop-rap queendom, and there’s no one, it seems, to stop her.  Well hurry up and release your album already, then, damn!  Out of the random bunch of stuff I’ve heard so far, I’m most fond of this track, which has an interesting trajectory of its own.  Nicki spit on top of Chase & Status’ original, and sent it to Rihanna for inclusion on Rated R, complete with a pitch-perfect impression as a guide vocal. Rihanna didn’t want it, but The Internet did, and here we are, with a weirdly great “single.”  It’ll do, for now.
4. Four Tet “This Unfolds” (Domino) The name of this track relies on what linguists call a deictic, a common form of language that points toward a particular object or event, and requires further context to elaborate on what exactly that object is.  Typically, songwriters are clear about the subjects of their odes, but others are made to travel weirdly.  Decontextualized, it’s hard to unpack Hebden’s reference point here, to know what he thinks “this” is.  Of course, it very well might just mean “the song you’re listening to,” but that’s no fun. What other things might we imagine unfolding, which this music would soundtrack appropriately?  Bolts of fabric.  An argument.  Hills, as you drive away from them.
5. White Hinterland “Icarus” (Dead Oceans) You’re forgiven for not thinking that Casey Dienel could pull off an R&B album, judging by, well, all of her past work.  Her first album under her given name comprised folky piano bar showtunes, her magnificent followup (with bandonym and solid label support) a jazzy, prim novella tracing some imagined history.  Kairos is her first total left turn; rhythm-centric, electronic, at turns nostalgic and woozy.  Shimmering opener “Icarus” is a paean to tunnelvision crafted from sustained organ drone, burbling bass, soulful coos.  The lyrics are evocative: don’t worry about emotion.  Not yet.  Let strange, soothing sensations take over. It’s not a song–more of a wash.
6. Spoon “Who Makes Your Money” (Merge) Like “Icarus,” “Who Makes Your Money” is a perfectly executed sketch; enough of a slice to get you going, but not nearly enough to shape a story, express an opinion, make an argument.  There’s no arc, just a flat line to bend at your whim.  Matthew described the vibe of this song as a “concussed haze,” the perfect evocation of the wobbly sense of realization going on here.  This might seem like a small thing, but there’s no question mark at the end of the song’s title.  It doesn’t ask not the sort of question, in other words, that a numbing financial crisis has forced us to ask.  It’s less direct, and in its own way more sinister.  “Money” is the sort of fleeting moment of realization that Britt Daniel has mastered evoking (think “Everything Hits At Once”).  Here: the person paying you owns you.  It’s not as open and clear as serfdom, but more a mundane fealty that can momentarily cripple you when you realize it.  Daniel vibes in that space between realization and feeling with a ghastly, assertive slogan that echoes through your brain, as if he’s left out the words “Don’t forget…” at the beginning of the phrase: “Who makes your money.” “Who makes your money.”
7. These New Puritans “Three Thousand” (Domino) Post-punkerly Brits with a conceptual penchant pen a shaggy, militribal rap jawn, and slay it.  Dangerously near self-parodic, but that’s sort of the point with these guys, right?
8. Erykah Badu f. Lil’ Wayne “Jump Up in the Air and Stay There” (Universal/Motown) Whereas most of the new LP sends Badu back to the nearly-quaint neo-soul of Mama’s Gun, this track–not on the album proper–finds her in that robo-soul zone, something of a 2010 fairy earthmother to Janelle Monae and Nicki Minaj.  It’s church–or better than church (Weezy’s the pastor and the primary axiom is “we don’t give a fuck”)–but Badu’s version of spiritual ascendancy never gets that high off the ground, or wants to.  Rise up a bit, then freeze.
9. Gonjasufi “Candylane” (Warp) Halfway between Stone’s Throw and glo-fi (THROW-FI [tm]) with its vibe of finding a lost Parliament studio session in a dusty bin, and vibing over it for a couple minutes.  You could CTRL-V the “ah-ooooh” from the Badu track in here just about anywhere, and it’d work.
10. Ariel Pink “Round and Round” (4AD) Glo-fi godfather stokes excitement for his upcoming 4AD debut with the most epic thing he’s done yet.
11. Beach House “Walk in the Park” (Sub Pop) February, it’s frigid outside and I’m stuck at a red light in the middle of the night, in a barren downtown.  There’s no logical reason I should be sitting here.  But here I am, shivering still, at the invisible whim of some civil engineer.  Then “Walk in the Park” shuffles up, locks in, and makes perfect sense, for the first time. A brief, seemingly pointless, frozen moment can wind itself up into something temporarily grand, but fleeting.  Victoria Legrand wallows, luxuriates in the simple fallibility of memory: “In a matter of time/ It will slip from my mind.” Oh, and it’s green now.
12. Pantha du Prince “Lay in a Shimmer” (XL) This also unfolds.  See you again soon.

(pic via)

[192kpbs mp3 | 72:14 | 100.5 MB]

1. Yo La Tengo “Nothing to Hide” (Matador)
2. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart “The Tenure Itch” (Slumberland)
3. The Fresh & Onlys “Peacock and Wing” (Woodsist)
4. So Cow “Casablanca” (Tic Tac Totally)
5. Kurt Vile “Freak Train” (Matador)
6. Wooden Shjips “Motorbike” (Holy Mountain)
7. Fly Ashtray “Creeb” (self-released)
8. We Are Hex “INDPLS” (Hex Haus)
9. Paper “Before that Day” (Imperial)
10. Clues “Approach the Throne” (Constellation)
11. Jay Reatard “Before I Was Caught” (Matador)
12. Micachu & the Shapes “Vulture” (Rough Trade)
13. Magik Markers “7_23″ (Drag City)
14. Flaming Lips “Convinced of the Hex” (Warner Music)
15. No Age “You’re A Target” (Sub Pop)
16. Sonic Youth “Antenna” (Matador)
17. Deerhunter “Famous Last Words” (Kranky/4AD)
18. The Broderick “Son” (self-released)
19. Spoon “Writing You In Reverse” (Merge)
20. PJ Harvey “Black Hearted Love” (Island/Universal)

Britt Daniel, on the rawer new Spoon record, to Spinner (also).

2. “’Virgin mishandled an earlier remaster series,’ says Partridge, ‘and there were all sorts of bad color separations and misspellings and wrong track listings. It was really heartbreaking. They’ve actually fumbled the ball, radically, twice in recent years. During the whole Britpop thing, they didn’t promote our back catalog despite all these bands like Blur, Pulp, and countless others that, to me, were shamelessly attempting to sounds rather like us. Then it came around again a few years later with another wave of bands like Dogs Die in Hot Cars, Hot Hot Heat, Franz Ferdinand, Maxïmo Park, the Futureheads, and Bloc Party. Everybody would come up to me in the street and say, ‘Hey Andy, that band blah blah sounds just like what you did in 1979!’ So Virgin fumbled it yet again, when they should have been promoting our back catalog there.”

Andy Partridge, acerbic as ever, to Wolfgang’s Vault.  A lot of good stuff here for XTC fans. And the good news: XTC reissues soon!  Maybe! (Vinyl plz.)

3. “I have nothing against one person sending a track to another person saying, ‘Hey, check this track out; it’s great!’ That’s like a fan-to-fan thing. But these big websites like Pirate Bay are just another corporation. It’s the future Clear Channel. They have nothing to do with good. They are just evil. It’s the worst. They take our music and put it out for free before we have released it to our record label. There’s no fanfare, there’s nothing, it’s just like ‘Kings of Convenience: Declaration of Dependence. Click Here.’ There’s no sense of jubilation.”

Erlend Øye’s take on filesharing from this Prefixmag interview with Kings of Convenience.

4. “‘From the days when the mathematical and mechanical were paramount in music, the struggle has been bitter and incessant for the sway of the emotional and the soulful,’ he wrote. ‘And now in this the twentieth century come these talking and playing machines and offer again to reduce the expression of music to a mathematical system of megaphones, wheels, cogs, disks, cylinders, and all manner of revolving things which are as like real art as the marble statue of Eve is like her beautiful living breathing daughters.’

John Philip Sousa, railing against those confounded music machines.  Part of a neat little Arstechnica piece about copyright holders’ fears of new technologies. (Further reading: Mark Rose)

Pulp “I Spy” (mp3)
from Different Class (1995) (buy)

Destroy All Monsters “Mack the Knife” (mp3)
from 1974-1976 Gospel Crusade

The Fall “C.R.E.E.P.” (mp3)
from The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall (1984) (buy)

The Smiths “Vicar in a Tutu” (mp3)
from The Queen is Dead (1986) (buy)

Roxy Music “Ladytron” (mp3)
from Roxy Music (1972) (buy)

X “Johnny Hit and Run Pauline” (mp3)
from Los Angeles (1980) (buy)

Spoon “The Agony of Lafitte” (mp3)
from The Agony of Laffitte EP (1999) (buy)

1. Black & White Town–Doves
2. A Little Bit More–Jamie Lidell
3. Gone (f. Cam’ron & Consequence)–Kanye West
4. Trouble With Dreams–Eels
5. All We Are–Fischerspooner
6. Gideon–My Morning Jacket
7. Like A Honeycomb–British Sea Power
8. There Goes the Sun–The Pernice Brothers
9. I Was A Teenage Rainphase–Stereolab
10. So Begins Our Alabee–Of Montreal
11. Paul Simon–The Russian Futurists
12. Sing Me Spanish Techno–The New Pornographers
13. Ringodom Or Proctor–Head of Femur
14. Exodus Damage–John Vanderslice
15. Bloodline–Orenda Fink
16. All the Little Pieces–Louis XIV
17. Bird On A Wire–Rogue Wave
18. Grass–Animal Collective
19. Don’t Save Us From The Flames–M83
20. Hope There’s Someone–Antony & The Johnsons

marathonpacks year-end mix, vol. 4 (128k mp3, 71.9MB) (expired)

1. Howl–Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
2. Lavender–Oneida
3. Do Not As I Do-Hanne Hukkelberg
4. It Kills–Stephen Malkmus
5. Pieces–Field Music
6. My Own Face Inside the Trees–The Clientele
7. They Never Got You–Spoon
8. I’m Pretty Sure I Can See Molecules–Troubled Hubble
9. My Doorbell–The White Stripes
10. The Shouty Track–Lemon Jelly
11. World of Vibrations–Blackalicious
12. Good Stuff–Clor
13. Tribulations–LCD Soundsystem
14. I Ain’t Saying My Goodbyes–Tom Vek
15. Wrong Time Capsule–Deerhoof
16. Pretty Little Neighbor–Giant Drag
17. Bees–Caribou
18. The Runaround–The Sugarplastic
19. Lit Up–The National
20. Sixteen Military Wives–The Decemberists
21. Outnumbered–The Rosebuds
22. I Feel Like a Child–Devendra Banhart

I’m no music theorist, and have a very loose grasp on what it takes to truly mix songs together–I guess they’re not really “mixes,” but more “comparisons.” What I want to highlight, though, is Spoon’s entirely unique appropriation of elements from the most disparate of sources. I even added cheesy “rain” effects to the “Maneater” open (sped up 7%) in an attempt to make it match. The Zeppelin one worked better, only because the two songs are so similar.

“Boogie with Spoon” (1:15) (”Back to the Life”/”Boogie With Stu”) (mp3)
“They Never Got Eaten” (1:16) (”They Never Got You”/”Maneater”) (mp3)

The song selection and sequencing of the ‘cast itself was determined by flow–I was, however, tempted to attempt a “six degrees” miracle, where each artist covered would follow his/her covered song with a cover of his/her own, but I kept working myself into a corner. I kept this one pretty easy–the next ones will get progressively “harder.” What I have here, if I can predict the average guesser, won’t pose too much of a challenge. The prize will no doubt be cheap, but it will definitely come from the heart. Or gut. I haven’t decided. I’ll post the tracklist after the code is cracked.

E-mail guesses to marathonpacks@yahoo.com, with the subject line “podcast 3.” Good luck!

marathonpacks podcast #3 (128kb mp3, 69MB)

Update (10/28): I’ve had a pretty good response to this “podtest,” but no one’s got the whole enchilada yet. I’ll keep it up through the weekend and see what happens. Expect a new one next week.

Update (10/30): We have a winner! Tracklisting posted below:

1. Some Velvet Morning (Lee Hazlewood/Nancy Sinatra) The Webb Brothers from Total Lee! The Songs of Lee Hazlewood (2002)
2. Sound and Vision (David Bowie) The Sea and Cake from One Bedroom (2003)
3. Let’s Spend the Night Together (Rolling Stones) Amazonics from Bossa n’ Stones (2005)
4. Shangri-La (Kinks) Versus from Shangri-La EP (2000)
5. Light My Fire (Doors) Jackie Wilson from The Jackie Wilson Story: The Chicago Years, Vol. 2 (1969)
6. Marquee Moon (Television) Kronos Quartet from Rubaiyat: Elektra Records 40th Anniversary (1990)
7. Heartbreak Hotel (Elvis Presley) John Cale from Slow Dazzle (1975)
8. The 15th (Wire) Fischerspooner from #1 (2003)
9. Alone Again Or (Love) The Damned from Anything (1986)
10. Fever (Peggy Lee) The Cramps from Songs the Lord Taught Us (1980)
11. Rebel Rebel (David Bowie) Rickie Lee Jones from Traffic from Paradise (1993)
12. All Apologies (Nirvana) Herbie Hancock from New Standard (1995)
13. Can’t Get You Out of My Head (Kylie Minogue) Flaming Lips from Fight Test EP (2003)
14. God Only Knows (Beach Boys) Giant Drag from www.giantdrag.com (2003)
15. Decora (Yo La Tengo) Spoon from Old Enough to Know Better: 15 Years of Merge Records (2004)
16. Why Are People Grudgeful? (Lee Perry) The Fall from The Infotainment Scan (1993)
17. Alabama Song (Kurt Weill) David Bowie from Scary Monsters (Rykodisc reissue) (1992)
18. Sex Machine (James Brown) The Flying Lizards from Top Ten (1984)
19. Use Me (Bill Withers) Grace Jones from Nightclubbing (1981)
20. What A Fool Believes (Doobie Brothers) Self from Gizmodgery (2000)

Speaking of Pavement, Stephen Malkmus’ video for “Mama” (wmv) is great–when I first heard the song, I instantly thought of Big Star, but the video has altered my perception of the song. Now I can’t get the image of the Asian Annette Funicello lip-syncing the song from my mind. But that’s not too bad.

Next is “Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games” (mov) from Of Montreal’s new and great record The Sunlandic Twins. It’s incredibly cute and humorously violent (see the still), and works well with the song.

Finally, The National’s record Alligator is bound to work its way into marathonpacks’ year-end top 20, mostly due to my witnessing of their live set, the force of which changes even the most tentative listeners into fans. This is a rather claustrophobic, superimposed performance-based clip for the screaming “Abel” (mov) that offers a brief insight into lead singer Matt Berninger’s magnetic stage presence.

10. A Tribe Called Quest-Midnight Marauders (Jive, 1993)

A whittled-down version of The Low-End Theory, Midnight Marauders is, aside from the obvious craft of MCs Q-Tip and Phife, a clear victory for unheralded DJ Ali-Shaheed Muhammad, who, over the course of this loose conceptual work, concocted some of the head-noddinest beats in hip-hop’s canon. Opening with the (somehow not annoying) female “tour guide,” Marauders launches into the one-two punch of “Stir it Up (Steve Biko)” and the irresistable organ-hop of “Award Tour.” Then, on to Phife’s career highlight, the brooding, stand-up bass driven “8 Million Stories,” featuring the memorable verse “Stressed out more than one could ever be/Forever trying to clear the sample for my new LP/With all these trials and tribulations yo I’ve been affected/And to top it off, Starks got ejected.” The second half is no letdown, as tracks 7 through 10 slide seamlessly into one another: the tinkling electric piano on “We Can Get Down,” the slinky, dirty “Electric Relaxation,” the Meters-copping “Clap Your Hands” and whip-cracking “Oh My God,” sampling fellow Native Tongue Busta Rhymes’ lyric from The Low End Theory’s “Scenario.” The rhythm is tighter on this record than it had been before or would be for the Tribe, making it feel much shorter than its 51 minute runtime–which is definitely not a problem, because a record with beats like this is made to be repeated.
9. Spoon-A Series of Sneaks (Elektra, 1996)

Still, even after the band’s last three releases, this dark, moody post-post-punk masterpiece is my favorite Spoon album. This collection of songs is Britt Daniel’s darkest, with obtuse lyrics summoning an overwhelmng sense of anxious anticipation perfectly suited to the music, a jagged minimalist interplay between guitar and drums. Daniel’s voice has matured, but still bears a warm resemblance to both Jonathan Richman and Elvis Costello, with a healthy amount of Texas grit. The songs sit next to one another as a fractious array of brief glances, nervy contemplation and obscured views of what’s to come. There’s an unrestrained propulsion to songs “30 Gallon Tank” and “Car Radio” that renders repeated, yelped offers to “c’mon” a dicey but intriguing proposition. Disconsolate slivers “Chloroform” and “The Minor Tough” are introspective moments created by unexplained forces, leading to perceptions like: “They’re standing up the block and down the street/And they’ll be out all night/As I’m out in the car/It comes to me/They’re breaking up inside.” Album highlight “Metal Detektor” is a slow, contemplative zoom into a frozen moment, tinted by the ache of unrealized ambition. It would take Spoon five years to fully recover from their unceremonious dumping from Elektra (Merge’s re-release of this record contains two great songs about it), and by that point, the band’s core sound as represented here will have morphed into something completely different. A Series of Sneaks stands alone in Spoon’s discography–as artful, broken shards of songs.

8. Ween-Chocolate and Cheese (Elektra, 1994)

The first album where Ween (and I mean this without sarcasm) began to take themselves seriously as musicians and appropriators. Their sense of humor is still the driving force behind their music, but is now given massive ironic punch by association with a variety of “serious” styles, and vice-versa. Let’s begin with “Freedom of ‘76,” a smooth, Philly-soul ode to the birthplace of liberty, sung in a syrupy falsetto and featuring the line “Mannequin was filmed at Woolworth’s/Boyz II Men still keepin’ up the beat, yeah.” Elsewhere, the seemingly untouchable is touched where it shouldn’t be–the cringe-inducing but hilarious “Spinal Meningitis Got Me Down” is sung from the perspective of a child, asking in the highest of voices, “Why they wanna see my spine, mommy?”, and live favorite “The H.I.V. Song” repeats the words “H.I.V.” and “AIDS” over repetitive circus music–this is not music to be taken literally. But when they rock out, they do it remarkably well, with the overdubbed guitar triumph of “Roses are Free,” opener “Take Me Away,” classic “Voodoo Lady” and Eastern-flecked “I Can’t Put My Finger On It.” The unqualified highpoint of the album, however, is the epic spaghetti western revenge fable “Buenos Tardes Amigo,” sung in full Speedy Gonzalez character with a deathly seriousness. Like Beck without the pretension, or Steely Dan’s Becker and Fagen after huffing gasoline, Chocolate and Cheese is a barely contained riot, a musically solid if ideologically retarded pastiche of style that forms a mind-bendingly coherent whole.
7. R.E.M.-Out of Time (Warner Bros., 1991)

One misstep (I know it was vogue at the time, but did opener “Radio Song” need KRS-One?) aside, Out of Time is R.E.M.’s best record since Fables of the Reconstruction, and remains the band’s best post-Warner Brothers effort. The mood swings wildly over the album, beginning with the dual Southern Gothic laments “Losing My Religion” and the gorgeous “Half a World Away” to the turtlenecked coffeeshop vibe of “Low” and Mike Mills’ two offerings “Texarkana” and “Near Wild Heaven” providing a wide-eyed sunny vibe throughout the record. The late album show-stopper is “Country Feedback,” a dirge that simultaneously reflects their earlier work and forecasts later songs like “E-Bow the Letter.” “Losing My Religion” remains one of my all-time favorite singles, and thinking of it sweeping the VMAs, complete with Michael Stipe removing t-shirts left and right, promoting one cause after another until they all faded together, makes me yearn for the days when MTV…well, you know.
6. Nine Inch Nails-The Downward Spiral (Interscope, 1994)

The best metal album of the decade, and the best industrial album of all-time. The pinnacle of a career logically proceeding toward this end, The Downward Spiral maximizes Trent Reznor’s appeal to a generation of disenfranchised youth–a blunt to the point of ham-handed approach to lyricism, a perfect balance of growling, screaming electric guitars with a loud, discordant, pummeling electronic undercurrent, and, exclusive to this record , an aura of disconcerting theatricality created through startling dynamic shifts, both musically and tonally. This is one of the finest and widest-ranging collection of songs offered on any rock album during the decade, from the pounding, distorted “Mr. Self-Distruct,” “March of the Pigs” and “Big Man With A Gun” to the Front-242/KMFDM march of “Heresy” and the majestic “Ruiner,” to the minor, elegant “Hurt” (the video for which was taped at a concert I attended) and the brooding Charles Manson-themed “Piggy” (the record was recorded in Sharon Tate’s house). Legions of metal and industrial bands have spent entire careers trying to release an album half as good as this.

5. Portishead-Dummy (Go!, 1994)

The greatest aspect of the best trip-hop (and I’m only thinking of Massive Attack and Portishead here) is that it at once balances the timeless and modern. The sultry, siren-voiced Beth Gibbons is obviously the centerpiece of this group, providing a majestic counter to the skittering, brooding gloominess around her. The skillful deployment of espionage-themed samples and clever steering around the latest technological wizardry renders this record as relevant now as it was eleven years ago, as if Shirley Bassey were singing for a backing band consisting of David Axelrod, Silver Apples and Grandmaster Flash. Dummy’s singularity lies in the fact that it could have been released at any time in the last 30 years and still been regarded as current.

4. Digable Planets-Reachin (A New Refutation of Time and Space) (Pendulum, 1993)

The epitome of the frequently attempted and often succesful hybrid between jazz and hip-hop, the Digable Planets were able to cohere the two, along with many other influences, seamlessly, to the point of creating something completely new in the process. A Tribe Called Quest and Souls of Mischief were still dominated by the hip-hop idiom, and Guru’s Jazzmatazz went the other way, but Reachin’ incorporated elements of fusion, bebop, cool jazz, funk and psychedelia, with a distinctly east coast bohemian flair, standing as a remarkable and untoppable work. There’s not a weak point on this record–the loping, stand-up basslines dissolving into coffee-shop banter between numbers, giving the album the feel of a one-off performance from a interplanetary trio of MCs (or “Insects”), only able to pick up Art Blakey and Sonny Rollins transmissions on their UFO in-dash.

3. Flaming Lips-The Soft Bulletin (Warner Bros., 1999)

Recorded when core member Steven Drozd was in the throes of heroin addiction, The Soft Bulletin is an overpowering, brightly colored symphonic testament to life, death, and the dark, existential forces beyond our control. This is producer Dave Fridmann’s finest hour, as he was able to sculpt from The Flaming Lips’ astronomical ambition (see Zaireeka) a comparatively robust, warm, and most importantly, focused record that sounds like it was recorded in Heaven–loud, thundering percussion, expansive yet airy strings and brass, and the strained, wounded timbre of Wayne Coyne’s voice. Thematically, Bulletin expertly balances the plaintive with the sublime, to best effect on “Waiting for a Superman” and the lush, elegaic “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate”:

Love in our life is just too valuable
Oh, to feel for even a second without it
But life without death is just impossible
Oh, to realize something is ending within us
Feeling yourself disintegrate

Concurrently, the album serves as an encomium to those sacrificing their personal health for the good of others’, on “Race for the Prize” and brash, thunderous “The Gash.” Two of the best moments are just that–moments–elevated to celestial status through subsequent revelation. “The Spark that Bled” opens with the lyric, “I accidentally touched my head/And noticed that I had been bleeding/For how long I didn’t know,” leading to a realization of the sanctity of the present, and the urgent yet hopeless need for reaction:

And it seemed to cause a chain reaction
It had momentum, it was gaining traction
It was all the rage, it was all the fashion
The outreached hands had resigned themselves
To holding onto something that they never had
Later, album highlight “Suddenly Everything Has Changed” delicately transforms the quotidian into the remarkable: “Driving home, the sky accelerates/And the clouds all form a geometric shape/And it goes fast/You think of the past/Suddenly, everything has changed.” The Soft Bulletin, to its eternal credit, re-imagined the beatific possibilities of “psychedelic” music, creating a timeless, yet very modern update on Brian Wilson’s “teenage symphony to God.”

2. The Pharcyde-Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde (Delicious Vinyl, 1992)
I’ve realized the appearance of some generic trends that make themselves known through the process of compiling rankings based on a seemingly arbitrary criterion of ten-year chunks of time. It’s that, for me, the nineties were my hip-hop decade. Just as the eighties were defined by “underground”/indie rock, the seventies by punk, and the current decade shaping up to be a reemergence of pop, I’ve found that the nineties represented the true “golden age” of the musical form. The early part of the decade was marked by a gritty, hyper-violent, at times misogynist strand of hip-hop called, popularly, “gangsta.” It’s best and most progressive-minded practicioners are featured throughout this list, as are several representatives of the other salient form of the music–an introspective, jazz-based alternative to the mainstream, a style that sounds as fresh today as it did then. A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets and Souls of Mischief can all fall into this category, but no group synthesized the music, lyrics, production value and innovation more than The Pharcyde, on their fascinating debut, Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde. Seven years before Eminem, Fatlip, Imani, Bootie Brown and Slim Kid Tre synthesized the hopes and fears, the successes and failures of Black youth culture into a sprawling, kaleidoscopic, hilarious hip-hop circus. Jazz (especially organ) was the basis of the music, but only as an opportunity to transform it into a hurdy-gurdy-style “step right up” welcome on to the carousel. Progressive politics permeate this record, but are presented with a casual flair that underscores the omnipresence of the current racial divide, especially in post-Rodney King Los Angeles. “Officer” begins with a revamped Chuck D line, and proceeds tothe singalong “Please/Don’t pull me over, Mr. Officer/Don’t pull me over Mr. Officer, please,” ending with a stammering, Chuck Berry-style neologism “I’m discomboberated!” More upfront critique is offered on two actually worthwhile skits, a rarity on hip-hop of any era, “It’s Jigaboo Time” and “If I Were President.” The bizarre ride features it’s moments of inspired frivolity, of course, and the Pharcyde proves this to be their strong suit, with the brass-driven, Brand New Heavies inspired “Soulflower” ending with the line “If Magic can admit he got AIDS/Fuck it, I got herpes!”, “Ya Mama” a gut-busting dozens game (”Ya mama looks like she been in the dryer wit’ some rocks”), and album-opening “Oh Shit” consisting of a series of embarassing revelations leading to an utterance of the titular phrase: “Looked at her shoes and her feets was real long/Then it hit me, oh please god no/Don’t let this ho turn out to be a john doe/He pulled a fast one on me yo/I guess that’s one of those things that make you go…” The self-deprecation that was all too rare in hip-hop of that period was taken to its sublime, remarkable extreme on two tracks that alone would have registered this record in at least the top twenty of this list. “Passing Me By” comes first, featuring one of hip-hop’s best and most recognizeable samples (from Quincy Jones’ fusion cover of “Summer in the City), and a stark, unrefined sentimentality that any musical or art form would do well to attempt. A series of ruminations on unrequited love, the song features one of the best lyrics ever to grace a hip-hop record:

The three 50’s ballad references at the end, the seamless lapse into imagined serenade in the middle, and the general sense of undeniably feeling conquered by overwhelming self-doubt is nothing less than remarkable. “Passin’ Me By” is then topped by next song “Otha Fish,” at the other end of the relationship spectrum–lamenting lost love, and reapproaching it to see if it ever truly existed. Two magnificent verses are topped by the third, my favorite hip-hop moment of all time: