Writing in the blogosphere can start to seem like a cut and paste affair: "I read this, I found this" Drag, Right Click, COPY, Right Click, PASTE, type three grabbing lines of information, and POST. But, that's not why I started my blog. I started the ZenLunatic to be about my taste. I want it to sound from me.
So, in an effort to make my 2009 taste-making more genuine, I have organized a format in which I will post my favorite albums of 2009. In the same vain as Aquarium Drunkards' Decade Piece, I will consistanty post my favorite albums in no particular order from now (end of November) to the end of the year. My goal is that these albums feel as happenstance of a discovery as they did when I first put the disc in my car CD player.
2009 served as a moment in my life where I was clearly starting to define my taste in music. I started ZenLunatic in March of this year , originally out of boredom and fear (to do something meant you weren't failing). So every morning, when I found myself out of work, in my sweat pants, and wired from too much coffee, I wrote about music. It started simply because. As I continued to explore and dig deeper, I found myself exposed to another universe of artists, genres, and creative possibilities. The world of music, as experienced via the web, is an energizing and hopeful place where artists communicate and survive all while remaining dreamers. I hold fast, that our likes and dislikes (opinions) are the guards to what food, what music, what art, what film, what people might come asking to take residency in the place that makes you, you. While exercising my ability to discover within the Clear Channel-less realm of music, I learned that finding what you like and don't like is the same as finding who you are. The following albums are the ZenLunatic.
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Rambunctious.
Jumping on the bed. Cutting Class.
Fucking in the back of a car. Quitting your job.
Deviant.
You know an album and band for that matter is good when it/they make you feel proper and reserved. The Black Lips shook my universe with the release of 200 Million Thousand earlier this year. Spontaneously brash, irrational at times, but contradictory with clear musical decision making the Black Lips showed turthful this year. 200 Million Thousand likens to a more hip version of the Stones' "Exile on Main" and highlights one of 2009's biggest statements: Apathy is the new Fuck You.
The first track, "Take My Heart," showacases Cole Alexander's vocal style with his echoing howl of apathy. Energetic "woo" and guitar whale creates a flailing atmosphere of carelessness. The Black Lips channel spook and gloom in "Trapped In A Basement" with ailing vocals and a waltz that sounds confidently mad, lost inside a house with too many doors and not enough rooms. Ultimately, "The Drop I Hold" is Alexander's greatest lyrical accomplishment and the bands best mood on the album. The track is a Basketball Diary-esque love poem to a drug. The bass line drips in rhythme with Alexander's flow. The guitar's subtle twang adds to the eerie fatalist mood:
feel so lame/what a shame/smoke my brain/got no name/it's insane/what a game/pulled by the pain/will it wain?/nine times out of ten/ain't got no money/But the gods make it fuckin' rain
All of 200 Million Thousand is gripping and inspiring. It feels accessible and friendly even if it sounds conflicted. Its through the struggle that the Black Lips channel a rhythm, flow, and attitude that says "its OK not to give a shit."
