Hey folks!

Today’s Best Album of 2001 match is:

#54 Unwound, LEAVES TURN INSIDE YOU

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vs.

#75 Lovage, MUSIC TO MAKE LOVE TO YOUR OLD LADY BY

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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 one Designated Cheerleader today, it’s for MUSIC TO MAKE LOVE TO YOUR OLD LADY BY, and once again, it’s from @lanna.bsky.social! Get to it, Alana!

Let’s get the most ridiculous part over first, shall we? In 2001, I was dating my ex-girlfriend’s best friend. My ex-girlfriend was dating my husband, who I’d been separated from since 1998.

Skipping all the sordid details, the best friend ditched my ex-girlfriend and my husband as friends after seeing how they treated my kid, and the two of us packed up our things and moved to North Charleston, South Carolina to write a TV show for a 21-year-old with too much money on his hands.

Just go with it.

My partner was a film school dropout and wannabe-savior of broken young women, funny and witty and creative and FREE in a way I couldn’t be as a single parent. And also? Disliking the same people can get you pretty far in a relationship. A match made in Heaven–except that they were also a huge Mike Patton fan. Despite how many times I tried, I could not get into any of Patton’s projects.

I was pretty sure of this from bouncing off Faith No More’s albums multiple times despite exes extolling their virtues to me for years, though I thought “Epic” was a fine enough song to hear occasionally on the radio. However, I was in love, so I thought I’d try Faith No More one more time. Nope. Tomahawk: Nope. Fantomas: Nope. Mr. Bungle? Okay, that was a stretch, and also nope.

I WANTED to love Mike Patton. I knew he was incredibly talented and had a great voice. I just couldn’t connect to any of his work.

Then came Lovage.

Gorillaz had come out a few months before and, while I hadn’t fallen in love with the whole album, I liked it well enough. I now sorta knew who Dan the Automator was. I now sorta knew who Del the Funky Homosapien was.

I already knew and loved Jennifer Charles from Elysian Fields, although I’m not 100% sure how I first heard them–probably from my friend in LA who sent boxes of CDs from the dollar bins at Amoeba Records. (Since writing my DC for Firewater and coming back to this document for edits, I now realize it was probably from her guesting on their first album.)

So when my partner told me that all of these people would be coming together to make an album, I thought I had an idea what I was in for, but I was wrong.

We went to a record store specifically to get the Lovage CD, even though we literally made room and board at our new job and nothing else. We are from Jersey, and that November in South Carolina it was sunny and WARM, which was freaking us out, but it meant that we could drive with the windows down and the music up like it was still summer. On the way back to our apartment, we listened to Music to Make Love to Your Old Lady By. I fell immediately in love.

Finally, finally I found my Mike Patton project.

I’d always wondered, why had God given a man a voice so fine and then blessed him with the desire to musically be everything BUT be sexy? Well, that era was over, and we were in the era of Lovage now.

The album title tells you everything you need to know, really: it’s too silly to truly be sexy, and too sexy to feel nothing. Patton’s range and Charles’ contralto are TOO FUCKING MUCH, but that’s okay because so are the songs. Beginning with a fake commercial for the album (baby’s first skit! yes, I am that white), you know exactly what you’re going to get: an album that refuses to take itself seriously, but will good and goddamn be hot as it does it.

There’s a part of me that feels there’s something subversive about “Pit Stop (Take Me Home).” While sultry chanteuse* Jennifer Charles opens the song, it’s Patton who shines. Part of it is because her opening is vocally flat, but then when it hits the “Ask me,” I still feel like she’s holding back. Meanwhile, Patton is going ham--and yes, I mean that two ways. This, to me, locks in the commitment to the, uh, old ladies.

“Anger Management” is like a strange dance between a murder ballad and a 70s love song.

One thing I’ve heard about this album is that it’s too “samey.” My brothers and sisters in Christ, how much do you want your bangin’ music to change it up? The front half of the album is the perfect pace: not too slow to drift off to, not too fast to ruin the mood. “Lies and Alibis” is a great time to get to the endpoint (hopefully of round 1) before the goofiness of “Herbs, Good Hygiene & Socks” kicks in.**

That’s the thing; you are not allowed to forget this is an album that sits on a delicate precipice and a chunk of the fun is the teeter-totter of getting too into it before being pulled back.

Bit like edging, right?

The second half just doubles down: another commercial, a song called “Book of the Month” (read the fine print later), a song that sounds like it’s about “Titanic,” a song literally called “Archie and Veronica” and I guess Veronica’s dead?

The CD ends with the line “Jealous of the flies and the worms inside me”--this is not an album committed to your sexy sexy comfort, but commits to your sexy sexy discomfort.

*I feel like she’d call herself that. We saw Elysian Fields once at the North Star Bar in Philly and were upstairs sitting on the world’s most painfully saggy couch when we heard her speaking voice float over the railing. If you guessed it sounded EXACTLY like her singing voice, you’re right! We BOLTED off that couch to the railing, because we had to see her speak in person. It was hilariously unreal, not unlike Lovage.

**Rest in Piss, Lance!

Thanks, Alana!

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, #11 Missy Elliott, MISS E... SO ADDICTIVE defeated #118 Ruby, SHORT-STAFFED AT THE GENE POOL, 118-31.

Thanks,

Kent