Christianity Today's Best of 2009

There's our winner Sara Groves, looking like Molly Ringwald.

Christianity Today offers its take on the best albums of 2009.

These wouldn't necessarily be the albums I would select, but I think it's a fine list, and it's further evidence that CT is breaking out of the CCM box. I was happy to participate.

Evolution is So Overrated

Dinosaurs are extinct because they couldn't evolve. Dinosaur Jr. is alive and well because it can't evolve. You win some and you lose some. Too bad for the stegosaurus. Two opposable thumbs up for music fans.

Stubbornly stagnating in the same late '80s scene of sweet melodies, slacker sentiments, and skronky, overdriven guitars that they pretty much inaugurated, guitarist, singer, and songwriter J. Mascis and sidekicks bassist Lou Barlow and drummer Murph just keep on bashing out the same old same old. After a nineteen-year hiatus, the original trio re-united in 2007 with Beyond, and followed that up with the stellar and non-odious Farm, released earlier this year.

It's good to have you back, guys. And it's like you never left. Mascis is a ridiculously great guitarist, a hyperkinetic Neil Young who revels in the ragged glory and the grunge, but who can also race up and down the fretboard. He makes me want to jump on the couch cushions and play air guitar, a prospect that ought to have my wife and daughters concerned. And Lou and Murph are rock solid in their support roles, and Lou's softer, more introspective songs are the perfect foil for J.'s hypercharged antics. But what is most astounding is that after some significant and lengthy detours -- Mascis with the revamped Dinosaur Jr. and The Fog, Lou with Sebadoh, Murph God only knows where -- they are so easily able to recapture the synergy that made them such a thrilling, formidable band in the first place.

For old hippie dinosaurs like me (alas, still roaming the earth), weaned on Clapton and Hendrix and Page, and wholeheartedly sick of the mopey synth bands that dominated the early-to-mid '80s, J. Mascis was and is a revelation, the guy who connected the dots between the pantheon of the '60s/'70s guitar gods and the latter-day deities such as Kurt Cobain, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo in Sonic Youth, Kevin Shields in My Bloody Valentine, and Joey Santiago in The Pixies. Those early Dino Jr. albums -- most notably You're Living All Over Me, Bug, and Green Mind -- were almost perfect distillations of slackerdom, but I never quite believed the ambivalent sentiments, either. Slackers didn't play guitar like that, like there was a real urgency in their getting off the couch, like they were on fire. But that's how J. Mascis played.

And so it's been a surprise and a delight to discover the same elements at work in the last two albums from the reunited band. They're older. I don't know if they're wiser. But if they've changed, they haven't changed the music much; maybe a little clearer production, that's all. Otherwise, the rhythm section locks in, and J. lets it rip. It sounds fabulous. It rocks. Across several musical epochs, dinosaurs still roam the earth.

Idioteque

I don't have time to write much these days. But I'm always thankful for music writing that finds the human connection behind the usual song-by-song commentary. Here's my e-buddy Joel Hartse on Radioheads "Idioteque," from the 2000 album Kid A (Radiohead lyrics in bold):

There is another student in my graduate program who has similar interests to mine—we’re both studying, in part, the results of the worldwide spread of the English language. Which, by the way, is no longer interpreted Kipling's celebratory colonial way—thank God we’re spreading civilization and Shakespeare—nor even in a triumphantly liberal “the world is becoming flatter and more democratic and we can all communicate” way. Lately it feels more like a “there’s no escape from the dominiation of a single language and culture threatening to transform everything in its path into a combination KFC/Pizza Hut staffed by Disney characters singing Britney Spears songs where businessmen have meetings (in English) on their iPhones about price fixing and building factories on wetlands" kind of way. Mobiles working. Mobiles chirping. Take the money and run. Take the money and run. Take the money.

“Suddenly, I feel like everything we're doing is worthless,” my classmate said to me as we were leaving a seminar. I know what she meant.

You can read the rest of Joel's commentary here.

Stefanie Spielman

People in Columbus, Ohio are crazy. They worship muscular young men between the ages of 18 and 22. If the young men keep their noses clean and do and say the right things, they are set for life. The muscular young men may or not end up playing in the NFL. But at some point the football career ends, and that's when the real community payback starts -- the business careers, the celebrity commercial endorsements for local establishments, the inspirational speaking engagements at high schools and churches. Once a Buckeye, always a Buckeye. You bleed scarlet and gray, you keep your name out there in front of the public, and the green can be rolling in for life.

But sometimes reality intrudes. Chris Spielman was an All-American linebacker at The Ohio State University. He was an All-Pro linebacker with the NFL's Detroit Lions. Now he's a sports commentator for a local all-sports station, and a football analyst for ESPN. He lives in Upper Arlington, a suburb just west of the Ohio State campus, where he is revered as a hero.

His wife Stefanie, and the mother of their four children, died yesterday of breast cancer at the age of 42. Stefanie was first diagnosed eleven years ago, and she kept beating the odds, and the cancer kept coming back. Five times it came back, and this time it got her. During those eleven years, she spoke all over the world, sharing her hopes and her fears, openly and candidly, and she raised almost 7 million dollars for research to combat the same fucking disease that is now threatening my sister. So I feel a bit of kinship with her. And with Chris. And maybe, in some small way, with the whole city of Columbus that is grieving today.

I don't know Chris Spielman. I've never met him, although, like many people in Columbus, I feel like I know him because he's omnipresent in the community, and he's not shy about expressing either his love for Ohio State or for his wife and family. When Stefanie was first diagnosed, Chris quit playing football to be by his wife's side. Stefanie went through chemotherapy treatments and lost her hair. Chris shaved his head. He has been with her every step of the way. I'm sure, like everyone else, he has bad days, irritating personality quirks that get on peoples' nerves. But the only Chris Spielman I've ever seen is someone I deeply admire, and not because of anything he ever did on a football field.

Columbus is crazy about football. And the irony is not lost on me that Stefanie died during Michigan week, and that the news of her death is filling Columbus papers the day before the big game with the hated Michigan Wolverines. Maybe some days you bleed scarlet and grey, and other days you just bleed red. Maybe some days you can't shake that blue feeling, even if blue is a big part of Michigan's identity. Maybe this is the day that a few people in Columbus wake up to realize that some things really are bigger than football.

I don't know. I can't sort all that out. I do know that I'm praying for Chris Spielman and his kids. I can't imagine what they're going through. Tomorrow I'll probably scream and yell and bleed scarlet and grey, and do my part to cheer the Buckeyes on to victory. Today I'm thinking it's okay for me to feel blue for some people I never knew, but whose lives mean something to me anyway. Let today be Stefanie's day.

Manly Pursuits

In a discussion about great books for boys and young men, someone recently recently referred me to a website called The Art of Manliness. It includes articles on How to Use a Handsaw, How to Exit a Room Like a Man (stride manfully? I'm just guessing here), Three Essential Campfires, The Best Guns for Self Defense, and An Introduction to the Art of Gambling. I have missed out on all these gender-defining moments, with the possible exception of walking. Hence the poor, snivelling shell of a man that some of you see fairly regularly.

I do know that I am surrounded by Men. They run power tools continually (the current favorite is the Leaf Blower, which, true to its name, blows leaves around; I prefer the more primitive rake, and I'm usually done in less than half the time. This is good, because leaves don't particularly excite me or generate feelings of enhanced virility). They build fires; big, roaring conflagrations in their back yards, as if they were trying to survive in the wilderness instead of gulping beer behind their tract homes. They may own guns and/or gamble. I don't want to find out. They occasionally corner me in conversation. "How 'bout dem Buckeyes?" they say, or "What's your handicap?"

I never know how to answer these questions. Weak chin? Propensity to exaggerate? There are several, actually. But that's not what they mean. I try to escape as gracefully as I can. "Oh aitch," I typically call out, and make hand signals. That usually gets them going, as they complete the "eye oh" cheer with their own hand signals. They can go on that way for a while, and I can usually return to reading, or learning how to bake, or whatever feminine wiles I'm pursuing at the time.

I don't think any of them read. They know that when the can turns blue, the beer is cold, and that's enough.

The Rose Above the Sky

A new post on my Image Journal blog, right here.

Tristram Shandy

Lord have mercy.

Has anyone read this novel/satire/autobiography that never quite gets around to telling a life story? I'm halfway through, and I alternate between thinking it's some of the most brilliant prose I've ever read and wanting to throw the book across the room in utter frustration and disgust.

Here's the deal with Laurence Sterne's masterpiece: It presumes to tell the story of the titular hero, but wanders off at every turn because the narrator Tristram, who has a very interesting name (the subject of which can be compared with and contrasted to more normal Christian names), is loathe to complete a thought (thought being the essence of what makes us human, as opposed to dogs, who, although they bark, and barking can be loosely construed as a kind of thought, cannot be categorized (viz. Berkeley) as True Human Thought). Bark, however, is one of the constituent elements of the tree, with elms being particularly prevalent in the district of Yorkshire where our non-story is set, and setters being a particular type of dog, who cannot be properly said to think, as Tristram, our oddly-named hero, most certainly does. I'm sorry, where was I?

Sterne goes on like that, although in a considerably more erudite and roundabout fashion, for six hundred pages, tossing in the occasional quote in Greek, French, or Latin, cramming his non-linear prose full of classical allusions, inserting parenthetical asides and learned treatises on obstetric medicine, noses, and medieval warfare, and anything else that comes to mind. Our young hero is conceived (or is he?) on p. 1, but coitus interruptus postpones the happy event, as do Sterne's thoughts, and he doesn't return to the birth of our hero for another two hundred pages. In the meantime he wanders, throwing in dazzling wordplay, puns, and some of the funniest, lewdest humor imaginable. This from a mid-18th century clergyman.

I'm tempted to call it post-modern fiction, but of course that couldn't possibly apply to a stodgy English rector and his mid-18th-century literary filigree. Whatever it is, I'm determined to finish it. It's the most peculiar thing I've ever read.

Russian Circles -- Geneva

Chicago instrumental trio Russian Circles play music that is a rough triangulation of Sigur Ros, Mastodon, and Rush (but without Geddy Lee; yes, this is a good thing). Their latest album Geneva is their best yet, and finds the band seamlessly merging those disparate influences. The former metal wankery is dialed back here in favor of more textured music featuring cellos and ethereal guitar feedback. Still, this is a far more visceral and muscular band than Sigur Ros and many of the other post-rock acolytes, primarily because drummer Dave Turncrantz is a madman. I'm very impressed. Think of it as post-rock with balls, or pretty, soaring rock 'n roll, with the emphasis on rock. Bonus points, too, for avoiding the whole quiet-to-shriekingly-loud buildup that plagues most post-rock. There are pummeling songs here, but they drift by so effortlessly that one isn't aware of a formula.