The Ten Best Albums of 1999
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3 ICP ORCHESTRA Jubilee Varia (Hatology). For more than 20 years, under the leadership of Dutch pianist Misha Mengelberg, this loose ensemble of eight or nine phenomenal musicians has mixed improvisation and composition, prickly noise blasts and finely wrought lyricism, with what might be called nonchalant focus. Mengelberg keeps the players–who include his longtime cohort Han Bennink on drums, reedists Ab Baars and Michael Moore, trombonist Wolter Wierbos, and cellist Tristan Honsinger–on their toes by perpetually juggling the repertoire and allowing any member to change the music’s direction at any time. Listening to them–on record or, even better, live–is a bit like watching tightrope walkers execute back flips in a windstorm.
4 WILCO Summerteeth (Reprise). Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy conjured his sunniest melodies ever to tackle his darkest lyrics: Summerteeth paints a picture of domesticity after the bloom is off the rose, and for the most part it’s not a pretty one. But as dire as the narratives get–on “She’s a Jar” Tweedy delicately croons, “She begs me not to hit her”–an unflappable optimism courses through the catchy hooks and gorgeous vocal harmonies. Against all odds, Tweedy has done far more than simply shrug off the albatross of alt-country–he’s made a rock album for the ages.
9 BECK Midnite Vultures (DGC). Beck returns to the genre-defying cut-and-paste methodology that made Odelay such a blast and gets calculatedly stoopid with it. The Artist formerly known as Prince is a pale lavender shadow of his sexy self these days, and Beck is happy to take up the purple mantle in his own ironic fashion, plumbing the depths of Lovesexy and Sign ‘o’ the Times on “Nicotine & Gravy” and “Get Real Paid” and employing a chorus of faux-Vanity 6 backup singers to coo silly rhymes like “We like the boys / With the bulletproof vests / We like the girls / With the cellophane chests.” Dopey as it may sound on paper, Midnite Vultures is loaded with smart details–like the way banjo plucking is seamlessly layered onto the imperturbable groove of “Sexx Laws.”
