Amanda’s Best of the Decade #10-6

Can’t believe we’re here, at the last bulk installment of the countdown.  After this batch, we start serving ‘em to you one at a time because the last five songs are so good, they can’t share blogspace with anyone else.  So get excited, but don’t let it detract from the following five moments of glory.

#10
Peach, Plum, Pear – Joanna Newsom
Album: The Milk-Eyed Mender
Year: 2004
At the opening of the Aughts, I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of songs by female vocalists to which I enjoyed listening.  And one of them was by Christina Aguilera.  Of that rather voluminous category, everything else was dismissed as trite, bra-burning singer/songwriters, whiny, gimmicky, or over-singing R&B balladeers.  It seemed, also, that the best that could be said of most of these women was that their voices were beautiful.  And while beauty is a quality I often attribute to music I love, it’s not an association born necessarily of beautiful sounds.  And excepting the ever-wonderful Neko Case, the beauty of whose voice seems enough to move mountains, I’ve never fallen for a song on the strength of its gorgeous vocals.  Joanna Newsom has a voice like a choir of cats; when she growls “water runs from the snow” I can see them, little feline mouths open in smiling parody of song, and the mental image fills me with joy, paralyzing joy.  And I think it is a beautiful sound.

#9
They Never Got You – Spoon
Album: Gimme Fiction
Year: 2005
For me, Spoon is a band of the Aughts.  Although they began their recording career in the nineties, their major triumphs all took place in the last ten years and they possessed a certain kind of cool that “belonged” – that oh so mystical attribution –  to the Aughts.  I say possessed because I am fond of making the unilateral assertion that they are over.  Though they may continue to make good music, they will do so in the manner of Bruce Springsteen: ever-adored but never again relevant.  I say this with deepest love!  “They Never Got You” was my favorite Spoon song during the height of my Spoon love affair, a time I pretentiously refer to as the Last Summer of Innocence.  When I loved its electric crackle, its impeccable hand clap, its taut energy and its unassailable cool, I was innocent.  Before London, before the year of “Bleeding Love” and club bangers I was just a girl who went to music festivals and drunkenly, breathlessly shook Britt Daniel’s fey, pale (un-Texan) hand three separate times in one night.  This song is what “Thunder Road” would have meant to me had I been 18 in Jersey in 1975; forever a fond throwback and bittersweet sigh when I open a beer and think of times gone by.

#8
The Past Is a Grotesque Animal – Of Montreal
Album: Hissing Fauna, are You the Destroyer?
Year: 2007
“Ugh!  What is this?  It sounds like a nervous breakdown.”  - My mother, a woman whose observations are nothing if not apt (but who prefers jazz).  Listening to this near twelve-minute song on repeat, as is my blogging ritual, I feel several steps closer to my own nervous breakdown.  And other than that observation, I have very little to say about this, preferring instead to let the genius of “The Past is a Grotesque Animal” speak for itself (in order of appearance):

“I fell in love with the first cute girl that I met who could appreciate Georges Bataille.”
“At least I author my own disaster.”
“I’ve been dodging lamps and vegetables.  Throw it all in my face; I don’t care.”
“Let’s just have some fun.  Let’s tear this shit apart.  Let’s tear the fucking house apart.  Let’s tear our fucking bodies apart.”
“The Gestapo circling my heart.”
“Even apocalypse is fleeting.”
“Sometimes I wonder if you’re mythologizing me like I do you.”
“Project your fears onto me; I need to view them, see there’s nothing to them; I promise you there’s nothing to them.”
“No matter where we are, we’re always touching by underground wires.”
“None of our secrets are physical.”

Kevin Barnes‘ lucid terror is akin to that of a neurologist experiencing a stroke, his own academic proclivities giving him the vocabulary and thought processes to truly realize the depth of the damage.  And this song builds like none other, layering so infinitesimally you’re given over to it before you feel your feet slipping.

#7
Cold Little Knife – Alec K. Redfearn & the Eyesores
Album: Every Man for Himself and God Against All

Year: 2003
I wrote last week about The Believer music issue and hinted that its influence reached as far as my Top Ten.  Perusing magazine racks this weekend with a friend, we came across this year’s issue.  My friend said fondly, “Aw, that first CD changed our lives.”  That it did, as well as introduce us to obscure-ish Rhode Island recording artist and accordion virtuoso Alec K. Redfearn.  I guess my feeling about this song is that, simply put, it’s the best goddamn little sea shanty this side of 1761, let alone 2000.

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#6
Come Pick Me Up – Ryan Adams
Album: Heartbreaker
Year: 2000
I could go on and on about how much I love dudes who love this record and spin it liberally, but it’s already been done better here.  The only thing I will add to the subject is that, kids, if you have never commenced a really sincere, urgent open-mouthed kiss as the harmonica drops to the chorus of this song, you have not yet lived and you need to get out there and try it before another minute passes you un-kissed to Ryan Adams.   I love this song as much as that last, shameful run-on sentence needs some punctuation and an entire editorial staff.