Philip’s comment a couple of entries back got me thinking about just what it is that separates how I feel about the likely top four or five in my personal best-of list this year from how I feel about the rest. I think his second paragraph hits on it pretty clearly, though. There are all sorts of different ways that music moves us, and I was using the word “passionate” in an extremely narrow sense: what I mean when I talk about being passionate about a record is—to use a metaphor that I think I may have beaten into the ground by now—that I develop a feeling for it that can best be described as romantic; I fall in love with it. I want to date it. I want to tell everybody in the world about it. I want to take it out (or more accurately, play it) and just gaze at/listen to it adoringly at every opportunity. As with most romance, the intensity of that passion may fade over time, but it can be called up again nearly every time I hear a note of the record in question, often even if it’s decades later.
I don’t expect even one record like that to come along every year; a handful per decade might be more reasonable. I’m not yet completely convinced that even this year’s top two contenders qualify; time will tell. Robbie’s record is just a little too long and overstuffed to set my heart soaring the way “Couples in Trouble” (most people’s least favorite Robbie record, and probably my favorite) did and still does, and I’m pretty sure I’m in love with the Son Volt record—that’s what I do with Son Volt records, after all—but I’m not sure about its staying power. (That was true for “Wide String Tremolo” too, though, and it’s turned out to have far more staying power than I ever would have imagined; I’m still in love with it for sure.) My current darlings, the everybodyfields and the Morning After Girls, are maybe more like crushes; I’m hopelessly smitten with them right now, but I think I’ll calm down a little bit about them after a few months—though I expect to remain pretty passionate about them.
And then there are the rest, which I feel a different sort of passion for. Philip is absolutely right in thinking that if I didn’t feel any passion for them (and I realize that’s the impression I gave because of the way I worded the reference to them), it would be pretty weird for them to be in my personal top ten. They might—probably not, but they just might—be on a list of the records I considered the best of the year, because I’ve always felt the distinction between “favorite” and “best” was crucial. But I’m long, long past putting records on my list just because they’re critical faves or even peer-group faves (hell, I’d have had the Long Winters on my list a couple of years ago if peer-group faves were that much of an influence, and I can’t stand the Long Winters, to name just one example). So what I’m left with are different varieties of passion: Brakes amuse and amaze me with their wit and originality and the pure entertainment that they provide, so they’re going to be high on the list; Dogs affect me on a visceral level that I can’t escape and wouldn’t want to; British Sea Power both call up appealing echoes of past eras of music that I loved and wow me with their outstanding songwriting. All of that is passion too, unquestionably, and so those records (and others about which I could say similar things) will be on my list. I also heard a lot of records this year that I admired, or wanted to like more than I did, or rooted for because I like the people in the band or whatever (can’t think of any examples of that third category off the top of my head, but it’s one that’s come up in years past), and I can say for sure that I didn’t feel anything like passion for those. So they might get honorable mentions or something—I always have a category on my endless year-end list of “Other Records That I Liked Quite Well”—but they won’t be among the best-ofs.
I think all of the varieties of passion mentioned by Philip and reiterated by me in that last paragraph are important and even necessary. I don’t think I could handle it, honestly, if there were 20 records a year that pulled my heart right out of my chest and simultaneously filled it with joy and shattered it into little pieces, as my favorite records—my records for the ages—do. (I know at least two people who actively avoid those kinds of heart-shredding records, in fact, and I can understand that, although I’m not capable of it myself.) And I think this has been a pretty well balanced year for those different types of passions. But in 2010, when I’m thinking back on the last ten years of records, I’m pretty sure that, say, Dolly Varden’s “The Dumbest Magnets” is going to have had more of a lasting effect on me, and inspired more passion in me, than, say, Dogs’ “Turn Against This Land.” I’m confident I’ll still think they’re both great records; it’s just that the one that does all sorts of funny things to my heart is nearly always going to beat out the one that moves me in a more physical sense (or a more cerebral sense, for that matter).
(It’s worth noting that this isn’t absolutely always true even for mush-queen me. One of my favorite records of the last ten years or so is The Libertines’ “Up the Bracket,” a magnificent record that entertains me and surprises me and affects me physically and gives me huge amounts of pleasure but does not, in fact, rip my heart out of my chest and chomp on it. There are exceptions to every rule, even in my heavily rule-governed world.)
Speaking of passion…a wander through some very good MP3 blogs* the other day made me stumble on an old (1996, I think) “Morning Becomes Eclectic” snippet featuring Mark Eitzel and band (including an old college pal of mine, Marc Cappelle, who I enjoyed re-encountering when they were touring that record) performing stuff from his first (well, second, if you count the live UK-only release “Songs of Love,” which came out while American Music Club were still active) solo record, “60 Watt Silver Lining.” Sometime I’ll write about Eitzel and American Music Club and the profound effect his songs have had on me and the weird mix of emotions I felt when his musical direction and my musical interests finally, and probably permanently, diverged completely. But for now, I’ll just say that although a few songs on “60 Watt” signaled (though I didn’t realize it at the time) the beginning of that divergence, other songs on that record remain among my very favorites of Eitzel’s exceptional body of work.
On “Morning Becomes Eclectic,” the last song they performed was my favorite one on the record, “Sacred Heart,” and, well, talk about passion. Geez. It’s an extraordinary, heartbreaking, devastating song, even by Eitzel’s standards, and it’s one of the best he’s ever written. I hadn’t heard the song in a long time, and I was disappointed that on the radio broadcast, they turned it into kind of a dirge (probably because they hadn’t been playing together for very long at that point). But it’s been replaying over and over in my head for the last several days, and you know what that means, right? Yup, I’m going to type out the lyrics.
(from memory, typos and other errata mine):
Now I’m out walking
On Saturday morning
Without a direction, I’m a dime a dozen
A worthless tourist
A walking target
With his eyes stuck on
Glue and paper
No roof to crawl under
With a heart full of rain
A heart full of rain
Full as the clouds
My throwaway map
Should throw me away
And where will it take me?
Streets long since flooded
Raindrops and heartbeats
But Noah doesn’t want me
You won’t let me drown
I don’t need to see you
I just need to feel you
When we make love
Feel you in the dark, feel you in the future
When we make love
Up in heaven
Do we make them burn up?
Or do they ignore us?
Bigger fish to fry
Waiting with the others
At the Sacre Coeur
Many different colors from all over the world
Here in the City of Love
No one wants me here
But I remember
The sweet things
We did together
When we made love…
Saturday morning
Waiting with the others
Listening to Messiaen
Waiting in the dark
At the Sacre Coeur
The future doesn’t matter
Nothing lasts but the dark
Where we feel loved
Track me down and I’ll give you
My pomegranate heart, my throwaway heart
Track me down and stop me
I’m ripe enough for the terror
That lies at the center
Of our hearts’ desire
I’m always alone
I’m always alone
I’m always alone
And I don’t wanna be
Always alone
(Self-pitying? Maybe, I dunno. Eitzel’s not exactly incapable of that. But also, in my opinion, utterly devastating, with the beautiful melody and arrangement making it even more so.)
*Speaking of MP3 blogs, which I could spend my whole life exploring if left to my own devices, there’s a rumor—a rumor started by me, right here and now—that a friend and I are going to be starting an MP3 blog of our own, inspired by our fondness for actual country music and our frustration at the near-total absence of country- and twang-oriented MP3 blogs. It won’t be limited to twang, and certainly it won’t be limited to mainstream country, but those genres will be represented. Details this weekend, I hope.