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[tgaoe]

“do you love me?” “only partly”

-a review of the Aubrey and the Three Amigos tour opener in Kansas City-

In the late 90s, in my early teens, I began attending concerts, almost exclusively Christian rock bands. Music, bands, and seeing bands play music, dominated my life. In the days, weeks, months leading up to an anticipated show, after school, before my parents got home, I would play a band’s CD—a live one if available—loud, and “perform” it in full alone in my room with a flashlight for a microphone, lip-synching, giving shout-outs to imagined fans, dancing around maniacally until pouring sweat. Last Sunday at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, for the 15,000 people attending the twice-postponed first date of a massive world tour, pop-rap superstar Drake Aubrey Graham—a grown man five months younger than me—did the exact same thing. Last Sunday night, I watched Drake do over an hour of Drake karaoke. It was adorable. It was Drake at his Drakiest, coasting on charm, giving minimal effort, getting away with it.

I love Drake. I love more Drake songs than I love songs by any other artist, by far. My meticulous Drake playlist, post-Scorpion, contains 96 tracks and lasts six hours and 32 minutes. If statistics equaled favoritism then Drake would be my all-time favorite artist. That said, Drake would likely not even make a list of my twenty favorite rappers, let alone general artists. But I love Drake still, and I think about him and enjoy his music disproportionately to how much the man and his work actually mean to me.  

I love Drake because he, or rather the character he plays—who is not actually a character, but is really him—is simple, but in a complicated meta way that circles around and in on itself. See, Drake is dork. He presents as hard, cool, svelte, smooth, but he knows he is actually a dork, we know he is actually a dork, we know he knows he is actually a dork, and he knows we know he knows he is actually a dork, and all of us together have this tacit agreement to accept this false narrative, to enjoy it because doing so validates the way we sing along in our cars alone to songs to which we cannot relate at all. Drake’s existence as a pop star makes it okay, in theory, for me, a 32-year-old white man who teaches elementary school—the dorkiest of dorks, to rap along with Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day” in my car on the way home from school, to pretend to be Cube, as long as I leave out certain words when I do it. Drake makes us feel like this is okay to do because it is what he does on the most massive scale. Drake is a theater kid playing a famous rapper, who also just happened to become the most famous rapper.

Drake’s show on Sunday manifested this idea. Tickets cost as much as $250. Mine cost $151.62 after convenience fees. This single performance netted Drake an estimated $2.25 million—I repeat, two million two hundred and fifty American dollars--and yet this man had the gall to perform without a band, without even a visible DJ. It was just Aubrey out there onstage—except during his three—THREE—extended breaks over the 100 minute set, one of which ate up a full 20 minutes while openers Migos sleepwalked through a surprise encore featuring several more of their dreary triplet trap tunes, sapping the energy from the arena until Drake finally, finally reemerged to begin “Blue Tint,” without Future of course. Well, Future’s voice was there, on recording, while Drake shouted over it.

Drake’s voice was also present on the backing recordings. In fact, earlier I posited the notion the evening was Drake doing Drake karaoke. That was not technically accurate. Karaoke tracks exclude missing lead vocals to make room for the amateurs’ interpretations. What Drake did on Sunday was more akin to what I used to do in my bedroom as a teenager, belting along with CDs. The backing tracks at this show were not backing tracks at all. No, they were the original album tracks, with all Drake’s original recorded rapping intact. Drake would rap over his recorded self roughly 40% of the time. The other 60% he would emphasize certain words, talk to the crowd, dance around the massive stage, generally act as a hypeman for himself.

I have seen dozens of large-scale touring rap shows, and I have developed certain guidelines for what makes a good one. First, and most importantly, an arena-touring rapper needs a solid live band, even if that band plays along with backing tracks. Organic instrumentation makes shows feel raw, real, vital in the moment, like something could go wrong. Last year I saw Chance the Rapper play for a crowd of 40,000, and even though his voice was shot due presumably to an asthmatic episode, the show was fun and good because his band played the music right there onstage.

A real, talented DJ can also suffice as long as the rapper(s) also meet the second guideline I will get to. A DJ that visibly flips records and scratches and mixes in real time can fill the void of a live band. Run the Jewels did this both times I saw them, and they are a titanic live act. Many others have made this work for me as well; Eminem, Wiz Khalifa, and, to an extent, Kendrick Lamar, whose monumental roadshow last summer deserves its own multi-thousand-word writeup.

Second guideline: rappers need to rap live with minimal backing vocal tracks, and along with that they need to be the only vocalists onstage and also know how to use a microphone. I have seen so many rappers scream into their mics with no regard for how torturous doing so sounds to the audience, and have three anonymous buddies onstage doing the same thing. I saw Odd Future twice and they were absolutely disastrous, a cacophony so intolerable that I left their Coachella set before they allowed Frank Ocean his allotted two songs. In hindsight I regret this given what and who Frank became, but that is a digression.

Third, live rappers need to be consummate, energetic entertainers, need to at least seem like they are happy to be there rapping for you. The Migos, who opened for Drake, were the antithesis of this. They had a live DJ(✓), but they moped around the stage oblivious of the audience, like they were at the supermarket perusing tv dinners. I am happy to report, however, that Drake met this third expectation, that, by sheer force of Drakery, because of Drake’s inherent Drakeness, the absence of a live band and the extensive use of backing tracks did not much matter. Drake’s show by its very nature was an exception that proved those first two rules.

Drake live is dork supreme, the epitome of his metacharacter. He triumphs as the sole presence on a huge stage in the center of a hockey arena in front of 30,000 eyes, fully living out the teenage bedroom fantasy of performing on a huge stage in the center of a hockey arena in front of 30,000 eyes. That he barely bothered to actually rap is rendered charming by the fact that the Drake we know on record is absolutely the kind of person who would do that, and it is why we love him. Walking out of the show, rushing back to my car to beat the throngs so I could commence the three-hour night drive home, I had the most bizarre feeling: I was satisfied by a total lack of satisfaction.

An early highlight of Drake’s set was a surprising rendition of If You’re Reading This relative deep cut “Know Yourself.” When the beat cut out before the chorus, the tension hung in the air, and then that massive EDM-like drop hit and the pit crowd went wild, as did Drake, galloping across the stage like a madman. The feeling was electric, screaming along with thousands of other people, RUNNIN. THROUGH THE. SIX. WITH MY WOES.

I wish Drake had done more songs from that era. He played 40 songs, but only one or two each from his first four LPs. He sounded best on hard rap tracks—“Free Smoke,” “Energy,” “Gyalchester,” new classic “Nonstop”—and worst on anything that required him to sing, because apparently Drake cannot sing live, even with autotune, to nobody’s surprise. The only time he audibly sung came during an anemic cover of Michael Jackson’s “Rock With You,” tacked onto the end of “Don’t Matter to Me,” naturally, and he sang it in a bizarre whisper. Drake cannot sing! Who knew!

Watching the crowd lose it for the hits was lovely, as was how Drake absorbed the love and fed it back to the crowd. He may have been acting—he was a professional actor first, after all—but Drake seemed genuinely surprised, or relieved perhaps, that the crowed enjoyed the show.  He saved the monster radio jams for the backhalf of the show, the finale lead-up a suite of unimpeachable chart-toppers; “One Dance,” “Hotline Bling”—including the video’s doofy dancing, which wasn’t that different than the rest of Drake’s dancing, “Fake Love,” “Nice For What”—which may go down as Drake’s greatest pop song, and “In My Feelings.” Arranging those five songs in succession is such a vaunt, a reminder why we all paid so much to be there, why we stuck it out through an interminable hour of Migos.

And then came the fake closer, “I’m Upset.” Look, I love “I’m Upset.” It is hilarious, unintentionally—but maybe not? —and that makes it great. But “I’m Upset” is not a closer, even if everyone present assumes an encore or three is inevitable. Drake mugged his way through the grievance anthem, left the stage, and came back out a minute later to bid us goodnight with what I assume would be a couple more tracks.

The opening synth lines of “God’s Plan” kicked it. The crowd roared. Drake opened his arms in full Jesus Christ/Scott Stapp pose. I could see the finale in my mind. We would all sing along with this jubilant new classic—she say do you love me I tell her only partly I only love my bed and my momma I'm sorry, hahahaha so funny and perfect and petty, so Drake—and then that four-to-the-floor kick/snare would start, each and every one of us suddenly awash in a wave of euphoria as Drake sent us out the doors with “Hold On, We’re Going Home,” quite possibly the greatest pop song of the last decade, an ecstatic moment we would all remember forever, a story to share with our progeny when Drake wins his third Oscar twenty years from now.

But no.

That did not happen.

We got silly to “God’s Plan”—see Drake=God in this equation, and I guess this was church?—and then… the show ended.

Drake and/or his keepers made the confounding, inexcusable decision not to play “Hold On, We’re Going Home.” Of the $151.62 I spent on the ticket, I would say roughly $102. 35 was to see that one song. I do not understand this choice, even a little, especially during a set that featured 16 songs from Scorpion, a record with but four great songs—well, five if we ironically include “I’m Upset.” Okay, six because “Mob Ties” is stupid but a grower. Yet, Drake subbed any of 10 mediocre Scorpion cuts in place of “Hold On.” Come to think of it, he also did not play “Marvins Room.” Or “Passionfruit.” Or “Best I Ever Had,” “Shot For Me,” “Take Care,” “Furthest Thing,” “Legend,” “No Tellin’,” “Back to Back,” “Right Hand,” “Portland,” or “Blem.” Drake had the audacity to karaoke 40 of his own songs and not one of those songs was the song “Feel No Ways.” Hey, Drake, guess what. I’m upset. With you. About this. But not really. But kind of. Eh.

The truth. The truth is that I knew how this show would go, that Drake would lip-sync or not even bother to lip-sync. I knew I would not be satisfied, because satisfaction is not what Drake is for. I knew that Drake could not possibly play all 96 songs of his that I enjoy. I knew he would favor the more recent material because that material is what is getting him paid right now. I knew the cheapest t-shirts would cost $45. I knew that the Migos would suck. I knew all this, but I still chose to pay to be there. I almost always go to shows to be present during them, enjoy them as they’re happening. But with Drake it was different. I paid to be there, not so much to see Drake, but to have seen Drake, to have actively participated in the summer of the year 2018.

A couple nights ago my girlfriend and I were chatting with some her neighbors on their porch, enjoying chilly mason jar margaritas after a long day of oppressive humidity. The conversation inevitably drifted to the topic of recent concerts, as most conversations which include me tend to do since I am unable to speak with a modicum of clarity about much else. The neighbors’ seventh-grade daughter heard me mention that I had recently seen Drake. “Drake… the rapper?” she said, giving me an incredulous look. Rather than dispute this child’s narrow genre classification, I said something like yep, that’s the one. This is all to say, I am now a person who has seen Drake, envy of middle school girls everywhere.

[tgaoe]

Andy’s 2017 Music Report

Favorite Albums, Favorite Songs, and other assorted temporally-specific ramblings.

Preamble

I. Dearth I listened to less music this year than I did last year, partly due to the immense amount of time required to finish my Master’s Degree, and also because I slept better. You may recall from last year’s treatise that I experienced something of a listening renaissance late in the year, turning to music during nights spent sleepless for work-related anxiety. 2017 marked my fourth year in my current job, and the first during which I began to feel confident in my own professional competence. Hence, less anxiety, fewer sleepless nights, less music. So it goes.

II. Duplicity, Disaffection Another reason. Prior to November 21st, I spent an inordinate amount of time listening to a single band, the band that made my #1 record from 2016. They were also my most-listened to band of 2017. I went deep into their back catalogue, full immersion, and I found such joy and pleasure in doing so. The band helped me through a fraught, life-altering personal ordeal. I traveled to see them play and it was cathartic. However, on 11/21 it was revealed that the leader of that band may have betrayed much of what he/they claimed to have stood for as steadfast advocates for kindness, equity, and empathy. The woman or women he hurt are the primary victims, but secondarily his hypocrisy destroyed a community of people who connected strongly with his music. I believe in rehabilitation. But I also doubt I’ll ever be able to listen to this band the same way again, if at all. I share this troubling information because it undoubtedly colors this list. For weeks after the revelation I only listened to songs sung by women, maybe to offset the damage somehow, maybe to avoid connecting with another secretly awful man.

III. Disappointment Last year I wrote extensively about how the absence of releases from legacy acts resulted in my exposure to an unusually large number of new/emerging artists. That trend of exposure continued this year, for unfortunate reasons. Most new releases by old favorites proved little more than pleasant. Though something like 20 albums from 2017 fall into that category, only five or six made my list of favorites, and even some of those did so despite caveats. I suspect this may have to do with the current circumstances of my life more than with the music itself, at least in some cases. For instance, Sleep Well Beast will not appear below, but I am the only National devotee I know who doesn’t love it as much as their previous records. Time will tell, I suppose.

IV. Derelict I devoted significantly less time to this project this year than I did to its previous iterations, probably 20 hours vs. the usual 40-60. I usually track favorites all year and begin writing in October. This year I was much less diligent, not commencing writing until mid-December. It shows, I’m afraid. I did not keep an actual Favorite Songs list, nor did I keep a running record of micro-moments.

Blame the Master’s. Over five months of work my research project ballooned to 18,415 words spanning 118 pages—characteristically about twice as long as it needed to be. It’s a mystery how I mustered the energy to eke out another 6000 words for this thing after all that.

V. Dingus As always, forgive my assumption that readers of this monstrosity possess a certain level of familiarity with prevailing music culture. The writing reads better that way. Also as always, please forgive the preposterous pretense that anyone would want to read this, the bloviations of yet another obsessive 30-something white man desperate for your attention.

My 19 Favorite Albums of 2017

19 favorites because 19 was how many favorites I had.

19 The World’s Best American Band White Reaper Big, stupid, shameless riff rock; a record as fun as its title is ridiculous. The band almost has the chops to live up to it too, blazing through ten hook-dense, hedonistic rockers with fatalistic abandon. No introspection here, folks. The only lesson White Reaper has to impart is, “If you make the girls dance, the boys will dance with ‘em.” Noted, dudes.

18 Cigarettes After Sex Cigarettes After Sex How to Make the Sexiest Music Ever, Apparently

1) Start with early Interpol. 2) Slow it down. 3) Tighten it up. 4) Strip away the fuzz. 5) Replace Paul Banks with Greg Gonzalez, a man whose smoky, sultry voice I mistook for a woman's until just now. 6) Drop the nonsense lyrics in favor of straightforward stories, proclamations, and invitations, all specific and intimate like the first xx record.

The result: a collection of variations on "Fade Into You" sans twang. Almost unfathomably sexy. The sexiest.

17 The Nashville Sound Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit I don’t love this album, but I do love all its songs. The Nashville Sound should have been a solo record with an accompanying full-band live release a few months later. The 400 Unit is so talented, so utterly professional that they can’t help but sound canned, over-produced, in a modern studio. Any old band off the street can be made to sound that way. What makes the Unit special is that this is how they sound live. They sound perfect. Perfection on record isn’t much fun.

Jason Isbell is the best songwriter of his generation. Case in point: Leonard Cohen’s “Chelsea Hotel No. 2,” his best song and a contender for best song by anyone, famously concludes with the couplet, 

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel That's all, I don't think of you that often

Isbell manages to casually convey the same sentiment through implication on Sound’s “Molotov”: 

Another life but I still remember A county fair in steamy September In the Year of the Tiger, nineteen-something

He remembers, but not that well, not the year. He doesn’t think of her that often.

16 Need Your Love Sheer Mag The opening salvo of “Meet Me in the Street” and the sort-of title track tells you everything you need to know about Need Your Love, the surprising segue of anthemic nails-hard rebel rock into heartfelt, slinky soul-funk. Sheer Mag is everything 70s rock, all facets, plain and simple, in timbre, tone, and demeanor, fitted to modern pop structure and sensibility. Massive riffs, throaty hollers, cavernous sonics, never not danceable. The last 40 years never happened.

15 Something to Tell You Haim Four years ago I passionately engaged in a pointless internet debate on the false premise of the superiority of Haim vs. Lorde. Of course this was less about the actual artists than it was the debaters’ desperation for validation of our own tastes and preferences at the expense of others’, which is a stupid thing insecure young white men do for some reason. However, looking back now and comparing the two entities’ work and public personas does reveal fascinating differences in their approaches and cultural placements, especially considering the rollouts and receptions of both artists’ follow-up records. I’ll write more about Lorde later (spoiler), but she crafts songs that achieve timelessness and universality seemingly unintentionally, through trope subversion and highly specific and personal writing. Haim achieves the same through something like the opposite approach.

Every Haim song feels like a glossy new product behind a high-end shop window, displayed uniformly, calculated and designed for maximum value and mass appeal. I’ve said this before, but Haim recordings sound like money, sound expensive. Because they are. Haim recordings are light, airy, sleek, tight, and huge. The lyrics strive for universality by exploring standard romantic emotional states in the most vague, impersonal, situationally unspecific possible manner. We do not know the identity of the “you” in these songs. Hell, we don’t really who the “I” is. We can project whoever we want. These songs are perfect manufactured products. That may read as negative criticism, but it is not. The total orderliness of Haim songs forces order on anarchy. Haim songs make the world simple, make it make sense. Every question has an answer, every problem a solution.

There is an exception that proves the rule here, a more experimental Haim song that towers above the others by subverting those established expectations of order, transcends them to depict in actuality the true messiness of love. That song is “Right Now,” and it is a monster jam, likely the best song Haim has ever written. The structure is confounding, the melodies don’t time out naturally, nothing musically makes sense, is rational, in the same way feelings don’t and aren’t. There is a call-and-response with which it is almost impossible to sing along because the response comes in like half a beat later than every other pop song has trained us to expect. Feedback blares, clicks click, hums hum. “Right Now” is imperfect, and in that it is the most perfect Haim song. It came not from an assembly line, it came from a soul. Or souls. “Right Now” even allows a single reference to an actual specific event, a quiet conversation overheard through a window, which, even though still somewhat vague, gives the song a level of personal meaning to the narrator missing from, you know, every other Haim song. More like this please.

By the way, this short PTA-directed performance film is incredible, and suggests that everything I wrote in that second paragraph may be negated when the band plays live.

14 Graveyard of Good Times Brandon Can’t Dance Brandon Ayers's collection of mom's basement DIY songs plays as much like a friend's great mix cd as it does a solo artist's album, intuitively-sequenced and formally experimental in the sense that the dude seemingly tries any musical idea that occurs to him, and there are so many here: stoned weirdo neo disco, 80s soft rock, wall-of-sound shoegaze, earnest folk, synthy dance rock, 90s industrial and more, all effortless, catchy and united aesthetically by competent use of limited production resources. Ayers's lyrics are always either smart or hilariously, knowingly dumb as he explores a kind of mundanity inherent to a life of low-budget hedonism, as well as how much he loves his dogs, mom, sister, and grandma. Can't go wrong with that.

13 Villains Queens of the Stone Age Josh Homme and Britt Daniel have much in common culturally, both mid-40s men who have spent nearly two decades each as highly unlikely sex symbols, sustaining multi-decade rock careers, stalking stages with maniacal, borderline-predatory confidence. But musically they’ve shared few qualities until now. Villians has airless, precise grooves similar to some Spoon records, but, you know, with that Queens menace and evil. The QoTSA has always been a band about perfect playing, but this time Homme brought in preeminent funk racketeer Mark Ronson to help shape Villains. The result is the shortest, most accessible record the band has ever made. Actually, it is not the shortest—it just feels that way. Villians cooks, showcasing the same old Queens, aggressively showy and prone to extended digressions, but with arrangements more focused, lightweight, and compressed than ever before.

Make sure you stick around for the entire song. Trust me.

12 I Love You Like a Brother Alex Lahey What is happening in Australian that the country keeps producing these witty, confident female punk singer/songwriters? Alex Lahey’s style certainly mines a similar humorous vain to Courtney Barnett, but her approach is more energetic and less erudite. I always feel held at a distance by Barnett’s music; listening to it is almost a purely intellectual exercise. Lahey’s, however, has a casual immediacy that makes me want to smile and laugh and dance.

The title track is both punk as hell and sticky-sweet, a genuine love song from a sister to a brother, insanely catchy and refreshingly sincere. I am no one’s sister, and my brother and I, though we love each other, have never had a connection quite like the one Lahey documents here. Still, I so feel this jam. It follows the album’s opener, “Every Day’s the Weekend,” an actual love song, albeit one about having fallen for a broke, emotionally elusive charmer. “Fuck work, you’re here, every day’s the weekend,” is lyric of such powerful brevity, so effectively conveying the feeling during those times when someone exciting has unexpectedly exploded into your life. The hilarious “Perth Traumatic Stress Disorder,” another gatestormer, follows, and then the album starts to mutate into something more complex and interesting.

I Love You Like a Brother begins as an aggressive punk record, but slowly warps into atmospheric, radio-ready stadium rock. On a couple occasions this may be to its detriment, but as a whole the album serves as a solid testament to Lahey’s versatility as a writer. The lyrics of “Awkward Exchange” are comparatively anonymous to the earlier tracks, but the open sound, dynamic structure, and wordless chants beg for massive festival singalongs. It might happen. It should happen. The two approaches combine on “Lotto in Reverse,” perhaps Lahey’s greatest triumph here, an inward-focused dirge grafted onto a massive, hooky rock song that more than earns its prominent placement on Spotify’s Badass Women playlist.

11 Go Farther in Lightness Gang of Youths Christian music is terrible, almost all of it. Not just because it all still sounds like U2, but because none of it deigns to explore actual life as a flawed human who happens to be Christian. This is so intentionally. The Christian music industry is insidiously Randian; cynical and deplorable. Gang of Youths is fighting back, hard.

Singer/songwriter David Le'aupepe is a vulgar spiritualist, kind of a like an Australian David Bazan or Sufjan Stevens in the way he publicly struggles to reconcile his faith with his human proclivities. His studious lyrics often recall very early Bruce Springsteen, with their expansive vocabulary and wide-ranging cultural literacy. The band met in church (like U2!), yet the man swears with relish and documents his perceived failings as well as his issues with the spirtual institution to which he belongs. Get a load of this, from “Perservere,” which is actually my least favorite song on the album:

But God is full of grace and his faithfulness is vast There is safety in the moments when the shit has hit the fan Not some vindictive motherfucker, nor is he shitty at his job What words to hear, and I’m a mess by now 'Cause nothing tuned me in to my failure as fast As grieving for a friend with more belief than I possessed

Imagine that at Sunday service! If all Christian music was this nuanced and genuinely introspective then, well, Christian music wouldn’t be a ghetto. It would just be more music.

This album is long, almost feature-length, most of its 16 songs stretching beyond five minutes. Fortunately, the wealth of ideas and arrangements sustain the length, if only just barely. Gang of Youths are adventurously egalitarian in their consummate unoriginality, adamantly subscribing to the notion of Ecclesiastes 1:9, content to let Le’aupepe’s compelling narratives give the band identity as their arrangements freely pillage ideas from the most successful indie rock bands of the last decade, mostly those who can now fill arenas; the Killers, the National, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, LCD Soundsystemm Bloc Party. My favorite songs here pound forward relentlessly like Titus Andronicus. On some songs Le’aupepe’s words tumble out uncontrollably like Gareth Campesinos, on others his voice could be mistaken for Matt Berninger’s low growl.

Also, I’d be remiss to not mention how appealing I find it that there are no white people in this band. It’s rare and refreshing to hear this kind of massive music from a cultural perspective so different then my own.

10 Hot Thoughts Spoon Spoon is a band of consummate constants and variables. The band knows exactly what defines it, what listeners like, and they always deliver while also changing just enough to surprise. Every record, every song, reliably has three particular elements: an airtight hard rhythm groove, simple, catchy, repetitive; a masterful command of pop structure; and Britt Daniel’s enigmatic brand of ultracool, vaguely sexual vocal swagger. The other sounds around those elements, the atmospheres and tones, change with each record. Hot Thoughts delves deeper into the psychedelic G-funk timbres the band played with some on They Want My Soul, as Daniel continues to explore nonthreatening, acceptable ways to express desire. In short, it’s another Spoon record, and it rules.

9 Strangers in the Alps Phoebe Bridgers I keep coming back to lyrics. Lyrics draw me in like nothing else, the more smart, personal, and specific the better. Lyrics don’t come more specific and personal and smart than Phoebe Bridgers’s. She tells vivd stories, recounts memories of events and emotions by conjuring indelible, detailed settings and images with devastating depths of feeling, mostly over quiet, close-miced acoustic guitars underlaid with noninvasive strings and other atmospherics. Prepare to be haunted.

Though she sometimes doesn’t bother and the songs don’t suffer for it, as on the incredible “Smoke Signals,” Bridgers can also write the hell out of a chorus. Try not to get “Motion Sickness” stuck in your mind.

Strangers in the Alps does take a production risk I would understand some finding off-putting. Sometimes sound effects supplement and/or match lyrical events; a plane flying overhead, a boot crunching leaves, the kind of thing. It’s strange at first, but ultimately sets the album apart from others by similarly earnest stool-seated strummers.

8 Near to the Wild Heart of Life - year’s best title Japandroids I’ve seen this band play three times. The third was this year. Those previous had been with friends, and before the shows we drank and goofed around, celebrating our affection for each other and getting just the right level of lit up. This year I took a vacation day from my professional job, drove to St. Louis alone, and waited in line alone while reading a screenplay by one of the guys I used to go to shows with, eventually watching the show alone while nursing a single beer. It wasn’t the same. But it was still good.

Japandroids write what they know. Seven years ago what they knew resulted in a masterpiece, an album more relatable to me at the time than any other. Indeed, Celebration Rock remains my all-time favorite record, its ragged, propulsive riffage and emotional narratives of kinetic nights with close friends still have the power to take me back to that time, when I had more energy and a will to wildness. However, over the long interim between albums, the Japandroids’ lives and mine ceased to resemble each other. My closest friends moved. I have bills and a career and a generally pleasant, stable life—one distinctly not wild. Meanwhile, those dudes are evidently still globetrotting, every night out there swilling top-shelf tequila to nurse the heartache of intercontinental romance, living hard and loving harder. I no longer relate. As a listener I’m an observer now when I was once a participant. However, while I don’t connect with latter day Japandroids experientially, in a way the fact that Wild Heart still plays great for me despite that suggests that Japandroids is a legitimately great band on a musical level, rather than one just great for its ability to bash out messy, meaningful feelings..

These dudes are not shy about their laziness as songwriters, at least in terms of prolificacy. They release music as soon as they’ve reached the requisite minimum quantity of great songs, and it takes them forever to do so. Like the two previous Japandroids records, Wild Heart has only eight tracks, and they cheat even to amass that many. While Celebration Rock included a (totally awesome, raucous, thematically-appropriate) cover song, this time one Wild Heart track is an interlude, barely a song (“I’m Sorry [for Not Finding You Sooner]”), and another is just bad, sounding like a high school garage band trying hard to write a Japandroids song (“Midnight to Morning”). They really shouldn’t have let that one through. But man, the other six songs still kill with the same ferocity as before, some with an increased sense of melody and hook, and they all sound great live and feel great to shout along with, which, let’s be honest, is mainly what this band is for, and has always been for. The shouting just means a little less to me now.

7 Don’t Be a Stranger Nervous Dater Rachel Lightner has the gift, my favorite gift. She expels what she considers her worst qualities, and she does it through great songs; extremely catchy, smart, driving, dynamic punk songs. She does it publicly, with casual confidence. She makes it look easy and, most importantly, normal. Feeling how she feels is not unique. Sharing those feelings legitimizes them, creates a community around them. I mean, look at these lines:

Cause when things get quiet I feel uneasy I need my friends or at least just the sound of the TV To keep these things in my head from screaming “You’re inadequate! You’re a piece of shit! You could run forever but you’d never get away with it! And if people really knew who you were, They’d probably cover up the ground that you walk on with spit!”

If you can’t relate, then I envy you. If you can, and if you like punk, you need this band.

The players behind Lightner are also great, building arrangements that match incidental turns in the lyrics. The lines above are from the title track. Listen for how the song bends and nearly breaks as the narrative does the same, then recovers before almost breaking again. The band follows a formula, each instrument doing a specific job. Drums, bass, and one guitar lock into rhythm, while a lead guitar incessantly plays highly-involved tasto solo hooks. The band rarely veers from its set aesthetic, and when it does, it does so with purpose.

Occasionally a male member of the band will cameo, supplementing Lightner’s self-excoriations with early-2000s emo-screaming in the background. It’s a signifier that, intentionally or not, effectively ties Lightner’s music back to that era, an era that very intentionally excluded and delegitimized women’s voices. As has been proven time and time again in recent years, that was stupid. Women do it better. The contemporary women making emotional, personal punk music are doing it so well that nobody’s come up with a term like “emo” to dismiss it. I love being alive right now.

6 Big Fish Theory Vince Staples For when people ask what kind of music I like, that impossible question almost only asked by those who do not share the obsession, I have developed a stock answer of surprising accuracy. The smartest versions of punk, rap, and country. Country is a fudge, designed to open up a conversation about what “smart” country is. Dorks call it “alt-country.” Anyway. That’s a separate essay. You may have noticed that Big Fish Theory is the first rap record on this list. I am not tapped in to most contemporary rap. The slow, repetitive codeine scene doesn’t do it for me, and rap is more about single songs and premium playlist placement than it is about albums now. The album-focused rappers are dinosaurs. Four fossil-rap acts made solid records this year, and three made my list. Ranking them was difficult, and I am not at all confident in my final assessments. Vince Staples could have ranked highest another day.

Some days I like Big Fish Theory more than DAMN. Vince Staples’ world is less complicated, more concentrated and angry. Some days unnuanced anger is what I want. For fuel. Case in point, compare the two’s thoughts on the President and the country. First, Kendrick, hinting and contemplative:

Homicidal thoughts; Donald Trump's in office We lost Barack and promised to never doubt him again But is America honest, or do we bask in sin?

And Vince:

Tell the President to suck a dick, because we on now Tell the one percent to suck a dick, because we on now Tell the government to suck a dick, because we on now

And, of course, both men appear on “Yeah Right,” every bit as glorious a linguistic whirlwind as could be expected.

Also, I don’t know another rapper more musically experimental, forward-thinking, and adventurous than Vince Staples, including Kendrick. Vince is admirably without ego here (humble!); often letting the music overtake his voice, having faith in listeners to look up his words if they so desire. Much of Big Fish Theory is essentially modernized Chicago house with rapping, while also proudly West Coast. And it bangs, hard.

5 Melodrama Lorde This one took time. It took reading younger people’s perspectives to appreciate, grow to love. The first listen felt cold, staid. Pure Herione had been an instant rush, a loud announcement of a new, exciting pop personality, fully steeped in enthusiastically appropriated pop tropes of the time and letting Ella Yelich-O'Connor’s novel personality shine atop it all. Melodrama is different. She doesn’t shine, she seethes and writhes. She’s growing up in front of us, with surprising, precocious wisdom and emotional maturity.

There is nothing particularly contemporary about the sound of Melodrama. It’s less jokey, more earnest than Pure Heroine. And ultimately, despite that it does not provide the same sugary pleasure rush of its predecessor, Melodrama is far superior. It doesn’t sound like a time period, it sounds like first love and first heartbreak, because it is the manifestation of those. It sounds timeless, orchestral without an orchestra, because it is those things.

One track is a notable exception to the timelessness, and that makes it almost impossibly special. I will elucidate later in the Favorite Songs section.

4 DAMN. Kendrick Lamar Has there ever been an artist so deft at balancing/blending pure creative expression with commercialism? Until DAMN., Kendrick had achieved that balance through compartmentalization, by creating knotty, esoteric records, masterpieces, while also featuring on the most crass chart-bait singles imaginable. Another case in point: Kendrick made “For Free?” and appeared on the “Shake it Off” remix the same year. DAMN. inextricably fuses the two compartments without compromise. Almost every second of the album is both at once. Every song has earworm hooks and brain-breaking lyrical density. The record is jammed with potential singles, yet still works as a whole… even when listening to the tracks in reverse order. All hail. DAMN. is unquestionably the best album of the year, but even so, and even though I flew 1500 miles to see him play it live his hometown… it is not my favorite this year. DAMN. somehow isn’t even my favorite rap record, a late-breaking change-of-heart that took me by surprise.

3 RTJ3 Run the Jewels It’s too long. Let’s get that out of the way. But it’s all essential. For months I said that cutting “Hey Kids” and “Thieves!” would have made a better record. I was wrong. “Hey Kids” is the weakest track, for sure, but Killer Mike’s verse is straight up canonical, despite the relative frivolity of El-P’s bars and the idiocy of Danny Brown’s feature. “Thieves!,” on the other hand, after some close-listening and Genius deep-diving, is one of RTJ3’s best tracks, a massively ambitious dystopian sci-fi narrative that subtly riffs on Hamlet. Part of that ambition is manifested in a structure quite different from the straightforward presentations we’re used to from these guys; listening without the proper context doesn’t provide the furious pleasure typically associated with Run the Jewels.

Killer Mike & El-P were in an unenviable position prior to releasing this album. RTJ1 surprised everyone, even its makers; a no-stakes lark that happened to be much better and more special than that due simply to the sheer volume of talent involved. Expectations for RTJ2 had been high as a result, and they were exceeded as the band chose to treat the project with seriousness and gravity, leveraging their newfound fame and cultural relevance/reverence for conscientious advocacy. The result, RTJ2, is an unimpeachable classic, one I will listen to for the rest of my life. How could they top it, or even match it, without repeating themselves? By ratcheting up the ambition even further, and with it the risk.

Run the Jewels had been many things on their first two records; angry, funny, aggressive, stoned. Introspective was rarely one of those things. On RTJ3, the duo turn their focus inward, exploring feelings, emotions, and motivations as they apply to the external world in a manner they had never done previously. They also continue to make hilarious dick jokes.

The first and last four tracks are the best work they’ve ever done, the bookends especially. I didn’t appreciate just how great “Down” is until seeing the group close a couple live sets with it. The friends with whom I saw those shows and I were confused by that choice, but it caused us, or me at least, to listen to the song differently, to consider it as the type of song to close a set. Turns out, the choice was a great one. This band has become a band about hope manifested as anger and action, and no track conveys that notion better than “Down,” no RTJ album does it better than their third.

2 Turn Out the Lights Julien Baker Julien Baker creates stadium soundscapes using only a clean electric guitar and/or piano filtered through looping pedals. Many artists try this and fail. Especially in a live setting, it’s a cynical trick often deployed to impress perceived plebes, as I’ve seen Ed Sheerhan and, sadly, Elvis Costello, do in person. But for Julien Baker it is not a trick. It is seamless, unnoticeable; technical mastery not for its own sake, for impressing an audience, but for empowering expressions of deep feeling.

Turn Out the Lights is so much more than its production and arrangements, however. Baker is one of the most talented living writers, singers, and performers. Her percussion-less, entirely solo arrangements exist only to serve the themes of her songs. She’s one woman, onstage or on record, alone with the power of a full orchestra as she looses her interior on the world, her battles with addiction and depression, her fight to square an existence as a Christian and queer person, and her longing search for love and meaning through it all, the constant quest to hurt less.

1 After the Party The Menzingers If this were a list of “best” rather than “favorite” albums of the year, After the Party would be much lower, possibly not even included. There’s nothing innovative or original happening here, nothing generation-defining, no new ideas or calls to revolution. But there is an endless well of energy, feeling, and hyper-competent rock musicianship. The Menzingers have one of the most able rhythm sections working, serving the songs of two extraordinary writers, who seem incapable of picking up guitars without creating stadium punk hooks as indelibly catchy as they are heavy. This is smart, pure, meat-and-potatoes rock music, the meatiest and starchiest.

Beyond the wholly satisfying drive and force of the band on a primal musical level, these dudes have a real working-class, post-religious Midwestern mentality, despite hailing a little too far east to fully qualify. Many of these songs deal with how to gracefully age and settle while maintaining an uncommon resistance to traditional values. It should come as no surprise how strongly I relate. Earlier I mentioned Japandroids, how their initial records depicted the romance of early-20s debauchery and intense friendship. The true triumph of After the Party is how the The Menzingers manage to write about moving forward, building lives with partners, embracing careers and domesticity while also looking back fondly at bygone wild days without romanticizing them, fully owning that a calmer life is a better one, but allowing that the past was pretty damn fun.

After the Party may not become a timeless classic like other records on this list might, but this year it was the album to which I connected most. It was, and is, mine.

A Few of My Favorite Songs of 2017

8/7 “Truth Hurts”/“Water Me” Lizzo Lizzo should be a huge star. She’s like André 3000 good. She’s my Beyoncé.

Including these songs here is like an honorary Favorite Album spot. I listened to the two singles back-to-back more times than I did most albums this year. Lizzo has talent in excess of her excess of confidence and swagger.

Music journalists could not shut up about the two times Rihanna rapped on record this year, a little on the Kendrick album and on the only good 45 seconds of the N.E.R.D. album. Both instances earned effusive and universal praise. It bothers me that Lizzo doesn’t get that type of attention. She raps, sings, and writes far better than Rihanna, better than most pop stars working, really, and she often does it all in the same song, the same line.

“Truth Hurts” is a total kiss-off rap banger, insidiously catchy as it deconstructs and rebuilds the chorus of “Black Beatles” into something much better and exponentially more driving than its lugubrious origin. “Water Me” is an aggressive funk jam that Lizzo goes nuts over, showing off the full range of her voice, trying about a hundred different modulations and weird ideas. They all work, and together form some truly transcendent pop.

Check out her older stuff too, including a couple unlikely collaborations with Sadie Dupois from Speedy Ortiz (!) for my punk friends.

7 “What Can I Do If the Fire Goes Out?” Gang of Youths This isn’t another “Younger Us,” a song that so fully represents a period of my life that the opening chords still sometimes have the power to make me tear up. But it does take me be back to another time, and moves me in a similar way to the Japandroids classic. I haven’t told many people about this, but though I didn’t openly quit the church until a few months after graduating high school, I had struggled to maintain faith for a few years, even while playing in a devoutly evangelical Christian rock band.

“What Can I Do If the Fire Goes Out?” takes me back to a specific morning, a bone-cold, see-your-breath morning, driving to school my sophomore or junior year, listening to the first song from the second Spoken album and weeping at the lyrics’ longing prayer for help and guidance. In hindsight, Spoken made objectively bad music; comically derivative and poorly-structured. Throughout the Gang of Youths album, and especially on “Fire,” similar sentiments are explored and depicted more articulately, with far superior musical acumen. I’ll never believe again, but it’s nice to be made to have those feelings again, to experience unforced sympathy for another’s spiritual struggle.

6 “Right Now” Haim See the last paragraph of the Haim album entry above.

5 “Even” Julien Baker Julien at her most simple, most distilled, uncharacteristically just 4/4 quarter-note strumming an acoustic guitar, showing us that her layered productions would be nothing without the powerful songs beneath them. And what a song, karmic allusions and memories of conflicts.

It's not that I think I'm good I know that I'm evil I guess I was trying to even it out

Yeesh.

4 “Supercut” Lorde That word, and its power. Until recently no expression or single word existed to describe that wistful wash of isolated, curated romantic memories, warm-tinted flashes of the loveliest tiny moments of a lost relationship, ignoring fights and infidelities, only seeing sunshine. The good parts. And knowing its nature, indulging it with caution, recalling fondly and reliving without desire to return or recreate. “Supercut” could not have existed at any other time, on any other album, by any other artist. Lorde took the most modern of language and forged a work of art of crushing emotional truth; timeless, indelible, perfect.

3 “HUMBLE.” Kendrick Lamar I saw Kendrick play his first ever solo headlining arena show in his hometown. When it came time for “HUMBLE.”, the music dropped out after the initial “Hyeuh, hyeuh!,” and Kendrick let the crowd rap the entire song acapella while he just gazed around, observing in awe. The moment was magic.

2 “If We Were Vampires” Jason Isbell I’ll be honest. I don’t know how to write about this one without getting inappropriately personal. It’s been a hard year for me in certain relevant ways, and this incredible song has not helped matters.

1 “God in Chicago” Craig Finn The adjective “cinematic” doesn’t do justice to “God in Chicago,” which, despite lasting a mere four minutes and forty-five seconds, and not being cinema, is one of the best films of the year, a devastating, seedy road trip romance with a tight plot, loveable flawed characters, and an ambiguous ending. Craig Finn fronts my favorite band of over a decade, and yet this is the best thing he’s ever done. Every detail matters, every word and phrase considered and intentional. It’s Craig’s “Chelsea Hotel No 2,” a quiet meditation towering over an oeuvre of louder, more sensational and populist work. I love this man.

Appendices

I. Albums I enjoyed and/or listened to often but did not become favorites for whatever reasons Allison Crutchfield, Tourist in this Town Arcade Fire, Everything Now Big Thief, Capacity Broken Social Scene, Hug of Thunder Bully, Losing Charly Bliss, Guppy Cloud Nothings, Life Without Sound The Dirty Nil, Minimum R&B Drake, More Life Fat Joe/Remy Ma, Plata O Plomo Father John Misty, Pure Comedy Feist, Pleasure Craig Finn, We All Want the Same Things Japanese Breakfast, Soft Sounds from Another Planet Jay-Z, 4:44 Jens Lenkman, Life Will See You Now LCD Soundsystem, American Dream Migos, Culture The National, Sleep Well Beast Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, The French Press Ryan Adams, Prisoner Sampha, Process Sylvan Esso, What Now Tigers Jaw, spin The War on Drugs, A Deeper Understanding Waxahatchee, Out of the Storm Wolf Parade, Cry Cry Cry Worriers, Survival Pop Yaeji, EP2 Yr Poetry, One Night Alive

II. Albums with which I was simply unable to spend enough time So many. Basically any album on any list covered on this site—the ultimate resource for end-of-year music dorkery--that I didn’t mention in my document I would have at least given a cursory try. That’s my normal process. There just wasn’t time.

III. A vain attempt to string together some final thoughts I’m exhausted, too exhausted to force a cute unified narrative onto my experiences with music this year beyond what I already have. As for the future… I’m excited, in a different way than normal. I don’t know what’s coming out next year. I haven’t done the requisite research. I’m into the idea of just letting it happen, letting New Music Fridays reveal themselves week-to-week.

Haha, just kidding. As soon as I post this I’m jumping in headfirst, making a 2018 Most Anticipated List. Sayonara suckers.

[tgaoe]

Andy’s 2017 Television Report

I love watching good TV. I still feel there’s a stigma associated with watching as much as I do, but I’m trying to own it. I love TV. I would much rather watch an old West Wing ep than go on a hike or do basically anything outdoorsy. So there that is. And here is an exhaustive list of everything I watched this year.

Not Enough Time and/or Motivation to Watch/Finish Ranked by Level of Intention to Watch/Finish

10. The Vietnam War 9. Godless 8. The Young Pope S1 7. The Handmaid’s Tale S1 6. Search Party S2 5. Rick & Morty S3 4. Halt and Catch Fire S4 3. You’re the Worst S4 2. Better Things S2 1. Broad City S4

Disappointing/Bad The Americans S5 Starts strong, has some nice character development, but the main story was inconsequential and frustrating, as were several side stories.

Preacher S2 Has cool moments and I still love the three leads, but the main plot left me cold. Not even close to as good as the debut season.

Sherlock S4 Stupid and infuriating.

Seasons I Liked, Ranked by Favoritism 32 Curb Your Enthusiasm S8 Same old show, wearing a little thin but still enjoyable.

31 I Love Dick Obtuse, intentionally discomfiting, wonderfully acted; Kathryn Hahn is a goddess.

30 Stranger Things S2 A fun time and not much more, which is fine.

29 Veep S6 Somehow exactly the same cruel, cynical show despite a somewhat significant premise shift.

28 Silicon Valley S4 More of the same. Not sure how much longer this show can sustain the whole “awkward tech bros overcoming impossible odds” premise. Hoping for some risks next season.

27 Vice Principals S2 A hilarious, surprisingly emotional comedy that will always be stuck in the shadow of its predecessor.

26 Love S2 Rock solid cast, writing with a nice balance of comedy, drama, and romance.

25 Bojack Horseman S4 I like this show less than everyone else who likes it, feels like. Still, no other televised depiction of depression rings truer, and remains funny without making light of serious mental illness.

24 Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp Manic, inspired inanity.

23 Brooklyn Nine Nine S4/S5 Comfort food. Love everyone on the show. Every episode is the same and always will be and who cares.

22 Legion S1 In a year that hadn’t also included Twin Peaks: the Return, this would have ranked much higher for its crazy formalist experimentation, dazzling visual style, and sustained weirdness. Wish it had been more character-focused, and I hated the coda. Almost dreading season two.

21 Easy S2 Warm, human, real. Love the whole notion of a serialized anthology.

20 GLOW S1 Spending time with these characters just feels great, even when they’re behaving awfully. It’s the kind of show the predictability of which is a positive.

19 Big Little Lies S1 Reese Witherspoon projectile vomits pure green goop in this show. It rules.

18 Crashing S1 You love Pete or you don’t. I love him, have for years. The show is just more Pete.

17 The Good Place S1/S2 Quite possibly the most imaginative, innovate half-hour sitcom of all time; inspires equal investment in the characters and the ever-expanding mythology and mysteries, which is quite a feat.

16 Top of the Lake: China Girl Full review.

15 Fargo S3 By far the weakest season of the show, yet still one of the year’s best. Willfully disgusting and perhaps a bit too writerly, the last few episodes redeem some early rambling and formlessness. Ewan McGregor was not great in his role(s), and Carrie Coon’s performance was done a disservice by her appearing here and in The Leftovers simultaneously. But Mary Elizabeth Winstead and David Thewlis kill.

14 Ozark S1 Every 2-3 episodes contain enough plot for a full season of most other shows. It is wild. Characters at once inhabit archetypes and subvert them. I love how the main means of circumventing trouble is simply telling the truth.

13 One Mississippi S2 The best pure romance story on TV this year.

12 Future Man S1 Starts rough, slowly gets great. Consummately derivative sci-fi comedy. Couldn’t love it more.

11 Mindhunter S1 Spent most of the season deciding whether Jonathan Groff is terrible or magnificent here. Landed on magnificent, for the way he oscillates between ego states in response to story turns, negotiating his perceptions of both the concept of deviance and his sense of his own masculinity.

10 Dear White People S1 The number of characters this show balances is a miracle, and how it engenders empathy for all parties while maintaining its slick, ultracool visual style and exploring sensitive themes with the utmost nuance.

9 Mr. Robot S3 A vast improvement after the letdown of season two. Takes some weird risks that attempt retrofit current events into the show’s 2015 setting, and while not all of them work, the ones that do pay off massively. Plot mechanics are secondary to atmosphere, character, and theme. The cast is great as ever, and this year Bobby Cannavale joins the fray, which is never a bad idea.

8 Insecure S2 Continues to use top-notch production values and writing to explore lifestyles and perspectives previously ghettoized on TV, relegated to peripheral channels and the lowest of low budgets. Issa Rae’s performance is reliably loveable despite her character’s constant questionable decisions, but Yvonne Orji truly makes the show. Somebody cast her and Tiffany Haddish in something together asap.

7 Better Call Saul S3 Slow, methodical, pulpy, consistent. Another solid season of intricate, character-driven puzzle-piece storytelling.

6 American Vandal S1 The funniest entertainment of any type I consumed all year, and surprisingly thematically resonant as it progresses toward its conclusion.

5 Master of None S2 As funny, romantic, and charming as its creator. Tackles some surprisingly heavy subjects, has gained significant poignancy after cultural shifts that came later in the year.

4 The Deuce S1 An even seedier iteration of David Simon’s expansive storytelling style than The Wire, the period details of this show are casually perfect; unshowy and lived in. The Deuce convinced me that James Franco is one of our greatest living actors, on the level of someone like De Niro in his prime. Franco plays twins, and though they look and sound exactly alike, his slightly varied physicality always makes it clear who each is.

3 The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel S1 Such fun. A romantically stylized 1950s New York period piece starring a woman who should be, and might yet become, our biggest movie star. Nicely balances light comedy and light drama. Watching feels like cuddling up in a warm blanket.

2 Twin Peaks: the Return Mystifying, hilarious, infuriating, horrifying, wonderful.

1 The Leftovers S3 Not just the best season of television this year, but one of the greatest of all time. I have never been more satisfied by a finale. I refuse to write more lest I spoil anything. If you have not watched this show, watch it. The first season is flawed and difficult. The second is perfect, and so is the third. If this show’s premise even remotely appeals to you, watch it.

Favorite Episodes 12 “Amber Waves” The Americans S5E1 Bold start to an ultimately weak season. Features a ten-minute sequence during which a group of characters silently and methodically dig a hole, and somehow it is almost impossibly dramatic and exciting to watch. Here’s hoping the show picks up again for its final season next year.

11 “Chicanery” Better Call Saul S3E5 A courtroom episode rife with familial drama and series history exploited to maximum effect.

10 “Prodigal Daughter” Easy S2E6 A small, deeply humanist story of a high school girl discovering what she values, and how she wants to manifest those values. Lovely.

9 “Chapter V” Dear White People S1E5 Builds tension to a fever pitch using dialogue, editing, and camera techniques  downright orchestral. Directed by Barry Jenkins, of Moonlight fame.

8 “Part 8” Twin Peaks: the Return Several professional writers called this David’s Lynch’s Tree of Life, and I can’t describe it more succinctly than that. Lynch traces the origin of evil in his universe in a way no person who ever lived would except him.

7 “Who Rules the Land of Denial?” Fargo S3E8 For the bowling alley scene alone.

6 “eps3.4_runtime-err0r.r00” Mr. Robot S3E5 A bravura, (faked) single-take episode that brilliantly uses transit time to build tension.

5 “eps3.7_dont-delete-me.ko” Mr. Robot S3E8 The opposite of bravura; Elliot walks around with a young boy for most of the episode, and it is even more kinetic and exciting than the one with the single take.

4 “Amarsi Un Po'”/“Buona Notte” Master of None S2E9/E10 Heartbreaking. Aziz Ansari’s tribute to the Before Trilogy, and, let’s be honest, the Elevator arc from Louie, is brutal in its exposure of emotional truth. The chemistry between the leads makes the whole thing work.

3 “Part 18” Twin Peaks: the Return The finale. Mystifying, infuriating, horrifying, wonderful. Decidedly not hilarious.

2 “Thanksgiving” Master of None S2E8 A deeply-moving short film exposing a type of hardship so specific that I’d never seen it depicted before. The ways Ansari marks the passage of time throughout this story… just astounding.

1 “The Book of Nora” The Leftovers S3E8 Perfect. There is a monologue here with more story and gravitas than entire seasons of other shows, great ones. Watch The Leftovers.

[tgaoe]

Graveyard of Good Times, by BRANDON CAN'T DANCE

16 track album

All week I had been anticipating waking up early this morning to listen to I See You, the new record from The xx, indie rock’s foremost purveyors of sexy medium-jams. I’d had high hopes despite that I had not cared for their sophomore album due to how it lacked the lyrical specificity of their first. I See You has the same issue, but is partially redeemed by lush, expansive production and three monster songs, all of which might as well be Jamie xx tracks with featured vocalists. In short, a minor disappointment, but unsurprising.

This morning did hold a nice surprise though! I’d heard a few tracks from Brandon Can’t Dance leading up to this album, enjoyed them all, nothing revelatory but weird and fun. Put on Graveyard of Good Times on a whim after The xx ended and whoa, it knocked me out. Been listening all morning. This is wild, adventurous music written, performed, and produced by one guy who manically blends and transitions between styles and genres that shouldn’t make sense together, but he does it all so casually and quickly that everything coheres into this weird and energetic and crazy and invigorating amalgam. Inspired sequencing and the warm, rich DIY production unite all the disparate elements into a dirty messy lovely whole. Songs have barely started when they end and another explodes into being. I can’t think of another album that reminded me of such a wide array of other bands, like Best Coast, Bowie, Car Seat Headrest, Disclosure, MBV, Grandaddy, every sensitive singer/songwriter, How to Dress Well… so many more, and all at once. It’s so much to process and processing it is so much fun. And it’s all introspective and emotional and celebratory and despairing, youthful and weary... take the trip.

[tgaoe]

Andy Karr’s Favorite Music of 2016

Preface For the third year in a row I was unable to sleep more than four hours each night between Thanksgiving and Christmas. This erstwhile frustrating scenario this year revealed itself as a privilege, a boon to my quality of life. I spent those many hours lying in bed listening to music. Just listening. I became intimate with songs and albums in a way I hadn’t in many years, since the days when I was unconsciously irresponsible, blissfully unaware how valuable time was, before the circumstances of my life rendered it a commodity. That’s not to say I hadn’t already spent thousands of hours listening in 2016. I remain an incurably obsessive-compulsive consumer of most media. However, when listening to music, the act itself was rarely my primary concern anymore. The majority of my consumption consisted of frivolous pop, sonically-rich pablum ideal for running, working out, doing chores, calculating grades; passive experiences. With that mindset I’d already begun composing this list prior to the onset of my seasonal sleeplessness. That collection of albums did not closely resemble the one below. Only two of those frivolous pop albums remain. Understand this, though: with a few exceptions, I had already heard the records listed here, in some cases ad nauseum. I just hadn’t listened to them properly, given them the attention they deserved, demanded. Lying in bed with no other focus or objective was a revelation, an opportunity to actively experience the work of these artists just as they had intended. My three favorites emerged as such despite that I’d listened to each immediately upon release and returned to them throughout the year. The lesson: focused qualitative listening fosters appreciation in a manner impossible for any accumulated quantity of passive listening. If I have a resolution for next year, it’s to consciously engage in more of the former, in addition to the latter. Preamble I Why 21 albums? Because that’s how many favorites I had this year. I liked many more, and, don’t worry, a list of those will be foisted upon you as well. II I am obsessed with my #1 to the extent that reading countless interviews with its creator(s) led me to discover other artists whose recent records also made it on the list. You know, the way people used to find new music before curated playlists and blogs and lists like this one. It also made me enjoy another of my previous favorites much less. I will elaborate. III 2016 saw a refreshing dearth of releases by legacy acts, which allowed for some relatively unknown artists to make a stronger impression than they would have in most other years. An extraordinary number of new bands made vital, lasting art this year, and hopefully that’s represented on this list. I confidently predict that several of the newcomers will themselves have become festival-dominating legacy acts by the decade’s end. IV Forgive me if I assume whoever reads this possesses a certain level of familiarity with contemporary music culture. The writing just flows better that way. Also please forgive the pretense that anyone would want to read this. - My Favorite Albums of 2016 21 Margaret Glaspy Emotions & Math The opening song, the eponymous “Emotions & Math,” is so good that it shadows the strength of the rest of the album, a growling, twangy rocker with knotty, slinky guitar work and vocals somehow both tender and fierce.  20 Kamaiyah A Good Night in the Ghetto Kamaiyah should and will be a star, at least if watching her succeed is as much fun as watching her strive. Besides being a breezy, summery blast, this album subverts the misogynistic tendencies of its genre. Kamaiyah brags about playing dudes, dismissing them in the same manner those same kinds of dudes often dismiss women in their songs. Unlike those dudes, though, Kamaiyah is also interested in finding a long-term partner… preferably a freaky freak. She’s sensitive, introspective, and vulnerable, yet confident, hardened, and street-tough as well, all over smooth tropicalia-inflected g-funk beats perfectly suited to her voice and flow. I don’t really cruise around bumping in my 2003 Chevy Cavalier, but if I did, this would be the perfect soundtrack. 19 Nick Jonas Last Year Was Complicated A silly Dum Dum Pop of an album, fun and sexy despite its enormous, vapid stupidity. This is profane EDM-pop as the bluntest of instruments, the closest analog being Justin Bieber’s far-more-adventurous Purpose from last year. But, while Purpose had higher highs, it also had much lower lows, suffering from bloat and an inexplicable self-seriousness. Conversely, Complicated revels in its own frivolity. God, it’s so much fun. But how? Who thought it was a good idea to sing the words “Bacon” and “Chainsaw” in earnest, let use them as song titles? And how are those songs still so good? Like most contemporary dance-pop, this album was written by a mysterious Scandinavian cabal. Surely as seasoned pros they know this stuff just begs for ridicule? Or maybe there’s a language barrier, they’re oblivious, and that’s why it works? But 4real tho, “Close” is like the sexiest sex jam white people made this year. And that video jeeeeez I’m sweating just thinking about it. 18 Cymbals Eat Guitars Pretty Years Their fourth consecutive effort that emanates the band’s potential to make a Great Record without actually being one itself. Pretty Years isn’t CEG’s masterpiece, but it gets so frustratingly close. The first time I listened to the three opening songs they conjured relief and elation that yes, this is it, they finally did it. Each of those songs is excellent and better than the last, culminating with “Wish,” probably the year’s best indie rock song with its driving almost-funk beat, weirdass a-melodic saxophone, and songwriter Joseph D’Agostino’s gutpunch recounting of a tense bond between siblings. But then comes “Close” with all its Flaming Lips wankery and the album plummets back down to Earth, never able to return to the stratosphere despite the presence of several more good songs. They’re sequenced strangely though, almost arbitrarily; the pace is jarring and the album never coheres into anything resembling a whole, even despite some strong lyrical motifs and connections. It still kinda rules, though. 17 Roosevelt Roosevelt Derivative in its entirety, in the best way, Roosevelt sounds like every dance party I attended between 2005 and 2010. Nobody’s making this type of laser-focused, glossy dance record anymore. Hear the sunshine synths and clean vocals of Cut Copy, hard live drums of !!!, structural surprises and fussed-over timbres of LCD Soundsystem, and the occasional atmospheric flourish of Phoenix at their most dreamy, but with a little less personality than those inspirations. The album doesn’t truly take off and justify its own existence until its second half, with the aggressive drive of “Colours”--basically a rewrite of “Reflektor” by way of LCD’s “Yeah”--and the dynamic euphoria of “Daytona” leading into “Fever.” Can’t believe this whole album is the work of one person. 16 Vic Mensa There's a Lot Going On Back in March of 2013, Dan and I saw Vic Mensa play through a cheap, blown-out PA in an underlit garage with a low stage and concrete floor at a corporate-sponsored SXSW show. It was weird. Small rap shows are notorious for indecipherable vocals, but at this one the music was also indecipherable, just a nasty blast of sound so loud it almost had a physical presence in the room. To make matters worse, members of the small, sweaty, variously-inebriated crowd moshed like they’d snuck out their parents’ to attend the 1998 Family Values Tour. And yet, despite everything, it was fun. Vic Mensa had a manic charisma that nullified all else. Couldn’t take my eyes off him. I’m not attempting to imply that I was some kind of rap Nostradamus, but there was definitely something undeniably special about the kid onstage. Apparently Vic had a tumultuous few years after that. He was signed to a major label before we saw him three years ago, and yet There’s a Lot Going On is his debut album. We don’t have to speculate as to what happened though, because Vic lays out the entire timeline on the title track, a six-minute tour-de-force that closes the EP and chronicles the trials and travails of a young prodigy who won fame, money, and, most importantly, access to drugs before he had the maturity to productively navigate those circumstances.  Mensa is a great storyteller with an extraordinarily articulate flow, at his best when rapping with conviction as on the incredible, furiously political “16 Shots.” I’m not familiar with Papi Beats, the album’s primary producer, but he expertly uses Vic’s voice to build a cohesive, coherent album here. Can’t wait to see what this guy’s future holds. I truly hope he can keep it together.

15 Swet Shop Boys Cashmere Sort of like a bi-continental Run the Jewels, the songs live up to the supergroup’s clever, pointed name. Mostly they vaunt, hilariously, but Riz and HEEMS also tackle serious topics intelligently, with a seering balance of anger and humor. They depict the travails of living as a brown person in the first world, facing constant profiling and suspicion even despite having achieved certain degrees of fame and known-ness. Both men can compose knockout quatrains and couplets, and their distinct styles complement each other. The layered production provided by Redinho, an official member of the group, subtly incorporates instrumentation originating from the emcees’ Indian and Pakistani heritages, fusing them with contemporary wall-of-sound blast-rap beats. The result is both familiar and unlike anything I’ve heard before. 14 Okkervil River Away A hard one for me to evaluate critically. Okkervil River was one of my favorite bands for many years. If I were to compose a 100 All-Time Favorite Albums list, the first five Okkervil records would be in contention, and Black Sheep Boy would almost certainly make the top 20. Seeing Okkervil River play Schuba’s in Chicago on August 2nd, 2008 may be the best show I’ve ever seen (I mean, just look at this setlist, a dream, and Will told a bunch of great, raw stories, which he never does anymore.) So yeah, this is all to say that I love this band. But here’s a dirty secret: I haven’t appreciated their last two albums, like, at all. It’s due to the cold, dull overproduction more than anything, but that’s another long essay unto itself. Away is barely an Okkervil River album, as Will Sheff is the only member present from previous releases, but it’s one that finally lives up to the precedent set by that early run of excellent records. Sheff’s voice is high in the mix above ethereal acoustic dreamscapes, impeccably arranged and performed by studio pros rather than the barroom bashers that formerly comprised the band. Away sometimes reminds me of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, full of sprawling songs that glow with warmth and find meaning in insistent repetition. Sheff’s lyrics are… almost as good as they’ve ever been (he used to have more fun); as always hyper-literary and labyrinthine in their density. It’s nice to have him back, or at least doing great work again.

13 Car Seat Headrest Teens of Denial I liked this album less after re-discovering and connecting with my #1. To be clear, I still love this album, or at least really like it. The songwriting is smart, catchy, funny, and sad, the lo-fi sonics warm and inviting. However, listening to my #1 illuminated the extent to which Will Toledo’s approach to his lyrical concerns is perhaps a bit too self-pitying, and definitely ultimately unconcerned with experiences outside his own. That’s not in any way intended as a negative criticism. I’m just in a place in which I prefer more empathy from my sad white boy singers. And come on, let’s face it. There are some unmemorable tracks on here, and it peters out toward the end. Why isn’t “The Ballad of Costa Concordia” the closer? I still love this album, I swear (he wrote, trying to convince himself)! 12 Kanye West The Life of Pablo My one-year-old nephew has a plush penguin named Pablo, which he will intently grab and hug. Sometimes he will kind of lightly dive onto the carpet, using the penguin to cushion the fall, and then he’ll cuddle it and visibly and aurally express delight at the feeling of plush on his cheek. Watching this makes me deliriously happy. 11 Frankie Cosmos Next Thing My #1 pick mentioned this album as a favorite in multiple interviews. Naturally, I checked it out and loved it. The emotional content resonates with me in much the same way that of my #1 does, so I’ll elaborate on that later. However, Next Thing is much different musically. On first listen these songs seem simple. Drums, bass, guitar, vocals, recorded tight and clean. Listening closely though reveals devoutly intentional composition similar to bands like The Strokes or Queens of the Stone Age, every strum, pluck, and hit purely intentional, fully considered and arranged. Greta Cline’s voice, unassuming at first, has a soft precision as she intimates highly detailed and specific stories about her friends and acquaintances, her relationships with them and theirs with each other. She does these brief modulations that emphasize certain syllables and/or melodic moments. It’s all shimmering and lovely. 10 Kendrick Lamar untitled unmastered. I don’t buy the dismissive narrative surrounding this release, that it’s “just” a collection of demos for songs that didn’t make the cut for last year’s consensus best album, the 80-minute opus To Pimp a Butterfly. You don’t perform demos on late-night shows, let alone the Grammys. These songs are fully-realized finished works. They may not have titles, but they’re mastered, well, and immaculately sequenced. And they’re so good. untitled unmastered. has its own sonic and thematic motifs separate from TPAB. This an EP, a great one, a major one. All hail K-Dot, bar-for-bar the greatest rapper alive. 9 Bruno Mars 24K Magic In our unfortunate era of blockbuster pop records intentionally overloaded to maximize streaming plays and thus heighten chart placement, 24K Magic is a work of refreshing brevity. Each of its nine tracks is a totally fleshed-out full-band 80s funk banger; silly, assured, braggadocious, and carefree to the core. F-U-N. Attention Views, Starboy, Malibu, Atrocity Exhibition, Gucci Mane, and The Colour in Everything: this is how you do it. Also, Bruno Mars really loves butts. His obsession makes Sir Mix-a-Lot look like a hobbyist. 8 Mitski Puberty 2 Mitski commits. To weird sounds, to musical idiosyncrasy, to openness, to truth, to the full, affirming exposure of her warm, sinister, gross, confused, glorious humanity. She commits to extended metaphors, like the premises of “Happy” and “I Bet on Losing Dogs,” personifying an emotion and imagining herself spectating dogfights. She tells stories in which no one comes out looking good, in which how people look doesn’t matter. On a base level Puberty 2 is viscerally thrilling, awash with hot waves of fuzz. Mitski mines the past three decades of indie rock for inspiration, following diverging paths which lead only to more diverging paths. You can hear Pavement, My Bloody Valentine, That dog., QOTSA, and many others filtered through Mitski’s resolutely DIY aesthetic and flown above by her hypnotic-demonic lullaby voice. Puberty 2 simply sounds amazing. On a deeper level, the knowing embodiment of established tropes serves to deconstruct and criticize them. Capital-I, Capital-R Indie Rock, while usually innately progressive in its inherent rebellious inclusivity, is, with a few exceptions, a bastion of white male normativity. Mitski, neither white nor male, inhabits this space as a means to explore her relationship with it, her place in the subculture and the nature of its gaze upon her. This is something like the girl from “Across the Sea” having grown up, having become a woman, angry and confounded, publicly wondering exactly why it was acceptable for a creepy older white man to sing about her so longingly. Puberty 2 also benefits from ingenious sequencing. Mitski wisely places the city-leveling blog-bait monster-jam that is “Your Best American Girl” in the record’s middle rather than succumbing to the streaming-era pitfall of opening the album with its ostensible best song (see Margaret Glaspy above). Now, while that allows initial listeners to appreciate the weirder preceding songs for what they are, perhaps the greatest sequencing decision was to follow “American Girl” with the album’s actual best song and crowning achievement, “I Bet on Losing Dogs,” a stomach-churning slow-burner destined to haunt psyches for years to come. *note* This is the album with which I connected latest of all mentioned here. It’s the Heatseeker entry, having moved from #19 to #15 to #11 to its current position over the week it took to assemble the list. Guessing we have a future classic on our hands. 7 Radiohead A Moon Shaped Pool Consummately minor. The band’s weakest record since Hail to the Thief for sure, yet somehow much better than what it is: essentially a career-spanning purge of b-sides added to an EP’s worth of new tracks. On those songs in particular it’s refreshing to hear Thom Yorke so openly emotional in his lyrics. However, sadly, unlike all previous Radiohead albums, A Moon Shaped Pool’s parts are disparate, never cohering into an overall sonic or thematic statement. Despite that, and despite feeling a little bloated even at only 11 tracks, there are no bad songs, and some are absolute jams. I’ll be buying the $100 ticket to see them again next summer just to experience live the moment when the drums, bass, and piano suddenly lock into that groove on “Deck’s Dark,” (around 3:23, not that I’ve listened to that specific moment over and over or anything.) 6 Leonard Cohen You Want It Darker Far more than just another solid album from a reliable workman. If there’s another plane of existence then I suspect Leonard Cohen somehow glimpsed it. Either that or he was a benevolent visitor to this one. The title track alone should suffice as evidence, but every song here is lovely, and some are transcendent. “If I Didn’t Have Your Love” is at once a gorgeous, instantly-canonical love song and a meditation on polarity, on the brutal balance inherent to a life on this planet, the way opposites define each other, pleasure and pain, beauty and ugliness, creation and apocalypse. 5 Chance the Rapper Coloring Book On which Chance the Chameleon out-Kanyes Kanye, out-2 Chainzs 2 Chainz, out-Futures Future. On which Chance the Druggy Burnout surprised everyone by transforming into Chance the Preacher. On which Chance the Goofball became Chance the Bright-Burning White-Hot Hope-Supernova we didn’t know we needed, and now we need more than ever. “On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;   No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet   To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet.” -Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Meanwhile, all the way over on the other end of the rap spectrum... 4 YG Still Brazy On “Twist My Fingaz,” YG boldly proclaims himself, “the only one who made it out the West without Dre.” While that may be true w/r/t YG’s i/r/l business dealings, musically it’s an absurd falsehood, and part of what makes this album such a monolithic behemoth. Still Brazy is the most recent culmination of G-Funk, the genre pioneered in part by Dr. Dre a quarter-century ago. YG and his small army of producers create a high-res synthesis of all G-funk tropes, both musical and lyrical, including all the complicated morality that implies. YG has a gift for macro-worldbuilding through accumulated depictions of micro-situations. He’ll quickly establish a song’s scenario and then just live in it. For most of the album YG’s storytelling oscillates in tone between paranoia, vaunting, and irreverent hilarity, which is usually genuinely funny, though it’s hard to forgive the gross, misogynistic “She Wish She Was,” which, despite epitomizing typical G-funk subject matter, deserves every feminist criticism leveled against it. However, for the last three tracks YG drops all the humor, gets conscientious and pissed, and effectively cements both his and the album’s legacy. “FDT,” “Blacks & Browns,” and “Police Get Away with Murder” build up an anger so downright nuclear it could incite riots… and has. So, while I love Chance’s commitment to childlike love and hope and all that, YG’s response to our country in its current state seems more appropriate to me. He’s the one I listened to as I voted, and he’s the one I’ll put on when I need motivation to keep my head up over the next four years. “your anger is a gift” -ZDL, RATM, “Freedom” 3 Touché Amoré Stage Four The elusively-defined “emo” genre evolved from “emotional hardcore,” itself an evolution from “hardcore.” Emotional hardcore emerged when kids began to use the abrasive, clangorous, primal musicality of hardcore to share personal stories and express feelings rather than espouse the naïve political dialectics of youth. We all know what happened after that. In reality the emo designation became illusory, but for most it’s synonymous with nasally, whiney young white men, thoroughly emasculated and begging strangers for pity. Emo in that form is mostly harmless, often embarrassing, and occasionally transcendent. Sadly, after the wild commercial success of emo around the turn-of-the-millennium, the pure aesthetic of emotional hardcore was forced to the fringes, where for the last couple decades only a few brave bands have carried the torch.* Most music like this doesn’t work for me, and hasn’t since I was a teenager. You might assume it’s the abrasive timbre, but no. I dig heavy music when the heaviness is justified. That just usually isn’t the case. Most frequently the lyrical subject matter doesn’t warrant all the clangor and commotion, all the blood-curdling broken-glass hollering. So many songs in this genre are about strains of anxiety and isolation that in most cases could be solved by leaving the house and being friendlier to people. It’s usually music by young white men, for young white men, and, while I’m still white, I’m no longer that young a man. If you’re going to scream and raise a holy racket, have a good reason. Touché Amoré’s Stage Four is the apotheosis of emotional hardcore. It’s the purest powder. Singer/lyricist Jeremy Bolm is a 33-year-old whose mother died of cancer a few years ago. It crushed him. Every song on Stage Four is about that event, how he processed it. The aurally-assaultive form naturally matches the content. It’s not a strong enough statement to say this album accurately conveys grief. This album inhabits grief, is grief. It’s the existential sorrow of loss fully manifested as music. Bolm’s voice is so expressive, so pained, so perfect for its purpose here. He recounts physical and emotional details so hyper-specific and personal that they become universal. Most famously, on “New Halloween,” he lists songs he can no longer listen to after his mother’s death. On “Benediction,” for his chorus Bolm repurposes words from the eponymous ritual sung at his mother’s funeral. On “Water Damaged,” Bolm describes in detail various esoterica of his mother’s kitchen, then makes the implicit explicit with the lines, “I find myself/Focused on the insignificance/Like there will be a revelation that'll make a difference.” Though Bolm’s gifts for lyrical composition and his delivery thereof undoubtedly define this album and provide its distinct power, credit must also go to the band. There’s nothing musically revolutionary here; mostly the players stick to the long-established post-hardcore/punk/rock playbooks; a young Guy Picciotto’s voice wouldn’t be out of place on top of these tracks. However, every song is dynamic and powerful, each with its own musical identity and specially arranged to match Bolm’s ragged self-bloodletting, and ordered in a manner that gives the album a true arc. The phases of grief are fluid, not sequential. Over time one might achieve a sense of acceptance and sleep well, only to wake up gobsmacked by convulsive anger once more. The grief cycle never concludes, because it’s not actually a cycle at all, not by nature cyclical. Bolm knows this from experience, offering fleeting moments of clarity but ultimately conveying no resolution or relief. Stage Four is grief. It’s not pretty. It’s not beautiful. It’s ugly, and it’s brutal, but maybe there’s some truer beauty in that. *This is all endlessly fascinating to me. Listen to any song by emo-hc pioneers Rites of Spring, Embrace, or One Last Wish, and then any song by Dashboard Confessional. According to common semantics, it’s all the same genre! There’s a okay book on the subject, though there could and should be a much better one. *note* If you listen to this album, know that most versions include a bonus track at the end called “Gather.” SKIP IT, or, if possible, straight-up delete it. “Gather” is a fine song, but this album very intentionally ends with “Skyscraper,” and not allowing some contemplative silence after that song does a serious disservice to the album as a whole. *another note* For a long time this was my #1, hence the full-length review, but the next two snuck up on me, and I had less to say about them. So it goes. 2 Frank Ocean Blond Frank Ocean’s closest cultural analog probably isn’t an r&b star or queer icon, but rather Bob Dylan. Like Dylan, Frank’s voice is unmistakable, but with it he can fully inhabit any character he chooses, tell whatever story he feels compelled to, and do it with a lyrical style all his own. Both men’s identities are fluid and enigmatic, recalcitrant to external strictures. In fact, with Blond, Frank breaks from the last of his confines: pop tropes, pop structures and melodies. What’s left is pure Frank Ocean, whatever that is, which is whatever he and we want. Blond is a dream. Frank floats along a gorgeous cloudy haze from one story the next through the album, a grower if ever there was one; I initially dismissed Blond as “background music,” but eventually realized that it’s one of the most innovative, fascinating, and richly rewarding albums of the last decade or so. The four year wait was worth it. Any wait would have been. 1 Pinegrove Cardinal An album epitomizing the struggle to be decent in a discouraging world, about empathy as a conscious choice. Songwriter Evan Stephens Hall’s lyrics are equally emotional and poetic, and perfectly suited to his uniquely expressive voice, the timbre of which falls somewhere between those of Jeff Mangum and Max Bemis. The song structures and dynamics follow along those firmly-established indie-auteur lines as well, soaring, driving, grooving, breaking, blooming according the lyrics’ subliminal dictations, but the instrumentation and arrangements couldn’t be more different, most often recalling the most traditionally roots-rocky tracks from the first two Wilco records, or perhaps Emotionalism-era Avett Brothers. But Cardinal is better than all of those. I’m serious. This is a masterpiece. Or maybe it’s just a personal masterpiece. I can’t fully explain it, and maybe that’s why it means so much to me. Maybe it combines all these elements of bands, songs, and sounds that I love and uses them to convey ideas, themes, and… aspirational states of being... that are the most important and meaningful to me right now. I love this album because, despite the evidence of the last 200 or so words, Cardinal doesn’t inspire me to analyze it, to blather on about it like so many of my favorites do. No, Cardinal just makes me feel, and it makes me want to, at all costs, keep growing, and keep feeling. Appendix I Albums I liked very much but didn’t become favorites for whatever reason. “Awaken, My Love!” by Childish Gambino Babes Never Die by Honeyblood Blackstar by David Bowie Blue Wave by Operators The Dream is Over by PUP Foiled Again by Speedy Ortiz Golden Age by Chris Staples Goodness by the Hotelier Heart Like a Levee by Hiss Golden Messenger HEAVN by Jamila Woods Holy Ghost by Modern Baseball I Had a Dream That Your Were Mine by Hamilton + Rostam iii by Miike Snow Lady Wood by Tove Lo Lemonade by Beyoncé Malibu by Anderson .Paak Merry Christmas Lil Mama by Chance the Rapper & Jeremih Nattesferd by Kvelertak Need Your Light by Ra Ra Riot No Grace by Paws Real by Lydia Loveless Romantic by Mannequin Pussy A Seat at the Table by Solange SEPT 5TH by dvsn Singing Saw by Kevin Morby Skin by Flume Slugger by Sad13 Standards by Into It. Over It. Starboy by The Weeknd Turn to Gold by Diarrhea Planet We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service by A Tribe Called Quest Wriggling by Abi Reimold Appendix II Albums with which I was simply unable to spend enough time. 99.9% by Kaytranada Awkward Pop Songs by Jank The Bible 2 by AJJ Big Day in a Small Town by Brandy Clark Cody by Joyce Manor i like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful but so unaware of it by the 1975 Kick at the Dust by PAPA - Love this band but didn’t even know this album had come out until today. Get some new PR people, guys! Light Upon the Lake by Whitney My Best Human Face by Moonface & Sinaii MY WOMAN by Angel Olsen Telefone by Noname WORRY. by Jeff Rosenstock

Appendix III Songs with which I was obsessed this year, in no particular order, and without comment, because I really just don’t have that kind of time. Spotify Playlist! --dash denotes the best of the best *--star-dash denotes the best of the best of the best --"24K Magic” by Bruno Mars “1985″ by Kvelertak “2100″ by Run the Jewels, BOOTS “All Night” by Beyoncé “Black Beatles” by Rae Sremmurd, Gucci Mane *--“Bling Blaww Burr” by Gucci Mane, Young Dolph “CAN’T STOP THE FEELING!” (sic) by Justin Timberlake --“Close” by Nick Jonas, Tove Lo “Cold Water” by Major Lazer, Justin Bieber, MØ --“Cool Girl” by Tove Lo “Crash” by Usher “Elodie” by Ten Fe “Emotions and Math” by Margaret Glaspy *--“FDT” by YG, Nipsey Hustle “Feedback” by Kanye West - initial mix only “Firecracker” by Todd Terje & the Olsens “For Free” by DJ Khaled, Drake --“Formation” by  “Friends” by Francis and the Lights, Bon Iver “Girls @” by Joey Purp, Chance the Rapper “GLOWED UP” by KAYTRANADA, Anderson .Paak “The Half” by DJ Snake, Jeremih, Young Thung, Swizz Beatz “Hallucinations” by dvsn --“I Bet on Losing Dogs” by Mitski --“I Feel It Coming” by the Weeknd, Daft Punk “I Have Been to the Mountain” by Kevin Morby “Into You” by Ariana Grande “Let Me Love You” by Snakeships, Justin Bieber “Let’s Run Away” by Matt & Kim “Love Again” by Keys N Crates, Ouici --“Never Be Like You” by Flume, Kai *--“Ocean Eyes (Astronomyy Edit)” by Billie Eilish, Astronomyy “Perfect Illusion” by Lady Gaga *--“PILLOWTALK” by Zayn “Rabbit Hole” by blink-182 “Real Friends” by Kanye West *--“Really Doe” by Danny Brown, Ab-Soul, Kendrick Lamar, Earl Sweatshirt “Same Drugs” by Chance the Rapper *--“Say It” by Flume, Tove Lo “Show Me Love” by Hundred Waters, Skrillex, Chance the Rapper, Moses Sumney, Robin Hannibal “Shut Up Kiss Me” by Angel Olsen “Technically Single” by Taylor Buono --“There’s a Lot Going On” by Vic Mensa “Ultralight Beam” by Kanye West “Whole Lotta Lovin’” by DJ Mustard, Travis Scott --“Wish” by Cymbals Eat Guitars --“You Want It Darker” by Leonard Cohen --“Your Best American Girl” by Mitski “Zayn Malik” by Swet Shop Boys

Appendix IV Favorite Musical Micro-moments 5 The “Ow!” into the riffage toward the beginning of Kvelertak’s “1985.″ 4 That part on Radiohead’s “Deck’s Dark.” 3 The annunciation and harmony of the phrase “so illogical” on Pinegrove’s “Then Again.” 2 How Gucci Mane pronounces the word “obvious” on “Bling Blaww Burr.” 1 The pure euphoria of that half-second of sustained harmony as the beat drops on the hard-B of “Texas-bama” at the beginning of Beyonce’s “Formation.” Appendix V More thoughts on the nature and influence of legacy acts on this year and the looming one. Let’s define Legacy Acts as major, established, contemporary artists with permanent fame, festival headliner types. In 2016 only five of those put out records: Beyoncé, Radiohead, The Weeknd, Kanye, and Drake. Next year is stacked; basically every other legacy act is scheduled to release an album. LCD Soundsystem, my beloved Japandroids, Run the Jewels, The National, Broken Social Scene, Spoon, St. Vincent, Arcade Fire, the xx, Vampire Weekend, Foxygen, Jason Isbell, the Flaming Lips, QOTSA, fka twigs, Taylor Swift, Earl Sweatshirt, Grizzly Bear, Phoenix, The National and (God help us) more Drake, as well as major sophomore efforts from Lorde, Deafheaven, HAIM, and a few others. And that’s obviously not even counting whatever surprises happen. There are even legitimate rumblings of a new Neutral Milk Hotel record coming in 2017! While I’m excited for all the new material from old favorites, it bums me out a little that there will be that much less time to spend with new artists. 2016 was an amazing year for discovery. Appendix VI Final thought. I’m sick of all the anti-2016 sentiment. This was an incredible year for music, movies, tv, books, art in general. Yes, it does seem that an inordinate number of revered individuals died, and politically our country is a living nightmare, but you know what, people always die too soon, and our country has been fraught with turmoil since its inception. I want to acknowledge those facts, and acknowledge the enormous number of outstanding artistic achievements this year. If this list is effective for anything beyond giving me something to work on over winter break, I hope it’s that.

[tgaoe]

teaching/writing

I began teaching elementary school in in the Fall of 2013. I’m also currently pursuing a Graduate degree. I have little time left for extended writing projects, hence the lack of recent work here. I still post film notes on Letterboxd, so follow that link if you please. I also take on the occasional freelance assignment. Contact me if interested. I’ll make time. 

[tgaoe]

A Year Removed: 2012 Revisited

My 2012 Favorites revised a year later.

[tgaoe]

My 29 Favorite Songs of 2013

I split these into two categories just to try something different. No mp3s this year. Everything’s easy to find. Also, please forgive the uncharacteristically brief and sub-par writing quality. I simply didn't have the time to devote to this that I normally do. 

  Album Songs

Songs I listened to almost exclusively in the context of their albums, songs that feel inextricable from their sources.

  12

“Santa Monica”

by The Front Bottoms

Takes a turn after the first verse and becomes a totally different kind of song.

  “I wanna be stronger than your dad was for your mom.”

  11

“Diane Young”

by Vampire Weekend

The only time I listened to “Diane Young” outside the record was at Abbey and Brant’s wedding reception, where it played to close out the night. The resultant dance frenzy is a memory I’ll always treasure; collars unbuttoned, ties loosened, dressiest dress clothes soaked with sweat, and knowing it was time to say bye to old friends we wouldn’t see again until god knew when. It was a perfect two minutes and forty seconds.

  10

“Man”

by Neko Case

M. Ward’s killer guitar awesomely augment’s indie rock’s reigning lady badass’s hilarious gender bender anthem.

  9

“On Site”

by Kanye West

Playing Yeezus for the first time and immediately hearing that brutal opening synth saw was a highlight experience of the year. It so effectively sets the tone for the willfully unsettling journey of an album that follows.

alt choice: “Blood on the Leaves”

  8

“Separations”

by Diarrhea Planet

Trademark monster riffage and lyrics about a great friend imploring the narrator to get real and pull himself out of a depressive mire.

  “Dig your heels in and grit your teeth and quit your bitchin’!!!”

  7

“Tennis Court”

by Lorde

A Top 40 pop banger about a couple kids hanging out and talking.

alt choices: “Royals”, “White Teeth Teens”

  6/5

“Plough”/“No Below”

by Speedy Ortiz

Sadie Dupuis.

  alt choice: “Tiger Tank”

  4

“Byegone”

by Volcano Choir

Strange structure. Always leaves me wanting more, which at first I saw as a positive. Now, even though that second and final chorus is so huge and revelatory… I wish there was another even bigger one following it. I still love the song, but the end, for some reason, came to feel like a copout.

  3

 “Half Angel Half Light”

by The Men

All three singers get a quatrain or two to bestow praise upon their ladies, who apparently graciously tolerate the hardliving road lives their Men lead.

  2

“Porno”

by The Arcade Fire

Counterculture love song. Totally awesome and empowering.

  alt choices: “Afterlife”, “Normal Person”, any of them really.

“Porno” is simply the one I’m currently obsessed with.

  1

“Sea of Love”

by The National

Eight of the thirteen songs on this record could have held this spot, but “Sea of Love” is the one I connect with most and keep coming back to. Infinite songs deal with the countless varieties of relationships between men and women. This song and a few others on this record deal instead with intense male friendships.

    Favorite Singles

Songs I played on repeat outside of album context.

  17

“Young Fathers”

by Typhoon

Almost too precious, like most of this band’s music, but packed with enough interesting ideas to stand out.

  16

“Lightning Bolt”

by Jake Bugg

Sounds like a song from a Bob Dylan biopic made without the rights to Dylan’s music. Fast, precise rhythm guitar and a voice that shreds.

  15

“Blurred Lines”

by Robin Thicke

The subject of the year’s dumbest, most nonsensical controversy (referring to the feminist one, not the Marvin Gaye one, which actually does suck). It’s a radio-tame seduction song, and a great one. Lush production and a voice that can pull off the absurd subject matter effortlessly.

  14

“America”

by Laura Veirs

Expansive guitars and production, critical impressions of the country. And that voice.

  13/12

“Chained to Love”/“Ain’t That The Way”

by Divine Fits

Awesome 7” with two tracks as good as or better than everything on last year’s excellent LP.

  11

“Smooth Sailing”

by Queens of the Stone Age

Josh Homme is cool incarnate.

  10

“Black Belt”

by John Grant

Hyperclever takedown of a phony friend. Love how the verse sort of folds into the chorus. Grant is such a sharp writer.

  9

“Started From the Bottom”

by Drake

Pitchfork got it wrong, big time. Forget the uber-generic “Hold On, We’re Going Home.” This is the Drake jam of the year.

  8

“History Eraser”

by Courtney Barnett

Almost like a female Alex Turner in terms of ability to come up with funny phrases and situations and tie them altogether in a narrative song.

  7

“Chum”

by Earl Sweatshirt

Something sinister to it.

  6

“Angel, Please”

by Ra Ra Riot 

My most-played song of the year by a longshot. A blast to dance and sing along to, chorus key change and all.

  5

“Nightwater Girlfriend”

by Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin

“Don’t turn your power on me” might be my favorite single line of the year. I love the concept of being a teenager and hoping a beautiful girl doesn’t come on to you because you know it would all be over.

  4

“Say Yes To Me”

by Surfer Blood

Built around a killer locked-in 6/8 guitar hook, every single instrumental part and vocal line is an earworm.

  3

“Get Lucky”

by Daft Punk

I hated this song when it first leaked. The lyrics are so stupid, but at some point I succumbed to the idiocy and just, you know, lost myself to dance.

  2

“Suit & Tie”

by Justin Timberlake

Many times at work when this song came on I would spontaneously, uncontrollably, start doing a weird approximation of the moonwalk.

  1

“Don’t Wait”

by Mapei

Features the two best choruses of the year. “Royals” for adults; minimalist production, beautifully sung melodies, but Mapei is unconcerned with projecting an image. She speaks only for herself, eschewing the all-inclusive “we” in favor of delivering a touching, moving tribute to her partner in the utmost anthemic manner possible.

  Thanks for reading.

[tgaoe]

My 26 Favorite Albums of 2013

Obscurity no longer exists. Or, if it does, it means nothing. Great music is everywhere, and it’s easy to find. I used to work hard to find it. Now I don’t. I don’t have to. All the music on this list I “discovered” passively through one the following sources:

Pitchfork, Metacritic, NPR’s All Songs Considered podcast, SPIN, KEXP’s Music That Matters podcast, WBEZ’s Sound Opinions podcast, and a facebook Album of the Week Club.

I work a nightjob in a warehouse and wear an earbud the entirety of every shift. I listen to a lot of music. I listened to every “indie” album released this year that achieved a level of national notoriety. I also listened to all the hip mainstream stuff. I love every album on this list. Wondering why Lorde is ranked so high or why Deafheaven didn’t make it? Let’s talk about it and have fun. That’s why I do this.

The previous few years I spent weeks putting my Favorites lists together. It was my top priority. This year I spent only a few hours. I am busier than I’ve ever been. This is a lark. 

Two Favorite Songs lists will follow later this week, one for singles and one for album tracks. There’s overlap with this list, but not as much as you might think.

  26

Doris

by Earl Sweatshirt

Not a great album by any stretch of the imagination, but Earl’s talent is undeniable. Earl would be wise to divorce himself from Odd Future and strike out on his own, work with some more capable, experimental collaborators. He should stop preaching to the adolescent choir.

  25

California X

by California X

Imagine if I started a band that sounded almost exactly like SSLYBY. That’s what Amherst’s California X has done with their own hometown heroes, Dinosaur Jr, right down to a suffixed band name. Fortunately, they write great Dino-style megaheavy sludge pop that keeps delivering with repeated listens.

  24

Nothing Was The Same

by Drake

Spacier production surrounds Drake’s typically all-heart/no-brain noncommittal romantic escapades. He’s fun.

  23

Random Access Memories

by Daft Punk

Half this record is close to a masterpiece. The other half is worth listening to twice.

  22

Modern Vampires of the City

by Vampire Weekend

I absolutely love this album, but I underrate it due to weird personal listening habits and preferences. Every single song is so independently great, so thoroughly crafted and individual, that the twelve tracks don’t cohere into a whole. Modern Vampires plays like a greatest hits collection instead of an album.

  21

…Like Clockwork

by Queens of the Stone Age

Such a perfect title. After six albums and nearly two decades, it’s business as usual for QotSA, and business is dense, bizarre, and badass heavy pop songs.

  20

Acid Rap

by Chance the Rapper

The notion that Acip Rap is a mixtape is silly. This is a fully realized, totally assured second LP from a wild young talent. Chance loads each song with varied delivery and matter-of-fact genius. This kid could very well be the next Jay-Z in terms of populist talent.

  19

The Silver Gymnasium

by Okkervil River

An Okkervil River record.

  18

The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You

by Neko Case

A Neko Case record.

  17

Days Are Gone

by Haim

Exquisitely produced pop pastiche, a pleasure to listen to despite the blatant, cynical artifice, engineered specifically to sell cars and electronics. The sister-band-makes-good narrative is a total fabrication. Don’t believe me? Check the songwriting credits. You’ll notice many of the songs were co-written with songwriters responsible for hits by Elle Goulding, Jessie Ware (who co-wrote a Haim song herself), Usher, and Snoop Dogg.

  I’ve spent a lot of time railing against an album I really love. There’s nothing wrong with co-writing, nothing wrong with expensive, glossy production, nothing wrong with making money from licensing. In fact, it’s awesome and heartening that artists can still make money. However, I resent the falsified indie narrative surrounding this band, and how people have eaten it up, taken it as gospel. The exact same thing happened with the band Foster the People a few years ago.

  16

Warp and Theft

by Laura Veirs

A huge step forward for Veirs as an artist and songwriter. Really should have been her mainstream breakout.

  15

Pythons

by Surfer Blood

These guys jettisoned some of the relentless hookiness that made them famous in favor of an approach both tighter and more intimate. A real winner that went underappreciated.

  14

AM

by Arctic Monkeys

Never thought this band would be in it for the long haul. Here they reconcile the experimentation and exploration of their previous few records with the pop songcraft of their early work. The result is their best release since their first. The Monkeys have been prone to a clunker track or two each album, but this time even the b-side castoffs are great songs.

  13

Pure Heroine

by Lorde

Lorde’s an outlier for sure, but she’s the coolest, most individual Top 40 artist in a long, long time. No track is skippable, no moments ring false. Fantastic pop record.

  12

Talon of the Hawk

by The Front Bottoms

Emo-tinged open-book indie rock with some dance elements thrown in. Fronted by a true raconteur. Strangely, the middle of the record is the strongest. These dudes are so young. Can’t wait to see what they do next.

  11

Fly by Wire

by Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin

Warm and wonderful, like a three-beer buzz in the woods with old friends. Would I feel as strongly about this band if they weren’t from my home? Don’t know, don’t care. They’re so good.

  10

Pale Green Ghosts

by John Grant

Opens with three total knockout tracks, including the much-ballyhooed “GMF”, which deftly rides a line between gimmick and genius. And then the real record begins. John Grant is astonishingly open, intimate, and vulnerable without ever feeling confessional or indulgent. There’s a lot to process here.

  9

Repave

by Volcano Choir

Imagine if Bon Iver decided to be U2 without compromising any vision or integrity. Something like that.

  8

Beta Love

by Ra Ra Riot

The spring of 2013 saw a nonsensical media-invented rivalry between Phoenix and The Strokes. The winner: Ra Ra Riot, who used the tropes shared by the other two bands to much greater effect than either did with their most recent releases. Ra Ra Riot lost a key member, reinvented themselves, and made a great record that didn’t receive nearly the attention it deserved. Beta Love is probably the most flat-out fun album of 2013.

  7

Yeezus

by Kanye West

Rap’s only auteur. Nobody in any genre of music is operating on his level. Kanye takes full advantage of the artistic freedom allowed by his fame/infamy.

  6

The 20/20 Experience (part 1)

by Justin Timberlake

Sparkling bloated fiasco love party.

  5

New Moon

by The Men

In March I took a trip from Portland to Cathedral City, CA, the desert city where my grandparents live, a weeklong respite from my horrendous living situation in the northwest. I listened to this album at least twenty times on that trip. I immersed myself in the warm, homespun production and the audible joy of dudes who simply love playing music follow their every impulse, country, punk, Exile-era Stones blues swagger, blistering postpunk, whatever. And somehow all those disparate ideas fit together perfectly. Awesome.

  4

I’m Rich Beyond Your Wildest Dreams

by Diarrhea Planet

Heavy as hell, punk as fuck, loaded with hooks, and intensely personal. The Planet understands that if your band has four guitars, you’d damn well better use ‘em all. Initially this one served me solely as a Titus Andronicus placeholder, but I quickly began to appreciate it entirely on its own terms. If Patrick Stickles and Titus bow at the altar of The Replacements, Diarrhea Planet slaughters goats in the name of KISS.

  3

Major Arcana

by Speedy Ortiz

What about Amherst is so conducive to awesome punk rock? Speedy Ortiz makes weird, heavy, and occasionally discordant slacker punk without the typically characteristic detachment. Sadie Dupuis really puts herself out there. The music is cool (there’s two guitarists and no rhythm parts!), but it’s Dupuis’s lyrics and voice that make the band.

  2

Reflektor

by The Arcade Fire

Every song is great but one. They may not best the best band of our time but they are the Greatest. I made life changes because of this record.

  1

Trouble Will Find Me

by The National

The best band of our time. And they just keep getting better.

  You can all just kiss off into the air.

[tgaoe]

Savages

I find the nature of the hype surrounding the band Savages quite bothersome.  I have yet to hear the album; I listened to the singles (pretty good) and read countless articles just like every music blog obsessive.  Also, I saw the band live a few weeks ago.  They stood and played their songs, barely moved, and didn’t interact with the sizeable, excited crowd.  It was dull.  They sapped all the energy from the room.

Savages is being marketed, excellently, around its manifestos of a tunnel vision focus on making primal and concisely expressive music, and an insistence on respectful, intense audience attention.  Great ideas, to be sure, and indeed, the lead singles and the songs they perform live are certainly primal, and also simple.  However, outside the context of the hype, the manifestos, the intense black and white band photographs, the willfully bizarre interviews, Savages’ music becomes a fleeting pleasure at best, and their lethargic live show an utter bore.

Savages is a band entirely about image and philosophies, rather than music.  Unfortunately, the images and philosophies all deal expressly with music and its purity.  Savages is a contradiction.  Every night, thousands of bands jam in basements and garages, beating their instruments like cavemen, focused entirely on making music for its own sake.  Some of them are probably pretty good.  But none of them have powerful friends and access to publicity agents and million dollar marketing campaigns.

[tgaoe]

Iron Man 3

Full disclosure:  I'm mostly over superhero films.  Perhaps I’ve seen too many, or I’ve simply come of age.  That said, Iron Man 3 is a work of masterful pop storytelling.  The film is the first of the latter day Marvel stable to organically integrate the Avengers material, acknowledging its existence without expense to the main narrative, which unfolds at a comfortable, rewarding pace.  3 is also the first of the Iron Men to transcend being simply Robert Downey Jr.: The Motion Picture.  The screenwriters allow supporting characters moments of intrigue and triumph, and Tony Stark some humanity and growth.  Some.

Iron Man 3 focuses on character over action, which delighted me but will almost certainly disappoint the majority of the franchise’s fans conditioned to expect the nonstop brainless whizbang thrills typical of modern superheroic cinema.  However, the first of the film’s two main set pieces combines both action and subtle character work, and it is truly spectacular, perhaps the greatest scene in the Marvel film cannon thus far.  The final sequence, the inevitable showdown, is also wonderfully orchestrated; exciting, kinetic, refreshingly coherent, and concise.  Iron Man 3 ends well, but in a manner which will lead to a boring and predictable Tony Stark arc in the next full-on Avengers film.  Oh well.  I’ll be there anyway, I guess.

3.5/5

[tgaoe]

Dead Man Down

Audiences know Niels Arden Oplev primarily for his success with the mediocre adaptations of the late Stieg Larsson's pulpy Millennium novels. Oplev portrayed the frigid beauty of Swedish winter with static shots, purposefully and effectively highlighting the film's characters' isolation. However, Dead Man Down suggests that effectiveness may have been a fluke. Oplev shoots a New York City summer in the exact same manner, turning one of cinema's most enjoyable settings into a boring, lifeless bustle with no personality. The film might as well have taken place on an empty soundstage.

Dead Man Down contains a single full scene and a few scattered moments which feature that special transcendent terribleness that can make an ill-conceived and/or poorly made film entertaining and worthwhile. Unfortunately, those moments cannot atone for the dull, self-serious remainder. Of the film's numerous problems, pacing is the worst. Oplev's static shots linger on for no reason. The dialogue scenes, already often overwrought and superfluous on the page, are stilted by bizarre editing choices; mostly overlong reaction shots and unnatural pauses in conversation. Of course, the actors may deserve some of the blame as well.

Colin Farrell and Noomi Rapace have a baffling lack of chemistry, a chemistry upon which the entire film depends. It's impossible to tell if Rapace is overacting or Farrell is underacting. Both characters have tragic pasts; Rapace copes with hers by being a rash, dramatic lunatic, while Farrell suppresses his emotions entirely. All of them. Even hunger. Wait, no, he appears eating some microwave noodles at one point. Anyway, Farrell mumbles his way through the film without a single smile or grimace, an experience made worse by the fact that we know exactly how wonderfully charismatic he can be when fully engaged. That scene of transcendent terribleness occurs when Farrell and Rapace go on a date early in the film. Oplev posits the scene as a meet-cute. The characters sit across a restaurant table and explain their simple characterizations to each other repeatedly, Rapace giving her Drama 101 all and Farrell giving absolutely nothing. They try to bond, and the film acts as if they do, and it's amazing. Taken out of context the scene might work better, but as the sole attempt at lightness amidst the relentless, dull ugliness of Dead Man Down, it fails gloriously. The date occurs twenty minutes in, and marks the only time the film manages to be enjoyable. Not worth it.

The story twists and turns in unexpected ways, but the audience has no reason to care, to invest, and it doesn't warrant discussion. There are no stakes. The lame, unlikable characters rush around the ugly city with vague notions of vengeance and romance. None of it matters. Dead Man Down fails to entertain on any level.

1/5

[tgaoe]

Should Win/Will Win 2012

Best Picture Should Win, Wasn't Nominated: The Master This film will be written about as long as film is written about. Should Win: Zero Dark Thirty A masterpiece of its time. Will Win: Argo The Academy loves movies about how important movies are. It's a highly-effective thriller, but never more than light entertainment. We'll all forget about Argo as soon as Affleck walks backstage at the end of the night. #Argoverated Dark Horse: Lincoln Spielberg's best work in a decade. The Academy loves him. Hollywood loves him. America loves him. And it's been awhile. Best Achievement in Directing Should Win, Wasn't Nominated: Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master Should Win/Will Win: Steven Spielberg, Lincoln Consolation prize for not winning Best Picture. Dark Horse: David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook Best Actor in a Leading Role Strong category all around, even Bradley Cooper. Should Win: Toss up. Joaquin Phoenix, The Master & Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln Will Win: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln The Academy loves historical performances almost as much as it loves ignoring The Master. Best Actress in a Leading Role Another strong category. Should Win: Toss up. Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty & Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook Will Win: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook Nominated for the second time in as many years, and deservedly so, she has it coming. The Academy avoids controversy at all costs, which will likely cost Chastain the award. Best Actress in a Supporting Role Should Win/Will Win:  Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables No question. The most compelling ten minutes of film released in 2012. Best Actor in a Leading Role The toughest choice. Everything nominated is wonderful. Should Win: Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master Will Win: Robert De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook  Soulful, hilarious performance, the likes of which we haven't seen from him for many years. He'll win essentially for making an effort for the first time in nearly a decade.

[tgaoe]

The goal of Sound City as a film is to justify its own existence. Dave Grohl believes so much in the sanctity of the titular music studio, specifically in its custom-built analog soundboard, that he made a celebratory documentary about it. One wouldn't be remiss to doubt Grohl's abilities as a first-time filmmaker given his reputation as an intensely likable dude whose enthusiasm, passion, and sincere workingman punk-rock ethics generally outweigh his talent at everything but playing drums. The film opens with Grohl's nostalgic cornball narration over a driving montage and those doubts seem totally justified. However, as soon as the title card appears, the film gets great and stays great. Grohl mostly keeps off camera until the film reaches the point where he becomes a part of its story.

Enjoyment of Sound City depends entirely on level of interest in rock lore, the artists featured in the film, and, most significantly, the process and romance of recording albums. Grohl and his editors do a great job of explaining the intricacies of recording using quick interview clips from a wide variety of artists and producers who worked at the studio. However, Sound City's subject matter is not akin to, say, The King of Kong, which requires no knowledge of arcade games to appreciate. No drama exists in Sound City to hold the audience's attention. Continued watching requires intrinsic motivation and prior investment. Dave Grohl made Sound City exclusively for his fellow music obsessives. In fact, an average Foo Fighters fan would likely be bored until the final segment, a long coda which features Grohl jamming and writing songs with some of the film's interviewees.

Grohl seems to revere the studio more than anyone else, which makes sense. He gained the most from his experiences there, having recorded Nirvana's Nevermind in the space. Kurt Cobain haunts this film. His image appears only briefly in a montage of photographs from those sessions. Grohl handles it tastefully, not mentioning Cobain's death and thus allowing the audience to project their own knowledge and feelings without miring the film in sadness. However, Nevermind producer Butch Vig does share a chilling, relevant anecdote about the taping of “Something In The Way”, which actually enhances the experience of listening to the song. It's Sound City's finest moment.

Grohl has made a great film for a very specific audience. He succeeds in explaining and celebrating the impact and importance of Sound City and its mystical soundboard without heavy-handedness or sentimentality. Of course, it goes without saying that the film has an amazing soundtrack. As with every rock doc, the immortal opening message from Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz is entirely applicable: “This film should be played loud!”

4/5

[tgaoe]

Andy's Favorite Films of 2012

20 The Queen of Versailles Funny, sad, sympathetic, and disgusting. That great type of documentary project which begins with a specific premise but, due to unexpected events, suddenly becomes about something else entirely. 19 Lawless Slight and predictable yet riotously entertaining. Glad to see Shia LaBeouf finally cast effectively. He plays a great pussy. 18 The Grey The first Joe Carnahan film to live up to the promise of Narc. Woefully mis-marketed as a high-concept thriller, The Grey is actually first and foremost an existential character study, and secondly a study of masculinity. It also just happens to be a consciously badass, casually stylized survivalist arctic horror film. 17 Flight That this film was a major release from the Hollywood studio system remains baffling. Flight revels in amorality. Robert Zemeckis and Denzel Washington treat their potentially hokey story concept like a playground. From the first frame the audience knows how this film has to end. The joy comes from watching Washington defy his inherent charm and likability, from watching him push right up to the breaking point. 16 Seven Psychopaths Martin McDonagh directs his own meta-meta-screenplay and fills it with phenomenally hilarious character actors. Genuine surprises are rare in cinema these days, but Seven Psychopaths manages several, both through plot twists and scenes featuring unexpected emotional resonance in absurd situations. 15 Shut Up and Play the Hits A film made solely for an audience of LCD Soundsystem fans. Framed around a maddening Chuck Klosterman interview with frontman James Murphy, the best moments occur when the film takes its title's advice. 14 The Cabin in the Woods A gift to horror fans and a proverbial love letter to the genre, The Cabin in the Woods both breaks down and adheres to established formulas.  It explores, explains, and celebrates their histories and continued exploitation. A smart film that never fails to entertain despite having an academic thesis, Cabin nearly ushers Scream into obsolescence. 13 Beasts of the Southern Wild Set in a vivid, lived-in fantasy world just off the coast of reality, Benh Zeitlin's strong debut often feels like a sort of primal, naturalistic painting, full of music and life. Not a single shot isn't gorgeous, even the ugly ones. 12 Goon Full Review

11 Your Sister's Sister A film about honesty and how it can simplify even the most complex interpersonal situations. The story deals with the malignance of secrecy and the healing power of time, especially within the enduring bonds between siblings. Writer/director Lynn Shelton made Your Sister’s Sister for $125,000. Few films with budgets of any size possess the raw power generated by Shelton and her small cast. Indeed, more than anything, Your Sister's Sister is an acting showcase. Stars Mark Duplass, Rosemarie Dewitt, and Emily Blunt each give natural, nuanced performances. 10 Moonrise Kingdom A two-hour loop of the beach dance scene would have made this list. Wes Anderson traffics in a very specific brand of sweet melancholy. You buy in or you don't. At this point, audiences know where they stand. 9 Oslo, August 31st Full Review 8 Lincoln Avoids common biopic pitfalls by focusing on a small period of its subject's life. Stephen Spielberg, a master of visual storytelling and our most popular populist filmmaker, is often only as good as his screenwriters. Fortunately, Tony Kushner is in top form for Lincoln; verbose, kinetic, and enthralling. He, Spielberg, and the much-lauded Daniel Day-Lewis turn what amounts to a series of meetings into a fast, grand piece of pop entertainment without sacrificing any sense of historical importance or integrity. 7 Django Unchained Quentin Tarantino's fifth straight revenge film features his typical sharp wit and crowd-pleasing debauchery. However, Tarantino elevates Django by forcing its titular protagonist into a disturbing socioethical dilemma. Django embodies everything audiences have come to expect from Tarantino, but with slightly more substance. 6 Zero Dark Thirty Full Review 5 Silver Linings Playbook David O. Russell portrays familial chaos more effectively than any other contemporary filmmaker. Here he spends most of the film subverting romantic-comedy genre expectations and cliches before intentionally, purposefully embracing them in the final act. Quite a trick. 4 The Comedy A film profoundly sympathetic for its disgusting, offensive characters. Tim Heidecker gives an disturbingly soulful, likely once-in-a-lifetime lead performance. Without him the film would be an insufferable series of disparate annoyances. 3 The Perks of Being a Wallflower Very much a 90s period piece, yet defiantly timeless.  Perfectly captures teenage social anxiety and the relief of being liked and appreciated against all perceived odds. 2 Searching For Sugarman Pure and masterful documentary filmmaking. Structured for maximum impact without blatant contrivance or manipulation; unreliant on sentimentality. The songs of the enigmatic Rodriguez are vivid and dense, occaisionally abrasive but more often beautiful.  They carry the weight of the film. 1 The Master Paul Thomas Anderson has reached the next level of human evolution. He waits for us there.

[tgaoe]

2012 - Full Breakdown

Films rated for enjoyment on the Netflix scale: 5 – Loved it. 4 – Really liked it. 3 – Liked it. 2 – Didn't like it. 1 – Hated it.

5 Beasts of the Southern Wild The Cabin in the Woods The Comedy The Dark Knight Rises Django Unchained Goon Lincoln The Master Moonrise Kingdom Once Upon a Time in Anatolia Oslo, August 31st The Perks of Being a Wallflower Searching For Sugarman Shut Up and Play the Hits Silver Linings Playbook Your Sister's Sister Zero Dark Thirty 4 21 Jump Street Amour Bernie Cloud Atlas End of Watch The Five-Year Engagement Flight The Grey Holy Motors Jeff, Who Lives At Home Lawless Les Miserables The Queen of Versailles The Raid: Redemption Safety Not Guaranteed Seven Psychopaths Skyfall Sleepwalk With Me Trouble with the Curve Wanderlust 3 The Ambassador American Reunion Argo The Avengers Brave Casa De Mi Padre Chronicle The Dictator Haywire The Hunger Games Indie Game: The Movie Jack Reacher John Carter Killer Joe Looper Magic Mike Men in Black 3 The Sessions This Is 40 The Three Stooges Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie To Rome With Love Total Recall (2012) Wreck-It Ralph 2 The Amazing Spider-Man Cosmopolis Savages Sound of My Voice Ted 1 The Bourne Legacy Dredd Killing Them Softly Not Fade Away Prometheus The Missed List Highly Regrettable Anna Karenina The Color Wheel The Imposter Wuthering Heights Regrettable 2 Days in New York Celeste and Jesse Forever Compliance Friends With Kids Life of Pi The Secret World of Arriety Barely Regrettable The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey The Man with the Iron Fists Ruby Sparks Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

[tgaoe]

The best comedies get funnier with every viewing. Dumped into a few theaters in the U.S. and unceremoniously released to DVD soon after, Goon should have joined the pantheon of the great Sports Comedies. Perhaps it might yet.

Filmmakers rarely cast Seann William Scott as anything other than barely-affable assholes, but here he gets to play a lovably dumb and sweetly naïve bartender who just happens to be a natural born brawler, a talent that, when discovered, gets him recruited by a local minor league hockey team. Scott is perfect in his role, as is Liev Schreiber, who plays Scott's aging hero and eventual nemesis. The two share only a few scenes, but their chemistry is electric.

As with most sports films, the story is predictable, but it's the telling that counts. Actor-turned-writer Jay Baruchel and fellow Apatow protege Evan Goldberg loosely base their screenplay on actual events. They plot the film tightly, save for a jarringly sudden but easily forgivable time lapse early on. Baruchel and Goldberg, along with director Michael Dowse, wisely make the establishment and rounding of characters their top priority, which allows for human comedy rather than situational. Doug, the character played by Scott, as well as his typically ragtag group of eccentric teammates and friends, come off more than worthy of emotional investment. Each of their personal stories matters. For a film that hits so many well-worn beats, that is both a necessity and an accomplishment.

Goon is proudly Canadian and unashamedly, celebratorily vulgar and gory. Blood does indeed bounce on ice, as do teeth. And it's hilarious.

5/5