Hey folks!

Today’s Best Album of 2001 match is:

#8 Gillian Welch, TIME (THE REVELATOR)

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vs.

#25 Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, THE TYRANNY OF DISTANCE

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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 [[email protected]] 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 TIME (THE REVELATOR), it’s @locraen.bsky.social. Take it away, argle-bargle!

I’m fairly certain it was one of the two, but I can’t recall if it was Bella2 or Kitchen Compatriot Jones who introduced me to the music of Gillian Welch. Well, re-introduced, perhaps more accurately. O Brother, Where Art Thou? and its omnipresent soundtrack had, of course, introduced the whole world to Ms. Welch a year before, at least for those of us who weren’t already privy to her dark and introspective Americana. But I confess that I didn’t really pay her much mind until around the time I started hooking up with Bella2.

Back then I was slaving away in a restaurant kitchen. Every kitchen is subject to its own unique rhythms, but in that kitchen, at least if Kitchen Compatriot Jones and I were around, the mornings were for alt-country. So, while “the cooks cleaned the kitchen / with the staggers and the jags,” the little CD boombox blasted the Flatlanders, Emmylou, Steve Earle, Neko, and of course, Gillian and her longtime partner and collaborator David Rawlings, who does yeoman’s work on guitar while stoically concealing himself behind Gillian’s moniker.

Kitchen Compatriot Jones had about a decade on me, and the age discrepancy, coupled with the geography of his Los Angeles and my upper Great Plains, resulted in wildly different exposures to specific artists. The Internet was still in its adolescence, after all; distance still mattered. So even though we had very similar tastes and appreciated a wide range of genres, there were confounding gaps in the musical artists that each of us knew, and we delighted in the fact that we were able to expose each other to so much new music. He singlehandedly filled in a massive hole in my musical knowledge, and hopefully I did even a fraction of the same for him. In any event, whether it was he or Bella2 who re-introduced me to Gillian, every one of her first three albums was in heavy rotation and blasting over the drone of the exhaust fans on those busy, knifework mornings. Time (The Revelator) was almost certainly the heaviest, on account of it being one of the most recently released...but also because of Bella2.

Yes, there was a Bella1. She was my high school sweetheart and my first love. She was and remains cool as shit. We still occasionally check in, as we did last year when a dear mutual friend was in trouble (likely the same friend who introduced us, to be honest). She’s married to a rad Garth, raising kids, and being crafty. I’m happy for her; though, she doesn’t really have anything to do with this...hype essay? We’ve gone a bit off course. I just thought you should know about her for context, I guess.

Bella2, however, has everything to do with this DC. She was the only person who ever straight-up ripped my heart out of my chest and grinned while she squeezed it, Temple of Doom-style. Though to be fair, she dumped me over the phone, so whether she was grinning is speculative. We didn’t date long—just a few months—but I fell hard. She was from Great Falls—where my grandparents had lived for a time—and there was something enigmatic about that. It felt like a little western town in the sky. Like, she was this hot barista rocker girl who descended from the Rockies and introduced me to so much great country music. Look, I was smitten, OK? She was smart and sardonic and irreverent, and we would spend nights drinking and chain-smoking on the roof of a building across the street from her four-plex, which overlooked downtown Portland across the river. We once watched a double-feature of movies that were filmed in our hometowns: Fargo for me, and for her The Slaughter Rule, a grim indie movie starring an embryonic Ryan Gosling. [I should note, also, that The Slaughter Rule had a criminally underrated soundtrack with a score composed by Jay Farrar that also included great tracks from Vic Chestnut and Neko Case (whose music I know for certain Bella2 introduced me to), among many others. I will absolutely nominate it for the Best Album of 2002 Bracket, if and when the time comes.] Not long after, Bella2 flew back to Great Falls for a few days. She dumped me over the phone the night she returned to Portland. “I quit smoking cigarettes,” was one of the last things she said to me, as if I cared.

To me, Time (The Revelator) will always be a breakup album. I know that it mostly isn’t. Not really. It’s about a lot of things: folklore and myth, ruination, death, time and revelations (duh). And it illustrates those motifs through repeating characters and events: Casey Jones, April 14, Elvis Presley, John Henry, the jags, the Titanic, Abe Lincoln. Did you know that the Titanic hit the iceberg and Honest Abe was shot and a hard luck band made a pittance on a poorly attended show, all on April 14? I didn’t, until I first heard “April the 14th Part 1,” and the pseudo-reprise “Ruination Day, Part 2.” The former is the strongest song on an album chock full of outstanding songs. The latter is the weakest, and the only one that might be deemed unnecessary. Surrounding them is banger after banger, from the titular tone poem “Revelator,” to the raucous and chuckle-inducing “Red Clay Halo,” to the somber and reflective “Elvis Presley Blues,” all reverently set to sparse acoustic guitars, with the occasional banjo plucked for color.

And then there’s the 15-minute-long “I Dream a Highway,” the closer, which comprises more than a quarter of the album’s run time. In a vague approximation of Dylan’s closer on Highway 61 Revisited, “I Dream a Highway” ticks off every theme that Gillian was reaching for across Time (The Revelator) while also being, at least to me, a breakup song. Folklore and myth? Ruination? Death and time? Revelations? Yes, these are the things one contemplates after having their heart ripped out. And as Roy Orbison taught us, only in dreams can you return to a love lost.

A couple of years later I was at a wedding at the foot of the Bitterroot Mountains, about an hour south of Missoula. There I met a close friend of the bride, who mentioned that he was originally from Great Falls. I told him that I had dated a girl from there once and dropped Bella2’s name. “Oh my god, I went to high school with her!” he said. Then he made a sour face. “Ugkh, she was one of The Plastics.”

She had definitely grinned like the guy in Temple of Doom.

When I sat down to write this DC, I started to think about the timeline of when we were a couple, in early 2023. We would have met in January, I think. She definitely ended it in April. Was that break up call on April 14—on Ruination Day? Very possibly! Perhaps that’s why I relied so heavily on this album to get me over that heartbreak hump. It wasn’t the only album that fit that bill, but it was one of the few I distinctly recall listening to most.

I am happy to report that I climbed that hump pretty quickly, thanks in no small part to Gillian, and I ended up meeting my wife later that same year, in the very restaurant where I had been blasting alt- country in the mornings. KC Jones was there when we met. He officiated our wedding.

To be honest, I haven’t listened to a ton of Gillian Welch since the mid-aughts. But I’ll throw one of her albums on every now and again, and I’m always glad that I did. Revival is still, probably, objectively, the best. But Time (The Revelator) is the most personal, and it’s still the one that gets the most rotations. It’s a fucking outstanding album. If you got me drunk enough on the right night, on a roof overlooking downtown, I might even declare it the best of 2021.

Thank you for that story, argle-bargle!

Then, for THE TYRANNY OF DISTANCE, it’s @alex-mitrani.bsky.social. Take it away, Alex!

This is going to be short and sweet because I only started listening to Tyranny of Distance this year, although I may have heard several of the songs earlier on live recordings. I like it a lot and it’s grown on me a bit with each repeat listen. Plenty of good tunes that rock intensely without being abrasive or crushing. Some of the guitar lines, while being totally electric and rocking, bring to my mind more traditional instrumentation like bagpipes and fiddles, there’s something folky about them.

The album title comes from a line in the song ‘Six Months in a Leaky Boat’ by Split Enz, a song which Ted Leo has covered twice, which itself references a history book called ‘the tyranny of distance (how distance shaped Australia’s history)’ (Blainey 1966).

The tyranny of distance

Didn’t stop the cavalier

So why should it stop me?

I’ll conquer and stay free (Split Enz 1982)

Lyrical themes are varied, several seem to have nautical themes as does the cover art, and some of them go quite deep. Some images appear in several songs, for instance ‘parallel run streams’ in biomusicology is followed by ‘parallel or together’ which makes me think of the lines of longitude which run parallel but converge at the poles. ‘Dial Up’ discusses over twenty years of history and the influence of british punk band Crass. Their independent way of living and working inspired many others, and they lived at a place called Dial House which was under threat of eviction at the time the music for this album was being written (Aitch 2001).

The Tyranny of Distance was recorded February 17 - March 3, 2001 and it was released in June 2001 (Ted Leo / Pharmacists 2001). All songs written by Ted Leo who sings and plays guitar. The Pharmacists on this record included no less than 4 different drummers (James Canty, Brendan Canty, Seb Thomson and Danny Leo), James Canty (Nation of Ulysses, Make Up) on second guitar, Alex Minoff and Pete Kerlin on bass, plus Amy Dominguez on cello (who also played cello on Fugazi’s The Argument a month or so earlier). Production was by Brendan Canty (Fugazi) and the recording engineer was Seb Thomson (Trans Am).

There’s a very good article on the making of this record by John Vettesse that is recommended reading for further information (Vettese 2016).

There is a collection of live recordings by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists (approved by the band) on the Internet Archive (Leo and Pharmacists 2024). The show at Brownies in New York City on 2001-09-02 is a good recording that includes live renditions of 9 of the 12 songs from Tyranny of Distance (Leo and Pharmacists 2001).

Have a listen, it’s worth at least 48 minutes and 54 seconds of your time.

Thank you, Alex!

But wait! There’s more! Here’s another one for THE TYRANNY OF DISTANCE by John T. Take it away, John T.!

Ted Leo is one of those musicians that, if you’re predisposed to like the kind of music he makes (wordy, melodic, punk-inspired rock that can turn on a dime from deep human tenderness, to bitter anger to painfully earnest political commentary, all set to some of the best guitar work this side of Thin Lizzy) then you’ll probably LOVE him. He’s the kind of cult artist where every member of the cult felt like he should have been the next Springsteen or Strummer and will not let the point drop. I say this from deep inside the cult myself, for whatever credibility that earns or denies me.

His indie pedigree is spotless. He started in the NY/NJ punk scene in high school, playing in Citizen’s Arrest, Animal Crackers and Puzzlehead before, like the good future-former Catholic boy he was, heading off to college at Notre Dame. He didn’t love the school but he did find a couple of friends with whom he formed mod-punk legends, Chisel who toured the midwest and east coast indie circuit extensively in the mid-’90s. After they broke up in 1997, he played guitar briefly for the Spinanes, formed a band that never recorded called the Sin Eaters and started touring solo. During this time he released an experimental solo record (with an appropriately confusing title tej leo(?) Rx / pharmacists) in ‘99 with help from his future wife Jodi Buonanno from the Secret Stars and a few singles before actually recording a full band Pharmacists EP, Treble In Trouble in 2000.

Though the band named “Pharmacists” had been kicking around since Leo’s Chisel days, the band itself was mostly a pickup affair at this point, consisting of whoever was available for studio sessions or the few live gigs at this point and Tyranny was the last hurrah of that method. This makes Tyranny feel far looser and more experimental than future Pharmacists records, which were more the products of a shit-hot touring band. For example, producer Brendan Cany (of Fugazi fame) drums on some tracks as does his brother James, as well as Ted’s brother Danny and Trans Am’s Seb Thompson. But Ted is the real mastermind, playing a little of everything and changing up arrangements on the fly.

This gives the final product the feel of a ‘60s or ‘70s classic rock record that dips into multiple genres or, as Ted described it “a great mix tape.” There’s finger-picked folk, distorted punk, dreamy pop, thundering Zeppelin riffage and sprightly Irish jig popping up throughout, which complement the lyrics, concerned with searching, exploration and possibility (among other things). Indeed, the title is a lyric from Split Enz’ “Six Months In A Leaky Boat” - a beautiful, almost corny nautical ode to travel and adventure. It was the dawn of a new millennium, Ted was falling in love, he was starting a new musical project with his friends, as well as entering a new period of his life. Also, perhaps crucially, 9/11 and the political dystopia that would dominate his future records (and everyone’s reality) hadn’t yet happened. Time to set sail on a great adventure!

Personally speaking, I think this is a large part of why the record grabbed me like it did when I discovered it at the end of high school. I too was looking out towards a big world full of challenges and rewards and lovers and friends in a potentially infinite variety and it all seemed so damn exhilarating. And I too, was a big hearted lefty, inspired by far too many hours behind big, weighty books, ready to dedicate that heart to love and art and making the world a better place. Everything seemed possible and all the possibilities - good, bad and otherwise - seemed full of wisdom and connection and excitement.

And indeed, this has been one of those records that can truly be described as a “soundtrack to my life.” It was with me on road trips to visit ill-fated long-distance girlfriends and train trips across Europe. I’ve walked through downtowns in towns that are not my own and tacked up the paintings on my walls, lost and found faith, fallen in love, broken up, been hired and fired, seen friends come and go, some from my life, some from this earth, all with Ted’s voice (and guitar) ringing in my ear.

When I first started listening, most of the subjects of the record were fairly abstract to me, which lent them an air of romance and adult wisdom. What’s impressive is how living through the things he sang about, made them seem, rather than reductive or obvious, deeper or more complex. I was naive enough to only see the upside of Going Out To Change The World, having yet to reach the “damn, the world’s got hands”-realization. But every bump in the road, there was Ted, helping me understand, teaching me how to emote and letting me know that it’ll be ok and there’s nothing worse than giving up the fight, personally, politically and anywhere in-between.

But when I went through breakups, there was “Parallel Or Together?” keenly observing things I thought were unique to MY relationship and showing me how there was hope after the “months of an ennui that kills” while also strumming at a seemingly impossible pace and somehow pulling a beautiful melody out of a frenetic mixture of words and instruments. When I went through that oh-so-Millennial Obama-era transition from bright-eyed West Wing liberal to clear-eyed, card-carrying socialist, “My Vien Ilin”’s distorted guitar and raging drums mirrored my own tumult while the lyrics (which manage to touch on The Odyssey, Ulysses, the Legend of Icarus and Vietnam’s DMZ) reminded me that this journey is not new and was never easy but simply part of living through this shitstorm of human folly. “The lightness of necessity… our days they make us, clearly.”

Those multiple literary references are a common feature, as grappling with the intersection of language, history and ideas is yet another recurring theme. “Thre Great Communicator” (re-recorded from a rough, earlier single version) isn’t just a cheeky Reagan reference but a meditation on what how we speak, uh, says about us as people. As a former debater and shameless opinionator, I harbor a delusion that if I could only fully understand myself and the world and communicate that understanding, it could fix everything - my life, my relationships, our broken world. And yet, it never does. “Stove By A Whale” (oh, another literary nod!) also explores this idea while engaging some of the heaviest riffing this side of Zeppelin IV. There’s a video of him playing it during the 2003 New York blackout which, to me, perfectly sums up the hubris and human longing for connection and perfection within broken systems.

There’s so much more I could say about all these songs. (Did you know that the gorgeous “The Gold Finch And The Red Oak Tree” is about the state bird and tree of his native New Jersey? Or that the meditative feedback freakout of “St. John The Divine” melds at least three different St. John’s to delve into Leo’s own crisis of faith? Or that “Under The Hedge” was about a fight he had with Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices?) But I’ll limit myself to simply pointing out the two sublime highlights of what is, for my money, an already perfect record.

“Timorous Me” is one of Leo’s calling card songs (shoutout to anyone else who frequented the fan forums of that name in the 2000’s). It plays like a lost ‘70s radio classic. Starting with Ted alone on guitar, he plays what sounds like a riff lost by the rock gods somewhere in history between Thin Lizzy and Dexy’s Midnight Runners. On top of this he starts spinning a nostalgic first-person story about his old friend Jonny, then and fan named Timory, (a real person who had since passed), it’s all sweet nostalgia and memory without being precious. And then the full band enters and Ted’s bringing us up to the present, singing about his new love Jodi, that newest human connection that keeps him going and gives him strength. Meanwhile, the song explodes into a full Irish wake, those hips are now fully free to move as he celebrates the present, mourns the past and lets us live forever in this perfect moment that we know is about to be over.

The other great gem is the opener, “Biomusicology,” the song I’ve long said I wanted played at my funeral because it is a perfect pop song about, well, fucking life itself. He first demoed it in 1999 and had been road-testing it solo since but the full-band studio version takes it from a dreamy-keyboard exercise into a full-blown anthem. It starts with a tinkling keyboard riff that feels like it’s blowing in off an ocean breeze before his energetic strumming kicks things into gear and then the band fully crashes in. The song builds steadily with keys, guitars, even a cello all melding together as Leo sings about struggling through the bleak and difficult everydayness of life, of finding meaning through community and connection with others. (He even throws in some German, a T.S. Eliot quote about Tristan and Isolde, because this is Theodore Goddamn Leo.) Finally, like wave crashing headlong into a seawall, the song crescendos as he belts out "all in all we cannot stop singing / we cannot start sinking / we swim until it ends / they may kill and we may be parted / but we will ne'er be broken hearted” as his echoplexed guitar fades into the distance like a seagull calling for its mates. A song that never fails to make my chest swell, my courage rise and my heart grow three sizes.

When I mentioned the Irish wake earlier, that was something Ted had also discussed about the album and I find it perfectly fitting. I’m also reminded of the song-cyle aspects of another Irish classic, Astral Weeks, as Tyranny starts and ends with meditations on life and death and the neverending journey humans are making between them This record is equally mournful and celebratory because it’s trying to tackle way more than any pop record could. As Kristin Sage Rokermann  put it in her Pitchfork review, “this album could have sounded like anything. As it turns out, it sounded like everything.” That scope and ambition is something I’m drawn to in all my favorite pieces of art - Moby Dick, Citizen Kane, Double Nickels On The Dime, Infinite Jest, etc. etc. But what makes it great is the execution and I hope that’s what people in this tournament are able to latch onto.

Since I’ve heard people say they prefer personal stories in their DC’s, I’ll end with this one. It’s summer 2006 and I decide to go to the brand-new Pitchfork Music Festival to see Ted Leo & The Pharmacists (in a set that ended up being iconic, with him smashing the mic into his forehead until he was literally bleeding for his art). I remember there was a girl from my Freshman English class who was also a fan and I decided to head over to her Facebook wall (this was years before messenger) and we agreed to meet up. When she asked me where at the festival we would meet that day, I responded to the woman who would, 11 years later end up becoming my wife (with our table at the wedding marked, not by a number but an album cover with a giant whale breaking through the sea) in a way that perhaps would have only made since to me and her - “have you ever come across the vastness of pavement?”

And, some 30+ Rx shows, a busy life and a rescue cat named Timory later, I’ve ne’er been brokenhearted. Thanks, Ted.

Thanks, John T.!

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, #16 Low, THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE defeated #17 Cake, COMFORT EAGLE, 130-86-1.

Thanks,

Kent