Rock's Big Questions

The world's greatest closers: Finishing the argument with a can't-miss list ofalbum enders

Aeroplane over the sea is one of my favorite albums of all time — and itfinishes on the sublime.
The Who have always known how to close.
Rain Dogs is Tom Wait' finest moment and he saves the best for last.
Want to discover some great unknown music? Check out the Tindersticks andparticularly the wooden-laden come-down on their debut album.

Editor's note: This is a new feature where Douglas Newman and Jim Beviglia, two of CultureMap's music writers, tackle rock's big questions in a spirited dialogue where no feelings are spared. This edition is Douglas' rebuttal to Jim's article on the best closing tracks of all time.

We encourage you, fair reader, to join the fray by leaving your own arguments and rebuttals in the comments.

Kudos Jim for your varied and unpredictable list! "Fight the Power" by Public Enemy is an inspired choice and "Waterloo Sunset" was lurking around my brain as I compiled my selections. It's a perfect pop song that could have easily become a standard. Ray Davies is a songwriting god.

Thanks for teeing up some of the obvious ones, although you'll notice that I didn't fully take the bait. Bruce Springsteen's "Jungleland" (from Born to Run) was just too obvious and I've always preferred the Kinks to the Beatles, so I also skipped over "A Day in the Life" from Sgt. Pepper's.

One of the Fab Four did manage to make my short list, though. I couldn't resist the Dylan trap and was happy to wrestle with choosing his ultimate closer. I could have easily made a solid case for "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" (from Blonde on Blonde) or "Sara" (from Desire) — both epics inspired by ex-wife Sara Lowndes — but I went with what I would deem his most ambitious song.

While a few of my choices might be considered a tad left of center, on the whole I think it will appeal to most serious music fans and novices alike.

"Desolation Row" by Bob Dylan, from Highway 61 Revisited (1965)

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Dylan closes one of the great albums in history with an "eleven-minute voyage through a Kafkaesque world of gypsies, hoboes, thieves of fire, and historical characters beyond their rightful time," as noted Dylanologist Clinton Heylin describes it.

The fingerpicked Spanish guitar is sublime and Dylan's delivery is hypnotic. Take a listen and you'll find that 11 minutes can pass in a flash.

"God" by John Lennon, from Plastic Ono Band (1970)

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OK, so officially it's not the final "song" on the album, but the 49-second "My Mummy's Dead" doesn't really count in my book. If you overlook this technicality, then "God" does serve as the last proper track on Lennon's searing debut solo record.

With lines like "God is a concept by which we measure our pain" and "I don't believe in Beatles," and "the dream is over," it's obvious that Lennon's wrestling with some mighty demons and that makes for some compelling listening.

"The Last Time I Saw Richard" by Joni Mitchell, from Blue (1971)

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This songs never fails to depress me. The vividness with which Joni revisits a dissolved marriage hits you in the gut, made all the more powerful by the mundanity and resignation that infuse her lyrics.

"Love, Reign o'er Me" by The Who, from Quadrophenia (1974)

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The Who know a thing or two about closing albums on a high. "Won't Get Fooled Again" finished off Who's Next with fist-raising fury and the band's masterpiece, Quadrophenia, is wrapped up with the emotional bombast of "Love, Reign o'er Me."

"Radio, Radio" by Elvis Costello and the Attractions, from This Year's Model (US Version) (1978)

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A blistering indictment of the radio and recording industries, “Radio Radio” features some of Costello’s most biting lyrics, all set to a furious new wave workout by the singer’s newly minted backing band, the Attractions. Costello spits his turns of phrase in rapid fire with inspiring results: “You either shut up or get cut up, they don’t wanna hear about it/It’s only inches on the reel-to-reel/And the radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools/Tryin’ to anaesthetise the way that you feel.”

This Year’s Model is an astonishing achievement, an album full of amphetamine-fueled nuggets with no filler.

"Anywhere I Lay My Head" by Tom Waits, from Rain Dogs (1987)

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Rain Dogs is perhaps Tom Waits’ finest moment, an ambitious album of jarring songs that seer themselves into your brain upon first listen. Featuring angular rhythms, clanging percussion, amazing fretwork from guitarist Marc Ribot, and Waits’ gravely howl, Rain Dogs is a surreal joy ride through the inner workings of the songwriter’s twisted mind.

On “Anywhere I Lay My Head,” the album’s final track, Waits is accompanied by a Farfisa organ and a brass section as he explains to the listener his change in fortune. The song then shifts into an uptempo classic New Orleans style brass band romp to take us out.

"Tower of Song" by Leonard Cohen, from I'm Your Man (1988)

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Cohen grapples with the calling to his musical craft in this charming track of the 1988 tour-de-force, I'm Your Man. It finds the musician/poet explaining how he has no choice but to sing, as if the gods have chosen his destiny: "I was born like this, I had no choice/I was born with the gift of a golden voice/And twenty-seven angels from the Great Beyond/They tied me to this table right here/In the Tower of Song."

Notice the sly humor in Cohen's choice of words. Golden voice?

"The Not Knowing" by Tindersticks, from Tindersticks I (1993)

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I implore anybody who's up for discovering some unfamiliar music to seek out Tinderstick's sublime debut. The English band boasts a remarkably consistent catalog in a career now 17 years deep, but its first offering is, as one critic gushed, a "chamber pop masterpiece of romantic elegance and gutter debauchery."

Tindersticks bring the dark, dank and emotionally wrenching musical exercise to a close with this elegant woodwind-laden come-down. It's the perfect end to a perfect record.

"Street Spirit (Fade Out)" by Radiohead, from The Bends (1995)

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The Bends signaled the true arrival of Radiohead as one of the planet’s most promising bands, a distinction the band would achieve in spades in the following years. The final track of the album is the beautiful ballad “Street Spirit (Fade Out),” with its spellbinding repetitive guitar arpeggio and Thom Yorke’s inspired vocal wail.

The final lines of the album is also a quintessential closer, “All these things we’ll one day swallow whole/And fade out again and fade out again/Immerse your soul in love.”

"Two Headed Boy, Pt. 2" by Neutral Milk Hotel, from In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1998)

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One of my favorite albums of all time, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is a song-cycle of astounding beauty, depth and originality. Fuzz guitar, organ, singing saw, accordion, trumpet, Uilleann pipes, euphonium, and Jeff Mangum’s unaffected voice and surreal lyrics mesh to form a kaleidescopic head trip.

The record’s final track, “Two Headed Boy Pt. 2,” opens with a bowed saw intro and segues into a lyrically dense ballad featuring just an acoustic guitar and Magnum’s voice. A sublime ending to a breathtaking album.

The first article in this debate:

For Closers only: Great finishing songs that demand rock recognition

Movie Review

Daniel Craig shines in Queer, an unapologetic tale of love and loss

Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig in Queer

Photo courtesy of A24

Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig in Queer.

As recently as the late 2010s, if a movie was made about an LGBTQ+ character, it was more than likely about their coming out experience. Romance, if it existed, was typically chaste, and actual sex was almost completely out of the question. Things have changed dramatically in the 2020s, to the point that a major movie star has no issue starring in a film called Queer.

Based on the 1985 novella by William S. Burroughs, the film features William Lee (Daniel Craig), whom everyone calls just Lee, a writer living in 1950s-era Mexico City who spends most of his time haunting local bars with friends like fellow writer Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman) and hitting on younger men. His early interactions in the film seem to indicate that Lee has a bad reputation within the local gay community, as multiple people avoid him or give him odd looks.

Lee senses an opportunity when he encounters a newcomer, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). Despite some awkward interactions, the two of them start spending time together, although Lee has much more invested in the relationship than Eugene does. Their hit-and-miss bond continues until Lee, who’s starting to get into drugs in addition to the booze, convinces Eugene to accompany him on a trip to South America.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Justin Kuritzkes (making their second straight film together after Challengers), early on the film seems to be mostly about the divide between an older person who’s grown comfortable in his ways and a younger person who’s living a relatively carefree life. The introduction of drugs into the plot changes things, though, with Lee searching out more ways to open his eyes to what the world has to offer.

Guadagnino and his team use some interesting visual storytelling techniques to introduce ideas that may not be present in the actual script. The most successful, demonstrated in multiple scenes, is the superimposition of movements by Lee over what’s actually taking place in the scene. The subtle overlay gives the audience insight into Lee’s true feelings, showing what he can’t or won’t say out loud.

Music also plays a big part in how the plot is perceived, with the use of anachronistic songs from Nirvana and Prince serving to heighten certain moments. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is not as in-your-face as the one they did for Challengers, but it complements the film well, especially when the plot starts to get trippy in its final half hour.

Craig, who appears sweaty and disheveled for much of the film, is about as far from the suaveness of James Bond as you can get in this role. He takes multiple risks with his performance and almost all of them pay off. Starkey’s character is subdued by comparison, but still comes off well. Schwartzman and Lesley Manville are given showy roles, with both using altered appearances that make them nearly unrecognizable to deliver memorable performances.

Queer is not as accessible as Challengers was storytelling-wise, but the fact that it tells a story about gay men living their lives as they see fit with no interference or questions shows how far the film world has come in a short period of time. It also continues Guadagnino’s streak of making audacious films in a way that few other filmmakers are willing or able to approach.

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Queer is now playing in theaters.

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