#eoy list

[weirdwariii]

2017: Albums I Wish I Listened to More

I am just one human, and there’s an awful lot of sounds out there. And I wish I could listen to every album 200 times but, like, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard put out 326 albums this year (as of the time I write this) and those took up a lot of my time, y’know?

Here are a few albums I a strong initial impression of, but just never found the time to return to. There’s probably a much larger list than this of albums I wish I listened to more, but these are the ones that I have the most regret over not listening to more…

Perfume Genius - No Shape

Jay Som - Everybody Works

Milk Music - Mystic 100s

Black Lips - Satan’s Graffiti or God’s Art: I love Black Lips, but the timing of this album just coincided with a ton of other things I was listening to a lot, and I kept putting this off. Black Lips + Sean Lennon? I really shoulda made more time for this.

Mountain Goats - Goths: I loved Beat the Champ, and I’ve been on a John Darnielle kick between older Mountain Goats albums and reading Universal Harvester this year. So, like, why didn’t I listen to this more? Sad!

Fleet Foxes - Crack Up: Despite being a pretty big fan of Fleet Foxes, I think I did the same thing with Helplessness Blues, where I didn’t listen to it much at the time it came out, only to completely fall in love with it later. I liked what I’ve heard so far, but I just haven’t devoted the time to the album that I think I’ll need.

SZA - CTRL

Big Boi - Boomiverse

Toro Y Moi - Boo Boo: Admittedly, I listened to a LOT of Chaz Bundick Meets the Mattson 2 this year, so I don’t even know what my excuse is for not listening to this more.

Girlpool - Powerplant: I really love seeing/reading interviews with these two women, as I think they’re very smart and cool. But I also wish I spent as much time actually listening to their new album, especially considering how much I enjoyed their last one.

Cornelius - Mellow Waves

Boris - Dear: I love Boris as a band, but they sometimes fall into the same trap as other post-rock bands (see also: Mono and Mogwai) of making albums that aren’t especially different than what came before it. So Dear, to me, felt like just more Boris music. Which isn’t a bad thing, but I ended up just coming back to Pink and Heavy Rocks when I needed a Boris fix this year.

Amber Coffman - City of No Reply: I love, and always have loved, Amber’s voice, and I was really sad that she wasn’t a part of this year’s Dirty Projector record (though she had a pretty good reason for not being on it). I was actually more excited for Amber’s record than DP, but I feel like this had a really stealthy release (or an extremely quiet one), and I hadn’t even realized it was out until close to the end of the year...

[weirdwariii]

2017 Albums I Didn’t Like

Obviously I can’t like every album that comes out in a year, nor do I try. I know I won’t like that new Maroon 5 album, but it probably wasn’t meant for me anyways. Still, there are plenty of albums I feel like I should like - some from artists I’ve previously enjoyed, some because everyone else has a favorable opinion on them - but I just don’t. And that’s what this list is: Stuff I tried to like, but didn’t.

I was excited for Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile’s Lotta Sea Lice, being a big fan of both’s solo endeavors. While, admittedly, there’s a charming chemistry between the two, they never seem to push each other or take any chances, thus the whole album just kind of meanders by with few memorable moments. Not a bad album, just not one I’ll ever choose to return to instead of when of their better solo albums.

Lana Del Rey’s first album Born to Die was, at best, just okay. But I bought into her aesthetic pretty hard around that time. I remember reading all the articles, interviews and think-pieces before she even had an album out, and I was listening to “Video Games” endlessly (Last.fm still ranks it as my most listened-to song in the last 10 years). And it’s kind of weird because with each album since then, she seems to have grown as a songwriter, seems to grow her fanbase and seems to get an even better critical reception - yet I continue to cool on her. Fatigue? Did I like her better as an underdog? I don’t know. But Lust for Life did nothing for me.

I’m not bitter about the mainstream attention Portugal the Man found this year. The writings been on the wall for years that this is exactly what the band was waiting for, and they finally found the right balance of weird, pop and Danger Mouse to get them there. Still, the PTM I fell in love with were a different band. Woodstock is my stop, and I’m getting off the train. Thanks for the ride!

People have spoken very highly of Japanese Breakfast, and I really wanted to like Soft Sounds from Another Planet, but it just didn’t happen. Certainly not a bad album in any way, just not one that resonated with me.

2017 was a trying time in the struggle with separation of art and artist. I actually liked Brand New’s album a lot, but in the fallout of the accusations against Jesse Lacey, I find it impossible to return to the album, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Ditto for Morrissey, who I already have a contentious appreciation for. On the same day I planned on going to the record store to pick up his new album, his comments on the Hollywood sexual assaults proved to be the final straw for me. There simply isn’t time to support artists like these when thousands of other bands and artists are actually helping to contribute to and build a safer space for their fans.

I still like Mac DeMarco way more as a human than I do as a performer.  See also: St. Vincent.

Mastodon continued to stray from their epic awesomeness that made me a  fan in the Leviathan/Blood Mountain era. Their latest was alright, but just alright.

I don’t know why I thought The National was going to win me over this year when their older albums (and their most acclaimed albums at that) hadn’t. But, nope, still not into The National.

I defended Weezer for way longer than I should’ve (like, I bought Raditude), but that new album...  No.

I continue to hold out hope that one day War on Drugs will click with me, but it hasn’t happened yet. And I’ve tried! Maybe that just one just isn’t meant to be.

I hope that time doesn’t prove me to be exaggerating when I say this, but Arcade Fire’s Everything Now might be one of the most disappointing albums I’ve heard in a long time. Not to say that they’ve had a perfect track record up to this point, but the worst thing I could say about AF up to this point is that their last two albums were just too long. But there’s just so little of EN that I like. Even the album’s best moments (maybe...”Creature Comfort” or the title track?) still sound like parodies of better AF songs. Everything about EN, down to the marketing and roll out, just felt heavy handed and exhausting. I continue to appreciate AF as a band, and clearly their overall message comes from a good place.

Next: the albums I wished I listened to more this year.

[coxone]

2014 albums

Loscil – Sea Island [Kranky]

Call Super – Suzi Ecto [Houndstooth]

Gnod – The Somnambulist's Tale [Aguirre]

Joey Anderson – After Forever [Dekmantel]

Kassem Mosse – Workshop 19 [Workshop]

Vril – Torus [Forum / Giegling]

Kangding Ray – Solens Arc [Raster-Noton]

Gesloten Cirkel – Submit-X [Murder Capital]

Neel – Phobos [Spectrum Spools]

Marco Shuttle – Visione [Eerie]

Jo Johnson – Weaving [Further Records]

Gunnar Haslam – Mirrors And Copulation [L.I.E.S.]

Keith Worthy – The Price of Nonconformance [Aesthetic Audio]

Plant43 – Scars Of Intransigence [Shipwrec]

[coxone]

La musique de 2013 (1/6) : albums et compiles mixées

Albums

Ampichino - Da Krazies 2 [Double F Records]

Aybee - Worlds [Deepblak]

Floorplan - Paradise [M-Plant]

Function - Incubation [Ostgut Ton]

Huerco S. - Colonial Patterns [Software Records]

Joe Blow - Check A Real Nigga Out Tho [Self-released]

Jonsson/Alter - 2 [Kontra-Musik]

Marcel Fengler - Fokus [Ostgut Ton]

Marvin - Barry [Africantape]

Minilogue - Blomma [Cocoon Recordings]

Segue - Pacifica [Silent Season]

Starlito - Cold Turkey & Fried Turkey [Grind Hard LLC]

Tropic Of Cancer - Restless Idylls [Blackest Ever Black]

Compiles mixées

DJ Sprinkles - Where Dancefloors Stand Still [Mule Musiq]

Steffi - Panorama Bar 05 [Ostgut Ton]

Svreca - For Your Eyes Only [Semantica Records]

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Suivants :

EP

Mixtapes rap

Morceaux

Podcasts

DJ sets et concerts

[i-willeatyoualive]

my favourite/top 25 releases (EPs & LPs) of 2013

25. Safe Hands- Montenegro. 24. Jen Buxton- Desperation Demos. 23. The Wonder Years- The Greatest Generation. 22. Citizen- Youth. 21. Endless Heights- New Bloom. 20. Andrew Jackson Jihad- Live At The Crescent Ballroom. 19. Real Friends- Put Yourself Back Together. 18. Paper Arms- The Smoke Will Clear. 17. Defeater- Letters Home. 16. Dads- Pretty Good. 15. Hotel Books- This Is All We Have. 14. Perspectives- Blind. 13. California X- California X. 12. Ex-Nuns- Make Amends. 11. Tiny Moving Parts- This Couch Is Long And Full Of Friendship. 10. Title Fight- Spring Songs. 09. Grim Fandango- Flicker Noise. 08. Wil Wagner- Laika. 07. RVIVR- The Beauty Between. 06. Daylight- Jar. 05. Touché Amoré- Is Survived By. 04. The Smith Street Band- Don’t Fuck With Our Dreams. 03. Old Gray- An Autobiography. 02. Kanye West- Yeezus. 01. The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die- Whenever, If Ever.