Sunday, January 04, 2009

It is 2009, everybody, and while we all sit glowing in the monitor light of best-of-the-year lists, somewhere in the shadows lurks the idea of the best-of-the-decade list, and with it canon-building. Now is the time to revisit work from 2000 to 2002 to see how it has aged. I maintain my belief that this has been sort of an odd decade for records, with so many bands' central appeal being based on general aesthetic, and expect a "best-of" list to select records based on what was the best example of that: Remember that Reveille was the best Deerhoof record, and remember they were one of the best bands this decade had to offer. Also, I think a lot of unassuming singer-songwriter records tend to hold up rather well. Again: The best Mountain Goats record was All Hail West Texas. Hopefully a lot of Animal Collective records, with their individual style, will coexist with each other without cancelling the others out.

As for cinema: I guess now would be the time to campaign for Punch-Drunk Love as a better film than There Will Be Blood.

My official stance remains that canons are useless, but the idea of best-of-the-decade lists is interesting as a corrective to the weird trends of fashion. But those trends still dictate nostalgia, and that's what we've got to be on guard against.

2 comments:

Erin Tustin said...

for some reason for me one of the strangest moments of looking back on the decade was realizing that george harrison died in November 2001.

Erin Tustin said...

http://futureshipwreck.com/2009/01/nadine-byrne/

Nadine Byrne has your hoodie