Fields of Play

"When I looked to the third base coach he turned his back on me" - bob uecker

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Michael Gorwitz’ Top Albums of 2022

25.  Daphni – Cherry

Hello and welcome to 2022. You made it. We made it. Things kinda seem like they’re getting better, no? So what better way to kick off this annual survey than with a perfect little dance record, Daphni’s Cherry.  Daphni is the pure dance alter-ego of Dan Snaith, better known as Caribou (and once upon a time, Manitoba).  So if you ever wished the song craft would stop getting in the way of albums like Our Love or Swim, then Cherry is the record for you.  Side projects often let artists flex muscles that don’t get enough workout in their main gigs, and thus often provide simple pleasures in unadorned forms, and Cherry is no exception.  No one is reinventing the wheel here, but more importantly, nor is anyone trying to do so.  The first track “Arrow” tells it all, a steady, brisk beat, a fun vocal loop, and that’s it, but really, what more do you need to get your booty shaking? More importantly, that simple purple and pink cover is just too beautiful to behold, so it had to go first to set a lovely hue for all the good music to follow.

24.  Vince Staples – Ramona Park Broke My Heart

Vince Staples is approaching a similar place to Kevin Morby (see below) where his supreme consistency is starting to almost work against him.  Ramona Park Broke My Heart is Staples’ fifth album, and its just as perfect as the proceeding four, which does create a bit of indistinguishability with each successive release.  Unlike Morby however, Staples’ string of releases do chart more a stylistically-varied path, even if it’s a bit circular.  Summertime ’06 was the stark Clams Casino produced statement of purpose, Big Fish Theory was a fascinating detour into club beats, FM! was experiment in minimalism.  Last year’s self titled was the first without a formalistic construct, and thus felt closest to Summertime ’06, and this year’s Ramona Park is more of the same.  However, that same remains some of the best hip hop around.  The one-two of “Papercuts” into “Lemonade” are some of Staples’ best songs.  If this is what it sounds like to be in a rut, why not revel in a place of such excellent output.

23.  Toro y Moi – MAHAL

MAHAL is emblematic of a fun phenomenon, namely, where you pick up a release from artist you once cared about, but not a ton and haven’t checked in in a minute, and you’re pleasantly surprised that they’ve still got it.  Toro y Moi was simultaneously kind of a chillwave also ran, and also someone who seemed like would be around after the hype-wave crested.  MAHAL is definitely not chillwave, but it’s definitely good.  It has a 70s skronk to it, and a summer bounce, like T. Rex it’s equally good for a sunny road trip and to chill out to.

22.  King Gizzard – Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava

Jam bands (whom I do not like) often try to cloak their musical meanderings in the intentionality of jazz, as if to say “we’re not bullshitting here, we’re engaged in serious praxis,” when in reality, they’re just hitting the bong, then the record button, and just going with whatever wanders out of their instruments.  This year’s King Gizzard album (I’m not typing that whole title out, banner year for long-ass album names, shouts Sufjan!) is dangerously close to being a jam-band record, but I’ll point to one key stylistic divergence.  Unlike a jam band pretending its playing a version of jazz, King Gizzard here are working in funk, with all the looseness, energy, and yes, jams, that that genre entails.  For generations, funk has given artists room to spread out, find a groove, and lock in, taking the listener along for the funky ride.  Am I splitting hairs? Perhaps.  But if you swapped out of the vocals on “Ice V” I think you’d be hard pressed to tell it wasn’t a deep cut from Sly’s Family Stone.

21.  The Reds, Pinks and Purples – Summer at Land’s End

When I write these lists I normally try and serve two masters: the first is the larger story of music in a given year, the second are my own idiosyncratic predilections. Summer at Land’s End is definitely me looking in the mirror and doing finger guns, and hey, its my list, so why not?  One of my favorite forgotten records of the last 20 years is Wild Nothing’s Gemini, and while Summer at Land’s End lacks that record’s uptempo jangle, it traffics in the same gauzy reverb guitars and sad structures.  As pop music and R&B continue to steamroll the “discourse,” I continue to light a candle for these little off kilter guitar albums.

20.  Sorry – Anywhere But Here

Sorry got a lot of hype two years ago for their debut 925.  Honestly, it never did much for me, it just kinda sounded like a band that liked the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as much as I did (not a knock, well it’s kind of a knock, but liking the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is cool).  Normally, that means I wouldn’t have paid much heed to their follow up, but when I heard it was breakup album, I was interested enough to give the band another go (I don’t know what it says about me that I thoroughly love a good breakup album, but here we are).  Less interested in being “experimental” for its own sake, and more focused on channeling those artsy influences into rock solid songwriting, Anywhere But Here takes Sorry’s conflicting interests in pop and trip hop and channels them into a rain soaked album (there’s literally a song called “Screaming in the Rain”) that surmounts the sum of its parts rather than always breaking apart into arch referents.  Take “Baltimore” for example, a tiny piano intro is passed along to bass and guitar, with the vocals hopping along in lock step with the bass in classic post punk fashion.  On Anywhere But Here, Sorry live up to the initial hype.

19.  Kevin Morby – This is a Photograph

As briefly discussed above with Vince Staples, Kevin Morby is fully a victim of his own consistency at this point.  This is a Photograph is arguably the best album he’s ever released, and if that’s the case, why is it down here at 19? The reason is by putting out great albums of similar sounding (or, at least, structured) music every single year, it becomes impossible for any one release to break through not only the crowd of music in a given year, but even amongst his own catalogue.  If this was Morby’s third release instead of his eighth (!) it might top this list, it’s that good.  Gelling all the elements that have come to define prior Morby releases, This is a Photograph stands as his best statement of freewheeling americana.  “Stop Before I Cry” actually moves me to tears, it’s that beautiful.

18.  Wild Pink – ILYSM

Wild Pink’s ILYSM is an interesting pair with Morby’s This is a Photograph.  Billed months before it came out as the band’s Yankee Hotel, that advanced praise actually proved to be a bit of a disservice, setting the expectation bar at unreachable heights.  However, unlike Morby’s eternal consistency, ILYSM actually does take some big swings at stylistic experimentation, which of course, are what generated those Yankee Hotel comps in the first place.  Opener “Cahooting the Multiverse” sets the stage perfectly, opening portals to different universal variants of this band’s maudlin country pop.  The music cuts out for a few off-kilter beats, backup singers join in, and the music warbles through processors.  “Cahooting” presents several different versions of a Wild Pink track, all withing the same song. The title cut employs a robotic chorus to chant the album’s mantra (“I LOVE YOU SO MUCH”), and the whole song comes off as the most interesting War on Drugs song in several years.  

17.  MJ Lenderman – Boat Songs

While Lenderman’s main act Wednesday made waves with Twin Plagues, it was their cover album Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling ‘Em Up that caught my ear, and on his solo album Boat Songs he continues the drift into more countrified sounds evinced on Mowing the Leaves.  While his lyrics—fixated as they are on ‘90s sports icons—have garnered a lot of attention, I sometimes find them too cute by half.  What makes Boat Songs truly great is the way Lenderman is able to make big sounds out of low fidelity.  He gets a lot of comparisons to Jason Molina, and you can hear why.  These are capital “G” guitar songs that share Molina’s reverence for Neil Young and Dinosaur Jr., but whereas Songs:Ohia tracks usually collapsed back into themselves, Lenderman’s tend to burst outward from the speakers, taking the listener along for a ride through his twangy tales of Dan Marino and actual Dolphins.  

16.  Beach House – Once Twice Melody

Beach House have no business being relevant in 2022.  Perhaps it’s just because I’m old and they’re not actually relevant, but I’m still seeing lots of love for Once Twice Melody on the year end lists (though again I could just be reading the lame lists).  Except for the brief period when the band employed an actual human drummer, the band has spun gold from nothing more than Victoria Legrand’s narrow vocals & lush synths, stuttering drum machines, and Alex Scally’s slide guitar.  As all of the great bands of their (read: my) generation have slowly faded away into irrelevance (Deerhunter, Animal Collective) or broke up (the Walkmen) somehow Beach House remain at the same level they were at when their self titled debut first made me swoon way back in 2006. I’m not going to go so far as to say Once Twice Melody is their best album (Teen Dream still holds a special place in my broken heart), but the fact that its in the conversation is a testament to their unparalleled abilities.  “Another Go Around” is not only one of the best songs of their career, but a perfect encapsulation of this record’s place in 2022.  

15.  The Soft Pink Truth – Is it Going to Get Any Deeper?

The Drew Daniel half of Matmos continues his excellent recent run of form with the cheekily titled Is it Going to Get Any Deeper?  Whereas his last full length, the stellar Shall we Go Sinning so that Grace May Increase?, was devotional music disguised as house music, the equally questioning Is it Going to Get Any Deeper? worships at the altar of the dancefloor.  While I can’t imagine actually dancing for the entire 11 minutes of opener “Deeper,” this is house music in the sense of envelopment, of losing one’s self, if not always in the sea of the dancefloor, then at least in the gently undulating currents of the throb of the music itself.

14.  Pusha T – It’s Almost Dry

King Push is back.  Splitting production between Pharrell (😍) and Kanye (☠️) It’s Almost Dry is fascinating as it shifts back and forth between Neptunes-style slinky bangers (“Let the Smokers Shine the Coupes”) and vintage Kanye’s trademark chipmunk soul (“Rock n Roll”).  It’s Almost Dry is Pusha’s strongest release since 2013’s My Name is My Name, if not his Clipse days.  From top to bottom, this album is filled with songs that live up to the strength of the production.  While many knock his continued lyrical fixation on coke dealing, “Diet Coke” was probably one of the biggest songs of the year.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  Beyond merely continuing a proven recipe, on It’s Almost Dry Pusha elevated his craft to its highest levels, constantly pushed there by Pharrell and Kanye’s first rate production.  

13.  Palm – Nicks and Grazes

These days it seems like the most interesting ideas in what used to be called good old fashioned indie rock are coming out of Philadelphia, but on seeing Palm live this year I realized the Philly band have more in common with Baltimore’s Animal Collective.  It isn’t necessarily that Palm sound like Animal Collective (they don’t really), but Palm meld ecstatic exuberance with odd time signatures and vocals that are more tonal layers than sense conveyors that is spiritually, if not sonically, akin Animal Collective in their heyday.  What was so cool about that Palm show was that it was readily apparent that this was a bunch of kids who grew up post Animal Collective and managed to import their spirit without aping their sound.  Sometimes seeing the torch passed from generation to generation can you make you feel ancient, but other times it makes you thrilled to see the youth pick up the spirit of something you once cherished and make of it their own.  So long as there are weirdos making fun music who barely seem to know how to play their instruments, there’ll be bands like Palm.

12.  JID – The Forever Story

In a year where Kendrick Lamar put out a (bad) record, it was JID who to my uneducated ear put out the most technically interesting flows.  While speed is impressive (see: Twista), and JID can unfurl 20 words in the time it takes zanax rappers to get out a single syllable, these aren’t speed trials devoid of rhythm or sense.  While a bit overstuffed at 15 songs with an hour runtime, on The Forever Story JID continues to match top notch chops with first rate story telling.  In a year in which Kendrick put his first foot wrong, give JID a chance instead.

11.  Panda Bear & Sonic Boom – Reset

Speaking of Animal Collective, even though Time Skiffs was well-reviewed, I had long ago given up on them doing anything of interest, which is totally fine seeing as they put out five consecutive albums that completely rewrote the possibilities of “folk” music.  (2003’s Here Comes the Indian through 2009’s Merriweather Post Pavilion).  It’s arguable that the most important album of that run wasn’t even put out by Animal Collective proper, but was Panda Bear’s seismic Person Pitch (2007).  While he continued to release great solo albums, often produced by Sonic Boom, like his main act, Noah Lennox seemed to be gradually receding from the center of cultural relevance.  While Reset doesn’t rewrite the fabric of pop music like his previous towering achievements, it does make you remember why we all fell in love with Panda Bear in the first place.  Pared down to pop perfection, songs like “Getting’ to the Point” and “Edge of the Edge” remind you that when Panda Bear gets his Brian Wilson on, there is almost no one who can write a better pop song.

10.  They are Gutting a Body of Water – S

Despite possessing the worst band name of 2022, They are Gutting a Body of Water put one of the year’s most interesting albums.  If you liked last year’s release from Spirit of the Beehive (a very narrow group of people) then S is precisely for you.  Without sounding much like them, They are Gutting a Body of Water remind me a lot of the Unicorns, but maybe that’s just because their lead singer also put out a hip-hop album this year. (Th’ Corn Gangg Anyone??? [This is a joke just for Brad Romsa if he is reading this]).  On S, They are Gutting a Body of Water (I can’t believe I have to keep typing that out, but I hate acronyms so here we are) are constantly shifting shapes, but most of the songs are sonically tied together by shimmering processed guitars that sound like they came from Broken Social Scene’s early records.  The songs that aren’t outright instrumentals often featured chipmunked vocals, or shoegazy coos that barely constitute “vocals” proper.  If you’re looking for 2022’s most sonically adventurous rock record, look no further than S.  

9.  Axel Boman – Luz

Along with Kornel Kovacs (whom I love) and Petter Nordkvist (not familiar), Boman founded the influential Swedish label Studio Barnhus. With Luz, Boman put out my favorite electronic album of the year.  Like the aforementioned Kovacs, and DJ Koze, Boman traffics in house music shot through with psychedelia.  The normally steady rhythms of house tend to bend and shift across the course of his tracks, as the music takes you more on a voyage of the mind rather than getting your hips moving.  Take, for example, penultimate track “Grape.” What starts out as a bouncy Herbert homage, gradually picks up cascading vocals, and then stuttering jungle, until finally dissolving as the sea of rhythms it had gradually built up begin to recede like the tide.  Each track on Luz is a journey,  so why not see where it takes you.

8. Anteloper - Pink Dolphins

2022 not only was a big year for jazz, it was a big year for Jeff Parker (see below).  On Pink Dolphins, the sadly dearly departed trumpeter Jaimie Branch and percussionist / electronics guy Jason Nazary (who combined constitute Anteloper) paired with Parker in the role of producer, to stunning effect.  If not for They are Gutting a Body of Water, Pink Dolphins would probably be the strangest record I’ve heard this year. The review I read compared the album to Live-Evil era Miles Davis, and that was basically all I needed to know.  Pink Dolphins is like a new age version of that Miles, and I’ve also read the album’s sound described as aquadelica (aquatic psychedelica).  The pairing of Anteloper and Jeff Parker is a match made in heaven, as he helps the duo push their sound out to the moon, where Branch’s trumpet functions more like a stab of noise rather than a source of melody.  On “Earthlings” the driving force of the song is Nazary’s scattershot drum beat paired with a haunting bass line, as a series of electronic effects and Branch’s understated but effective vocals swirl around like a whirlpool. Her trumpet doesn’t cut through the swirl of noise until about 4 and ½ minutes into the song.  It is terrible to comprehend that Pink Dolphins is the last thing we will ever get from Branch, but at least it’s a hell of a way to go out.

7.  Beyonce – Renaissance

We can keep this one short. You don’t need me to tell you anything about Beyonce. All I need to say is someone derisively said of lead single “Break My Soul” that “it sounds like C+C Music Factory.”  My only complaint with Renaissance is that I wish it sounded more like C+C Music Factory.  

6.  Yard Act –

The Overloard

Yard Act are the most british band on this list, by a mile.  There is just some sort of bratty nonchalance that only the Britsh can pull off, and The Overloard is soaked in it.  While most post punk—especially the vein currently back in vogue—is defined by dark brooding, Yard Act practice a different type of post punk always very close to my heart, the minimalist, strutting, arty variety perfected by The Fall, Wire, and Buzzcocks several decades ago.  So long as there is someone somewhere sipping a coffee, smoking a cigarette, reading a book (Kafka?) over the top of wayfarers perched archly at the end of their nose, but more importantly, always aware of the ludicrousness of such a pose, there will be bands like Yard Act.  According to internet-based statistics, “Dead Horse” was my most played song of the year, and there is no surprise there. It’s everything I love in a song and nothing else.  

5.  Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You

For a folk-rock outfit that doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, Big Thief’s permanent position towards the top of this and most other lists year after year is fairly outstanding.  It’s not that their sound has changed from Masterpiece to Capacity to U.F.O.F./Two Hands to Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, but their sound has somehow gotten better with each successive release.  A sprawling double album in the truest sense of the word, Dragon New Warm Mountain is where it all should have gone wrong.  Their familiarity should have grown a little tiresome as they drowned in the sea of their self indulgence.  Instead, the name of their first album notwithstanding, Dragon New Warm Mountain stands as their clear masterpiece.  Like the Beatles on the White Album (which has become my favorite Beatles’ record as I’ve aged), here the double album format allows Big Thief to focus a little less on perfecting their folk gems and allows them to spread their wings a bit.  Like the Beatles, rather than resulting in a slip-shod series of half baked results, the looseness of the double album allows their genius to shine through all the brighter.  Top to bottom, start to finish, this thing is absolutely stuffed with perfect little songs.  For my money (which is none, because this is free) of all their small gems, “Certainty” is the best they’ve ever penned.  

4. Destroyer - Labryinthitis

Well Dan Bejar, you’ve done it again.  I have no idea what number Destroyer release this is (I just checked, it’s the project’s 13th!) but with Labryinthitis Bejar continues his recent run of excellent form.  Destroyer never really puts out bad records, but his sea of releases has crests and troughs just like any body of water controlled by the moon.  To my ear, those peaks occur every three or four albums or so (Streethawk, Rubies, Kaputt), and while I really enjoyed Have we Met, I think Labryinthitis is his best release since Kaputt.  Mixing the electronic textures of Ken and Have we Met with Kaputt and Poison Season’s chill, Labryinthitis is a culmination of all of Bejar’s recent preoccupations (see “June.”) If “The Last Song” were not only the cap to this excellent album, but to an outstanding career, it would be a fitting testament.  And as someone who once thought “I used to live in New York” constituted a personality, there is no biting line than “you wake up / you stand up / you move to LA / you’re just another person that moves to LA.”

3.  Cola – Deep in View

There’s a pretty easy test for whether or not you’ll love Cola as much as I do: does the phrase “the slow Strokes” appeal to you? If so, this is your band.  Formed out of the ashes of the occasionally great Ought, Cola take Ought’s nervous, angular guitar rock, give it a nice glass of white wine on a balmy day, and unwind that pent up energy into the best chilled out strummers this side of Julian Casablancas and Albert Hammond Jr.  At one point I declared Deep in View to be the “album of the summer,” and now with a little perspective I stand by my own dashed off opinion.  This is music for driving around with the windows down and nowhere in particular to go.

2.  Jeff Parker – Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy / Forfolks

If Alex G had the best album of the year (spoiler alert!), no one had a better year than Jeff Parker.  In addition to producing Anteloper’s Pink Dolphins as discussed above, he also put out two outstanding, and completely different, albums under his own name.  While I enjoyed Suite for Max Brown, Forfolks is the record that really got me into Jeff Parker (not counting all his excellent records with Tortoise of course).  Comprised almost entirely of looped acoustic guitars, it somehow sounds the most like Django Reinhardt of anything put out since the days of that unequaled gypsy.  While Forfolks is excellent, and would have made this list somewhere in here, Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy is Parker’s best achievement in a year filled with his excellent music.  Comprised of recordings from a two year period (presumably on Monday nights) at the LA cocktail bar (to which I have never been, but now hold in almost religious esteem based on my time listening to this record), Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy is one of the most hypnotic jazz albums I’ve ever heard.  Fitting in perfectly with Nala Sinephro’s excellent album from last year, this is ambient jazz of an entirely different variety.  The product of a quartet—Jay Bellerose on drums, Anna Butterss on bass, Josh Johnson on saxophone, and Parker of course on guitar—locked in to one another with laser-like focus, on these four recordings you can hear the air in the bar hum with the energy of their playing, and also the tinkling of the bar patrons’ glasses from time to time, which gives the album a lived in energy.   These songs are somehow simultaneously taught and languid, electric and unplugged, looping and driving.  Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy is the product of four players at the absolute heights of their powers, and probably the best “modern” (i.e. post 70s Miles) jazz record I’ve ever heard.  

1.  Alex G – God Save the Animals

Without having gone back through my records, I’m not sure a single artist has ever topped these lists more than once, but with God Save the Animals, Alex G has once again proven himself to be the best around (and lets be fair, if I was publishing these lists in the mid Aughts, I would have put every Sunset Rubdown release at number one).  It isn’t that God Save the Animals is somehow different from, or better than, House of Sugar, but instead it feels like a continuation of the slight turn Alex G took on that exceptional record.  While all his albums have trafficked in the same basic building blocks (pitch shifted vocals, acoustic guitars, little pieces of Elliott Smith without ever really sounding like Elliott Smith) on House of Sugar things got just a little bit weirder, and the results were absolutely stunning.  With God Save the Animals, I continue to be stunned.  While these songs seem fixated on God / the divine, Alex G never loses his connection to the here and now.  Before the album even came out my friend John sent me a live version of “Miracles” and told me it brings him to tears, which is perfectly understandable.  What is strange is that another song on the same album, “After All,” has the same effect on me.  To my ear, it’s not only the most beautiful song on the record, but one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard.  In an album filled with God, blessings, and miracles, the truly divine thing is we continue to get more albums like this from Alex G.

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Gorwitz’s Top Albums of 2021

25.  Black Midi – Cavalcade

I LOVE Black Midi.  I do not, however, love Cavalcade.  Steering hard into their proggiest leanings, the most name-checked band in reviews of Cavalcade is Primus, which is about all you need to know.  What’s funny is, I love prog (you’re looking at the head of the Prog Club subsection our local Record Club, which meets exclusively at a booth at the CC Club).  But with prog, you have to take the good with the bad.  If you’re going to define your sound as “experimental” there are going to be a few that fizzle, and the middle section of Cavalcade is full of meandering segments that don’t really go anywhere (think more The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway than Shine on You Crazy Diamond).  However, the highs—“John L” “Dethroned”—are so visceral and thrilling that Cavalcade still makes the cut, even if it’s the most “difficult” album on this list to hit play on track 1 and stay with all the way through the conclusion of “Ascending Forth.”

24.  Painted Shrines – Heaven and Holy

If Black Midi has diametrical opposite on this list, it’s probably the homespun grandeur of Painted Shrines’ Heaven and Holy.  If you think it reminds you of Woods’ heyday, well pardner you’re in luck, because Painted Shrines is the moniker of Woods’ frontman Jeremy Earl, along with Glenn Donaldson.  I’ll be the first to admit I’ve found Woods’ recent experiments in pop-perfection to be some of the best work they’ve ever done, but for those longing for the shaggier Americana of Songs of Shame era Woods, Heaven and Holy delivers.  Gentle harmonies float over jangly guitars, as your mind is transported to a country lane while fall leaves slowly circle down to the ground.  If The Byrds and The Feelies had a feral baby, it’d be Painted Shrines.  

23.  Special Friend – Ennemi Commun

You know when you have that band that you try to get your friends into and for whatever reason no one else will bite? Well, for me that band this year was Special Friend.  The duo’s songs are not the most complex, often repeating basic patterns, so I get how it can be not the most engaging / challenging listen, but for anyone who loves the guitar-heroics portion of Yo La Tengo records, Ennemi Commun is worth a listen.  Marrying simple but propulsive drums with squalling guitars (and hushed vocals), Ennemi Commun is basically if someone made an entire record out of “Cherry Chapstick.” If only anyone else saw it that way.  

22.  The Weather Station – Ignorance

Ignorance is easily the most polished album on this list, which is normally something I avoid, but for The Weather Station the overall professional sheen works decidedly in their favor.  I believe the album is a cautionary tale about the apocalyptic onset of climate change, but as someone who pays almost no attention to lyrics, I'll admit that thematic cohesion largely escapes me.  What does come through, however, is how each song’s elements are perfectly produced and fit together in a.m. radio gold.  Tamara Lindeman’s contralto is crisply balanced by strings straight out of Abbey Road and jazzy drumming that succinctly keeps things moving without drawing attention to itself.  I’m sure if I actually paid attention to the words I’d have deep things to say about the roll of this album in the ongoing disaster of world existence, but since I haven’t I’ll continue to luxuriate in its silky ‘70s sounds.  

21.  L’Rain – Fatigue

I read a review of Fatigue that called it R&B musique concrete, and while that might be a turn off for some people, I was like, “where do I sign up?” (Answer: apple music/spotify).  But that really is the most apt description of this at times familiar at times confounding record.  Essentially it sounds like an old R&B album run through a blender. Some tracks feel like background / samples stretched out to song length, while others are perfectly conventional.  The whole thing has a dreamy quality, like listening to the idea of a song rather than the song itself (that’s not a knock btw).  

20.  Goat Girl – On All Fours

On All Fours is the quintessential grower on this list.  While on first blush everything is perfectly competent and well produced, with its emphasis on moody atmospherics and chill grooves, Goat Girl aim not to impress on the first listen, but rather on the 7th.  Though it sounds nothing like Portishead, there is something spiritually connecting these groups (besides both being from England of course).  Whereas Portishead is all staccato, stuttering hip-hop beats, Goat Girl melts their sound down into a liquid languor, what Stereolab would sound like if they weren’t into jazz.  “Sad Cowboy” would perfectly soundtrack one of Spike Spiegel’s adventures.  

19.  Nite Jewel – No Sun

As I age, Nite Jewel is emblematic of those bands I still consider “new” even though they’ve been around for over a decade.  I guess that’s just what happens with music that comes around while you’re in your mid 20s. Because you first heard it when you were young, it forever retains a tinge of youth.  No Sun is a fitting record to discuss this phenomena, because it is decidedly a “mature” album.  Miles away from the lo-fi experiments of Good Evening (a record I absolutely loved in 2009), No Sun is a melancholy, mannered reflection on a failed marriage.  The coldness of the beats meets the coldness of the subject matter, to create a haunting dissection both of pop music and a lost relationship.

18.  Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg

While Dry Cleaning first grabbed my attention with the Boundary Road Snacks and Drinks E.P., they take a major leap forward with their proper full-length debut, New Long Leg.  While Boundary Road employed the same flat intoned spoken lyrics from Florence Shaw to more or less the same effect, on New Long Leg they employ her non sequitur observations to entirely different effect by pairing them with instrumentation straight off a Buzzcocks or Television record.  The guitar playing here is some of the best of the year, and the rhythm section is equally up to the task, transforming Shaw’s flat delivery into starkly vivid, thrilling music.  Consumed as a whole, New Long Leg can get a bit repetitive, but the highs here are equal to anything else released this year.  

17.  Ovlov – Buds

With Buds Ovlov continue their recent winning streak following 2018’s excellent Tru.  Ovlov are one of those bands that I don’t get why they aren’t more popular / receive more critical praise, but then I’m reminded that that’s kinda the whole point of this “indie rock” thing, whatever that terms means at the end of 2021.  While they’re clearly indebted to the Dinosaur Jr. “heavy” guitar take on power pop, Ovlov are no mere revivalists.  Through their combination ear-worm surprisingly light melodies, crunchy guitars, and punchy drums, Ovlov have consistently turned out gem after gem.  Not for the faint of heart, but neither for the heartless, if you like your guitars loud, even here in 2021, then Ovlov is the band for you.

16.  Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, & the London Symphony Orchestra – Promises

I know in past versions of this list I’ve enjoyed declaring jazz “back,” and I’ve done it so many times that I think its just a given we no longer have to have to champion.  Now that we can just assume jazz’s critical relevance in the 21st century, we can start to analyze the trends within jazz rather than the entire genre’s return from the dead.  2021 was the year of ambient jazz, and honestly I couldn’t be happier.  Nothing better encapsulates jazz’s current status than Promises.  Sanders, a hold over from jazz’s last moment of critical relevance, partners with a maven of the current electronic music scene, Floating Points, and the London Symphony Orchestra (sure, why not) to thrilling results.  Through its constant repetitions of small passages and themes, Promises captures the key to both Sander’s cosmic jazz of the late ‘60s early ‘70s and ambient electronic music of the late 2010s.  With each cycle, the music subtly varies, all the while striving ever higher towards the heavens.  

15.  Nation of Language – A Way Forward

If you don’t love ‘80s synth rock in the vein of Depeche Mode and Human League, I don’t know if you’ll love Nation of Language, but if you do love that stuff, then A Way Forward will scratch you right were you itch.  Perfectly melding Ian Devaney’s somber baritone—which would fit right in on a Tears for Fears record—with luscious synths, this is the new romantic music for people who still walk around thinking they’re a character in a John Hughes movie.  No one is reinventing the wheel here, but on a A Way Forward Nation of Language build on an excellent debut to create a truly impressive young body of work.  

14.  King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – Butterfly 3000

King Gizzard have no business being this good after putting out so many damn albums (according to my unofficial tally on Allmusic it’s their 18th, but I feel like that’s an undercount), but here we are.  I’ve always enjoyed King Gizzard, especially in the incidental moments where I’ve caught them live (standing next to Lady Gaga at Le Poison Rouge was definitely a trip), but they’ve never been a key act for me.  That all changed with Butterfly 3000.  Out are the psychedelic jams, in are tightly wound krautrock and motoric (which, lets admit, is still a bit jammy, albeit in much smaller packages).  If Neu! just wanted to have fun and had more arpeggiaters, it would probably sound something like Butterfly 3000.  Things get off to a hard charging, bouncy, delightful start with “Yours,” and the album sustains that hard driving energy all the way till the conclusion of the title track.  “Shanghai” was one of my favorite songs of the year, its electro funk is simply irresistible.  

13.  Squid – Bright Green Field

Have you ever wondered what Dismemberment Plan would sound like if they were trying to be The Fall instead of the Pixies? Well, the answer is Squid’s Bright Green Field, and it is excellent.  Of the trio of Black Midi, Squid, and Black Country, New Road, Squid are the most discernibly “british” of the three.  All nervy energy and razor-sharp guitars, with bratty speak-sing lyrics, Bright Green Field feels like a lost relic from the moment when the Manchester scene of Joy Division evolved into the Madchester of Stone Roses and Primal Scream.  Squid posses the dancy energy of those Madchester bands while still hewing closer to the punk music of their Manchester forbears.  With multiple songs stretching past the 8:00 mark, often times a Squid song will morph back and forth from arty experimentation to raw punk attack within the same song.  I initially had Bright Green Field as my favorite of the trio of arty British punks on this list, but Ollie Judge’s vocal delivery can become a bit grating across the entirety of album, so I ended up slotting Black, Country New Road just ahead.  However, when taken in smaller portions, Squid are making some of the most arresting, challenging music of the year.  

12.  Hand Habits – Fun House

Fun House is the album Meg Duffy has been building to, both across a series of interesting one-off experiments this year (see, Yes/And), and over their young career.  I like placeholder, but Fun House is a major leap forward, both in terms of production and songcraft.  Having played with both Kevin Morby and War on Drugs, Fun House feels like they’ve learned a few tricks from the Drugs when it comes to incorporating electronic elements into heartland guitar rock.  Case in point, “Aquamarine” is almost pure pop, but it nevertheless feels perfectly at home amongst Fun House’s more guitar-centric cuts, such as “Gold/Rust” or the excellent opener “More than Love.”  Having perhaps been previously best known for their backing roles in bigger bands, with Fun House Meg Duffy has fully become a star in their own right.  

11.  Black Country, New Road – For the First Time

2021 was another banner year for young post punk experimental brits.  Like Black Midi (“Track X” even name checks them) and Squid, Britain is rich with bands like Black Country, New Road combining the energy of (post) punk, the free-form experimentation of prog, and the chug of rock to create truly compelling, vital music full of the brashness of youth.  For the First Time is composed of six songs, most of which stretch beyond six minutes and two of which are over 8.  Via an off-kilter combination of jazzy drumming, jittery vocals, sax & violin (?!) and buzzsaw guitars, Black Country, New Road are slightly above their peers on this list, leading us boldly into the new.  While it starts off a bit conventionally (you know, minus the klezmer influenced opener “Instrumental”), around the midpoint of “Science Fair,” as the guitar and sax enter a manic squalling duet, a synthesizer suddenly cuts in, and the album achieves lift off and never looks back.  Too visceral for prog, too avant garde for punk, For the First Time fully lives up to its name.

10.  Avalanches – We Will Always Love You

Alright, this is cheating a little bit, but you know what, it’s my list so aint nobody going to take me off to critics jail for including an album technically released in 2020 on my 2021 list.  We Will Always Love You came out on December 11, 2020, after most outlets, including this humble one, had already compiled their year-end lists. So why not take the opportunity to give it its flowers (a phrase I only use to ask, where did it come from? If 2021 had a most over-used phrase, it was “to give __ their flowers.”) Loosely inspired by the love affair of Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan (that’s her on the cover), and the Golden Record launched into deep space on the Voyager probe, We Will Always Love You is an album of interstellar love pop perfection worthy of late period Daft Punk.  Featuring contributions from Dev Hynes, Leon Bridges, Tricky (?!), and Kurt Vile, among many others, you’ll be hard pressed to find better pop music from any year.  

9.  Spirit of the Beehive – ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH

Ah yes, welcome to the strangest release on this list, by a decent margin.  If you want to know what ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH is all about (I hate when bands use all caps, come on guys, we get it) you need look no farther than the two and half minutes of opener “ENTERTAINMENT” to know what Spirit of the Beehive are all about.  What starts out as blaring, borderline unlistenable bursts of noise, resolves after about 50 seconds in a gently strummed (albeit, modulated) acoustic guitar, which then resolves into clean acoustic strums with gently pretty baritone singing and even some strings thrown in for good measure.  I’ve been chasing an album that sounds anything like Broken Social Scene’s perfect You Forgot it in People since 2002, and ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH is the closest I’ve ever come.  While Spirit of the Beehive are no Broken Social Scene in terms of both scope and ambition, they share the Canadian collective’s interest in bending pop conventions to create off-kilter beauty throughout ever changing song structures.  

8.  Armand Hammer & the Alchemist – Haram  

While 2021 was an excellent year for hip hop in general, it was an exceedingly good year for the Alchemist.  Coming off 2020’s excellent Alfredo with Freddie Gibbs, in 2021 the Alchemist put out the excellent Bo Jackson with Boldy James (just on the outside looking in on this list) and my personal favorite, Armand Hammer’s Haram.  Billy Woods and Elucid continue their own hot streak, and by pairing with the Alchemist’s production, they’ve hit their creative peak with Haram.  Though neither is the most technically gifted rapper, when Woods and Elucid come together as Armand Hammer there is an alchemy (pun!) that turns their street tales into hypnotic flows that envelope you in their imagery.  Without ever breaking a sweat, Armand Hammer’s verses will carry you away into a sonic world entirely of their own creation.  

7. Water From Your Eyes – Structure

All year, I kept yelling at anyone that would listen “Water From Your Eyes’ Structure is the most interesting album I’ve heard in some time!” However, no one would listen. (*Insert Abe Simpson “Old Man Yells at Cloud” newsclipping here*).  First of all, its called “Structure” so they’re telling you in advance they’re dealing with the forms (in the platonic sense) of music itself.  Then, there’s that crazy cover art.  A white field, an abstract geometric pattern, and a figure (but one that is only barely recognizable as such).  All are in black white and gray.  So again, they’re telling you they’re dealing with the relationship of the figural and the abstract, which is quickly born out in the music itself.  The first track, “When You’re Around” is pure pop; hell it sounds like Camera Obscura.  Then, things take a sudden right turn with second track “My Love’s” (even the tile is left in abstract incompletion, my love’s what? The possessive is left unresolved) which sounds more like the Knife than most anything else I can think of, with its stark industrial beats and sudden blasts of white noise.  All of this is before we even get to the fact that there’s two songs called “Quotations,” one whose title is enclosed within actual quotation marks (the second one, which closes the album) and one which isn’t.  Oh, and they’re too versions of the same song, the first abstract, the second pop.  What does all this mean? I’m not exactly sure, but it’s damn fun to think long and hard about.   Barthes 4 eva!!!

6.  Low – Hey What

The only reason that Low’s Hey What doesn’t get the “strange” crown from Spirit of the Beehive is because, coming on the heels of 2018’s absolutely insane(ly gorgeous) Double Negative, Hey What seems relatively staid by comparison (emphasis on the “relatively”).  While Double Negative took everything that Low had ever done and run it through a time and tone altering blender until it became almost unrecognizable (like a copy of a copy of a copy, or Basinski’s Disintegration Loops), Hey What works in the opposite direction, taking the shreds of molten industrial sounds from Double Negative and building absolutely beautiful pop songs out of the molten shards of music.  The semi title track “Hey” perfectly encapsulates what the album is all about.  Built upon a woozy loop of sound that sounds like a doppler-shifting window air conditioner, Mimi Parker’s crystal clear vocals suddenly come in over the top like a ray of sun glinting off a glacier, as that single word “Hey” echoes to infinity, breaking up the verses exactly like a chorus, and then for the last four minutes the song beautifully cycles out through its own echoes, like the sound of the ocean as imagined by electric sheep.  

5.  Cory Hanson – Pale Horse Rider

Better known as the frontman of the Ty-Segall-featuring Wand, Cory Hanson steps out on his own for the exquisite Pale Horse Rider.  For the first few bars of “Paper Fog” Pale Horse Rider sounds a bit like Cut Worms’ George-Harrison revivalism, but then around the 2:20 mark it does what Cut Worms and so many likeminded bands have failed to do, it transcends its ‘70s folk rock influences with some truly genuine oddity.  Giant buzzing synths (electric guitars? I genuinely struggle to tell the two apart sometimes) fill the stereo spectrum, and the album achieves eerie lift off, and doesn’t look back from there.  The whole thing sounds like an off-kilter trip through late night Los Angeles, like a lost soundtrack for Mullholland Drive, but one that was recorded in Laurel Canyon.  This is one of the most inventive folk-rock records I’ve heard in some time, and one I wish garnered more attention than it has so far attracted.  

4.  Helado Negro – Far In

Roberto Carlos Lange continues his recent excellent run of form with Far In.  If you liked Helado Negro’s last record (2019’s excellent This is How You Smile) then Far In is a winning continuation of that album’s form.  Gentle, bouncy electronics pair perfectly with Lange’s soft-spoken vocals. Just as electronic dance music had its Balearic phase like 10 years ago, Helado Negro brings a sense of “chill” to electro pop.  This is music for dusk strolls and porch sits, for introspection that is still capable of arresting your wayward attention.  You’re never going to dance to these tracks, but they port in dance music’s focus on the texture of rhythm to create pop music crafted around a few simple elements that nevertheless completely fill the audio spectrum; the music is sparse but inviting, like a well appointed living room in an old home.  Instead of saying “far out” this music asks you to gaze “far in,” trippy, but introspective and connective.

3.  Nala Sinephro – Space 1.8

I mentioned above that 2021 was the year of ambient jazz, and as much as Pharaoh Sanders and Floating Points are respective icons, this years best ambient jazz record was from newcomer Nala Sinephro, and it wasn’t even close.  Sinephro plays modular synth and harp, so the Alice Coltrane comps are inevitable (not a bad thing!), but Sinephro crafts a sound all her own by giving equal weight to the “ambient” as she does to the “jazz.”  It helps the album also features multiple horn players, including current stalwart of the London scene Nubya Garcia, which helps keep Space 1.8 grounded in the red-hot present of London jazz.  In the late ‘50s jazz entered its “cool” phase with Miles’ Birth of the Cool, and it seems like ambient can be to 2020s jazz what cool was to the ‘50s.  Instead of emphasizing speed and virtuosity, this is music that reveals in tone and mood. Instruments float into and out of the mix, as the whole thing just seems to levitate.  Sinephro is an impressive new talent, and I can’t wait to see where she goes from here.  Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in Space 1.8.  

2.  Tyler, the Creator – Call Me if You Get Lost

I used to champion Kanye on these pages because he was out there swinging for the fences on each successive release, wildly changing up his style from album to album but still putting out pop masterpieces despite all the various styles he was experimenting with.  Now that Kanye has receded into gospel mediocrity (I actually enjoyed moments on Donda, but not the entirety of the experience) that mantle of “King of Pop” has passed to Tyler, the Creator.  I LOVED Igor when it came out, and now that more time has passed I think its arguably the best album of the last 5 years, if not the last 10.  Just as Igor was a radical stylistic shift for Tyler, Call Me if you Get Lost is an equally big swerve, even if it brings him squarely back into the lane of quote-unquote “rap.” The opening run of “SIR BOUDELAIRE” through “LUMBERJACK” is peerless hip-hop perfection (my favorite being “CORSO”).  Then, the album takes a sharp turn into flute-featuring Cali chill with “HOT WIND BLOWS” (featuring an amazing verse from Wayne, himself continuing a recent return to form).  I could do with a little less DJ Drama across the album, but his silly non sequiturs are a fun throw back to Wayne’s mixtape days, so I can’t really complain.  Finally, things come to a fascinating (penultimate) conclusion on “WILSHIRE,” with its nearly nine minute narration of the speaker’s fascination with a non-single lady.  The autobiographical has always played a key role in Tyler’s public image and music, so I understand the internet’s fascination with who the subject of “WILSHIRE” is supposed to be, but in a key showing of Tyler’s growth, the music stands all on its own without having to take recourse to his personal backstory to explain its import.  “We got our toes out!”

1.  W.H. Lung – Vanities

I haven’t seen Vanities get a lot of love on year end lists, so let me give you the 411.  W.H. Lung are a bunch of kids from Manchester who make dance music with live instrumentation.  LCD Soundsytem is a clear influence, so you can understand my interest.  Their 2019 debut, Incidental Music, was perfectly aight, showed some promise, but it’s on Vanities that they take their big leap.  According to a profile I read on Stereogum, the members of W.H. Lung spent the run up to Vanities clubbing at a place called the White Hotel on the outskirts of Manchester, and it shows.  Every track on Vanities is bursting with the energy of the club, while still being grounded in the structures and run times of “pop/rock” music.  Things get off to a roaring start with opener “Calm Down” and never look back.  The siren chant of “Calm Down” is ironic, as it serves to get you hyped for everything that is to come.  The whole album is driven by hard charging synths and pulsing bass, which really get cooking on second track “Gd Tym.”  It’s not that Vanities doesn’t have its slower moments.  Just as Hot Chip perfectly melded bangers and ballads on all of their (excellent) records, W.H. Lung do the same, with the bleary-eyed “Ways of Seeing” probably my favorite song of the year.  If you love New Order / having a good time, pop in Vanities and let it sweep you away to a night at the club, even if you’re just dancing alone in your own living room.  

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Favorite Albums of 2020

25. Dehd – Flower of Devotion

Rather than look back on the shit year that was 2020, lets keep our eye on the hope of the horizon.  Speaking of which, Dehd herald much of what’s to come on this here list.  While as previously mentioned a shit year for most everything besides presidential politics, 2020 proved to be a great year for good old fashioned guitar music.  Could I be accused of curling up with my version of musical comfort food? Perhaps.  But starting off with Dehd, we have a type of band that used to be everywhere and now seems to be almost nowhere.  Jangly lo-fi guitars, perky drums, and straightforward unadorned singing.  About five years ago you couldn’t throw a rock in Brooklyn without hitting a band like this, but now that that fad is long gone.  I’m glad that Chicago’s Dehd are still carrying the torch.  

24. Perfume Genius – Set My Heart on Fire Immediately

I’ve always liked Perfume Genius, but for whatever reason Set My Heart on Fire Immediately is the album that took him out of the realm of casual background musical encounter to something I sought out.  Chamber pop has never really been my thing (except for those couple summers where Grizzly Bear was totally my jam), but here the torch songs catch fire by the compressed force of Michael Hadreas’ longing.  This record also pulls off the impressive feat of each song gradually morphing just a bit from what proceeds it, so that the whole record sounds similar and yet each song carves out its own little generic niche, the whole thing united by the quivering power of that pleading voice.  

23. 2nd Grade – Hit to Hit

If you ever found yourself wondering what Guided by Voices would sound like if they wanted to be Big Star instead of punk rock Kinks, we now have the answer, and it’s Phily’s 2nd Grade.  In the noble tradition of Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes, Hit to Hit’s 24 tracks breeze by in a mere 41 minutes and 8 seconds.  An earworm sunny melody, a quick guitar hook, a second verse (maybe), and poof, each song is gone before you could ever miss it.  You would think variation would be difficult working within such tight musical corners, but while each song clearly shares common DNA, there is actually a lot of variance here, from weepy country ditties (“Bye Bye Texas”) to overdriven stompers (“Baby’s First Word”) though they all tend to orbit the same (big) star.  

22. Tame Impala – The Slow Rush

I’ll be the first to admit that The Slow Rush isn’t my favorite Tame Impala record, not by a long shot.  Having said that, this album still feels like it got short shrift this year (not that anyone can really complain about that in these here times).  If we never knew that Lonerism or Innerspeaker or Currents existed, I wonder how much people would be head over heels for this album.  “One More Year” “Is It True” and “Posthumous Forgiveness” are all top notch Impala jams.  Seems like this album is the soundtrack for the chilled out summer hangs that we never got to have, and thus it’s fitting that it seems condemned for the ash-heap of history rather than the late-night come downs we never got up to.

21. Against All Logic – 2017 – 2019

Ah, speaking of complicated musical relationships, I can never seem to chart a clear course with Nicolas Jaar.  The music he puts out under his own name never seems to do much for me, but I dug his collaboration with Dave Harrington as Darkside, and I really love most everything he’s put out as Against All Logic.  While admittedly not a great year for house music—normally a liberating genre of communal interconnectivity, now a cruel reminder that we all live in Footloose—a banger remains a banger, and 2017-2019 is full to the brim with them.  While I honestly can’t remember the last time I went dancing, I’ll still crank up “Fantasy” and bop around my living room, literally dancing by myself (lets be honest, something I would have done pandemic or no).  

20. Fiona Apple – Fetch the Bolt Cutters

Fetch the Bolt Cutters has had a lot of great things said about it this year, so I don’t really have to add that much.  What I will say is this is perhaps the most interesting percussion I’ve ever heard on a record.  There is percussion all over the place, but almost none of it in the form of full-kit drumming.  Fiona always used the left hand on the piano as the rhythmic center of her songs, but here there is drilling, tapping, rapping, patting.  The phrase DIY gets tossed around all the time (and almost never applied to big money, big label Fiona) but to me the most impressive thing about this record is how it always sounds like she is sitting at a rickety upright piano in the corner of a living room, while everyone congregating around keeps the beat by tapping on pots and pans, the walls, whatever is at hand.  I’ve truly never heard anything like it.  

19. Advertisement – American Advertisement

Godbless Seattle’s Advertisement. So long as there is cheap beer, old shitty cars driving with the windows down, and the U-SofA, there’ll be bands like Advertisement.  Straight out of the vein of Cheap Trick and the more recent White Reaper, Advertisement play power pop with the emphasis on the power.  Sometimes this type of music gets called sleazy, but honestly I don’t get it.  I think its probably because you can imagine it playing while Wooderson drives around Austin looking for redheads. While we rightfully cancelled the song of summer this year, “Upstream Boogie” would have gotten my vote, perfect for backyard bbqs and cannonballing into creeks.  

18. Nation of Language – Introduction, Presence

I didn’t set it up this way, but if Advertisement has a diametric opposite, its probably Nation of Language.  Where Advertisement is all frayed edges and foam, Nation of Language is as buttoned up as those terrible sports jackets people wore in the early ‘90s.  While its not as good as my beloved Black Marble, those bands share enough DNA to make me a big fan of this synth pop gem.  It’s not as dark as the cold-wave Black Marble, but it does share that bands fondness for stark baselines and crisp arpeggios.  If you’ve ever envisioned your life as a scene from a John Hughes movie, Nation of Language could easily be playing in the background.

17. The Soft Pink Truth – Shall we Go on Sinning so that Grace May Increase?

Indulge me in a moment of naval gazing.  Every year as I put these things together I reach a point where I’m lack “damn, this album is this low on the list?” And the point at which that thought enters my head is usually indicative of how good a year for music it was.  Now 2020 wasn’t a good year for anything, and I probably spent the least time of any year listening to music, new, old, whatever.  For the most part I just listened to the Grateful Dead and ambient albums.  However, for my idiosyncratic tastes, 2020 was actually a pretty fucking incredible year for new music, as evinced by the fact that this album is all the way down at 17.  

Earlier on in 2020 as I was bombarding my poor local music text thread with yet more of my inane musings, I think I declared this a top 3 album of the year.  And I wasn’t lying!  “Pretty” is often a dirty word in aesthetic appreciation, but this is certainly the “prettiest” album of the year in the best sense of the word.  From the Drew Daniel half of Matmos comes Shall we Go on Sinning so that Grace May Increase?  A record that is somehow simultaneously deep house and feather light, so much so that it needs its own dumb internet music writing moniker—shallow house? wide house? vacation house? (actually kinda like that last one).  With vocals from Jana Hunter, Angel Deradoorian, and Colin Self (with whom I wasn’t previously familiar) this thing will simultaneously make you want to tap your foot and drift off into the clouds.  This is album is like the prayer Madonna sang about all those years ago.  

16. Kurt Vile – Speed, Sound, Lonely KV

It’s not at all surprising that if Kurt Vile decided he wanted to go country western he’d be really fucking good at it.  First of all, he’s an exceptional acoustic guitar picker.  Secondly, his voice, while always befitting his hazed out urban rockers, has just enough twang to it that in retrospect it always sounded a little bit country.  This record also gives me room to offer up an homage to the late great John Prine, for whom the EP is essentially a tribute.  Vile covers two Prine songs, dueting with the man himself on “How Lucky.” Saying goodbye is never easy, but on Speed, Sound, Lonely (both the album, and the song more or less by that name) Vile manages a fitting tribute to a lost legend.  

15. Lomelda – Hannah

The reviews of Hannah really did Lomelda a disservice.  Sure, they were glowing, but they made it sound like this was some weepy milquetoast singer songwriter affair, when it’s actually a knotty album full off elliptical piano and fuzzed out electric guitar.  Its 14 tracks hurtle by, largely due to the fact that almost all of them are under 3 and a ½ minutes.  Things really get going with the second track, “Hannah Sun” with is squiggly synth effects and driving acoustic strums carrying on Hannah Read’s musings.  It’s an album of relentless forward musical movement even if the vibe feels like it’s always looking back over its shoulder.  Basically this album is what emo would sound like if it wasn’t made by the worst people in the universe.  

14. Shabaka and the Ancestors – We are Sent here by History

Jazz! Another great year for jazz (Asher Gamedze’s Dialectic Soul and Keefe Jackson, Jim Baker, & Julian Kirshner’s So Glossy and So Thin are with a strong group that just missed the cut).  In the midst of an excellent jazz renaissance (you gotta use super annoying words like “renaissance” when talking about jazz) Shebaka Hutchins remains my absolute fave of the bunch, and We are Sent here by History is probably my favorite thing he has put out so far.

13. Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud

While I really liked Waxahatchee’s low-fi emoish debut—American Weekend—I’ll readily admit I wasn’t much about the popier albums that followed, frequently jesting, honestly, that Allison was my preferred musical Crutchfield sister.  All that changed for me with Saint Cloud.  I’ve certainly drifted far off into country and Americana as I’ve aged, and it appears the same came be said for Katie Crutchfield.  These songs have a giddyup to them but they never break out into a gallop, allowing the strength of the melodies to carry them along across the plains, with just the right hint of twilight.  Saint Cloud is the sound of Patsy Cline if she played to roadside inns rather than the Grand Ol’ Opry.  

12. Neil Young – Homegrown

This was the hardest album to place on the list this year.  For starters, should it even count? Clearly I say yes.  While some of these songs have been available for over 30 years, as an album, Homegrown was a “new” release here in 2020, even though it was originally slated to come out in ’75 between On the Beach (my personal fave Neil record) and Zuma.  As a pure piece of music, is it better than most, if not all, of the records that follow? Of course yes.  But what does a new Neil Young record mean in 2020? As a thought experiment its fascinating.  Do we value this album within the musical context of 2020 or 1975? Fortunately, it’s an even more enjoyable listen than it is a thought experiment.  From the first strums of “Separate Ways” you’re like “oh shit, this is the vintage stuff.” Gentle amber acoustic numbers (“Try”) share space with electric stompers (“Vacancy”).  The best thing you can say about Homegrown is that if Neil had originally decided to release this instead of Tonight’s The Night, it would have fit right in amongst his unimpeachable run from Everybody Knows This is Nowhere up through Zuma.  A classic is still a classic, no matter what year it finally sees the light of day.  

11. Destroyer – Have we Met

Ah Dan Bejar, boy was I wrong about you.  I kinda got into Destroyer’s Rubies, I loved his contributions to Swan Lake and The New Pornographers, but yet when Chinatown started really making waves, I just couldn’t do it.  It was soft rock! I hate soft rock! I hate everything about it!  This preconceived notion wasn’t helped by the fact that I saw him open for the War on Drugs in Pontiac once and he was so drunk he could barely stand up and had to read his own lyrics from a sheet.  And yet, for some reason I never really gave up on it. I can’t tell you why exactly, but two summers ago Chinatown just slowly became my go-to for early morning / late afternoon strolls. I found comfort in giving myself over to its pillowy soft embrace / cheating on my own aesthetic judgments.  Now that I’m card-carrying Bejarhead, I greeted Have we Met with open arms, and I was not disappointed.  The synths glimmer, the guitars add just enough punch, and his lyrics remain sharp as ever.  Its fitting that this was the last concert I saw before the iron curtain fell.  The one thing I had always turned my back on ended up being the last memory of dionysian group enthrallment I had to carry with me out into the desert of social isolation.  Come back soon Destroyer, come back soon, everyone.

10. Deeper – Auto-Pain

Ladies and gentlemen, get ready, because post punk is back! I always say my favorite genre is ‘sad songs you can dance to’ but post punk is a close second.  When I was in college post punk underwent a bit of a renaissance in the form of Interpol (back when they were still good), Bloc Party (ditto), Franz Ferdinand, and a whole slew of British one hit wonders (Maximo Park, Futureheads, Art Brut, the Bravery).  Fortunately, as is always the case, what’s old is new again, and stark melodic bass lines, angular guitars, and moody introspective speak-singing are back in full force.  Of the three post punk bands gracing this here top ten (Deeper, Fontaines DC, and Crack Cloud) each has its own little slice of the generic pie.  Fontaines have the deep gloom of Interpol/Joy Division, Crack Cloud ripple with the staccato energy of Gang of Four, and Deeper have the wiry dancieness of, well, Wire. So long as leather jackets and black and white photography remain cool, there’ll always be bands like this, and thank god for that.  In a true sign o’ the times, I learned about this band from some random girl’s Tik Tok in my for-you feed.  She repped five bands, two of which are in my top three, so I was like, sure I’ll give this band Deeper a go.  God bless the internet.  Finally, Deeper get bonus points for naming a song “This Heat,” who I’ve been spending a lot of time revisiting this year, and whose spikey guitars are all over this record.  

9. The Flaming Lips – American Head

There are few things as satisfying in art as being genuinely surprised by a beloved artist you had given up as culturally dead.  Since putting out their last masterpiece (2009’s Embryonic) the Lips have put out a string of good, if inconsequential, albums that befitting the ethos of the band could best be described as half baked (The Terror, Oczy Moldy, and a series of collaborative experiments).  Basically, they had reached that dreaded nadir where I was no longer interested in listening to their new output (cough The National, cough cough Arcade Fire).  So what made me give American Head a chance? That reader, is the point of art criticism! I can’t remember how the blurb on pitchfork read exactly, but I knew it referenced Tom Petty and a return to a preoccupation with more Earthly concerns—namely ‘70s heartland rock.  Well, this sounded intriguing, and boy was I not disappointed.  Sure, the Flaming Lips have already reached their sell-by date twice over (first in 1992, immediately followed by their MTV reinvention on 1993’s Transmissions from the Satellite Heart; and then again in the late ‘90s with the departure of guitarist Ronald Jones, followed by their creative pinnacle, ‘99’s symphonic masterpiece The Soft Bulletin), so it shouldn’t be all that surprising that this band could rise from the dead a third time.  Only, for the most part, they didn’t.  I guess I’m not surprised that American Head failed to reach a broader audience. Most people probably aren’t even aware that they are still a going concern, and after the failures of the last decade it makes sense that most weren’t interested in more tunes from the Oklahoma freaknicks.  But for those willing to give the band another chance, American Head easily delivers their best album since Embryonic, if not all the way back to Yoshimi.  Mixing ‘70s Americana with the star gazing of Soft Bulletin’s “Sleeping on the Roof,” the Lips deliver their best album in decades by foregoing the parlor tricks and returning to what they do best, taking trips to distant galaxies while keeping their feet firmly planted in the soil and songcraft of Oklahoma.

8. Cut Worms – Nobody Lives Here Anymore

This one is pretty easy.  Do you like George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass? If yes, listen to Nobody Lives Here Anymore and revel in this double album’s upbeat acoustic rock mediations.  If no, well there’s plenty of other good stuff out there.  Not quite as metaphysical or orchestral as All Things Must Pass, Nobody Lives Here Anymore still manages to hit that rockabiliy-pop sweet spot that Harrison used to mine.  I’m not quite sure what the definition of “troubadour” is, but it feels safe to call Cut Worms a troubadour, which is certainly better than his terrible stage name.  

7. Cigarettes for Breakfast – Aphantasia

Similar to Cut Worms, Cigarettes for Breakfast also involves a simple influence equation.  Do you pray at the altar of Loveless? If so, Aphantasia is just the record for you.  Sure, it’s a bit of My Bloody Valentine paint by numbers (“Breathe” even features the same squally guitar noise [it’s really hard to try and describe My Bloody Valentine effects ha] as “Soft as Snow (But Warm Inside)”) but when you’re as into shoegaze as I am, that’s never really a bad thing.  Plus, I’m being a bit unfair.  Everyone with textured tremolo heavy wall-of-sound guitars and cooed vocals is going to inevitably be compared to MBV, and Cigarettes for Breakfast do enough to chart their own course.  Perhaps most interesting is the musical journey this record charts.  Its loudest moment is its opening, where pummeling guitars more reminiscent of Sonic Youth with a touch of Dinosaur Jr. rip across hardcore style drumming. From there each song becomes a little more ambient, until closer “If Someone Could Help Me, Please” more or less floats away on its shimmering sheets of beautiful noise clouds.  In this sense, it bears a resemblance in structure, if not in sound, to Deerhunter’s Cryptograms, another album I spent a lot of time revisiting this year.  A shutout here is owed to the fine folks at Radio K, who had me diving for my shazam as this thing ripped across their airwaves.  So long as there is college radio, there’ll be a new crop of kids discovering via Kevin Shields that the electric guitar contains endless sonic possibilities.  

6. Fontaines D.C. – A Hero’s Death

The second entry in our top-ten post punk trio is A Hero’s Death by Fontaines D.C.  I’ll admit, on first blush it’s kind of a dumb band name (I just assumed they were some hardcore band from Washington DC chasing those Dischord Records glory days), but when you learn that the “DC” stands for Dublin City, it all clicks, as this band is sorta inescapably Irish in the way that James Joyce is.  Now this fact at first was also off-putting—if I went the rest of my life without ever hearing the Dropkick Murphy’s again I’d be quite content—but eventually it becomes integral to their sound, and not just because of the brogue in Garin Chatten’s vocals.  “Love is the Main Thing” is an incredible song in many ways, most notably because of the hypnotic quality of the drumming with its counterpoint between riding cymbal and staccato toms, but perhaps in the main (*wink*) for the way it manages to connote the weariness of a grey urban environment without ever being explicitly about it.  Just as Turn on the Bright Lights managed to perfectly capture New York in 2001, A Hero’s Death to me is the aural equivalent of a dense urban center like Dublin, especially after nightfall.  

5. Imaginary Softwoods – Annual Flowers in Color

It should come as no surprise that I listened to A LOT of ambient this year, and to me there was no better electronic record to chill the fuck out to during this insane year than Annual Flowers in Color.  I absolutely loved Emeralds’ Does it Look Like I’m Here? and was devastated they never followed that gem (*wink*) up.  In the immediate aftermath of the demise of Emeralds Mark McGuire’s solo albums got a lot of attention, but apparently the person I really loved in Emeralds was Imaginary Softwoods’ John Elliot.  Annual Flowers in Color is like if Dead City’s, Red Seas, Lost Ghosts were waiting in the departure’s lounge of Eno’s airport.  At the heart of the album lies the 10 plus minutes of “Another First/Sea Machine.” I could listen to this song forever, and on some particularly WTF 2020 lakewalks I more or less have.  Chunky synths, arpeggios that drift off to infinity, ‘80s soundtrack nostalgia.  I could live in these Softwoods for the rest of my sonic days.  

4. Pottery – Welcome to Bobby’s Motel

In another moment of nostalgia for my college years, Pottery are a welcome return to weird ass experimental Canadian bands.  They don’t sound anything like the Unicorns, but in spirit Pottery kind of remind me of them.  I’ve spilled a lot of digital ink here and elsewhere bemoaning the fact that Pitchfork (or perhaps, me) isn’t cool anymore, and to me no band embodies this more than Pottery.  They take a bunch of fun disparate elements—Talking Heads dance art rock, periodic weird pitch shifted vocal effects, hazy deep purple style guitars, and Queen style machismo disco—throw them into a witch’s cauldron, and come up with something off the wall that sounds like nothing else but is also instantly familiar.  This is the type of thing Pitchfork would have been all over in 2007, but instead now they’re too busy chasing conde nast clout clicks.  Oh well, nothing gold can last. But enough negativity, this here is a celebration of the joy of new music, and no new band embodies that unbridled joy like Pottery.  Along with Fontaines DC, this is the band I wish I most could have bopped around to with a bunch of sweaty strangers in the 7th St. Entry or Turf Club.  You can just imagine the call and response vocals and funky grooves getting the people moving.  Oh well, hopefully we’ll soon all be rocking the vaccine, they can breeze through town, and I’ll be the first person on the dance floor embarrassingly pumping my fist a half beat behind the rhythm.  

3. Pure X – Pure X

To paraphrase Same Elliott in the Big Lebowski, sometimes there’s a band, and well, sometimes there’s a band.  For me this year, that band was Pure X.  I absolutely loved their debut Pleasure way back in 2011, when lo-fi reverb heavy slow guitar music (ie, Galaxie 500) was all the rage. Their follow up Crawling up the Stairs was so bad I didn’t even bother listening to Angel, though perhaps that also owed a decent amount to just how terrible the art on that record is.  (I’ve since remedied this mistake; turns out that record rules).  Being that as it may, I can’t particularly tell you what drew me in to this year’s self-titled album, a full nine years after Pleasure first graced the stage.  In one sense it’s probably because Pleasure is one those albums that just never went out of my rotation.  Whenever the fahrenheit tips past 90 and the walk to the bodega is a few blocks longer than you’d like, that record always hits the spot.  Maybe I just knew this was the record I needed this year.  Either way, from the first bars of “Middle America” I was hooked.  The guitars crash over you, but never in a threatening way. Rather, they envelop you like a weighted blanket, comforting you in their sonic embrace.  Nowhere is this more true than on “Fantasy,” easily my favorite song of 2020 (especially since this was a year entirely devoid of dance floor bangers).  If this album came out in 1999 rather than 2020 I would have hit the repeat button on my discman and listened to this song forever.  

2. Crack Cloud – Pain Olympics

Pain Olympics is the answer to the question that no one asked: what if Arcade Fire’s (back when they were good) communal uplift was paired with Gang of Four’s stark anthem’s of industrialism’s collapse?  While on first blush this might sound like your standard album of punkish fist pumping angst, from when the female vocals (sorry there are too many people in this band for me to be able to figure out whose who) come in on opener “Post Truth (Birth of a Nation)” Pain Olympics reveals itself to be a very strange animal (likely a unicorn of some sort), especially as little orchestral swirls creep into the mix, giving it an almost Judy Garland (in hell) quality.  This subtle genre pastiche is given its best effect on stunner “The Next Fix.” That song starts out as an elastic spoken-word call and response addiction rumination, at the minute mark it starts to segue into a vocoded chill raver, then some horns crop up out of nowhere, then a spoken word passage, then at the two minute mark a chorus of voices come in, doing their best Broken Social Scene in the truest sense of the phrase.  This is perhaps one of the strangest records I’ve ever heard, but what is strangest of all is just how beautiful it is.  Crack Cloud are not for everyone, but if you really give it a chance, the returns are limitless.  

1. SAULT – Untitled (Rise) / Untitled (Black Is)

You cannot tell the story of 2020 without SAULT, which is why this pair of records is here at the top, even if under the influence of sodium pentothal (lets be honest, veritaserum) I might lean more towards Pain Olympics.  In June, the “anonymous” London project put out Untitled (Black Is), and then quickly followed that gem up with September’s Untitled (Rise).  Perhaps more amazing still is that these two albums, released so close together, have unique personalities.  Black Is is more pop/R&B whereas Rise has a dancy, electr(on)ic feel.  I lean more towards the latter, but honestly, both albums are so overstuffed with amazing moments that it’s borderline unbelievable that one outfit could put out so much amazing music in such a short span.  While these records would chart high even if sung in Hopelandic, there’s no escaping the social import of the lyrics.  One need look no further than Black Is’s “Don’t Shoot Guns Down” for the 2020 dance party at the end of the world.  As if that weren’t more than enough, it finds its analogue on Rise’s “Street Fighter,” and that’s SAULT in a nutshell: two albums in constant communication with one another, and more importantly, with the state of the world.  Guns down.  Don’t Shoot.  Let’s dance.  

[fieldsofplay]

Top Albums of 2019

Top Albums of 2019.

25.  William Tyler – Goes West

For those of you reading along, I want to thank you for sticking with this blog for basically an entire decade at this point. Jeez, where does the time* go? To that end, I’m gonna put out a decade list sometime next week, so to keep my sanity somewhat in check, this years tops list is going to be a little more abbreviated than usual. A few less records, a few less words, but still the same self indulgence you’ve come to know and expect.  To that end, William Tyler.  Tied for my favorite cover art with IGOR.  This is beautiful finger-picked cosmic acoustic guitar music with some nice flourishes added by Brad Cook and the usual suspects.  Perfect for fall days.  I accidentally heckled him at a concert about the Andy Griffith show, but I was only trying to say he shouldn’t be ashamed about liking that program.  The shame still haunts me, much like this music. *A fictional social construct

24.  Floating Points – Crush

Now I’m not going to sit here and pretend to know much about electronic music.  I don’t know the deep history, I don’t know the technical lingo, but like pornography, I know it when I hear it.  Much has been made about the impact opening for the XX and being limited to minimal gear while doing so had on Sam Shephard, and I’ll admit the differences from Elaenia is palpable.  Where that album felt minimal, Crush is maximal, bursting with colors and ideas, not unlike the beautiful painting that adorns its cover.  I never quite knew what the phrase Intelligent Dance Music was supposed to mean, but to me, that’s precisely what this is. You could dance to “LesAlpx” if you wanted, or you could just throw it on headphones and drift away to its unceasing pulse. Find you a man who can do both.

23.  Nerija – Blume

Let me be the first to tell you that jazz is back! Centering largely in London, there is thrilling music being made by the likes of Sons of Kemet, The Comet is Coming, and this year, by Nerija. Breathing new life into a long moribund form (at least until Kendrick Lamar started featuring jazz musicians on his albums), Blume literally does just that, unfurling jazz from a long dormancy.  While I’m not normally a fan of the guitar in jazz, here it keeps the whole thing moving forward, as the horns swirl around in a supportive role and the percussion cooks.  “Riverfest” is the best exemplar, as the guitar chimes with joy while the cymbal-crashes enliven the vibe.

22.  Florist – Emily Alone

A tale as old time (song as old as rhyme): member of ambient-electronic band puts out solo acoustic album, about the sadness of moving to LA and finding oneself.  No one is reinventing the wheel here, but I can’t help but feel little touches of Florist’s electronic full-band output in Emily Sprague’s solo record—the way the words repeat, subtly, but building meaning with each little phrasal repetition. Plus, the ocean is a recurring image, and dear lord do I miss the sea. If you want to listen a sad girl sing sad songs accompanied by acoustic guitar, you aren’t going to do better than Emily Alone this year.

21.  Kevin Morby – Oh My God

Possibly the best Kevin Morby record?  No one else would say that, but I will.  If so, why is it so far down the list? Well, when you consistently put out amazing records year-after-year it becomes difficult for any individual album to make an imprint on the “culture.” I think “Seven Devils” is possibly his finest tune.

20.  Sacred Paws – Run Around the Sun

My friend David turned me on to this band right before I was about to embark on a road trip up north in the middle of the summer, and let me tell you, that was the perfect time to first experience Run Around the Sun.  Noodly guitars burst out of every seam on this record, as bubblegum lyrics tie the whole shebang together.  If you ever wondered what the Shangri-las would sound like if Johnny Marr played lead guitar, I give you Sacred Paws.

19.  Jamila Woods – Legacy! Legacy!  

On Legacy! Legacy! Woods takes the R&B of the excellent Heavn and applies a jazzier sheen, to excellent results.  One need look no further than the track titles (“Frida,” “Miles,” “Basquiat,” “Baldwin,” “Sun Ra” etc.) to see that Woods is consciously engaging with the titans of history, and here, while she doesn’t exactly reach the heights of those innovators, she certainly begins to carve out a legacy of her own as one of the best voices in a currently thriving R&B scene.

18.  Mt. Eerie & Julie Doiron – Lost Wisdom, Pt. 2

On Lost Wisdom, Pt. 2 Phil Elverum (of The Microphones) and Julie Doiron (of Eric’s Trip) recapture the magic they bottled on the first Lost Wisdom back in 2008.  It is hard to imagine sparer music than this, but the duo make so much of a pair of voices and few plucked guitar or banjo lines.  As with all of his music of late (for obvious reasons), loss hangs all over Elverum’s output, but here, the loss is more mood and less of a literal presence (with the exception of the blistering “Widows”).  Few songs I can think of capture a single, specifically odd phenomenon quite like “When I Walk Out of the Museum.”

17.  DIIV – Deceiver

As capital-G guitar music recedes further into irrelevance, it’s good to still have a band like DIIV kicking around, who make shoegaze like it’s still 1991.  And it’s a good thing they are still making their beautiful walls of feedback, as heroine has repeatedly knocked this band off the rails of what appeared to be a very promising career.  This is ominous, portentous music, that swirls with white noise and black despair.  Shoegaze is premised on making beauty out of the squall of overdriven electric guitars, and DIIV make beauty of the squall of 21st century opiate addiction.

16.  Earl Sweatshirt – Feet of Clay

Earl continues the excellent experimentation of Some Rap Songs in the (slightly) more structured Feet of Clay.  Whereas Some Rap Songs felt like fragments, the tracks on Feet of Clay (almost) feel like “songs” proper.  Earl continues to quickly sweep the ground out from underneath you, whether it’s in the form of oddly woozy backing tracks that can’t really be called “beats” or the sub 2-minute run times, but he seems to pack slightly more structure into those abbreviated entrants, even if there are a lot less of them than there were on Some Rap Songs.  Right now no one is pushing the boundaries of hip-hop like Earl, and each new release, even if the total run time is under 15 minutes, is a thrilling event.

15.  Better Oblivion Community Center – S/T

Yes, last year I had Boygenius as my number one record, but if I’m being frank, and I am, this is the better collaborative album put out by Phoebe Bridgers.  At first blush a record between the up-and-coming Bridgers and the largely has-been Conor Oberst seems like a desperate grab at continued relevance by the latter, but having seen them live, I must admit the pairing makes perfect sense.  The energy between the two is infectious, and while they share a common fascination with emo, they really draw the best out of each other.  Bridgers plays the Emmylou Harris role from I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning to perfection, and Oberst plays the Kenny Rodgers in “Islands in the Stream.”  For a period I could not turn on Radio K without hearing a song from this album, which is strange because, as a college radio station, every hour is usually completely different.

14.  Chromatics – Closer to Grey

In a certain way, Chromatics are victims of their own tendency towards self-mythologizing.  Their last two official albums were absolutely perfect slices of Italo-Disco, equal parts late night ennui and seething dancefloor longing.  There was way more guitar on those albums than most anyone would appreciate on first glance, and yet Ruth Radelet’s smoky vocals were unquestionably the star.  In the interim Johnny Jewel (the mastermind behind the band and basically everything on Italians Do it Better) famously destroyed all the copies of the long teased Dear Tommy after a near death experience, provided essential music to Twin Peaks: The Return (which included multiple Chromatics performances at the dear Road House), and then suddenly dropped Closer to Grey out of the sky, with neither warning nor fanfare.  This record is everything you would want a Chromatics record to be, but perhaps that is part of the reason it didn’t really make a major impression. It felt a little Chromatics-by-the-numbers, right down to the cover of “The Sound of Silence” to open it up.  I absolutely love this album, and if it weren’t for the incredible quality of albums put out this year, it would certainly be a top-10 or top-5 in any other year (hell, in the terrible-for-music 2018 it would have been number one by a mile).  Perhaps the biggest frustration is just how fucking good “Light as a Feather” is.  It hints at a version of Chromatics influenced by Portishead, and now that’s all I want more of.

13.  Thom Yorke – ANIMA

Doubt it if you will, you sneering youngsters, but Thom Yorke and his more well-known band are currently making some of the best music of their careers.  Just as A Moon Shaped Pool was a much needed return to form after the completely forgettable King of Limbs, with ANIMA Yorke gets back to what made The Eraser so compelling all the way back in 2006.  While a fondness for Aphex Twin is no longer at all exceptional in rock music in 2019, it was in 2006, and with ANIMA, Yorke gets back to the creepy, clicky, paranoid distrust of modern consumer culture that is solidly his wheelhouse.  Bonus points for using Netflix and a pairing with PTA to make America care about a long form music video again in 2019.

12.  Black Marble – Bigger than Life

I would call black Marble my favorite new band of the year, but the thing is, they aren’t new, just new to me.  Bigger than Life is their third record, and first for Sacred Bones (whose distinctive album art is what first caught my eye).  Because their music is comprised solely of arpeggiated synths, melodic bass, and clinking drum machines, overlaid with melancholicly narrow vocals, it is easy to accuse Black Marble of being a little same-y.  However, if you, like me, worship at the temple of New Order, than this is the band for you.  I have lived with their three extant albums the last couple months (the second, It’s Immaterial, being my favorite), and in reality, this is really the only music I want to listen to.

11.  Big Thief – U.F.O.F. / Two Hands

If you’re reading this than you likely already know how much I love Big Thief, and you might be a little surprised that one, if not both, of the records they put out this year is not sitting atop this list based on how much I’ve professed my love for this band over the course of 2019.  So here’s the thing, the highs on both of these albums--“U.F.O.F.” “Not”--are better than anything else anyone has done this year, but to my ear both records suffer from a flew blah-ish passages that prevent either album, on its own, from achieving top status.  However, if you borrow a few tracks here (Cattails, Contact) and a few tracks there (Shoulders, Two Hands) and made one album out of the highlights of both sessions, you would unquestionably have the album of the year.  That Big Thief gave us two records brimming with amazing folk rock ideas is a blessing.

10.  Sharon Van Etten – Remind Me Tomorrow

Hey, do you remember Sharon Van Etten put out an amazing record in 2019? I bet you don’t.  The culture moves so fast these days that albums from January might as well have been released five years ago, and it seems to me like this record slipped off a few peoples’ radars as the year progressed, which is a shame, considering how damn good it is (her best imho).  There are few runs on an album I’ve enjoyed more this year than “Jupiter 4’s” electro-throb into “Seventeen’s” Springsteen chug into “Malibu’s” comedown.  Bonus points for being my dear friend Hadley’s downstairs neighbor for all those years.  Ah Brooklyn, how I miss thee.

9.  Black Midi – Schlagenheim

Yes, that most reliable of music-critic tropes: the hot young band from London.  Black Midi made waves with a legendary youtube video of their live show, and having seen it in person, let me tell you, even that now infamous video doesn’t do them justice.  Much like its gobldy-gook made up title, Schlagenheim is an amalgamation of strands of music that don’t really fit together but somehow they pull off with aplomb.  At times they play with the hardcore fury of Minor Threat, while at others the proggy interconnectivity of Rush at their most arena-rockish, all with a weird dash of David Byrne wiry energy holding it all together.  If they come to your town, go see them, just don’t stand in the front unless you want to be swept into the maelstrom.

8.  Helado Negro – This is How You Smile

Did you love Little Joy (the Strokes sideproject) but wish it was occasionally electronic and periodically in Spanish? If so, I give you Helado Negro. This is the prettiest record of the year; it never goes above a certain emotional register / decibel range, but it inhabits the spectrum in which it lives like a ghost in its occasional electronic flourishes.  This is a record for someone with a long drive with something to think about. “Seen my Aura” is simultaneously funky and restrained, acoustic and electronic, and emblematic of the joys of This is How You Smile.

7.  Sturgill Simpson – Sound & Fury

Each of Sturgill Simpson’s last three records have been fundamentally different from one another, and each has been excellent, which is almost impossible to accomplish.  Metamodern Sounds in Country Music introduced many, like myself, to a new voice in an often overlooked medium, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth dusted off the horns from Elvis’s stax-era and romped around, and now with Sound & Fury Sturgill looks to the outlaw tradition (and ZZ freakin Top) he’s so-often been associated with, but rarely resembled, to crank out an incredible record that is far more “rock” than it is “country.” Throw on a heaping of 80’s-era Springsteen synths and you have the recipe for a record that makes me very, very happy.  The two halves of “Make Art not Friends” have little business coexisting within a single track (the first half sounds like Tangerine Dream, the second half Arcade Fire) and yet it is precisely in this tenuous cohabitation that Sturgill has produced his best record to date.

6.  Vampire Weekend – Father of the Bride

Vampire Weekend started out their career being accused of stealing from Graceland and ended up becoming Paul Simon.  Funny how that works out sometimes.  Modern Vampires of the City has become, next to Sound of Silver, the definitive record about life in New York during my era (2005-2016).  On the follow up, the band, newly shorn of Rostam Batmanglij (whose solo record is also phenomenal, even though he’s maybe one of the worst performers I’ve ever seen), decamped to California, and Father of the Bride revels in both the California sun and a well earned sense of accomplishment.  “Hold You Now” is my favorite song of the year, it is simply stunning.

5.  Bill Callahan – Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest

There is a bit of theme developing here at the top of the list: established artists putting out arguably their best work deep into storied careers, and no one on this list is deeper into a more storied oeuvre than Bill Callahan.  Between Smog and under his own name, Callahan has been releasing consistently great albums since 1992, and to me, Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest is his finest work to date.  Having found domestic bliss, so the press materials state, Callahan is content to sit back and let that world-weary baritone spin out all the comforts of a well-worn chair near a fire in a hearth.  This is the type of record that gives you hope that happiness isn’t the exclusive provenance of the young.

4.  Purple Mountains – Purple Mountains

If I were to really sit and write out all of my thoughts about David Berman this blurb would probably be 10 pages long, at least, so rather than spill a bunch of digital ink lamenting the loss of a true inspiration, I’ll just try and stick to the album itself, which is almost impossible now in the wake of his suicide shortly after its release.  Even on first blush this was a difficult hang, clearly the product of someone who lost their wife to a series of poor decisions / mental difficulties, and who hadn’t come to terms with it.  Understandably so.  Berman remains endlessly quotable, right up to the very end, and “we’re just drinking margaritas at the mall” remains emblematic of his ability to compress the tedium of middle american misery into a single haunting, yet, hilarious, image.  While “Nights that Won’t Happen” lives on as his suicide note directly to the fans (“The dead know what they’re doing when they leave this world behind” ; “all the suffering gets done by the ones we leave behind”), and it is hauntingly beautiful, it still makes me cry every time I hear it. As does most of this record. So the song I’ll carry on with me, and can still actually listen to, is “Snow is Falling in Manhattan.” Just a beautiful song from a beautiful man.  

3.  Tyler, the Creator – IGOR

I really don’t have the words (well, clearly I have some) to express just how impressed I am by the arc of Tyler’s career.  The one-time shock-rap flash in the critical pan quickly turned into forgettable homophobe who perfectly fit a description of Eminem’s fan base I once heard: kids who call their mom a bitch to their face.  The first startling change came with Flower Boy, which came right on the heels of his step out of the closet.  Flower Boy is a really great record, but it still largely sounded like Tyler, just a more mature version who stopped saying cringe worthy shit.  IGOR is something entirely different.  I honestly don’t even know what to call it. It’s not a rap record, and there are honestly entire tracks on it where I’m not sure what it is he does on them, but my god, this thing is incredible.  It’s basically a Parliament album for the end of the world, and if the earth is going to burn down around us, we might as well dance our way out, which is precisely the party Tyler has orchestrated here.  I cannot wait to see what he does next.

2.  Angel Olsen – All Mirrors

All Mirrors isn’t just clearly Angel Olsen’s best album by a clear margin, it is the best pop album made by anyone in sometime.  Just like black clothes make anyone a little slimmer, orchestration can make any pop song sound symphonic, but most pop acts don’t have the power of Angel Olson’s voice to match the bombast of the string section and percussion.  It feels like the term Beatlesesque has started to fade from the critical lexicon, but this music is truly akin to the orchestral richness of “I am the Walrus” or “A Day in the Life.”  People celebrate Lana del Ray for her torch songs (and I really liked Norman Fucking Rockwell, even if it didn’t quite make this list in a stacked year) but no one carries a torch like Angel Olsen.  I was initially reticent to catch her live show this tour, it was on a weeknight, it was cold, I had to go downtown, I’d seen her a couple times already, yadda yadda yadda, but I knew deep down I really wanted to see if she could recreate the power of these songs on stage (the inverse of how that equation usually goes).  Reader: she did.

1.  (Sandy) Alex G – House of Sugar

House of Sugar may not be quite as experimental as IGOR, or as pop-perfect as All Mirrors, but it takes those two impulses and melds them together into what is my favorite album of the year, even if strictly speaking it may not be the “best” as measured against the other entrants in this top 3.  “Hope” was actually a “hit” song on the local college radio station, and understandably so; it sounds like Elliott Smith and tells a comprehensible story about a friend who died from an overdose.  But “Hope” is jut one facet of House of Sugar, which is a veritable hall of musical mirrors.  “Walk Away” is hypnotic in its repetitions, “In My Arms” is a legit straightforward acoustic love song, “Sugar” sounds like The Knife (no joke), “Sugarhouse” could have been on The River, and while I already said “Hold You Now” is my favorite song of the year, “Gretel” has something to say about that.  I saw a show right when this album came out, and as the band left the stage for the final time the soundguy cued up “Gretel” not, I’m guessing, because the band requested it, but because it rules and he just wanted to share it with everyone as they receded into night.

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Top Albums of 2018

30. Robyn – Honey

On first blush I thought 2018 was a pretty shitty year for music. Nothing really leapt out at me as thee album of year, and I figured I’d cut this list down to like 20 or 15 albums and save my fingers some click-clacking for a change. Nope. Here we are, another top-30 because I couldn’t bear to cut any of these, starting with Robyn. (Others receiving votes: Beach House, Noname, Blood Orange, NIN, and Superchunk). Like the Western Conference in the NBA right now, its virtually impossible to distinguish numbers 30-9 on this list. While this wasn’t a year for standout all-timers, it was a surprising (to me) year for very solid records. Like this Robyn album, is it her best work? No. Have I already listened to “Missing U” a thousand times since it came out? Absolutely yes. This album falls in that great genre of club music to listen to late night on the way home from the club (think Chromatics, or Junior Boys).  It’s 2018, and I’m still dancing on my own, and loving every minute.

29. Black Panther – OST

Black Panther was such a cultural phenomena that it managed to pull off the seemingly impossible in 2018 … in the age of streaming and infinite playlists it made a movie soundtrack mandatory listening. It used to be the likes of the Royal Tenenbaums or Fight Club or the Big Chill soundtracks were as essential listening as anything by any individual artist contained thereon, but the movie soundtrack had seemingly gone the way of the DVD in 2018. However, when you feature Kendrick, Schoolboy Q, Vince Staples, and throw in a chart-topper by The Weeknd, even a movie soundtrack can rise above the crowd and make a name for itself. My only knock on this record is that most of these songs barely appear in the movie, if at all, so you don’t have that fun moment of bringing the scenes back to mind while listening to the songs, but this thing seriously bangs, so who cares. Wakanda forever.

28. Ty Segall – Freedom’s Goblin

It was a good year for San Francisco psych-rock garage bands who put out a million records and now all live in L.A. (see Oh Sees below). Based on the amount of records he’s released and the type of music he plays (straight up garage rock) it’s basically impossible for Ty to do anything new at this point, but Freedom’s Goblin is a return to form of sorts. Gone are the led zeppelin cosplay and T. Rex covers (both of which were excellent, by the way) and here is a double-album of good old fashioned American garage rock. Music like this is like mashed potatoes, when it’s done right there’s always room for more, its familiarity is all part of the charm.

27. Jeff Rosenstock – POST-

Jeff Rosenstock makes loud, angry, literate power pop, i.e. the perfect accompaniment for life here in the dystopia. Think Thermals but with less conceptual unity. To my ear WORRY is still the better of his recent records, perhaps because it possesses a levity that POST- self-consciously eschews. Having said that, this is still thrilling music for going forth and shouting from the barricades.

26. Key! & Kenny Beats – 777

I came to 777 like so much cultural discovery here in 2018, as a random tweet from someone whose taste I respect very much but will never know irl (Micah Peters). I was also deep in Atlanta Robbin Season at the time, so the idea of an under-appreciated Atlanta MC was an incredibly appealing proposition. (I think the first thing I read about Key! called him the real life Paperboi). It may not be the “best” song of 2018, but “Demolition 1 + 2” is a song I lived with all year. It’s beat is hypnotic as it drifts hazily in the background, like a long summers evening.

25. Mitski – Be the Cowboy

To be frank, I still don’t know what I think about this album. I loved everything about Puberty 2, its profainly insightful lyrics, its nonchalant coolness. When Be the Cowboy came out I was actually pretty disappointed. It was a pop record in the way that (unpopular opinion alert!) St. Vincent writes pop (as opposed to rock) records, which I’ve never really liked. However, I stuck with Be the Cowboy, and it’s really grown on me, perhaps because at its heart it’s such a sad album. There is a tremendously forlorn tune set in a literal “blue diner,” but it doesn’t come off as hokey in the least despite (or perhaps, because of) its chintzy synths. While these songs aren’t really my cup of tea I can’t help loving them, perhaps in large part because they are so focused upon the bitterness of the dregs.

24. Low – Double Negative

This is an album whose time has not yet come, so it’s still a little hard to judge just how good it is. This is a record for the dead of winter, like Sigur Ros’ ( ). This isn’t an album you listen to, you crawl inside it and live within its internal rhythms. This is definite headphone music. It comes alive in stereo, vibrating back and forth from channel to channel as it goes into and out of phase. I don’t know what these songs are about but they function like landscape painting. Bleak landscape painting. Tundras in grays and blues. Right now I like Double Negative, I’m pretty sure come February it will be essential.

23. Sons of Kemet – Your Queen is a Reptile

I’ll tell you what, jazz is officially back! And I for one couldn’t be happier. Like a lot of things, jazz just had to go away and sit a few musical eras out so we could properly miss it, so we could truly welcome it back as a vibrant living thing as opposed to a thing that lived irretrievably in the past. To Pimp a Butterfly made jazz cool again, and while Kamasi is unquestionably at the vanguard (see below), for my money Sons of Kemet are the most interesting group in the new jazz renaissance. This album would be way higher for me if they didn’t mar it with some pretty terrible vocals. You wanna have a good time? Put on “My Queen is Harriet Tubman” and hold on for the ride. The group is comprised of a tuba player, a sax, and two drummers, and these guys rip. The interplay between drum drum and tuba creates a rhythm section the like of which you’ve never heard anywhere, perhaps besides The Roots, and unlike The Roots, these dudes cook. This aint your grand daddy’s jazz, but nor is it some lame ass fusion bullshit. As Kerouac used to drunkenly shout at jam sessions, this thing just “go”es!

22. Earl Sweatshirt – Some Rap Songs

You know how I told you jazz is back? This Earl Sweatshirt record is a prime example of that even though it’s definitely not a jazz record. It’s rhythms and rhymes have more the feel of a spoken word jam session than hip-hop flow, not that jazz and hip-hop were ever all that different. While we’re here, I’m so glad to see concision finally starting to creep into rap. Earl gets through 15 tracks in under 30 minuetes, and Vince does the same with FM!. Some Rap Songs aren’t for everyone, but it has a hypnotic quality if you let it knock around your head. This is the best record Madlib never made.

21. DJ Koze – Knock Knock

Now I’ll never claim to know all that much about continental electronic music, hell, I don’t even know what the proper genre of Knock Knock is (I’d guess straight up house, but god only knows), but I know a jam when I hear one, and Knock Knock is chock full of them. “Illumination” locks into its silky groove and transports you to a dance floor far far away. “Bonfire” is not remotely autumnal, and yet with its plinky squelchy synths it can’t help conjuring visions of twinkling stars. “Music on My Teeth” gets bonus points for reminding me of how much I used to love Jose Gonzalez.

20. Oh Sees – Smote Reverser

I’ve probably seen (The) Oh Sees a half a dozen times at this point, and there is a reason I can’t stop coming back for more. No matter the permutation of line-up or band name, or how many records they have put out in the interim (they have to be around 20 at this point), John Dwyer and crew just rip. Ever since they settled into a dual-drummer set-up around Carrion Crawler/The Dream they’ve contained this irresistible driving rhythm, and watching the two drummers push each other live is truly a sight to behold. The last couple records have gone deep into prog territory (just look at that cover, it belongs on the side of van), which is A-ok with me. “Sentient Oona” is one of my favorite songs of the year. There is no reason this band is still so good, but so long as they keep turning out albums every six months the quality of Smote Reverser I’ll keep eating them up.

19. Jon Hopkins – Singularity

While Koze put out the more musically accomplished record, there is something about Jon Hopkins’ Singularity that scratches me right where I itch, and makes it my favorite electronic record of the year. To me, Singularity sounds like the music Explosions in the Sky or Built to Spill would make if they had computers instead of guitars (and it doesn’t hurt that a bunch of these tracks unfurl past the 10 minute mark either). This is post rock that just so happens to not contain any “rock.” These songs build and build and build and will transport you to far off lands if you let them take you along for the ride.

18. Spiritualized – And Nothing Hurt

Speaking of transportive, Jason Spaceman / Pierce has always trafficked in intergalactic gospel music deserving of the name Spiritualized, and with And Nothing Hurt he makes a triumphant return to form. Much has been made of the fact that no longer having access to big budgets and the orchestras those label dollars will bankroll, Pierce had to learn to compose his symphonies with computer programs instead of living breathing musicians this time around, but honestly, if you didn’t know that I don’t think you’d even notice. “I’m Your Man” is the most heartbreakingly beautiful thing you will hear all year, and the guitar solo that skyrockets out of its culmination … *chef kiss.gif*

17. Big Red Machine – S/T

You’ve got to hand it to Justin Vernon, he never stays in one place, both for good and bad. Every time you expect him to zig he zags, which I guess is how you stay incredibly relevant despite starting out singing mopey acoustic folk ballads. When I saw him perform these songs in embryonic form two summers ago with Aaron Dessner, they were guitar anthems propelled by electronic rhythms as Vernon and Dessner traded leads like the best possible version of The War on Drugs. Now two years later, the guitars recede into the background, one more layer in the electronic stew cooked up by these two wizards. Now, I’m not complaining, the “finished” versions of these songs are incredible (scare quotes because as part of their People project, these songs are meant to be adapted by future collaborators) but I do sorta miss the other version of this band. My own gripes aside, this is still one best records either musician has ever put out, which is really saying something. For me, “Lyla” is the perfect version of where Vernon is at here in 2018. Where he (and Dessner) will be in 2019 god only knows, which is precisely why both musicians are so thrilling. 

16. The Internet – Hive Mind

The more years that go by, the more Odd Future’s cultural tentacles continue to spread. What first seemed like shock-rap flash in the pan, has become a mature, vibrant, den of ideas. Earl Sweatshirt, Frank Ocean, and Tyler, the Creator all hail from the collective, but perhaps my favorite Odd Future output is The Internet. Their full-band R&B sounds straight out of the mid 80s, but not in a cheesy or derivative way. The band is super tight and locked-in on Hive Mind, a fitting title as each member brings something vital to these tracks (Steve Lacy’s solo records are well worth a listen as well). Put on “Roll (Burbank Funk)” and try and not tap your toe, it’s cool, I’ll wait. You couldn’t resist, could you?

15. Pinegrove – Skylight

Pinegrove is a very difficult band to talk about in 2018, which is probably why no one is really talking about Skylight despite it being an excellent follow up to their cherished debut, Cardinal. Rather than go into the backstory of why this album was shelved for a year, I’ll just point you to this excellent feature by Pitchfork and leave it at that. Backstory aside, Pinegrove still sound like almost no one else, somehow melding the raw energy of emo to the emotional maturity of country folk / Americana. If you liked Cardinal you should definitely give Skylight a spin. They sound like what Ryan Adams would sound like if he didn’t suck.

14. Parquet Courts – Wide Awake!

Unpopular opinion alert! One of the most cherished things in Minneapolis/St Paul is a radio station called The Current. Its essentially a college radio station put out by NPR, and while they play truly great music, like their corporate radio evil twins, they tend to play the same songs over and over and over, and it drives me insane. Because of this I don’t really listen to the Current (Radio K is where its at!). However, there is something incredibly comforting in the fact that if I ever want to hear the Courts’ “Almost Had to Start a Fight/In and Out of Patience” all I have to do is turn my dial over to 89.3 and there it’ll be, blaring out of my car speakers. Wide Awake! is a highlight for a band whose discography is full of nothing but highlights. I caught them at the Fine Line, and it was like a little piece of Brooklyn had travelled across the country to wrap me in its sweet sweet embrace. While it definitely wasn’t Death by Audio (RIP), it was a hell of a good time. These dudes rip, you should see them if they bring some Ridgewood to your town.

13. Swearin’ – Fall Into the Sun

Fall Into the Sun is one of those records inexorably linked to its back story. Swearin’ are Allison Crutchfield (to many the lesser of the Crutchfield sisters to Waxahatchee’s Katie, but Allison has always been my favorite sister) and Kyle Gilbride. They trade off songwriting and lead vocals on nearly every other track. When they started the band they were dating. They put out two excellent records, broke up (romantically), and that seemed to be it for Swearin’, only it wasn’t. 5 years after Surfing Strange and the end of their relationship, they got the band back together and put out their best album. As Fleetwood Mac so famously proved, sometimes interpersonal drama leads to excellent music. “Dogpile” is far and away my favorite song of the year, I just can’t stop listening to it. I truly hope you give it a listen, and the rest of Fall Into the Sun.

12. Lala Lala – The Lamb  

The Lamb is one of those records that doesn’t reinvent the wheel, and more importantly, it doesn’t try to. These are chilled out guitar songs that create a perfect mood and then execute it flawlessly. Think Young Marble Giants (with guitars) or Beat Happening (with a little more oomph). “I Get Cut” is a great place to start. This is one of those records that I’ll listen to whether I’m feeling up or down, it’s an album for all seasons.

11. U.S. Girls – In a Poem Unlimited

Amongst some friends I made a middle-of-the-year album list and In a Poem Unlimited was my number one at the halfway mark. Which isn’t to say that this record hasn’t aged well, only that so much good music has come out or been discovered in the intervening months that the field just caught up a bit as opposed to this record receding. Here, U.S. Gilrs take a funky, skronky turn towards 70s plastic soul, and the results are thrilling. This record is slick, which to me is normally pejorative, but here it fits the music perfectly. I still don’t quite know what the phrase “velvet for sale” (taken from the first track) means, but it somehow perfectly defines the sound of this gem of an album.

10. Tony Molina – Kill the Lights

With the exception of Ovlov, there is no one I rode harder for in 2018 than Tony Molina. To do anything unique is always impossible, but Molina, as a musical miniaturist, makes music almost unlike anything else out there. Yes, Guided By Voices wrote short songs, and did so incredibly well, but Molina’s short songs still feel full. You’d never notice they were all only about a minute long unless you were really paying attention. The man can fit an entire folk symphony in 80 seconds, it is literally unbelievable. He started out playing Weezer style bubblegum power pop on Dissed and Dismissed, and now with Kill the Lights he’s moved fully into british psych folk in the vein of Fairport Convention or Syd Barret era Pink Floyd. Just the fact he can do both styles so well is a testament to his abilities, and that he can do so with such concision takes it to another realm. Hell, I nearly listened to the entire album just while writing this blurb.

9. Kamasi Washington – Heaven & Earth

More Jazz! No one has done more to bring jazz back into vogue than Kamasi, and for good reason. The man is the second coming of Coltrane, and his cosmic jazz fits perfectly with the times. Case in point: “Fists of Fury.” A cover of sorts of a 1972 Bruce Lee movie theme, that sounds equally of 1972 and 2018, and addresses head on the current political and cultural crisis. As if this impeccable double album (one disc is Heaven, one is Earth, though I always forget which is which) weren’t enough, he also threw in a bonus EP called “The Choice” that has an incredible cover of Carole King/The Shirelle’s “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.” While there is a ton of exciting stuff happening in jazz these days, Kamasi is still king.

8. Courtney Barnett – Tell Me How You Really Feel

I have a theory about this record. Last year Courtney and Kurt Vile put out a solid collaborative album Lotta Sea Lice, and now this year Courtney put out Tell Me How You Really Feel, and to me I see Kurt Vile lurking all over this record. I think a lot of people miss Courtney’s hyperliterate high energy slacker anthems of her first two records, but to me this is her best album. It’s so chill, it gives her lyrics and guitar playing room to unfurl like a cat in the sun. This was my go to album of summer 2018, the perfect soundtrack for meandering sunset lake strolls, when you both want to be alone with your thoughts and not really think about anything at all.  

7. Moonface – This One’s for the Dancer & This One’s for the Dancer’s Bouquet

This record is not for everyone, and perhaps is only just for me, but you know what, it’s my list, so I get to put it on here because that’s precisely how these things work. This is a dark, beautiful, progy album that is somehow a concept record about Theseus and the Minotaur, though I’ll admit I haven’t quite pieced it all together. More importantly, it plays out like an homage to the soundtrack to Twin Peaks the Return. It’s all saxophones and stark guitars and bright keys, with some signature marimba thrown in for flavor. Most interesting for Spencer Krug is use of autotune, which normally I despise, but really gives these songs an interesting twist, (mis)shaping his vocals to match the gnarled songs accompanying them. “Dreamsong” sounds precisely like it should. Allegedly this is Krug’s last album as Moonface, and as someone who still laments the end of Sunset Rubdown, This One’s for the Dancer … will leave me thinking about Moonface for sometime to come.

6. Pusha T – Daytona

Poor Kanye, nothing really went right for him 2018 (not that I feel remotely bad about it after all the stupid ass shit he said), nothing, that is, besides Daytona. The first release from his revived G.O.O.D. music series (Montana Edition) Daytona was the perfect example of what that project could have been with a little (read: a lot) more attention to detail. I actually liked Kid Sees Ghost a lot, but Daytona was far and away the best entrant in the series. Gone is the heaviness of King Push – Darkest before Dawn, and in its place is pure flames of the type he hasn’t kindled since Clipse. Every track on this EP bangs. It also helps that Pusha burned Drake to the ground. 2018 may have been a bad year for Kanye, but it was a fantastic year for Push. This is windows down summer cruising music of the highest order. A standout in a career full of them.

5. Dilly Dally – Heaven

Don’t let the truly terrible cover art through you, with Heaven Dilly Dally have put out one of the best heavy rock records of recent times. I saw them a couple years ago and I was struck by how much they resembled Nirvana (not that I ever liked Nirvana all that much) and with Heaven they’ve gone further down that rabbit hole. The drums pound, the guitars wail, and over the top of it all are Kate Monks’ howled vocals, channeling Black Francis (or Frank Black or whatever we’re calling him these days) at his most throat shredding. This is visceral, thrilling music. More please.

4. Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – Hope Downs

I saw a lot of great bands this year, but none managed to top the set put on by Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever at the Turf Club. Part of that was the marriage of act and venue, as the Turf’s tiny stage could barely even hold the band’s three lead singers and all of their guitars. Yes, their name is pretty terrible and a mouthful to boot, but once you get past that this is the best jangle rock you’ll hear anywhere. It helps of course that these guys are Australian, and perfectly channel Flying Nun’s legacy of jangly kiwi guitar music. From the first strums of “An Air Conditioned Man” to the final chimes of “The Hammer” Hope Downs propels you forward on its galloping rhythms. Like the Beatles I can never keep their three leads straight, but they are all excellent and the band is more than equal to the sum of its very good parts. If you fancy a trip back to the Australia / New Zealand of the 1980s, put on Hope Downs and let the bevy of guitars chime away in all their glory.

3. Vince Staples – FM!

While nothing could equal Big Fish Theory, as that record was truly innovative, with FM! Vince Staples has put out yet another flawless album. Summertime ’06 was a double record of Clams Casino ice cold beats, and FM! is its dialectical opposite, a concise 20 minute record full of the big house beats of Big Fish in a tight concept album about a fictional radio broadcast. While Kendrick is still hailed as the king, Vince Staples is very close on his heels. No one else melds big beats to enthralling flow like Vince. I genuinely can’t wait to see what this guy does next.

2. Ovlov – Tru

People who have read through these lists throughout the years (and to you, I say a truly sincere thank you, really it means a lot that you read these and seem to enjoy them) may have picked up on a trend. While I try to pick a number one that reflects the year that was in music, that touched a lot of lives, including my own, the number two is usually always my “favorite” record of the year, even if it’s not the “best” album. This year, that record was Ovlov’s Tru by a rather sizable margin. If you like Dinosaur Jr’s guitar heroics mixed with the more melodic lyricism of Built to Spill, have I got the band for you. Tru rips, but also has a sort of wistful sweetness to it. Apparently the band puts out records whenever Stuart Hartlett feels like it (their debut, Am, which is also incredible, came out five years ago). I pray we don’t have to wait another 5 years for more music like this.

1. Boygenius – S/T

Boygenius is a throwback in every sense of the word. First of all, the cover art is a direct homage to Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s debut, and as such also a deconstruction of the myth of the very nature of the “supergroup.” Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus all bring something unique to their group outing, and the result is an alchemical miracle that takes all their individual strengths and transmogrifies them into something utterly unique, and yet recognizable in its origins. The first time I listened to this album it kind of slipped passed me, but then I put in on in the car while I was driving around on a chilly fall night and fell head over heals. Each song is perfect. They all dwell in this sort of 70s Fleetwood Mac sound, as their voices overlap one another and Baker’s electric guitar soars over the top. I could listen to “Salt in the Wound” forever, and likely will.

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“Everything but the Inflammatory Remarks.” Kanye, Bowie, & Bad Things from Good Artists

​When Kanye first started showing affection for Trump during his aborted Life of Pablo tour I didn’t really bat an eye. Besides perhaps being the greatest living musician (the Rolling Stones are still alive and kicking lest we forget) Kanye is known for two things: being provocative, and unrelenting egomania. The interrelation of those three things isn’t accidental. No one becomes a star by hiding their art and avoiding the media, well, except for your Jeff Mangum types, but then again he hasn’t released an album since 1997. Kanye married into America’s most vapid family, so it’s hardly surprising he would admire the patriarch of the second-place finisher in those rankings.

​The elephant in the room of course, as it always is, is race. We can understand the egomaniacal affection, but how could the man who wrote New Slaves embrace the klan loving President of Amerikkka? As a privileged white male I’ll leave this side of the matter to Ta-Nehisi Coates, who of course already said everything far better than I ever could, but I will just add, as a brief aside, that when Kanye again started tweeting out his love for Trump, my first thought was also, “I’m not Black, I’m OJ.”

​What I want to investigate here in this little slice of essayistic navel-gazing are the complicated and contradictory emotions I experienced the first time I unwittingly encountered Kanye’s music following his latest spat of agitprop self-expression. I think the first instance was a bit of Power playing in the background of some NBA playoff game bumper music, and then hearing some bars of All of the Lights streaming out the window of idling auto. My first unreflective emotional response to hearing those beloved songs was “man, fuck Kanye,” and I have to admit, I was startled by that reaction.

​I built my (failed) academic career on the attempt to separate fiction from reality, text from context, art from artist. In advocating for transhistorical interpretation I alienated myself from my department at the University of Michigan and ultimately shiprwrecked my career upon a deserted intellectual island of my own making. I mention that by way of saying I’ve invested a lot of (das) kapital over the years in defending the unpopular opinion that you shouldn’t judge a book by its by-line or copyright date. Surely Kanye should be my greatest cause celebre, for what does Yeezus have to do with the embrace of a bigot years after its release? Yeezus was great before anyone ever wore a dumb red hat proclaiming to the world their small-mindedness. And yet there it was, I heard the bars, and I couldn’t help but think “I miss the old Kanye.”

​What I want to know is, can we hate Trump and love Kanye? Is it a different question if I ask, can we hate Trump and love Kanye’s music? What about, can we hate Kanye and love Kanye’s music? I think the answer remains a very strong “yes,” but not perhaps for the most obvious reason. There is a dangerous trend in America today, where rather than grapple with art made by problematic artists we are turning instead to censorship. Louis CK did some pretty shitty things to his female employees and his film was pulled from theaters. R. Kelly did some truly awful things to children and his songs were removed from Spotify’s playlists. Some applaud these moves, some condemn them. I see both sides, but I still come down squarely against censorship.

One side will say you can like Ignition (remix) without liking R. Kelly the (despicable) man, and the other side will say your eyeballs and dollars support the man whether you want to or not. Fair debate. However, removing the art because of the artist only further places us in a cultural silo of our own creating. Again, some will say this isn’t a bad thing, for who wants to be in a silo with sexual assaulters and child molesters? Clearly no one. But who wants to be in a silo with only ideas they agree with, that don’t challenge them, that pretend there is only beauty in what is in actuality a very ugly world? To put my proverbial cards on the desk, I’m all for you burning your R. Kelly records and saying enough is enough, but I’m not for some corporate entity removing the ability to decide for yourself all together.

​This article isn’t about R. Kelly because R. Kelly is an entirely different matter. This article is about Kanye and his avowed love of Trump. I hate Trump and everything Trump stands for and all who stand with him, does this mean I now hate Kanye? Does this mean I now hate My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy? In order to think through this I want to pose you a historical example, and let you come to your own conclusions as I come to terms with mine.

​In a series of interviews in the mid ‘70s David Bowie said some truly despicable shit. Now that the years have gone by and he has unfortunately passed out of this world it doesn’t really come up anymore. When he died there was no handwringing about his problematical utterances. He was praised as a hero. If the things he said about fascism and Hitler come up at all anymore, they are brushed aside as indicators of just how much cocaine he was doing while recording Station to Station, instead of held against him as the earnest musings of an open fascist whose records should be burned and who should be cast out of the cannon.

​In a 1975 interview with NME Bowie said the following:

"Like the original aim of rock and roll when it first came out was to establish an alternative media speak voice for people who had neither the power nor advantage to infiltrate any other media or carry any weight and cornily enough, people really needed rock and roll.

"And what we said was that we were only using rock and roll to express our vehement arguments against the conditions we find ourselves in, and we promise that we will do something to change the world from how it was. We will use rock and roll as a springboard.

"But it's just become one more whirling deity, right? Going round that never-decreasing circle. And rock and roll is dead."

Does he really believe that?

"Absolutely. It's a toothless old woman. It's really embarrassing."

So what's the next step?

"Dictatorship," says Bowie. "There will be a political figure in the not too distant future who'll sweep this part of the world like early rock and roll did.

Along those same lines Bowie said the following in an interview with Playboy in 1976:

Christ, everything is a media manipulation. I’d love to enter politics. I will one day. I’d adore to be Prime Minister. And, yes, I believe very strongly in fascism. The only way we can speed up the sort of liberalism that’s hanging foul in the air at the moment is to speed up the progress of a right-wing, totally dictatorial tyranny and get it over as fast as possible. People have always responded with greater efficiency under a regimental leadership. A liberal wastes time saying, “Well, now, what ideas have you got?” Show them what to do, for God’s sake. If you don’t, nothing will get done. I can’t stand people just hanging about. Television is the most successful fascist, needless to say. Rock stars are fascists, too. Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars.

#54: PLAYBOY: How so?

BOWIE: Think about it. Look at some of his films and see how he moved. I think he was quite as good as Jagger. It’s astounding. And, boy, when he hit that stage, he worked an audience. Good God! He was no politician. He was a media artist himself. He used politics and theatrics and created this thing that governed and controlled the show for those 12 years. The world will never see his like. He staged a country.

Despite saying these things we don’t think of Bowie as a “problematic” artist. There is no movement to expunge Hunky Dory from Spotify, no AntiFa anger spills out when Fame starts playing on the dancefloor. Why? Is this nothing more than further proof of the old adage “tragedy plus time equals comedy”? Why does Bowie get a pass but Kanye gets raked over the hot-take coals?

​Perhaps if I were a better writer I’d have an answer for you, but this isn’t really an essay with a pithy moral at the end. I spent a lifetime separating art from artist, but we are finally having a reckoning about what it means to tacitly endorse awful people (spoiler: it means we perpetuate the very horrors we claim to stand against). The Civil War Monuments are coming down, and to that I unequivocally say: thank fucking god. But, isn’t there a difference between a celebratory statute in a town square honoring Robert E. Lee, and an unequivocally good piece of art (Ignition (remix), Hannah and Her Sisters) made by an unequivocally awful person (R. Kelly, Woody Allen)? Some will tell you Hannah and Her Sisters is a Civil War Monument celebrating sexual assault, others will tell you the movie has nothing to do with the awful deeds of the man who made it. What if Robert E. Lee made a statute that was objectively beautiful, had nothing to do with the civil war, but we still knew precisely who made it? Should that come down too? Some will tell you yes, any badge or symbol of slavery should be blighted from the face of the earth along with the horrendous system it signifies. Others will say no, if the statute itself is not racist the racism of its creator does not automatically imbue it with the politics of its maker. Finally others will suggest a third way, keep up the statute made by Lee, but put a little placard next to it saying it’s a good thing made by a bad man, think of it precisely what you will.

​Obviously I’ve used a very loaded example, but it’s easier to grapple with the idea of a non-racist statute made by a racist than it is to think about the current status of New Slaves. Not only is New Slaves not a racist song, it’s an anti-racist song. It’s a song of beneficial empowerment. We don’t have to struggle over the meaning of New Slaves because New Slaves unequivocally says something we (by which I mean, non-assholes) can not only get behind, but advocate for, fight for. When Yeezus came out in 2013 we had to question many things about Kanye West, but we didn’t have to question his support of a racist regime. In 2018 that no longer holds true. New Slaves is still New Slaves, but now Kanye is wearing a MAGA hat, making us ask, what does it all mean?

​This brings me back to Bowie. Kanye is the hard example because Kanye has always been hard to love, even before he wore that stupid fucking hat. Kanye wrote a song called I am a God, and he meant it. No one ever loved Kanye more than Kanye, and that turned a lot of people off, all the while his music was turning a lot more people on. Bowie has been many things, Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, but he has never been a figure of scorn the way Kanye at times has been. And yet, some other Bowie quotes from those same interviews perhaps shed more light on the Kanye-conundrum than Kanye (or myself) ever could. From that same Playboy interview quoted above:

#26: PLAYBOY: Do you ever have trouble deciding which is the real you?

BOWIE: I’ve learned to flow with myself. I honestly don’t know where the real David Jones is. It’s like playing the shell game. Except I’ve got so many shells I’ve forgotten what the pea looks like. I wouldn’t know it if I found it. Being famous helps put off the problems of discovering myself. I mean that. That’s the main reason I’ve always been so keen on being accepted, why I’ve striven so hard to put my brain to artistic use. I want to make a mark. In my early stuff, I made it through on sheer pretension. I consider myself responsible for a whole new school of pretensions–they know who they are. Don’t you, Elton? Just kidding. No, I’m not. See what I mean? That was a thoroughly pretentious statement. True or not, I bet you’ll print that. Show someone something where intellectual analysis or analytical thought has been applied and people will yawn. But something that’s pretentious–that keeps you riveted. It’s also the only thing that shocks anymore. It shocks as much as the Dylan thing did 14 years ago. As much as sex shocked many years ago.

If I took the name off the answer I’m pretty sure you would be willing to believe that Kanye said that. This is the contradiction that lies at the heart of the art-artist conundrum. We cannot take art at face value, because art is intentionally designed to elicit a response. It is fiction, which isn’t to say it’s false, but is to say it’s designed with a point in mind. Many have said Kanye’s tweets are designed preciously with this theory in mind, and still others have said “nope, he’s just an asshole.”

​I’m not here to tell you what to think. If you want to stop listening to Kanye because he supports an awful man, go for it. If you can separate the rap from the (w)rapper, you do you. The whole key is just think about why you judge the way you do. Some hate the player, and some hate the game. The one thing this piece is meant to advocate against is merely uncritically disengaging with anything you disagree with. I’ll probably take a break from Kanye for a bit, but I’m willing to wager when this is all said and done, we’ll remember him just like Bowie. Then again I’m a terrible gambler. I’ll just leave you with Bowie’s last line from that Playboy interview:

#77: PLAYBOY: Last question. Do you believe and stand by everything you’ve said?

BOWIE: Everything but the inflammatory remarks.

[fieldsofplay]

Top Albums of 2017

20. Protomartyr – Relatives in Descent  

I put this album 20 for several reasons. One, it’s a great album. Two, they release these records every year and their inclusion is thus a little rote at this point, so it might as well just kick off the list as the official start to another year. Three, we can get politics out of the way at the outset. 2017. Woof. And we thought 2016 was bad. If any band is going to soundtrack the hellscape that is Amerikkka in 2017, it’s hard to do better than Detroit’s Protomartyr. No one is better at channeling our collective disillusionment with the political climate into raw power.

19. Lorde – Melodrama

I don’t know if I’m surprised by my embrace of this record or not. I’ll admit part of me found the idea of Lorde not all that interesting, and I never really bothered to listen to her first record. But as high culture and pop continue to draw ever closer to each other it would be foolish to ignore one of the true pop perfectionists while embracing the Beyonces and Kanyes with open arms. This album bangs. The beats are oddly reminiscent of late night Junior Boys vibes, with perfect pop sing-along’s about a night on the town laid infectiously over the top of those hypnotic beats. Whenever I hear “Homemade Dynamite” it takes days to get it out of my head (dy-dy-dy-dynomite).

18. Tyler, the Creator – Flower Boy

While many old acts dusted off their A-games and a few young guns broke on through, no artist this year was more surprising than Tyler. Long written off as a homophobic infantile flash in the pan, the least interesting member of a crew (Wolf Gang) that he single handedly launched, Tyler did a lot of growing up in 2017. Flower Boy is a testament to that growth. The hip-hop equivalent to former fellow crew member Frank Ocean’s Blond, Flower Boy is a kaleidoscopic trip through acid rap tinged with a hint of g-funk. While I never find personal politics compelling when it comes to artistic statements, the fact that the former gay-basher came out himself is important not for who he professes to sleep with, but for the giant emotional leap such an ideational 180 requires. Having come so far as an artist, I cannot wait to see where Tyler goes next.

17. TOPS – Sugar at the Gate

TOPS are perhaps the most precise band on this list. When left to my own devices I tend to gravitate to loose punk and dance music, and I am an avowed enemy of soft rock, but there is just something irresistible about this band. The whole thing never drifts out of a narrowly restrained emotional range, and yet at the same time remains impeccably locked-in, like a krautrock metronome played on a chintzy synthesizer. There’s a song on this record called “Dayglow Bimbo”; that’s all you really need to know.

16. Sza – Ctrl

With the exception of Kendrick I’m not sure who cast a wider cultural net this year, Lorde or Sza? Ctrl is one of those albums that seemed to cross all scene boundaries, if it were still the 1990s it’d be one of those cd’s that was in everyone’s car (like Californication or Sublime). Ctrl is an R&B record that is simultaneously chill and bumping. Sza sings, not to the audience, but as if she’s alone in her apartment, letting her emotions out to the music playing on the radio in the background.  

15. Run the Jewels – RTJ3

Run the Jewels appear to be the victims of their own success. After two universally revered albums of mic passing mc showdowns that also managed to be locked-into their historical moment, album three was enjoyed and largely forgotten as more of the same. Perhaps this is my contrarian nature shining through, but I honestly like RTJ3 more than RTJ2, an album many embraced as the most important album the year it came out. Killer Mike and EL-P remain in top form, and the group is probably more relevant than they’ve ever been. “Call Ticketron” is still my go-to Friday afternoon ducking out of work early jam.

14. Kevin Morby – City Music

Like Protomartyr, Kevin Morby just puts out incredible record after incredible record, literally every year. For my tastes Singing Saw remains his finest work, but City Music has really grown on me over the course of the year. I caught him at the Turf Club and these songs really come alive in person. This album is more restrained than his previous output, but there is a certain beauty in its restraint. This album reminds me of another exquisite work of countrified city music, Bright Eyes’ I’m Wide Awake its Morning. The perfect album for wandering around city streets at night, wondering what it all means.

13. Brockhampton – Saturation II  

I first learned about Brockhampton while waiting for my to-go order sitting at the counter at World Street Kitchen. Some of the local youths were talking about the new Jay-Z record so I decided to wade into the fray, throwing my hat squarely in the ‘I don’t really care about Jay-Z anymore’ ring. One of the youths responded he was too busy listening to this new collective of kids out in LA that were like a westcoast Wu-Tang Clan to bother with Jay-Z. Well, my interest was certainly peaked, and Saturation II did not disappoint. The album bristles with energy as the mic moves from mc to mc, all of whose individual styles vary but still manage to cohere into a definitive whole (is it clear I still haven’t figured out who is who in this crew?). While none of the sounds are new, Saturation II is definitely the sound of the future of hip-hop.

12. Vagabon – Infinite Worlds

This album checks all my boxes. Loud guitars. Thudding drums with liberal use of the cymbals. Quirky narrative lyrics. Sounds like it was recorded live to tape in someone’s backroom. (And its even got a super hazy synth song with a French title.) The chorus of the first track is “You’re a shark that hates everything.” A more aggressive Pavement. A less sad Bedhead. Bonus points for being vaguely from Brooklyn and having a great song called “Minneapolis.”

11. Kamasi Washington – Harmony of Difference

Following the three-disc sprawl of the aptly titled The Epic with a 6 song E.P. (clocking in at a very economical 32 minutes) felt slightly underwhelming at first. We are used to having so much Kamasi, it was something you could get lost in, like a Russian novel. However, while Kamasi certainly excels on the astral plane, this set benefits from concision. It’s one thing to write a novel and another to pen a short story. Kamasi is able to use his saxophone to portray both, sometimes within the same song –the opener “Desire” is both a mellow group cut and clarion solo, all within just 4 and a ½ minutes.

10.  John Maus – Screen Memories

Of all the people on this list, John Maus is definitely the weirdest. In all honesty, his music sounds like it was made by Ross Geller, with one notable exception, it’s really fucking good. Often linked with Ariel Pink, I’ve honestly never really found them comparable. I find Pink’s music vapid and uninteresting, whereas Maus’ synth tracks are full of such life and oddness, all while remaining compellingly melodic. His baritone singing is less a vocal performance and more another layer of tone piled into the composition. Maus does more with stark base, futuristic (i.e. 1980s) synths, and rudimentary drum machines than others do with entire symphonies.

9. The War on Drugs – A Deeper Understanding

I honestly didn’t think 2017 was as good a year for music as some of its recent predecessors, but then I realized this album is number 9 on my list and I had to come to terms with the fact that the peaks of this year are incredibly high. A few years back Lost in the Dream was my number one album of the year, and I like A Deeper Understanding just as much. Over the years Adam Granduciel has come to perfect a sound obviously indebted to a few key influences, and yet a sound somehow entirely his own. Even though he’s a Philadelphia musician, Granduciel has somehow come to encapsulate the ennui of the late capitalist American middle west. These songs are haunting, filled with the charged emptiness of ambient music. But they are also filled with giant guitar solos that would put Jeff Tweedy to shame. I’ve seen this band several times dating all the way back to 2008. When I saw them this fall they were bonafide rock stars. I imagine this is what it must have been like to see Neil Young circa On the Beach. It was a treat.

8. Wolf Parade – Cry Cry Cry

Dear America, what gives? How come no one seems to love this record? Everyone seems to like it, but no one seems to love it. This album is great, and I won’t accept anything less. A band cursed by a universally revered debut and multiple equally successful sideprojects that split the votes of the true believers, Wolf Parade have somehow managed to be critical darlings, popular, and yet somehow are also underrated. Cry Cry Cry is to my ear arguably their second best album, which isn’t to say I was disheartened with Mt. Zoomer or Expo ’86. The new record has something for every member of the Wolf Parade expanded universe, the propulsive Dan fist-pumper (“Artificial Life” “You’re Dreaming”), the moody opener (“Lazarus Online”), and most importantly, the sprawling Spencer epic (“Baby Blue”). Wolf Parade were another bygone band I was fortunate enough to see in 2017. It was arguably the best show of the entire lot, and somehow it wasn’t a sellout. What gives, America?  

7. Strange Ranger – Daymoon

Daymoon is my cause célèbre of 2017. Largely overlooked by the press, this is the most perfect fall album I’ve heard in years. It creaks. It echoes. It’s full of odd flourishes. “Haunting” is an adjective I feel is mostly misapplied but fits this album like a glove. I don’t know if there is actually a theremin on this record (or a singing saw) but it always feels like one is humming softly in the background. If you loved the Microphones’ The Glow, Pt II, early Modest Mouse, or Neutral Milk Hotel give this album a spin when you feel like taking a long walk in a golden post-harvest field, or at least feel like doing so in your mind.

6. Slowdive– Slowdive

This album has no business being anywhere near as amazing as it is. While Souvlaki remains one of my all time favorite records, it was always the exception, not the rule. As I learned from the great Pitchfork documentary, one of the reasons Souvlaki was so distinct, besides the inclusion of personal hero Brian Eno of course, is that the two front people in the band were in the process of breaking up while making that record. 1995’s Pygmalion was essentially an (uninteresting) solo affair, and that was it, Slowdive faded along with the shoegaze movement of which they were a central figure. Suddenly here we are in 2017, the band is inexplicably back, and almost more amazing is just how great a record Slowdive is. It’s like the follow up to Souvlaki was frozen in carbonite (timely reference!) and perfectly preserved so it could be unveiled 25 years in the future. If “Slomo” isn’t 2017’s best song, it’s certainly its most beautiful.

5. Daniele Luppi & Parquet Courts – Milano

To loosely paraphrase Ferris Bueller, I’ve never been to Milan, I’m not Milanese, what do I care about an album devoted to the city put together by an Italian composer I don’t know? Well, collaborating with Parquet Courts and Karen O is certainly an irresistible start. On paper the whole thing sounds like a mess, and yet the finished product is a taught 9 tracks that breezes by in 30 minutes like an alfa romeo. While I might not know anything about Milan, especially Milan in the 80s, somehow this album manages to evoke that place, or at least an idea of that place. A large part of this has to do with the arty coolness Parquet Courts have always exuded. They can emblematize any hip scene, be it Ridgewood in the 2010s or Milan in the 1980s. They just have that wiry sound and jittery energy that calls to mind fashionable afterparties and mountains of cocaine. While I love both of Parquet Courts singers, I never would have imagined that Karen O is actually the perfect frontwoman for this band, sorta like Nico and the Velvet Underground. Here’s hoping the Courts enjoyed working with her more than Lou Reed did with the German chanteuse. Give “Flush” a listen, I guarantee you start strutting.

4. Vince Staples – Big Fish Theory

Every now and then there is an artist whose debut is an instant classic, and then somehow manages to grow even further on each subsequent release. For this current generation, besides Kanye, that person is Vince Staples. Summertime ’06 was a double disc perfect rendition of classic LA hip-hop that was also a sneaky great album to dance to. Big Fish Theory is possibly the most formally experimental hip-hop album I’ve ever heard. If you cut out the vocals, it’d be an avante guarde electronic dance album. Throw Vince’s perfect flow over the top, and you have a Frankenstein monster of hip-hop and dance music that somehow manages to be a seamless union of the two. I’m still mad at my friend Evelyn for skipping this at Shrizz’ wedding this past summer. The nerve of some people.

3. White Reaper – The World’s Best American Band

I sincerely hope you like Cheap Trick. And not ironically. Like, you actually really like Cheap Trick. If so, I’ll be goddamned if this isn’t a perfect album of fist-pumping arena rock made by a bunch of basement punks from Louisville. If you don’t like Cheap Trick, well then, you just might not get why this is so great. Every track is a perfect nugget of 70s style power pop with just enough of a hint of punk to make it somehow sound fresh. In a year when I saw most of my favorite bands make triumphant returns from the grave, seeing these guys blow the roof off the tiny 7th Street Entry was probably the most fun I’ve had straight up rocking out in some time. I’ve never owned a jean jacket in my life, but this album makes me want to buy one.

2. LCD Soundsystem – American Dream

Now I know I’m a hyperbolic person. Every bar is my “favorite,” every track is the “best,” but I’m being legit when I say LCD Soundsytem are the most important band of my lifetime. I bought the self-titled album at a CD store on State Street in Madison shortly before leaving town and moving to New York. Sound of Silver was the soundtrack of my 20s. By the time they broke up my 20s were over and all my friends started moving out of New York. If I came of age in the 70s this band would probably be Bowie or in the 80s it would have been New Order, but as someone who gradually became an adult during the late 00’s, this was the most important band, not only to me, but to most everyone I know. It was of course also crucial that they were the official band of Brooklyn. They were there, as the song goes, and so were we. I honestly never understood the overwrought handwringing that accompanied their return. Are you really going to be mad at having more LCD in your life just because they once told you “that’s it, it’s all over”? American Dream is just as good as anything they’ve ever put out. I’d put “Other Voices,” “Change Yr Mind,” and “Tonite” up there with the best songs they’ve ever penned. Getting to see them tour once again, with both old New York friends and new Minnesotans, in a new town, in a new phase of existence, was the cherry on top of the electro funk sundae.

1. Kendrick Lamar – Damn.

People call him King, and it is a worthy title. Throughout music history the truly all-time greats always had someone who was their dialectical opposite spur them on to greater accomplishments—Beatles and Stones, Michael and Prince, Pumpkins and Pavement (not that either would acknowledge the other)—and now we have two titans of hip-hop pushing each other in radically different directions. Kanye is the pop perfectionist, the Michael Jackson, the Paul McCartney, everything he touches turns to gold. Kendrick is the flawless technical savant, he is literally the best, no one is better. Pick your favorite MC from throughout hip-hop history, they all have their idiosyncrasies and particular strengths (Rahim has technical prowess, Andre has speed, Q-tip has an inimitably odd flow) somehow Kendrick is better at all of all those things than all of those legends. No one’s voice is more varied, no one is a better rhymer, and no one has ever matched rhyme to rhythm this side of Shakespeare (that’s not hyperbole, well maybe Frank O’Hara). Just listen to the subtle variations in “Lust” that somehow tell a person’s entire day, an entire lifestyle, in a sentence or two. It’s not just he’s the best at spitting lines, he also has the ability to intertwine those rhymes into infectious pop structures. Kendrick has released 3 albums that people are aware of (and 4 overall), and those three are all amongst the top albums of the decade. Each one overbrims with classic tunes. “Humble” was the song of the year before Damn. even dropped, and the rest of the album lived up to the hype of that single. I’m still not exactly sure what “If I gotta slap a pussy-ass ni***, I'ma make it look sexy” means, but goddamn if I don’t love it and still perfectly understand it. This record is so good it somehow makes U2 cool. In a year where everything seemed to go wrong, Damn. was there to remind us that there will always be beauty in the chaos, so long as you don’t forget to keep searching it out.

[fieldsofplay]

Colin Kaepernick, a (Packer) Nation Turns its Weary Eyes to You

We’ve all been there before, and that’s what makes this so hard to replay. A seemingly innocuous tackle. A fall directly onto a shoulder. A hero lies writhing in agony. Why, lord? Why? Most people in the State of Wisconsin watching that tackle, and then Rodgers trip to the (newfangled) medical tent, and then by cart to the locker room, unable to raise his right arm to give his replacement a consoling high five, would have literally given their own collar bone in his place. Few mean as much to as many people as Aaron Rodgers does to Packer fans. He is resplendent. He is the best there ever was. You don’t replace someone like that because that is a logical impossibility. Rodgers is defined by inimitableness. You don’t replace someone like that, you simply mourn their absence.

If ever there was a time for Colin Kaepernick, surely this is it. Though it was clear to most several months ago, it is now apparent to anyone with eyes that the NFL is blackballing Kaepernick. There are 32 teams in the NFL. There aren’t 32 starting quarterbacks. That means there certainly aren’t 64 people capable of either starting or backing-up a NFL team. When the Ravens floated their interest and subsequently signed someone from the arena league you knew that was it for Kaepernick.

For the briefest moment the NFL seamed to stand in solidarity with the player they tried so hard to burry. Donald Trump threatened the NFL and the league presented a unified face against a common enemy. Teams locked arms. Teams remained in the locker room during the playing of the anthem. What began as one man taking a stand (by taking a knee) against racially biased policing and state sanctioned murder turned into a collective show of defiance against the blustering threats of a buffoon king. However, people quickly began to ask, what exactly did teams mean by “unity”? Unity with Kaepernick? Unity with the fight against state sponsored racism? Unity against the President and everything he stands for? Unity against hate?

All it took was another week and it became clear the NFL only ever stood for itself. Jerry Jones, PT Barnum himself, who took a knee (before the unfurling of the flag and the playing of the anthem) to the boos of his patrons, pulled a 180 and threatened any Cowboy who kneeled against oppression with suspension from America’s Team. Sports Illustrated photoshopped Goodell locked-in-arms with Steph Curry onto the cover its magazine (much to the chagrin of the latter), but one person was conspicuously absent from that tawdry rendition of ptompkin-village protest. The NFL locked arms to keep out the President, but still no one invited Kaepernick to join the human chain of opposition, neither on the field, nor on the cover of a magazine.

All through the fall of 2017 sports talk radio has resounded with the same question: “what is it going to take for a team to sign Kaepernick? And who will that team be?” It always came down to the same factual scenario: a contender who loses their QB for the year but still thinks they have enough pieces to win the title with an able-bodied replacement. Well ladies and gentleman, that factual hypothetical has manifest itself, and it is the Green Bay Packers. Talent on Offense. Talent on Defense. A long tenured offensive minded coach. A GM with as much job-security as one can get in this day and age. Most importantly: no owner. While the team isn’t public in the true sense of the word—I own a share and no one has ever asked me whether the team should let its best offensive guards walk in free agency (No!) or what they should charge for a beer in the concourse ($4.50)—it is the only team free from a member of that black-balling cabal known as owners. While it is clear no one is going to sign Kaep, if ever a team were going to, surely this is it.

The only problem is the lack of an owner works both for and against the Packers. I was born and raised in Wisconsin, but I also fled to New York the first chance I got. The people of the Badger state, and Packer fans in particular, are lovely, sensible, Midwestern folk, but there sure as shit are a lot of virulent racists amongst the bunch. Wisconsin is one of the main reasons Donald Trump is now our president. Wisconsin is a swing state because the electoral war between republican towns and democratic cities is what tells the story of the national temperament. If a Democrat wins the state it means the liberal cities had more enthusiasm for their candidate than the conservative farms and backcountry hamlets. Vice versa if a Republican wins the state. The most ardent Packer fans happen to be the people who turn out in droves to support the Republicans.

It is no coincidence that Aaron Rodgers asked the Packer fans to lock arms with one another during the playing of the national anthem on a nationally televised Monday night game and no one listened to him. There were many chants of “U-S-A” during the anthem but narry a gesture that could be perceived as showing support for anyone who used the national anthem to protest the current state of America. Packer fans would give Aaron Rodgers their own children if he asked them, but supporting a racially charged political issue was a bridge too far, even when requested by the most beloved person in the history of the State.

Here’s the funny thing: Packer fans will tolerate anything if it means the team might win a game it would otherwise lose. No one knows first-hand how good a quarterback Colin Kaepernick can be like the green-and-gold faithful. We are still collectively shell-shocked from the times he single-handedly crushed us in the playoffs. He ran like a gazelle and threw the ball all over the field. He was a one man wrecking ball sprinting through the heart of our defense on legs of gold. Not since the days of Steve Young and Troy Aikman have Packer fans feared an opposing quarterback as they did Kaepernick.

Not many Packer fans support what Kaepernick stands for socially, but almost all of them appreciate what he represents as a football player. This is what makes this situation so frightfully interesting. Here we are, presented with the one scenario that might finally disrupt the blockade. A contender, bereft of its star quarterback for the remainder of the season. A team without an owner formally committed to keeping Kaepernick, and his cause, out of the league. If anyone was ever going to give the man a chance, surely the Pack is that team.

Will they? Sadly I doubt it. Trumpism runs disgracefully deep in the state of Wisconsin, even if this is the place where Kaepernick grew up. Rodgers is an adoptive son, and is beloved by one and all. Kaepernick was literally adopted by Wisconsin parents, but very few look upon him as our own. People here love the flag, which is another way of saying they are filled with inarticulable hatred. No team needs Kaepernick more. No team is better suited to giving him a chance.

In America nothing is guaranteed, yet everyone is supposedly entitled to an equal chance to succeed. Kaepernick’s cause is devoted to pulling the veil from that myth of equal opportunity. Will the one team with no owner embrace the freedom this country believes it stands for, or reify the racial hostility of football’s predominantly rural fanbase? After all the events of the last year I’m done blindly hoping anyone in any position of power in this country will simply do the right thing. The barbarians are at the gate, and they’re devoted to keeping Kaepernick, and his cause, on the other side of the segregationist fence.

[fieldsofplay]

Favorite Albums of 2016

30.) Noname – Telefone

Most every entrant on this list could be summarized as some sort of allegory to the awfulness that was 2016, so I will just tip my critical-cap to that mode of surmising here at the start of this list and then do my best to dwell on the music itself as opposed to the awful political-cultural maelstrom swirling around its borders. In a banner year for hip-hop, few MCs possessed a flow that made me smile like Noname. A Chicagoan associated with Chance, Fatimah Warner’s lilting delivery and day-glow minimal backing beats emphasize the everyday poetry of her verses. Though lyrically heavy, the songs somehow imbue you with a contagious sense of optimism, that while things might be awful (especially on the South Side), they don’t necessarily have to be that way forever.

29.) Kornél Kovács – The Bells

As the lone straight-up instrumental dance record on this list, The Bells has to shoulder a large burden of booty-shaking goodtimes, but fortunately for you the reader this record is so stuffed with transportive euphoria that if you can only grab one album to keep the dance party going for a while, you’d be hard pressed to do better than The Bells. From the minute “BB” kicks things off, I can’t help but think of Daft Punk’s Homework. I’ve never really been able to tell the difference between “acid house” and plain old “house” music, but I know a good time when I hear it, and Kovács provides those aplenty.

28.) Nite-Funk – Nite-Funk

Keeping the dancy-vibes going, while hardly a proper album (only 4 songs covering 18 minutes), Nite-Funk was everything those eagerly awaiting the collaboration between Nite Jewel and Dâm-Funk dreamed it would be. While more of the late-night than dancefloor strand of funk, these four tracks provide the perfect come-down for a night on the town. Like Junior Boys before them, Nite-Funk make dance music for people to drive home to. During the summer swelter, I found myself returning to this album again and again as the soundtrack for my strolls over to the Franklin Street haunts on a Friday night. “Let Me Be Me” would be a strong contender on any list of top singles from the year, though I’ve always been more drawn to “Don’t Play Games” moody introspection. Think early 80s Madonna, but less “Material Girl” and more “Borderline.”

27.) David Bowie – Blackstar

I promised at the outset not to dwell on the awfulness of 2016, but Blackstar requires one to confront the year that was head on. On January 8th, his 69th birthday, Bowie released Blackstar. On January 10th, he departed this world. Having lived his life as a cosmic traveler, as spaceman, spider from mars, and so many other out of this world things, it is highly likely that Bowie knew just what was coming our way and decided to get out before the storm. Frankly it’s hard to blame him. It isn’t just that 2016 was terrible on so many levels, but the absence of the comforting presence of people like Bowie and Prince only amplified the negativity that was everywhere in the news. Written in the shadow of his impending demise, Blackstar was that rare thing, a man’s eulogy for his own life, a capstone, a concluding chapter on a life of many characters. If I were forced to pick my single favorite artist, while an impossible choice, on many days I’d tell you it was Bowie. Though I haven’t listened to most of his output since Scary Monsters, Blackstar was a fitting end for a man who made most, if not all, of the most important albums of the 1970s. I still have trouble listening to Blackstar, largely because it’s impossible for me to hear it and not think of a man grappling with his imminent demise, but as more time goes by, it will surely stand alongside the towering achievements he put out forty years ago. Farwell Bowie, you are dearly missed.

26.) LVL UP – Return to Love

Though created in Brooklyn in 2016, I cannot listen to Return to Love without thinking of it as long lost artifact from Athens Georgia in the late 1990s. It’s probably just because of the fuzz bass and clattering percussion, but somewhere Rob Schneider and friends at the Elephant 6 are smiling. While its all too easy to dismiss bands like LVL UP as knock-off artists, I choose to take the opposite tack, and say, why should we blame someone for putting out more of the music I grew up with and first fell in love to? There are plenty of places on this list for overwrought originality, sometimes you just want to have fun, and LVL UP doles out the fuzzy guitar rock goodtimes a plenty. Think Neutral Milk Hotel’s “Holland 1945” but as an entire record (and not about the Holocaust thank heavens). With the exception of only Pablo, no other album on the list can boast an opening three-song barrage like that on Return to Love.

25.) Jeff Rosenstock – WORRY.

The older I get the less records like WORRY. and the more albums like Heart Like a Levee populate this list, but every now and then I like to pretend I’m not so old and crank up an album like WORRY. (I also take comfort in the fact that Rosenstock is a year older than I am). Despite our advanced age, WORRY is a flawless record of overdriven guitar solos, lyrics about making out in cars, and the anxiety that comes along with wondering what happens when those good times burn themselves out. “Festival Song” is introduced with an audio clip of Rosenstock saying “I want the song of the American Dorm Room,” and if he isn’t true to his word, then the fault lies not with Rosenstock but with our current stock of collegiate freshmen. Full of shouted “woo-ohhhs” and ripping guitars, these are songs for pumping your fist—not in outraged protest, but in communal euphoria. These are songs about the everlasting power of good old fashioned rock ’n roll to empower the masses and bring people together, if only to yell “fuck yeah” while accidentally spilling beer out of red solo cups.

24.) Sturgill Simpson – A Sailor’s Guide to Earth

Picking up beautifully where Metamodern Sounds in Country Music left off, and taking country  western music further out into the cosmos, Sturgill Simpson’s A Sailor’s Guide to Earth is the perfect album for anyone who enjoys Old Elvis just as much as they do his younger iteration. If you’re put off by the idea of sequin jumpsuits and towering stax-style horns, then there is plenty of other good music out there for you to listen to. If you’re still with me, then hot-dog is this record a riot of blue eyed soul and dog eared country. While many will come just for the cover of “In Bloom,” you should stay for songs like “Welcome to Earth (Pollywog)” and “Brace for Impact (Live a Little)” where Sturgill makes not only Nirvana, but all of country western music, his own.

23.) Mitski – Puberty 2

On one level, Puberty 2 feels precisely like the type of indie Brooklyn used to churn out like Detroit spun out Motown hits in the 60s. Reverby speak-sung vocals, clangy guitars, and interesting production flourishes (a sax solo paired tastefully with a disintegrating drum-machine loop) all combine to signify a sound that was once so ubiquitous here in the five boroughs (but especially in the borough of Brooklyn) that it makes you realize how much this sound has faded out in recent years, like all the venues closed down so Vice could have their shiny new offices on Kent. However, rather than revere Mitski as the last holdout in a changing landscape, once you scratch the surface of the lyrics a depth of both emotional profundity and wry poetic lingual play is revealed not seen since the gold sounds of Malkmus. A simple example will suffice from the opening track “Happy”: “Happy came to visit me, he brought cookies on the way / I poured him tea and he told me it’ll all be ok /  Well I told him I’d do anything to have him stay with me / So he laid me down and I felt Happy come inside of me / He laid me down, and I felt happy.” On one hand this is the punning of eighth graders more prone to the comic styling’s of Beavis & Butthead, but as the entendres double and then double again, Mistki arrives at an emotional depth that is both easy to miss and worth pondering over and unlocking. 

22.) Beyoncé – Lemonade

Lemonade seems to me to fall into the same category as The Bible and Shakespeare, works discussed far more than they are actually read / listened to. Everyone loves Queen Bey (and rightfully so), everyone talks about “Becky with the good hair,” the halftime performance of “Formation” was a cultural flashpoint for people all over the political spectrum, but how often have you actually listened to Lemonade? I’m sure a large degree of the blame lies with Tidal, as our streaming era has made that exclusive designation a death-sentence for mass consumption. I absolutely loved her last self-titled album, and songs from it saturated the culture, they owned the dance floor, blared out of car windows, bled from earbuds on the subway, but with the exception of “Formation”, when was the last time you heard any cut from Lemonade? Part of this is because the album is a genuinely compelling left turn for the Queen of Pop. Whereas the self-titled was all hip-hop inflected bangers, Lemonade is a very different beast, full of quiet ruminations on love, fidelity, and more importantly the lack thereof. It’s a good album, but in terms of things I actually lived with on a daily basis, I spent way more time in 2016 with the other Knowles sister (see below).

21.) Parquet Courts – Human Performance

Parquet Courts are one of those bands that so perfectly fit my own idiosyncrasies that I will always ride for whatever they put out. While Human Performance was decidedly a step back from their high water mark Sunbathing Animal, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a great album on its own merits. Still brimming with off-kilter punk ruminations on the intersection of drugs and life in Bushwick, cut with a generous helping of Modern Lovers’ wit, Parquet Courts continue as the torch-bearers of New York cool. I challenge anyone else out there to write a song as compelling or enjoyable about dust (no joke, the chorus goes: “dust is everywhere, sweep”). The title track is one of the best songs they’ve ever produced, and one of my favorite cuts of the year.

20.) Sheer Mag – III

CMJ disappeared from the New York scene this year, which was perhaps most noteworthy for how little attention its absence garnered. New York doesn’t really need an event like CMJ (the North East equivalent of SXSW for those Non-New Yorkers out there) because every single day in this city is CMJ, there are a thousand bands playing a thousand shows in spaces ranging from Bushwick DIY hovels to the ornate splendor of the Kings Theater out in Ditmas. However, one of the joys of an event like CMJ is the discovery of like-minded bands at the better curated showcases, and for me last year that show was the Brooklyn Vegan bill at a Carwash under the BQE, and the band was Sheer Mag. III rips by in under 14 minutes (the whole thing is up on Youtube) with the bluesy guitar rock we’ve come to associate with Philly over recent years. On stage they bear a strong resemblance to Alabama Shakes, only if Alabama Shakes was a drunken roadhouse band playing behind a chicken-wire screen to protect them from flying bottles. Most walks in New York take at least 14 minutes, so if you want to put some pep in your step, consider listening to all of III between home and your destination (preferably a good dive bar like 3 Diamond Door or Birdy’s).

19.) Operators – Blue Wave

If you know me at all, then you know I’m a sucker for any of the various projects spiderwebbing out from the beehive of Wolf Parade. Well 2016 has been a good year for people of my ilk, as Wolf Parade returned from mothballs to rock out with the same abandon they did back in 2005. Also, with the release of Blue Wave, Dan Boeckner put out his best side album since Handsome Furs’ Face Control. Having finally perfected the nervy new wave he’s been crafting ever since his split from Spencer, Operators have achieved that seemingly impossible task: a “side project” that is so fully its own aesthetic achievement that any remarks to the main band (as this summary is full of) are necessary only to draw more people into the tent. Full of buzzing analog synths, rock solid disco beats from his partner in Divine Fits, and Boeckner’s trademark wiry entwining guitar and lyrical lines, Blue Wave is decidedly one of the best things he or Spencer have ever done, under whatever of their various monikers, both together and apart. Shouts to Brad if he’s reading this for getting tickets to the show at Baby’s for my birthday, never knew turning 33 would be so damn fun.

18.) Childish Gambino – Awaken, My Love!

To emphasize some positives of 2016 for a change, few spots on the cultural landscape were brighter this year than the work of Donald Glover. Atlanta was the best thing I’ve seen in a long time, and his newest record as Childish Gambino was arguably the surprising musical delight of the year. I never really listened to his earlier rap records under that moniker, as they were widely panned as the vacuous output of a self-indulgent actor. Having been completely won over by Atlanta, I was willing to follow Glover wherever he wanted to lead me this year, and Awaken, My Love! is a fucking good time. Having never listened to the hip-hop albums, I can’t speak to the surprise of this left-field album of funk, soul, and Prince role-playing, but from the variety of his television show I can’t say anything this man does at this point should come as a surprise. Having fallen hard for Funkadelic and Sly Stone after the recent revivals of those sounds by D’Angelo and Kendrick, and with Prince’s death looming large over all music this year, Awaken, My Love! scratched me precisely where I itched. It is also important to note that this album isn’t just Glover doing his best George Clinton karaoke routine. While these songs are certainly steeped in the cosmic funk of the 1970s, they bear a strong connection to some of Frank Ocean’s vocal experiments discussed below. Also, its hard to imagine anyone doing the chipmunk falsetto Prince perfected on “If I were your Girlfriend” as well as the Purple One, but Glover somehow nails it to a T. This record could have been a disaster in a million ways, and the fact that it is an unqualified success speaks to the roll Glover is on this year. If it hadn’t come out 5 days ago it’d probably be higher on this list, but what it lacks in cultural perspective it more than makes up for in funky good times.

17.) Angel Olsen – My Woman

Three albums in, Angel Olsen has clearly established herself as a lasting songwriter in a field full of here-today gone-tomorrow critical darlings. Largely championed as her best and most mature work (I still have a soft spot in my heart for her more countrified debut Halfway Home) My Woman definitely possesses a forcefulness (and fondness for the electric guitar) lacking from her previous two albums. For the devoted, there is plenty more to love here, for the uninitiated I might suggest starting with Halfway Home, but if you prefer pop/rock to country/folk, this is the Olsen album for you.

16.) Kevin Morby – Singing Saw

Without intending it, it’s fitting I’ve placed Singing Saw alongside My Woman on this list, as this is also Morby’s third album. Unlike with Olsen, I have no qualms whatsoever proclaiming Singing Saw to be Morby’s best album to-date, which for me is saying a lot as I’ve been in on him hook, line, and sinker ever since first randomly stumbling across Harlem River. In any other year this would likely be a top-5 album for me, but just because it sits here at 16 doesn’t mean I didn’t live with these songs all year long. The opener “Cut Me Down” is my favorite thing he has ever written, a slow burner with actual singing saws (not just a clever title, sorry Shitty Beatles) the perfect song for slanting sunlight on a late Sunday Afternoon. That the following track, “I Have Been to the Mountain”, is probably my second favorite speaks to the depth of joy this album has brought me in 2016.

15.) Hiss Golden Messenger – Heart Like a Levee + Vestapol

As I joked above, I know I’m getting older because I find myself increasingly drawn to records like Heart Like a Levee. Full of quiet heartfelt Americana ruminations on life and love in this great land, this is music for people who spend at least as much time looking back over their shoulder as they do gazing along the horizon. Rather than dwell upon my own station in life however, I would prefer to use this space to advocate for Vestapol, the largely unknown second album that accompanies the deluxe addition of Heart Like a Levee, like how Weird Era Cont. came packaged with Microcastle. Whereas Heart Like a Levee is a fully fleshed out communal affair, Vestapol is a largely solo outing, allegedly dashed off by M.C. Taylor on the margins of the period during which Levee was recorded. Both albums are filled with beauty, not the ecstatic beauty of a record like Awaken, My Love! , but the quiet beauty of stolen moments and sidelong glances. You’ll be hard-pressed to hear a song more achingly lovely this year than “Cracked Windshield.” Few lyrics instantly transport you quite like the line “I can feel October coming, on the back-scratch wind.”

14.) Vince Staples – Prima Donna

While Kendrick is unquestionably the most talented MC currently cobbling together bars, Vince Staples remains my favorite. The rhythms of his lines tend to skitter and run like the oddball beats over which raps. Full of pings, bleeps, bloops (and the occasional Outkast sample) there are few MCs who make me want to dance the way a Vince song will. The production from No I.D. and DJ Dahi, holdovers from Summertime ’06, are still immaculate, with the shocking addition of James Blake behind the boards (and perhaps more shocking, he’s really good). If you enjoyed the double disk tour of life in Compton that was Summertime ’06 then you should definitely give Prima Donna spin. If you’ve never heard a Vince song, than this 8 track EP provides the perfect way in to one of the hottest talents working in hip-hop today.

13.) Chance the Rapper – Coloring Book

Having stolen the show on 2016’s greatest single (“Ultralight Beam”) the world was primed for Chance’s third mixtape, and he did not disappoint. Combining the dayglow enthusiams of Acid Rap with the communal spirituality of Donny Trumpet & The Social Experiment, Chance makes hip-hop that you can feel cool for rocking on your headphones while not being embarrassed to play it on the stereo for your mom. While not the most technically gifted MC (that goes to Vince and Kendrick), with Coloring Book Chance was perfectly able to capture the vibe of Summer 16 (sorry Drake). Like Kanye in whose Chicago footsteps he follows, Chance has grown from making “rap” to making “pop,” welcoming everyone into the (church revival) tent that is his music. I can think of no more heartbreakingly beautiful song from the past year than “Same Drugs.” How such a young man was ably to so poignantly capture the difficulties of growing old and drifting apart from close friends is beyond me, but however he does it may we all be so lucky that Chance continues to pump out music this uplifting, lord knows we need it now more than ever.  

12.) The Radio Dept. – Running Out of Love

Sweden’s The Radio Dept. are one of those bands you come across for a brief moment and then kinda forget they are still out there, until someday you stumble into a new release and fall back in love all over again. They first came to my attention back in 2010 with what I thought was Clinging to a Scheme, but was actually a mislabled collection of their earlier EPs (ah the good ol’ days of internet MP3s), which I really enjoyed, but at some point stopped thinking about. All of that changed with Running Out of Love. True electro pop has somewhat fallen off of late, but for anyone who ever loved The Notwist, Junior Boys, or The Postal Service, this a true return to form. Full of deep beats and forlorn vocals, this is the perfect music for late night introspection. Equally indebted to Depeche Mode and Johnny Jewel, The Radio Dept. make mood music full of pop hooks, and with Running Out of Love they have put out their best record.

11.) Whitney – Light Upon the Lake

While “songs of the summer” are supposed to capture the euphoria of driving around with the windows down and backyard bbq’s, my album of Summer 16 was Light Upon the Lake, and it was not even remotely close. I couldn’t tell you the amount of times I listened to this album all the way through during the sultry months, which is perhaps why I haven’t listened to it much since, but that could also be because of the indelible link between music and moment. These are the songs of heat sapped languor, to listen to while sitting on a stoop or rooftop in the evening to try and escape the heat bubbling up from the pavement. When I hear Light Upon the Lake I always have before my mind’s eye an image of a girl twirling in slow motion through the smoke a camp fire, or kids running gleefully off a pier and into a lake. For some reason I also always picture LA, of driving through valleys, though I couldn’t precisely say why, likely because these songs all have a distinct laurel canyon vibe. It’s not for nothing that one of the album’s standout tracks is called “Golden Days.”

10.) Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam – I Had a Dream That You Were Mine

Not much needs to be said about I Had a Dream That You Were Mine because its appeal is right there on the surface, perfectly executed to such a stunning degree it would hardly have been thought possible if it weren’t for the fact that it was. Combining the lead singer of The Walkmen with Vampire Weekend’s former jack-of-all trades (including producer), Leithauser and Rostam unite to produce doo-wop rockabilly torch songs with the odd production flourishes of a Vampire Weekend sanctioned jaunt across the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It could have been a sad compromise between competing sounds, but instead it is greater than the sum of its parts. Somehow to me it sounds like the record John Lennon and Harry Nilson would have made if they weren’t shit wasted the whole time, which is fitting, considering the fact that The Walkmen once released a full album cover of Pussy Cats.

9.) Kendrick Lamar – untitled unmastered.

While To Pimp a Butterfly was more or less coronated as thee album of 2015, many, such as myself, championed Kendrick’s vision while still lamenting the fact that many of the songs were not all that enjoyable. That is decidedly not the case with unititled unmastered. With the lone exception of the bloated second half of track 7, there isn’t a wasted moment here. Kendrick comes out spitting fire on untitled 1 and never lets up till the album has quickly run through its 8 stellar tracks. Back in the day it was constantly debated how to categorize Amnesiac in the shadow of the monumental Kid A. I always thought Amnesiac stood on its own merits, even though it was constantly denigrated as a collection of b-sides. While no one seems prepared to consider untitled unmsasterd alongside To Pimp a Butterfly, I want to put forth the unpopular opinion (alert!) that the songs on unamstered, taken as a whole, are actually superior to those on the cultural touchstone which birthed it.

8.) Solange – A Seat at the Table

Ah, finally, my favorite album this year from the sisters Knowles. While normally such a statement would be mere clickbait troll, it just so also happens to be true. A perfect companion to Blood Orange’s Freetown Sound (see below), with A Seat at the Table Solange has managed to both connect directly with the current political moment and craft incredible songs, somehow simultaneously. Between Freetown and A Seat at the Table the latter is decidedly the more upbeat of the two. That comparison is not haphazard, because Dev Hynes (aka Blood Orange) wrote Solange’s breakout album True. While that record was a genuine collaboration, with her newest release Solange is now blazing a path all her own, which is all the more impressive considering the long shadow cast by her sister. While True was comprised of bright big pop songs about heartbreak (which makes perfect sense considering their source), A Seat at the Table is a more modest feast, but is all the more impressive for its restraint. By shifting the focus from hooks to subtle jams, the lyrics stand out all the more distinctly in front of a comfortably modulating background. In a more perfect universe these songs would be just as ubiquitous as those of Queen Bey, but in a way that’s precisely the point. Solange is free to tell it precisely as it is, and the world would be a better place if everyone stopped and headed precisely what she has to say.

7.) Frank Ocean – Blond

This is one of those things that you when you say it people instantly get mad at you and try and start convincing you to think otherwise, but I honestly didn’t really like Channel Orange. It’s not that I thought it was terrible, it just wasn’t my thing. Well that’s not entirely true, I loved “Pyramids.” I listened to “Pyramids” all the time, and lamented the fact that nothing else on that album sounded remotely like it. So how did Frank Ocean bring me over into the fold? It wasn’t that he made one big “Pyramids,” but rather that he made a record as equally full of interesting choices as it was to place a nine minute electro-soul song about working at a strip club / pyramid forced labor camp in the middle of a record full of innocuous short R&B songs. Like fellow Kanye collaborator Bon Iver, Frank has become a singer with a truly exceptional voice who isn’t afraid to toy with his angelic pipes with pitch shifters and various other electronic effects. When I first listened to “Nikes” I had no idea what I just heard, and now it is my favorite song on the record and perhaps the single track I listened to most this year. While Blond is overlong and loses me a bit in the middle (a popular problem this year), the opening and concluding run of songs are more than enough to keep me coming back again and again to this album. With the weight of the world bearing down upon Frank because of the mountain of expectations heaped upon his reclusive silence, it would have been easy (and even understandable) for this album to disappoint. That it managed to meet and at times exceed the hype is a testament to Frank Ocean’s status as a true pop icon.

6.) Bon Iver – 22, A Million

In the tradition of albums like Loveless, with 22, A Million Bon Iver have somehow managed to make both 2016’s most experimental pop album, and also its most beautiful. Ever since I first heard the oddly stuttering, ethereal, cooing “22 (over soon)” I knew this was an album I couldn’t wait to consume in its entirety, and boy was I not disappointed. In a weird historical twist, Bon Iver records have always been Justin Vernon’s output that I was least interested in. I have always been more drawn to the odd post rock experiments of Volcano Choir and the sleezy soul of Gayngs (not to mention the vocal turns on Kanye albums) than I was in Bon Iver, Bon Iver’s stately chamber pop. When I heard that Yeezus was a sonic inspiration, I basically knew all I needed to know. Like Kid A 16 years ago, 22, A Million shows that computers can have souls. Folk music doesn’t necessarily require acoustic instruments, or even recognizable instruments at all beyond saxophones and the occasional real life drum kit, to tell the types of stories it has always told. A line can be drawn from For Emma, Forever Ago to 22, A Million, but it may require a spirograph to draw it. 22, A Million rarely sounds like anything other than Bon Iver, or whatever it is Bon Iver means in 2016. It is a peerless record, likely to only grow more beautiful and striking with each successive year.

5.) A Tribe Called Quest – We Got It From Here … Thank You 4 Your Service

This record is perhaps the rarest thing in popular music, an epitaph to its own creators. The only other album that comes to mind is Abbey Road, the swan song that is aware of its own status as such. With Phife’s death earlier this year, the country already collectively mourned Tribe. Tribe was over, Tribe was literally dead (I don’t mean that crassly). They hadn’t released a record in 18 years and their two famous MCs famously hated each other. I’ll cop to assuming that when I heard a “new” Tribe record was coming out I figured it was nothing more than a cash grab, a dip into the vaults to release some Phife songs without needing his approval (estate’s are always much more willing to cash in on prospective offers). Then I heard that these tracks weren’t dusty vault dwellers, but rather the fruit of sessions commenced after a recent successful reunion and motivated by Phife’s apparent poor health. While clearly more of a Q-Tip record than a proper collaborative effort (no one really ever seems to remark that Ali Shaheed Muhammad is completely absent), it is still unmistakably a Tribe album. The jazzy backing tracks could belong to no other group, and yet they still somehow sound modernized, as if in some alternate dimension, Tribe Called Quest had been gradually adapting to the passing years. I’ve always been more of a Q-Tip man myself, and he absolutely kills it whenever he takes over the mic (“Whateva Will Be” stands out to me in terms of technical proficiency). As if all of that weren’t enough (dayenu), despite being made by a group whose prime years were 1991-1993, Thank You For Your Service … has its finger perfectly on the pulse of 2016. Just read through the lyrics for “We the People …” (don’t worry I’ll wait). I first listened to this while boarding a flight in New York, and when one of my best friend’s picked me up in Minneapolis it was playing on his car stereo. Farewell Tribe, you will be missed, but you want out with one hell of a goodbye.

4.) Blood Orange – Freetown Sound

While on a purely musical level I think the next three albums are a bit more compelling, if I were to cite the record that is most emblematic of just what 2016 meant, that title would go to Freetown Sound. Grappling head on with what it means to live as a both a racial and sexual minority in America in 2016 (things I personally know nothing about it must be remarked), Blood Orange puts the pain felt by so many directly into his music, and somehow, I guess catharsis would be the process, he manages to wring unspeakable beauty out of that agony. The album is also an interesting conduit for polyvocal expression, as it features a wide variety of female guest vocalists. Informed by found sounds captured throughout the streets of New York, nothing speaks better to What’s Going On? In 2016 like Freetown Sound. As he plaintively sings at the end of the third track, “all I ever wanted was a chance for myself.” Here’s hoping that in the coming years somehow the wish becomes a reality.

3.) Radiohead – A Moon Shaped Pool

That after all these years Radiohead are still able to surprise may perhaps be their lasting impression upon popular music. Following an unimpeachable run of classic albums (The Bends, Ok Computer, Kid A, Amnesiac) Radiohead took a slight stumble, barely, on Hail to Thief, and just when people were starting to wonder whether or not they still had it, they released what to me has become their best album, In Rainbows. Next came King of Limbs, a truly forgettable album from a band who had been many things, but until that point were never boring. It had been nine years since In Rainbows (and sixteen since Kid A) and it finally looked like things were all over for the most important band of the turn of the century. So what did they do? Well, they cheated a tiny bit. They raided their own archives, releasing new versions of songs that had floated around the internet in one form or another for years (with “True Love Waits” dating all the way back to the mid 1990s. But like a golfer kicking a ball out from under a pesky tree on a casual Sunday afternoon, why should we penalize them? This isn’t a major tournament, this is art, who cares when a song was written so long as it sounds fucking great when you release it. A Moon Shaped Pool is a much welcome return to the electronic eeriness of Amnesiac. A few songs rock (“Ful Stop” “Identikit”), albeit more along the lines of a serpentine jam like “I Might Be Wrong,” but for the most part the album is content to sit back and soak in the glacial electronic atmosphere. I could listen to a song like “Decks Dark” forever, it is a perfect song; it just hovers there suspended in that dark evening, and yet it moves purposively forward, carried onwards by a beat and few clanging piano chords and spectral synthesized choirs, plus the occasional strum of an actual honest-to-goodness guitar. Radiohead may no longer be culturally relevant, but even in their dotage, they are still better than anyone else out there when they really bring it, as they unquestionably do on A Moon Shaped Pool.

2.) Car Seat Headrest – Teens of Denial

Teens of Denial is one of the most exhilarating things that can happen in music, the sophomore release from a band who put out some good music previously, but who really figured their shit out and proceeded to take a giant leap forward. They always say you never truly outgrow the music you fell in love with in high school, and for me that means I’ve spent all my years padding along the widow’s walk with my eye on the horizon looking for another Weezer to come along and whisk me away with guitar nerd anthems. Finally, at long last, my ship has come in. Chock full of songs that combine bubble-gum hooks with windmilling guitar heroics, which are then stretched out on the rack to epic lengths without sacrificing any of the catchiness. “Vincent,” “Destroyed by Hippie Powers,” “Fill in the Blank,” and the peerless “Ballad of the Costa Concordia;” the list goes on and on. As guitar rock grows increasingly irrelevant, a 24 year old Will Toledo type has to come along every now and then and give the genre a shot in the arm by not giving a fuck and writing 12 minute songs about captains who refuse to go down with their ship.

1.) Kanye West – The Life of Pablo

Part of me thought of doing something provocative here in honor of Mr. West and just posting a link to “Ultralight Beam” and having that say all I could ever hope to about this record (and much, much more). But I will be true to my true self and ramble on about why I think this is the number one album in a year in which any number of releases could rightfully lay claim to this spot. If Weezer is the band that coincided most with my late adolescence, my first love was always Michael Jackson. I may have a very large soft spot for guitar anthems and comeback records from old faves, but the best album in a given year has to be a leap forward for music itself, not just the artist who produced it, and this year that album is the latest from Kanye, as they often are. In a year defined by a return to gospel and a search for spirituality in a hostile world, no song was more sacred than “Ultralight Beam.” After the punk-rock of Yeezus, Kanye returns to the maximalism of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and the result is another string of legitimate anthems that most artists spend entire careers trying to pen single instances of. Many thought “Panda” was the song of the summer, and it was essentially premiered within a song from Pablo (“Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 2”). Try to pick the biggest banger out of: “Famous,” “Waves,” and “FML.” You can’t, the answer is all of them. The bangers to the side, I absolutely love the forlorn navel gazing that closes out the record (I consider the “end” of the album “Wolves,” the initial released version of the song that cut out Vic Mensa and Sia). Things have taken an unfortunate turn for Kanye of late, but with him it seems impossible to separate the beauty from the madness (and no, that was decidedly not an oblique reference to the Weeknd). Few figures in the history of pop music have been as divisive as Kanye, nor have there been any as unquestionably gifted. Ever since the turn he took with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy Kanye has been floating above his competitors like the stage suspended above the audience on his recently cancelled Saint Pablo tour. May his reign at the top be long and peaceful.

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Of Rosin Bags & Old Ghosts

What would a universe be like in which the Cubs were World Series Champions? Would such a victory herald the coming of Utopia, or Dystopia? Would America be a little bit more like Hill Valley in 1955, or Bizarro 1985 Hill Valley in which Biff Tannen is mayor, George McFly is dead, and the schools have all been boarded up? (Of course in Hill Valley of 2015 the Cubs are World Series Champions, but that, alas, remained the stuff of fiction).  More importantly, if the Cubs won the world series, would baseball still be baseball?

I have no horse in this race, be it proverbial or otherwise. As a life-long Brewers fan I was raised to hate the Cubs, which I did all through my youth, jealous of the team from the fancy city with the fancy fans who won just as few games as the Brewers but somehow still filled up their quaint old ballpark while County Stadium sat largely empty throughout the 1990s.

I spent most of the summer of 2002 staying at a lakehouse with a group of friends who were by and large Cub fans. Baseball is a daily occurrence. Its rhythms seep into your regular routine until it becomes part and parcel of your existence, an indistinguishable element of the scenery of your own living story. Clearly I’m trying to use a bunch of fine-spun phrases to distract you the reader from my brief flirtation with the enemy, from my moment of moral weakness, fan adultery, subconscious oedipal rebellion. Yes, in 2002 I fancied myself a Cubs well-wisher. As a lifelong romantic (one thing from which I have actually never waivered) I liked their history of futility, their cursedness, their ivy bestrewn confines. Then 2003 happened. The Bartman Game. Few events in the history of my time upon this Earth are so singular: the election of Barack Obama; the assassination of Osama Bin Laden; the day Steve Bartman reached out into the October sky and became forced to shoulder the Sisyphusian burden of 95 years of losing.

I returned eventually to my true love the Brewers (and then the Mets, and then the Yankees, and then the Mets again, but that’s a matter for another essay), and the Cubs returned to their true love: suffering.

This is precisely why baseball is so great. Baseball’s history is actually that, historic. Its record books predate the invention of the radio. It was once consubstantial with the daguerreotype. Its legends can become mythic because they actually stand a bit outside of recorded time. Ted Williams, the last player to ever hit .400 (in 1941), did so by playing in both games of a double-header on the final day of the season, which might have cost him that lofty designation were it not for the fact that he (mythically) went 6-8 that day. Oh, I should probably also mention that he was also a war hero, in the middle of his playing career. In 1920 Babe Ruth hit more home runs than every other team in baseball, except for the Phillies, singlehandedly. These aren’t just sports legends, these are American legends, on par with the likes of Paul Bunyan and John Henry (no, not the owner of the Red Sox).

All of this is only prologue to our initial question: what would it mean for baseball, for American myth, if the Cubs were to finally win the World Series? Should we rejoice along with their weary fans, entire generations of whom never lived to see this potential moment? Or should we, the non-emotionally involved, lament the disappearance of this (in a way) hallowed record of futility? Two of my very best friends are genuine Cubs devotees, and I honestly don’t think any single event in their entire lives would make them as happy as seeing the Cubs win the Series. While I would rejoice outwardly for them and their happiness, part of me inwardly feels that the universe would be out of whack if the Cubs were to win.

If my life has a guiding philosophy it is that the only constant is change. My God is Proteus, and my single favorite thing ever written begins “ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes …” So yes, on one hand I realize that the Cubs cannot remain futile forever. The Red Sox once shared in this status as beloved losers, and look at them now, the very symbol of despised success. At some point the Cubs will become like the Red Sox. They will transcend history and completely alter their status in the moral universe. It is a historical inevitability that they will at some point go from easily embraced symbol of folly to reviled symbol of success, but I, as an idle witness, need not cheer this transformation.

It isn’t that I wish my friends continual sufferance. There are few joys in life equal to seeing your team win it all. I’ve been fortunate enough to witness two Packer Super Bowl Titles, and they are some of my fondest memories. Part of me just worries that baseball won’t be baseball anymore if the Cubs win. Baseball is myth. Baseball is lore. Baseball is Carleton Fisk waving at a foul pole and Kirk Gibson fist pumping as he rounds the bases. So too is Baseball watching the ball go through Buckner’s legs, as the Red Sox were unable to escape their own cursedness. Well that curse was broken, but only by coming back from 0 games to 3 against the Yankees, the team where the Curse of the Bambino began. The myth of baseball wouldn’t have it any other way.

Well the Red Sox could beat the Yanks and avenge their own history, but against whom can the Cubs fight back the tides of historical determinacy? Their curse originated with a disgruntled patron and his pet goat, and one would think was reinvigorated by scapegoating an innocent fan who was only one of many reaching for a foul ball (that Moises Alou never would have caught if we’re being honest) one fateful October night. Perhaps they should play a game in an empty Wriggly Field? Perhaps like Doc Ellis they should all drop acid and hope a vision of Harry Caray comes to excise their past demons?  The thing about fate is that it is larger than any single ball player. The Cubs losing is a part of baseball, it is a part of us all. Sure at some point that is going to change, perhaps this year, but if it does, baseball will change too. Perhaps for the better, perhaps for worse. It’ll probably take another 108 years till anyone really knows.

While I will lament the end of such an impressive feat of ineptitude, there is one silver lining if the Cubs really do break the curse. Where one myth fades, another is born, phoenix-wise (no, not Craig Counsell, or even the much beloved Mark Grace). While there are few things more romantic than 108 years of lovable folly, if the Cubs were to win than one man will have defeated the two greatest curses in modern sports lore, and that, would truly be one for the ages. Theo Epstein, whose grandfather and great uncle wrote the greatest screenplay of all time (Casablanca), would vault into the Elysian Fields of baseball myth, the cursebreaker, the man who brought joy to generations of fans in two distinct regions of this great nation. Losing may always be more romantic than winning, but defying the Gods, twice, would surely be the stuff out of which legends are written. So I guess ultimately whether the Cubs win or lose, baseball will always have its myths, for without them, it wouldn’t be baseball.  

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There’s a Riot Goin’ On

The ‘cultural ferment’ is a phrase frequently tossed around, though hardly ever applicable. Often it just means its principle dictionary definition, to turn alcoholic, to become drunk on itself, when in actuality it is the second definition that is ostensibly intended: incite or stir up (trouble or disorder). Our culture is unquestionably fermenting right now in 2016, and music has once again served as the point of refraction in a way it hasn’t in several decades.

The Bush Years allegedly marked a return to protest, but only in the most urban-outfitters lite version of the word, a repackaged echo of a once authentic expression. President (W.) Bush started a war and took away civil liberties, but no one really suffered. There was no draft, there were no midnight raids, no show trials. The financial crisis created more fissures in society, which to be fair can be largely attributed to Republican policies of deregulation, though of course, those date back to the era of the (first) Clinton presidency. The 2000s were a decade of large scale disaster, but on the small scale, things carried on basically as they had before.

Here we are, smack in the middle of the subsequent decade, and something very different is happening, and nowhere is that change more apparent than in the music. 2016 is a musical year the likes of which I have never seen in my (somewhat substantial) lifetime. Recency bias is a very real statistical phenomenon, but at its core it basically just means we tend to overemphasize whatever is most present in our mind, an observation which doesn’t require mathematical proficiency to grasp. So yes, it’s easy to sit here around the 4th of July and declare this to be the best year ever in music, because it is the moment with which we are intimately familiar, except that it also just so happens to be true.

I don’t know what more clearly conveys the enormity of the current musical moment; that Radiohead, Kanye, Beyonce, Drake, and Kendrick all released albums; that all those albums are pretty fantastic; or that those aren’t even my favorite picks of the year so far (and I genuinely love all those albums). This piece opened with a brief digression into political upheaval (or previous lack thereof) because music is always the most contemporary of art forms. A novel can take years to write, a film takes at least couple years to get from finished script to cineplex, a painting can be finished in fairly short order if it isn’t a Flemish masterpiece, but nothing beats a pop-song when it comes to artistic germination. Though I once decried the streaming era for aiding the death of physical media, I now champion it for ushering in the return of monoculture after decades of fragmentation. A musician, if they so chose, can write, record, and distribute a song to everyone in the world in a single day (just so long as it isn’t a Tidal exclusive). Because of streaming release dates matter again. At a single moment of time everyone everywhere can hear the same thing, and because of the buzz such moments generate across the interconnecting webs of tweets and posts, a very large amount of people actually do listen (especially since there is no added cost besides a monthly subscription to be able to do so).

2016 is a year unlike any other I’ve experienced not just because of these big “event” releases, but because they all seem of a piece, responding to the same stimuli, thinking long and hard about the long hard problems we are all beset with. This of course is not unique to 2016, but there is a very real strain of interconnectedness that has long been absent from pop music. The first spark was D’Angelo’s surprise release of Black Messiah in December or 2014. When an artist of D’Angelo’s stature waits 14 years between releases, a new album is going to be an event no matter what, but perhaps more important than the interim was the impetus for the return. Black Messiah somehow indelibly linked the sounds of the early 70s with the political reality of the 2010s, creating a sound that was both retrospective and futuristic, that used the past to speak to the present, and vice versa.

After the triumph of D’Angelo’s return came Kendrick’s To Pimp a Butterfly in 2015, another record that used the sounds of the 70s to speak to the current moment. Whereas D’Angelo was a ghost long absent from the cultural spotlight, Kendrick was standing at absolute center stage when he released that record, and everyone took notice of the sounds, and more importantly, the messages he was conveying. Lest anyone think these two albums’ shared ideology and aesthetics were random moments of cultural alignment, 2015 also saw the release of Ta-Nehisi Coates Between the World and Me and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton. The truly popular public intellectual seemed to have died out with Susan Sontag and Joan Didion, but Coates brought it back with a vengeance. Miranda brought the idea of radical racial historical re-imagining to literally the great white way. In 1967 Buffalo Springfield opened a song with the lines “There’s something happening here / what it is ain’t exactly clear / There’s a man with a gun over there / telling me I got to beware / I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound / Everybody look what’s going down.” Music in 2016 is asking us again to do precisely that.

2016 has no bigger star, in any medium, than Beyoncé, and the Houston police protested her performance because of the imagery contained in her video for “Formation.” A song, it is worth remarking, that she performed at the halftime show for the goddamn Superbowl. That performance also drew a lot of ire for the black panther garb she and her dancers adorned. The 1968 Mexico Olympics this was not, nor however, was it far off.

All of this brings me to the release of Blood Orange’s Freetown Sound. Originally this piece was going to be a straight-up review of that record, but as I sat down to write I found that it was impossible to talk about Freetown Sound without talking about 2016. The record opens not with Dev Hynes silky vocals, but rather with a recording of Ashlee Haze performing her poem “For Colored Girls (the Missy Elliot Poem)” with its definition of feminism as the work of Da Brat (amongst others). The album also highlights a snippet of Coates reading from his game-changing work.  It isn’t that Freetown Sound is emblematic of 2016, rather, it takes 2016 as its very subject.

While I am not going to claim that I more eagerly awaited Freetown Sound than Life of Pablo or A Moon Shaped Pool, this record was right up there for me. With Prince now gone from us, it seemed like 2016 was the year where Dev Hynes would take over the Purple One’s mantle. The parallels run deep, and not just in their unequaled mastery of funk. Hynes is equally renowned for the hits he has written and produced for others (Solange, Carly Rae Jespen) as for his own work, and gender fluidity has also been a central aspect of his music. His debut album Coastal Grooves largely centered around the film Paris is Burning. But 2016 didn’t just seem like a banner year for Hynes because of the disappearance of Prince from the land of the living, for his previous singles indicated a man about to take a very large artistic step forward, which he has most certainly done on Freetown Sound.

Last year Blood Orange released the one-off single “Sandra’s Smile” in connection with the death of Sandra Bland, who died while being held in a jail cell for a minor traffic violation. 

The video however depicts people dancing on the streets of New York (albeit in stark black and white), and it is in the unlikely conjunction of those happy images, beautiful melodies, and incredibly powerful subject matter that Freetown Sound takes shape. The album may not be the most anticipated, or even the most successful, of 2016, but I am willing to bet that when we look back in several years it will stand apart as the most emblematic. Like Black Messiah these are protest songs, but they envelope that anger with the state of things in beautiful melodies; these are songs that transmute that anger into something else. They don’t dissipate it, but they make it into something you can live with, you can walk around and think about, lose yourself to late at night.

In a recent New York Times profile Hynes said he was trying to capture the feeling of walking the streets of New York, the way 1st and Houston feels at a certain time of day, or the sound of a saxophone wafting casually across central park (sounds which he recorded on his phone and incorporated into the songs). I haven’t spent enough time with the record yet to truly understand my feelings about it. Some records you have to live with for a bit before you truly grasp them, and this is definitely one of those. Early standouts “E.V.P.” “Juicy 1-4” and the single “Augustine” point the way to a record I look forward to spending a lot of time with during the hot summer swelter of the streets of New York. More importantly however, the record stands right alongside Chance’s Coloring Book and Kendrick’s To Pimp a Butterfly as direct engagements with what’s going on, as answers to Marvin Gaye’s plea “to find a way to bring some understanding here today.”

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He Who Would Be King

The inevitabilities of history are usually only apparent in retrospect. This is why hindsight is always sharper than foresight. As we sit here at the dawn of the 2016 NBA Finals, a rematch worthy of Ali-Frazier or Minaj-Cyrus, many things seem inevitable, but which inevitability will actually play out remains to be seen.

These Finals are so potentially enthralling because either narrative could triumph in the end. On one hand, there is the story of the dethroning of the Old King. LeBron has been the epicenter of the NBA since he was still a student at St. Vincent-St. Mary. His heralded return to his homeland and the quest for the restoration of lost glory was thee story of the NBA, until it wasn’t. This year, for the first time in his entire basketball playing life, LeBron was an also ran, just another ripple in the NBA’s talent pool. LeBron has been loved, LeBron has been hated, but this year, for the first time, he suffered a fate worst than death: irrelevance.

To say Steph Curry’s rise has been meteoric is to do a disservice to heavenly bodies. Having been a grade-schooler during the peak Jordan years I know just how much a transcendent basketball player can capture the hearts and imaginations of youngsters world-wide. I genuinely wanted to be like Mike, and now everyone wants to be like Steph. Someday his number 30 will be as ubiquitous as Jordan’s 23, merely because that is the number every great 5th grader is going to choose for themselves. LeBron wears 23 not as an empty facsimile but because it is what he’s always worn. It’s his number because it was Jordan’s. I’m willing to wager that the best player in 20 years is going to wear 30.  

Steph beat LeBron last year, and then even worse banished him from the sports landscape with the Warrior’s pursuit (and attainment) of 73. If the Warriors beat the Cavs in this series Curry will officially become the new King of basketball, and LeBron will have to search for a new nickname. Jordan’s Bulls were so dominant in the 1990s that an entire generation of talent (Ewing, Barkley, Kemp, Stockton, Malone, Drexler) were excluded from the status of NBA Champions merely as a result of having been born under a bad sign. Yes, Drexler got a ring by joining Olajuwon’s Rockets in 1995, but both those Rockets’ titles bear a very large asterisk for having taken place while Jordan was toiling away in self-imposed exile (unless you believe the Stern-gambling conspiracy theory) in minor league baseball.

LeBron has two titles to his name, but those are already annotated by the fact that he turned his back on Cleveland and joined DWade’s team in sunny Miami. LeBron was phenomenal in those two Championships, and I will never hold his flight from wretched Cleveland against him, but those titles will always be viewed by many as more 1995 Drexler than 1996 Jordan. LeBron’s much heralded return to Cleveland (and to doing things the right way) was supposed to be where he left his true mark upon the history of basketball. This was supposed to be where he placed an (incredibly talented) non-playoff team on his Malone-esque broad shoulders and carried it to victory. A title free of the taint of mercenary collusion, a title of one’s own.

A funny thing happened on the way to the coronation of King James. Golden State management planted a mole in Mark Jackson’s locker room, used that ill-got information to fire the much loved but lack-luster coach, installed Steve Kerr in his place, and the rest as they say, was history. The new-look (in every sense of the word) Warriors won the title in Kerr’s first year, won an all-time best 73 games this regular season, and seem primed to do to the NBA in the 2010s what Jordan did to it in the 1990s: grab it by the scruff of the neck and never ever let go. If Curry beats LeBron this series the Cavs stand a very real chance of imploding underneath the King. They’ve already fired one coach. Kevin Love’s departure has been rumored seemingly since before his arrival. Kyrie is made of glass and plays even more brittle defense. What should be the second installment in a prestige series of showdowns could actually be the end of an era.

Lest we write LeBron’s epitaph before the first spadeful of funereal dirt is heaped upon him, it is important to recall that for the first time in the Kerr era, the Warrior’s looked human in the last series. The Thunder had the Warriors beat, before they let them off the mat. Westbrook proved the havoc a truly gifted point-guard can wreak when faced with Curry’s so-so defense. Durant reminded the world that for all the heart and charisma Draymond Green possesses he is still only 6’7”.  Most importantly, Steven Adams showed that a true force in the low block can eat the Warriors up on the boards and provide a genuine counter-punch to the much vaunted “lineup of death.” For most of the Western Conference Finals it was the Thunder, not the Warriors, who seemed like the better all around team. 

For all those brilliant demolishing victories wrought by the Thunder, they are still forced to watch the Finals at home like the rest of us. Klay Thompson refused to let his team be defeated in Game 6 and single handedly saved their season. Like an elderly Peter Pan recalling that he still knows how to fly, Curry somehow rediscovered his shot during the waning stages of that pivotal Game 6 and then proceeded to nail down the lid on the Thunder’s coffin in Game 7. When we look back on the 2016 NBA in 10 years the outcome will have seemed long foretold. We’ll sit back and say the Warrior’s magic was doomed to run-out; the horse-drawn carriage was always-already a pumpkin. Or, we’ll say LeBron’s era was over the day the Warriors signed Steve Kerr and forever changed the way basketball is played. Lebron was a Tyranosauras Rex (latin: Tyrant Lizard King) and Curry was the doomsday comet. Only in retrospect will one of these outcomes seem apparent. Right now neither would surprise, and thus tonight’s tip-off cannot come soon enough. Only a Trial-by-Combat will determine the King of the NBA, the Mountain versus the Viper II. Curry may dip his shots in poison, but he would be wise to stay out of reach of the Mountain’s crushing grasp.

[fieldsofplay]

Before the Crest of Waves

There’s been one sound rattling around the far corners of my brain for the last week or so, and it is the forlorn boi-1da beat to “Real Friends.” As the first edition of Kanye’s resurgent G.O.O.D Fridays series heralding the release of Waves (or so the album is currently called as this goes to print), the track was an odd opening salvo. The first time Kanye introduced the G.O.O.D. Fridays concept as a lead up to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, he lead off with “Power,” perhaps the biggest banger he’s ever penned. Though “Power” isn’t MBDTF’s greatest track (that would be either “All of the Lights” or “Runaway,” depending if you tend more towards the manic or depressive end of the emotional spectrum) it was certainly a perfect encapsulation of the maximalism of that record. From the instant those opening chants of “oooooh-eeeeeeh” burst across your stereo, you’re forced to sit up and take notice of what ias to follow.

Kanye similarly introduced the world to Yeezus by debuting “Black Skinhead” and “New Slaves” on SNL, a pair of tracks that functioned more like a brick through the window than a polite introduction. Where My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy oozed with kaleidoscopic pop symphonies, Yeezus pummled the listener with a truly unique version of 21st century black punk. Their releases weren’t just debuts, they were events. MBDTF not only put Kanye back on the map following the commercial failure of 808s and Heartbreaks (which thankfully has enjoyed a critical renaissance in recent years), it elevated him from celebrated producer / M.C. to legitimate pop-icon status. Rather than attempt to further expand his pop appeal Kanye instead delivered a reggae horn driven curve-ball in Yeezus, an album designed to give the middle finger to pop sensibilities, which only made him more beloved by those willing to follow him down the rabbit hole. But the question remains, where, possibly, can he go from here?

Enter Waves. A 10 track album of which we’ve already heard 3 or 4 cuts (depending on how you count “Fade”). So far, if the album seems auspicious for anything, it is for its restraint. Gone is the grandeur. Gone is the vitriol. Gone is the enormity of the sound. While for Kanye posturing is an inevitability, so far Waves feels like it is trying to pair everything back. It isn’t that the early tracks are minimalist, but whereas the last two records could be felt in the pit of the stomach, this one seems to aim at an absence, a longing, a sense of something that was once part of you but is there no longer. Of the three tracks I’ve spent considerable time with, “Real Friends” and “Wolves” feel of a piece with one another, and “No More Parties in LA,” with its Madlib beat and Kendrick verse, feels like the odd duck, but then again perhaps within the larger of context of Waves it is the other two tracks that are the outliers. At this point no one knows, and that’s what makes all of this so damn exciting. Kendrick may be currently atop the hip-hop throne, but no one, no one, is capable of moving culture as a whole (a concept larger than music itself) like Kanye West. It’s easy to joke about Kanye 2020, but in terms of shear popularity no one gets more votes these days, not even the blowhard in the blonde wig (and no, I don’t mean Sia).

Kanye got into this position by releasing two nearly flawless records, which means the weight of the world is resting upon Waves. Perhaps this explains the muted tones of the initial tracks. At this point, what does it mean for a Kanye record to succeed? What does it mean for one to fail? The man from Chicago has become an institution, so no matter what people we snatch up the album, but will it be Jurrassic World—pleasant, familiar, innocuous, and ultimately, forgettable—or The Force Awakens—reminiscent of the past, yet able to stand on its own? Do we want Kanye to continue to completely reinvent himself, or do we just want him to kick out the jamz? Either move alone would be viewed as a disappointment by a large subset of his audience, but asking him to continually do both seems like an impossible goal.

This is why I keep returning to that boi-1da beat, and that haunting female vocal that runs throughout “Wolves.” Rather than impress via his ear for a hook, Kanye seems to be attempting to catch us in the echo, in the creaky, creepy, harrowing sounds that linger long after their sources have stopped their projection. “Real Friends” isn’t a “No New Friends” anthem to his “Clique,” rather it is a lament for how few actual friends he has. I’m not really sure what “Wolves” is about, but even though all dogs are descended from wolves, the only appellation that immediately comes to mind is “lone.” While it appears we are back at the “emo” Kanye of 808s, these tracks hardly feel like retreads of the sound of a broken heart run through a vocoder. They sound like a man isolated by the very thing that connects him to millions.

In a few short weeks Waves (or whatever it is called by that point) will finally drop and all these guessing games will become moot, but in an odd way this moment of anticipation is worth holding on to. The man has put out six records, five of which are essentially perfect (most would exclude 808s, I would count out Graduation, but really, whose counting?) so to know a seventh, whatever its ultimate character, is just around the corner is pretty exciting stuff. What Kanye will show up? Is it someone we’ve glimpsed before, or will we meet an entirely new iteration? There’s currently a Bowie sized hole in the musical universe, and it seems only appropriate that it is at that is precise moment that Kanye has come to share the newest version of himself. He may not name his personalities with the flair of the Thin White Duke, but no one since Bowie has proven themselves so adept at the art of self-reinvention. I for one cannot wait to meet the new Kanye, whoever he turns out to be. 

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Favorite Records of 2015

20. Diane Coffee - Everybody’s a Good Dog

Sometimes a new record fits the peculiarities of your own predilections so perfectly that it feels like what you took to be your own idiosyncrasies are actually part of the larger cultural ferment, and this year that record was Everybody’s a Good Dog. I’ve spent this year obsessing over 70′s am-gold singer/songwriters like Todd Rundgren and Gene Clark, and Shaun Fleming’s (the drummer for Foxygen) work as Diane Coffee is a perfect modernization of those records. The album bursts with laidback melodies, strummed acoustic guitars, and technicolor harmonies executed with perfect studio wizardry. This is the followup to “We are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic” Foxygen fans have been patiently waiting for. 

19. Dilly Dally - Sore

The last couple years have obsessed with the grunge revival, which I’ve always found upsetting seeing as I was never that into grunge during the early 90s, so I could care two figs about its shotty second hand revival, which is why I’m so glad a band like Dilly Dally is willing to look back further than Bleach for inspiration. In theory the Pixies returned this year, but without Kim Deal that was a return in name only. The real spirit of Surfer Rosa and Doolittle is alive and well, and its in Sore. 

18. Jessica Pratt - On Your Own Love Again

Speaking of 70′s am-gold, Jessica Pratt continues to churn it out absolutely perfectly. I don’t know what Laurel Canyon looks like, I don’t really know where it is besides somewhere in the vicinity of Los Angeles, but when I close my eyes and listen to this record, I feel like I’m transported there, or at least to my idea of what that place must be / have been like. Armed more or less with just a nylon string acoustic guitar and breezy but evocative voice, Pratt weaves beautiful stories that are as equally captivating as they are difficult to pin-down (”people’s faces blend together, like a watercolor you can’t remember, in time”).  

17. Leon Bridges - Coming Home

Never in a million years would I think that 2015′s most devise record would come from Leon Bridges, but here we are. Yes, he clearly fetishizes Sam Cooke (who doesn’t?), and yes, his record is for sale at the register at Starbucks (or so I’ve been told), apparently solid red motifs are the harbinger of discord this year. It’s funny how no one complains when punk bands continue to pump out cheap Minor Threat knock-offs and Kevin Parker can sing just like John Lennon and no one seems to bat an eye, but when Leon Bridges tries to get his Sam Cooke (amongst others) on everyone is up in arms about originality. I say, originality be damned, “Coming Home” is one of the absolute best songs I’ve heard this year, and I don’t need to beat you over the head with the fact that White Denim are his backing band to feel like I’ve thrown out enough signifiers of white cultural hegemony to make myself feel good about liking this record. 

16. Alabama Shake - Sound & Color 

Ah, speaking of problematic issues of cultural (mis)appropriation, if that beautiful Apple commercial set to “Sound & Color” plays during one more goddamn halftime commercial break I’ll be on the verge of not being able to listen to this record anymore. However, as everyone knows the money isn’t in album sales anymore (unless you’re a white lady pop star who can get moms and their daughters to actually buy your album) but in commercial soundtracking (usually cars, but in this case, some sort of astrological app) so I say to you Alabama Shakes, mozel tov! All of that aside, this is a record of perfectly funky and odd blues rock that is in lock step with the recent revival of astro-funk spreading throughout the gestalt. Bonus points for soundtracking one of the pivotal scenes of Mr. Robot (no spoilers, don’t worry). 

15. Father John Misty - I Love You, Honeybear

Father John Misty, on paper, sounds like one of those guys you can’t wait to hate. He is like an internet troll come horrifically to life in some sort of Frankenstein evil lab experiment. A moniker dreamed up by Josh Tillman while on a mushroom trip sitting in the boughs of a pine tree, used to ironize his own singer/songwriter spiel seems like the empty heart of our insincere internet culture. Then, of course, you actually listen to the record. I Love You, Honeybear, is the opposite of irony, which is of course, sincerity. A photorealistic rendering of his courtship, marriage, and life together with his wife, I Love You, Honeybear is not only startlingly frank, but the music is equally stirring. I read that Tillman has trouble performing “I Went to the Store One Day” (recounting the first time he met the girl that was to be his wife) without breaking down in tears, and I can understand why, I can barely listen to the thing without getting misty, and I never lived it firsthand. 

14. Damaged Bug - Cold Hot Plumbs

Somehow, try as I might, I just can’t keep John Dwyer of this list each and every year. Damaged Bug is the Thee Oh Sees frontman’s eno-esque electronic sideproject, and Cold Hot Plumbs is arguably my favorite thing he has ever done across any of his varied projects. Melding the molten energy of recent Oh Sees records into succinct, clicking pop gems produces staggering results. “Jet in Jungle” and “The Frog” were two of my favorite songs of the year. Bonus points for having by far the best cover art of 2015. 

13. Jamie XX - In Colour

In a year filled with big expectations, there are few records I’ve been patiently longing for more than In Colour. I’ve always found his main band The XX to be just ‘aight’ (I always wanted them to just own their inner Young Marble Giants instead of getting into whispery pillow rock), but ever since I first heard “Far Nearer” back in 2011, with its weird, wobbly, and utterly entrancing kettle drums I’ve been waiting for this record, and boy did it not disappoint. It has been remarked all over the internet that 2015 has been a banner year for new music, and nothing to me speaks louder of that fact than that this record is somehow 13 on this list. In most any other year this would be #1, but whatever, I’ll take the embarrassment of riches. Next to “Truffle Butter” “Good Times” was Thee song of the summer, and was arguably the third best track on this album (behind “Gosh” and “Sleep Sound”). That I nearly literally ran into Jamie while jogging past The Good Room was just the icing on the cake.  

12. Vince Staples - Summertime ‘06

Anyone who knows me knows I’m hardly an authority on hip-hop, but I know a banger when I hear one, and front to back this double album is filled with them. As your stereotypical middle class white kid from comfortable safe middle America I’m not going to pretend like I grasp the deeper resonances of these songs of disenfranchisement, disappointment, and inequality, but music is a truly egalitarian medium, and what I can’t intuit I can at least feel. “Lift Me Up” “Norf Norf” and “3230″ are some of the best West Coast Hip Hop I’ve heard in some time, and while I wish the reasons for its inception would disappear from the social fabric of the nation, I’m certainly glad their are people like Vince Staples using music to draw people’s attention to these all too real problems besetting our country in 2015. 

11. Car Seat Headrest - Teens of Style

In someways Teens of Style feels very behind the times, and yet despite that fact, or perhaps, because of it, Car Seat Headrest is my favorite “new” band of the year. Drenched in reverb and sounding like it was recorded into a tin can, it is an album that would have been much more at home in 2011 than it is in 2015. It reminds me a lot of the first Youth Lagoon record, with one very important distinction: it fucking rips. The last minute of opener “Sunburned Shirts” suddenly hits the overdrive pedal and turns things up to 11, and the rest of the record never looks back. The album is a perfect encapsulation of those things that have filled pop music since the early 60s and will always be its stock and trade: youthful longing, manic energy, the exciting confusion of having one’s life before them and unsure of just where it goes from here. Even though I’m much further down that road than I would like to admit (and in theory on the verge of actually getting my shit together) albums like this will always have a special place in my heart so long as there is that part of you that wants to curse the coming of the dawn and chase the excitement of the evening as long as you can. 

10. Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly 

Whereas Summerimte ‘06 hits at the problems of America in 2015 with the visceral force of ... (I almost gave way to the temptation to make a loaded metaphor of police brutality, but that is not the stuff of cute punning), To Pimp a Butterfly comes at the problem of race in America  from the opposite angle. Yes, there is very real anger here (”The Blacker the Berry”), but whereas Vince tells you exactly how it is in Long Beach, Kendrick transmutes these issues into a grand, sweeping artistic statement. Few things are more powerful than just that cover image, which is simultaneously white America’s most intransigently racist fear (that the hood will makes itself at home on the front lawn of the White House) and also a utopian vision of a future where the problems of Compton will be central to American politics and not shunted off to the side and pretended like they don’t exist. Kendrick remains unquestionably the best MC since ... Rakim? While To Pimp a Butterfly is unquestionably the most important (itself a loaded term) record of 2015, and while I love its melange of George Clinton, Sly Stone, D’Angelo, and most obviously Tupac, the songs themselves are often more ‘interesting’ than they are enjoyable. Kendrick takes real risks on this record, which means there are some very high highs, and occasionally a few lows, which it is worth remarking, is much more worthwhile than just trying to create a cookie cutter version of M.A.A.D City 2.0. 

9. Deerhunter - Fading Frontier

As I age along with the bands I loved in my early 20′s, I find myself wondering if I’m stuck repeating old cultural moments, or if this music continues to be just as meaningful in 2015 as it was in 2007. I at first didn’t listen to Fading Frontier when it came out. I have a lot of Deerhunter records in my life, and after Halcyon Digest and Monomania I felt like I didn’t really need anymore as the law of diminishing returns seemed to be very much in effect. Then I got over myself and queued this up while strolling around my neighborhood on a Sunday morning, and I was instantly blown away. The one two opening punch of “All the Same” and “Living my Life” are possibly the two best songs they’ve ever produced, and that is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg (not that there are many of those left either in 2015). 

8. Shamir - Ratchet 

If the cultural spectrum has an opposite pole from my seeming Deerhunter fatigue it is undoubtedly Shamir. Fresh, bold, new, young, bright, Shamir is unquestionably a product of 2015 and no other time, but not in a reductive meme today gone tomorrow sense. If Prince and early-80s Madonna had a baby, it would be Shamir. I think that is about all I need to say. If that appeals to you, listen to this record, if not, there is plenty of other good music out there this year. 

7. Kamasi Washington - The Epic

Nothing is less of the moment than jazz, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still love the hell out of it. Sine probably the early 1970′s there seem to be only two ways jazz musicians crack the cultural barrier: cover pop/indie songs (see: The Bad Plus, Brad Mehldau), or associate themselves with hip-hop. Pitchfork, as far as I’m aware, never reviews jazz records, and yet they were unabashed in affixing the “best new music” tag to Washington’s The Epic, and for good reason. Is it all that different from Coltrane’s astro spiritual late 50′s peak? No. Is that a bad thing? No. Presumably the only reason pitchfork reviewed the record (and by extension, I was aware of it) is because it came out on Brainfeeder and he played on To Pimp a Butterfly, but whatever it is that is able to bring great jazz to the forefront 55 years after it was last culturally relevant, I say, godbless. Not only was 2015 a great year for recorded music, but for me personally it was a great year for live music. I finally saw Sufjan Stevens (long my white whale) and Joanna Newsom (my idol) for the first time, and yet the best live show I saw was Kamasi Washington (or maybe Sylvan Esso in Prospect Park, fuck, why choose they were all phenomenal) . The power that comes out of that tenor sax is unlike anything else you can experience in person, and I highly recommend you feel it for yourself. 

6. Protomartyr - The Agent Intellect 

Three (great) records in, it no longer seems appropriate to tag Protomartyr with the ‘favorite new band’ label. At this point they have firmly established themselves as the greatest post-punk band plying their trade. These songs are dark, visceral, brooding tales of the difficulties of life in post-industrial America (which is what the Manchester scene was always about from the inception anyways). The album opens with an image of “the devil in his youth” and ends at the “Feast of Stephen” and in between never relents from a vision of postlapsarian degradation that is catchy as all hell. 

5. Joanna Newsom - Divers 

Enthralled as I am with Joanna Newsom, you would possibly think not having this album at number 1 is some sort of condemnation, an earmark of disappointment or expectations not met. It’s been five long years since Have One on Me came out, and believe me I couldn’t have anticipated it more. To say it isn’t quite the equal of Have One on Me (probably my favorite album of all time if I’m being perfectly frank and in the right mood) or Ys (one of the most technically experimental and yet also beautiful albums ever) is hardly criticism. I return to this anecdote often but it is always so true: when asked why he hadn’t written anything as good as Catch-22 lately, Joseph Heller merely replied “who has?” Divers is a phenomenal record, and pulls off the amazing feat of cutting Newsom’s work down to what for her counts as pop-brevity. “The Things I Say” is already one of my favorite songs of hers, and I think as more time passes (the dominant theme of this record) the rest will take up their respective places in my heart. Her music is not the type of instant gratification pop rush, but rather the deeper understanding of shared lived experience. This is a record I can’t wait to grow old with, which sadly is happening quicker with each passing year.

4. Beach House - Depression Cherry

My relationship with Beach House is much like that to Deerhunter remarked on above. They’ve been an integral part of my (emotional) life since 2006, but unlike Deerhunter I’ve never really questioned their continuing relevance to my lived experience, which is probably because they have carefully doled out their records in even intervals, just long enough that you miss them when they’re gone but not so long that you begin to forget that they exist. Like Fading Frontier, Depression Cherry may be the best thing they’ve ever released, which is really saying something. It isn’t that I dislike Thank Your Lucky Stars, its just that my heart was already full of Depressrion Cherry when that record came out only a couple months later. At some point I’ll have the emotional availability to process that record, but much like meeting a cool girl when you’re already smitten by another, all you can say is “thanks, but my heart already belongs to someone else.” 

3. Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell

If we’re being completely honest with one another, this is the “best” album of the year, and it’s not particularly close. In terms of pure beauty, musicianship, and pathos Carrie & Lowell is the highwater mark of 2015. Having said that, it’s hard to return to a super sad album about the death of the singer’s estranged mother in any and all moments, the requisite ubiquity required by a “top” album. I saw him perform more or less the entire record at the most beautiful venue I’ve ever been to (the Kings Theater in Ditmas) sandwiched between the Kentucky Derby and the “big” Mayweather Pacquiao fight. It took a moment to reorientate my julep addled brain to the uncommon solemnity of the concert, but once I did I was transfixed. My favorite Sufjan album has always been Seven Swans, and to say this is the best thing he’s done since then is no faint praise. RIP Carrie, out of your death came one beautiful album. 

2. Tame Impala - Currents 

When I think back to Summer ‘15 there is always one record playing in the background of trips to Fort Tilden, backyard bbq’s, and rooftop parties, and it’s Currents. While the year belonged to Drake, the summer was owned by Tame Impala. With the exception of Kendrick, no record had higher expectations from me than this one, and it not only met them, but in many ways surpassed them. When “Let it Happen” dropped I listened to it three times in a row, despite (or perhaps because of) its 8 minute runtime. Though “rock” bands going “electronic” is hardly novel (see: Dylan, Bob, and Kid, A) Kevin Parker pulled the move off seamlessly. Though Currents is a bloated single disc masquerading as a double album, the jams are so plentiful that one is willing to forgive his tendency towards over-inclusiveness. Whenever the fahrenheit spiked over 90 this past summer there were few things I enjoyed more than waiting till dusk, queuing up “ ‘Cause I’m a Man” and taking a stroll down Bedford Ave., utterly transfixed by the beauty before my eyes, and between my ears. 

1. Drake - If You’re Reading This it’s Too Late 

2015 was undoubtedly the year of Drake, and if you still doubt that, than you either live under a rock or are categorically opposed to fun. As someone blessed enough to live within the broadcast range of Hot 97, you basically couldn’t turn that station on without hearing at least one Drake verse between commercial breaks. Hotline Bling was so far and away the song of 2015 that it has already become a covered hit for Erykah Badu, amongst others (which of course requires the admission that Drake himself stole it from D.R.A.M., but thats besides the point since it was undoubtedly Drake, and Drake alone, who made it a hit). The truly amazing thing is If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late was the album of the year and it didn’t even need Drake’s number one single to accomplish that feat. The album came out all the way back in February, and I still remember running up to the DJ at a coffee company launch party in a barber shop (the most Brooklyn of scenes) in snowy, frigid February, completely enthralled because he was playing my jam, which at that time was “Energy.” I was like a crazy fangirl, and continued to be that way throughout 2015. First it was “Energy,” then “10 Bands,” then “Know Yourself” ruled about 4 months of my life, and finally “Hotline Bling” came in and ruled the rest of the year. When I think back to my favorite songs of 2015, at least 5 of them are Drake songs (or songs he guested on). I’m writing this account and it just dawned on me that for a while “0 to 100″ was my absolute favorite song and center piece of my one pseudo DJ gig at my birthday party in April, and that too wasn’t even on a record. Sometimes the ubiquity of pop music makes you want to stuff your ears with wax (see above on that Alabama Shakes commercial), but sometimes you want to dance every time “your” song comes on, and for me, Drake had every one of those songs in 2015. The man is a mother fucking legend after all.  

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The Twilight of the Idols

Last night was the NBA draft lottery, aka Bill Simmons Christmas, so suffice it to say that the Simmons shaped hole in the internet was particularly noticeable. After all these years it was almost possible to fill in his reactions to the evening as it unfurled: an unfounded Celtics trade here (who says no?!?), a dig at the blank expression of Byron Scott there (maybe he died before the start of last season and Jimmy Buss has been propping him up Weekend At Bearnie’s sytle), and of course unbridled joy at the Knicks falling out of the top two (the ghost of Isiah Thomas lives). While his reactions have become pat, his ebullient spirit could never be replaced, and we are all the worse for his absence.

Like any decent child of the ironic 1990s I don’t use the word “idol” lightly, but Bill Simmons has always been someone I’ve admired. Like any good tragic figure the thing that drew us in was also what served as his ultimate undoing. Besides his personal friends and beloved Boston teams, he wasn’t beholden to anyone or anything. In the pre-internet era pop culture was filled entirely with corporate shills whose only goal was to be as inoffensive as possible. Sometimes a man and a medium perfectly align, Hitchcock and film, The Beatles and the LP, and the internet found its best expositor in Bill Simmons.

Sometimes genius is towering and oft-putting, but sometimes it is so subtle it effaces the difficulty of its own achievement. No one reads Ulysses and thinks to themselves “gee, I could have done that,” and yet anyone who looks at a Warhol thinks “bah, that could have been me.” The thing is, you aren’t anymore Andy Warhol than you are James Joyce. Bill Simmons was never cool, he was never either ahead of the times or behind them. He was only ever just a person doing what we all love to do in our spare time, talking with our friends about sports, and making foolhardy comparisons across mediums and eras. Simmons was hardly the first person to conflate sports and pop culture, nor will he be the last. All one need do is watch the Sinatra v. Mathis scene from Diner to realize these are precisely the sorts of arguments people have been having from the dawn of time, and will always have so long as there is coffee and idle time. Simmons didn’t invent the form, he just did it better than anyone else.

While he was decidedly a man of his moment, he always had his eye on the horizon, capable of discerning the next wave where others only saw indistinct forms. The BS Report became a cultural mainstay long before most people even knew what a podcast was. Not that anyone actually reads this blog, but as those few of you whose eyes have actually graced these pages know, there is no website I admire more than Grantland. To me Grantland is exactly what journalism should be in the 21st century, a mix of long form articulations, quick-hit responses, videos, podcasts, and snappy graphics that don’t detract from the legibility of the actual content. The real tragedy of this whole public spat between ESPN and Simmons isn’t that a rich and eminently employable man lost his job, but that a perfect website lost its founder and chief.

Though I hate ESPN for what they did to Simmons, I wish I could say that I don’t understand why it happened. If there is one lesson I’ve learned the very hard way in this life, it is that no one can ever speak Truth to Power. I once had a very cushy “job” as a graduate student at the University of Michigan. I like to think I was smart and a good teacher, but I grew weary of the pointless affectations of academia and thought (in my youthful vanity) that I could take them head-on, and expose the fraudulence of a corrupt system. Surprise surprise, I was quickly informed that I was no longer welcome within the ivory tower, and have continued to kick-around ever since, trying to find a place in this world. That’s the thing about Power, it doesn’t matter who is right, and who is wrong, because those are the wrong questions to ask. In the end the person who signs the checks is always right.

ESPN signed Simmons’ checks and the NFL signed ESPN’s checks. A good friend of mine actually defended ESPN’s actions saying Simmons committed fireable offences. They suspended him last year for going after Goodell, and he continued to do so. They forbade their employees from going on the Dan Patrick Show and he did so anyways. Bill Simmons built his name on answering to no one, on saying things the way they were, not as some corporate overloard dictated them to be recounted, and ultimately he was held to account for such actions. I got exactly what I deserved from the University of Michigan, and Simmons got exactly what he deserved from ESPN. Never in a million years would I say people care as much about literary theory as they do about Ray Rice, I’m just saying I understand.

The ax was bound to drop at some point, and now it has. The reason for this post isn’t to advocate for the undoing of what has been done, it is merely to lament the end of an era. Nothing gold can stay (as Frost remarked), and all we can do is appreciate the ride while it lasts. Simmons had an amazing run at ESPN, probably far longer than he or any of us expected when we’re being really honest with ourselves. The real shame is seeing Grantland go on without him. ESPN’s own homepage still has Simmons picture next to its little Grantland section, the Grantland podcast page still features the conspicuously silent BS Report, and a Simmons section still prominently adorns the top of the site. Its like a scene from The Wire and Simmons’ is the body laid out on the pool table for an Irish Wake, only unlike Jimmy McNulty, he won’t be given the opportunity to get up and join in the festivities.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this, but then again, what ever does? A lot of people (read: Andy Greenwald, who I also genuinely admire) were upset with the conclusion of Mad Men, and Mathew Weiner very much got to set the stage of his own departure. Perhaps we aren’t so much upset with the way things end as we are with the finality of conclusions. But having said that, Bill Simmons certainly deserved better. He built a beautiful thing, and then the ESPN brass dispatched him in the dark of the night, denying him one last 10,000 word goodbye. Well, he’s gone, and all we can do is say ‘thank you.’ Like so many over-educated under-employed persons such as myself, I long held onto a dream of someday being Bill Simmons, publishing my thoughts and friendly banter for the benefit of the people. This lowly blog is a testament to that aspiration. Well, I’ve recently been coming to terms with the fact that I will probably never get to be a journalist. I tried my hardest to be another Bill Simmons, but the truth was always so plain it is easy to overlook. There will only ever be one Bill Simmons, and he will be missed. Yes, he’ll be back in our lives soon, but he deserved better from ESPN. His departure should have been heralded, not swept under the rug. He should have been allowed to keep the site he built. Well, life should have been many things that it is not. All we can do is say so long Bill, thanks for the memories.  

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Loomings

I was listening to the Hollywood Prospectus podcast when something Chris Ryan said about Don Draper really gave me pause. I must admit at first it was because I thought he had made a blunder with his literary allusion, but like any potential misspeak, there was a greater depth of truth in the misillusion than the proper one (or, perhaps he was correct all along, which is more of less the point of this piece). While describing head McCann man Jim Hobart’s joy at finally landing the elusive Draper, Ryan remarked “there is something where Hobart says to Don, ‘you’re my white whale,’ but Don is Ishmael, Don thinks he’s searching for a white whale, he doesn’t want to be somebody’s white whale.” At first I was all nerd-alert, Ishmael isn’t searching for the white whale, Ahab is, Don isn’t Ishmael, he’s Ahab. However, there is a depth of truth to Ryan’s remark whether he intended it or not.

In Moby Dick Ahab is the maniacal captain and Ishmael is just along for the ride, taking it all in, and reporting back on the adventures of the Pequod to the reader at home. Ahab is consumed by the whale, willing to more-or-less literally go to hell and back to capture his illusive foe, but of course, it is that very illusoriness that allows the whale to always escape Ahab’s grasp. Ishmael doesn’t really ever seem that interested in the whale, at least not in itself. Ishmael only wants to flee his landlocked life, to have an adventure, to escape the mundane and experience something profound. To Ishmael the whale isn’t even a destination, it’s an excuse to take a trip.

The other major allusion in this week’s episode (besides the titular Lost Horizon) is to On the Road. Now On the Road is an easy book to love when you’re 16 and revile when you’re 22. I re-read it when I was 26 and moving from New York to Ann Arbor and was struck by how profoundly sad it is. When you’re 16 all you see is a grand adventure, a middle finger to conformity and an embrace of the freedom of the open road. When you’re 22 you see the silliness of such youthful optimism, a totem to irresponsibility and a one way ticket to false profundity. Returning to it when I was 26 and about to start a fresh chapter of life I couldn’t help but be struck by the loneliness of the characters criss-crossing America because they had no where to go. They were all running from an empty life but they weren’t really running towards anything. Endings always contain within them beginnings, and vice versa, but as Don sets out on his own roadie we can’t help but feel, like Sal and Dean, that he is driving to just to drive, to escape for escape’s sake without really being present anywhere.

I must admit I haven’t really cared for the waitress plot this ½  season. Yes, there’s something interesting in Don’s infinite loop of mournful brunettes, especially with this season’s fixation upon finality, but her character always seemed a little too on the nose. Lost Horizon made me realize that that was precisely the point. As Don stands outside a stranger’s house in Racine Wisconsin discussing god and the devil, he actually remarks “she seems so lost.” The implication of course being that it isn’t the waitress who is lost, but himself. Now this is the sort of false profundity that we normally roll our eyes at, but over the course of its many seasons Mad Men has earned this moment of desperation for Don Draper. He spent his whole career defining himself against that Miller Lite meeting at McCann, where a room full of indistinguishable starched white shirt sleeves consume the type of corporate fairy tale about the platonic Midwestern beer drinker that Don himself used to spin by the yard. In a moment of apparent rupture Don gazes at the Empire State Building and waltzes out of the office, seemingly forever, still wearing his suit jacket.

All those long looks out the window were incredibly eerie this episode, especially after we catch Don trying to open the window in his new office. The falling man in the opening credits has always been a grim foreboding of the fate of a man like Don Draper, and this week it looked like it might happen right before our very eyes. The fatalistic showdown in the Miller Lite meeting seemed to initially belie one of two options: take off your jacket and become a faceless member of the shirtsleeves, or go out the window. Well, Don rejected this false binary and chose to walk out the door instead and just start driving, which returns us, to Ishmael.

As Moby Dick begins we meet a disenchanted Ishmael who feels the walls of his mundane, landlocked existence closing in around him. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particularly to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.

Fortunately (for now) Don has chosen the path of Ishmael (and Sal and Dean after him) rather than that of Cato. Instead of taking to ship and sea Don does the modern American equivalent and gets in his car and takes to the open road. Don could never be happy at a place like McCann, that’s always been exactly the point of his existence, but where, the show seems to be asking, can a man like Don actually be happy?

This remains an open question. Ishmael wasn’t really going anywhere either, it was either start knocking people’s hats off or take to sea, and he chose the latter. Ahab was always the one with a destination, and it ultimately consumed him and everyone on the Pequod, except for good ol’ Ishmael, rescued from the wreck by the Rachel looking for her lost children. Is it coincidence that Don was visited by the ghost of Rachel Katz earlier this season? Maybe yes, maybe no. That Rachel can’t save him because she is already gone.

This final ½ season has been consumed with finality, and understandably so, its most poignant moment a hapless Don standing in the midst of the bedlam of the SC & P offices after announcing the news of the merger with McCann, imploring to a deaf audience, “this isn’t an end, it’s a beginning.” No one listens to Don, and he probably doesn’t really believe it himself. The last big caper failed. The gang didn’t ride off to the California sunset but was instead swallowed up the inescapable sexist, racist, corporate monstrosity that is McCann-Erickson. Jim Hobart thought he’d finally landed his white whale, but the very definition of a white whale is the thing which can never be attained. But what is Don’s white whale? What is he chasing along the westward highway? Surely it isn’t the waitress. She was merely an excuse, a signpost to the unknown. Don, like Jim Hobart, is realizing you can’t find someone who is lost. I very much love that Mad Men, rather than coming to some pat conclusion, is dissolving before our eyes like the ghost of Burt Cooper riding shotgun with Don on his road to nowhere. In the end, Mathew Weiner seems to be left with the same unanswerable questions as Ishmael,

Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as the visible absence of colour, and at the same time the concrete of all colours; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows—a colourless, all-colour of atheism from which we shrink? … And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?

[fieldsofplay]

Favorite Records of 2014

20. D'Angelo & The Vanguard - Black Messiah

I honestly have no idea where this record should be on this list. Should it be number one? Should it be off it entirely ? (seems unlikely). I only just got my hands on it. It's been a long time coming, and it'll take a minute to figure out where it stands in the landscape, but new music from D'Angelo, even on first listen, is pretty darn exciting.  

19. Real Estate - Atlas 

While in the dead of winter this album seems unremarkable, you have to remember what it sounded like on a steamy August evening, as the light continued to linger forever. 

18. Alvvays - Alvvays 

[Insert joke about this album being three years behind the times here.] While Alvvays certainly missed the jangly girl group revivial, that is actually kind of its redeeming quality. Instead of sweeping it up in the gestalt you can just enjoy these little doo-wop pop gems for precisely what they are. 

17. Cymbals Eat Guitars - LOSE 

Whereas Real Estate are the summer, fellow New Jerseyians Cymbals Eat Guitars are the fall. When I was 17 I only listened to records like this, now that I'm older I find this record like visiting an old friend, that group of white males with guitars wondering what the hell they are supposed to do in the world (still an open question). 

16. The Juan Maclean - In a Dream 

Dance Music from Nancy Whang put out on DFA. If that means anything to you listen to this record. If you miss LCD Soundsystem, this won't fill the void, because of course nothing can, but it's still pretty damn good so don't hold the ghost of her previous band against her. 

15. Sturgill Simpson - Metamodern Sounds in Country Music 

You know how I know I'm getting old? I really like Country Music now. This is by far the best contemporary country record I've ever heard, though maybe Blake Shelton is actually good, who knows? I certainly don't. 

14. Ty Segall - Manipulator 

If you were to look back through my archives every one of these year-end lists probably contains a Ty Segall record right around this spot in the list. All of them would be way higher if a new one didn't come out every single year. It's hard to miss something when it isn't gone, and Segall is increasingly becoming the victim of his own prolificness, but so long as he keeps turning out garage nugget gems I'll keep swallowing them hook, line, and sinker. 

13. Sonic Avenues - Mistakes 

While I thoroughly enjoy not having a car, this album makes me wish I had one so I could roll the windows down and drive around the suburbs cranking this record. Power Pop is always a tricky balance to strike, but Sonic Avenues carry the flame for Big Star, Cheap Trick, and Weezer. Rock on. 

12. Pallbearer - Foundations of Burden 

I'm not the biggest doom / metal fan, but this record perfectly scratches that Black Sabbath itch, with a few modern twists thrown in for good measure. For those about to rock, we salute you. 

11. Future Islands - Singles 

While I still long for Future Islands to return to their post-punk roots (see: Wave Like Home), it seems like they are really starting to nail this mellowed out pop star ballardry thing, so so long as they keep pulling in new fans by hand and fist who am I to begrudge them their success? 

10. Angel Olsen - Burn Your Fire for No Witness

I saw Angel Olsen earlier this year, and during the course of "White Fire" she managed to make Le Poisson Rouge completely silent except for her echoing voice and solitary electric guitar lines for seven minutes. It was more powerful than many a punk unslaught I've willing lost myself in. She's the type of performer who makes guys like me stand in the audience and fall in love like a school girl with a crush. 

9. Kevin Morby - Still Life 

Speaking of school girls with a crush, I continue to cary the torch for Kevin Morby. Between Harlem River and this year's Still Life he's currently sitting atop the Dylan Weary Rambler throne. "The Jester, The Tramp, and The Acrobat" is one of my favorite songs this year. 

8. Run the Jewels - Run the Jewels 2 

I may not be the biggest hip-hop-head around, but I know a good thing when I see it. Killer Mike and El-P had me at "you can all run naked backwards through a field of dicks." 

7. Spoon - They Want my Soul 

Did you listen to the last Spoon record? What was it, Transference? Yeah, me neither. I'm not sure why I wandered back to one of my all time favorite bands, I guess it was once I heard Dave Fridmann was behind the boards. Seemed like maybe they were up to something a little new. Boy, they did not disappoint. With a full bodied sound they rock as hard as they ever have while still maintaining their status as first rate pop perfectionists. If you haven't gone back to Spoon in a long while, now is the time. 

6. Posse - Soft Opening 

Everyone who cares a little too much about music has that band they live to go to bat for, telling everyone they have to hear it, putting it on every mix cd (i guess playlist now, RIP mix cds) for a 6 month period. Basically proselytize the uninitiated. For me this year that band was Posse. Sure, they sound a lot like Galaxie 500, but if you're like me, there is no such thing as too much Galaxie 500 in your life. 

5. Caribou - Our Love 

Like Spoon, Caribou had started to lose me a bit with the passing of the years, but ratcheted me right back into the fold with a new record that stands among their best. Dan Snaith goes further down the dance music rabbit hole, and I'm all too happy to follow. If 2014 had a "song," it's "Can't Do Without You" and it's not even close. 

4. Sylvan Esso - Sylvan Esso

Speaking of surprising dancey albums, Sylvan Esso managed to score that record you just can't stop going back to. I was lucky enough to catch them opening for Volcano Choir, and it was one of those perfect moments where an opening band you've never heard (of) grabs your attention and makes you a fan for life. I recently spent a week in Minneapolis, which meant a lot driving around listening to The Current. I'm pretty sure every time we got in the car some song off Sylvan Esso played at some point. 

3. Parquet Courts - Sunbathing Animal

While Protomartyr was more even across it's total runtime, no album from 2014 had more highlights than Sunbathing Animal. "Ducking & Dodging," "Black and White," and the title track are far and away this year's best rock / punk cuts. Nothing makes me more happier than the fact that Brooklyn once against has a rock band to carry the banner. 

2. Protomartyr - Under Color of Official Right  

As someone who spent a lot of time in Detroit while waylaid in Ann Arbor for three years of grad school, I normally cringe at any invocation of the motor city as artistic image, whether for good or bad. The city is in real trouble, but there are some pretty rad people trying to keep it going nonetheless. For me Protomartyr sit atop of those acts right now. While Under Color of Official Right certainly owes something to its surroundings, to me its kinda insulting to make everything that emanates from Detroit into a symbol for the city. This album is the best post punk this side of Manchester in the early 80s (another inexorable link between music and place) and should be celebrated for what it is, not endlessly discussed for where it came from (which I guess is what I ended up doing anyways, oh well, fuck it). 

1. The War on Drugs - Lost in the Dream 

When Lost in the Dream came out back in March its spot at the top of this list was basically a foregone conclusion. Ever since I was lucky enough to catch them as the first band of 4 at the Mercury Lounge way back when Kurt Vile was still just their guitarist I've been all about these guys. Just as I described going to bat for Posse this year, that was me for The War on Drugs back in 2008 when Wagonwheel Blues came out. Now those preceding sentences smack of dick measuring, and they are and I'm sorry, but they're needed to explain the import of this album in my life. Most bands come out of nowhere, you become obsessed with them, and then they drift off back to the elysian fields of 3 minute pop songs. A couple times in your life there is that band you grow with from album to album, who don't just accentuate the background of your life but come to define the eras of your own existence. When I was in high school it was Radiohead, in college the Flaming Lips, in my early 20s it was all the bands of Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner, and now as my 20s have finally given way to the 30s it's The War on Drugs. Right now this is my band, so to watch them release their magnum opus and see it become generally beloved has made for a hell of year even if overall 2014 was pretty thin music-wise. This is just one of those albums, which is always the case with a year-end best, but is the sine quo non of musical perfection. You can't skip any tracks. Different segments of songs fit different moods. There is the rocking early section ("Red Eyes" - "An Ocean in between the Waves"), the misty-eyed ballad ("Eyes to the Wind"), and the enveloping conclusion that caries you away into the distance ("The Haunting Idle" onwards). This is the best, there was never any doubt. "And I hear it all through the grand parade."