There was not a more thrilling record in 2000 than this one, especially on the opening track, "Big Exit," where Harvey's cry of "Baby, baby/Ain't it true? I'm immortal when I'm with you/And I want a pistol in my hand" had me reaching for a concealed weapon to give her. Other highlights include the homage to Patti Smith's birthplace on "Good Fortune"; the way the disembodied voices merge together in "This Line"; and the droning reverb guitar on "Horses in My Dreams" that saunters like a loping equine.
When her Romeo/Clyde finally opens his mouth on "This Mess We're In," it turns out to be Radiohead's Thom Yorke. The way the two come together literally and figuratively on the chorus -- with Harvey describing the sweat on her skin like a commercial for Calvin Klein's Obsession -- is sheer beauty. I'd like to think it was her wordless gasps on this song and her expressed wish to "chase you around a table, want to touch your head" that won this record the "Parental Advisory/Explicit Lyric" sticker and not the throwaway "fuck" buried in "Kamikaze."
Steve Earle's Transcendental Blues: The record a '90s Beatles reunion might've spawned.
Marah emerges from the City of Brotherly Love with the big tableau rock 'n' roll of Kids in Philly.
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2. Marah, Kids in Philly (Artemis/E Squared) Why would anyone want to be in a band anymore, when bands aren't drawing the crowds, the prestige, the perks or the airplay they used to? This album explains why. You get to hang with your buddies, crack open a few beers, play and record music on seven functioning tracks of an eight-track mixing board, have Steve Earle fall in love with it and put the damned thing out. Marah's Bielanko brothers are the kind of guys who can still get excited about a Phil Spector record, an undiscovered fishing hole or Philly DJ Hy Lit with equal zeal and the desire to chronicle each burning new obsession before they forget it. Perhaps the shortest record in recent memory but one that crams in as much information as Sandinista!did in three albums.
3. Radiohead, Kid A (Capitol) Like everyone else, you've probably made up your mind whether you think this is a work of art or a piece of crap. The fact that I still can't decide after two months has gotta account for something. Of course, the way I pronounce the album's title gives you some idea of which school of thought I'm from. This is a put-on, as most avant-garde records are. Even our precious Beatles engaged in such chicanery, the let's-throw-this-in-because-the-pseudo-intellectuals-will-love-it school of random recording. Sure, there are a lot of infuriating touches on Kid A -- the multi-page artwork destroyed countless trees but still fails to come up with one image you could put on a tee shirt, Thom Yorke slicing up his voice into meaningless syllables and putting it through a vacuum cleaner nozzle to sound like Francis the Talking Mule -- but it's all a glorious clusterfuck my eyes and ears can't quite forget.
You have to admire, if not revere, a band willing to freeze out guitars and song structure for an entire album. And there are genuine moments of beauty in this bleak and unforgiving landscape. Kid Acomes to you from a long line of eerie, extraterrestrial British space rock. Like Joe Meek's I Hear a New World, Radiohead is making music that sounds as if it hasn't been invented yet. Like the Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request, they're playing catch-up to the Beatles and playing the blues in outer space. And like Ummmagumma or Dark Side of the Moon, there are plenty of moments you can't hum -- when was the last time you sang "On the Run" in the shower? At a time when Now THAT's What I Call Music Volume 5 sits at the top of the charts, maybe you should opt for non-music items like this. And speaking of Dark Side, mark my words that Kid A will join its ranks as primo Lysergic fare.
And is it me, or is the album's opening line "I woke up sucking on a lemon" a dig at U2's failure to bring the avant-garde into K mart first?
4. Johnny Cash, American III: Solitary Man (American Recordings) While the appearance of Neil Diamond and U2 songs on the latest Cash outing might make you worry that he and producer Rick Rubin are running out of good ideas, the Man in Black turns it around and makes it all seem like a match made in heaven. Hell, he could sing "I Am . . . I Said" and make it sound convincing. Some of his best-ever performances are here, especially with poignant originals like "Before My Time." But it's the covers like "Nobody" and "That Lucky Ol' Sun" that steal the show. And if his take on Nick Cave's "The Mercy Seat" doesn't convince you that the electric chair is a waste of voltage, nothing will. Burdened by health problems over the past decade, Cash is a survivor, and his rugged rasp provides more coloring than a bank of computers ever could.
5. Frisbie, The Subversive Sounds of Love (Hear Diagonally)Remember Dick Rowe, the A&R man at Decca who turned down the Beatles? The same guy who told Brian Epstein that "guitar groups are on their way out"? The industry is full of Dicks like that now, and that's why you don't hear bands like Frisbie on the radio anymore. This record made me question why I distrust pop bands that wanna sound like Big Star and the Beatles when all they can expect is the cult status of the former instead of the world domination of the latter. If the sheer craft of their songwriting doesn't wear you down, then singer Steve Frisbie's Robin Gibb quaver will.
