Hey folks!

Today’s Best Album of 2001 match is:

#53 Lucinda Williams, ESSENCE

Listen on Spotify or YouTube

vs.

#76 Superchunk, HERE'S TO SHUTTING UP

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To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [kentmbeeson@hey.com] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.

We have dueling Designated Cheerleaders today! First up, for ESSENCE, it’s mjl2003.bsky.social. Take it away, Matthew!

I had no idea who Lucinda Williams was until I purchased the Spin Alternative Record Guide and saw her perched above the more famous (to me) Victoria Williams. I was intrigued by the 10 rating listed next to her debut album but never checked it out.

Fast forward a few years, and "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" is released. It received lots of critical love, so I bought the album. I was hooked. And I hooked my parents on it as well. We all went to see her at the Wiltern Theatre. I downloaded the rest of her catalog on Napster - I became a fan - which is a little odd, considering that she is the same age as my mom. Taking a look at Spotify listen counts, it saddens me few people have discovered the brilliance of "Lines Around Your Eyes" from "Sweet Old World."

2001 was a year of a ridiculous amount of change for me and the world. When "Essence" came out, it was like a solemn, but warm hug. The album begins with "Lonely Girls," a slower tune with a woven mixture of fiddle, pedal steel, and acoustic guitar. And I find something new to appreciate about it upon every listen. But the key to its success is the longing in Lucinda's voice.

Track 2, "Steal Your Love" has a sparser arrangement, with more percussion than "Lonely Girls." The lyrics are quite lustful, yet I've never found them, or her delivery particularly sexy, but I find myself, especially in times of longing, easily able to identify with them.

The title track is the highlight of the album. It's explicitly lustful lyrically ("shoot your love into my vein"). I oddly enjoy playing this song on guitar, but would never want to sing this publicly. As a man, sad lustfulness becomes super creepy. But Lucinda can get away with it. And Ryan Adams' tremolo guitar further accents the lust.

From a genre perspective, it's tough to classify Essence. The album was oddly nominated in 3! different genre categories. It lost Best Contemporary folk album to "Love and Theft," from her current tourmate, Bob Dylan. The title track was nominated for Best Female Pop Performance (won by Nelly Furtado's "I'm Like a Bird"), and "Get Right With God" won Best Female Rock Performance (I know I'm cheerleading for "Essence," but even I think this is ridiculous considering it was competing against "This is Love" by PJ Harvey - this is also my least favourite song on the album).

I saw Lucinda open for Big Thief in 2023. Her vocals were slurred somewhat by her stroke earlier in the year. Out of 10 songs, she played 2 from Essence (the Jam-friendly, guitar-oriented "Are You Down?" and "Out of Touch"), and nothing from before Car Wheels. But it's clear that the songs from these albums remain in her sets over 20 years post-release. This is a beyond worthy entry in the catalog of one of America's 30 Greatest Living Songwriters (according to the New York Times).

Thank you, Matthew!

Then, for HERE’S TO SHUTTING UP, it’s Head Cheerleader @bsglaser.bsky.social. Take it away, Brian!

On more than one occasion, I've heard long-time Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster refer to HERE'S TO SHUTTING UP as the band's ALL SHOOK DOWN. I've taken the comparison to the final Replacements album (which is also sort of the first Paul Westerberg solo album) to mostly mean that it was a too-late last shot at...something. Or maybe just a record that came out more downcast or exhausted than originally intended. Either way, both ASD and HTSU had similar results: For the 'Mats, it was the effective end of the band; for Superchunk, it put a period on their initial run and started a decade-long hiatus.

But I will call upon all the hubris it takes to disagree with...one of the people who actually made the record and say: I don't think Wurster is right about HTSU. I think it's their Yo La Tengo record.

Between Superchunk's previous LP (1999's COME PICK ME UP) and this one, one of many things Mac McCaughan did was serve an an auxiliary member of YLT on the band's US tour behind AND THEN NOTHING TURNED ITSELF INSIDE OUT. He not only got to see how they worked every night, but he got to be a part of it, handling keyboard, guitar, drum, and vocal duties as needed. If you've ever seen YLT live, you know the shows include a wider array of instruments than a standard guitar/bass/drums lineup, lots of switching off roles, and plenty of improvisation from moment to moment. It's fantastic for the audience, and I have to imagine it's inspiring for the musicians.

So when Superchunk regrouped to record HTSU, Mac brought all of this back with him. And you can hear it: there are more keyboards (including an Acetone organ, a key part of the YLT stage setup), more loops, and generally a higher density of ideas and experiments outside of Superchunk's typical MO. The shows on the brief, mildly cursed HTSU tour (which started in mid-September 2001 and was, by all accounts, a huge bummer for the band--watch the QUEST FOR SLEEP documentary and/or read OUR NOISE for more) had a YLT vibe, especially on the more recent material. Instruments were switched around, members of the opening act were brought on stage to help out, and songs stretched out with improvisational sections.

From this point of view, HTSU is maybe more of a noble experiment for a band that was generally expected to play melodic pop-punk songs. Lead-off track "Late Century Dream" has a mid-tempo, off-kilter pace and an unusual instrumental bed; "Phone Sex" features pedal steel; "Out on the Wing" clocks in at almost 6 minutes, and "What Do You Look Forward To?" goes past 7. Mac's songs across the album have lots of recognizable Superchunk trademarks, but also extend past them. It's not the band's best album, by a longshot, but it's also not nearly as bad as its reputation. You just have to listen to it a little differently.

It's worth noting that when Superchunk came back from hiatus in 2010, they basically inverted the HTSU approach: From MAJESTY SHREDDING onward, they've returned to their core strengths, with experimental touches under the surface and around the edges of some songs. Instead of abandoning the wider palette of HTSU and CPMU, the time off seemed to let them internalize what they'd been reaching for and better integrate it all into what the band does best. None of which will make HTSU anyone's go-to Superchunk LP, but I think it can be heard as an important transitional chapter in a longer story.

Thank you again for all your work, Brian!

Click here to see the current results for the entire tournament, and click here to see the current results for the prediction bracket contest.

Yesterday, Fugazi, THE ARGUMENT defeated Ludacris, WORD OF MOUF, 155-30-1.

Thanks,

Kent