Reviewing your favorite music since 2011. UMass/NJ. Part of The Music Writers Collective, and Arts Editor/Writer for the Massachusetts Daily Collegian. A collection of my opinions.
“That’s Us/Wild Combination” is a love song. It’s a lovingly framed snapshot of something intangible, something that appears at first to be a specific experience, but dissolves layer by layer. First a specific time and place, then a yearning, then an idea.
I keep returning to the line “it’s a big old world.” It reminds me of when, on “A Little Lost,” Russell sings “it’s just me and those big old waves, rolling in.” “It’s a big old world” is more hopeful than that line though, even though the full line is “it’s a big old world, with nothing in it.” “That’s Us/Wild Combination” is a pop song that flourishes in the emptiness it creates for itself. In that “big old world,” it finds an inner peace that I can only sit back and envy.
When I was a younger lad I used to justify my unjustifiable hate for all things pop by labeling it above all as entirely phony. “It’s not natural!” 15 year-old me would protest, “it’s hand-crafted so...
@aseaofsongs is really a remarkable web site. Since I basically stopped writing album reviews, I’ve found that the format this site uses, looking at a song as the basis of a personal reflection - a story - is the way that I think about music now. I felt lucky enough to contribute to it in March, and the fact that they’ve actually taken another piece from me blows my mind. Take a look if you like!
The legendary English group reemerges with a deeply moving, immaculately detailed work.
(If any of my followers are still alive)
This blog’s been collecting cobwebs for over two months now, and to be perfectly honest I don’t know what to do with it. I’ll never delete it. Honestly, whenever Tumblr goes dormant, when we’re all old and grey-haired with grandkids, they’ll have to pry this thing from my cold dead hands. I’ll never stop writing, but I’m at a loss as to what format I’ll continue writing in.
At this crossroads then, I think it’s fitting that I’m posting my Daily Collegian review of A Moon Shaped Pool, the first album review I’ve done since I wrote about Kendrick’s untitled unmastered for this here blog. Radiohead’s last album, The King of Limbs, was the very first thing I ever reviewed on this blog, and the first piece of real music writing I ever put together in general. Please god don’t read it, I’ll melt of humiliation, but I just, at this strange moment in time, find it a bit fitting. Enjoy!
If you’re a fan of music, or even if you simply need something to make you smile, you should watch the album reactions of YouTube user BIGQUINT INDEED. My personal favorite of his is his reaction to both his and my favorite album of 2015, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. When I first heard To Pimp a Butterfly, my reaction was far more muted, both because my relative lack of familiarity with hip-hop prevented me from seeing what an earthshaking masterpiece it was, and because of how intimidating it was. It took the better part of 2015 for it to fully sink in, but as the year went on, it became clear to me almost immediately why To Pimp a Butterfly had no parallel for me. Night after night this past fall semester, I’d lay in my bed in my shabby dorm, listening to it into the early hours, trying in vain to wrap my head around its innumerable, immaculately structured layers. Next time, I would always think to myself during these private late-night listening sessions. Next time Kendrick puts something out, I’ll be as excited as Big Quint, running and jumping around my room in ecstasy while a new set of vignettes from Lamar flowed for the first time around me.
When I woke up to the news a few days ago that, overnight, Lamar had dropped his fourth album, a sort of compilation of the unreleased, untitled tracks he had been performing on various late-night shows for over a year now, I realized that next time had come far sooner than I had hoped, or imagined. But my first listen to untitled unmastered. didn’t have me bouncing off the walls. Why isn’t this altering my life as I listen to it??? I kept wondering to myself while digesting its fits, starts and quirks. I had forgotten, of course, the slow-to-develop nature of Kendrick Lamar’s work. Like its three predecessors, untitled unmastered. was slow to seep its way into my head. But it was on the couple of days this week where I didn’t get the chance to listen to it that I felt myself thinking about it the most. It was a little bass line, or a specific observation, depending on the time of day. But linger it did, and by my fifth and sixth listens, I found myself checking to see if my ground floor blinds were in fact shut, so no one could observe me making an idiot out of myself to “untitled 05.”
You don’t have to hear Lamar spit “I made To Pimp a Butterfly for you” on the fierce “untitled 01″ to know that untitled unmastered. is that record’s companion piece. But where Butterfly may have stretched out, untitled contracts. Where Lamar spends much of the former looking for answers, he seems content, for the moment, on the latter. But the main ingredients are still there: the way Lamar can glaze effortlessly - in any cadence or voice - over any rhythm that gets tossed his way, the anarchic funk/jazz/fire-and-brimstone gospel stew of musical influences and Lamar’s ever-changing, always-passionate inflection. His presence alone is a force of nature, morphing “untitled 06,″ a brisk, bright demo made by CeeLo Green, Adrian Younge and A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad, into a surreal, perfectly lyrical near-love song. He waits more than two minutes to appear in the jazzy meltdown of “untitled 05,” taking what was a blissful groove and shifting it into the pounding heartbeat of a man consumed by paranoia and confusion.
It’s easy to see why these eight tracks never made To Pimp a Butterfly, an album that, despite its effortlessness, carried itself with the gravity of an instant classic. The wonderfully relaxed shuffle of “untitled 08,” the intimate, revealing monologue at the end of “untitled 07″ paint a picture of an artist who, while not at peace, seems to finally recognize his historic, unique place in the world at the moment. Yes, Lamar can get robbed at the Grammys and completely dominated in the media conversation by an absurd, endless album rollout by his only companion at the top of the mountain. But only he can stop the world with a surprise album of outtakes (!!!), and perhaps only he can craft a group of songs that, though they had no home for a couple of years, fit immediately and perfectly at the top of the world’s always-growing musical and political conversation. Though he may not always make the most noise, untitled unmastered. is the proof that, in this form, Lamar will always get the last laugh.
If I may confess to something, it’s that, when listening to music for pleasure (not to write about it,) I skip between songs constantly. Though I know most of my music-loving friends do this, it’s at a point with me where I rarely find myself listening to songs in their entirety before feeling the need to dive into something else. This has led to plenty of awkward situations where one of my friends will be talking to me about a song we both love, and they'll describe a prominent section or lyric which I’d have entirely forgotten about, simply because I never get to it on my own before my attention wavers. Similarly, unless I make a concerted effort to sit down and listen to an album in its entirety, I sometimes give new artists a pitiful amount of time (think, ya know, half a song) before deciding whether or not I should pursue them further.
I say this because of “Map on a Wall,” the seven-and-a-half minute centerpiece of Lucy Dacus’ phenomenal debut album, No Burden. This song, a jaw-dropping, Bruce Springsteen-level tour de force of bristling vulnerability and desperate escapism, is something I simply can’t turn myself away from. Over an-always building, vividly-realized pulse of guitars, Dacus turns indecision into power; “But I, am alive/and I, made up my mind/to live fearlessly, running wild behind the trees/above a ground that’s solid at the core.” That declaration paves the way for the song’s volcanic build-up. But just as it seems like the song can’t go any farther at breakneck speeds, Dacus cuts it back down to its simple, but beautifully vivid riff. After spending the majority of the song bravely charting her own internal battles, Dacus ends the song with a drastic change in spotlight, and a tantalizing challenge. “if you want to see the world, you have to say goodbye/’cause a map does no good, hanging on a wall.” What an invitation.
Since I moved to Scotland for the semester two months ago, my priorities, and my brain’s usual inner workings have been turned on their head.
And no, it’s not because studying abroad “opens your eyes”...
I count myself as incredibly lucky to be among such incredible talent on @aseaofsongs, an amazing new blog from Hendrik Jasnoch, the founder of the equally amazing One Week One Band. This blurb is a mess, but it pretty much describes how I’ve been feeling lately to a tee. I’m a little embarrassed by it, but also proud. Have a look and, while you’re at it, check out all the other incredible pieces on the site too.
I’ve been so out of it lately that until the day before it came out, I completely forgot that Animal Collective had a new record. It’s interesting to note what they’ve both regained and lost in the three and a half years since Centipede Hz, a record that still sounds as confrontational and reactionary to me today as it did the day I first heard it. Even though I felt that the endless, impenetrable layers that defined Centipede Hz intentionally shied away from the group’s greatest strength - their ability to morph basic pop songs into kaleidoscopic, unrecognizable vehicles of intense self-discovery - it was a work that could only be seen, and analyzed from their own, unique lens. Yes, it wasn’t nearly as good as anything from their unbelievable 2003-2009 run, but it still existed - like everything in their discography - on a plane without recognizable boundaries.
Painting With is the first Animal Collective record that feels...normal. Its 12 brief, sunny songs are an expectedly zippy bunch, with the group thankfully letting some of their pop instincts emerge from hibernation. But the re-emergent hooks and idealism of songs like “FloriDada” (”I found myself there a collagin’/With all of the human race”) disguise how compressed this record feels. Avey Tare and Panda Bear’s vocals ping pong against one another constantly, almost as if they’re colliding in their efforts to escape the box they’ve been placed in. Though nearly identical effects peppered “Boys Latin,” a radiant single from Panda Bear’s brilliant 2015 solo offering, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, on that track those effects served to give us a clear insight into Noah Lennox’s indecisiveness immediately before he declares “dark clouds descended again.”
The doors to the kind of blissful, jaw-dropping sonic explorations that used to dot Animal Collective’s records are constantly cracked open, only to be slammed shut just when you start to get a glimpse of what’s on the other side. “Spilling Guts,” the album’s most immediate, catchy and instantly lovable song, cuts itself off after less than two minutes. The jittery, over-excitable rhythms, guitars and synths of “Bagels in Kiev” don’t do justice to Avey Tare’s powerful memories of listening to his grandfather’s stories of growing up in the Ukraine. “Golden Gal,” the Golden Girls-sampling spiritual successor to “My Girls,” is filled with warm, heartfelt messages of love, gratitude and admiration of the women in the band member’s lives, but feels cozy and domesticated next to the breathtaking intimacy of “My Girls.”
As much as I love them today, listening to Animal Collective rarely fails to bring me back to 2008, when I, as a surely, bratty 13 year-old, saw the band live at an open-air festival in New Jersey. Having next to no concept of electronic or experimental music of any kind at the time, I was completely dumbstruck, almost offended by this group of weirdos with no drummer playing warped, deafening, meandering pop songs that hadn’t even been released yet. As much as I hated them at the time, their overwhelming, fearless performance stayed with me long after those bands I saw that same day that I enjoyed more. And as I slowly ventured backwards, album by album, through the band’s catalog, I realized why that performance stuck so stubbornly with me. There’s something magical in diving into a pop album that, joyously, sets no boundaries for itself, and follows only its own rules of structure and construction. Centipede Hz still had that magic, the feeling of immersing yourself in entirely uncharted musical waters. But, it sacrificed the group’s primal, adrenaline-fueled joy in its reactionary nature. Painting With is an album that manages to find that wellspring of joy again, but in doing so sets an unfortunate amount of boundaries for itself.
I don’t think, in the past five years, I’ve gone this long without writing about music in some way and putting it on here. But over the past three weeks or so, I’ve struggled to find anything to substantiative to say about what little new music I’ve actually listened to. I actually started to write a grand dissertation a week or so ago about how I’m going to change Broken Drums into a blog that operates more like that of a couple of my Music Writers Collective comrades, but couldn’t find the nerve to actually pull the trigger on the piece, and trashed it entirely.
With the inevitable unpredictability of my semester abroad, I find myself with neither the time nor the energy to give new records a fair shake. I also feel like, while I’m busy with a single album for so long, countless incredible releases slip right by me. I also feel though, that giving an album just a listen or two isn’t enough to fairly write about it. I may continue to write about records, but without a score. It’ll be more my face value look at something, rather than my attempt at a tireless analysis. Maybe I can skip over less music that way, and feel less perennially out of the loop. Who knows. I certainly don’t. Thanks for sticking with me either way!
My relationship with Julia Brown and their first EP, To Be Close To You, was indicative of an incredibly specific time and space in my life. It came out when I was 17, and was available only through Bandcamp. Listening to it and glancing at its cover, even at that age, brought forth a wave of nostalgia. Its ultra lo-fi sound - complete with ample tape hiss and audible conversations - hand-drawn artwork, and coy liner notes (which only contain the words “recorded at various peoples houses over a long period of time”) reminded me of my first DIY punk shows, where I’d pick up similarly humble and vague hand-constructed EPs from bands that I loved.
The EP itself, for the brief time it had me it under its spell, dazzled me. Clocking in at well under 20 minutes, its gorgeously distant harmonies and themes of suburban romance and fantasy represented the best of a world that I had yet to escape. On top of it all, when I wrote about the EP on this very blog, the band themselves reblogged it and praised my words, the first band to have ever done so. But as the high school window of my life began to close, so did the window through which I enjoyed To Be Close To You. With college, and the maturity and adulthood that I assumed would just show up with my arrival there, the EP, and the youthful, rose-colored glasses through which I felt like it saw the world, quickly faded from my mind.
Ironically, my rediscovery of To Be Close To You came only a couple of weeks ago, and was the result of what was essentially a cleaning-out-the-closet scenario. In an attempt to transfer my entire iTunes library from one laptop to the other, I came across the EP for the first time in years. Stuck at home for a couple of weeks while I prepared (or, more honestly, procrastinated in preparing for) my upcoming semester in Scotland, To Be Close To You suddenly seemed warm and inviting again. Lost within a giant haze of anxiety surrounding the imminent trip, I found solace in the blurry beauty of songs like “How I Spent My Summer.” When Sam Ray, with all of those grainy but note-perfect harmonies around him, sang “taking valium/the first snow of the year,” as I wandered around my post-apocalyptically deserted hometown on the evening of New Year’s Day, I finally was able to see that Ray actually didn’t have any rose-colored glasses on. The anxieties of love, and the anxieties of every day life - the ones I was too immature to see at 17 - bubble beneath the idyllic, family-video like sounds of To Be Close To You, making me appreciate the craft of Sam Ray’s songs far more than I did originally.
More than anything though, I wondered what on Earth may have happened to Julia Brown. Like so many of my DIY indie/punk teenage favorites, they seemed to simply evaporate into thin air, leaving only years-old Bandcamp pages as evidence that their magic ever existed. And yet, just a week after this rediscovery, I got wind of the re-release of a full-length Julia Brown album that I hadn’t even been aware of in the first place. An Abundance of Strawberries was meant to be Julia Brown’s first big release, but the band dissolved before the album could be made. Rather than starting anew, Ray decided to scrape together whoever he could find to make An Abundance of Strawberries, Julia Brown’s first and, sadly, only full-length. Ray released the album for free via e-mail and Dropbox in the summer of 2014, but now it is finally getting a proper release via Joy Void Recordings.
An Abundance of Strawberries is a wondrous thing really, an album that will immediately be warm and familiar to those who embraced To Be Close To You, but a unique animal for those who’ve never heard Ray’s music before. For one thing, it’s ambition and scope is far greater than that of the EP that proceeded it. Though organic percussion maintains a healthy presence, scattershot drum machines dominate “Snow Day” and “You Can Always Hear Birds.” “The Body Descends” is an epic piano ballad conducted on an Arcade Fire/Radiohead size scale. The opening, title track begins as a straightforward acoustic strummer, but picks up into a full-band, ramshackle jam by its conclusion.
But none of this distracts too much from Ray’s obvious songwriting gifts. “Possession (full)” aches with drama, stringing it out evenly over its devastating melody. The tune of “Closing (On a Roof)” works perfectly with the delicate strings that shyly operate behind Ray’s evocative vocals. The production provides more clarity than what was given to To Be Close To You, but retains the fantastical air that enveloped that EP. To use the cleaning-out-the-attic metaphor again, An Abundance of Strawberries often feels like opening up an old photo album. What you’ll find might surprise or amaze you, or make you cringe or ache a little. But the feeling of experiencing it will undoubtedly stick with you in some way. Though it’s a shame that this album almost certainly marks the end of Julia Brown as an entity, I can’t help but feel like Sam Ray can create music this evocative and special under more than one guise.
Pusha T- King Push - Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude 7.8
I’ve always felt that some of the more legendary guest verses on Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, namely Nicki Minaj’s “Monster” verse and Rick Ross’ surreal, sagely takeover of “Devil In A New Dress,” have served to obscure one of the album’s climactic moments. This moment in question is Pusha T’s brief appearance on the album’s centerpiece, the still-unimpeachable “Runaway.” “Runaway” is Twisted Fantasy‘s emotional canyon, an impossibly grandiose, surreal opera of self-hatred and remorse. But in the midst of this all-encompassing hurricane, one that West operates like a ventriloquist, Pusha T appears as the eye of the storm. As always, his presence is a terse one; sneering, focused and menacing, whereas West is busy theatrically cleaning up messes of his own making. While West tears himself down in one final plea (”why can’t we just run away,?”) Pusha is unapologetic (”Now pick your next move, you could leave or live with it.”)
And, in a word, “unapologetic” describes Pusha T’s presence as a lyricist. He’s proud of his wealth and the respect he has gained with age (Kanye recently named him President of his G.O.O.D. Music label,) but his boasts are less about what he has than how he got it, and, more importantly, how he’s maintained it. On “Untouchable,” the lead single from King Push - Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude, he separates himself (“I’m aiming for the moguls”) from the pack, while chiding those who merely “aim for the locals.” He crows of his lofty ambitions (”I drops every Blue Moon/to separate myself from you kings of the YouTube/I am more U2, I am like Bono with the Edge,”) but does so in the most brutally efficient way possible. In a manner that perfectly reflects his new position as the president of an incredibly successful label, Pusha cuts out any and all fat from his verses, making his point in the most linear way. He even outsources “Untouchable”’s hook to his hero, Biggie himself. But despite all of these efficiency measures, Pusha always manages to leave room for delectably fierce wordplay (”In Mexico, fuck Donald and his pledge.”)
Elsewhere, Darkest Before Dawn shines the most when it’s wound the tightest. “Crutches, Crosses, Caskets” clocks in at less than two and a half minutes, and has nothing resembling a chorus or hook, but features three of the album’s most smooth verses. Thumbing his nose at what he sees as the selfishness in some younger rappers, Pusha demands “is there shame when a platinum rapper’s mother lives in squalor?”, contrasting the scenario with his own mother, who he says is “In the Bahamas for the month/she’s probably sitting in her pajamas having lunch.”
Pusha’s compact, almost minimalist style has always been the perfect stepping stone for any variety of beats, and on Darkest Before Dawn, the choices, and the results, are plentiful and wide-ranging. “Got Em Covered” is an oddity, with (what sounds like) a creeping guitar loop that’s surrounded by any number of off-kilter contributions from various bits of seemingly homemade percussion. Meanwhile, West makes his only appearance on the album to construct its centerpiece, “M.P.A.” And, while the Pusha/Kanye tandem has produced remarkable results for both artists in the past, “M.P.A.” is decidedly underwhelming in that regard. Though West’s taste for samples is, as always, impeccable, the backdrop he provides for “M.P.A.” is unusually stale. The single piano loop, three-note guitar riff and basic percussion grow stale fairly quickly, and dig a hole that Pusha struggles to dig himself out of.
But, Pusha T is nothing if not a fighter, and he largely waits until the final act of Darkest Before Dawn to deliver his strongest material. Timbaland gives Pusha a formidable, constantly mutating beast of a beat on the hard-hitting “Retribution,” while Q-Tip provides a distorted, bare-bones breakbeat for the wonderfully eccentric penultimate track, “F.I.F.A.” But Darkest Before Dawn is, above everything, meant to be a prelude to the eagerly anticipated King Push, which is tentatively scheduled to drop in April. And, as a prelude should, Darkest Before Dawn leaves us on a bit of a cliffhanger. “Sunshine,” which features soulful incantations from Jill Scott, is both the album’s finest moment, and its most drastic shift in direction and tone. After spending the previous nine tracks smugly looking down, Pusha dramatically changes gears to address police violence and institutional oppression in America. He opens the song with the line “America, you need a miracle,” his voice having lost all of its previous confidence and snarl. Sounding unusually defeated, he says “these ain’t new problems, they just old ways,” ending the first verse with “Still a target, but the badge is the new noose/Yeah, we all see it, but cellphones ain’t enough proof/So we still lose.”
The beat around Pusha and Jill Scott is apocalyptic, and simmers with unexplored tension and anger. As to what prompted this change in topic, Pusha simply says “I can’t turn the other cheek.” It’s a sobering, bleak conclusion for an album that could never be, in anyone’s right mind, be mistaken for pop-rap. But the song has a tenor of unfinished business, an intro to something bigger. And if “Sunshine,” or any of the back three tracks of Darkest Before Dawn, serves as any indicator of what we’re in for this spring with King Push, there’s a reason to expect very big things.
What follows is the incomplete review of Blackstar that I had been writing in the days before David Bowie’s death late Sunday night. I’ve omitted the score out of respect, and because I’m starting to get sick of giving stuff numerical ratings, though that’s a conversation for another day. There is a post-script at the end, because trying to finish this piece by pretending to be unaware of his shocking death would be an entirely pointless exercise. Originally, I wanted to abandon these words, in light of how devastated I was by the passing of one of my greatest heroes and influences, but for some reason, I really feel the need to put my original feelings on Blackstar out there, rather than stowing them away. Enjoy!
The majority of the world first came to know David Bowie as the “Starman.” In 1972, he was a doe-eyed, flamboyantly dressed pop star who sang of the cosmos and characters doomed by their desire to fly too close to the sun. But, over the next four decades he would evolve into, among other things, the cocaine-addled, genre-blurring Thin White Duke, a master in exile in Berlin and, most improbably, a bona-fide, blockbuster pop star in the mid-1980′s. While he didn’t strike gold with each sea change in image and sound, he consistently traversed more ground between each album than many artists do over their entire careers.
His legacy and extraordinary discography sealed forever, there was no need for Bowie to re-emerge from the decade-long artistic hiatus that had begun in 2003. And yet, seemingly out of nowhere, he gifted us with The Next Day in 2013. While far from flawless, Bowie’s first album in a decade was a sharp, clear re-awakening. About as straightforward a “rock” record as he had made in some years, its muscly production was countered with an equally prominent sense of minimalism. Bowie’s world-weary lyrics, and beautifully weathered vocals were shrouded in little but punchy riffs, power-pop drums and grooves that often veered towards the legions of early-oughts dance-punk bands that Bowie himself so inspired. Though even its cover went so far as to poke fun at the famous artwork for Heroes, The Next Day wasn’t self-referential to the point of exhaustion. It seemingly existed for the sole purpose of re-establishing Bowie as a creative force that hadn’t lost his edge with age, something that it executed fairly easily.
Having proved himself as a vital artist in his mid-60′s, there was, again, nothing left for Bowie to prove to the world, which is exactly what makes his 27th studio album, Blackstar, so astonishing. First, there were the rumors about what the album sounded like, with a “Bowie insider” claiming the record contained Gregorian chants, a soul section and backing from a jazz group. Considering Bowie’s cultural status as a punchline for all things crazy, it was easy to chuckle and think “of course that’s what’s in the new Bowie record.” But those chuckles faded as soon as Bowie revealed the album’s opening, 10-minute title track in November. A three-part, avant-garde monstrosity of skittering beats, gothic strings and free-jazz saxophones, complete with one of the most terrifying music videos ever made, “Blackstar” may very well be the most confrontational work in Bowie’s half-century long career. But, like the rest of the album it opens, once you get over the shock value (and it takes a long time,) and begin to at least try to figure out where the elegantly bizarre arrangements are going, the quiet mastery within is undeniable.
Buried far underneath the unsettling saxophone squeals, Bowie’s chilling lyrics, the horror-movie strings and the dread that clouds the entire piece is an honest-to-god pop song. Though the lyrics are straight out of a European Dark Ages tragedy (”In the villa of Ormen/stands a solitary candle,” ”On the day of execution/only women kneel and smile,”) Bowie injects them with an operatic, almost religious sense of occasion. He offers very few clues as to what exactly is happening in this scenario, but, just from the song’s ever-creeping march into the unknown, you can probably ascertain that it is quite disturbing. But Bowie, ever the actor, is completely in character, doing his best to make this apparent execution seem like a joyous, entirely necessary affair. He croons the song’s opaque lyrics with the delicacy of a nighttime lullaby, losing none of his disturbing charisma while doing so. In the song’s bizarro lounge-jazz middle section, Bowie boldly declares his most radical artistic reinvention, singing “I’m not a popstar/I’m a blackstar.” By the time the piece finally slithers back into whatever terrifying abyss it was created in, it’s easy to feel equally stunned and clueless. For Bowie, “Blackstar” marks the beginning of yet another, wholesale transformation. For the listener, it offers few ideas of what to expect from the following half an hour of music.
Blackstar’s (the album’s official name is actually the black star that adorns its cover, but it’s a nightmare to copy and paste effectively) sense of dark theatricality by no means evaporates with the title track. “’Tis a Pity She Was Whore” takes its name from an early 17th century John Ford tragedy of the same name that has historically met with incredible amounts of controversy due to its subject matter (an incestuous relationship between siblings). Bowie effortlessly rides the song’s up-tempo groove, wrangling pop hooks out of a song dominated by atonal saxophone bleating and a relentless bass line. “Lazarus” is a pure slice of neo-noir imagery, with distorted, slow-motion James Bond guitars and mournful, regretful saxophones that etch the song’s melody permanently into your head.
Considering just how strange Blackstar is, it’s a testament to how firm Bowie’s vision is that the album doesn’t feel remotely in the weeds until its fourth track. “Sue (Or In a Season of Crime),” a maniacal piece of industrial/krautrock/free-jazz fusion, feels far less fleshed out than the tracks it shares space with, while “Girl Loves Me” feels overlong at five minutes (though I could listen to Bowie sneer “where the fuck did Monday go?” all day.) Things pick up again quickly though, with the superb ballad “Dollar Days.” Possibly the least nostalgic look back in rock history, the song finds Bowie looking deep into past, and, rather than longing for those days, concluding that he simply gives no fucks anymore. “If I never see the English evergreens I’m running to/It’s nothing to me/It’s nothing to see,” he sings, brushing aside the temptation to write the “yay the 60′s!” song typical of many artists of his age and stature.
Even I didn’t know how much Bowie’s music meant to me until I realized his otherworldly presence had departed this world in favor of another. In the minutes after reading the news of his death, I turned on “Drive-In Saturday,” a criminally underrated masterpiece of his that remained sturdy through even the most tumultuous periods of my life, and completely lost it. Why him? I wondered. Why the artist who, even in his final days, could see so far ahead of the rest of us? But it was then that I saw the true beauty of Blackstar. Only Bowie would hide a terminal diagnosis from the world, while crafting one final, inexplicable masterpiece. Blackstar, as the album’s producer Tony Visconti put it, is “his parting gift.” I’m sad that I didn’t appreciate Bowie’s vision, a true wormhole into god knows what universe or future, more while he visited Earth, but am continually amazed by this record, his extraordinary swan song. If only we could all check out in such a graceful, perfect and dignified way.
I’ve spent the last three days listening to, and writing a review of David Bowie’s Blackstar. I was going to post it today actually. I was ready to expound upon what a masterpiece it was, and how it marked yet another brilliant, astonishing re-invention for one of music’s greats. Finishing it was going to be the first thing I did when I woke up this morning. And instead, the first thing I saw when I woke up this morning was the news that David Bowie had passed away peacefully after an 18-month battle with cancer.
I don’t think I could ever write a set of paragraphs that could fully explain Bowie’s impact on culture and music, something that could explain just how ahead of his time the man always was. Like Lou Reed before him, he was one of my heroes, someone who remained artistically defiant towards the end, and whose music was always as much of an enigma as the person who created it.
For someone who so consistently transformed, so consistently shed all his skin only to put on another amazing act, it’s impossible to think of one song that would define him. But the first song I thought of was Blackstar’s “Dollar Days.” I was just writing about it last night, talking about how un-nostalgic a look back it is. One of the great ballads of his career, the song finds him singing “If I never see the English evergreens I’m running to/It’s nothing to me/It’s nothing to see.” When I was writing about it last night, I found delight in the fact that Bowie, at his age and status, was resisting the urge to shed a falsely positive light on his origins. I thought that those lyrics were a summary of how Bowie, at this stage in the game, simply gave no fucks.
Now I see that I was actually right. Bowie didn’t want to tell the world he had terminal cancer because he wanted us to remember him as he was in life: unapologetic, and always looking forward. Blackstar is a record that pushed musical boundaries I didn’t know existed, one that finds Bowie, in his final days, exploring uncharted musical waters. It’s a staggering final act, but a fitting one. Blackstar serves to remind me, and should remind all of us, of the full magnitude of today’s loss. He was pop’s ultimate chameleon: the man who could release one of the most experimental albums of his career, and do a Christmas duet with Bing Crosby within months of each other. There has never been a figure in pop music and pop culture quite like him, nor will there ever be anyone like him again.
In a few days, I’m heading to Glasgow, Scotland, where I’m spending the next five months as an exchange student at the University of Glasgow. Through all of the frenzied preparation and hastily arranged gatherings with my friends, I’ve found neither the motivation nor inspiration to say anything new about my 15 favorite albums of the year. I’m disappointed in myself, but I won’t throw a bunch of paragraphs on here simply for the sake of doing so. So here are my 15 favorite albums of the year, with links to my original reviews of each album. My thoughts on almost every single one of them have changed drastically since, and I cringe at words that seem short-sighted to me now. But I’ve always found that my original takes on something contain astute, in-the-moment observations that I can’t duplicate later.
But, this list isn’t entirely free of new writing. There are a couple of records I did want to discuss. One of them is And The Kids’ Turn To Each Other, which I never actually reviewed, and the other is Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly. I felt the need to discuss why I placed the record where I did, and to explain why my doing so isn't an act of bandwagon-jumping. Enjoy, thanks for reading everything I wrote in 2015, and happy 2016!
15. Jessica Pratt- On Your Own Love Again
14. Beach House- Thank Your Lucky Stars
13. Quarterbacks- Quarterbacks
12. The World is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die- Harmlessness
11. D’Angelo & the Vanguard- Black Messiah
10. Deerhunter- Fading Frontier
9. Carly Rae Jepsen- E.MO.TION
8. Panda Bear- Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper
7. And The Kids- Turn To Each Other
When I first saw And The Kids live, at a tiny Unitarian church in downtown Amherst, MA, I had one of those ridiculous “I’ve seen the future of rock ‘n’ roll and his name is Bruce Springsteen” moments. Though Turn To Each Other doesn’t entirely replicate the cathartic explosiveness that is an And The Kids show, it comes pretty damn close. A powerful, volatile, yet deeply accessible and melodic punk record, Turn To Each Other really does sound like the blinding future of rock music when you listen to it. Speedy Ortiz has already paved the way from the Pioneer Valley to national recognition, and with Turn To Each Other, I can’t imagine And The Kids not following the same path, if not going much farther.
6. Sufjan Stevens- Carrie & Lowell
5. Courtney Barnett- Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit
4. Blur- The Magic Whip
3. Beach House- Depression Cherry
2. Jamie xx- In Colour
1. Kendrick Lamar- To Pimp a Butterfly
I know that To Pimp a Butterfly is the most un-original choice for album of the year in 2015. Many have sneered at its dominance of lists like these, saying that everyone who has it at number 1 is just a bandwagon-jumper, or feels that it has to top their list. For me, To Pimp a Butterfly was an album that constantly evolved. I would lay in bed in the early hours of the morning night after night, trying to take in every beat, every astonishing verse, every nuance of this flawed, but deeply human behemoth. And it blew me away every fucking time.
It’s far from perfect, but its flaws are what make it all the more remarkable. It’s an unprecedented stew of African-American musical history, with funk, jazz, spoken word, R&B, soul, gospel and hip-hop all coming together at strange, uneven angles that somehow coalesce into pictures that make perfect sense. It’s deeply political, without staking everything in making some grand “statement,” and deeply personal without giving too much away. Every note of the album’s instrumentation is perfectly placed, every beat a meticulously constructed foundation. Over it all, Lamar delivers a succession of jaw-dropping performances, setting the bar incredibly high from the opening bars of “Wesley’s Theory,” then proceeding to one-up himself time and again as the album rolls along. When I listen to it, I can’t help but feel like I’m listening to history being made, that I finally was around when one of those timeless classics that people will still be talking about fifty years from now came out. And my love for this record doesn’t stem from a desire to say, in the words of James Murphy, “I was there,” it stems from never being able to do anything but sit back in total awe while this record unfolds in front of me.
Over the past few days, every time I’ve sat down to write out the rest of my “Top Albums” list, I’ve come up empty. I’ve written so many reviews and blurbs about my favorite albums and songs of the year that trying to come up with something new and profound, some new light to shed on them that I haven’t already talked about, has felt like pulling teeth. I’ve always said to myself that when this blog begins to feel like a chore, I’d stop myself before I came to resent it. So over the past few days I’ve sort of resigned myself to the fact that I may leave this year hanging, and open-ended.
But then Radiohead, my sleeping giant, my giant cliché, of an all-time favorite band, chose today of all days to break their four-year silence. Though their discography is practically embedded into my soul at this point, I’ve felt a growing distance from their music lately. Recently, when I made an hour-plus mixtape for a friend featuring little but all-time favorites, I completely forgot about the Oxford quintet. The band’s last album, The King of Limbs, Atoms for Peace’s 2013 record, Amok and Thom Yorke’s 2014 solo album, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes made me feel for the first time like Yorke was beginning to repeat himself, nestling into a comfort zone where he could stay strong, without necessarily exciting our ears anymore. The skittering percussion, woozy synths and Afro-beat influences all began to grow a bit old, and for the first time, slightly predictable.
“Spectre,” a rejected theme song for the James Bond film of the same name, grabs you from its first note. Yorke’s ominous piano chords crack like thunder, while Greenwood’s stunning orchestral arrangements bring the requisite Bond drama and elegance, with Radiohead’s otherworldly heft. Phillip Selway is at his jazzy best behind the drums, while Colin Greenwood remains forever the quiet, but integral pulse. One of my favorite sensations in music is hearing something and thinking “man I forgot how much I loved this.” This past week or so, I’ve completely lacked the sort of spark I need to create something presentable, not only to you guys, but to myself. But when I threw my headphones on (while still in bed) this morning to hear “Spectre,” and felt my jaw drop during the first piano chords, I felt that rush. This is the band that inspired me to start this blog, to give as much of a shit as I do about music writing. Maybe I just needed something dramatic, something that could really jar my head back into action. A three-minute reminder of what drove me initially to pursue this hobby as relentlessly as I do certainly doesn’t hurt.
As I predicted, exams and life got in the way of doing all of my lists in one week. So, (I know all of you were waiting on baited breath!) I’m doing my albums lists today and (hopefully) tomorrow. Thanks for reading!
30. Natalia LaFourcade- Hasta la Raíz
Natalia LaFourcade is all over the place, musically and emotionally, on Hasta la Raíz. There’s the title track, an impassioned pop masterpiece where the lyrics cascade down like a waterfall. There’s “Antes de Huir,” an immaculate bit of solemn neo-soul that actually manages to capture the original genre’s timeless, universal heartache. Or there’s the bottomless piano ballad in “Estoy Lista.” In that way Hasta la Raíz is an elusive thing; dancing through phases and giant shifts in mood with an ease that never fails to leave me spellbound.
29. Adult Mom- Momentary Lapse Of Happily
It’s been a long time since I last heard a songwriter who can find as much catharsis in confusion and uncertainty as Steph Knipe. Knipe’s band, Adult Mom, plays uplifting punk that thrives in even the most bleak of emotional situations. The characters in Knipe’s songs are almost always embroiled in something overwhelming, but Knipe’s presence is always a reassuring one. You don’t need to be a mess to love Momentary Lapse Of Happily, but in case you (honestly aren’t we all?) are, it’s a slice of joy and power; a wonderful companion in times both trying and triumphant.
28. José González- Vestiges & Claws
On his first solo album in close to a decade, José González didn’t shift things around all that much. His hypnotic acoustic fingerpicking, effortlessly smooth vocals and ambiguous lyrics didn’t go anywhere, neither did the inherent consistency in his songwriting. Sure, Vestiges & Claws wouldn’t be at all out of place on the counter at your local Starbucks, but it’s an album that marks a new level of commitment from González. Gone are the brilliant, but dominant covers; the re-interpretations that were beginning to define González as an artist. Vestiges & Claws is a comfortable but firm statement of artistry, a low-key assertion of independence and mastery that you didn’t realize you needed.
27. Vince Staples- Summertime ‘06
In a year that would forever be defined by the endless sprawl of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly, hip-hop needed that album’s antithesis. Vince Staples’ Summertime ’06, the hour-long debut LP from Long Beach, CA’s new favorite son, can definitely play that role. Air-tight and muted, Summertime ’06 takes you down a singular path, from which it rarely deviates. But while the instrumentals often tend to blend together, it’s worth the trip just to hear Staples, a remarkably gifted storyteller who is clearly just getting started.
26. Neon Indian- VEGA INTL. Night School
Though I still think Era Extaña is one of 2011’s most underrated albums, and that Psychic Chasms is the chillwave classic, it was hard to argue with the notion that, after a four-year absence, Alan Palomo needed a reinvention. And what a reinvention it ended up being. VEGA INTL. Night School, an honest-to-god dance album that comes to life when the sun goes down, proved that Palomo is just as captivating without reverb. Taking more than a couple cues from Prince, Palomo crafted an album of insatiable grooves and hooks, romantic longing and the infinite possibilities of a night in a giant, undefined urban landscape. Alan Palomo’s third album as Neon Indian may draw just as much inspiration from the 1980’s as either of his first two under that name, but VEGA INTL. Night School is unquestionably a pop album for the modern night.
25. Lower Dens- Escape From Evil
Though its main single lays out its setting in its title, (“To Die In L.A.”) Lower Dens’ Escape From Evil is just as much Southern Gothic as it is Lynchian, Southern California neo-noir. Its songs are pop by definition, but are jittery and unsettling in their disposition. It’s not pop for embracing what lays in front of you, it’s pop for turning onto the highway, and putting as much distance as possible between yourself and anything that’s behind. Escape From Evil is a pop album that drives you, and tells you to never look back.
24. Low- Ones And Sixes
Ones And Sixes is the work of a group that, at this stage in the game, knows exactly where its strengths are. Endlessly expansive, yet still incredibly detailed and subtle in its construction, the eleventh album from the slowcore greats is exquisite on all counts. Piercing the thick ice on its shell is far from easy, but the naked emotions inside can shake a person to their core.
23. Girlpool- Before the World Was Big
When I first saw the cover of Girlpool’s debut, its attractive color scheme and illustration made me think of mid-aughts blog-rock. Perhaps naturally, I thought that an album name like Before the World Was Big meant grandiosity and an awe of the world. Musically, the bone-simple but shockingly nimble riffs of Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad couldn’t have proven me more wrong. But lyrically, the duo does at least have curiosity about the world’s mechanisms, but it’s more of a morbid curiosity than childlike awe. Discussing the ways in which the home and the friends of their youth have changed, Tucker and Tividad wryly observe the differences from their youth, rather than simply pining for, or romanticizing, those simpler times. They have an innate understanding of the giant shifts in perspective that come with adulthood; understandings that, though both Tucker and Tividad are younger than myself, I can’t help but look up to.
22. The Libertines- Anthems for Doomed Youth
Anthems for Doomed Youth works as a perfect Libertines comeback album more because of its faults than its strengths. Though the famously substance-abused addled quartet is apparently entirely clean now, the band is still sloppy as hell, maddeningly inconsistent and prone to irritating self-indulgence and mythologizing. But, without all of those annoying traits, it wouldn’t be a true Libertines album. And, like a true Libertines album, when they’re on point, oh my are they wonderful. Doherty and Barat, after a decade of iffy-to-dreadful solo projects, haven’t lost one ounce of the chemistry that made them, for their brief original existence, one of the most exciting bands in the world. Yes, their flame doesn’t burn as brightly as it once did, but it’s definitely still shining.
21. Grimes- Art Angels
For all of the words that have flown around the Internet about Art Angels since its release a month and a half ago, I think that one thing that can tie most opinions of the album together is the idea that it’s a bold, fearless record. Though she backed away from her 2014 single, “Go,” after a cool reception from fans, Claire Boucher doesn’t hold a thing back on this record. For better or worse, she doesn’t give a fuck about what anyone’s idea of a pop album should sound like. Consequently, it’s a wild ride of fake-outs, unlikely collaborations, ambitious bangers and – in “Flesh without Blood” – an absolute monster of a pop single. Whether you thought it was the pop album of the year or a sell-out from an indie darling, it’s hard to find an album that did as much to bend the boundaries of the genre.
20. Mac DeMarco- Another One
Another One, Mac DeMarco’s August mini-album, is a perfect complimentary companion to last year’s masterful full-length, Salad Days. While the latter album anticipated the summer in its laid-back tempo, sunny melodies, hell, even in its title, Another One was definitively end-of-the-summer document. The famously outgoing DeMarco is a tad more regretful and bashful on these eight songs. The guitars are less prominent, the synths more watery, the drums more hushed. What doesn’t change is DeMarco’s knack for weaving effortless hooks into the most of unexpected of places. Another One may not be as celebratory as its predecessor, but it’s no less easy to listen to and enjoy.
19. Earl Sweatshirt- I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside
There may not have been a more accurate album title this year than Earl Sweatshirt’s I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside. A dizzying, half-hour cloud of paranoia, grief and claustrophobia, it’s an uncompromisingly intimate look at Earl Sweatshirt’s state of mind. Within the unerring bleakness though, one can find beauty in Sweatshirt’s delivery, a constantly evolving flow of tricky, illuminating wordplay. The album plays like a grand statement, but one that’s contained within a restless half an hour.
18. Fraternal Twin- Skin Gets Hot
The songs of Fraternal Twin - a side project from the brain of Quarterbacks bassist Tom Christie - have the skin of traditional indie rock, but innumerable layers that suggest something deeper. Skin Gets Hot is, at a half an hour, all too brief, but it plays like something right out of classic rock’s cannon of mythical masterpieces. One could probably spend hours dissecting its lyrics, and listen after listen being dazzled by its subtleties. It’s a record with humble origins, but a scope that’s anything but humble.
17. American Wrestlers- American Wrestlers
Though American Wrestlers is unquestionably a bedroom pop record, (just a listen to the tape hiss, scratchy guitars and tinny drum machines that dominate it prove that beyond doubt) it has greater ambitions than simply being heard. “There’s No One Crying Over Me Either” has a triumphant solo that could bring a stadium to its feet, the beautiful middle section of “Left” pulses with drama, while the central riff of “Kelly” has speaker-shaking levels of muscle. Working for a Nuclear Free City guitarist Gary McClure has tasted success before, and wants American Wrestlers to be loved, and not just discovered. Though it has the aesthetic of an amateur recording, American Wrestlers has the construction of a veteran songwriter, someone who knows exactly how to dress his songs, regardless of the circumstances.
16. Father John Misty- I Love You, Honeybear
If 2012’s Fear Fun was Josh Tillman taking his first, thrilling dip into the Father John Misty character that has come to define him, I Love You, Honeybear is his first full immersion. Tillman is a method actor here, playing himself up as a sleazy, bored, arrogant debonair with a wild imagination. Where Fear Fun was a trip through Laurel Canyon folk-rock, I Love You, Honeybear is full, schmaltzy showbiz, with strings, pedal steel, brass and even canned laughter. Tillman’s full well of sarcasm may make the record seem like one big joke at our expense, but the elegance of his musical arrangements are anything but. Though it has no “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings” or “Only Son of the Ladiesman,” no show-stopping calling card, I Love You, Honeybear fully completes Tillman’s transition from morose, brutally honest folk singer to a strange, willing participant in pop culture. It’s an odd, sometimes polarizing, but frequently dazzling trip to experience.
Modest Mouse suffered terribly from the departure of Eric Judy. The title of Strangers to Ourselves, the band’s first album in eight years, unfortunately reflected its content. Though the band’s sound was still unmistakably there, the band’s spark, and essence, was often lost. But, “Wicked Campaign” showed that Isaac Brock is still capable of penning a touching piece. Though its production is glossy, its chorus bulldozes through with authority. It’s a song that befits the band’s new status as theater, possibly even arena, filling indie vets; a barnburner that proves the band’s muscle, and that Brock still hasn’t quite lost all of his wistfulness.
24. EL VY- “It’s A Game”
Matt Berninger’s first full-length venture outside of his comrades in The National, EL VY’s Return to the Moon, was an uneven affair, but through little fault of his own. Berninger’s vocals, more bracingly honest than ever before, simply didn’t gel with Brent Knopf’s knotty instrumentals. But on “It’s A Game,” Knopf did the right thing in letting Berninger stand in the spotlight. Knopf sticks mostly to rhythmic basics and small embellishments, while Berninger turns in a stunner of a vocal performance that can stand toe to toe with virtually any of his work with The National. When Berninger comes clean with you, singing “I’d never been so alone/till I read that the Minutemen were dead,” you feel that loneliness, and that isolation, in every syllable and every word.
23. Carly Rae Jepsen- “Gimmie Love”
Where the first two singles of Carly Rae Jepsen’s E.MO.TION are about decisive action (just a look at the titles, “Run Away With Me” and “I Really Like You,” paint enough of a picture,) “Gimmie Love” is about being overwhelmed. The song’s stunning production and immaculately constructed, Madonna-evoking beats create a wall through which Jepsen outlines her vulnerability. “I know I said that I’m too scared to try/But I still think about you.” She opens the song with the line “worlds fly by,” and, while you’re lost in the immersion that is “Gimmie Love,” worlds could indeed fly by without notice.
22. Lower Dens- “To Die in L.A.”
There’s little real glamour in the Los Angeles Lower Dens presents in “To Die in L.A.” Jana Hunter’s dream of Southern California’s metropolitan colossus doesn’t feature a drop of daylight, or even that many inhabitants. Hunter’s vocals, and the song’s tense synths and metronomic rhythm section are the product of pure fantasy. Hunter’s dream of L.A. is one of a spidery, endless city you can disappear into and never re-emerge from.
21. Panda Bear- “Lonely Wanderer”
If Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper is Noah Lennox’s brush with his innermost anxieties, “Lonely Wanderer” is its emotional nadir. Over an infinite, echoing piano loop and grainy effects that scurry in and out of view, Lennox gazes into the abyss. “If you, if you, if you, look back/would you, would you, would you, look back?” he asks, turning his growing paranoia into a breathtaking vocal melody. Though the demons that follow him throughout the album remain, “Lonely Wanderer” is the musical eye of the storm of Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper, a moment of clear-headed reckoning amidst a beautifully chaotic sprawl of sound.
20. The Libertines- “Gunga Din”
Self-referential? Check. Self-mythologizing? Yup. Ragged Doherty/Barat harmonies? Mmmhmmm. A musical mess? You betcha. Ok so it’s uh… just a normal Libertines song I guess?... Exactly! It’s just what it needed to be. They might be older, but musically, they haven’t grown up at all. I mean, what were you really expecting with a Libertines reunion album? The Wall?
19. Alabama Shakes- “Don’t Wanna Fight”
Though much of Sound & Color still rubs me the wrong way, (I just feel like the material didn’t flatter the band’s innate musical connection like their debut did. Don’t kill me! Please!!) “Don’t Wanna Fight” is simply unstoppable. Brittany Howard and Heath Fogg’s punchy riffs intertwine perfectly, complimenting each other every step of the way. Vocally, Howard is just on fire. From the opening screech, to the falsetto chorus, to the way she spits out lines like “don’t waste my time,” at the end of the first verse, Howard powers through the song like a freight train. If only the rest of the album had this track’s laser-like focus.
18. Courtney Barnett- “Elevator Operator”
Being 20 years old myself, and having some of the same worries and quirks as Oliver Paul, the main protagonist of Courtney Barnett’s wonderful “Elevator Operator,” I made a habit of constantly listening to this song while walking to work in New York City in the summer. As always, Barnett is unbelievably keyed in to the anxieties of modern life, and her expressions of them are invigorating. Even though I’m not as tightly wound as Oliver Paul, and would never scream “I’M NOT GOING TO WORK TODAY!!” in the middle of Penn Station, “Elevator Operator” always gave me hope of whatever was to come after my work/commute routine was over. For three minutes, with each listen, I could imagine myself ditching everything to gaze out on New York from one of its many, impossibly large skyscrapers, just like Oliver Paul does in Melbourne.
17. Deerhunter- “Breaker”
Every time I listen to “Breaker,” I simply wonder why it’s taken Bradford Cox and Lockett Pundt this many years to do a duet. Their voices, like their songwriting and guitar playing, are each other’s greatest foil. “I’m alive!” Cox crows, in what may be the most positive song he’s written to date. Though there are still clouds hovering in the distance, Cox lets Pundt handle the uncertainty of the chorus, which he does with aplomb. It’s incredibly heartwarming to hear that this remarkable group, which used to find such bliss and catharsis amidst incredible turmoil, may finally have clearer skies ahead of them.
16. Mac DeMarco- “No Other Heart”
“No Other Heart” shows perhaps the greatest gap to date between Mac DeMarco the songwriter and Mac DeMarco the chain-smoking pied-piper of indie rock. Though he may come off as absurd and immature in interviews and live videos, “No Other Heart” is as honest a love song as they come. Over the song’s watery synths and not-quite-in-tune guitar jangles, DeMarco puts on a knee-weakening charm offensive. Right before each sublime chorus, he asks “what could you lose?” After that, it’s damn near impossible to turn him down.
15. Beach House- “One Thing”
As if the transcendental Depression Cherry wasn’t more than enough already, Beach House decided to treat us yet again just a few weeks later with Thank Your Lucky Stars. “One Thing” is the latter album’s climax; a hypnotic march into the dark, with Victoria Legrand goading you the whole way. “Perfect in the morning/and you ruin it in the evening,” she chides, in the most elegant bit of shade-throwing of the year. You spend the whole song chasing her elusive, enchanting presence, before Alex Scally turns the song on its head with a guitar solo that cracks open the song’s black skies. By this point, you’re fully absorbed into whatever oblivion the duo descended into to craft this masterpiece, but the ride down into it is unforgettable.
14. And The Kids- “Cats Were Born”
Though it was written by a band who hails from the second town over from where I attend college, And The Kids’ “Cats Were Born” is a piece of nightmarish punk from another world. A bridge of nothing but melodic squealing, a verse that evokes the feeling of being followed on a desolate street at night and an insanely catchy break in the middle, none of it should make any sense. The Northampton, Ma. trio, however, somehow makes it all sound perfectly natural. Move over Dinosaur Jr., the Pioneer Valley has some new punk heroes.
13. Jessica Pratt- “Back, Baby”
“Sometimes I pray for the rain,” is the way Jessica Pratt introduces “Back, Baby” to us. But, don’t mistake this as an omen of sad-sack acoustic strumming. Pratt packs a lifetime of melancholy and regret into this cosmic folk masterpiece. Pratt’s idiosyncratic falsetto makes this song even more of an outlier, roping us immediately into this startling, tangled web of beauty and loss.
12. American Wrestlers- “Kelly”
On its surface, “Kelly” is nothing to write home about. A hissy, meat-and-potatoes riff built on about as basic a drum machine as you can imagine and a bright, jangling chorus. But there’s something about “Kelly” that really sticks. Yes, it’s quite catchy, yes its fidelity is memorably scratchy and tinny in spots. Maybe it’s the fascinating, underdog story of Gary McClure, the indie veteran behind the project. Whatever it is that makes it stick, it defies its humble origins and works hard for your appreciation, and that effort is hard to forget.
11. Sufjan Stevens- “No Shade In The Shadow Of The Cross”
By now Sufjan Stevens has become so intrinsically associated with the sad-boy strain of 21st century indie rock, that the only way he could shock us was by crafting an album that was somehow more ethereally beautiful, bare-bones and bracingly honest than anything else in his catalog. So that’s exactly what Stevens did for Carrie & Lowell, a wholly immersive, emotional roller coaster of an album that touches some of the most exposed nerves of Stevens’ career.
“No Shade In The Shadow Of The Cross” is its emotional apex, a mission statement of complete loss and confusion. “There’s blood on that blade/fuck me I’m falling apart,” he whispers to open the final verse. Stevens assesses himself, his actions and the vicious cycle of self-hatred that resulted from them brutally. And yet he explores these truly horrifying depths with a melody that ranks among his greatest, and a performance that can stop time in its tracks.
10. Grimes- “Flesh without Blood”
Grimes’ Art Angels is all unapologetic offense, steamrolling over expectations and convention left and right. “Flesh without Blood” is the tip of its arrow, a sledgehammer disguised as candy. While Claire Boucher dispatches her enemies left and right (“you never liked me anyway,” “after all I just don’t like you” and most importantly, “I don’t care anymore) the music explodes and crackles at her command. If “Go” was Boucher’s hesitant test run at the charts, this is the keeper; a thrilling, constantly buzzing fuck you for the ages.
9. Carly Rae Jepsen- “Run Away With Me”
Not since Clarence Clemons hot-rodded over Bruce Springsteen’s “Born To Run” forty years ago has the sound of a saxophone been so liberating and exciting. “Run Away With Me” is an injection of pure adrenaline, an epic, moon-lit widescreen of infinite possibility. Though the whole point of the song is to chase something you haven’t found yet, “Run Away With Me” almost makes you wonder if it’s worth finding what Carly Rae Jepsen wants you to find. It’s so much more fun to soak it all in: the exuberant “hey!”s, that sax that sounds like its descending from the heavens themselves, than to think about what exactly is ahead. Anything could be ahead, but “Run Away With Me” captures what it’s like to sprint into the unknown. You don’t know what’s there, but you’ve already accepted that, whatever you find, the gamble was entirely worth it.
8. Blur- “Ong Ong”
“Ong Ong” embodies, in three minutes, everything that’s so wonderful about Blur’s reunion. A ludicrously catchy bit of sunny pop, “Ong Ong” is a slice of pure, childlike exuberance and joy. Listening to The Magic Whip, the band’s stunning return, you can hear all the old wires connecting again. Though these guys all have incredibly impressive resumes on their own, something remarkable happens when they play together. “Ong Ong,” like the album it punctuates, is truly magical in its display of that one-of-a-kind chemistry.
7. Kendrick Lamar- “How Much a Dollar Cost” (ft. James Fauntleroy & Ronald Isley)
Having given perhaps the greatest of his many remarkable speeches at terrorism victim Rev. Clementa Pinckney’s funeral in June, it’s little wonder that President Obama named “How Much a Dollar Cost” his favorite song of the year. “How Much a Dollar Cost” is spiritual, but not religious, an encounter with a higher power who acts as a mirror for Kendrick Lamar, rather than a persuasive force. The encounter that defines the song, Lamar’s tense, uncomfortable interaction with a homeless beggar, puts Lamar on the defensive. He can’t pretend that he doesn’t know the perspective of the homeless man (“Keep in mind, when I was struggling I did compromise/Now I comprehend,”) he says, as much to himself as it is directed at us. But he is decidedly, gruffly uncharitable, seeing the man’s pleas as a ploy for drug money while studiously asserting himself (“my selfishness is what got me here, who the fuck I’m kidding?”)
But the song is more than just a soul-probing interaction. A bleak, minor-key, amalgam of jazz, funk and fire-and-brimstone-gospel, “How Much a Dollar Cost” is To Pimp a Butterfly’s musical peak. Lamar tears through rapidly shifting perspectives on the interaction with remarkable ease, swaying with the song’s piano/upright bass instrumentation, and stately beat. But, in the song’s dying seconds, after the homeless man reveals his place in the story to Lamar (“I am God,”) Ronald fucking Isley makes an appearance, injecting a final dose of surrealist, spiritual beauty. Obama, the astute politician he is, can probably see “How Much a Dollar Cost” for what it is: a profound, generation-bridging masterwork that finds extraordinary beauty in a seemingly grim, almost tragic everyday interaction.
6. The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die- “Mount Hum”
The closer of an album as uncompromisingly grandiose as The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die’s Harmlessness basically needed to be an opus. And if “Mount Hum,” a staggering eight-minute colossus of Godspeed You! Black Emperor-style instrumental eruptions, emo-inflected introspection and bleak, droning soundscapes, doesn’t fit the term “opus,” I don’t know what does. Though you might be preoccupied with David Bello’s album-ending proclamation that “we’re all gonna die,” the vocal loop that plays behind Bello gives greater context. “Where the pieces of the pieces go when walls corrode/where the water spills in waterbeds when we’re alone,” you hear repeatedly as the song’s outro rolls to its graceful conclusion. “Mount Hum” is a song that, in eight minutes, can transport you to incredible places. Those places can be familiar, or entirely alien, just like the place where the pieces of the pieces go when walls corrode, or where the water spills in waterbeds.
5. Florence & The Machine- “Ship To Wreck”
All of Florence & The Machine’s biggest singles have been larger than life extravaganzas, which is why “Ship To Wreck,” the opening salvo from How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful caught me so off guard. Streamlined, smooth, one could even say breezy, “Ship To Wreck” finds Welch perfectly in the pocket. “What’s with the long face? Do you want more?” she teases, full of vigor despite her otherwise discombobulated state. Welch sounds relaxed in her surroundings, only using her famously enormous vocal range as a seasoning for the song’s steamroller of a chorus. Though it lacks the theatrics of “Dog Days Are Over,” “Ship To Wreck” may be Welch’s most straightforwardly brilliant hit to date.
4. Vince Staples- “Summertime”
Vince Staples’ Summertime ’06 is usually noted for its decided lack of sprawl and air-tight resolve. The album’s other highlights, like “Norf Norf” and “Lift Me Up,” snap with imposing focus. “Summertime” though, may be its greatest outlier. A ballad that finds the normally muted Staples flashing some pipes, it expands where the rest of Summertime ’06 contracts. “Open up your eyes and tell me what you’re thinking/open up your mind and tell me what you’re seeing,” he pleads, seemingly ready for any answer. “Summertime” was the ultimate anti-Song of the Summer, a humid, inhospitable waltz. It could soak up even the longest days of the season, but it doesn’t just work in the dregs of those hot days. Staples is always singing “this could be forever, baby,” and when you hear him say it, no matter how deep the rut that you’re peering out from is, you can’t help but believe him.
3. Jamie xx- “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)” (ft. Young Thug & Popcaan)
If “Summertime” was the anti-Song of the Summer, “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)” was just the plain ole’ Song of the Summer. Jamie Smith practically puts the song on a giant platter for Young Thug & Popcaan to devour it, which they joyfully do. It’s all steel drums, soul samples and snaps, constructed with assembly-line precision. Popcaan is perfect as Young Thug’s excitable hype man, while Thugger himself steals the show. He’s all male braggadocio and showmanship, but, as eye-roll inducing as some of his lines may be, try to turn yourself away. “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)” is undeniable, a song that just knows it’s going to get the gold.
2. Beach House- “Sparks”
When I wrote about Beach House’s Depression Cherry at the time of its release, I spoke about how I couldn’t help but play “Sparks” as loud as I could physically stand it. After three and a half months, despite my fears of hearing loss, I can still safely stay that I find it difficult to ever listen to “Sparks” at a reasonable volume. Powered by an Alex Scally riff that pierces the sky, the song is possibly the greatest piece of noise-pop to emerge since My Bloody Valentine dropped Loveless a quarter of a century ago.
Though Beach House is a band that has always had such complete control over its presentation, “Sparks” has an air of anarchy towards its conclusion. After Victoria Legrand (who turns in a vocal performance for the ages) coos “we live again,” Scally turns up the volume of the song’s central riff to compete with the suddenly prominent percussion. Struggling herself to be heard over the cacophony, Legrand cries “make it/wave it/alive.” It’s a riveting game of sonic one-upsmanship, made all the more strange considering the duo’s ultra-reserved nature. For a minute or so, not only do you not know where the song is heading, it doesn’t seem like Legrand or Scally do either. It’s that moment of freefall, that sheer drop into the void, that puts “Sparks,” and Beach House themselves, in another league.
1. Kendrick Lamar- “The Blacker the Berry” (ft. Assassin)
To Pimp a Butterfly is a beautiful album. Kendrick Lamar weaves a gripping story of redemption, reflection and reckoning over an endless parade of flawlessly produced instrumentals, dancing over it all with verse after verse of mesmerizing poetry. Even in its darker moments, you can find bliss in Lamar’s humanity, in the way his words and the instrumentals around him interact in an almost subliminal way. What’s the most remarkable about it is how it all sounds so easy for Lamar, as if he’s imagining the tracks as pictures in his head, and shifting them as he goes along.
But, “The Blacker the Berry” isn’t easy. It’s ugly and scary, almost apocalyptic in its premonitions. You can hear Lamar strain at the outer edges of his voice as he burns through three breathtaking verses that viciously take on institutional oppression, the media and, most importantly, himself. Lamar goes through a whirlwind of viscerally charged emotions, fury at the country that lets incidents like the death of Trayvon Martin happen time and again, pride in his heritage, defiance against those who try to tear him and his community down and anger at himself (each verse begins with “I’m the biggest hypocrite of 2015.”)
“King Kunta” is To Pimp a Butterfly’s effortless hit, “Alright” is its statement of affirmation, “How Much a Dollar Cost” is its spiritual journey. But “The Blacker the Berry” is its radical, fearless heart. In Lamar’s greatest performance to date, we get perhaps the most revealing self-portrait he’s ever drawn. As ever, he’s conflicted: torn between the natural rage and tragedy he feels, and his need to analyze the situation further. We’re fortunate enough to have front row seats to this inner battle, which is entrancing enough. But, every single time I hear Lamar finish his final, jaw-dropping verse, I’m left completely in the dust, in awe and at a total loss for words.
