Returning to Dungeon Master, Pt. 3: Down and Out in Worm Town

This is a series about my recent attempt to play the classic CRPG Dungeon Master, and it will contain minor spoilers regarding this game.  I can't imagine they won't be common knowledge to anyone who cares--the game is 25 years old, after all--but consider yourself forewarned.  You also might want to first read Part One and Part Two.

Work with me here: imagine being three levels deep in a hostile underground complex and finding the winding and claustrophobic hallways unexpectedly opening into a large central chamber flanked by rusty gates, each of which leads to a passageway that disappears into darkness.  Now imagine approaching one of these gates and seeing letters etched into the adjacent wall, letters that your flickering torch reveal to spell "Creature Cavern."

The pixelated intimidation of the Creature Cavern

Okay, now imagine all that again through the eyes of a preteen boy too chicken to handle a tame PG horror flick like Poltergeist.

Creature Cavern: the terrifying words upon which one personal playthrough attempt after another once clashed and crashed.

As a kid, my approach to the branching "Choose Your Door, Choose Your Fate" third level of Dungeon Master could be summed up as follows: knock out the various monster-light segments and then approach the "Creature Cavern" gate as apprehension welled up within me.

"Creature Cavern, time to do this," I would think, at which point I would promptly restart back in the comforting safety of the Hall of Champions.

Well, I was now a little older with significantly more computer gaming under my belt, so I decided to change tactics and approach level three--my previous breaking point--slightly differently.  Zed and company turned first toward the Creature Cavern, opened the portcullis, and headed in.

As a kid I dubbed these monsters "Blue Drippy Guys."

As it turns out, the Creature Cavern was a perfectly doable slice of dungeon, intimidating name notwithstanding.  I took out a slew of monsters that are apparently called Trolins--who knew in 1987?--although I did grind through a few healing potions in the process due to the fact that they swung their clubs with the power of a homerun hitter on the horns of doping charges.

Once I bested my personal embodiment of childhood anxiety, I continued on to the other branching segments of level three.  While fun, this is where Dungeon Master started to feel slightly broken.

To be fair, I don't know if the problem was with Dungeon Master itself or a setting that the port had, or even the very real possibility that I was making head-smackingly poor gaming decisions, but level three was where my party started to feel incredibly underpowered in a way that just didn't seem right. The mummies and, uh, Trolins were fine, but the rockpiles were something else entirely. As a kid I'd just drop them in pits or close doors on them, but now I was determined to beat them with my actual party to not to pass up opportunities for XP.

And so each rockpile battle was a non-fun extended battle of attrition, Zed and company wiping sweat from their brows as they slowly chipped away with workmanlike rhythm.  Fireballs seemed to barely dent the rockpiles and weapons weren't doing much more than a point or two of damage with each hit. Something felt wrong and unbalanced.  I eventually said, "screw it," and started just slamming doors on their asses, but due to this resource-intensive series of marathon battles, I found myself descending to level four without any food.

Should've chosen a moderation in diet.

Yeah, I somehow completely burned through my food supply on level three. That didn't feel right.

Let's backtrack a bit: years of gaming have taught me many things, but at the center of it all is the fact that I just don't enjoy games that feature some sort of long-term resource limit that must be managed. This is a strictly personal thing, of course, but I'm far too paranoid about early actions in the game creating a later pass-blocking barrier. Place a fire under my ass and I can't help but focus on the fire instead of just playing. I know this pressure is sort of the point, but there's just something about it that doesn't mix well with me.

Because of this, the food-and-water management mechanic of Dungeon Master didn't exactly jibe well with my brain, despite it being a perfectly valid gameplay mechanic. I didn't handle it well as a kid trying to play Dungeon Master, and I still don't handle it well as an adult. And so it was a monstrous personal anxiety come true when I found my party of champions four levels deep in the dungeon and starving to death.

I decided to soldier on as I knew that level four contained a lot of magenta worms, and they dropped food upon death.

"We can make it," I said.

"This wall has 'Prepare to meet your doom' carved on it," Zed replied.

 It was as if the people who designed this level knew what was coming next.

The Magenta Worm Experience: Part One

The Magenta Worm Experience: Part Two

The Magenta Worm Experience: Part Three

What was coming next was this: the magenta worms were tough beasts that could take a beating and dish out poison for everyone.  Each battled turned into yet another extended war in which I used up far more resources that the slain worms replenished.  I quickly found myself in the gaming equivalent of a dead end, as all four of my champions were bottoming out on stats and starving. If they proceeded on they would be ill-equipped in their low-stat state and find nothing but worm-inflicted magenta death. If they slept to top off their stats they would die from hunger.

I knew restarting the game wasn't really an option, as it was unlikely I'd ever invest another couple hours just to starve to death again on level four. Something felt off, with my party an underpowered mess that operated mostly as an ever-consuming furnace for food, but I didn't know where the problem was or how to fix it.

In other words, this was it. If I was ever going to beat Dungeon Master, it had to be now.

And so Zed and company tightened their belts, gripped their weapons, and waited patiently while I cheated by looking up the level map online.

Here's the thing:  I knew there was a room on this level with a screamer generator, which amounted to a constantly replenishing supply of food.

I also knew there was a way of unlocking a teleportation shortcut that enabled skipping a decent portion of the level.

Finally, I also knew I could use what meager magical resources I had remaining to brew stamina potions, which could possibly help me stave off hunger damage just long enough to run through the level, ride the teleportation fields, and reach the regenerating screamer room.

Possibly.

I gave my champions a quick inspirational speech--"do it for the food, you voracious assholes!"--and a swift kick in the ass, and once they realized that neither were starvation-induced hallucinations they were off.

What ensued was a mad dash in which they avoided anything and everything not critical to reaching the screamer room.  They danced around monsters, to the degree that they'd lure them out of hallways and into larger rooms where they could then maneuver past and race on, closing available doors behind.  In other words, at this point I played level four by not playing as much of level four as possible.  It was a tense experience, one in which I was quite literally fighting for my character's lives with no safety net to speak of. I couldn't restart and I couldn't reload.  If I failed I failed Dungeon Master.

Fifteen nerve-wracking minutes later a thoroughly emaciated Zed and company managed to reach the screamer room and somehow secure the surroundings.  Somewhat safe at last, what commenced was a murderous feast in which one replenishing roomful of screamers after another was killed and devoured. I filled the food bars out of the red, gloriously past yellow, and full on through green until they couldn't be filled any further, a perfect depiction of my champions' once-empty bellies swelling in gluttonous celebration.

It was honestly one of the most satisfying gaming experiences of my life. The thrill of beating the endboss of most games didn't hold a candle to that feeling of finally reaching that screamer room and snatching my characters back from the precipice of starvation.

Sometimes the comforts of home look like this.

As rewarding as it all was, though, I again wondered if the game was fundamentally broken or if I was doing something wrong. The DMcore might smugly grin and say that Dungeon Master is just from a bygone era where games refused to hold your hand, but I can't help but think that the developers of the game probably didn't intend a cheat-map-checking mad dash to avoid starvation on the third real level of their video game.

Whatever the case, my characters had carved out their first base within the dungeon, a home where they could eat, rest, and--perhaps most importantly due to how underpowered my party felt--a place where they could train.

"We dudes are back in business," Zed remarked to the rest of the party.

"I'm actually a woman, not a dude," said Wu Tse, Son of Heaven.

"The whole 'Son of Heaven' thing threw me off," said Zed.

After filling up on food and practicing skills enough to achieve something resembling proficiency, my party tracked their way back through level four to kill all the worms they, erm, initially frantically ran past while shrieking. It was a surprisingly less burdensome task than I had anticipated, as it turns out a party with something resembling proficient skill can actually dispatch the beasts without too much sweat.

I remember as a kid watching my buddy play this level. I followed along with the maps that my dad had downloaded from a BBS; I had printed out the maps and stapled them together, with a front page on which I'd record each new spell we learned and sketch a drawing of each new monster we encountered.  The maps were pretty thorough and arguably took some of the fun out of the game, but they didn't show everything--monsters weren't listed and items were only distinguished by an all-purpose "x" that didn't actually indicate what the item was.

Dungeon Master might only have one tileset but it still manages to
occasionally present new eye candy.

I remember my friend taking the teleportation shortcut that enabled skipping a portion of level four, and I remember looking at the map and seeing that this meant missing out on at least one "x" of indeterminate item identity.

"But we'll miss out on this item." I said.

"You saw the monsters up in that hallway, it can't possibly be worth it," my friend said.

"Are you sure?"

"It can't possibly be worth it."

I don't even know now what the "x" was (so it probably wasn't worth it) but as an adult I tackled this passage that my childhood brain had amplified into some sort of hallway of instant death, and I found it to contain a minimum of trauma.  With relative ease I reached the second teleportaton field that marked the end of the passage, meaning I had managed to complete it.

"Huh," I thought.

Zed and friends took the shortcut back and returned to our home base.  With the level as clear as a monster-generating level can get, they approached the stairway to level five.

Well, first they had to dispatch the massive fuck-off flood of magenta worms that tenaciously guarded the stairs, but by this point said worms were little more than excuses for spell-slinging, sword-swinging exercise amidst worm-derogatory inter-party japery.

And then down we went, level five stretched out before us.

Postscript: Before the DM sourdoughs start schooling me on food rationing, let me say that I eventually figured out that the starvation issue was partially due to me moving around too much (coming off Grimrock probably had me conditioned to think that dancing around monsters was more necessary than it really was) and also partially due to having a poorly optimized party (which resulted in battles eating up more of my health and stamina than was intended). Low health and low stamina is replenished from food and water, so it sort of makes sense that the above mistakes would result in starvation.

Up next: the Chamber of Genocide and the lonely, windswept plains of the Arena.

Returning to Dungeon Master, Pt. 2: Exposition and Inventory

This is a series about my recent attempt to play the classic CRPG Dungeon Master, and it will contain minor spoilers regarding this game.  I can't imagine they won't be common knowledge to anyone who cares--the game is 25 years old, after all--but consider yourself forewarned.  You also might want to first read Part One.

Most would agree that a massive underground dungeon full of lethal monsters and ventilation issues wouldn't be the most compelling environment for exploration--I personally find woodland trails to be a delight--and as such a back story was provided to grant Dungeon Master's concept something resembling justification.

At this point in my playthrough attempt I hadn't yet revisited the manual to refresh my memory, but such was my childhood obsession that I didn't need it.  The story is as follows:

1. The Gray Lord--some kind of benevolent Christ-like figure--attempts a tricky move with something called a Firestaff, a tricky move that would bring world peace if successful.  
2. The tricky move doesn't go so hot and fantasy world Jesus is torn into two separate beings, one representing his law-abiding impulses and one representing the chaotic.
3. The latter, Lord Chaos, takes up residence in fantasy world Jesus's underground complex and warps it into a death trap full of monsters and puzzles, which makes a lot of sense when you think about it.
4. The lawful manifestation sends his formless apprentice--represented by us, the players--into the death trap dungeon to revive four fallen champions, use them to retrieve the Firestaff which enabled this mess, and then return the Firestaff to the lawful manifestation so that he can defeat Lord Chaos.
5. Oh yeah, this must be done because the fuck up with the staff also resulted in the world being thrown into a PERPETUAL NIGHTMARE where war ravages the land and soldiers chase crying children in the streets.  This is an important motivating detail.

Without the manual or the magic of google, the author of the
backstory shall remain forever unknown.

This was compelling stuff in the seventh grade.

Well, my party of champions didn't have a Firestaff--hell, we didn't yet have more than pairs of pants--and so on we marched.

Zed and company descended to level two, the level most well-worn in my mind from the constant replaying  I did as a kid as an alternative to the whole actually-making-progress-in-the-game thing.  I took one look at the small stock of torches we carried, sneered, and spiked them all right into the trash.

See, Dungeon Master was unusual in that it pioneered a classless skill system in which experience was gained in skills by using them, and class ranks were earned by earning experience in related skills.  Start waving around a sword and your character will get better at using a sword and eventually level up as a fighter.  Throw weapons at monsters and improve as a ninja.  Mix healing potions and improve as a priest.  Cast certain spells and improve as a wizard.

Or, as anyone past the training wheels portion of Dungeon Master knows, do all four simultaneously and constantly if you want to survive.

And so I chucked the torches.

"But we need torches to see!" Zed complained, at which point I commented that nobody needs to get better at holding a torch and this light spell wasn't going to improve itself.

The first monster of the dungeon and the first skirmish with true danger.  

It was no apprehensive, pasty pre-teen boy at the helm, I can tell you.  It was time for these once-failed "champions" to start earning their keep.

We started making our way through level two. I was a little apprehensive about the lack of an automap because there's no way in hell I'm cranking out the graph paper and mechanical pencils--it's 2012, for god's sake--but I found things reasonably straightforward.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that gameplay generally hadn't aged a day, and once I got comfortable with the controls I was impressed with how much the game sucked me in. Playing Dungeon Master stopped being a nostalgia exercise and turned instead into an addicting, fun experience in and of itself.

Well, except for the aspects that hadn't aged well. The graphics were quite impressive in their own right and easily held their own--at least as far as this sort of thing went--but there were certain aspects of presentation and user interface that have rightly been excised from games during the 25 years since.

The slightly clunky inventory screen.  This screenshot was taken
from far later in the game; Boris didn't start the game with the Firestaff
and a Health of 295.

Inventory management, for example, was unnecessarily convoluted and leaned too heavily on dragging items around in a virtual approximation of the physical act being simulated--drag items to the eye icon to look at them, drag chests to the hand icon to open them, drag food to the mouth icon to eat it, etc. I recognize that Dungeon Master was a pioneering game and as such didn't quite have everything yet worked out, but all of this functionality could have been replaced by a simple left or right mouse click.

I mean, I get it: you see with your eyes, hold with your hand, and eat with your mouth, but I give thanks with all of my body that subsequent games recognized all this dragging as the the ballast it was.

Less forgivable was the fact that the game didn't actually ever give stats (beyond weight) of any gear, so deciding what armor to wear or what weapons to use was largely guesswork based on trial and error. I know some of the DMcore will defend this as a more realistic system that didn't coddle players, but I found it to be a needlessly complicated design choice that got in the way of fun.  It didn't take long for me to adopt the "looking spoilers up online" approach to gear management.

These monsters are considerate enough to impart edible food upon
death.  Screamer slice?  I'd eat that.

As I can already sense legacy gamers everywhere sharpening their vorpal blades with violent promise at my words, let me clarify that these issues were minor and Dungeon Master still otherwise played brilliantly.  The past 25 years hadn't rendered the game any less compelling.

Back in the dungeon, Zed and company managed to knock out level two in less than an hour.  We had a close call with a few sets of aggressive sentient mushroom-things called screamers, but we squeaked through and reached the stairs down to level three, the first branching level of the dungeon and the one on which the younger me repeatedly met his personal barrier of no passage.

It was also the level on which the fuses were lit in such a way that the current me almost met my match as well, but I'll save that story for a subsequent installment.

We descended down.

Up next: choose your door, choose your fate, choose burial by worms.

Returning to Dungeon Master, Pt. 1: Unfinished Business

Look: you were either there when the shit went down with Lord Chaos and the Firestaff or you weren't.

Sure, anyone can go back and see what they missed, but unless you were going toe-to-toe with mummies and trolins back when dungeon maps were downloadable only via GEnie, you really can't understand the full impact of the game.

Muscle-y dude in a loincloth?  Check.
Frustratingly generic game title?  Check.

The game, of course, was Dungeon Master, which was released by FTL Games for the Atari ST in 1987.  It wasn't important because of its cool magic system, although its magic system was cool.  It wasn't important because of its skill-based experience model, even though that would later be adopted and expanded upon in the Elder Scrolls games.  And even though over half of the people who owned Atari STs purchased the game--an impressive market penetration by any standard--even that isn't why the game was important.

No, Dungeon Master was important because it was the first realtime 3D action roleplaying video game, providing previously unknown levels of "you-are-fucking-there" gaming immersion.  Instead of a reduced game world with thick boxes demarcating rooms and icons representing threats and treasures, Dungeon Master provided long atmospheric chambers that disappeared off into darkness populated by monsters that could creep up from behind and scare the shit out of you.  Food and water were necessary for survival, and the dungeon itself was enshrouded in ominous darkness unless you provided a light source.

Dungeon Master was a groundbreaking experience of unparalleled virtual dungeon crawling.

And as a kid it was that game for me.  All gamers have them: those games that loom large in our past, those heavy hitters from our childhoods that somehow put on weight and grow muscle in our memories. Games that take root and spread out and become more than just games.  No game embodies this for me more than Dungeon Master.

I remember watching the teaser "demo" when I was 11, a non-interactive video that was almost nothing but scrolling text followed by the merest glimpse of a working navigation prototype; no monsters, no traps, no interactivity.  Yeah, that was what we were dealing with back in 1986, and that was all it took for me to plunk down thirty-plus dollars of my allowance money when the game finally came out a year later, my first video game purchase ever.

This is what terror looked like to a boy not yet a man.

I'd love to say that I played the shit out of Dungeon Master, but I really didn't. I never made much progress despite spending a fair amount of time with the game, so what the hell was I doing?  Starting and restarting, I seem to remember, and yet somehow never getting comfortable enough to make progress beyond the top few levels.  Gameplay is now pretty linear for me--face a challenge and conquer it, move on to the next challenge--but back then I just wasn't very good at breaking down and playing video games.  I did spend an afternoon watching a buddy play through the sixth level, but I personally never managed to pass the halfway point of the "Choose Your Door Choose Your Fate" branching level three.

In other words, the BIG GAME of my childhood is also one giant fucking manifestation of unfinished business. I thought playing the recently-released (and excellent) Dungeon Master homage The Legend of Grimrock would set my gaming soul free, but it only reinforced the fact that there's really no excuse to not put on my man pants and wrap up what I started a good 25 years ago. That's right, it was time to stop being a failure and play some goddamn Dungeon Master. Would my ability to actually play a video game properly now render the dungeon a sweat-free breeze, or would I someone wind up starving to death in a forlorn corner of level four as a nearby purple worm brainstormed new uses for my corpse?

The sight of this still does something to me.

This would turn out to be an eerily prescient concern.

For now, though, my first decision regarded what port to play. The most modern and user-friendly was Return to Chaos, which is a rough port in that it is a close approximation of Dungeon Master using its graphics. I wanted the true experience from my childhood, though, so the clear choice was Chaos Strikes Back for Windows, which is an exact translation of the Atari ST version of the game.

After a five second download followed by a torturous hour of untangling a config file while sobbing, I was off and running with a Dungeon Master that played remarkably well.

I took a moment to savor the dungeon entrance launch screen of the game, all 256000 pixels of which are seared deep within a formative alley in my brain.  I clicked enter, and the gates opened with the grainy CRINKCRINKCRINK that marked the cutting edge of sound circa 1987.

At twelve I lacked the worldliness to fully appreciate Zed's mustache.

Then followed one brief loading period shrunk to nothing by the progress of technology and I was within the Hall of Champions.


Drunk off rampant nostalgia, I decided to throw caution to the wind and select the exact same party I used as a kid. This decision would come back to haunt me, but it made a certain amount of sense at the time. As such, I resurrected (as my first mistake) the following four (as my second mistake):

• Zed Duke of Banville as my fighter/jack of all trades
• Wu Tse Son Of Heaven as my ninja
• Elija Lion Of Yaitopya as my priest
• Boris Wizard of Baldor as my wizard

With the four familiar faces gathered around me, I collected the few available items on the very first small, harmless level and then descended down that first set of stairs into the darkness of level two.

First glimpse into danger.

Postscript 1:  How to properly count the Dungeon Master levels is a matter of some debate as the first level is small and contains no threats, and is therefore sometimes considered Level 0. To hell with that, it's a level and the maps I downloaded as a kid called it Level 1, so Level 1 it is.

Postscript 2: This is a series about my recent attempt to play the classic CRPG Dungeon Master, and it will contain minor spoilers regarding this game.  I can't imagine they won't be common knowledge to anyone who cares--the game is 25 years old, after all--but consider yourself forewarned.

Up next: just what exactly is going on in this dungeon, anyway, and how does it hold up after 25 years?

Re-engage Transmission 2

Another attempt at a relaunch?  Yep, another attempt at a relaunch.

I'm not entirely sure why this blog more or less withered up and died a few years ago, other than the fact that holy shit did it take itself too seriously.  Not that I wasn't writing reasonably well about topics worth covering, but I slipped a little too much into the common voice of what I was writing about.  There was the POLITICAL COMMENTATOR VOICE, and the SERIOUS REVIEWER VOICE, and the occasionally the ME JUST WRITING ABOUT BULLSHIT VOICE.

Which is, of course, my real voice.

My real voice sounds a little like the way this looks.

And so I'm going to attempt to relaunch this guy by writing about everything I care about, except with my real voice.

We'll see how it goes.

Bill's Music Roundup: 2009 (Part Three--Misc. Debris)

Honorable Mentions (which are all pretty great but didn't make my top ten)

• Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest - Yeah, that's right: it didn't make the top ten. Replace a couple of the water-treading mood pieces with "Two-Weeks"-worthy singles and this would have been a contender for album of the year.
• Dan Deacon, Bromst
• St Vincent, Actor
• Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
• Japandroids, Post-Nothing
• Handsome Furs, Face Control
• The Raveonettes, In and Out of Control

Thanks But No thanks

• Dirty Projectors, Bitte Orca - After five spins I gave up and admitted that hyper-arranged quirky vocal pop isn't for me.
• Passion Pit, Manners - "Sleepyhead" makes me want to go back in time and destroy whatever caveman combination of tapping and grunting resulted in the creation of music.

Disappointments

• Yeah Yeah Yeahs, It's Blitz! - Things that should never be uttered to Nick Zinner: "Would you mind playing less guitar on this one?"
• Franz Ferdinand, Tonight! - Not exactly a pile of crap but nor can it hang with anything from their back catalog.
• The Decemberists, Hazard of Love - We only care about shapeshifting forest dwellers and babykilling rakes if you've got the tunes to back them up, kids.
• Muse, The Resistance - The beginning and end consists of some of their finest work to date, too bad about the uninspired stretch in the middle that seems to consist of B-sides from previous albums.

Top 10 Singles of the Year

• 10. Muse, "Uprising"
• 9. Grizzly Bear, "Two Weeks"
• 8. Das Racist, "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" (Wallpaper. remix)
• 7. Dorrough, "Ice Cream Paint Job"
• 6. The Lonely Island, "I'm On a Boat"
• 5. Jason Derülo, "Whatcha Say"
• 4. Kanye West, "Heartless"
• 3. Animal Collective, "My Girls"
• 2. Sean Jean, "Down"
• 1. HEALTH, "Die Slow"

And on that note, I believe I have finally exceeded my generous capacity to rank and write about music. Roll on 2010, and Happy New Year!

Bills Music Roundup: 2009 (Part Two)

(Part One here)

• 5. Sunset Rubdown, Dragonslayer - The Boeckner/Krug songwriting team of Wolf Parade--think Lennon and McCartney but with less friction and tighter pants--spent most of 2009 splitting the difference with side projects, and Krug's dubiously named Sunset Rubdown can claim the cup (albeit only slightly--that Boeckner's Handsome Furs disc is a lot of fun, too). Sunset Rubdown is technically a fully functioning band but Dragonslayer is very much a Spencer Krug affair, overflowing with elegant melodies, abstract lyrics, and angular song structures that spin off unexpectedly in unusual directions that make perfect sense upon hindsight. There's a restless creativity at work here, a refusal to sit back and say "yeah, that'll do." Krug's quirky, affected voice can be something of a love it or hate it affair, true, but I fall firmly in the former, and frankly he could possess the pipes of Marge Simpson as long as he kept yelping out lyrical gems like "I hope that you die in a decent pair of shoes, you got a lot more walking to do where you re going to." Dragonslayer not only provides the perfect showcase for Krug's brilliance as a songwriter but also promotes Sunset Rubdown from Wolf Parade offshoot to confident equal. Sample: "Nightingale/December Song"
• 4. HEALTH, Get Color - HEALTH's eponymous debut was a disruptive and screeching ride that, while rewarding, didn't really have a base of appeal beyond a couple kids and that v-necked hipster sneering at you from behind the American Apparel counter. On their second proper album, HEALTH take a massive step towards, well, songs, and the results is a bit like witnessing an amphibian climbing on land for the first time. Lead single "Die Slow" is actually catchy enough for your girlfriend, and even more abrasive numbers tend to be softened with an expanded sense of melody. "Before Tigers," for example, sounds like great sheets of noise careening across a metal plain, and yet the androgynous vocals soar over the battlefield with pensive beauty. This softer, rounder sense of songwriting also provides greater contrast with the noise, as when the album escalates into the nightmarish "Eat Flesh," you really feel it ("Death+" doesn't exactly play nice, either). Get Color is a riotous journey that pulls between melody and cacophony and eventually pushes directly against you--hard--until expansive closer "In Violet" grants release. It isn't quite the best album of the year, but it was my personal soundtrack to 2009. Sample: "Die Slow"
• 3. The Flaming Lips, Embryonic - Embryonic's dizzying strengths don't exactly require context to be appreciated--for many the album will even serve as a point of entry into the weird world of the Lips--but its place in their discography is what rendered it such a surprise. 2006's At War with the Mystics was a tired, underwritten mess from a band that had made a career out of consistent, loopy brilliance. The Lips seemed more dedicated to their (admittedly great) carnival of a live show than to, you know, actually making music. As such, the fact that Embryonic is an unapologetically surreal and confrontational volley of weird with nary an uplifting crowdpleaser in sight is a shock that would border on career suicide were the album not so ridiculously good. Much has been made of the spastic freak-out jams that stretch across the double album (that still comes packaged as a single album--what?), but beneath it all is a center that holds it all together--you're never too far from a compelling melody, or a moment where the Lips' pop sensibilities squeak through. The album could be trimmed a bit, true, but its sprawling excess is part of its charm--this isn't a collection of songs so much as a hallucinatory experience. Even if you leave out all the accompanying visuals currently accompanying this album--that guy hitting the everloving shit out of the gong on their live shows, the fully naked people sliding out of a giant, spherical vagina in the video for "Watching the Planets"--the Flaming Lips have solved running out of gas by bolting a jet engine to the car's frame. The Lips are back and weirder than ever. Sample: "Watching the Planets (warning: very, very NSFW!)"
• 2. The Antlers, Hospice - "I wish that I had known in that first minute we met/ the unpayable debt that I owed you." And so begins 2009's most gorgeous yet unsettling album, which technically isn't the Antlers' debut but might as well be. Hospice is a story on two fronts, the story of its inception--it was more or less written in extreme isolation over the course of a year--and the story of the album's narrative itself, which is either an explicit first-person account of a cancer ward care provider falling in love with a terminal patient or a metaphorical examination of a claustrophobic and destructive relationship. Heavy stuff, sure, but even heavier than you think--generally speaking, if you're finding the going too easy then you probably aren't following along close enough. The lyrics are perhaps this year's best, unfolding and connected upon previous points with successive listens, sweeping yet compact with resonating truths (personal oh-shit-I've-been-there moment: "You say that, 'No one's gonna listen, and no one understands,' so there's no open doors and there's no way to get through, there's no other witnesses, just us two"). The generally gorgeous music doesn't really break any new ground--Arcade Fire and Sigur Ros are definitely taught this younger brother how to shave--but it locks in with the raw lyrics to produce a punch to the gut that lingers uneasily after the final notes, like the album's epilogue that explores the ghosts of traumatic relationships that haunt long after any attempts at a happy ending. The most visceral and emotional listening experience of the year. Sample: "Two"
• 1. Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion - For awhile Hospice was going to get the top honors, but I couldn't do it. As great as that album is, I have to hand 2009 over to joy. To sheer celebration. To dancing with your loved one in a moment so private that the world outside swirls forgotten. To solving insomnia by holding hands and running through the streets in the middle of a hot summer night. To honoring the life of a deceased family member by cherishing and supporting those closest to you now. To the magic of shared moments of intimacy that belong solely to you and the one you love. To life and its habit of being horrible and then incredible and the fact that you need to deal with the former by embracing the latter. And, on a personal level, to the album that has been my constant companion throughout the many highlights of an incredible 2009. Here's to life, joy, love, and Merriweather Post Pavilion. Sample: "My Girls"

Bills Music Roundup: 2009 (Part One)

Back by no demand, it's time for my annual ridiculous musical best-of list. I may be just another self-important opinion howling on the internet, but this is my corner of the internet and howl I will.

I've gone into a bit more detail with each album to (in part) make up for the fact that I've been remiss in my music blogging this past year, and to better handle this increased word count I've decided to things up over multiple posts. As such, I've only got entries 6-10 of my top ten for now, with more to come soon.

And so, without further ado:

Bill's Top Ten for 2009

• 10. The Mars Volta, Octahedron - I'm not sure you'll find many Mars Volta fans that weren't hanging on for dear life by their last album, the exhausting and busy Bedlam in Goliath which marked the near-unlistenable end point of five years of sonic experimentation. Surprisingly, the Mars Volta have now returned from the unforgiving prog wilds to deliver music that actually has appeal beyond amateur musicians practicing their mixolydian scales at the Guitar Center nearest you. Not only is Octahedron remarkably tasteful by Mars Volta standards--more good ideas survive the production than not--but the songs themselves are the most solid batch these guys have managed since their debut, with gorgeous melodies and hooks that are given enough breathing room to thrive. Not quite as ambitious as their past work, yes, but a much-needed palate cleanser before the Mars Volta head off into digital bagpipe arpeggios, or whatever the hell it is they decide to do next. Sample: "Since We've Been Wrong"
• 9. The xx, X - Making music that sounds like the way night feels is more difficult than it sounds. You have to capture the shadows, for one, and the dark areas they swallow between sparsely-places lights. And then there's the sensation of a landscape in transition, a hushed tone as the cheerful clamor of day closes shop and activity retreats inside. And, of course, lots not forget the possibility of sex, or of being alone, or of sex that turns against itself and leaves one alone. Effectively capturing all this on song isn't exactly new, of course, but what is stunning is that The xx, a group of four nondescript kids barely out of their teens, could rise out of nowhere to nail it with such deliberate perfection on the first try. Sad and sexy, X provides the surprise essential soundtrack for anyone who gets a second wind as dusk descends. Sample: "Crystalised"
• 8. Fuck Buttons, Tarot Sport - Fuck Buttons always had two strikes against them in my book: the wall of gibbering vocals they employed to disruptive effect and, well, that name. They're still called Fuck Buttons, true, but they've ditched the meth-addict-behind-the-Shop-n-Go rants on their sophomore effort. What's more important, however, is that Fuck Buttons have expanded upon the strengths hinted on last year's debut and bolted for the horizon, creating an album of noise that twists upon itself to then explode into cathartic melody. Tarot Sport shrugs off unnecessary limitations--genre restrictions, who needs 'em?--and the results, from the wet, electronic pulse of "Rough Steez" to the shimmering, synth-drenched "Space Mountain," is an instrumental masterpiece with surprisingly broad appeal, band-name-being-"Fuck Buttons" notwithstanding. Sample: "Space Mountain"
• 7. Future of the Left, Travels with Myself and Another - Even the most patient of us have our breaking point--maybe it's trying to debate the moon landing with a conspiracy theorist, maybe it's discussing the tax-exempt status of churches, or maybe it's just when that meathead your friend is dating queues up Creed on the jukebox--but at a certain point social niceties collapse and you want to make it crystal clear exactly how much less you think of the intelligence and taste of the individual in question. Future of the Left make punishing music out of that disdain, that fury at the idiocy of others, but imbue it with a sharp and hilarious wit that renders it approachable, if not exactly good-natured. Smart-assed and sarcastic but never preachy, Travels with Myself and Another turns its guns from one target to another, regardless of politics (overly-sensitive earth hippies receive perhaps the most brutal takedown), and the result is a compact thirty minutes of pointy, pissed off rock for smart asses everywhere--well, smart asses who are cool enough to remain on the right side of Future of the Left's arsenal, which, honestly, probably excludes you. Sample (with goofy fan-made video): "Arming Eritrea"
• 6. The Lonely Island, Incredibad - Comedy albums are a tricky prospect, as songs that hinge on humor are typically worth only two listens at most--one for you and one for a friend, the end. The Lonely Island's brand of humor avoids this pitfall by typically involving a humorous concept that escalates via repetition until its inevitable horrible conclusion, each song a humorous micro-journey into the absurd that actually gets funnier with each subsequent listen. More importantly, though, The Lonely Island actually brought (and bought) the musical chops to represent on the music, with songs so pop perfect that the line between parody and mainstream radio is rendered meaningless. The opening volley of incredible tracks stack up to the giddy heights of an alternate universe greatest hits collection, and even gimmick tracks like "Sax Man" manage to understay their welcome and operate as breathers before the next onslaught of twisted top 40. Of course, it isn't all perfect--the skits are generally terrible and a few joke genre exercises like "Ras Trent" fall flat--but overall Incredibad managed to not only stand up to repeat listens but somehow become the album I've listened to the most all year. Sample: "I'm On a Boat"

TO BE CONTINUED (suspense!)