I’ve managed to see nine of the ten Best Picture nominees in the theaters, though I’ll probably be skipping The Blind Side.  That definitely meets one of my post-Oscar resolutions from last year, although this accomplishment may have more to do with finding a regular movie-going partner than anything else.  The Oscars are the reason this post was delayed from December, because I don’t live in LA or New York, so I have to wait to see some of these films to hit the small town theaters of Philadelphia in order to see them.  I’ll have an Oscar predictions post closer to the ceremony, but here are my favorite films of the year, regardless of whether they are touched by Oscar’s gold glow.

Best Movie of the Year: Inglourious Basterds

Basterds is my favorite kind of movie—Tarantino aside for a moment—it’s an action movie with a brain. The best action movies are not only smart in how they show action, but also that you care about the outcome and the characters. Not only is Basterds excellently written, with sharp dialogue, and an intricate plot, but what really makes this movie work is two things: One, the well-defined but not shallow characters, and Tarantino’s newfound mastery of suspense. As a total package, this was the best movie-going experience I had all year.

Most Gripping Performance (Actor): Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

It’s no secret that Waltz is one of the major reasons why Basterds works so well. Every time he was on screen, the tension ramps up immediately, as everyone on screen and in the audience knows that they are in the presence of evil genius. Also, I feel bad to say this, but he even beat out Robert Downey, Jr. as having the best on-screen Sherlock Holmes this year, though his character is morally aligned with Moriarity.

Most Gripping Performance (Actress): Mo’Nique, Precious

All I have to say about Mo’Nique performance is that I left seeing Precious having to immediately acquire a new pair of pants.

Best Comic Book Movie: Watchmen

This pretty much wins by default, beating out the awful Wolverine and the rumored-to-be-worse Whiteout.

Best Action Movie: Sherlock Holmes

I’m so happy Guy Ritchie found something worthwhile to apply himself to, and Robert Downey Jr. once again makes it look easy to have fun at the movies.

Best Sci-Fi Film: Moon

This is exactly why I’m excited about the costs of technology coming down. Moon and District 9 both are shining examples of how this can lead to quality “hard” sci-fi at a low budget. What puts Moon over the top is the performance of Sam Rockwell, who basically carried the whole movie and pulled it off.

Most Overlooked Movie: The Brothers Bloom
I love con movies. And I love movies that feel literary. So a lighthearted literary con movie (featuring Rachel Weisz, one of my favorite actresses nonetheless) was too much to pass up. It’s criminal that this movie wasn’t more widely seen, and at the very least, I will force feed this movie to as many of my friends as possible. It’s my new favorite camel.

Best Actor: George Clooney

I’m stunned. Until this year, I’ve only liked Clooney in the Ocean’s movies and under the tutelage of the Coens. However, this year gave me three fantastic movies all starring George Clooney. First was Men Who Stare at Goats, a fantastic tour of the American military and psi-ops, then followed Fantastic Mr. Fox (more on that soon), and Up in the Air, another Jason Reitman triumph. He had a fantastic year. Runner up: Jeff Bridges for the aforementioned Goats and Crazy Heart.

Best Actress: Meryl Streep

Like Mr. Clooney, Meryl Streep had an excellent year, also with three movies that I very much enjoyed. Not only was she in Fantasic Mr. Fox (as the wonderful Mrs. Fox), but also Julie and Julia, easily the most delicious move of the year. It’s Complicated looks like an also-ran in this company, but it had a great cast, and I suspect part of my faults with it may be my age relative to the main cast.

Best Film Based on a Children’s Book: The Fantastic Mr. Fox

I love this movie. It’s completely wonderful in every way. Funny, heartfelt, touching, suspenseful, and artfully made, as well as boasting a great soundtrack, it may be Wes Anderson’s best movie, and features a great cast of Anderson Players and newcomers. A complete joy to watch. Runner up: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Best Romantic Comedy: (500) Days of Summer

A great film that dances around and through genre tropes with death-defying ease, bolstered by the charming performances of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. I haven’t seen this movie in six months, and I still think about scenes in this movie on a weekly basis.

Best Movie I Had to be Talked into Seeing: The Informant!

I went into this movie completely expecting not to like it, but I came out positively raving. Matt Damon’s performance as Mark Whitacre was severely overlooked this awards season. Runner up: Julie and Julia

Best Franchise Movie: Star Trek

Such a venerable franchise had fallen by the wayside until JJ Abrams gave Trek it's groove back. Playful, sexy, and fun, this is a Trek I can't wait to take again. This is how you do a reboot. Enough fan fodder to make it feel like the property, but ground-floor enough for everyone else.  

Here’s my Top Ten:

10. An Education

9. Julie & Julia

8. Whip It!

7. The Hangover

6. Up in the Air

5. Up

4. (500) Days of Summer

3.  The Brothers Bloom

2. Fantastic Mr. Fox

1. Inglouriuous Basterds

Vampire Weekend's sophomore album, Contra, establishes as a fantastic winter album by not being one. Some albums are great for the dark of winter because they make you want to stay home by the fire with hot cocoa and a good book. What makes Contra so great for winter is that it reminds you that fun can be had during winter too. Maybe this will change as time goes on and I hear it in different seasons, but right now this album reminds me of driving on a early winter's morning, as the dim sun rises over a snow covered golf course. Beautiful and a little bit preppy. 

Contra doesn't possess the same punchy character as their debut, but it is certainly good in its own right, and I've only come to like it more the more I've listened to it. Perhaps more importantly, it accomplishes the goal of a sophomore album: it sounds enough like the first one to be well received by fans, but also not just a direct repeat of previous material. In fact, the album starts in a place musically close to the first album, but pushes further and further away as the album progresses. 

The synths are more prominent here, and definitely listening to Discovery's LP from band member Rostam Batmanglij was good preparation for listening to this album. This is especially true of "California English" and "Diplomat's Son," two electronic heavy romps, the later of which includes a sample from MIA. 

Everyone has commented on how Vampire Weekend songs are littered with highbrow references, but I don't think that's what matters. It's really the fact that these cultural ornaments are weaved seamlessly into lush melodies with a texture not unlike chunky peanut butter. Its an album that feels like a Wes Anderson movie: deliberately scripted, well executed, and done up in Futura. 

Also check out Pitchfork's review here. 

Children of Men
Easily the best sci-fi movie of the past decade, this movie took the dystopia and made it feel real. Alfosno Cuarón is an amazing director, and manages to balance the movie’s realistic and gritty feel with it’s sci-fi elements and deeper themes, like a fantastic Christian allegory. The action is also shown in a great way, and the chase shot alone is something to be studied.  Brilliant. 

High Fidelity
One of the more serious movies in the “chick flicks for dudes” genre, High Fidelity is one of the best movies I have ever seen about love and loss. In this movie based on the book by Nick Hornby, Rob Gordon (John Cusack) recounts his “Top Five” breakups in a quest to figure out why he is aging and miserable. Along the way, he discovers that he isn’t miserable because of his relationships, but because of how he feels about his own life. Rob owns a record store, so the movie has an awesome soundtrack, and a wonderful caricature of record store workers in Todd Louiso and Jack Black’s Dick and Barry. 

The Incredibles
Half of this list could have easily been Pixar output, but the reason this reigns supreme is that it’s the best superhero movie of the decade, and manages to do the Watchmen story on screen better than the movie that straight-up adapted the comic book. It’s the best Fantastic Four movie ever made, with both nonstop action and heart through and through. 

Inglourious Basterds
I think Brad Pitt’s character Aldo Raine sums up this movie perfectly. Towards the end of the movie he says, “I think this might just be my masterpiece.” This is Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece. It combines perfectly his mastery of dialogue with the building of suspense in such a way that makes this film a Hitchcockian thrill ride from start to finish. It’s a Bingo!

The Italian Job
I love heist movies. Especially smart ones, and there are few smarter ones that 2003’s remake of the Italian Job. What really shines here is the excellent ensemble cast led by Mark Wahlberg and Charlize Theron, allowing the movie’s thriller and comic tones to work equally well. 

Lord of the Rings
Making the most epic novel in existence into a film is something only a crazy man would attempt. And Peter Jackson is crazy. Lucky for us, he also happens to be a filmmaker of the highest caliber. Pulling this all together and doing it all so well may be the single greatest achievement in film of the past decade. 

O Brother Where Art Thou
What I love about this film is that it is about so many things all at the same time. The Odyssey, the South (politics, culture) in the 1930’s, Americana, etc. Featuring great performances from Coen Bros. staples, this is a vision of a film. And features the best (and most important) soundtrack of the decade). 

Sideways
Not since Annie Hall has this movie deconstructed nerdish maledom in mid-life so well. Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church play not only well-rounded male friends, but absolutely believable as real people. The relationships between the characters feel vibrant and real, making this one of the best depictions of real people on film. 

Stranger Than Fiction
I have watched this movie upwards of 10 times, and there are still metaphysical questions to be answered. This from a quirky rom com starring Will Ferrell, Dustin Hoffman, and Maggie Gyllenhall. This movie is funny, poignant, and deeper than it first appears.  

Unbreakable
M. Night’s best film, and the best superhero origin deconstruction ever put to film. Before Chris Nolan ever decided to take on the Dark Night, M. Night imagined what superheroes would look like in our world without loosing the iconography that makes them superheroes. Highly underrated, with excellent character performances by both Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. 

8. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

Most people are not shocked that I had never heard of Animal Collective until a month ago. This is because most people have not heard of Animal Collective. Briefly sampling their back catalogue via the Interwebs, I know why. Most people don’t like avant-anything. This is why MPP is a revelation. After apparent years of experimenting on the fringes of pop music, Animal Collective ride back from the wilderness on biomechanical creations—like Terminators that are made to love and dance.

Listening to the album is a good experience, and it’s not in-your-face so much as in-your-mind. The album functions on a fairly deep level, with synth and bass lines swirling around steady vocals. This is the kind of thing that makes me love End of the Blank Lists, because without them, I still would not have heard of Animal Collective. Thank you, music media prophets. This makes up for your obsession with Grizzly Bear.

Key Tracks: “My Girls,” “Summertime Clothes,” “Brother Sport”

Summertime Clothes - Animal Collective

There are not enough good bands with lead female vocalists, although this decade’s biggest trend—bands with vocal leads of both genders (Arcade Fire, The Hush Sound, Silversun Pickups)—is a welcome move. Alongside the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Metric’s Emily Haines is like a mother hen of indie rock. She leads the pack from the rear, often worrying more for groups other than her own. More guitar driven than their previous work, this is a welcome shift.

Fantasies opens with “Help, I’m Alive,” and “Sick Muse,” both have extremely well constructed hooks and driving guitars, which in turn shape the baseline of the album. The syth still sparkles, especially on “Satellite Mind,” and “Twilight Galaxy,” which leaves you with a bright and happy feeling.  Despite some of the feelings expressed on the album, seeing Metric at a show this past week, you can tell Haines and Co. have a blast playing these songs. What some “serious indie bands” forget is that music is fun, and that’s exactly to what this album aspires. I could write a several pages long pontification about how the lyric “Who would you rather be/The Beatles or the Rolling Stones?” is a metaphor for different kinds of relationships, but it could easily just be the fun kinds of questions us Rob Gordon-types ask each other.

Key Tracks: “Help, I’m Alive,” “Gimme Sympathy,” “Twilight Galaxy”

Help Im Alive - Metric

6. Mastodon - Crack the Skye

Mastodon may be the most important metal band of today, and this is not because Crack the Skye may be the first modern metal album I have truly loved. Simultaneously a throwback to the days of progressive rock and a torch leading the way to metal of tomorrow, Crack the Skye exists apart from the ‘thrash metal’ that dominated the post-hair metal hard rock scene.  Bringing in Brendan O’Brien as producer on this disc was a very wise move. His trademark is texture, and helps make the layers of sound work towards a higher purpose, as well as making the vocals truly shine (a rarity for metal bands today, IMO). Everything was accessible if you were in the right state of mind. Or maybe two tracks longer than ten minutes on an album doesn’t bother me because I listen to Rush.

Mastodon blows right past accessible and shoots for cosmically epic. There’s something beautiful in the texture of this album. The pounding drums and the spinning riffs on the opener “Oblivion” meld into something not unlike chunky peanut butter, smooth and crunchy at the same time. This goes the same for “Divinations,” as well, which is easily my favorite song on the album. The guitar solo on here sounds like Muse’s “Knights of Cydonia” or perhaps more true—Satriani’s “Surfing With the Alien,” and is a more ethereal version of space-surf. This is a band unafraid to sing about the Czar and Rasputin for ten minutes. This is a metal band that is unafraid to have a banjo open a single. And no fear is good. Very good indeed.

Key Tracks: “Divinations,” “The Last Baron”

There may be no band in the history of popular music more controversial among its own fans than Weezer. Most of Weezer's fans are my age or older, discovering Weezer in the wake of their 2001 album or from their first album in 1994. Among these fans and most music critics, Weezer's debut album and 1996's Pinkerton are the high points of their career. 

One of the reason for the success of early Weezer is that geeks finally had a band they could identify with. Weezer spoke to people who were outsiders in high school as peers, on their level, and in a way they understood. This trend continued into 2002's Maladroit, which while good, showed Cuomo's limits as a person on the outside. 

You see, what made Pinkerton such a later success (and the most influential album of the past 15 years) is Cuomo's heartfelt and personal lyrics. He perfectly captured the feelings of being an outsider, not being able to get the girl, loneliness, not being cool, etc. 

Flash forward to 2005's Make Believe, and "Beverly Hills." Something hand changed. Rivers Cuomo got happy. Basically, from the fans' perspective, this is a disaster. I quite like Make Believe, and I actually think it's better than Maladroit. However, last year's Red Album was an absolute disaster. Some of the songs were fun, but it was like cereal with too many marshmallows. So sweet and sacchrine, you get sick before you finish the bowl. 

And that brings us to Raditude. It is so obvious that Cuomo is a great pop song writer, and he really enjoys writing songs. However, he is only good writing in a pseudo-autobiographical manner. Given that Cuomo is married with children and seems to be really freakin' happy about it. 

Raditude is meant to be an ironic party album. The album you pop in when all your friends are drunk...ironically. It's meant for older hipsters who want to love pop but are too cool for it. Basically, if you're cool enough to listen to Weezer and can survive Miley Cyrus, this might be the greatest albums of all time. 

Moreso than their previous effort, the songs are catchy, if shallow-seeming, and the band has a much more cohesive sound. "(If Your Wandering If I Want You To) I Want You To" is my favorite song on the album, and the best song they've done in four years. Also, "The Girl Got Hot," is an excellent high school revenge fantasy when you consider that Cuomo is the girl in question. 

None of this can explain the embarrassment I feel over even listening to "Can't Stop Partying," which seems to be destined to be the new "Fight For Your Right." Expect most people to miss the point. 

Overall, I actually really enjoyed the album, but as a long time Weezer fan, I almost hate myself for liking it at all. 

Album info at Last.fm

First of all, this is a fun album. It may get dark and deep throughout, but remain fun throughout. Iggy Pop wrote most of the albums lyrics, and Bowie dominated the musical direction. It’s one of those albums that has a distinct sound, which each track part of a larger sonic whole. The drums are especially well recorded here, with some of the best cymbal crashes I’ve ever heard on a record. 

It opens with the title track, which is probably Pop’s most famous song. With its distinctive drum beat and infectious guitar riff, the song can’t help but get stuck in your head for the rest of the day. The song is about Pop rediscovering what to live for and dealing with drug and alcohol rehab. Though some of the lyrics here seem negative, it’s largely an affirmative song. Easily one of the greatest rock songs of all time, and a great Side One Track One. The Australian band Jet also owes pretty much their entire career to this song. 

Drug abuse and recovery are the common themes running throughout the album, including “Some Weird Sin,” “Tonight,” and “Turn Blue.” Later covered by Bowie himself, “Tonight” has a really cool 50’s-style introduction. Here Pop deals with addiction and recovery. This may be the best anti-drug record ever made. 

“The Passenger” may be my favorite song on the album, as it has a fantastic guitar riff and a nice driving beat. The lyrics are simply the point of view of a passenger in a car, making it a great driving song. Also, the pacing of the lyrics may have influenced Franz Ferdinand’s “Shopping for Blood” or Bell X1’s “The Great Defector,” but I could just be imagining things. 

I think the song where Bowie’s contribution is most felt is “Neighborhood Threat,” which also happens to be my second favorite on the album. Dark lyrics backed by busy keyboard, drums, and backing vocals, with the guitar joining but sometimes surging over, make the song surge with menace.

Overall, this is a fantastic album. 

If any album truly is representative of a “classic rock,” the fourth Led Zeppelin album is it. At least half of the album are staple songs on FM radio, and one is the purported to be the song with the most FM spins ever.

The release of this album, including the symbols, the lack of title, and the sleeve design,  was a reaction by the band to the negative and somewhat dismissive critical reception of Led Zeppelin III. It may have been the unfortunate timing in the wake of the overnight sensation that were Crosby, Stills and Nash. Led Zeppelin’s third album was criticized for being a departure from the raw, hard, rock of their first two albums for an embracing  more folksy and acoustic sound. Jimmy Page had this to say in an interview with Cameron Crowe:

That LP had just come out and because acoustic guitars had come to the forefront all of a sudden: LED ZEPPELIN GO ACOUSTIC! I thought, Christ, where are their heads and ears? There were three acoustic songs on the first album and two on the second.

The album was recorded in several stages, with a bulk of it done at Headley Grange, a house in East Hampshire, using the pioneering “mobile studio.”

I will definitely say that this is my favorite Led Zeppelin album, with each traffic building on the sound and the themes of the album: women and Lord of the Rings. This doesn’t exactly make it distinct from the rest of the catalogue, but to me this marks the high point of sheer creativity from the band. 

It opens with one of the best Side One, Track Ones in the history of pop music: “Black Dog.” Lyrically simple, the whole song is built around an idea for a rolling bass line by John Paul Jones. It also features a relatively simple drum pattern, however the music is all written in a series of shifting and complex time signatures, making it difficult to reproduce live without alteration. A rousing tour-de-force of a hard-driving rock song, it’s a perfect way to open the album. 

Following this is a fast-paced song built on the traditional 12-bar blues structure: “Rock and Roll.” First, I love two things about this song: one, the drum pickup by John Bonham that opens and song, and two, the fact that this sounds like pretty much the most amazing jam session ever recorded. The song feels organic and raw, and full of the energy of a live band. 

“The Battle of Evermore” follows, and this comes from the ‘acoustic’ side of Zeppelin. Essentially coming from Jimmy Page messing around on John Paul Jones’ mandolin. It’s an epic, sprawling song, detailing either a battle from Olde England or Tolkien. I would love to go back in time to teach this to medieval minstrels. Accompanying Robert Plant on vocals was Sandy Denny, who is the only additional vocalist ever on a Led Zeppelin track. All the voices come together nicely, and I think it’s my second favorite song on the album. 

Ahh, “Stairway to Heaven.” The only lyrics printed in the album jacket (and in a cool medieval font Plant found), it is truly Led Zeppelin’s signature song. It’s also possibly the most popular song never released as a single, as it was too long and the band refused to edit it down. Other than that, I’m not sure what else to say other than that it’s pretty obvious why this song is so epic.

Kicking off Side Two is “Misty Mountain Hop,” which has some of my favorite drums on any Led Zeppelin song, and this combined with the sheer fun of this song makes it my favorite. It’s a tour-de-force of rock featuring not only Bonham’s drums, but very nice and melodic play between the guitars and keyboards. If/when the Zep ever comes to Rock Band, this is the top of my list. 

“Four Sticks” is an abstract of a song, rhythmically complex and rich it sound. It was notoriously difficult to record, with the title of the song coming from the four drumsticks Bonham used during the song. Also, the lead guitar riff from “Rock and Roll” was born out of frustration of recording this song. 

The penultimate track on the album is also a personal favorite of mine. “Going to California” was reportedly written about Joni Mitchell. It also features the mandolin, and musically recalls the surf rock and folk rock movements, and certainly captures the feeling of California as a land of dreams, a place that could represent anything it needs to. 

The album closer is a cover of the Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie song “When the Levee Breaks,” written about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. It’s actually my least favorite song on the album. I appreciate the structure, but I think (sadly) the recording and slowing it down makes it feel overly muddy. 

Overall, this is obviously one of the best albums of all time, and when it comes down to it, the reason why is because each song is great, and how they fit together is even greater. Also on the list of things everyone should experience listening to on vinyl. 

I enjoy being "dragged" to movies (because I enjoy it, there usually isn't much resistance) because I often see movies I wouldn't otherwise, and sometimes it really works out. The Informant! is a perfect example. Ocean's aside, I usually give Steven Soderbergh films a wide berth. 

Yesterday I was "dragged" to see The Informant!, starring Matt Damon as Mark Whitacre, an executive at Archer Daniels Midland, a bunch of TV actors (ranging from sitcoms to Star Trek), and Biff Tannen from Back to the Future. The cast is certainly eclectic, but along with Damon's ability to lose himself in the role helps to reinforce the idea that none of these people are particularly extraordinary, but the situation they find themselves in is a fantastic one to be sure.

A rare comedy based on a true story, and perhaps even rarer, a comedy based on white collar crime (the only other one being Office Space, though I find Boiler Room to be pretty funny) and rarer still, a discussion of price fixing outside the economic classroom. 

As the audience gets pulled further and further into Whitacre's deception (and layers thereof), one can't help but feel sorry for the man, and Soderbergh is deft at making no one in the movie seem like a particularly bad guy, and using an unreliable narrator to the fullest effect. 

This is a guy who believes he's a spy, and the voice-over insights into Whitacre's mind (polar bears have black noses) and the music used both effectively serve to help the audience understand the protagonists' mind set. 

In short, this movie reminds me of what would have happened if the Cohen Brothers had directed Catch Me If You Can. It's smart even if the characters aren't, and it makes the protagonist sympathetic but not overly so. 

Highly recommended. 

Also, there is a book, and This American Life did a show about Whitacre. 

Rock ‘n’ roll is the opposite of safe. It should be experimental and forward pushing, and a little dangerous. It was true when Elvis Presley ruled the charts, and it’s true today. I love bands who continue to experiment and push the limits of popular music as well as their own. Some of rock’s greatest artists are also its greatest innovators. The Beatles, Hendrix, and Brian Wilson all come to mind. U2 is also on that list. 

U2 is a fascinating band, especially when their transatlanticism is concerned. Throughout their careers, U2 have oscillated between Europe and America, creating an especially varied catalogue. Achtung Baby, their 1991 release, is definitely the best synthesis of the two, deftly spanning the sea between their 1987 masterwork The Joshua Tree with this week’s album, 1993’s Zooropa. 

This may be the last album that would be expected of a band that delivered such a heartfelt love letter to American roots-rock a mere six years prior. Even more jarring is that it was released during the height of both American grunge and Britpop, both of which also looked to earlier, less technologically complex forms of rock contrasting the over-produced albums of the 1980s. 

Rather than echo the melodic pop or wailing guitar solos of their contemporaries, U2 decided to make a record that captured the ‘new Europe’ of a reunited Germany and a fallen USSR. Achtung Baby was perched on the verge of the post-Cold War environment, but after three legs of the Zoo TV Tour, U2 felt the need to capture the historical moment as well as the media overload satire from the tour with new studio material. Originally conceived as an EP (a format that had always been more successful in Europe than America), to be recorded on break between tour legs, at Bono’s urging it was expanded into full LP-length. 

The result is something very European, and very Brian Eno driven. 

The title track opens the album, and fittingly the first part is based on a warmup jam the band was using at the time. It then fades into “Zooropa” proper, which outlays a vision of a future Europe by way of William Gibson’s cyberpunk, as Bono and The Edge had been reading Gibson’s work at the time. I think it’s my favorite song on the album, perhaps simply of the central conceit of using advertising slogans like “Be All That You Can Be” and “Better By Design” intermixed with ‘traditional’ lyrics. From this perspective, it reminds me of an affirmative version of what Thom Yorke would do in the early and mid-2000s with Kid A and Hail to the Thief. 

'That's what I want it to be. Legal drugs! Why else would you buy an album these days? Have you read anything by (William) Gibson? It's sort of fucked-up sci-fi. And ('Zooropa') shows you what I mean when I say the textures on this record were very much influenced by what he writes about the future.' -Bono, August 1993.

“Babyface” follows, an untraditional love ballad depicting a man pining over the woman he loves- a model/actress whose photo he is manipulating for a magazine. It brings the idea of celebrity and privacy as part of the media machine into the album, and does a nice job being a subtle jab at ever growing celebrity journalism. 

 “Numb” was a very unconventional lead single from the band that had scored big with anthemic hits like “Streets With No Name.” It’s an industrial-flavored spoken word track, and one of the few times The Edge has done the lead vocal tracks. It’s a list of ‘don’ts’ spoken over a guitar riff and other electronic “noise,” with the intent being to try and capture the feeling of media overload, making one “numb” to all of it. I have to say after listening to it three or four times, it really grows on you. Also, the pacing of The Edge’s lyrics reminds me a lot of M.I.A.’s hit “Paper Planes.” I would totally love to mashup the two.  

The video is notable on its own:

“Lemon” features Bono singing mostly in falsetto over extremely processed guitar sounds. The song is about voyeurism as well as the transience of man’s creations. “A man builds a city/With banks and cathedrals/A man melts the sand so he can/See the world outside” is probably one of my favorite U2 lyrics ever. I also think an acoustic version of this song would be pretty awesome. 

Perhaps in a out-of-place-at-first-glance addition to the album is “Stay (Faraway, So Close!),” which was written about Frank Sinatra. It has a very electronic sound, as is typical of the album, but the lyrics are actually very soulful and heartfelt. The chord progressions backing it are actually very classic, but remixed and processed to sound electronic and foreign, fitting in with the whole Zooropa theme. 

“Daddy’s Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car” may be my second favorite song on the album, and it begins with some interference and a very Eastern European-Soviet style horn clip. Immediately it is interrupted by industrial-flavored percussive and electronic sounds. Recounting a snapshot in the life of a young girl who has befriended a very generous older gentleman, it shows how she has nothing to worry about-- he takes care of everything-- but she feels alone. Sure, she has nice things, but she is totally dependent on him. 

“Some Days Are Better Than Others” is what I think of when I think of U2 in transition. It’s a very typical U2 vocal track. Bono’s singing and occasional backing by other band members over very electronica-style music. It makes for an interesting combination, especially as the latter crescendos halfway through the song. 

After listening for this review, “The First Time” is now one of my favorite U2 songs. It features some of Bono’s best use of Christian/Biblical imagery. It’s an excellent ballad, and sounds like nothing else on the album. Here’s a link to the lyrics, because I don’t know what else I can say about this song. 

“Dirty Day” takes a lot of its lyrics from things Bono’s dad would say, and they sound like what we in America think of as nuggets of Irish wisdom. “You can’t even remember/what I’m trying to forget” and “The days run away like horses over hills.” Perhaps the most powerful lyrics in the song, especially since the passing of Bono’s father in 2001:

Wake up
Somethings you can’t get around
I’m in you
More so when they put me in the ground

 Closing the album is a true meeting of digital and analog. Johnny Cash sings lead vocals in a song titled “The Wanderer” about a man searching for God in a post-apocalyptic world. Adam Clayton’s bass line, though distorted, is the predominant instrument here, and it serves as a distorted echo of the guitar work on Cash’s “I Walk the Line.” It’s a haunting song, and it truly shows of Cash as the master storyteller as well as being an awesome thematic coda for this idea of the future.

As a bonus, “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me,” U2’s single from 1995’s Batman Forever. It easily could have been on this album, and would have fit thematically better than some others perhaps. It sounds like electronica-glam, and a true synthesis of that idea. It’s a fun song, playful and loud. Reminds me of neon lights. (Link to the video because embedding is disabled by Universal Music Group)

Overall, I think this is now a hidden gem in the U2 discography. In lieu of me prattling on more, here’s what bassist Adam Clayton had to say about it:

 "It occured to me... look at the history of the band and then the Zooropa album... and looking at the history of The Beatles, and everything they'd done and learned, and then suddenly...Sergeant Pepper, which redefined the whole ballgame, and produced a different language, a different sound. And I think Zooropa achieves a new language for Bono to use - a language that's more his own, that he feels more comfortable with... 

And musically, I think, we've defined, or found, a sound that we're entitled to use...It's a record deep with mystery for me.' -Adam speaking to John Waters for Race of Angels

Overall, this is now certainly a hidden gem in the U2 catalogue, especially given the direction they took with their three albums of the 00’s. Some of the ‘European/electronic’ U2 does creep in on No Line on the Horizon, but I think I’d like to see more of this side of U2 again in the future. 

Also of note (to some): all of the liner notes are in Helvetica.