We're Not Who You Think We Are
by Jim Connelly
(Virgin)
At their best, which they are often here, they ride their endlessly elastic, endlessly hypnotic and endlessly weird groove straight towards bliss. I’m not sure what “I’ve been thinkin one thing but doing something else in a daze, yeah” means, but I spent most of the first part of this year singing it.
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Part of my 2002 Top Ten list as published by Neumu on Jan 17, 2003
by Jim Connelly
(RCA)
Their continued success — both artistically and commercially — is one of the most bittersweet stories in rock and roll. They’ve done some fantastic stuff, but … sigh. And on their last album, I thought it finally caught up to them: for the first time, nothing special. But Dave Grohl’s recommittment to rawk, as evidenced by his works with Queens of the Stone Age and (especially) Tenacious D, has been good for his heart. So he sticks it out on the album cover as he wears it on his sleeve — you can hear it in every vocal and every riff. Bittersweet still, yeah, but on this record, he’s earned the right to call himself a “new day rising” in what might be his best song ever, “Times Like These.”
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Part of my 2002 Top Ten list as published by Neumu on Jan 17, 2003
by Jim Connelly
(Sony)
Part of my 2002 Top Ten list as published by Neumu on Jan 17, 2003
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Sure, it’s got its overly mauldin bits, and too much earnestness can weigh on a soul, but luckily, Bruce knows that, so he balances it with soul workouts like “Mary’s Place.” And, as always, what he’s saying is more ambiguous than you might assume: why else would his “dream of life” image on the title track — that catfish dancin’ at the end of his line — actually be an image of death?
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by Jim Connelly
(Interscope)
Almost too perfect in all of its white-noise crazy-drums bliss. In fact, they’ve got their thing so together that after nearly a year, I still don’t know which songs go with which song titles. Until the end, that is, when they make with “Relative Ways,” which takes perfection and ups it a notch.
Part of my 2002 Top Ten list as published by Neumu on Jan 17, 2003
by Jim Connelly
(Elektra/Asylum)
The last two (or three, I won’t argue) Old 97s albums featured as- good-as-it-gets songwriting, and so if this is a letdown, it’s only just barely. It experiments more, to the detriment of the speed factor, I suppose, but speed hasn’t really been much of a factor since he declared himself a serial lady killer. Lyrics still are, though, and I hope that it doesn’t mean anything bad that this time, instead of my favorite lyrics being about his cat running away or proposing, they go like this: “Uh-ah, uh-ah, uh-ah, uh-ah.”
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Part of my 2002 Top Ten list as published by Neumu on Jan 17, 2003
by Jim Connelly
(Vagrant)
Finally giving up on his dream of mass acceptance 10 years after everybody else knew that it was impossible, Paul relaxes and delivers his best music since he first started trying for it. Sloppy rockers and shameless tear-jerkers, all aimed squarely at his cult. I’m one, and he can release records like either one of these forever.
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Part of my 2002 Top Ten list as published by Neumu on Jan 17, 2003
by Jim Connelly
(Bootleg)
Speaking of mythology, I know that declaring that the hard-to-find demos for this album are better than what was eventually released just adds to the overwhelming mythos already surrounding the album. But they are, they are! Songs like “Venus Stopped The Train,” “Not For the Season” and the Badfinger version of “Kamera” have more punch and immediacy than what was released. None of this demeans the final album, which I like a lot (and should have put on my 2001 list, as instinct told me to). The upcoming DVD of the movie and accompanying EP should just finally close the chapter on all of this, and I can hardly wait to see what Jeff Tweedy does next.
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Part of my 2002 Top Ten list as published by Neumu on Jan 17, 2003