Flak Magazine: Christopher Hickman's 2003 annotated mix CD, 02.03.04

A bit of a cheat — the song first surfaced in 2001 — but the superior recording of "Danger! High Voltage" is 2003's, which includes some nifty backing vocals courtesy of Jack White, and a place on Electric Six's debut album. "Danger!" beats Hot Hot Heat's "Bandages" by a nose, mainly because Dick Valentine's vocals, as well as the opening guitar lick, are hilarious, and the bass line is too monstrously fat to be denied. Not quite Tenacious D, whose debut album has better songs, but much, much better than Ima Robot, whose debut album is little more than one too clever, self-conscious song after the next.

2. "I Want to Be the Boy to Warm Your Mother's Heart" | The White Stripes | Elephant | V2 | 3:20

Is it a too-calculated attempt to woo the Aimee Mann/Norah Jones crowd, as Chuck Eddy maintains in his Village Voice review of Elephant? Maybe. But, for the purposes of this mix, it seemed imprudent to follow Electric Six with the thunderous "There's No Home For You Here." This piano-driven tale of a young man's attempts to win over his girlfriend's mom ("We've been sitting in your back yard for hours/ But she won't even come out and say 'Hi'"), sweetly melodic and lyrically beguiling, earns its stripes: You come to Elephant for the garage anthems "There's No Home..." and "Ball and Biscuit," and you stay for this track.

3. "10 Rocks" | Shelby Lynne | Identity Crisis | Capitol | 2:45

2001's Love, Shelby, was a terrible disc, and Glen Ballard a distinctly misguided choice for producer; he optimized Lynne's rock sound, and underrepresented the country music foundation that is her greatest asset. It was a cause for concern among Lynne fans who hoped for a continuation of 2000's I Am Shelby Lynne. Fortunately, she shook it off, and Identity Crisis finds Lynne back where she belongs, mining the contents of her soul through roots music. "10 Rocks," a rousing blues riff augmented with a gospel chorus, mulls over the perils of life, the things out of our control, and offers no solution other than, "That's heavy, brother, heavy as 10 rocks."

4. "Still in Love" | Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds | Nocturama | Anti- | 4:44

Nick Cave's Nocturama is the unfortunate result of an artist misapplying what makes him interesting — in this case, Cave's mournful crooning and the odd, morbid humor he invests in his songs have become an empty pose. "Still in Love" is a track that escapes his sloth; its thickly produced piano and bass deposit this odd love song squarely in Lynchtown. "Hide your ribbons, hide your bows, hide your colored cotton gloves," Nick warns his gal, for reasons as unsettling as they are absurd. It pales next to his classic late '80s cover of "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," but what doesn't?

5. "The Laws Have Changed" | The New Pornographers | Electric Version (Flak review) | Matador | 3:26

You can't beat the New Pornographers when it comes to jangly pop. Lots of good stuff on Electric Version, but how can you not pick a song that features Neko Case, whose unaffected and direct singing kicks up anything the NP does a notch or two?

6. "Big Bunch of Junkie Lies" | Sinéad O'Connor | She Who Dwells... (Flak review) | Vanguard | 4:03

A song attacking a drug addict who destroyed a friend's life — who better than Sinéad to sing it? "Junkie Lies" is done as a folky ballad, and Sinéad gives a restrained and understated reading that belies her anger; you can feel her clenching her fists. Great singers are great interpreters, capable of revealing a song's power without noisy emotion. The others use melisma.

7. "No Trust" | The Black Keys | thickfreakness | Fat Possum | 3:37

Sometimes the only thing worse than Deep Purple is no Deep Purple at all. The Black Keys took a step back to the '70s to present, for our delectation, a tribute to the smokin' guitar riff. What's more, they end the song at its peak, something that will never happen at an Allman Brothers concert ever again.

8. "Saint Simon" | The Shins | Chutes Too Narrow | Sub Pop | 4:25

Sub Pop darlings, circa 2003. Fact is, much of their best material is a stone's throw from the New Pornographers'. and "Saint Simon's" gorgeous bridge, complete with strings and a choral round as warm as nearly anything pre-breakdown Brian Wilson composed, is a Chutes Too Narrow standout. The Polyphonic Spree would kill to cover this choral middle-eight passage.

9. "Transdermal Celebration" | Ween | Quebec (Flak review) | Sanctuary | 3:26

See the main mix.

10. "Ten Eleven" | Terry Hall & Mushtaq | Hour of Two Lights | Astralwerks | 4:59

Terry Hall, he of the perpetual wanderlust, returned in 2003 with Hour of Two Lights, his first solo album in six years. Not surprising, the man with Bowie-like musical ADHD has a new sound, something along the lines of Middle Eastern, with a ska beat, and, here and there, a bit of Israeli folk music for good measure. The result is stronger than you might think, and actually does well by Hall's limitations as a singer. "Ten Eleven" has a groove fit for the dance floor — that said, I can't imagine the kind of dancing that would be going on. The reggae rap verses are vastly preferable to all things Shaggy.

11. "Mahgeetah" | My Morning Jacket | It Still Moves | ATO | 5:56

"Sittin' here with me and mine/ All wrapped up in a bottle of wine," sings Jim James on "Mahgeetah," the first track of My Morning Jacket's third disc. Another in a continuing series of MMJ songs that immediately calls to mind vast fields and a nighttime sky and a pickup truck or two, "Mahgeetah" boasts a haunting vocal, and, thanks to James' abiding love for reverb (which often drowns out the vocals in their live shows), a persuasive wall of guitar fuzz. "[I] like a recording you can stick your head into and swim around in," says James. The guitar solo at the end, a nod to the Neil Young of "Rust Never Sleeps," adds more Southern rock texture — it's a great exit strategy. (The cowbell doesn't hurt, either.)

12. "Ashes on the Highway" | David Dondero | The Transient | Future Farmer | 3:10

"I play the skinny indie white boy blues," David Dondero intones on "Living and the Dead," the first track of October's The Transient. That's a nifty — and reductive — admission. Dondero is not Jeff Tweedy lite; he deftly moves through early new wave to traditional picking to some John Lennon Beatle-y distortion. He is deliberately clumsy and imprecise, and his singing is ragged and, on "Ashes on the Highway," insistent and impassioned, as he speaks of life after as he has gone ("Turn the radio up, and throw my ashes out the window"). Dondero is an artist of great promise, with an original voice and an odd point of view in his songs that has no clear reference point; he's a few cartons of cigarettes shy of Tom Waits. Not a bad thing; we need more Tom Waitses.

13. "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" | The Darkness | Permission to Land | Atlantic | 3:36

See the main mix.

14. "Good Dancers" | The Sleepy Jacksons | Lovers | Astralwerks | 4:12

This reviewer is a sucker for any group that successfully adds a little Fab Four vibe to its repertoire. The very George Harrison guitar intro to the Sleepy Jacksons' "Good Dancers" is instantly charming, and the rest of the song — a baroque bit of pop music — builds on its promise. "My heart is stronger than you are," sings Luke Steele. So is his production technique; he manages to lend the best aspects of psychedelia to the production, and the result is warmly melodic without being cloying.

15. "Supersonic" | Basement Jaxx | Kish Kash | Astralwerks | 5:23

There's dance music, and then there's Brixton's Basement Jaxx, who, happily, recorded several dozen tracks during the making of Kish Kash and kept the best. Felix Burton and Simon Ratcliffe throw all their influences into the mix, even inviting some of them to guest-vocal (welcome back, Siouxsie Sioux!) "Supersonic" features an ornery groove and an ecstatic vocal by reggae artist Totlyn Jackson. Her growling, erotic, theatrical performance is reminiscent of Merry Clayton's on the Rolling Stones' "Gimmie Shelter," which was so hot, so balls-out bluesy, that it moved Mick Jagger to yell out his approval. (You can hear it on the track.) Jackson has that kind of power.

16. "Forest Whitaker" | Brother Ali | Shadows on the Sun | Rhymesayers | 3:30

See the main mix.

17. "Go or Go Ahead" | Rufus Wainwright | Want One (Flak review) | Dreamworks | 6:39

Not Wainwright's best album, but Want One does have some great songs on it, and "Go or Go Ahead" is the best; it's so good, in fact, that after a while you don't mind the terrible lyrics, which are meant to evoke the recklessness of drug addiction without being on the nose about it. Why doesn't Wainwright just write straightforward lyrics? The guy wants to be Cole Porter — so just cop to it, and let us know that in olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking and move on. Then, perhaps, his music — his orchestral, intricately layered, melodically fascinating, dense music — can really take wing. Wainwright has an album of genius in him — one suspects that he knows it, and he's too self-conscious to let it happen.

18. "Unhappy" | OutKast | Speakerboxxx | Arista | 3:19

The call here: Big Boi's album is better. It's flawed, to be sure — the summit meetings with Ludacris and Jay-Z, for example, are B-side, and OutKast is not a B-side outfit. Aquemini is A-sides from start to finish. The best songs on Speakerboxxx are better than anything Big Boi's famous guest rappers have done in years, including this song about struggle and survival in the Dirty South. Listen to the way Big Boi uses his voice to tell his story: he's loose, experimental, twisting vowels and inventing three-syllable pronunciations for one-syllable words. The song's optimistic bounce nicely counterbalances a pragmatic/pessimistic chorus: "Might as well have fun/ 'cause your happiness is done/ And your goose is cooked."

19. "Prototype" | OutKast | The Love Below | Arista | 5:26

In an interview for Entertainment Weekly, Andre 3000 was shocked to hear that ornery popular artist Pink has never listened to Prince. Andre, like his partner Big Boi, references everyone from the Isley Brothers to John Coltrane in his music, but The Love Below, its themes and its preoccupations, is first and foremost about His Purpleness. Andre doesn't imitate so much as approximate the feel and sequencing of a Prince disc, and so he comes up with a musical language all his own. Too often he indulges himself, but not on "Prototype," an ode to love that boasts syrup-thick bass work and some great multi-tracked vocals on the chorus, as Andre informs, "I think I'm in love... again." He smartly acquired Prince's sly sense of humor, too, tossing in a non-sequitur joke near the end of the song that, like Big Boi's vocal work, shows you the assets of a what-the-hell attitude in the studio. It's so much more fun listening to artists who are enjoying themselves than it is to listen the dutiful. By the way, what happened to Prince? What in God's name happened to him?

E-mail Chris Hickman at hickatz@mindspring.net.