The Best of 2011: Part Three

Merge Records

East River Pipe – We Live in Rented Rooms

Fred Cornog’s output as East River Pipe has always had a downer vibe to it, but the depress-o nature of his music has never felt gratuitous. For instance, if you were listening to a Nine Inch Nails record, it’s likely that about 1/3 of the way through, you would say “Trent, how can you still be this angry after all this time? What sort of pain have you actually experienced other than your white boy guilt?” Cornog has lived it – he battled depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, and ended up homeless in a Hoboken train station.

The Jim Carroll Band “Catholic Boy”

Atco 1980

I have always been reluctant to listen to this album. I thought The Basketball Diaries movie was OK back in high school, but I was never really a fan of the song “People Who Died”. In college, I discovered Carroll’s poetry and was moved by it, but for some reason, I have always expected that “Catholic Boy” would be a pretty unexciting affair. I was wrong, but I am not sure I could have stomached it as a younger music listener.

The Top 100 Albums of the Decade (part 2)

RCA Records

The Strokes—Is This It

Julian Casablancas has said that he learned how to “sing cool” from Lou Reed. There is definitely a ton of that New York, Velvet Underground-style swagger to the music of The Strokes, but never was it more immediate and more purposeful than on their debut.