Hey folks!

Today’s Best Album of 2001 match is:

#9 Spoon, GIRLS CAN TELL

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vs.

#24 The Coup, PARTY MUSIC

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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 GIRLS CAN TELL, it’s @levin.bsky.social. Take it away, Elana!

Girls Can Tell is a perfect album. It was a comeback album from a band I did not care about till they came back. After two disappointing 90s albums their label dropped them. They went on hiatus and somewhere in there Britt Daniel studied The Kinks and Elvis Costello and became a first-rate songwriter.

Daniel’s got an instantly recognizable rock and roll voice. He emotes like a champ. He’s got throaty raspyness with an underlying sweetness. He makes interesting choices in his vocal melodies and line delivery. He can Beatles when he wants to–John Lennon specifically.

Spoon aren’t full on retro time travelers like The Lilys or Apples in Stereo (bands I also love). This may be why Spoon are more popular. Yet I often find other bands that aim to modernize 60s & 70s sounds end up with bland results or incorporate only the aspects of contemporary music I don’t like. Spoon perfects the balance.

Spoon was co-founded by drummer Jim Eno. Spoon sounds like a band co-founded by a drummer. The piano? Percussive. Vibraphone going bing bong? Percussive. Daniel’s vocals on songs like “Believing Is Art” are EXTREMELY percussive. Loads of syncopation. Apparently they are fellow fans of Jamaican Ska.

There’s a lot going into these songs: yes Power Pop but also a Steely Dan chord here, a Duane Eddy guitar there. A Marquis Moon bass moment. And bless them for having vocal harmonies even if it’s just Daniel multitracked.

• Everything Hits at Once is an all time great breakup song. The lyrics have the broadly relatable feelings that will connect with anyone who’s ever fallen out of love. At the same time, the lyrics have a specificity in their vacillation between confidence and doubt that make it vulnerable and interesting.

• That song’s rhythm creeps up on you. Try singing the word “sneak” along with those little lightly played keyboard chords.

• How was Me and the Bean not a single?! (Probably because it is a cover)

• Lines in the Suit is my favorite Elvis Costello song of 2001.

• The Fitted Shirt borrows Kashmir’s groove, but its about the challenge of finding slim fit shirts in the 90s. It’s also about complicated Dad feelings and nostalgia.

• In retrospect Anything You Want sounds 90s by way of Todd Rundgren. Great vocals.

• Take A Walk goes hard. A real rocker that presages 2022’s Lucifer on the Sofa.

• 10 20 am is like the chamber pop songs The Kinks put on b-sides. Imagine if Spoon had a Dave Davies for backing vocals. I love Daniel’s voice and yet, what if he had a younger brother with even more rasp and nasality!?! IMAGINE!

• Take the Fifth has become an all time favorite song. It reminds me ofLilys’ perfect distillation of 1966. The song is tight as fuck till a key few moments when it deliberately sounds like it’s about to fall apart. Like the tension of the off-key piano notes they hit at 1:46. That’s drama!

• This Book is a Movie is an early exploration to a cinematic style they’ll expand in the future. Bit of a Steely Dan vibe?

• Chicago At Night is a modern take on The Kinks’ character study songs but loaded with self recognition too.

The album is over too soon and I still don’t know what exactly it is that Girls Can Tell. Perhaps the title is a play on Dave Edmund’s song Girls Talk (written by Elvis Costello)?

I’m usually not into the bands Spoon get’s filled away with. I find that era of indie band full of dullness and dudes that can’t sing. But Spoon is MY indie band. Maybe yours too?

Thank you, Elana! (For those interested, you can find the original post here.)

Then, for PARTY MUSIC, it’s @renamj.bsky.social. Take it away, Rena!

2001 was the year that I started getting deeper into music. Sure, I had always liked music and grew up watching music videos. But now I was reading reviews on AllMusic and posting on message boards (I was 17 and something of a late bloomer in this regard). I remember when year-end "Best of" lists were released for the greatest albums of 2001 according to critics, featuring acclaimed albums like The Strokes' Is This It, Bob Dylan's "Love and Theft," The White Stripes' White Blood Cells, etc. But there was one list I recall, maybe a record store newsletter, that had The Coup's Party Music. At that time, I had never heard of the leftist hip-hop group from Oakland. The original cover from June 2001 depicted Boots Riley and Pam the Funkstress blowing up the World Trade Center(!!!). After 9/11, the band created a second cover for the album with a flaming martini glass. Boots Riley on the original album cover after September 11:

"There's been a whitewash in the media over the past couple days over what the U.S.'s role in the world is, and the fact that they kill hundreds of thousands of people per year to protect profit. Now how can I get to the point where I could be saying that on the world stage, and interrupt the lies that CBS, CNN, NBC, and everyone is saying? In my view, that [would be] by keeping the cover. Not because I think by looking at the cover you get all of this message that I'm telling you, but as a way to have a platform to interrupt the stream of lies that are being told right now."

I didn't actually hear Party Music, my first Coup album, until years later but I instantly became a fan. It features some of their very best songs - "Everythang," "Wear Clean Draws," "Ride the Fence," "Heven Tonite." It is fiercely political and makes for an ideal soundtrack while living in the hellscape that is America in 2026, with lyrics addressing late capitalism, social justice, and racism. Worth a listen even if the music itself (West Coast funk/hip-hop/R&B) isn't exactly in your wheelhouse. Donald Trump is even mentioned by name! There is a track titled "5 Million Ways to Kill a C.E.O.," long before Luigi Mangione and the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. But my favorite lyrics are from "Heven Tonite":

"Let's make health care centers on every block
Let's give everybody homes and a garden plot
Let's give all the schools books
Ten kids a class
And give 'em truth for their pencils and pads
Retail clerk - 'love ballads' where you place this song
Let's make heaven right here
Just in case they wrong"

Look, I know everything is so terrible right now. It's impossible to read the news without falling into despair. But I sincerely hope like-minded people can work on building a better world.

Pam the Funkstress sadly passed away in 2017, and Boots Riley is now a director who made the arthouse black comedy Sorry to Bother You and the upcoming I Love Boosters featuring Demi Moore. I'm glad I got to see The Coup over a decade ago at Brooklyn Bowl - they put on a great live show! And we'll always have Party Music.

Thank you, Rena!

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

Thanks,

Kent