Week 6: The Future

16. LEONARD COHEN - The Future
Columbia, 1992

In which the illustrious Mr. Cohen all-too-readily inhabits the role of demonic soothsayer. This dark pop gem opens with the spooky title track, where ol' Leonard details some grim soon-to-be reality (or probably it's already happened) where "Things are gonna slide/ Slide in all directions;" or, more directly, "I've seen the future, brother/ It is murder." That ominous tone colors the entirety of the album, and one wonders for a fleeting instant what a happy album from Leonard Cohen might sound like, but then the thought reveals itself as idiotic and irrelevant: what would it sound like if Terry Riley wrote a pop song? Leonard Cohen is master of all things dark and depressing and gah, sometimes it's almost too much to take, like when he implores a lover to "Be For Real" in the song of the same name, 'cause he's "Been hurt so many times," and he sure "Don't want/ To be hurt by love again." All this beautiful borderline-kitsch is delivered with the glorious assistance of Cohen's ubiquitous female background singers, earnest beyond belief, somehow indispensable. Only on "Democracy" do we catch a glimmer of hope, but it's hard to tell if it isn't tinged with a little masked cynicism; then again, most things sound that way coming out of this man's mouth. Anyway, "Democracy is coming/ To the U.S.A." and it is what it is. Set to deep, foreboding synths and in a minor key, it would sound terrifying, but in its jaunty form it becomes almost hopeful. And this is precisely why Leonard Cohen was and is the best in his field; he is capable, with a flip of the tune or the tongue, of making the good sound horrific and the horrific sound downright beautiful. Don't be afraid of The Future, because, after all, it's already here.

WATCH: Leonard Cohen - "The Future" (Live)

Week 6: Clouds Taste Metallic

15. THE FLAMING LIPS - Clouds Taste Metallic
Warner Bros., 1995

It often isn't until a band releases their most overtly theatrical, symphonic, in-your-face album that the Pitchforks of the world begin paying close attention; in the case of Oklahoma stalwarts The Flaming Lips, it was 1999's The Soft Bulletin that catapulted them into the limelight. That album - with its larger-than-life production and gaudy lyrics that waxed metaphysical but actually came across a bit, well, silly - meant the start of endless editorial praise and countless offers to headline prominent summer festivals 'round the globe. Critics claimed that the album came out of nowhere, that these strange, psychedelic rednecks had finally arrived after a decade of aimless musical meandering. One listen to 1995's Clouds Taste Metallic, however, and one gets the sense that the band may very well have been doing its best work before NME caught serious wind - this is an Important record just as much, if not more so, than any one that followed. It is, after all, certainly a more grounded and listenable record than the Lips' later-period output: while Bulletin was admittedly enjoyable in its grandiosity, the middle-of-the-road atrocities that were Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots and At War With The Mystics practially beg for the band's earlier (and seemingly lost) zany creativity. That sense of innovation is what guides Clouds Taste Metallic, from the expansive, shifting opener "The Abandoned Hospital Ship," to the rubberband melodies of "Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus with Needles." The silly-but-consciously-so "This Here Giraffe" is childlike and wonderful, and so on. The Flaming Lips displayed here are the Flaming Lips who were not yet convinced they were or even could be the Biggest Thing in the World; they are bombastic and loose without betraying their egos. Rock and roll has a long and storied history of its most skillful and ambitious performers reaching farther and farther beyond to achieve a sort of immortality through song, which itself becomes more magniloquent and bloated (see: The Beatles, duh, perhaps the greatest example of this phenomenon). It's a horribly self-defeating M.O., yet we have seen it occur time after time amongst those most ardent of musicians. But thank God for the gigantic egos amongst this crowd, for it is their journey itself which accidentally yields the greatest rewards. If every tortured genius were to abandon this absurd pursuit of perfection, we would have a million more Nickelbacks and not a single Clouds Taste Metallic.