Our four pop culture critics take their best shot at summing up the highlights of 1999 in books, movies, and music
Joe Tarr
Moby, Play—Some of the songs are bouncy romps (Appalachian techno, or gospel raves, or whatever amalgam you want to concoct) but mostly the CD just makes me sad: Moby seems haunted by death and pain and seeking some kind of redemption he knows he'll never get. Which is why the samples of old blues and gospel are so at home here, since that music (at least today) sounds so much more mysterious and earnest. And it's also why this disc ultimately ends up being so uplifting—it makes you feel connected to humanity, with all its messy uncertainties and failings.
Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs—On this three-disc opus, Stephin Merritt gives us 69 songs about love from every which way (lustful love, quirky love, obsessive love, angry love, puppy love, and lots of broken-hearted love)—none of which ring terribly true, since to experience so much love would have surely killed him. But Merritt creates such a magical world, you fall into it and make it your own. There are so many gems here, you feel like you're raiding the vaults of Tin Pan Alley. Or as Merritt sings, "The book of love is filled with music/ In fact that's where music comes from/ Some of it is just transcendental/ Some of it is just really dumb/ But I love it when you sing to me..."
Mos Def, Black on Both Sides—Anyone who still thinks that hip hop isn't music should put this CD on and listen to the song "Know That"—it's one of the most intricate and emotionally powerful songs I've heard in recent years, as the tension and anger of rappers Mos Def and guest Talib Kweli are weaved with the soulful, sampled chorus, "And know that I love you." Overall the disc is both forceful, engaging and mournful, and exactly the thing hip hop needed to end the century on.
Le Tigre, eponymous—Kathleen Hanna, (who practically invented the riot grrl movement with Bikini Kill), resurrects her career with this joyous collection of pop-punk songs, singing about Cassavetes, grrl power and riding the Metro in the Big Apple.
Sally Timms, Cowboy Sally's Twilight Laments...For Lost Buckaroos—Timms doesn't aim for a gritty realism (which too often ends up sounding fake) the way so many alt.country bands do, but rather creates a lush, wistful soundscape to frame her gorgeous vocals. It is both pretty and sad.
Tom Waits, Mule Variations—No one does junkyard, hobo, down-and-out music better than him.
Joe Henry, Fuse—Not as strong as 1996's brilliant Trampoline, Henry still manages to deliver a solid dose of eerie, jazz-influenced tunes. Like Tom Waits, Henry acts the down-and-out persona, but his songs are more expressionist mood pieces than stories.
The Mekons, Hen's Teeth and other lost fragments of unpopular culture, vols. 1 and 2—Arguably the best punk band that ever existed (at least in terms of endurance and diversity), these two compilations showcase them at their sloppy, inconsistent best as they tackle nearly every pop music style (techno, country, rockabilly, rock, folk), and even get some of them right.
Sleater-Kinney, The Hot Rock—The band doesn't try to shatter your world the way it did on its previous two landmark LPs, but instead grope for where it should go next. Fortunately, what hasn't changed is its emotional intensity: the passion is always intact, even if those feelings are shrouded in ambivalence.
Also Noteworthy:
Sparklehorse, Good Morning Spider; Rahzel, Make the Music 2000; Kool Keith, Black Elvis/Lost In Space; The Roots, Things Fall Apart; Shannon Wright, Flightsafety.
Coury Turczyn
I never thought I'd say this; at the beginning of the year, it would have seemed too inconceivable, too mind-boggling to even consider. In years past, you see, it's been all too easy for me to compile long lists of genuinely dreadful Hollywood movies instead of the usual "Top Ten," to hoot with a tear in my eye over the splayed corpse of American cinema. Not only did studios churn out great gobs of celluloid landfill with their "A" pictures, but they couldn't even make bread-and-butter sequels and rip-offs very competently. Who would have expected this year to be any different?
Yet here it is: 1999 was a great year for movies.
Somehow, the idiots who were making all the wrong decisions up on the top floors got replaced by geniuses who made lots of right decisions. Though there were still plenty of head-scratching screw-ups—Instinct: why?—a lot of great movies got the greenlight this year. Hell, even the standard-issue genre flicks were better than average, and the come-from-behind indie winners were true indies. In no particular order, here are some movies that will qualify as memories from 1999:
The Matrix—Keanu Reeves? Virtual reality? Nevertheless, the Wachowski brothers successfully applied a graphic novel style to a science fiction shoot 'em up, and managed to throw in a few ideas to boot.
Election—As revealing of American attitudes as any social satire made, Alexander Payne's Election was also a milestone in what should be an interesting career.
The Blair Witch Project—Wildly overrated though it was, Blair Witch nevertheless delivered the creeps in what was actually a piece of experimental film/video. Now if only TV shows would stop parodying Heather Donahue's crying confession scene (Joan Rivers...now that's scary).
Three Kings—Juggling more concepts than any three regular war movies, directorDavid O. Russell managed to fuse dark comedy, politics, action, and sentiment into a silver-bleached epic.
American Beauty—Forget the yawning chasms of Ordinary People. American Beauty is the great drama of suburban life today.
Eyes Wide Shut—It may not be the Stanley Kubrick finale we hoped for, but it certainly deserved better than the witless, thoughtless reviews it inspired as critics raced to see who could kick over his tombstone first.
Fight Club—Meanwhile, the far more empty-headed Fight Club won raves; too bad it didn't make much sense once you scraped off the glossy finish. Nevertheless, it's one of the most wickedly humorous and graphically inventive films in years.
Rushmore—Completely unique, with a humor all its own. Let's hope studios keep letting Wes Anderson make movies the way he sees them.
Being John Malkovich—And the same can be said, even moreso, for Spike Jonze's directorial debut, taking quirk where no movie has gone before...and still making a point.
Toy Story 2—Who said sequels couldn't be better than the originals? While certainly not as groundbreaking, Toy Story 2 was nevertheless the funnier, more cinematic of the two.
Sixth Sense—Yup, a studio-made supernatural horror flick that was not only creepy, but reintroduced pacing and a sense of quiet back to major studio movies.
And then there are the ones I still haven't seen: The Iron Giant, The Green Mile, The Limey, Man on the Moon, Cradle Will Rock, Sweet and Lowdown, Magnolia... It's truly been a year to give 1939 a run for its money.
John Sewell
Buzzcocks Modern—The consensus among the hipper-than-thou punkers of the world is that this album is another case of a band of yore trying to convert nostalgia into a few extra bucks. Truth be known, The Buzzcocks have been back together for over 10 years now—which is a damn sight longer than the first incarnation of the band.
Modern finds the band at the peak of its abilities, and it's not just rehashing the prototype pop/punk hybrid it perfected in the late '70s either. The new album is thoroughly modern indeed. Sure, there are plenty of loud guitars, but there's also lots of inventive studio techniques, electronics, and even a sample or two. And underneath all the modernism and postmodernism is the focus on hooks and melodies that always made this band so great. This album is a pure joy that any fan of energetic anglopop should love.
The Wonders of the Invisible World David Gates—This collection of short stories lives up to Gates' high standard of darkly comic tales of unraveling American manhood. Most of the stories in this collection somehow involve pivotal points of early middle-age life when the protagonists come to some kind of realization that their best-laid plans just aren't going to work out. As I careen toward mid-life, these tales provide an ugly mirror of some of my own experiences. It's hard to read this kind of stuff and not flinch just a little. Gates' bleak portraits are unflattering, compelling, and, above all, honest.
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings at the Bijou Theatre Center, February 26, 1999—Sure, this stuff is postmodern folk, Americana, modern primitive or whatever you want to call it. And it's obvious that Gillian and David have done their homework on understanding and interpreting the classics.
Welch and Rawlings' vocals and flawless acoustic playing mix into a seamless whole that is downright ethereal. And, of course, the duo delivered in spades on this particular night.
For me, what brings Welch ahead of the Americana pack is her total avoidance of Hee Haw clichés and a certain high brow sensibility in her approach. Welch is a chanteuse of the highest order, and her death-folk stylings are so downright brutal, morose, and pure that I can't help but adore her.
The Mr. T Experience Alcatraz—It looks like Dr. Frank and Co. decided to end the century with a new twist to the MTX formula. Alcatraz abandons the typical buzzsaw guitars in favor of less distortion and an organ added to the lineup. So many of the group's core fans may scream foul because they want the band to continue the same three chord Ramones approach forever.
Actually, the new MTX sound is leaps and bounds beyond its earlier releases. I think Frank has finally hit on a way to expand his sound without sacrificing the skewed wit that made the band popular to begin with. It's as if he added an entire new range of colors to his musical palate. Here's how it works: MTX - distortion + organ = a wider spectrum of sound and an intact sense of humor. Progress is wonderful.
Boards of Canada Music Has The Right to Children—On first listening, Music Has The Right to Children seems like a playful excursion into the world of ambient electronica. The CD has plenty of quiet passages, repetitive loops, and nursery rhyme samples that initially sound calming. After a few days, I decided that this album might be hiding a dark undercurrent. There's something just a little bit scary about it.
I couldn't say just exactly what Boards of Canada are trying to convey with the odd pastiche of sounds on this collection. Whatever the message (or lack of it), the album is strangely compelling. I can't get enough of it.
Music For Torching A. M. Homes—A.M. Homes never fails to deliver a sense of paranoia, and her new book is no exception. Drifting between standard narrative techniques and more surreal passages, the novel is a skewed morality tale about the darker side of the family experience that offers readers no moral at all. Music For Torching comes off like a comic coupling of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Don Delillo. It's a quick read, but it'll haunt you.
Superdrag at Moose's Music Hall, November 1999—In the mid '90s it looked like John Davis and Co. were gonna bust into the top of the charts and finally get Knoxville on the national rock 'n' roll map. Well, Superdrag's rocket to fame may have slowed down a little bit from its initial escape velocity, but the band is still headed upwards and the music is heavenly.
GlamoramaBrett Easton Ellis—Once again, Ellis regales us with another tale of the shallow life of the rich and famous. It takes a bit of concentration to get through all of the celebrity namedropping and designer product placement in the book, but this kind of thing is Ellis' strongpoint. Glamorama exposes readers to an endless barrage of nightclubs, models, movie stars, musicians, and public figures of every shape and form. Heck, even badboy teen actor and Knoxvillian Brad Renfro gets mentioned fer chrissakes!
This novel is not a classic, but it will definitely serve as a time capsule of the late '90s. Glamorama is good entertainment, not high art. But then again, with the postmodern mix of high and low brow culture, maybe this is the best we can hope for. Read this book and just revel in the sheer artifice of it all.
Jesse Fox Mayshark
It's hard to build a coherent picture of 1999 from the bits and pieces assembled here. If there's any thread holding them together, it's that we've reached a point of media saturation where everything is happening at once. You can mix and match your prefixes (neo-, retro-, post-, roots-, future-, multi/culti-, electro-) and suffixes (rock, hip-hop, pop, noir, ironic, modern) and come up with something that fits any of them. There was lots of stuff I didn't see or hear, so I'll have a lot of catching up to do in the next century. Likewise, a few things here are late '98 releases that I didn't dig up until this year. That said...
Music:
ALBUM OF THE YEAR:
Moby, Play
Other Good Stuff:
Sleater-Kinney,The Hot Rock—America's best rock band gets a little older and a little quieter.
Eminem,The Slim Shady LP—Yep, he's rude, incredibly crude, tasteless, violent, and in some cases inexcusable. He's also a smart, complicated sonofabitch, and funny as hell.
The Roots,Things Fall Apart—Funky and sultry hip-hop, dark in sound but light in spirit, sometimes hard to get a grasp on.
Kelly Willis,What I Deserve; Alison Krauss,Forget About It; Dolly Parton,The Grass is Blue—Three lovely albums from three of the loveliest voices in country music.
Pernice Brothers,Overcome by Happiness; Old '97s,Fight Songs—Two outfits known for alterna-country (as the Scud Mountain Boys in the case of the Pernice Brothers) find their real strength in melancholy pop. (See also: Shannon Wright,flightsafety.)
Kool Keith,Black Elvis; Dr. Dooom, First Come,First Served—Two whacked-out servings of greasy, spacy rap from the inimitable Kool Keith. Black Elvis is a G-funk party record; Dr. Dooom is harder and weirder, the year's best cannibalism concept album.
Manic Street Preachers,This is My Truth, Tell Me Yours—Soaring, oblique, anthemic pop from Britain's most idiosyncratic guitar band. "If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next" might be my favorite song of the year, even if it did come out in '98.
Worth mentioning: Hefner,The Fidelity Wars; Missy Misdemeanor Elliott,Da Real World;Basement Jaxx, Remedy; Built to Spill,Keep It Like a Secret.
Movies
Movie of the year: Being John Malkovich—What makes this more than just a very funny, very inventive gimmick film is the way its effortless weirdness conceals the weight of its theme. It's not really about celebrity, the title notwithstanding; it's about identity, what makes us us, and the tantalizing futility of seeking transcendence through other people. All that, and the most dazzling puppet shows you'll ever see. Career-peak work by almost everyone involved, and that's saying something. John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, and Malkovich himself have never been better.
Runner-up:South Park—I laughed more at this movie than at anything I can remember. Oddly good-hearted in spite of itself, expanding the TV show's parameters to truly (albeit satirically) epic scale, South Park was the best bit of cultural commentary in a year full of sociopolitical nonsense. That it's set in Colorado and came out just months after the Littleton shootings was a piece of pointed, poignant serendipity.
Other good-to-great movies: Three Kings, Princess Mononoke, American Beauty, Election, Rushmore, The Blair Witch Project (for low-budget chutzpah),and The Matrix (for big-budget chutzpah)
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