The Conquest of Gaul

The Best Albums of 2022

2022-12-30T21:26:00.000-05:00

Welcome! To the 6th Annual Baltimore Music Festival! 2022 finally saw the full return of live music, a sorely missed socio-cultural activity that had essentially been wiped out by the pandemic. Even Rage Against the Machine, who had postponed their whole tour for two years, finally returned (and gave me Covid...worth it) after over two decades of silence. People everywhere, including yours truly, poured into venues of all sizes, starving for live music, proving that nothing beats the real thing, no matter what Daniel Ek might tell you. Get vaxxed, get masked, go support your favorite artists.

Shoutouts

As should be routine information by now, there was way to much music to include on a 50-album list. As such, the following albums were really, really, really...good:

Adeem the Artist White Trash Revelry, Ashenspire Hostile Architecture, Joey Bada$$ 2000, Black Dresses Forget Your Own Face, Cave In Heavy Pendulum, Chat Pile God's Country, The Comet Is Coming Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam, Conway the Machine God Don't Make Mistakes, Dehd Blue Skies, DJ Premier Hip Hop 50: Vol. 1, Doechii She/Her/Black Bitch, Dry Cleaning Stumpwork, Everything Everything Raw Data Feel, Lupe Fiasco Drill Music in Zion, FKA Twigs Caprisongs, Florist Florist, Freddie Gibbs $oul $old $eparately, Ginger Root Nisemono, Ghost Impera, Harry Styles Harry's World, Julia Jacklin Pre-Pleasure, Carly Rae Jepsen The Loneliest Time, J.I.D The Forever Story, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard Changes, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard Laminated Denim, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard Omnium Gatherum, Cate Le Bon Pompeii, Nas King's Disease III, OFF! Free LSD, Orville Peck Bronco, Daniel Rossen You Belong There, Rina Sawayama Hold the Girl, Sirom The Liquefied Throne of Simplicity, Spiritualized Everything Was Beautiful, Soccer Mommy Sometimes Forever, Suede Autofiction, Earl Sweatshirt Sick!, Taylor Swift Midnights, SZA SOS, Tears for Fears (yes, that Tears for Fears) The Tipping Point, Toro Y Moi Mahal, Viagra Boys Caveworld, Jack White Entering Heaven Alive Wormrot Hiss, Nilufer Yanya Painless.

Thus begins the countdown...

Honorable Mentions

50. death's dynamic shroud
Darklife

Vaporwave (Listen)

49. Natalia Lafourcade

De Todas las Flores

Chamber Folk (Listen)

48. Black Midi

Hellfire

Brutal Prog (Listen)

47. Arctic Monkeys

The Car

Chamber Pop (Listen)

46. Yard Act

The Overload

Post-Punk (Listen)

45. Ty Segall

"Hello, Hi"

Psychedelic Folk (Listen)

44. The Vacant Lots

Closure

Cold Synth (Listen)

43. Charli XCX

Crash

Dance-Pop (Listen)

42. Bad Bunny

Un Verano Sin Ti

Reggaeton (Listen)

41. Vince Staples

Ramona Park Broke My Heart

West Coast Hip Hop (Listen)

40. Steve Lacy

Gemini Rights

Neo-Soul (Listen)

39. Preoccupations

Arrangements

Post-Punk (Listen)

38. The 1975

Being Funny in a Foreign Language

Pop Rock (Listen)

37. Spoon

Lucifer on the Sofa

Indie Rock (Listen)

36. Sharon van Etten

We've Been Going About This All Wrong

Indie Rock (Listen)

35. Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul

Tropical Dancer

Art Pop (Listen)

34. Ibibio Sound Machine

Electricity

Electro Afro-Funk (Listen)

33. Jack White

Fear of the Dawn

Blues Rock (Listen)

32. Angel Olsen

Big Time

Americana (Listen)

31. Rosalía

Motomami

Neoperro (Listen)

30. Björk

Fossora

Art Pop (Listen)

"When I was a girl, I fell in love with a building." Girl, same.

29. Makaya McCraven

In These Times

Jazz Fusion (Listen)

28. Ethel Cain

Preacher's Daughter

Dream Pop (Listen)

27. Pusha T

It's Almost Dry

Gangsta Rap (Listen)

26. Fontaines D.C.

Skinty Fia

Gothic Rock (Listen)

25. Beyoncé

Renaissance

Dance-Pop (Listen)

24. Jockstrap

I Love You, Jennifer B

Art Pop (Listen)

23. Backxwash

His Happiness Shall Come First Even Though We Are Suffering

Industrial Hip Hop (Listen)

22. Sudan Archives

Natural Brown Prom Queen

Alternative R&B (Listen)

21. Perfume Genius

Ugly Season

Art Pop (Listen)

20. The Smile

A Light for Attracting Attention

Art Rock (Listen)

19. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava

Jazz-Rock (Listen)

18. Soul Glo

Diaspora Problems

Hardcore Punk (Listen)

17. Little Simz

No Thank You

UK Hip Hop (Listen)

16. Father John Misty

Chloë and the Next 20th Century

Lounge (Listen)

15. Billy Woods

Aethiopes

Abstract Hip Hop (Listen)

14. Kendrick Lamar

Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers

Conscious Hip Hop (Listen)

13. The Weeknd

Dawn FM

Synthpop (Listen)

12. Weyes Blood

And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow

Baroque Pop (Listen)

11. Black Country, New Road

Ants from Up There

Art Rock (Listen)

Runners Up

10. Richard Dawson

The Ruby Cord

Progressive Folk (Listen)

Richard Dawson has been on quite the tear over the past several years: the disturbing medieval folk of Peasant, the harsh experimentalism of 2020, the progressive metal of his collaboration with Circle Henki. Now he returns to folk instrumentation on The Ruby Cord, but the lessons he's learned along the way come too. 41-minute opener "The Hermit" is a test of sheer perseverance, though its many movements keep the time from dragging, instead turning the epic into a sort of twee concerto. "Thicker than Water" picks up the pace (and drastically cuts the time) while Dawson returns to more familiar songwriting territory--a fun ditty complete with warm guitar tones and fuzzy jazz drums. "Museum" takes us back into Dawson's medieval instrumentation and vocal balladry, including flits of beautiful harps and confident falsettos. Closer "Horse and Rider" brings a harder edge to its folk underpinnings, despite what the crying violin solos might suggest. Every song is also tinged with Dawson's characteristic sardonic wit and scathing social commentary, hidden beneath lush arrangements and perpetually unique sonic choices. As long as this man is around, folk will never be boring.

9. Denzel Curry

Melt My Eyez See Your Future

Conscious Hip Hop (Listen)

I am and (barring any unforeseen terribleness) always will be a Denzel Curry supporter. This man consistently releases some of the most forward-thinking, inventive, and provocative hip hop around. I LOVED TA13OO, and was incredibly high on ZUU and Unlocked, each changing subtly while keeping that addictive Zel sound. But Melt My Eyez is Curry's riskiest attempt yet, and the rewards are beyond measure. This is Curry's most mature and expansive effort to date. The sample carrying from the end of intro "Melt Session #1" to "Walkin'" is the perfect inflection point to move from jazzy to boom bap. "The Last" sees Zel jumping on a cloudy trap beat to rap about how tomorrow is never promised. The Saul Williams closing spoken word feature of "Mental" is a welcome blast from a sadly forgotten past, even if the topic of suppressing suicidal thoughts is probably the heaviest subject on the album. T-Pain's feature on "Troubles" is incredibly fun, as always, but especially contrasting Zel's growly delivery. The variety of styles offered that is somehow contained in an album that is undeniably Denzel Curry makes Melt My Eyez one of his most rewarding, and, perhaps, his best album yet.

8. Beach House

Once Twice Melody

Dream Pop (Listen)

At first glance, the prospect of an 85-minute, 18-track dream pop record sounds like an idea that could fail spectacularly. But on Once Twice Melody, Beach House found a supremely elegant solution to this dilemma: show up with some of your best songs yet. The gorgeous strings on the title track, the melodies on "Superstar" that will literally never leave your head once you hear them (this is a warning), the the addicting synth arpeggio that cuts in and out of "Pink Funeral" create the best three-track opening on any Beach House record. Album star, "New Romance" brings a hit of that 2010's indie sound, that classic Beach House formula hidden in a new structure that reminds you of when the world wasn't scary, but shining and brand new. Songs like "Sunset," and "The Bells," are dives into dream folk, while "Illusion of Forever" has an almost Cure-esque quality to its grand production, and closer "Modern Love Stories" is certainly their most weirdly ominous attempt at ending an album. In a recent interview with Pitchfork, Legrande and Scally both implied that this may be the end of Beach House, and while it would be an unfathomable shame to never hear any new music from arguably the best dream pop group of all time, it's harder to think of a more monumental and fitting way for them to go out. (Seriously though, please don't leave us)

7. Alvvays

Blue Rev

Shoegaze (Listen)

Who doesn't love a good, no, GREAT shoegaze record? This is nostalgia done right, using sound to plant the listener in a halcyon age of their teenage selves, sending ripped copies of Alvvays songs to their friends over AIM. Blue Rev still includes Alvvays' hallmarks of saturated exuberance, soaring melodies, and powerful vocals, but the sound palette here is significantly noisier and heavier. Molly Rankin's lyrics are more desperate, but she delivers them beautifully over a wash of guitar noise that pulls your ears in every direction. Blue Rev is an immersion therapy album for the modern world: it's anxious, disillusioned, and constantly asks "what if," but does so wrapped in a fuzzy blanket, on a comfortable sofa, with a warm cup of tea; a wistful, glowing haze of static and reverb; the soundtrack to a daydream.

6. Alex G

God Save the Animals

Indie Rock (Listen)

Alex G(iannascoli) is adamant that not all of his songs are about dogs, but God Save the Animals uses our furry (and feathered, and scaly) friends to discuss the world through non-human eyes, both innocent and beautiful. On "Miracles" Alex G decides that maybe having children isn't as horrible as he once thought, "after all, there's no way up from apathy." "Ain't It Easy" seemingly provides calm, but it's constantly interrupted by ominous whispers. Halfway through the album, glistening jangle-folk guitars give way to breakbeat hyperpop. The blown out sounds of album highlight "Blessing" provide a strangely intentional tone of late-80's pre-grunge weirdness that these days feels almost completely novel. God Save the Animals has you thinking of the future, rather than pining for the past, in an almost religious way. This is Alex G's most hopeful record, grounded in patience and stunning simplicity.

5. Danger Mouse & Black Thought

Cheat Codes

East Coast Hip Hop (Listen)

Seventeen years in the making, and boasting an impressive array of supporting characters (including legends MF DOOM and Raekwon, Joey Bada$$, A$AP Rocky, and Conway the Machine), Danger Mouse's return to sample-based production, and Black Thought's jazz-influenced lyricism find an extraordinary balance for the most efficient and effective hip hop album of 2022. This short album immediately sounds like a timeless classic, where every track is of the utmost importance. "Because" perfectly meshes the soul styling of Dylan Cartlidge with the varied flows of Black Thought and a bevy of guest appearances. The posthumous verse of MF DOOM on "Belize" is just one more piece of evidence that the late rapper was (and still is) one of the most important in the history of the genre. The sheer beauty of "Aquamarine"'s perfect sample matching exactly with Michael Kiwanuka's chorus and Black Thoughts' dark, winding tale following him from the formation of The Roots to his future as an artist. Danger Mouse's perfect mixing of styles new and old remains impressive to both hip hop newcomers and golden age devotees. The combination of both Mouse and Thought creates a brilliantly layered evolution that simply pours into the ears.

4. The Black Angels

Wilderness of Mirrors

Psychedelic Rock (Listen)

In 2013, the Black Angels made a drastic decision: organs are psychedelic too. While that sentiment is historically true (the roots of the late 60's and early 70's psych-rock movement were certainly propelled by organ-driven bands like the Doors, Barrett-era Pink Floyd, and 13th Floor Elevators), the Angels' approach was uncharacteristically clean. When they changed their fuzz pedals for wurlitzers, they lost their grit, their edge, that feeling of dropping acid in Hendrix's basement. Sure, the songwriting was as tight as ever, but the presentation became a sterile affair--less drug den, more model home. 2017's Death Song, followed a similar trajectory: even though they brought the guitars back and wrote some of their most popular songs to date ("Comanche Moon" alone has been used in uncountable commercials and episode credits), it was just so...pre-packaged. This, however, is not like the others. Call it a 180, a regression, or a step back if you want, but for my money, Wilderness of Mirrors is the sound fans were hoping these elder statesmen of psych would move into after their magnum opus Phosphene Dream. Here, the bass and drums work together to drive every song forward like a demonic piston, the guitars are appropriately--even maximally--fuzzed and distorted, echoing off the walls of even the most soundproofed room, and Alex Maas' uncanny voice belts over the wild storm to deliver some of his most prescient and vital lyrics yet. Lead single "El Jardin" is as fun in its delivery as it is disturbing in its content. "Firefly" is the Black Angels at peak neon-psych, while the title track is so delightfully strange it's guaranteed to expand your mind. "The River" uses its many layers of acoustic guitars and desertscapes to create a whirl of sonic color that equals anything the band have done. Penultimate track, the cheekily titled "Icon," sees the return of the blues-rock garage style that made the Angels famous all the way back in aught-six. Wilderness of Mirrors is a brilliant return to form for the Black Angels, one that sees them continuing to fight for a world that's gone to hell in a handbasket.

The Best of the Year

3. Big Thief

Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You

Indie Folk (Listen)

The title track of Big Thief's longest and most intense effort is a haunting and atmospheric ballad that sets the tone for the entire record. Lead singer Adrianne Lenker's raw, emotive vocals are the perfect match for the intimate and introspective sound that explores themes of love, loss, and the search for connection. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You is a masterpiece of indie folk that showcases the band's incredible songwriting abilities and heartfelt performances.

Standout track (and my personal favorite), "Time Escaping," is a catchy and upbeat tune that showcases the band's knack for crafting infectious melodies and curious harmonies. The song's ear-worm percussion section, paired with a spare but much appreciated keyboard, is guaranteed to get stuck in your head, and provides the perfect backdrop for Lenker's delightful voice.

"Heavy Bend," is a beautifully crafted bit of songwriting that showcases Lenker's folksy side of her soulful vocals. The song's stripped-down arrangement and intimate lyrics make it one of the most emotionally powerful tracks on the album. Conversely, "Blurred View" is an immense departure, incorporating programmed beats, detuned samples, and faux lo-fi production, like a slow Deftones song. This album is a wild ride.

Country-fried songs like "Spud Infinity" and "Red Moon" provide a lightness to the album while still celebrating Big Thief's folk background and influences and expertly highlighting their musical talent and diversity. "Red Moon" in particular features driving, hoedown-inspired instrumentation while providing an emotional and personally reflective message about love and loss.

Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You is a breathtaking and deeply moving album that showcases the incredible talent of Big Thief. Whether you're a fan of indie folk or just looking for some truly beautiful and heartfelt music, this album is a must-listen. Besides, look at that cute little campfire up there. There's a cool dinosaur, and a bear playing guitar. For just a moment (or, like, 90 minutes of moments) feel the warm glowing warming glow.

2. Wet Leg

Wet Leg

Post-Punk Revival (Listen)

"When I think about what you've become, I feel sorry for your mom," Rhian Teasdale sings on "Ur Mum," Wet Leg's cheekiest single from their self-titled debut. Rare is the debut album that is willing to be this daring. Rarer still is the snark accompanied by such a joyous expression of what rock can be, and surrounded by a record full of songs equally giddy and silly that are immediately unforgettable.

Full honesty, this will probably be the simplest recap of an album in the #2 slot I've ever written, but it's for a great reason: everything I can say about every song is that it's fun. SO FUN! I have never had this much fun listening to a post-punk album. Usually they're sobering, technical affairs (see Preoccupations further up this list) that rely on an admittedly problematic history of exploiting a band member's expression of their mental illness: Joy Division, Swans (pre-experimental phase), Sisters of Mercy...umm, Suicide.

But Wet Leg's version brings forward the punk half of "post-punk," driving bass and drums, simple-yet-catchy guitar melodies, and smile-inducing lyrics. "Wet Dream" is the kind of pop rock singalong that you hear more from J-pop songs, so upbeat and--and I can't stress enough how often this word will be used here--fun, you'll be clapping and singing along after just one pass of the chorus. "Beam me up! / Count me in! / 3, 2, 1 / Let's begin!" Please, let's do.

Incredibly silly first single, "Chaise Longue" sees Teasdale referring to her college degree as "the big D," which given the state of student debt these days, seems a little too close to home. It's paired with a brilliant bit of production in the pre-chorus, the call-and-response of "Excuse me. .......... what" that's just delicious. And lordy how I love the rhythm of the line "Is your mother worried? Would you like us to assign someone to worry your mother?" Ha!

Previously mentioned "Ur Mum," is like, my spirit animal, a song about how you can never leave a party early enough, constantly hounded by people trying to make inane conversation. When Teasdale performs her "loudest and longest scream," phew, we've all been there, screaming inside, while, like the instrumentation of the song, we mask it with upbeat party rock.

And of course, in typical Wet Leg fashion heaviest song, "Oh No," is reserved for the most superficial of things: doomscrolling. "3 AM / Fucking zen / Oh no / Suck the life from my eyes / It feels nice / I'm scrolling, I'm scrolling." It's the perfect encapsulation of what it feels like to escape the drudgery of life with insipid internet bullshit, "I went home all alone / I checked my phone / And now I'm inside it."

I'm going to stop here now, because to divulge anymore would be telling. This album is fun. I can't, nay, I shan't stop saying it. Fun, fun, fun! Stop whatever sad year-end recap traditions you have right now and listen to this fun album for fun.

Fun!

1. Mitski

Laurel Hell

New Wave Art Pop (Listen)

Let's

Step

Carefully

Into

The Dark

When I originally reviewed Mitski's Laurel Hell earlier this year (my only review this year, sorry), I analyzed many of the songs with a reading that, while emotionally true, was fairly surface level: this person's life is stalked by tragedy in love. However, there is a more allegorical take that even Mitski herself has coyly agreed is accurate: Laurel Hell is an allusion to her falling out of love...with music. Looking at the album this way, the symbolism is almost face-palmingly ham-fisted. But if there's anyone who can tread such a fine, dangerous line, it's Mitski.

Opener "Valentine, Texas"'s opening lines (see above) create a thrilling scene where all is dark except the light of a fire. Be it spooky woods or haunted house, we know that perhaps we are not accompanied by the most trustworthy of guides. This is very easily substituted for the stage before a show. "Once we're in I'll remember my way around," she murmurs: Mitski knows exactly where all the wires and props and lights and amps and drums are. The stage performance metaphor continues, more existentially, "who will I be tonight? Who will I become tonight." Perhaps alluding to the cutthroat world of music, she threateningly announces her lupine transformation, "I'll show you who my sweethearts never met / Wet teeth / Shining eyes." When the synth stabs out of nowhere, it shocks and jars us; she is not the same and our view of her will never return to the energetic "sad girl" that we knew. Her lycanthropy complete, she bemoans what she has become, "clouds look like mountains / Let me watch those mountains from underneath / And maybe they'll finally float off of me."

"Working for the Knife" is...too obvious for me to need to explain it here, but I will go on and on about the off-time metal clang countering the smooth, deep synth backing, lightly plinking piano, and sumptuous shoegaze guitars that come in at the end of each verse. For an editorial about how much someone hates being trapped in the music industry, goddamn is this song gorgeously produced.

When the funky, disco rhythms of "Stay Soft" break the silence, the sarcasm only becomes more biting. "It's why I've arrived, your sex god / Here to take you where you need to go / To where the dark remembers you," Mitski croons, implicating the audience of her shows as mere users of her talent to gain access to a more emotive realm. She then steels herself for the inevitable backlash of critical and fan dis/approval, "Open up your heart like the gates of Hell / And stay soft, get beaten / Only natural to harden up." The chorus is a sickening blend of sexual innuendo and self-reassurance, the disturbing dichotomy of being a woman in today's spotlight. Unable to live with the constant demand of persnickety fans any longer she goes on, "just tell me what you want to do / Tell me what you want to burn away / So I can be your stoker." Mitski is no longer having fun; everything is a chore, everything is scrutinized, we are just the worst.

"Everyone," with its incredibly simplistic beat also ends up being the most heart breaking. "I left the door open to the dark / I said, 'come in, come in, whatever you are' / But it didn't want me yet," she tells us, describing--not so subtly--her start in music, producing her first few albums herself with no studio or label backing. Worn down by the struggle to get noticed, she returns: "And I opened my arms wide to the dark / I said, 'take it all, whatever you want' / I didn't know that I was young / I didn't know what it would take." Her regret is beyond compare, and even with the space afforded her from years of hit singles, she is still trapped, "Sometimes, I think I am free / Until I find I'm back in line again."

Massive single "Love Me More" follows the same story, "if I keep myself at home / I won't make the same mistake / That I made for 15 years / I could be a new girl / I wish that this could go away / But when I'm done singing this song / I will have to find something else to do to keep me here." But despite her hatred of the industry, disgust with her fans, and dreams of moving on to other art forms, she just can't help herself, singing "here's my hand / There's the itch / But I'm not supposed to scratch," before the song explodes into a glorious cacophony of 80's synths. Her love of music itself keeps her in an abusive relationship, "how do other people live? / I wonder how they keep it up / When today is finally done / There's another day to come." Knowing she's trapped in a permanent cycle of wanting to create, then needing greedy label-men and intrusive fans to express that creation, she contents herself with fantasy, "we'll pretend it ends tomorrow." The devastating chorus is a plaintive cry to music itself, begging in the dust for some sign, "I need you to love me more / Love enough to fill me up / I need you to love me more / Love enough to drown it out / Drown it out / Drown ME out."

Emotion destroying ballad "There's Nothing Left for You" is a heart-rending letter from Mitski to herself. A 10CC-inspired synth loop opens before she begins breaking up with her younger, optimistic self: "Try and go outside / Nothing waits for you / You had it once before / Not anymore." She laments all the missed opportunities to escape the cycle, the burden of the creative mind, and how it has destroyed he hopes and dreams: "You could touch fire, you could fly," she belts over top of an ever-increasing crescendo of guitars and cymbals, "it was your right, it was your life / And then it passed." The din cuts to near silence, like a knife in the dark. "There's nothing left for you."

And if you ever find yourself in need of a good cry, might I recommend, "I Guess," which is sad enough through my initial surface-level reading of a breakup. But looking through the lens of Mitski falling out of love with music, the sadness increases by orders of magnitude. "I guess this is the end / I'll have to learn to be somebody else / It's been you and me since before I was 'me' / Without you I don't yet know quite how to live." Just...let that sink in. Mitski has been making music since she was a precocious, artistic teenager, her brain still not fully formed. And now, purely to keep up appearances at this point, she's still doing it, having long fallen out of love with the artform. This isn't fun or fulfilling anymore, it's just...empty, and there's nothing else. The reverb and distorted string break point to Mitski being locked in her own mind, unsure of what, if anything, she should do: "If I could keep anything of you / I would keep just this quiet after you."

Closer "That's Our Lamp" (song title of the year, btw), fortunately turns the mood around, despite its sincere content. The simplistic synth intro gives way to an ebullient 80's pop-country style made famous by Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" and GODDAMN is it a fun sound that, I mean, who knew we were missing that so badly? To return to our allegory, the lyrics act as a sort of letter to Mitski's own creativity. Once, as a girl, it was free, wild, and constantly opening doors: "you say you love me / I believe you do." Now, many years later, it's a slog, a boring chore, a demanding, manipulative, jealous boyfriend: "you just don't like me / Not like you used to." But much like a jealous boyfriend, creativity, ominously, never leaves: "I'm standing in the dark / Looking up into our room / Where you'll be waiting for me." Mitski has totally fallen out of love with music at this point, but as her mood changes in the cheery parade of the outro, so does our perspective of the past.

Regret is a waste. "That's where you loved me." Maybe, perhaps, we'll fall in love again.

Mitski's Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (New Music)

2022-02-05T18:39:00.000-05:00

Mitski

Laurel Hell

Art Pop (Listen)

"I guess this is the end / I'll have to learn to be somebody else / It's been you and me since before I was me / Without you, I don't yet know quite how to live," Mitski Miyawaki softly coos on the penultimate, and saddest, track from her new album Laurel Hell, "I Guess." The song is bare, highlighting Mitski's beautifully calm voice, even in the face of such heartbreak, backed only by a reverbed piano. Between verses, there is a distorted keyboard, reminiscent of Bowie's "Moss Garden." There is no chorus, only a return to the painful truth.

Laurel Hell, Mitski's sixth album, is full of these austere moments where the meaning can be decided by the listener: is the breaking relationship between Mitski and a partner, her fans, fame, the music industry, or herself? What is undebatable is the emotion it evokes. Mitski is a master of the poetic edit, distilling her thoughts and feelings down to the sparest minimum required for understanding. She once described herself in an interview as "a black hole where people dump their feelings," and like a black hole, Mitski can compress those feelings with immeasurable gravity to a single word.

Opener "Valentine, Texas" begins with a solitary, low synth line backing Mitski's echoed, enticing vocals: "Let's step carefully into the dark / Once we're in, I'll remember my way around," before informing (warning?) us that "Who will I become tonight? / I'll show you who my sweetheart's never met / Wet teeth, shining eyes." The Cure-esque fuzz of keyboards explode like a jump-scare string stab to open up the song to new heights of lush poetry: "Let's drive out to where the dust devils are made / By dancing ghosts as they kick up clouds of sand / Where the clouds look like mountains / Let me watch those mountains from underneath."

"Working for the Knife" showcases Mitski's musical chops, with an off-time metalic beat opening the song, increasing the pace and mood a bit, much more like her previous work on Be the Cowboy and Puberty 2. But here is the last time those albums will be referenced. Using her most obvious lyrics, Mitski describes how she wishes she made movies but grinding for music leaves her unable to follow any other passions: "I always knew the world moves on / I just didn't know it would go without me."

The danceable, Twin-Shadow-like bassline that opens "Stay Soft," is our first look at the new Mitski, upbeat and clubbing, all while exposing your deepest emotional frailties. "Open up your heart / Like the gates of Hell," she pleads while the chorus builds with complex tom drumming and a pounding piano, until every instrument and sound is swaying at full fever pitch. "You stay soft, get beaten / Only natural to harden up."

"Everyone" sees the return of the spare, echoing lyrics of the opener, this time lilting over a dark, minimalist sci-fi beat. "I left the door open to the dark," Mitski tells us, returning to her original theme, "I said, 'Come in, come in, whatever you are' / But it didn't want me yet." The coolness of the beat morphs into a John-Carpenter-horror theme as she continues her tragic tale: "I opened my arms wide to the dark / I said, 'Take it all, whatever you want' / I didn't know that I was young." And in a moment of pure lyrical genius, she ends with the gut-punch: "Sometimes I think I am free / Until I find I'm back in line again."

One of the best-ever examples of painting pictures with words, "Heat Lightning" describes, in perfect detail, what it's like to lie awake all night with insomnia: "I've lied awake since one and now it's four o'clock / Though I've held on, can't carry it much longer / On the ceiling dancing are the things all come and gone." The beautiful portrait is sung delicately over a lush old-school country guitar-and-piano composition with occasional cymbal ride to dramatize the imagery, which I can't state enough, is breathtaking: "Heat lightning, watch it from my doorstep / Sleeping eyelid of the sky flutters in a dream / Well, I've held on, but I feel a storm approaching / Trees are swaying in the wind like sea anemones."

Big single, "The Only Heartbreaker," is a bop through and through. There's awesome 80's synths, workout video drums, a powerfully belted chorus, and somewhere in there is definitely a cowbell. That this is just the glimmering façade over a much more serious subject--that maybe the reason you're always the one making mistakes in a relationship is because you're the only one trying--only adds to Mitski's greatness: even her façades are better than most other musicians' whole catalogs.

On to my current obsession: "Love Me More." An absolute banger of a pop song where Mitski parallels the damaging dependency of a doomed relationship to that of the isolation she feels as an artist, growing ever-distant from her fans and her love of music. And her message is not subtle: "But when I'm done singing this song / I will have to find something else to keep me here." She pleads achingly to fans and literal music over powerful synths in the chorus, begging the art form she loves so much: "I need you to love me more / Love me more, love me more / Love enough to drown it out / Drown it out, drown me out." If Bo Burnham's Inside taught us anything, it's that art is a harsh mistress.

An aside: when I heard this song in the context of the album, I'm embarrassed to say, I cried. I wept like a child. Strangely, it wasn't out of any sadness in my life, but instead the opposite. This album is so fantastically brilliant that I wept out of sheer awe for the experience. To be in the presence of an album like this is maybe...MAYBE, once in a lifetime. I don't know if there will be another.

"There's Nothing Left for You Here," begins with a 10CC-esque synth rhythm to complement Mitski's song of being left utterly alone, be that from a lost partner, or a loss of love with music. "So go on to that sweetheart's door / And find a new you / Give her all the love you saved for it." The music crescendos and swells to a monumental leviathan of strings and percussion while Mitski belts out "You could touch fire / You could fly / It was your right / It was your life," when everything suddenly cuts. "And then it passed."

"Should've Been Me" finds Mitski at her most Bowie-worshipping (and, I mean, who hasn't been there). The metallic percussion hits, hand claps, and fake-yet-very-real piano sounds recall the god's tragically overlooked 1993 masterpiece Black Tie White Noise, particularly "Miracle Goodnight," a romp around the dancehall that, like Mitski after him, hides its message under a party guise. "When I saw the girl looked just like me / I thought, it must be lonely loving someone / Trying to find their way out of a maze," Mitski happily sings along to the honky-tonk beat, hiding her own shame about letting a relationship fall apart when the other person so obviously wanted to make it work.

And so we return to where we started, "I Guess." This may be the saddest break up song I've ever heard. The piano and synths here are reverberated so heavily as to fill every aural space, crushing you under their melancholy, and forcing you to focus on Mitski's cooing voice as your only source of orientation. But her message is not one for the faint of heart. "If I could keep anything of you / I would keep just this quiet after you / It's still as a pond I'm staring into / From here I can say, 'Thank you.'" The lifetime together now fully ended, and the drone of the keys fading leaves you behind to sit and regret everything.

Closer "That's Our Lamp" (amazing title by the way) is quite the culture shock moment, starting with a toe-tapping synth sample and bass drum, before Mitski begins to describe the final fight that precipitated this whole uncoupling saga. When she gets to the chorus, we explode into full-blown Dolly Parton "9 to 5"-ing, including strumming guitars, tambourines, and...there's that cowbell again! "That's our lamp / It shines like a big moon / We may be ending / I'm standing in the dark / Looking up into our room / Where you'll be waiting for me / Thinking that's where you loved me," Mitski triumphantly sings as sound adds upon sound--percussion, a foot-stomping chorus, trumpets, and so much more--until the song becomes a Mardi Gras parade. Mitski and the chorus of singers belt out "That's where you loved me" over and over as we fade out on the end of a utterly mesmerizing story of heartbreak and rebuilding.

TL;DR: 10/10 Would cry dancing again

The Best Albums of 2021

2021-12-30T13:53:00.000-05:00

Welcome! To the 5th Anniversary of the Baltimore Music Festival! 2021 wasn't a whole lot better than 2020, featuring a bunch of dumbasses who thought overthrowing the government was the best way to not overthrow the government, a bunch of dumbasses who think science and medicine formed an evil cabal to change their DNA, and a virus that just won't quit. That said, the music, partly spurred on by the idea that maybe we'll get to see some of it live this year, was great, and as such is compiled in the list below. Let's get started!

Shout Outs

Once again, there are way too many good things to listen to to include in a single Top 50 list, so here are a whole crap-load that are definitely worth your time and consideration:

Sufjan Stevens Convocations, Shame Drunk Tank Pink, Goat Girl On All Fours, Django Django Glowing in the Dark, The Horrors Lout EP, The Armed ULTRAPOP, Arooj Aftab Vulture Prince, Vince Staples Vince Staples, Adele 30, Taylor Swift Red (Taylor's Version), Ad Nauseum Imperative Imperceptible Impulse, Arca Kick iii, Deerhoof Actually You Can, illuminati hotties Let Me Do One More, Nas King's Disease, Panopticon ...And Again Into the Light, Silk Sonic An Evening with Silk Sonic, Viagra Boys Welfare Jazz, Weezer OK Human, Westside Gunn Hitler Wears Hermes 8: Side B, serpentwithfeet Deacon, Hanna Peel Fir Wave, The Bug Fire, Skee Mask Pool, Lil Ugly Mane Volcanic Bird Enemy and the Voiced Concern, death's dynamic shroud.wmv Faith in Persona, Ill Considered Liminal Space, Squid Bright Green Field, Sweet Trip A Tiny House in Secret Speeches Polar Equals, Olivia Rodrigo Sour, Wolf Alice Blue Weekend, Lil Naz X Montero, Dave We're All Alone in This Together, Pink Pantheress To Hell with It, Doja Cat Planet Her, Allison Russell Outside Child, Julien Baker Little Obilivions, Gojira Fortitude.

Alright, deep breath, and...

Honorable Mentions

50. Lost Girls

Menneskekollektivet

Electronic Art Pop (Listen)

49. Death from Above 1979

Is 4 Lovers

Dance Punk (Listen)

48. Converge & Chelsea Wolfe

Bloodmoon: I

Atmospheric Sludge Metal (Listen)

47. Deafheaven

Infinite Granite

Shoegaze (Listen)

46. Halsey

If I Can't Have Love I Want Power

Art Pop (Listen)

45. A Place to Bury Strangers

Hologram EP

Post-Punk Noise Rock (Listen)

44. Ty Segall

Harmonizer

Psychedelic Garage Rock (Listen)

43. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard

L.W.

Psychedelic Rock (Listen)

42. Lucy Dacus

Home Video

Indie Rock (Listen)

41. Boldy James & The Alchemist

Bo Jackson

Drumless Gangsta Rap (Listen)

40. Faye Webster

I Know I'm Funny Haha

Alt-Country (Listen)

39. L'Rain

Fatigue

Neo-Soul (Listen)

38. Self Esteem

Prioritise Pleasure

Electropop (Listen)

37. Billie Eilish

Happier Than Ever

Contemporary R&B Art-Pop (Listen)

36. Mdou Moctar

Afrique Victime

Tishoumaren (Listen)

35. Snail Mail

Valentine

Indie Pop Rock (Listen)

34. The War on Drugs

I Don't Live Here Anymore

Hearland Rock (Listen)

33. Arlo Parks

Collapsed in Sunbeams

Bedroom Pop (Listen)

32. The Weather Station

Ignorance

Sophisti-Pop (Listen)

31. Japanese Breakfast

Jubilee

Indie Chamber Pop (Listen)

30. Dry Cleaning

New Long Leg

Post-Punk (Listen)

29. Yola

Stand for Myself

Country Pop Soul (Listen)

28. Injury Reserve

By the Time I Get to Phoenix

Experimental Glitch Hop (Listen)

27. slowthai

Tyron

UK Hip Hop (Listen)

26. black midi

Cavalcade

Avant-Prog (Listen)

25. Brockhampton

Roadrunner: New Light, New Machine

West Coast Hip Hop (Listen)

24. Nick Cave & Warren Ellis

Carnage

Chamber Pop (Listen)

23. Backxwash

I Lie Here Buried with My Rings and My Dresses

Industrial Hip Hop (Listen)

22. Feu! Chatterton

Palais d'Argile

Art Rock (Listen)

21. Twin Shadow

Twin Shadow

Psychdelic Pop (Listen)

You have no idea how good it feels to see this here

20. Sleigh Bells

Texis

Noise Pop (Listen)

Same here

19. Armand Hammer & The Alchemist

Haram

Abstract Hip Hop (Listen)

18. James Blake

Friends That Break Your Heart

Alternative R&B (Listen)

17. JPEGMAFIA

LP!

Experimental Hip Hop (Listen)

16. Sufjan Stevens & Angelo De Augustine

A Beginner's Mind

Indie Folk (Listen)

15. Spellling

The Turning Wheel

Art Pop (Listen)

14. Black Country, New Road

For the First Time

Post-Rock (Listen)

13. Low

Hey What

Post-Industrial Pop (Listen)

12. Jazmine Sullivan

Heaux Tales

Contemporary R&B (Listen)

11. Tyler, The Creator

Call Me If You Get Lost

West Coast Hip Hop (Listen)

Runners Up

10. St. Vincent

Daddy's Home

Psychedelic Soul (Listen)

For the sixth time in as many albums, St. Vincent lands in the top 10 of a year-end list. But this is no continuation of the ever-more electronic path Annie Clark seemed destined to continue in the wake of both St. Vincent's synthpop influences and Masseduction's nearly elctroclash noisy romps. Was she becoming the next Peaches? The new Eurythmics? No. Instead doing a full 540 (that's a 360+180), Annie goes full Bowie-interpretation-of-Philadelphia-soul and utterly crushes it. The rambling, staggering keyboards and delightful backing vocal jabs of hit single "Pay Your Way in Pain"; the chilly groove of "Down and Out Downtown"; the paradoxical coolness of "The Melting of the Sun"; the clash of dancehall beats and 70s-sitar-infused blues rock on "Down"; the Sheena Easton inspired "My Baby Wants a Baby"; it's all so fantastically well written and executed and wrapped in a timeless aesthetic that could only be done by Annie Clark and St. Vincent.

9. Genesis Owusu

Smiling with No Teeth

Experimental Neo-Soul Hip Hop (Listen)

Have you ever heard something so bizarre and different that it became...delightful? That is the only way to describe what happens listening to the debut album from Australian singer/rapper Genesis Owusu. Opener "On the Move!" blitzes you with industrial sounds, followed by "The Other Black Dog"s breakneck pace and Thundercat-influenced massive basslines. The soul-funk of "Centrefold" recalls some of Outkast's best slow jams, while the Kirin J. Calanan-featuring "Drown" is one of the best bops of the year, slammed with speaker-destroying bass and a catchy chorus you'll be humming for days. But apart from hit after goddamn hit, Owusu knows how to get weird, like the spoken word title track, complete with mouth sounds instead of instruments; or the strange vocal play of "I Don't See Color" that is equal parts off-putting and intriguing. But all of this is infused with a sense of play that one doesn't often see in conscious hip hop, or really music in general--the sense that music is fun, and that it can do that while still saying something important and taking big swings is why I, personally, cannot wait to see where this talented artist goes in the future.

8. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra

Promises

Minimalist Third Stream Jazz (Listen)

To quote Beck and Bat for Lashes, let's get lost. In one of the more surprising turns of the year, two forms of music I generally...don't get into--jazz and minimalist electronica--combined to make a gooorrrgeeeooouuusss menagerie of sound that can only be described (pretentiously) as a sonic feeling. The serene journey painted for you by accomplished saxophonist Pharoah Sanders is unlike anything I've heard: a stark combination of of a Bowie/Eno Heroes instrumental and the anti-muscularity of Lester Young. These brilliant passages are deftly complimented by the spare minimalism of Floating Points' electronics, which evoke Vangelis' Blade Runner, and the London Symphony Orchestra's subtle arrangements that, while incredibly muted, are used to maximum effect, heightening every high and submerging the lows to the Challenger Deep. What a truly splendid odyssey.

7. Richard Dawson & Circle

Henki

Progressive Art Rock (Listen)

With Henki, Richard Dawson continues his impressive run of complex, challenging, and thought-provoking avant-folk tales, now with increased sonic depth and texture provided by Finnish prog rock band Circle. It's a match made in some sort of bizarro twee heaven, where all the instruments are acoustic guitars, tom toms, and pre-digital synths, but is decorated with black drapes, burning candle wax, and skulls from the traveling grotesquerie. At any moment you can't know what you'll be getting: is it a beautiful Zeppelin's "Going to California" folk piece? An 80s vampire movie score? A soring arena rock anthem? You'll have to listen to each six-plus-minute epic to find out. Each song is built to maximize the effect of Dawson's darkly sardonic--and occasionally Lovecraftian--lyrics about Greek gods, biblical floods, stone age love stories, and...paleobotanists? This album is as close as we'll get to a Neil Gaiman musical.

6. Magdalena Bay

Mercurial World

Synthpop (Listen)

Goddamn if a great synthpop album isn't the palette cleanser everyone needs at the end of 2021. Magdalena Bay deliver the York Peppermint Pattie after a year of Necco wafers and candy corn, because Mercurial World is icy sweet. Sparse, neon-soaked synths stab in and out of four-on-the-floor beats and keyboard basslines that kick harder than a taekwondo champion. The title track's not-so-subtle nod to Madonna's "Material World" leads into one of the best pop anthems of the year, the Dragonette-meets-New Young Pony Club banger "Dawning of the Season." Stunner "You Lose!" combines hardcore EBM drum machines with Atari game sound effects in a glorious marriage of glitch pop and chill wave so totally cool that Alan Palomo thought about bringing Neon Indian out of retriement. Album closer "The Beginning" is a party anthem, loud and brash and just waiting for people to dance like they, finally, don't have to care. I guarantee if you sing this in your car, you will be the coolest person anyone has ever seen.

5. Turnstile

Glow On

Post-Hardcore Alternative Rock (Listen)

It's so incredibly awesome to finally be able to point to a band that comes from my hometown that isn't dream pop (Beach House, Future Islands, etc.) and also is absolutely, utterly fantastic. Baltimore's Turnstile is a talent that I have, sadly, not been paying that much attention to, as I usually don't really engage with hardcore (or "post-hardcore") in a way that my standard hard rock, grunge, and post-punk proclivities take me. But Cave In's 2019 album, Final Transmission, really opened my eyes to the possibilities of the genre, and I began to follow more artists practicing it. Needless to say, Glow On is a mesmerizing, head-banging masterwork that showcases both the style's and Turnstile's flexibility and creative expansiveness. The music--pounding Grohl-esque drumming, violently explosive guitars, angry vocals that are expertly delivered without an over-reliance on screaming--is so kick-ass and hardcore that you'll break every piece of furniture in your house moshing alone. Glow On is an all-out assault on the ears that you never want to end.

4. Sault

Nine

UK Neo-Soul (Listen...?)

Last year, in the midst of some of the most heinous, noxious, vitriol that we as a society have had to deal with in a long time, Sault released a double-album, Untitled (Black Is / Rise) that was so poignant and beautiful that it made me cry. In this year, in the midst of dread and fear that never seems to go away, they've managed to do it again. Nine is significantly shorter than Untitled, but packs just as much emotional gut-punch into its 35 minutes. "Haha" opens the album with an amazing sample defying the very idea of living in sadness. "London Gangs" has a synth-bass loop to die for, backed by jazz drumming and some fun "doo doo doos" that almost distract you from its serious message. The actual bass line flowing along "Bitter Streets" is so swoon-inducing that I recently bought a fainting couch just for listening to this album. "You from London" picks up where "You Know It Ain't" left off with biting sarcasm and juvenalian lyrics over a Casio keyboard beat and jazz horns, plus it features Little Simz, which is just a treat. Much fuss has been made over Nine's gimmicky release, only appearing on streaming platforms for 99 days before being removed, essentially without a trace (hence the iffy YouTube link up there). And yes, admittedly, it is a little gimmicky, but songwriting this good, and production (my GOD, the production) this perfect, can't last forever...can it?

The Best of the Year

3. Black Dresses

Forever In Your Heart

Electro-Industrial (Listen)

It has been many a year since an industrial album was so good it actually made me contemplate including it on a year-end list, much less placing it in the top three. Black Dresses have, however, revived my faith in, and restored my love of the genre. It's harsh, loud, angry, and focused purely on sonic maximalism. God, I love it. And Forever in Your Heart delivers on every level: massive, crunching guitars; vocals that mix between ethereal crooning and abject, bloody-throat screams; the beats created using machine parts and literal metal strikes. Opener "PEACESIGN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (I hope I got the right number of exclamation points) is the perfect test of whether this is for everyone (it's not) but is also an amazing overture for the rest of the album.

In 2020, along with every other horrible thing going on, Black Dresses announced their breakup due to the overwhelming amount of transphobic bullshit that founding member Devi McCallion was targeted with online after the release of their fourth album, Peaceful As Hell. To think that there is human behavior so disgusting and repulsive that it causes a person to give up their dreams and ambitions in order to hide from the world makes me seethe. Given that Forever in Your Heart was released after their dissolution was announced puts the future of Black Dresses in a state of flux, but we can only hope it's a sign of rebirth for the band.

The album title makes an appearance in one of the best songs of the year, "Heaven." After a dark, jack-hammering club beat makes the song seem like a standard EBM track, we get the exclamation, "I love feeling pain / Makes me feel like I'm going to heaven," followed by the harsh existential truth disguised as sentiment, "The night explodes in light from a shooting star / It's easy to be disillusioned when you don't know who you are / And that can live forever in your heart." This journey is going to be...dark.

"Tiny Ball" is an exploration of Nine Inch Nails-"Hurt"-style minimalism mixed with the post-modernist depression of EMA, and the production of Deftones' "Teenager," that eventually explodes into a disturbing sluice of grunge noises and off-kilter lyrics. "Silver Bells" is probably the album's most traditional industrial-rock song, taking inspiration from KMFDM and Front Line Assembly until it slowly devolves into a din of noises and confused studio adlibs.

Perhaps the best song on the album is "We'll Figure It Out," with its underground pounding drums and gloomy, distant guitar and synth lines. The chorus is a celebration of total nihilism: "I'm breaking it / It's broken / I open it / It opens / I'm drowning and I'm floating / I'm dreaming and I'm hopeless / I don't give a shit if it doesn't work / I've done a lot of things and none of them worked;" delivered with ever-increasing frustration and anger directed towards the void.

The intensity and harsh sounds increase and increase through the rest of the album until the finale, "(Can't) Keep It Together," which keeps the distortion, but refigures much of Black Dresses' music into an almost cute, upbeat series of Weezer-esque guitar ditties and genuinely heartwarming singing. It's a great disguise for the often sad subject matter, that no matter how hard we try, especially those of us in targeted minorities who disproportionately suffer from mental health issues, try our best to "be everything to everybody" and "keep it together," but sometimes we just...can't, and that's okay. "I couldn't keep it together / I couldn't make it last / I couldn't keep it together / But it's not that bad."

2. Lingua Ignota

Sinner Get Ready

Neoclassical Avant-Folk Darkwave (Listen)

Warning: the following review includes discussions of abuse and suicide.

After the crushing noise of the death industrial Caligula, Lingua Ignota's 2019 album that impacted her life so much it's permanently tattooed on her skin, the neoclassical style of Sinner Get Ready might almost seem calmer, but I assure you, it is anything but. Immediately out of the gate, "The Order of Spiritual Virgins" greets you like a Fiona Apple song from Hell. The loud slams of piano keys seem violent and random, an apt mood for the dark, personal subjects of the album. Kristin Hayter's voice is strong and clear, evoking the chanters of olde Christendom.

Much of Sinner Get Ready focuses, thematically, on the psychological injuries sustained by those forced into religious conformity before their minds have even matured enough to know about the adult world. "I Who Bend the Tall Grasses" finds Hayter nearly screaming directly into the face of some over-puritanical sadist, bent on forcefully converting her or to kill her trying. You can feel every vein popping in her neck and forehead as her guttural cries demand vengeance, if salvation is no longer an option. It is no coincidence then that the entire song is backed by the sounds of a massive church organ.

"Many Hands" leans heavily on the other theme of Sinner Get Ready, that of the emotional torture suffered by victims of sexual assault and abuse. Here, the "hands" double as those performing an unwilling baptism and those that abused Hayter, having only recently escaped a violently manipulative, abusive relationship with Daughters frontman Alexis Marshall. The music here is an over-plucked, under-tensed guitar that recalls the eeriest passages from Richard Dawson's Peasant, foreboding at best.

The gorgeously melancholy "Pennsylvania Furnace," about loneliness, absence, and the inevitability of God’s judgment, has some of the most tear-jerking moments of this or any other year in music. "Do you want to be in Hell with me," Hayter asks plaintively, appealing for the target of her question to join her, even if it means the very worst could happen. "I wish things could be any other way," she warns us, the listener, as to what will happen if we follow the road with her. "All that I've learned is everything burns."

"Repent Now Confess Now" is a direct message to Alexis Marshall, as well as other abusers, including the graphic images of Hayter's actual injuries, "you took my legs and my will to live," when Marshall allegedly injured Hayter's spine during a particularly violent outburst that left her nearly paralyzed, and the trauma caused her to attempt suicide. Similarly, "The Sacred Linament of Judgement" describes the mental and emotional toll enacted by those in positions of religious power: "Oh sinner have you ever had / The love of Christ so ruthlessly applied / The sacred linament of Judgment / With cruel fingers bind."

The quietest and most desolate song on the album is the aptly titled "Perpetual Flame of Centralia." Full of dread, Hayter's dry vocal recording accentuates the desperation and emptiness of that town, and the message that, while life can be blissful, the fires, perhaps those of Hell itself, burn just underneath the surface. And if you want proof, just look at the once peaceful, god-fearing town of Centralia.

The fear of judgement continues in the penultimate track, "Man Is Like a Spring Flower," listing in an effectively repetitive fashion how the heart of mankind is inherently a dangerous weapon. It can be used to inspire, certainly, but inspire what exactly? If the history of religion on Earth has taught us anything, it's not great. The song eventually switches into a baroque chamber composition of patted percussion and layered backing vocals and harpsichords that is immensely beautiful, increasing until the sounds eventually blow out the red on their mics and your headphones.

The closing track, "The Solitary Brethren of Ephrata," is a sumptuous chorale of pianos, strings, and woodwinds behind about a thousand different layers of Hayter's pronounced voice singing "Paradise will be mine," the culmination of both the religious themes of the album, and those of Hayter's personal journey, through the darkest moments a person can endure, to the glorious lightness of freedom.

1. Little Simz

Sometimes I Might Be Introvert

Conscious UK Hip Hop (Listen)

2019's excellent Grey Area was a short, bold collection of boastful rhymes by Little Simz that floated atop a new, raw sound. It changed how Simz had previously wrote, usually preferring lush, ornamental arrangements. Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is Simz combing the best of both of those styles: the production is still incredibly raw, almost coarse in many places; but the music and lyrics she creates using it are full of nods to soul, R&B, and orchestral theatricality. The masterful mixing of both raises the ceiling for what is possible in this sonic space, and Little Simz smashes through that ceiling with the power of Mjölnir.

The hard aggressiveness of Grey Area is interchanged with massive string sections, bright horn arrangements, and an adorable children's choir. The content of Little Simz' lyrics is even more rewarding as she dives into family issues, her emotional struggles with the spotlight, and her past, while at the same time celebrating womanhood, blackness, and art, framing her career in music as a Tchaikovsky-esque fantasy (see: the multiple interludes where Simz is addressed by a Glinda the Good Witch-type host guiding her through various expressions of her internal struggles).

The opening track, "Introvert," sees Simz pursuing her passions while fighting her tendency towards, well, introversion, with immense orchestral instrumentation and lyrics that allude to religious ceremony, the pomposity of ancient kingdoms, and the "glory" of war, clearly a mirror of Simz own nagging doubts regarding her opposing personality traits.

"Woman," featuring the dynamic Cleo Sol, is a charismatic, classy, and flawless, jazzy tribute to women of color. The drum work and backing vocal loop is pure perfection, complimented by an occasional glockenspiel flourish. When the Sol-led chorus enters, the song is lifted to entirely new heights, and the instrumentation adds more and more as a string section slowly builds underneath.

On one of the best produced songs of the year, "Two Worlds Apart" enters with a jump-scare of an R&B sample that runs through Simz discussion of how her psychology makes it difficult to truly connect with others, until it hits true euphoria. The song slowly tunnels its way out, creating a dizzying, disoriented feeling.

"I Love You, I Hate You" includes the textbook example of how to properly use a sample. Simz uses the shouts of "I love you, I hate you" as a sort of call-and-response: "As always I love you / But sometimes I hate you." Again, the orchestra shows up about midway through (a reoccurring event) to deliver the emotional weight to back the message of Simz lyrics. Then, the track "Little Q, Pt. 2" marks the first appearance of the children's choir, as Simz uses their presence to discuss her own troubled childhood and the pain of growing up.

The biggest banger of the year has to be "Speed," Simz' brash return to the production and beats of Grey Area. Her lyrics return to boasting and put-downs, all rightfully earned, while a massive synth-bass pounds away over jazz drums. "Still running with ease / Marathon not sprint," she declares at the close, revealing her statement of work. The surprise of a string quartet to wrap up the song provides a perfect transition to the grand layering of "Standing Ovation," complete with back-up singers and a full horn section.

"Rollin Stone" may be the biggest departure yet. Simz spits fire as fast as possible over the desolate low throb of an italo-disco beat. At the halfway point, the song devolves into a trap-meets-808 smooth track while Simz continues to put you in your place, a subtle vocoder effect providing an otherworldly air.

Then we come to the single of the year, the incredible pop departure of "Protect My Energy." A massive drum machine provides a Janet Jackson Control sound that is just to die for. Simz, in a rare turn, forgoes rapping to sing "that's why I / Love being alone / Protectin' my energy," the rallying cry of introverts everywhere.

"Fear No Man" introduces us to African rhythms, kept expertly just on the brim of fully exploding. Simz embraces the power of women while a faded vocal loop expresses her love of being the very best in an industry dominated by male toxicity. A funky bassline drives the song ever-forward to the finale.

After one final visit from British Glinda, the final duo of songs finds Simz in a significantly calmer mood, finally accepting her introversion and her past as part of what makes her, her. Empowered to be herself entirely, Simz guides us through "Miss Understood," a delicious double-entendre that embraces being unknown by others while fully knowing herself. The grandiose strings are replaced by a simple piano, symbolizing how, having worked through her personal dilemmas, Simz can finally, at last, come to be at peace with who she really is: she may be the best in the game, but, sometimes, she might be introvert, and that's just fine.

The Best Albums of 2020

2020-12-18T00:37:00.010-05:00

Welcome to the 4th Annual Baltimore Music Festival, this time featuring Il Douchey Orange Julius and the Terrible Awful No-Good Very Bad Year. We're going to change things up a bit, in that all the categories will be released in just one article. THIS ONE! Also, in years past, we've only ranked the Top 3, but I've decided, since I have the kajillion hours of free time at home this year, all 50 will be ranked (though still separated into their categories).

But before we get to the music (which, despite a pandemic, recession, and political stupidness, was very, very good this year), some statistics...

Number of albums reviewed: 191
Spotify listening minutes: over 35,000
Longest artist name: Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs
Longest album name: Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase?
(Sorry 1975, not this year)

Wasn't that fun? More fun than any of us have had in a while anyway.

A Note: This year began one of the more annoying trends in music, releasing double-albums as two separate albums. Look, if you're going to completely unload on the world and are egotistical and pretentious enough to think we need over 75 minutes from you in one go, have the balls to put it all together. That said, several of those are in this list, so clearly I have no spine.

...anyway, let's do this!

Shout Outs

When you review 191 albums, obviously you can't include them all in 50 (I mean, that's how counting works), so here's some cray cray great albums that deserve shout outs and your listening attention:

Actress Karma & Desire, Moses Boyd Dark Matter, Bill Callahan Gold Record, Caribou Suddenly, Catholic Action Celebrated by Strangers, The Chicks Gaslighter, Christine & The Queens La Vita Nuova, Cornershop England Is a Garden, Baxter Dury The Night Chancers, Jay Electronica A Written Testimony, Four Tet Sixteen Oceans, Grimes Miss Anthropocene, J Hus Big Conspiracy, Lady Gaga Chromatica, Lianne La Havas Lianne La Havas, Lil Baby My Turn, Lyra Pramuk Fountain, Mac Miller (RIP) Circles, Nation of Language Introduction, Presence, Nadia Reid Out of My Province, Jeff Rosenstock No Dream, Shamir Shamir, Chris Stapleton Starting Over, Thundercat It Is What It Is, U.S. Girls Heavy Light

Pheww... alright, let's get started

Honorable Mentions

50. Andy Bell
The View from Halfway Down

Rock Listen

49. Protomartyr
Ultimate Success Today

Post-Punk Listen

48. Craven Faults
Erratics & Unconformities

Ambient Listen

WINNER: Best Album Art of 2020

47. Nine Inch Nails
Ghosts V & VI: Together/Locusts

Dark Ambient Listen I Listen II

46. Laura Marling
Song for Our Daughter

Folk Listen

45. Against All Logic
2017-2019

Electro Listen

44. The Soft Pink Truth
Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase?

Leftfield Listen

43. Soccer Mommy
color theory

Indie Rock Listen

42. Bad Bunny
YHLQMDLG

Reggaeton Listen

41. Charli XCX
how i'm feeling now

Indie Pop Listen

40. Oneohtrix Point Never
Magic Oneohtrix Point Never

Abstract Electronic Listen

39. Tame Impala
The Slow Rush

Alternative Rock Listen

38. Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist
Alfredo

Hip Hop Listen

37. Eefje de Visser
Bitterzoet

Synth-Pop Listen

36. Backxwash
God Has Nothing to Do with This Leave Him Out of It

Hip Hop Fingers crossed

35. Fuzz
III

Hard Rock Listen

34. Hey Colossus
Dances/Curses

Psychedelic Rock Listen

33. Sam Hunt
Southside

Country Listen

32. Arca
KiCk i

Experimental Listen

31. Mary Lattimore
Silver Ladders

Ambient Listen

30. Napalm Death
Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism

Grindcore Listen

29. The Strokes
The New Abnormal

Rock Listen

28. Moses Sumney
Græ

Soul Listen

27. IDLES
Ultra Mono

Punk Listen

26. Helena Deland
Someone New

Indie Rock Listen

25. Chloe x Halle
Ungodly Hour

Trap Listen

24. Kelly Lee Owens

Inner Song

Techno Listen

23. Porridge Radio
Every Bad

Alternative Rock Listen

22. Lil Uzi Vert
Eternal Atake

Cloud Rap Listen

21. Duval Timothy
Help

African Jazz Listen

20. Yves Tumor
Heaven to a Tortured Mind

Experimental R&B Listen

19. Dua Lipa
Future Nostalgia

Power Pop Listen

18. Adrianne Lenker
Songs/Instrumentals

Folk Listen I Listen II

17. Fleet Foxes
Shore

Folk Rock Listen

16. Deftones
Ohms

Art Rock Listen

15. Code Orange
Underneath

Metalcore Listen

14. Working Men's Club
Working Men's Club

New Wave? Whatever 80's Depeche Mode is Listen

13. Waxahatchee
Saint Cloud

Indie Rock Listen

12. Sufjan Stevens
The Ascension

Indie Pop Listen

11. Perfume Genius
Set My Heart on Fire Immediately

Indie Pop Listen

Runners Up

10. Fontaines D.C.
A Hero's Death

Post-Punk Listen

Just last year, Fontaines D.C. stunned with a smash debut, Dogrel. If you're not entirely familiar with post-punk, the last time a band with this sound followed up their universally acclaimed debut with a darker, more versatile sophomore effort with an album cover featuring a statue just a year later...well, at least we got New Order out of it. A Hero's Death is as somber as the title suggests, but it features some of Fontaines' most intricate writing: Grian Chatten's lyrics are harder hitting, Carlos O'Connell's guitar is sharper and features more musical influences than just Gang of Four, and Tom Coll's drums carry the dirges--and the rocking pick-ups like album highlight "Televised Mind"--with more drive and punch. And, as always with this genre, the bass, masterfully played by Conor Deegan, leads in places most modern rock would almost certainly have a guitar. A Hero's Death doesn't have an ass-kicking mosh-starter like Dogrel's "Too Real," but the subtlety on the rare high-energy moments like "A Lucid Dream" and the title track, or the beauty of "You Said" more than admirably replace it. One of the most fun things about post-punk--a genre very near and dear to me--is its subversion of standard rock tropes, and its ability to throw you, almost violently, from one emotion to another: depression, anger, acceptance...perhaps there's more grief-analysis to this album with "death" in the title after all.

P.S. I saw this band open for IDLES (an utterly insane punk band in their own right) pre-pandemic and they totally blew the roof of the repurposed art gallery.

9. Jessie Ware
What's Your Pleasure?

Disco/House Listen

Get your hairspray, platforms, and light-up floors ready, because this is a steamy trip down to Studio 54. Jessie Ware has been making competent (and in the case of her debut, Devotion, beyond competent) soul-pop for almost ten years now, but never before has her breathy, ballad-ready voice ever sounded like this. While providing some of her most unseemly lyrics, Ware perfectly skulks around, lingers near, and stalks the dancefloor that is absolutely brimming with bump-and-grind bass lines, Moroder-esque synths, and jazzy beats. If you asked anyone when they thought this album came out, they would definitely say "umm...when was Abba a thing," because people don't know history anymore, but that would be close enough. Obviously the Italo-disco of the title track is unforgettably satisfying, but the rump-rattling "Ooh La La," the clearly-a-Janet-Jackson-Control-single "Soul Control," the Robyn-like pop of "Save a Kiss," and the Donna Summer-style uplifting closer "Remember Where You Are" are so unexplainably enjoyable and fun that this is definitely the soundtrack to the next ten years of parties after we're allowed to see humans again.

8. The Weeknd
After Hours

Synthwave Listen

There's not much left to say that hasn't already been said about Abel Tesfaye and his musical persona The Weeknd, including how much my spell-check HATES that name. But the biggest reason for that is that he rarely ever disappoints, and continues to find new and interesting ways to explore a sonic palette many thought played out days after his debut, House of Balloons. And while many of his contemporaries have either switched back to mainstream R&B or hip hop, Tesfaye has stood strong, a marble sculpture in the garden of synths. After Hours is not only a welcome turn after the overly pop-formula Starboy, and the incredibly, well, melancholy My Dear Melancholy, but is also a fabulous turn to more intriguing and often experimental sounds in the genre more akin to Chromatics or Justice on songs like "Too Late" or "Escape from LA," while still maintaining his panache for absolute bangers like the M83-inspired "Blinding Lights" or the Allan Parsons Project references of "Save Your Tears." Combining this with Tesfaye's ability to write teenage-angst lyrics about breakups, vague sadness, and partying all weekend (weeknd? Now I don't know anymore!) that somehow aren't dumbed down or bland means that After Hours is the kind of album that careers are launched from...if he wasn't already incredibly famous. Damnit, man, you've done it again.

7. HAIM
Women in Music, Pt. III

Rock Listen

It has been a looong time since Haim released an album, especially considering we all forgot their sophomore effort, which fell so flat after the hype from their debut that many thought they might just be...done. Not so fast, critics everywhere! This trio doesn't give up that easily, and in a world nearly devoid of pure rock, Women in Music Pt. III is a very, very welcome addition. Haim do there best to wear every mask possible, trying to cover every subgenre of classic rock they can, since apparently no one else is going to damnit! There's both yacht-rock and surf-rock (hey, two beach things) on opener "Los Angeles," the both Heart and somehow Sheryl Crow inspired sounds of smash single "The Steps," electronic influences on "I Know Alone," the soul/funk of "3 AM," and even hints of industrial on "All That Ever Mattered." Is there anything these women can't do in music? Pt. III? Normally, this jack-of-all-trades dabbling generally means you master none, as per the idiom, but here, Haim master every...single...one. There's not a sour note or misstep. Women in Music Pt. III is an album you can give to anyone and every person will have a different favorite. You could teach a history of modern music class with this album alone.

6. Rina Sawayama
SAWAYAMA

Pop Rock Listen

Finding a debut pop album that's anything other than a test of patience already places this album on the list. But the jaw-dropping surprise of Rina Sawayama's full-length debut is truly something to behold. Sawayama masterfully--and I really mean that--combines pure pop with some nasty, guitar-ripping progressive metal elements for an entirely unique experience. There's songs here, like "XS," that you could swear were a Britney Spears single when all of a sudden you're beaten over the head with the crazy distortion of a Bring Me the Horizon bridge. "STFU!" is basically a pure metal song straight out of the Lacuna Coil catalog, with Lil' John samples for some reason? But there is no reason so STFU. Your mind is pulled in a hundred different directions listening to this album: Rina's voice is gorgeous, the music is...just confusing as all hell in the most refreshing way, and the songwriting is award worthy before you take into account this is her DEBUT. Is it pop? Is it techno? Is it metal? Is it whatever Bjork does? Whatever it is, Sawayama is painting with all the colors and no restrictions. She can go forward doing whole albums in the style of any one song and nobody would ever be able to pin her to any one sound.

5. Phoebe Bridgers
Punisher

Indie Rock Listen

In the dense, nearly unending list of artists using music to cope with grief, Phoebe Bridgers is unique in what she is grieving for. Punisher has a deep and dark reminiscence behind it. In rich, hand-plucked guitar tones and a voice that's shaky in a "I'm afraid I have some bad news, we did all we could," kind of way, Bridgers delivers "Garden Song" as both thesis statement and Vonnegut-esque moral: she grieves for the past; not for what happened per se, just that it existed at all. "I don't know when you got taller," she sings, through my tears, clearly regretting that anything has ever changed, the existentialist's terror. The sound of the album picks up on "Kyoto," a horn-backed Arcade Fire influenced ditty, but the theme remains the same: can we go anywhere to escape the ravages of time? The title track teases the reveal of Bridgers' secret, but it evades even her among the lush strings and dense soundscapes. The skin-crawling finger-picking at the start of "Halloween" brings to mind the score of Akira while Bridgers sings about how only this bizarre holiday offers a respite from all the truly horrifying things happening outside the other 364 days of the year. After 40 minutes of some of the most plush depression anyone has ever produced, Bridgers' secret is clear: she is both the punisher and her only victim.

4. Fiona Apple

Fetch the Bolt Cutters
Experimental Listen

Trying to place Fetch the Bolt Cutters into a simple genre is like trying to put a square peg in a round hole that Wile E Coyote painted on a wall. Thank God "experimental" exists as the new catchall that "indie" used to be, and "alternative" before that. And Fiona Apple has been categorized as all of those at various points in her career. What makes her one of the special people is that when she finds out, she just completely reinvents herself so that the tag doesn't stick anymore, beguiling and angering discographers and musicologists the world over. However, this album is, by a wide margin, the most experimental release in all of music since Trout Mask Replica. That's a bit hyperbolic: Swans exists, and Xiu Xiu's Girl With Basket of Fruit was the cruelest way anyone has ever treated sound; but it is emotionally true. The structure of so many songs here change halfway through and then again at the end, or sometimes for the second chorus but only the second one. Then there's the instrumentation: the entire album is only Fiona Apple's voice and percussion instruments (yes, a piano is a percussion instrument, ask your 4th grade music teacher). It's a difficult choice on the best of days, but to produce an entire album that way is astounding. Fetch the Bolt Cutters also sees some of Apple's most unhinged performances, from the dolphin noises at the end of "I Want You To Love Me," to the random beat poetry readings in the middle of the title track, to the 'round-layering of "Under the Table." But behind all that is solid songwriting like you wouldn't believe, to the point where you just can't stop listening even when there's definitely something else you should be doing. It's like a visual art installation that resists interpretation.

The Best of the Year

3. Run the Jewels
RTJ4

Hip Hop Listen

Is it weird to say I dread this write-up? I have done nothing but go on and on espousing the qualities of Run the Jewels, but relistening to RTJ4 while writing this is like agreeing to do a third tour in a warzone. When RTJ started, El-P and Killer Mike made hard-hitting, face-slapping rap that was addictive and fun. They upped the ante a hundred fold with Run the Jewels 2, a perfect album, that took their already fantastic formula and added excellent guest spots, gut-punching beats, and a smattering of lyrical substance to go with their party rap (see Zack de la Rocha guesting on two songs). Run the Jewels 3 increased this effect even more, and introduced the thematic tie-in with samples from the old Ticketmast--ahem, -tron, "Ticketron" phone hotline, and glimpses of their live performances. It also took a more musically darker tone in its production and beat construction.

This was a...grim portent.

RTJ4 is so heavily political it might as well be an NWA album with guest spots from Gil Scott-Heron and Aesop Rock. Every song is filled to the brim with entire short story anthologies of treatises on (and this is just a small sample): police violence against people of color, summary executions, caging children in concentration camps, wealth inequality, health service access inequality, corruption, Russian-owned orange presidents, violence against women, racism, misogyny, Nazism, propaganda presented as "news," the dark history of slavery in America, and many, many more hits.

And if you want production value, Jesus answered you and gave you one 39-minute relentless gauntlet of all of humanity's worst tendencies. And it is just so engrossing you barely even notice 2 Chainz is here (his best bars in years, btw) before Pharrell shows up and then Josh Homme is playing guitar? Holy shit was that 39 minutes already? Is...are they getting a TV show? This headbanging has got to stop, my neck has never been this sore.

If El-P gets any better at beat-making I think he'll be apotheosized right in front of us. Every single track is an absolute fire banger. "yankee and the brave (ep. 4)" (...are we sure this isn't a TV show?) takes what would be repetitive in the hands of any lesser duo, but here set the table for your journey to Dismaland. "Ooh La La" (second time that song name has come up) is the closest thing you'll find to a "standard" hip hop single: just two dudes bragadociously b-boying it up over, like how many times do I have to tell you about the beats? They're other-worldly. But even this "fun" song has lines like "Warmongers are dumpin', they'll point and click at your pumpkin / Your suffering is scrumptious, they'll put your kids in the oven." Heavy, man.

A track clearly titled to evoke delightful 80's nostalgia, "goonies vs. E.T.," does just that purely to tell you that nostalgia is for bitches and get your head out of your ass already: "It's the funniest shit, finally the money up / And print on the kid and planet hit the skids / Livin' in a valley of flames like, 'I win' / Skyline ablaze in a Bob Ross pic;" and "Ain't no revolution is televised and digitized / You've been hypnotized and Twitter-ized by silly guys / Cues to the evenin' news make sure you ill-advised / Got you celebratin' the generators of genocide."

This is followed by the most horrifying song in rap, "walking in the snow" which I've discussed ad nauseum and still to this very minute reminds me of things so tragic, depressing, and infuriating that I won't go into it again. Just know that when I heard this the first time, literally days after George Floyd's murder, it made me freeze in place. It still makes me cry rage tears.

"JU$T," one of the best songs this already god-like duo has ever produced, discusses the totally light fare of capital distorting power and warping people's value systems. This track sees Mike at his dirty south-iest in his line delivery, but this is no crunk debasement, with lines like "You believe corporations runnin' marijuana? / And your country gettin' ran by a casino owner." Pharrell's pre-chorus changes a bit each time to reflect a different horrible way money skews human perception. First: "Mastered economics 'cause you took yourself from squalor." Second: "Master of opinion 'cause you vote with the white collar." And through all of them runs the theme of "Look at all these slave masters posin' on your dollar." Bet you never thought of that before. There's a lot of them on our money and stamps and signs and statues and parks and monuments.

For the first time, Run the Jewels have put their force behind one single message. Sure, they both lovingly worked together as brothers on great art--yes, ART--before, but they danced around the issues, dropping some serious bars here and there to keep themselves grounded. But RTJ4 picks up where Rage's Battle of Los Angeles left off, and is just as hardcore. If you don't want to rip the goddamn system down by the end of this, then you're already their drone. Resist.

2. Caroline Rose
Superstar

Synth-Pop Listen

The opening seconds of Superstar are like the phantasmagorical entry into a lost Alice in Wonderland chapter where she journeys to a land where Ryan Gosling from Drive takes you to various points in the Suspiria universe. A simple beat opens up to an veritable orgy of glorious neon synths, and you truly do believe, as Caroline Rose sings, that nothing's impossible.

I came across Caroline Rose's second album since her reinvention from country ingenue to pop-rocker purely by chance: scanning Metacritic for something new to listen to while locked in my house for the 473rd consecutive year this year. "This could be fun" I thought, as I saw the reviews (glowing) and album cover which definitely gives the hint of pop with a twist. I had no idea just how mind-altering the experience would be.

Rose's first venture outside of country was 2018's Loner--which I, sadly, only discovered because of first listening to this--is a pumped-up jam of a rock album punctuated by loud mellotrons and brilliant lyricism. Superstar is another animal entirely. An electro-wave thesis dipped in the shiny veneer of pop. This album changed how I judge music, and it consumed my every waking moment for the better part of a month after my first listen.

That's the thing about Superstar: it's utterly addictive. The wobbly synth stabs that open "Got to Go My Own Way" form a curiosity rabbit-hole that absolutely demands to be investigated. And it leads to an even greater reward, a boisterous, funky bass line that Parliament would kill for in "Do You Think We'll Last Forever?" What Rose sings about here, that obsession, is the same feeling this song inspired in me about this album. Listening to any one song just leads to listening to the rest, compulsively, instinctually.

"Feelings Are a Thing of the Past" is a gloomy, Bowie's-Low-esque soundscape that is definitely more of a feeling than a proper song, but it's just such a great lead-in to "Feel the Way I Want," easily one of the best songs of the year. It's bumping beat and Casio keyboard rhythm section back the best self-love anthem of the millenium: "Everybody's so quick to stand up and say, 'gotta be this way or that way' / Gotta ask yourself, 'is this really what I wanted?' / Everybody's so quick cry out and say 'gotta get your shit together' / Well baby watch me freak out." It has inspired many a fist pumping dance around the living room and will continue to be the soundtrack to many more. God, when will live music come back? This song is in dire need of a room full of people clapping in unison.

The Interpol bass line that opens "Someone New" conceals an explosive break-up "fuck you" that disturbingly doubles as another concert-floor-jumping song about obsession. Here, it's confusing as to whether the "someone new" Rose is becoming is her turning over a new leaf and showing it off, or her Sandra Dee-esque transformation into the thing she thinks this love interest wants. It is an incredibly dark turn that is lit only by the fluorescent production of Rose's empty-hall-echoed voice and ear-filling sound that leaves no empty space to breathe.

By the time we reach Superstar's conclusion, the parting couldn't be more bitter. "I Took a Ride" brings to bear all the Kavinsky-level might Rose's synthesizers have to offer, not just filling the space with sound, but dripping with emotion as well. The transition from her crooning "someday soon, my baby's coming back," to the arpeggios of entrancing keyboards and wall of pure electronic thrum still gives me goosebumps; and may I remind you, I listened to this song every day for a month. The track ends on a ghostly whisper of a live piano, a superstar fallen to the lowly earth. Will it rise again?

1. SAULT
Untitled (Black Is/Rise)

Afrobeat/R&B Listen I Listen II

If, like me, you are wondering who Sault is, then good luck to you sir or madam. The experimental R&B collective from the UK seemingly appeared out of nowhere two years ago and have given no interviews or photos, produced no music videos, and have never performed live. They have no Wikipedia entry and are all but ghosts on social media platforms. All you need to know is that they are a true marvel of musical geniuis.

This year, filled with turmoil and social unrest, they released two albums that serve as complements to one another, hence their inclusion here as a single entry. And believe me when I say, you must listen to both. Untitled is the green light at the end of the musical dock that so many artists strive to attain, longingly lust for, and most never reach. A revolution in the audible experience.

Black Is begins with its historical reference point, a protest chant that could very easily be heard in the streets today, before giving way to a melancholy piano backing a spoken word passage about the meaning of blackness that gives the album its name. This first section has these essays scattered throughout, giving context to the brilliant songs around them.

"Stop Dem" follows the opener's protest-based lead, and a funk drum line backs a line of cybernetic programmed hooks. A chorus sings about the necessity of the black experience at the fever pitch of a street demonstration while a sample repeats the track title back to us, begging the world to do something about the injustice suffered by people of color worldwide. The song builds to a roaring din before cutting all sound except the loop of someone shouting "STOP DEM!" It is all too haunting.

"Don't Shoot Guns Down" continues in this vein. Samba rhythms and booming bass back a looped sample that presents its message in the simplest, clearest way possible: the policing system is inherently racist and designed to harm the historically oppressed. It is a short diversion from the heavier songs that bookend it, the Solange-inspired "Hard Life," and "Wildfires," a beautifully presented song that I could just as easily see on an early Moby album.

Michael Kiwanuka, the UK soul-revival prodigy that gave us the unforgettable "Black Man in a White World" and "You Ain't the Problem" provides a brilliant guest appearance on "Bow." His emotional voice provides a strong anchor for the driving bass line, flitting guitar, and ancestral drumming; and of course, in standard Kiwanuka fashion, there's an incomprehensible chorus shout sample looped throughout.

"Monsters," the emotional climax of the first movement, begins with a 70s organ played with nearly every key before revealing an overblown recording of vocals that shook me to my very core: "Take off your suit, you're just a sorry clown / And why are all my people disappearing now? / ... / Baby, your mind is worth more than gold / Wipe your tears so they can see the glow / Pray, pray, pray, indigo child / Just so you know, they call us monsters 'cause they're in denial."

The first act closes with "Pray Up Stay Up," a fantastic ode to Motown and doo-wop that parrots every facet of the old songs: the barbershop quartet of voices, the "oohs" and "woos" in the backing track, the high-pitch plinking piano line. It's a great summary of the imposing sermon that is Black Is.

But while Black Is serves as the sermon, Rise is the joyful choir.

"Strong" opens the second movement with another addictive bass line and brilliantly selected vocal sample loop. The song's message about staying strong and not quitting the fight is exactly the message we need after Black Is' message of everything that's wrong. Rise is here to tell you how to fix it. The song then changes to a gleaming drumline that could easily lead either a parade or a march.

The influences here still include ancestral drums, jazz, and civil rights protests, but now added are the dazzling strings of disco, the frenetic wall-of-sound from Philadelphia soul, and the cool-wave synths of 80's house. This is a musical experience unlike any other, and a presciently important one.

"I Just Want to Dance" makes you want to do just that, while "Street Fighter"...well let's just say there's a lot of really well-titled songs on Rise. It's a joyful fist of righteous rebellion, a celebration of culture and ethnicity, and a stunningly beautiful dissertation on the black experience, exemplified on "Son Shine," in the staggering elegance of "Free," and the surprise social comedy of "You Know It Ain't."

After a cerebrally thrilling section of orchestral pieces, Rise concludes with "Little Boy," a funky riff and upbeat piano line that hides its moribund message: "Little boy, little boy, when you get older / You can ask me all the questions / And I'll tell you the truth about the boys in blue / Little boy, little boy, when you get older / And you're searching for the answers / And the Lord's truth for those who look like you." And yet we end still hopeful that maybe, one day, we really can put all this evil behind us.

The future is bright, we just have to build it.

The Best Songs of 2020

2020-12-07T18:06:00.006-05:00

Just like last year, I can't bring myself to rank the songs I really liked from this year, but there were definitely a bunch of standouts. So instead, I came up with fake awards for them. Enjoy.

Double Winner:

The BWAHAHA Award for Most Brazen Thing Ever

The Dead Battery Award for Why Can't I Stop Listening to This

Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion
"WAP"

Listen

I'm going to keep this short and sweet, because you've heard this song so is there really a need to explain? The song is full of the most bawdy and totally unabashed sexual messaging, but it's in the service of telling women everywhere to not just own but DOMINATE their sexuality. "Beat it up, n*****, catch a charge," in this context, has to be one of the best lines I've heard in five years, easy, and that's in the first 30 seconds. As much as I despise their journalism, Pitchfork said it best: "'WAP' is so decisively absent of shame," and we are all the better for it.

The Blanket Cocoon of Isolation Award for Being the Most 2020:

TIE

Christine & The Queens

"People, I've been sad"

Listen

Christine & The Queens (aka Héloïse Letissier) has been somewhat quiet recently. Despite the massive hit she scored when teaming up with Charli XCX for "Gone" last year, the time spent waiting for a follow up to Chris has been silent. Sure, it's only been two years, but that's an eternity in the pop world, and 2020 has actually been seven years, so hurry up okay? "People, I've been sad" is, like, the most ennui a French person has ever been, and there's nothing like a person made entirely of shrugs to represent our collective morning decision of whether to wear pants to a Zoom meeting.

Dehd

"Loner"

Listen

Dehd are one of the few bands able to reproduce surf-rock on a level that isn't purely nostalgia or a terrible Beach Boys cover band. And while I could go on and on espousing all the great musical nuances of this song, the real reason it shares this award is for the line "I've had enough of each other / I want nothing more than to be a loner," and the end chant that's clearly the thing we all say to ourselves as we rock back and forth in our fetal positions every night, "I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, fine, fine, fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, fine, fine, fine."

Double Winner:

The 70s-Only Billy Joel Award for Closest Thing to A Capella That's Still Listenable

The Facepalm Award for Extreme Prescience

Fiona Apple

"Relay"

Listen

Fiona Apple's dramatic and striking new album is an exercise in pure minimalist production with maximalist songwriting. Most of the songs use only homemade percussion instruments with the barest piano accompaniment to back Apple's striking alto voice. And while many of the songs feature political or philosophical themes, "Relay" boasts the most in-your-face example: "Evil is a relay sport, where the one who's burned turns to pass the torch." That the song repeats this phrase until it's covered by a din of layers and random drum sounds before eventually devolving into nonsensical vocal hoots and woos seems only to provide evidence for Apple's thesis statement: do not take up the torch of hate, it burns us all.

The Wes Craven Memorial Award for Best Jump Scare Sample

Yves Tumor

"Asteroid Blues"

Listen

The award for this song is a bit mischaracterized, but it's the best I could come up with, sue me. The real star of "Asteroid Blues" is the crazy, balls-to-the-wall bass line that's fat PHAT like the juiciest peach. That the song is punctuated with stabs of what is clearly an early-80s B-movie horror scream, mixed ten times louder than anything else is incidental, if not at least a fascinating stylistic choice. The entirety of Yves Tumor's Heaven to a Tortured Mind is peppered with unforgettable bits like this, but "Asteroid Blues" is where everything comes together with the greatest effect.

The Paul Simon Award for Most Fascinating Spacetime Warp to 80s Nostalgia for 50s Nostalgia

Perfume Genius

"On the Floor"

Listen

"It's really like I'm back in the 80's feeling like I'm back in the 50's," says Wanda Pierce, BoJack Horseman's new girlfriend on their first real date--and Wanda's first real date since waking up from a 30 year coma--to a definitely-not-a-Pulp-Fiction-reference 50's style diner. I don't know but that's all I could think of listening to this incredibly bubbly, poppy call-back by Perfume Genius (who, secretly, has clearly gotten over his drug abuse and turned it around; look at that chiseled marble up there). Each album since 2012's Put Your Back N 2 It has incorporated more and more instrumentation, particularly drums and synthesizers; and though none have been as experimental or jaw-dropping as Too Bright, they do keep increasing the arsenal and repertoire of one America's best alternative-pop songwriters.

The Dwarf Star Award for Most Unexpectedly Heavy

SAULT

"Monsters"

Listen

SAULT's duo of absolute masterpieces were a stunning addition to 2020's already stacked catalog of political and conscious R&B. The first entry, Untitled (Black Is), is a brutal sermon delivered to the indifferent everywhere, while secretly delivering hope to those of the true faith. "Monsters" is the fever pitch of that sermon. At times tear-inducing, at others beautifully inspiring, the song tells those that are oppressed and underrepresented that the white world calls them "monsters" out of fear of their raw power--that the term is not one to be ashamed of, but to be embraced. If they call you a monster, it means you're headed in the right direction. "Baby, your mind is worth more than gold / Wipe your tears so they can see the glow." Glow on. Raise your fist in righteous anger and glow.

The Phillip J. Fry Award for Most Cover Your Ears And Go "Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah"

Caroline Rose

"Feel the Way I Want"

Listen

I have not exactly been hiding my love for Caroline Rose's Superstar under a bushel. I wrote an entire album review about how it was on repeat in my headphones for almost a month. Three of my five most listened-to songs of 2020 were from that album, and "Feel the Way I Want" led that charge. In a year of extreme feelings and darkness, this song is the self-love anthem that everyone needs. And while it is one of the happiest songs of the year, it cleverly delivers a message of mental health empowerment: "There's only so much that a person can take / Too much abuse and somebody can break" Rose croons over a bouncing beat straight out of a 2000's bubblegum pop chart topper, expounding on the theme of letting loose and feeling however it is you feel. Stoicism is a poison, and Caroline Rose has the cure: "Baby watch me freak out!"

The Katey Sagal Award for Most Blown-Out 70s Hair and Disco Ball Fun

Jessie Ware

"What's Your Pleasure?"

Listen

Goddamn is this song hot! Pulling straight from Donna Summer's foray into Italo-disco with Giorgio Moroder, Jessie Ware calls on all her clearly divine powers to deliver THE DANCEFLOOR RUMPRATTLER OF THE DECADE!!! The sly, silky beat is taken directly from the Warriors soundtrack and is headed straight to a White Sox-sponsored bonfire near you (look it up, I have good references dammit). Ware's lyrics and their soul-melting delivery will have you weak in the knees, and rarely has a dance song had poetry like this: "Is this love too hot to handle? / Make a wish blow out my candle," was already causing me to fan myself until "On the floor your clockwork timing / Spin me 'round so I'm unwinding." Tonight we burnin' it all the way down.

The How Does The Weeknd Always Do This? Award for Most Addictive Beat

The Weeknd

"After Hours"

Listen

The penultimate, and title song of The Weeknd's excellent After Hours is perhaps not the most radio-worthy ("Blinding Lights" was covered ad nauseum, and "In Your Eyes" is ready for millions of fans' lighters to be raised in stadiums around the world post-pandemic), but "After Hours" is the dark, synth-laden backroom that made The Weeknd so dangerous and exhilarating on songs like "The Hills" and the entirety of House of Balloons. His unique falsetto voice delivers a "fuck you; nevermind come back" straight out of The-Dream's best work: "Baby / Where are you now when I need you most / I'd give it all just to hold you close." And not to get too far into the weeds of music theory, but my spine melts when there's a perfectly placed off-beat sample, which, Christ-alive is this man great at doing. At six minutes, it's a bit long for the playlist-it-and-forget-it crowd, but trust me the invested time is well worth it.

The Sweaty Eyes Award for the Most I'm Not Crying You're Crying

Kelly Lee Owens

"L.I.N.E."

Prepare your tissues

Kelly Lee Owens has the distinction of being one of a very select few artists to surprise me multiple times. The first was her self-titled debut album, which so stunned me into silent awe it made 2017's short list for best albums of the year the day before I had to write the article. The second time was "L.I.N.E.," a powerfully somber and plush (anti-)love ballad in the middle of an otherwise alt-electro album. And while "L.I.N.E." is most definitely a break-up song, it also has an uplifting core about the power of individualism ("death begins with compromise") and perseverance in the face of unbelievable heartbreak: "You'd think I'd learn by now that this shit's not easy / That's what you get for wearing your heart on your sleeve." Is...is someone cutting onions?

The Paperbag of Shame Award for Most How Is This Still Happening in America in 2020

Run The Jewels

"walking in the snow"

Prepare your molotovs

And so here we are at the end of all things. Run the Jewels have, for years now, been known for their high-energy, fist-in-your-face rap that stuns both critics and fans into adoration. But if there was ever a year that needed a real bitch slap it's this one. RTJ4 is absolutely loaded with political messaging and ruminations on the current state of the world, but nothing is more striking, heartbreaking, and rage-inducing than the bars shared here. The songs starts with an absolute essay from El-P which I will try my best to pare down into it's most prescient parts:

"This whole world's a shit moat, filled to the brim like Gitmo / When you think it don't get mo' low it limbo 'til the stick's on flo'"

"Hungry for truth but you got screwed and drank the Kool-Aid, there's a line / It end directly at the edge of a mass grave, that's their design / Funny fact about a cage, they're never built for just one group / So when that cage is done with them and you still poor, it come for you / The newest lowest on the totem, well golly gee, you have been used / You helped to fuel the death machine that down the line will kill you too"

Note: that's not even half of the lyrical content of just his part of the song. And if that seemed heavy, well brother have I got a verse for you.

Killer Mike's portion is almost entirely targeted at something we thought, at least until around May of this year, was in the American rearview: police killing unarmed black people. Well, I should say, "we" means people like me: white, privileged, working from home at full salary while others are laid off, whose interactions with the jackboots have amounted to nothing more than inconvenience and eyerolls. The people of color in America have never had this in their rearview, it's only ever in their face...all the time. When Mike delivers his line "And you so numb, you watch the cops choke out a man like me / Until my voice goes from a shriek to whisper 'I can't breathe'"... I can't stop being angry about how this line was originally written about ERIC GARNER and that event was somehow repeated almost congruently AGAIN. "Never forget, in the story of Jesus the hero was killed by the state."

Never forget, they murdered them all, and then gassed the people speaking up about it.

They want you to forget.

Fight the power. Black Lives Matter

10 Year Rewind: The Misunderstood Noise-Pop Genius of '/\/\ /\ Y /\'

2020-09-09T18:42:00.000-04:00

In 2010, it would be an understatement to say that M.I.A.'s third album was the most anticipated of the year. Her sophomore effort, Kala, was so overwhelmingly well-received that Maya Arulpragasam became the "it" girl of the music industry. It shoved standard pop aside and, for a brief moment, the grime/rap of "Paper Planes" and "Boyz" ruled the airwaves.

Kala shot M.I.A. into the stratosphere, selling over 500,000 copies in the US alone amidst the burgeoning streaming world, with Blender and Rolling Stone naming it their #1 album of 2007. Then to wait three more years for a follow-up, the time seemed interminable.

Then in early 2010, the single "Born Free" was released, giving the world a glimpse into the sonic hellscape that MAYA would live in. Loud, blown-out production, glitchy effects. It was accompanied by a music video so violent and disturbing it was almost banned from music video channels; depicting a systematic genocide against people with red hair, a fictional government force, in riot gear and highly weaponized, rounds up gingers on buses and transports them to the desert, where they are summarily executed.

To say it was controversial doesn't do the backlash justice. How could anyone think this was okay to show? What on Earth was she trying to say? It was a post-2008-Obama-election America, "stuff like that" just doesn't happen anymore.

Eight years later, an equally violent music video for Childish Gambino's "This Is America" would be lauded as "brave" and "speaking truth to power." And this is not to criticize that video; Donald Glover and Hiro Murai created a piece of pure art that told a powerful truth about the dark side of the US. Perhaps M.I.A. was just a bit ahead of her time. Given what's going on in America, China, and Belarus now, I would call her a soothsayer.

A second single, "XXXO," was released a month later, and it was more to the taste of those waiting for Kala Pt. 2: a pop beat, a stadium anthem chorus, mainstream use of synths and samples. It is a perfect example of M.I.A. using her musical prowess to create a true banger, but this was the last song most would find recognizable.

MAYA debuted in July of 2010, and it did so to a divided critical reception. Pitchfork gave it a 4.4/10, AllMusic, Entertainment Weekly and The Guardian all gave it below-average reviews, while Rolling Stone gave it a 4/5, and Spin gave it a 9/10. Most decried the lack of "direction" (or more specifically, hated the direction it went) and loathed the hyper-amped sound that pushed into the red. They hated the industrial samples, and despised its glitch aesthetics.

Those that saw it for what it was--a bold turn into the delightfully, frightfully weird side of electronic music, and an established artist finally free to flex her creative muscles--believed, like I did, that it gave us a "mainstream" entry-way into that most wonderful of musical accompaniments:

NOISE! GLORIOUS NOISE!

"The Message" starts the album as a sort of skit, a song format M.I.A. had avoided entirely on Kala after having several on her debut, Arular. But unlike the fun-sounding back story style we saw on that first album, "The Message" is much more apocalyptic. A KMFDM-style beat pounds away like a terrifying jackhammer, while a very serious man delivers lines about "the internet connects to the Google, connects to the government," a warning about internet privacy and surveillance that wouldn't be heeded for another half decade at least. Needless to say, this is exactly the introduction this album needs.

"Steppin Up" is clearly the most extreme of the new sound, beginning in the clear before ear-splitting samples of power drills and table saws peal across your headphones. The song breaks down into the standard M.I.A. rap before returning to a chorus filled with those industrial samples and a de-tuned metal guitar chugging away. This is clearly the filter song, we're only one into the album and M.I.A. is testing the limits of our listening ability. It's a brilliant gate-keeping strategy: if you can't handle "Steppin Up," we don't want you around for the rest of it.

"XXXO," as previously mentioned, is the pop pinnacle of MAYA, Tamil folk music samples lie gently over a The-Dream-inspired drum pattern and hints of Crystal Castles-esque glistening loops pop in around the chorus, which is a beautiful mash-up of themes about hidden identities and cultural appropriation. The song is so good it made it on NME's "Best Songs of the Past 15 Years" in 2015.

"Teqkilla," my personal favorite, is a loop-heavy, sample-laden spoof of the "party all night" songs that were pervasive in pop and hip-hop at the time (and, sadly, still), but absolutely smothered in Peaches-inspired electro-clash sounds that would put Aphex Twin to shame. Samples of clinking glasses, toilets flushing, a harsh synth ride, and syncopated hand claps make "Teqkilla" the most experimental M.I.A. has ever been. The chopping, distortion, and looping of her own vocals make the epic's six-minute runtime feel like a breeze, like a constant road of discovery of new sonic highways never before heard.

"Lovalot" seamlessly transitions into the British grime and dub styles that M.I.A. was clearly influenced by in her first forays into music. A deep bass thrums hypnotically as M.I.A. rhymes with a cockney accent some of her most overtly political lines to this point. The obscure and limited chorus is often interrupted by chopped samples of Opal.

A heavily distorted excerpt from a Bollywood film forms the basis for the hook of "Story to Be Told," which continues the grime/dub sound, but with a large helping of late-era Meat Beat Manifesto production. M.I.A.'s vocals are mixed very far in the front, almost like the cut out from a sonic pop-up book, while at the same time drenched in reverb.

"It Takes a Muscle" is, by a wide margin, the most wonderfully strange song on the album. A dancehall slow jam that must have been composed entirely on a Casio keyboard, it's upbeat message and calm musicianship gives the listener a respite between two very heavy halves of an otherwise dark album. In a moment of pure genius production, M.I.A.'s vocals are run through a filter that sounds like a cheap mic and the music is mixed toward the back, giving the whole song the effect of a dingy karaoke bar.

"It Iz What It Iz," (other than being our dear leader's fateful words about 180,000 dead Americans from a pandemic he could have lessened) is probably the strangest of the choices for inclusion on MAYA. A beat taken from an 80s Madonna song and a synth loop that calls back Oracular Spectacular MGMT build the ground work for innumerable vocal layers that cover each other over and over until they're nearly indistinguishable. Clearly a way to shy away from singing as opposed to rapping, what initially appears as a mess soon becomes a warm blanket of voices, their sounds no longer just words, but an instrument.

"Born Free," begins with a live drum, never before heard in an M.I.A. song, before being slammed with a fuzzed-out guitar, a cross between Death Grips (a band that wouldn't exist until a year later) and old-school punk (a credit to its sample of Suicide's "Ghost Rider"), until eventually we're met with M.I.A.'s INCREDIBLY LOUD, overblown voice. The voice tells us stories of being "free" while at the same time subject to the whims of an economy that doesn't care, and living in abject, impoverished squalor. The dramatic irony is delicious. The headbanging, doubly so.

"Meds and Feds" heavily relies on a sample from fellow loudness war enthusiasts, Sleigh Bells' "Treats," and is an exercise in turntablism and sample DJ-ing that passes muster against any contemporaries (Crystal Castles, Dan Deacon), and surpasses many others. This is the loudest song on the album and the Scanners effect the volume has is well worth the brain explosions. The crushing weight of EBM influence wouldn't show up again in music until Health released Slaves of Fear or Youth Code released...anything by Youth Code. This is industrial noise in all its 80s-Ministry, eardrum-shattering glory.

"Tell Me Why" is probably the weakest song in the bunch. It features M.I.A.'s signature satiric lyrics about making money as fast as possible, laid over a Panda Bear Person Pitch-sample loop with a drum-line beat. The chorus leaves a bit to be desired: not particularly subtle or inspired, you could make the argument that it too is supposed to be a sarcastic send-up of "feel-good" stadium anthems that teen pop was and still is so attached to. Either way, the effort still receives an 'A,' as the loop and 1920s folk-song sample are certainly avant-garde in this genre.

Closer, "Space," returns us to the dark electro of the rest of MAYA, while M.I.A. sings, prophetically, of being too ahead of her time. Earlier that year, she had been accused of being a conspiracy theorist, until only three years later, the NSA's warrant-less tapping of phones would be exposed by Edward Snowden. (NOTE: this is NOT an endorsement of Snowden. While he did reveal information that was helpful to the American people, he also stole untold amounts of information that almost certainly could put our service men and women at grave risk. The point of this was purely to state that M.I.A. was saying in 2009/2010 that the NSA was spying on Americans and then in 2013 that ended up being true.)

In 2010, M.I.A.'s third album was felt by many to be a disappointment, a slump, a misstep. Looking back, we can see just how wrong they were. Other elements seemed to scheme for this album's demise: the New York Times ran what was essentially a smear campaign in their "profile" of Maya Arulpragasam, insinuating that because she could now afford things like truffle fries, she should shut up and not talk about genocide, systemic racism, and wage slavery anymore; while the violence of the "Born Free" video coupled with her "conspiracist talk" led to death threats and dropped tour sponsors.

In the wake of the bad press MAYA recieved, M.I.A. would retreat from her experimentalism, and with Matangi would fully 180 back to mainstream hip-hop and pop with singles like "YALA," "Bad Girls" and "Double Bubble Trouble," as well as two Weeknd guest spots. We would never see or hear anything like MAYA from M.I.A. again.

MAYA is demented, aggressive, risky, towering, startling, confrontational, catchy, and yes, loud. It set the standard for many noise-pop and experimental rap albums that would only begin to gain acceptance years later. Without MAYA, there's no Money Store, no SOPHIE, and no SoundCloud rap. It implores listeners to run through the pain and reach the core meaning...

...fight the power

RTJ4, or: How to Top Yourself Three Times in a Row

2020-06-05T14:52:00.000-04:00

RTJ4

Run the Jewels

Genre: Fuckin' Sweet

There's...a lot of things happening right now. I am not fit nor am I qualified to comment on them effectively. I'm here, in my house, paid job, complaining about how I want to go back to a physical work location. That is the extent of the problems that directly affect me. My privilege is extreme.

And yet, at the same time, over 100,000 people have died from a virus that robs them of their ability to even be with their loved ones at the end; a virus whose extent and spread could have been prevented if a certain orange moron had pulled his head out of his ass and listened to actual medical professionals rather than his own ego.

And now, hundreds of thousands more bravely stand and fight against the illegal occupation of their cities by the military, and for the same rights and equality of law that they are guaranteed by the Constitution but have been denied by a fascistic and militarized system of force in place since they were first brought here against their will 400 years ago.

Every day, social media is inundated with videos, some live, of people being attacked while doing nothing but practicing a right guaranteed them, and sometimes while doing nothing at all. Anger is not a strong enough word to describe my emotional reaction. And I know that's not enough. How can people continue to stand up for such an oppressive and totalitarian force when the evidence is plain to see?

The willful ignorance is mind-boggling.

Run the Jewels, in case you were woefully unaware, is the rap duo of Killer Mike and El-P, and everything they have ever recorded is pure gold. Every song is a torrent of rallying cries for action. Their second album, released in 2014, was widely agreed as the best album of that year, and rightly so; filled with fire-spitting rage and beats harder than a blacksmith's hammer, it was a revolution in hip-hop.

Their third album, released on Christmas Day four years ago, was made in the wake of the saddest election in US history, but before we knew just how terrible it would really be. Its songs serve as warning of what was to come, and as a guide for how to power through. It built off everything 2 had promised and created a masterpiece of political manifestos as hardcore rap. Sadly, everything happened exactly as they predicted.

Four years later, in 2020, the year of never ending tragedy, they release RTJ4, and it's as punishing and brutal as we deserve. An "I told you so" admonishment that is almost literally crushing. It is the darkest RTJ have ever gone, and it's only too prescient. Filled with rage and injected with wisdom, the bars here are razor-sharp, unapologetic, and a vicious anthem for unity against the system.

A lot of press has focused on the song "walking in the snow" and Killer Mike's verse about being choked until he gasps "I can't breathe." Impossibly, this line, referencing Eric Garner, has somehow, inexplicably, terrifyingly become all too real...again.

No. It's not inexplicable. The system is racist and violent and perpetuates systemic hatred and prejudice. That the topics of this album are anything other than dystopian fantasy is the saddest commentary on American society I can think of. The system must end.

Educate yourself

Understand your privilege

Defund the police

Black Lives Matter

Best New Music (4.17.2020)

2020-04-17T15:41:00.001-04:00

Caroline Rose

Superstar

Indie Pop

Obsession. It is rare to find something so totally pure as a perfect pop album, but when you do, it's impact on every aspect of your auditory life cannot be overstated. It...consumes you.

Such is the effect of Caroline Rose's newest, Superstar. After reinventing herself as a pop songwriter with her previous album, Loner, this effort is another adventure entirely. I have mined every song for every sound for days, distracted by nothing in my quest to understand its genius, but the rich ore has not stopped producing.

It might be hyperbole to say this is a once-in-a-lifetime find, but it feels that potent right now. It has taken me days to even think of the words necessary to describe Superstar, much less actually write them coherently. My first experience was more like tears of joy and incoherent babbling, like in movies when friendly aliens telepathically impart all the knowledge of the universe to the protagonist.

That's a fabrication. That's actually how I experience Superstar now. When I first heard it, I thought, "wow, this is some pretty catchy stuff," then moved on to other albums, trying to catch up on my ever-expanding backlog. But as the albums and hours went by, like the world's lamest addict, I began to think about listening to it again. It slowly became my only thought.

When I did, it was a psychic mistake, as sating the thirst meant grabbing the tail of the dragon, never to be released. The grandiose synths swathed in neon-like production, Rose's sumptuous alto voice peppered with occasional falsetto; the combination is soothing and exciting, like a caffeinated lip balm.

"Nothing's Impossible" is the perfect thesis statement to the album, with its stuttering beat, faint maraca, and a stabbing synth pattern pulled from Empire of the Sun's catalog. And that it devolves into a bass-driven 80s lounge song for the last 30 seconds is certainly to be commended.

"Do You Think We'll Last Forever?" is a monolith of everything going right with pop right now: a funk bass line, coolly and wryly delivered vocals and an Olivia-Newton-John-style chorus. It also turns at the end, if only for a brief moment, to a Distillers/Brody Dalle rock anthem, which explodes at the finish line.

Lead single "Feel the Way I Want" hearkens back to blissful 90s glam pop so that you can imagine it playing in gymnasiums and roller rinks worldwide (remember roller rinks?). It is also the most inspiring song on the album, eschewing darker themes for a positively light message of personal acceptance.

"Freak Like Me" turns what would be a beautiful piano ballad on its head, with the baby grand hook playing far in the distance as Rose croons about her unhealthy relationship with a dominatrix. It's the kind of twisted sordidness that sneaks up on you, like Snow White's poison apple, so tempting and so vile.

"Someone New," a personal favorite, combines the quirkiness of a St. Vincent single with the textures of the Alan Parsons Project: wall-of-sound synths mix with highly affected guitars for a unique form of pop-dance that is just divine.

The grunge-inspired "Pipe Dreams" could easily be the slow song on a Soundgarden album if they had Victoria Legrand singing (that's my second Beach House reference this week, they're just so universal) and a LOT more xylophones and chimes.

"Back at the Beginning" is more modern, with its falling whistle sample and glistening keys. The explosive chorus also brings a more club-like feel to what would otherwise be a techno Queens of the Stone Age song.

Finale "I Took A Ride" begins as a simple ballad, but beautifully descends into a din of electronic beats and propulsive croon as Rose clamors that "I'll get my baby back, someday soon." It is a truly gorgeous end to a ravishing experience.

While my consumption may be total, I still continue to listen, questing, searching, for...something. No one listen is good enough, I need another. Perhaps it's from drought, a thirst brought on by a dearth of gleaming pop music as statuesque and perfect as this. Should we be asking more of our 4/4 radio hits? Perhaps...I simply cannot stop. Obsession.

Best New Music (4.13.2020)

2020-04-13T22:18:00.000-04:00

Coming in incredibly late...

Soccer Mommy

color theory

Indie Rock

I've only had over a month to contemplate, ruminate, and generally bloviate about the new Soccer Mommy album, color theory, (annoyingly not capitalized), and I've decided that, yes, it is the best album I've heard so far this year, 2020: Year of the Byzantine Labyrinth of Endless Doom.

Sophia Regina Allison's fourth (really? fourth?) album is as brilliantly introverted as Clean, but with ten times the polish. color theory is filled with intriguing deviations and head-turning hooks, so much so that you would be forgiven for mistaking Allison for a veteran Liz Phair, or Alanis Morisette, or Sheryl Crow when she wasn't a boring caricature of herself.

Album opener, "bloodstream" is the perfect example: a 90s semi-Brit-pop guitar strum leads us into a world of hazy, double-taped vocals before an expressive front-mixed simple drum kit beat builds to what should be a chorus; but instead of chorus, we get a beautiful tandem of piano and steel guitar that keeps popping its head in to check on us. But before we've settled, the song changes to a Garbage-esque grunge ballad, and just as it's about to explode...yes, back to the first movement. It's a gorgeous maze.

"crawling in my skin" (seriously, what is with all the lower case these days) is Allison's best Sleater-Kinney impression while singing like Alice Glass. The effect is both eerie and awesome, the driving beat covers over the Atlas Sound-inspired repeating guitar plinks in the most subtle--and satisfying--way.

"lucy" (come on, seriously, that's a person's name, it should be capitalized) is a beautiful piece of dream pop, complete with faux-lo-fi, and fuzzy production. It sees the return of "bloodstream"s steel guitar semi-chorus, but this time complete with the vocals to match the very best alternative hits from Lush or Cocteau Twins. I don't want to make a Beach House comparison here but, this is like a heavy "Myth" mixed with The Breeders.

It's no small feat for a 22-year-old to write four albums, much less have two back-to-back dingers out of the park. And yet, here we are, listening to Soccer Mommy's color theory and being dumbfounded. It is my sincerest hope that this singer-songwriter keeps this going for many, many years to come.

The Best Albums of 2019: Best of the Year

2019-12-31T16:08:00.001-05:00

The 2019 Baltimore Music Festival concludes with our best albums of the year. These albums were transcendent, exemplary, and the best of the best. They deserve your undivided attention.

Shall we begin...

3. Big Thief
U.F.O.F.
Folk : Listen

Usually I don't include two albums by the same artist on any given year's/decade's list, but Big Thief's double effort in 2019 is so mesmerizingly haunting that both deserve recognition. The second made it on our previous list, 2019's Honorable Mentions, but U.F.O.F. is clearly the superior of two utterly fascinating albums. Parts are gossamer wisps, like "Cattails" and "Open Desert," songs so delicate and beautiful that you find yourself tearing up in sheer awe. Others are heavy, James Gang-esque rock moments, like the screams and hard guitar picks at the end of opener "Contact," or the jazzy strut of "Strange." Not even Beach House--generally a perfect band in every way--with their double effort in 2015 (Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars came out the same year) were as absolutely correct as this. Big Thief wowed me in 2017 with Capacity; this album floored me. Moments on U.F.O.F. are so jaw-dropping that I still continue to jump in and out when I need something light to listen to.

Every note is so expertly calculated that you can hear their thought process: a collection of songs that express every possible emotion with as little extraneous sound as possible. Little flashes of weirdness, like background screams on "Contact," or the theremin and static noises on closer "Magic Dealer," keep the traditional instrumentation from turning stale. "Open Desert" shows its face as your standard Feist cover...that is until it reveals a chorus so beautiful and delicate that to sing louder than a whisper would destroy it. It is a moment so eye-opening and mesmerizing as to produce tears. "Century" follows a more traditional songwriting format, but includes hints of Joni Mitchell, and a bass line to die for. The inclusion of an Allman Brothers-esque guitar solo is a respite from the sensory overload that comes in the first half of the album; and "Terminal Paradise" sees Adrianne Lenker effortlessly shape-shift from Beth Gibbons, to Bjork, to Natasha Khan, proving that this sonic landscape is in the deftest of hands. U.F.O.F.'s major standout is the penultimate track, "Jenni," which takes the lightness and fragility of the previous ten songs and throws them at the wall in a fit of heavy reverb and fuzz-delay so masterfully mixed that My Bloody Valentine would blush with inadequacy. It is a statement that proves Big Thief know exactly what they're doing in every sense.

There aren't enough thesauruses to provide the synonyms required to describe the beauty of this album. A picture is worth a thousand words, but can a song be worth a thousand tears? A thousand sighs of fulfillment? A thousand burdens made lighter? There are moments listening to U.F.O.F. where you can be totally transported out of yourself, like a cartoon ghost. The delicacy of Big Thief's mission is so abjectly important that every guitar string gets it's own channel, every vocal recorded in a room lined with plush down. The comforting quality of every sound on U.F.O.F. is so persuasive and inviting that you'll be completely limp by the end of its brief 43-minute journey, numb and tingling to move again. This album will melt you. The acoustics are so sumptuous you could suffocate in them like the mid-Atlantic summer air. Every song sounds like Big Thief is sitting around you, with their instruments pressed to your ears, trying as best they can to make the world's first ASMR-folk album. This is Big Thief's most subtle, most empathetic, most ethereal work yet, but they're not begging for your attention. Rather, it emanates from the center of the universe and waits for you to find it and claim your reward. A biblical flood distilled to a wispy dream, U.F.O.F. is--and I don't say this lightly--a perfect album.

2. Richard Dawson
2020
Folk Rock : Listen

In 2017, Richard Dawson released one of the most unique and fanciful folk albums of all time. Peasant was a modern take on 10th Century British songs and poems, for which Dawson did an immense amount of research. It is clear that Dawson put the time and work in to become intimately familiar with a period of such brutality and squalor. But his ear for sumptuous strings, clever songwriting, and resonant lyrics made the album not only intriguing, but intrinsically beautiful. Peasant was the present full of past; a timely work from another time. When Dawson announced 2020, it was a surprise (at least to me), especially with the announcement single, "Two Halves," a light-ish song about Dawson's most memorable childhood soccer game and his father's slightly overbearing coaching. The chorus, "man on, man on, an empty stadium yells 'man on,'" is so incredibly English and catchy, that the gloomy memory of Peasant begins to fade away. Still, the song is written with undeniable talent, and Dawson's "new" sound seems just as interesting as ever. But then, 2020 actually released, and we got so much more.

“Civil Servant,” the opening track, proves just how revolutionary Dawson’s writing is. “I don’t want to go into work this morning; I don’t think I can deal with the wrath of the general public,” he sings in what might be the single most comedic line in modern music. The verses are punctuated with a jarring, repetitive, off-time, Swans-esque guitar and synth (a new instrument for Dawson), skewing the listener’s perspective of time and tempo just as being stuck in the titular civil servant’s office is mundane and disorienting. "The Queen's Head" is a cheerful little ditty about...having all your possessions flooded out? Once again, Dawson masterfully disguises dark subject matter with delightful instrumentation and carefully-chosen vocals. 2020 picks up where Nothing Important left off lyrically, in that many of the songs are presented literally; what you hear is what Dawson saw. But can describing things with no additional subtlety still make a distinct statement about our time and place in the world? A song like "Jogging," about...well...jogging to try to improve ones health, with lines describing how Dawson is using the exercise to relieve his anxiety and reduce social paranoia. And epic "Fulfillment Centre" is about just that, working in a *cough* unnamed online marketplace's fulfillment center to the point of monotonous insanity. The lyrics include listing almost everything Amazo--I mean, the unnamed company, sells, peppered with stories about employees peeing in bottles to avoid taking breaks, collapsing at their stations from exhaustion, and having full-on psychotic breaks only to be escorted from the building and never seen or heard form again.

With 2020, Dawson has crafted a memorable and colorful parallel to the mundanities of every day modern life, set to some of the most splendid guitar-and-drum tunes to come out this decade. The album is also a powerful statement that while modern life might not be some grandiose adventure every minute of every day, it is, well, life, and we can still be appreciative of what we have while working to make the world better. Yes, the planet is on fire, and we're all stuck in jobs where our minds are filled with naught but existential dread as we continually press that same button over and over and over. But sometimes you just have to say "hang the sense of it" and keep yourself busy. Let's go jogging!

1. Sharon Van Etten
Remind Me Tomorrow
Indie Rock : Listen

It is my undying and extreme pleasure to place this album at #1 for 2019. On Remind Me Tomorrow, Sharon Van Etten has constructed some so beautiful, so pure, and so everlasting it will surely go down in the annals of music history with the other indie rock giants like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. I have been utterly obsessed with Sharon's music since the inimitable Are We There was released in 2014, and then...I waited, patiently, for five years. In that time, Sharon has clearly been very busy exploring new sonic textures, and honing her already perfect songwriting craft. Let's just jump right into it.

Opener "I Told You Everything" begins with a sparse, echoing piano chord progression, while Sharon's voice enters splendidly. During the chorus her vocals are layered beautifully as the piano is joined by a bare drum kit and a dusty upright bass. Soon the production mastery of John Congleton comes into view: the hidden, swelling synths, the reverb-ed violin plucks pulled forward in the mix; what was meant to be a crooned ballad becomes a slow burn. "No One's Easy to Love" picks up the pace and introduces us to new sounds in Sharon's catalog: fuzzed synth-bass and processed percussion loops. The song begins as a condemnation of a relationship with too much time in it, but eventually comes around to the idea that love is work, and it's a work worth the effort, accented by Moby-esque plinking piano and Congleton's signature St-Vincent-mumble-guitar.

Sharon explores entirely new sonic territory on "Memorial Day," using turntablism-style samples to create an entirely synthetic beat, while singing at the upper end of her register to the point of falsetto, lending the song and almost creepy air. Standout single (and one of the best songs of 2019) "Comeback Kid" sees Sharon going full 80s arena rock to tell us how being purposefully anti-social may look cool when you're in high school, but is just kind of sad when you hit 40. Complete with a near-shout chorus, blown-out organ, and pounding drums so catchy you'll be humming it to yourself for days.

"Jupiter 4" is closer to a single from Are We There, and the sound most Sharon fans would be familiar with, though it does still make use of the newfound sampling and looping. Her vocals are soulful and pleading, "my love is for real." This is the sound of someone who is not willing to give up on that love they worked so hard for, whirling chords lift ever higher like a high-tension point in a Hans Zimmer score. "Seventeen" is probably the most obvious story, as she recounts her past indiscretions to a teenager who is doomed to repeat the same actions as their parent(s). We're never really told if the pep talk works, but either way it's one we all probably could have used when we were that age (even though we probably would have rolled our eyes).

"You Shadow" is an amazing slap at all the people who try to mimic Sharon's sound and storytelling (I'm not exactly sure who the song is pointed at, but it's pretty obvious Sharon is really upset with them). "You say you changed your mind / Yeah, I let you / ... / You don't do nothing I don't do," she croons over a loud party-tune, really digging into the subject. And closer "Stay" may be the most delicate and lovely song Sharon has ever written. Again she uses her upper register to remain as soft as possible over a simple slide guitar, an unpretentious church organ, and the reemergence of that sparse piano from the beginning. "Find a way to stand, and a time to walk away / Letting go to let you lead, I don't know how it ends." There is more heart and soul here than I can bear.

Remind Me Tomorrow is a gift. It is a manifesto on the difficulty of love, a warning to not waste your youth, and a clapback at copycats so hardcore you'll have an hand print on your face. Remind Me Tomorrow is as great a collection of short stories as anything in print, and an unforgettable listening experience. Sharon, never leave us.

Thanks for reading, everyone! 2019 was great for music. Here's to an even greater 2020!

The Best Albums of 2019: Runners Up

2019-12-29T16:51:00.000-05:00

The 2019 Baltimore Music Festival continues with our runners up for the year. These albums were excellent and deserve your attention and support.

Shall we begin...

Runners Up listed alphabetically

Bat for Lashes
Lost Girls
Indie Pop : Listen

The glory that is Natasha Khan's entire career has only been handicapped by the time she takes between albums and her deep, deep feeling. After the darkness that inhabited her while writing (and filming?) her last album, The Bride, Khan swore off writing new music ever again; terrible news for anyone who is a fan of unique songwriting, sumptuous arrangements, and heavenly voices. But like a teenager after their first break-up will find love again, Khan brought her Bat for Lashes project back when the pull of music became too strong. And we are all so much better for it. Lost Girls is a fantastic new direction for Khan where she takes up fully the synth-pop sounds she had only dabbled with on previous efforts. If Lost Girls sounds like a soundtrack to an 80s teen vampire movie, well, you're not far off. Much of the music was written while Khan was writing and directing a short film about...well, teen vampires in the 80s, and this was originally just meant as a score for that film. The beautiful "The Hunger" (which itself is the title of an 80s vampire movie starring David Bowie and Susan Sarandon) includes some of Khan's best soundscaping and heartstring-pulling lyrics: "I want to fly, you know how I like it / I want to feel like I'm still alive / I want to bleed and feed us forever / But I want to feed the hunger inside." The dream pop of "Jasmine" could easily be a Giorgio Moroder score highlight, while "So Good" wouldn't be out of place in Bangles album. The sound is definitely very different for Khan, but it is executed to perfection. Welcome back Natasha, you have been so sorely missed.

black midi
Schlagenheim
Math Rock : Listen

Since I am not Pitchfork, I won't just paste a gif in here and call it a day. But if I did, it would be...probably a mouth-agape Patrick Star combined with Homer Simpson backing/disappearing through a hedge, then blend into the prank opening of Skyrim. I know that doesn't explain a lot, but this album is a next-level braintrust experience. The members of black midi (yes, they insist it's lower-case) I can only assume have degrees in astrophysics and music theory. Some of the songwriting would give TOOL, Yes, and King Crimson a run for their money, at times like a hardcore show, while others are pure psychedelia. Schlagenheim, the incredibly ambitious debut album of black midi, is like a metal album written by Peter Gabriel-era Genesis, complete with a very Gabriel-sounding co-lead singer in George Greep. The album is sometimes punishing, sometimes soothing, but always intriguing. black midi have not striven for something mind-warping and soul-crushing, like a Xiu Xiu album, but instead are clearly complicating their music in an attempt to open your mind to new sounds. It's hard for me to explain the weirdness of it without sounding off-putting, but Schlagenheim isn't an impenetrable fortress of complexity and bizarre sound effects. Instead, it's the most interesting way these particular structures ever been combined.

Denzel Curry
ZUU
Trap : Listen

Anytime I hear trap, I thank God that Denzel Curry exists, to shine a light in the otherwise pitch-dark tomb that is this unbearable genre. Curry had one of the best albums last year with TA13OO (though I still despise the numerals-as-letters thing), and I guess he couldn't wait even one minute more to drop another epic on the world. ZUU is not as expansive or theme-centered as its predecessor, but it more that makes up for it with banging beats, brilliant lyrical performances (by Curry especially, but all the guests as well), and brazen originality. Opener/title-track "Zuu" acts as the perfect thesis statement with it's smooth groove punctuated by a nearly-yelled chorus that then blends seamlessly into "Ricky," a song I've listened to enough times by myself to pay the man for a year. The inimitable Rick Ross guests on "Birdz" and gives one of the best performances of his career, while Sam Sneak adds a verse to "Shake 88," a song that still wouldn't be long enough if there were another ten verses. Closer "P.A.T." slapped me so hard I told people I deserved it, with its industrial inspired loops and the hyper-aggro rhymes delivered in a way that is becoming Curry's signature: part Danny Brown, part Death Grips' MC Ride. ZUU is a rap album you can mosh to, and boy have we been in dire need of those.

Drenge
Strange Creatures
Grunge : Listen

Drenge left 2015 as one of the most promising bands to continue the grunge tradition. Undertow was a polished, perfectly produced miracle of a genre left for dead in the wake of the disturbing 2000s "post-grunge" movement. Then, seemingly, they disappeared. When Strange Creatures was finally announced, it instantly became my most anticipated album of the year; more than Bat for Lashes, more than TOOL. Gladly, it was well worth the wait. The album opens the heaviest song in Drenge's discography, "Bonfire of the City Boys," a loud, driving anthem to announce the band's return, complete with Eoin Loveless shouting his proclamation at the top of his lungs. Song of the Year "This Dance" is the classic, jumping romp that is the equal to any of Drenge's 90s forefathers, mixed with a bit of Franz Ferdinand garage rock. On the title track, the band explores their soulful side in a mysterious and emotional ode to to all the "selves" we keep hidden from the outside world, and showcases the first synth the band has used beyond sound effects. We travel down a dark and twisting road, where stops include a layered shout chorus and a delay-riddled guitar drone that continuously adds to the atmosphere. "Avalanches," the penultimate track, explores a fuzz-heavy shoegaze plea to tear down all those walls we put up in "Strange Creatures," with songwriting so unexpectedly beautiful it brings tears to your eyes. Here's hoping we get more exploration, more depth, and more headbanging awesomeness from this group sooner than later.

Billie Eilish
When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
Indie Pop : Listen

This is truly one of the best surprises of 2019. Billie Eilish has been releasing singles for a while now, but many of those were showcasing her ability to mimic Lana Del Rey, Lorde, and other dark-pop singers. On this, her first proper album, Eilish demonstrates just how incredibly talented she is. Sure, those pop influences are still there on songs like "When the Party's Over" and "Listen Before I Go;" but in many cases she's done more subversion than reflection, such as the troubling "Xanny," or the deliciously snide "Wish You Were Gay." Then there's her intense hold of trap and club-EDM on bangers like "Bad Guy" and the Vantablack dark "Bury a Friend." The showstopper is, of course, "You Should See Me in a Crown," the song that destroyed all my preconceptions about who Eilish was as a singer/songwriter. The song is bone-chillngly disturbing with it's knife sharpening sound effects, and the lyrics are the type of coming out anthem that would turn the stomach of a Roman conspirator. Eilish and her brother, Finneas O'Connell are such an excellent songwriting and production tandem that I can easily see them being hired by other headlining acts in the very near future. I would say that they should take their time and create another perfect pop album, but I also selfishly want another When We All Fall Asleep every year.

Fontaines D.C.
Dogrel
Post-Punk : Listen

It wouldn't be a Conquest of Gaul annual list without a little post-punk, and Fontaines D.C. fulfills that requirement perfectly. The impressive debut by the Dublin band hits every possible infulence: Joy Division, Siouxsie, Adam Ant, Pere Ubu. The most clear parallel is to Gang of Four, their guitar work is impeccably similar, as is the jazzy percussion punctuated the occasional slamming of floor toms. Album standout "Too Real" has every calling card: the Peter Hook-style bass line, the jangling guitars, the overstated vocal accent. Apart from wearing their influences on their sleeves, Fontaines do a masterful job of maintaining a consistent aesthetic, even with all the varied styles, and their songwriting is absolutely top-notch. It is a rare feat indeed to create an album so original while so deeply honoring the past.

Little Simz
Grey Area
Conscious Hip Hop : Listen

If you didn't know, Grey Area is Little Simz' third album, not to mention her four mixtapes and seven EPs, most of which came out before she was 21. So...what are you doing with your life? All of them are beyond the comprehension of your average 21 year old: thematically deep, and sampling from a library that rivals the one at Alexandria. Grey Area doesn't look to slow that pace down, either. While it may be her first truly visible release, it's just one in a long line of compelling, heady, sonic stunners leading to the very spot where she stands now. Simz demands you sit up and pay attention as looping beats perfectly match her rapping "I'm Jay-Z on a bad day / Shakespeare on my worst days" on opener "Offence." The strutting bass-line of "Boss" is enough to hook even the most skeptical of listeners, and the sheer inventiveness of "101 FM" should wrap up the pitch. With the backing of names like Kendrick Lamar and Lauryn Hill, you would think talent this fathomless would have been blown-up all over the States by now. Sadly, her well-deserved fame is still waiting, seemingly doomed to the obscurity of many a UK grime artist. But when you're Shakespeare on your worst days, you have a lot to look forward to.

TOOL
Fear Inoculum
Progressive Metal : Listen

TOOL's perfectionism and professionalism is already well known, so going into details about it here is putting a hat on a hat. The fact that this album in here in the list should be absolutely no surprise, and a foregone conclusion the moment it came out an wasn't a pile of burning garbage. thirteen years in the making Fear Inoculum continues TOOL down their path to becoming the metal Pink Floyd: no song (real song, weird interludes and drum solos don't count) is under ten minutes. That said, the drum solo, "Chocolate Chip Trip," clearly named by a 4-year old who somehow understands Timothy Leary, is the best drum one-off since the great John Bonham recorded "Moby Dick" some...oh my God, 50 YEARS AGO! In fact, the entirety of Fear Inoculum is guided, and even helmed, by Danny Carey's god-like drumming, like a 76-minute solo that he graciously allowed the other members to jam over. Songs like fan-favorite "Pneuma" and live preview "Descending" are as mind-bending and experimental as TOOL have ever been, while semi-closer "7empest" is the equal to AEnima closer "Third Eye" in both creativity and face-melting awesomeness. We can only hope we don't have to wait another 13 years to hear more.

Tyler, The Creator
IGOR
Contemporary R&B : Listen

If you can honestly say that you didn't listen to "I Think" at least three times in a row after hearing it, you are either a very good liar, in total denial, or you didn't hear it. Every song on Tyler, The Creator's fifth full-length solo album is its own statement of purpose: sometimes a musical theme, sometimes a political message, but always goal-oriented. It feels kind of silly writing about IGOR like you didn't hear it. It was #1 on the Billboard 200, much to the hilarious chagrin of a fat, trashy, talentless moron whose only claim to fame is yelling his own moniker on other people's songs like the world's longest, saddest, most expensive game of Marco Polo, who shall remain nameless. IGOR, however, is a showcase of every influence Tyler, The Creator ever encountered, turned up to 11: Motor City R&B, 80s synth-pop, old school hip hop, Italo-disco; they're all here. This is the most successfully experimental contemporary album I've heard since James Blake's debut. The constant vinyl hiss, the extreme mash-up of styles, the harsh mixing, the offensively pink album art, you can just feel that this is the album Tyler has been trying to make his entire life. The exacting perfection of each new twist: "I Think"'s roller rink pop, to spoken word on "Exactly What You Run From...," to the crooning of "Running Out of Time," to a straight-up banger in "New Magic Wand." This is the kind of album that keeps hip hop fresh, immediate, and growing in cultural importance.

Weyes Blood
Titanic Rising
Soft Rock : Listen

I find it funny, and slightly annoying, that Weyes Blood has been stamped with the label of "indie" when, if you go back about 50 years, this is what pop sounded like. Late 60s and early 70s pop radio was filled with Carol Kings, Carly Simons, James Taylors, Paul Simons, Janis Ians, and Billy Prestons. And while the 80s' synths, 90s' drum-and-bass, and 00s' bling may have changed how we view pop forever, the musicality of the old ways will never die. That musicality is what Weyes Blood understands better than anyone, helping her to deliver one of the most listenable acoustic pop albums ever. Titanic Rising is like a thesis statement for an art history PhD candidate. While this hasn't always been the M.O. of Natalie Mering, having played bass for the experimental post-rock Jackie-O Motherfucker to kick-off her career, she has seemingly come to accept the genre that best fits her solid, alto, Karen-Carpenter-esque voice. And before we get too far, let's talk "Andromeda." I have never heard a song about slowly, procedurally falling in love, much less one that is this complex and beautiful. Listening to Titanic Rising, you get the uncanny feeling that if Mering had just been born a generation earlier, she would have conquered the charts and raked in millions. Her lyrics are heartfelt and powerful, and her arrangements are new and compelling...if you just forget the last 40 years happened.

Up next, the best albums of the year...
(coming soon)

The Best Albums of 2019: Honorable Mentions

2019-12-22T15:37:00.000-05:00

So we begin the third annual Baltimore Music Festival, where we listen to everything and then rank them arbitrarily. Just as every year, there are three categories:

Honorable Mentions, where the largest number of albums end up, those that were fun, interesting, and definitely good enough to warrant a stream or two;

Runners Up, where ten albums reside, those that were excellent and of high enough quality to land on your shelves as physical copies, or at least purchased from iTunes/AmazonMusic/GooglePlay;

Albums of the Year, the top three albums, those that are truly transcendent, the ones you’ll be reminiscing about while your grandchildren won’t stop playing whatever passes for popular music in 2049.

2019 was actually a very good year for music. Amazing records were put out by a vast variety of artists, and a great time was had by all. Shall we begin?

Honorable Mentions listed alphabetically

Baroness
Gold & Grey
Stoner Rock : Listen

Big Thief
Two Hands
Folk Rock : Listen

James Blake
Assume Form
Leftfield R&B : Listen

Danny Brown
uknowhatimsayin?
Hip Hop : Listen

Cave In
Final Transmission
Post Rock : Listen

Charli XCX
Charli
Pop : Listen

The Comet Is Coming
Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery
Jazz Fusion : Listen

Dave
Psychodrama
Hip Hop : Listen

Lana Del Rey
Norman Fucking Rockwell!
Pop Rock : Listen

FKA Twigs
Magdalene
Ethereal R&B : Listen

Freddie Gibbs & Madlib
Bandana
Gangsta Rap: Listen

Ariana Grande
thank u, next
Pop R&B : Listen

Aldous Harding
Designer
Art Rock : Listen

HEALTH
Vol.4 :: Slaves of Fear
Industrial : Listen

The Highwomen
The Highwomen
Folk/Country : Listen

Ibibio Sound Machine
Doko Mien
Highlife : Listen

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
Infest the Rats Nest
Thrash Metal : Listen

Michael Kiwanuka
Kiwanuka
Soul : Listen

Lizzo
Cuz I Love You
Pop/Hip Hop/Funk : Listen

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Ghosteen
Ambient Electronic : Listen

Angel Olsen
All Mirrors
Indie Rock : Listen

Purple Mountains
Purple Mountains
Rock : Listen

Show Me the Body
Dog Whistle
Hardcore : Listen

Širom
A Universe that Roasts Blossoms for a Horse
Free Improvisation : Listen

Slowthai
Nothing Great About Britain
Grime : Listen

Solange
When I Get Home
Contemporary R&B : Listen

Hayden Thorpe
Diviner
Ballad Pop : Listen

Tinariwen
Amadjar
Electric Blues : Listen

The Twilight Sad
It Won/t Be Like This All the Time
Alternative Rock : Listen

W.H. Lung
Incidental Music
Psychedelic Rock : Listen

Jamila Woods
Legacy! Legacy!
Contemporary R&B : Listen

Xiu Xiu
Girl With Basket of Fruit
Abstract : Listen

Thom Yorke
Anima
Electro : Listen

The Best Songs of 2019

2019-12-04T11:40:00.000-05:00

There were a lot of really great songs this year, too many to list in one place. So instead, here's my 10 favorite, presented in a completely random order...
No numbers
No scheme
Here we go...

Hayden Thorpe
"Love Crimes"

Hayden Thorpe’s debut album, Diviner, is a gorgeous depression, a breakup album that paints its story in thick, oily glops like only the best pointillists and impressionists, cloudy up close and lush from afar. “Love Crimes” is not only the most beautiful of the album, but it also is the best representative of its themes, stating that “even the greatest of loves can be given up.” Nothing is permanent, nothing is real. Musically, an off-time, staccato piano chord progression gives the entire song an air of unease: does Thorpe really mean what he’s singing, or is this just the harsh, rash reaction of someone so thoroughly disgusted with the end of a relationship that his mind is poisoned? Only we can decide.
"Love Crimes"

Sharon Van Etten
"Comeback Kid"

Apart from being one of the best albums of the year, Sharon Van Etten’s Remind Me Tomorrow is a fascinating collection of songs about dealing with negative emotions and how to navigate a world full of hate. “Comeback Kid” is the answer to all those god-awful Springsteen / Mellencamp / Jackson Browne odes to the “good ole days” where high school is just the best and adults are held back by their old ideas and stifling your right to party. The titular “Comeback Kid” is the scary Ghost-of-Christmas-Future-version of the main character of those songs: his anti-establishmentism keeps him unemployed; he still thinks he’s cooler than everyone else, but is envious of how they’ve all moved on (and moved away) without him; the Gary King character from The World’s End. “Comeback Kid” is a warning: please don’t grow up to be this person.
"Comeback Kid"

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
"Perihelion"

Infest the Rats Nest may be King Gizzard’s bajillionth album, but it is their first foray into the world of old-school metal. Taking not-so-subtle inspiration from Judas Priest, Motorhead, and early Metallica, “Perihelion” is perhaps the smartest track off the already hyper-intelligent concept album about a dying Earth and future humans trying to escape it: a song about using the gravitational pull of the Sun to accelerate a spacecraft for faster travel to another planet. Of course, King Gizzard’s tale is not particularly light or fun: the crew misjudge the trajectory and get sucked into the Sun itself, vaporizing everyone. Such is the dismal future of Infest the Rats Nest. At least they were able to headbang their necks off all the way in.
"Perihelion"

Big Thief
"Jenni"

Big Thief have a very specific definition of folk that involves ultra-clear production and a jazz-like composition. It’s a definition that has served them extremely well, as Capacity, their second album, was one of the best of 2017, and even one of the best of the decade. “Jenni” then, comes as a massive surprise. The penultimate track on the otherwise almost plush-down soft U.F.O.F., “Jenni” is soaked in shoegaze reverb and written like a 90s grunge ballad, with heavy-handed guitar solos and a dreamy vocal delivery. What the song is about...I can’t really tell, but it so fantastically fills the space with sound that the search for meaning seems unnecessary.
"Jenni"

Weyes Blood
"Andromeda"

“Andromeda is a big, wide-open galaxy” is crooned by Natalie Mering (aka Weyes Blood) as the opening line to maybe the most beautiful song of the year. Mering’s voice conjures memories of 80s power-pop ballads like “Voices Carry” or “Constant Craving”, while the music brings to mind the great country ballads of the late 70s (before the genre went downhill hard) with it’s slide-steel guitar and island-inspired percussion. Thematically, it’s about as forlorn a love song as you can find: Mering pushes away perhaps the love of her life because of all the pain she’s experienced, but she just can’t bring herself to give up completely; “if you think you can save me, I dare you to try.”
"Andromeda"

Tyler, The Creator
"I THINK"

Tyler has been on an upward trend for several years now (despite being banned from Australia or something...I wasn’t really sure what was going on there). Flower Boy was beyond excellent and now 2019’s IGOR is a massive artistic success (as well as commercial success, so DJ Khaled can eat it), so much so that its offensively pink album art and hilarious promo music video for single “EARFQUAKE” became memes. But “I THINK” is where the aggressive production choices and overall musical aesthetic are best showcased. The sample, the beat, the synths, they all could be just as easily found in a 70s roller rink as they are on IGOR. It also has the most pleasant of the many stories found on the album, with guest vocalist Solange repeating the line “I think I’m falling in love, this time I think it’s for real;” a pleasant diversion from the otherwise heavy material found elsewhere. Bonus: if you hit repeat, the song sounds like it was designed to be on a loop, and that’s not a bad thing.
"I THINK"
"EARFQUAKE"

Michael Kiwanuka
"Rolling"

Confession: I’m a huge sucker for a big bass line, and “Rolling” is packing one of the biggest bass lines of the year. It also has going for it: Michael Kiwanuka’s soulful voice, the full Philadelphia-sound throwback production, and an unintelligible Motown backing chorus sample seemingly at random (a Kiwanuka signature; see 2016’s “Place I Belong”). Increasingly, Kiwanuka’s themes have become less personal and more political, just as the best soul did in the 1970s, and coupled with album opener “You Ain’t the Problem,” “Rolling” may be Kiwanuka at his most pointed. “No tears for the young, a bullet if you run away” opens the song, and gives the entire chorus, “rolling with the times, don’t be late” a sharp sarcasm that borders on juvenalian satire. Top it off with a blown-out guitar and slowly-disintegrating-into-its-own-layers outro, and you got yourself a hit.
"Rolling"
"Place I Belong"

Richard Dawson
"Civil Servant"

Richard Dawson wowed everyone in 2017 with his collection of 10th century folk songs arranged for a demonic orchestra. Peasant was so mind-blowingly, earth-shatteringly unique and brilliant that it changed the way I think about music forever. Could his surprise follow-up continue the trend? Of course, and “Civil Servant,” the opening track, proves just how revolutionary Dawson’s writing is. 2020 is a commentary on modern living delivered with all the subtlety of being brained with a cue ball, but that extreme choice is one that has paid off for Dawson in the past (see “The Vile Stuff,” a 15+ minute track that is just the details of a school field trip Dawson took as a child, where he drank smuggled alcohol on the back of the bus). “I don’t want to go into work this morning; I don’t think I can deal with the wrath of the general public,” he sings in what might be the single most comedic line in modern music. The verses are punctuated with a jarring, repetitive, off-time, Swans-esque guitar and synth (a new instrument for Dawson), skewing the listener’s perspective of time and tempo just as being stuck in the titular civil servant’s office is mundane and disorienting. Any points lost by the obvious messaging are regained ten-fold by the mirroring instrumentation; why follow the “show, don’t tell” rule when you can follow the “show-and-tell” rule.
"Civil Servant"
"The Vile Stuff"

DRENGE
"This Dance"

Tool may have the record for longest wait between albums (they don’t actually, that goes to My Bloody Valentine), but Drenge’s four-year break between the unfathomably slick Undertow and this year’s equally smart follow-up, Strange Creatures, felt just as long. “This Dance” is the second track off the new record, and is a grunge romp that will have you shaking it as much as moshing. Eoin Loveless delivers his most fever-pitched vocal performance while singing about underground dance parties on aqueducts, in dingy basements, and under highway overpasses. His guitar work is as clear and haunting as a surf-rock horror movie, followed by Rob Graham’s bass line that is--by far--the most complex of Drenge’s catalog. His brother, Rory Loveless, pounds a drum set so fantastically you wouldn’t be blamed for confusing him with Matt Cameron or Dave Grohl. Turn this on and turn it up.
"This Dance"

James Blake
"Lullaby for My Insomniac"

The very idea that James Blake is good at vocal loops has been discussed so ad nauseum it has made people actually nauseous. That said, the loops on "Lullaby for My Insomniac" are so beautiful it would require an entire acoustic forensics team to dissect the layers. The final minute of the Assume Form closer is just his voice, endlessly covering itself with more and more and more. This comes after a stunning, free verse poem about literal insomnia, with the awe-inspiring lines “sleep happens to you, it’s not a failure if you can’t; in any case, you will, at some point, fall,” and “I’d rather see everything as a blur tomorrow if you do.” The song is, otherwise, essentially music-less, save an occasional horn fade-in, putting even more pressure on the vocals to deliver. But this is territory Blake has traveled a thousand times, and like and old pro, he navigates the peril to bewitching effect.
"Lullaby for My Insomniac"

Happy holidays, everyone, and pleasant listening to 2019!

The Case for World Music (Best New Music 9.12.2019)

2019-09-12T11:33:00.001-04:00

The music world, as we are generally aware of it, is terribly Western-centric (i.e., Europe and the Americas). Much of this is because with great wealth comes a desire to spend that money on non-necessities like art, and in our case today, music and its production. Hidden somewhere in there is a subconscious need to promote Western exceptionalism ("our music is better; look, everyone is buying it"), but that's a very different discussion for a very different time.

So what do I mean when I say "world music?" Certainly, the term must conjure some measure or response: generally acoustic, non-English vocals, using Eastern or African instruments. Basically, world music is characterized as being cultural folk music from the developing world. It's...not a great term (see the note on Western exceptionalism above), one, because it's a little derogatory, and two, because it's far too general and includes an extreme diversity of sounds: Tuvan throat singing, Zimbabwean guitar, Sufi, and I have to stop now because the list is pages long.

In the American mind (and subsequently, the Western mind), world music was introduced to us through already popular Western artists: Peter Gabriel's "Biko", Paul Simon's Graceland, and David Byrne's entire solo career (not the Brian Eno stuff, just...forget that). In reality, the term is a euphemism created by the industry in order to make "foreign" music sound less threatening to middle America. But no matter what you think of the term, it has become a staple in the classification of genres, so we continue to use it.

The "case" I'm trying to make is not one saying that world music is good. Obviously, people like Gabriel and Simon have stated that case and made it painfully obvious already. I simply wish to make the argument that you should listen to it. "Good" is subjective, and those titans of the industry merely skimmed the surface in their releases, in order to incorporate the sounds into what would otherwise be pop music. So let's talk about actual international releases...

We'll start with a perpetual Conquest of Gaul favorite, Ibibio Sound Machine. ISM is a British-Nigerian highlife band that bases their sound on the 70s- and 80s-Nigerian disco movement that was spearheaded by the great, prolific William Onyeabor. (I've written multiple reviews of ISM's music, one of them including an entire dissection of Onyeabor's "Fantastic Man" and its use in American commercials. It's a thing, look it up, you've heard it before.)

There's no need to really delve into ISM, if only because they've been covered at length on this site previously. I bring them up instead to suggest that they are a fantastic gateway into world music. Their dance-able combination of new wave synths, disco horns, and funk rhythm section includes lyrics written and sung in Ibibio (where the band gets the name), a prominent language of Nigeria.

The thing with the "scary" wall over which you must climb to "understand" world music, is that it's not real. The hurdle is entirely made of your own prejudices and presuppositions. Music is universal, and can communicate across the barrier of language. Many world music artists are writing and creating sounds we as Americans are already extremely familiar with. Like...

Tinariwen is a group of Tuareg musicians from Malian Sahara and Algeria whose new album, Amadjar, is a brilliant combination of tichumaren (North African "rebellious" folk music) and electric blues. You would recognize 90% of the music as being from any number of blues-rock revival garage bands like White Stripes or the Black Keys. But...the vocals are in Tamasheq (the Tuareg language). But there's something appealing about listening to music when you can't--as a boorish American like me--understand the lyrics. The pure musicianship shines through, and you focus on each note, delivered expertly by a group that has had the full expanse of the world's largest desert in which to practice their craft. And even though you (read: I) can't understand the lyrics consciously, the international, cross-cultural language of the blues allows you to somehow understand every song. You feel what they feel because when musicians know what they're doing (and Tinariwen know) and are so impressively skillful (and Tinariwen are), the journey you go on by listening happens regardless of where you're from or what language you speak.

And once you've completed the second lesson in world music this week, we move on to...

Širom's second full-length album, A Universe that Roasts Blossoms for a Horse, has a significantly higher standard for entry than Tinariwen's. But once you cross the threshold, I guarantee you'll be satisfied. Širom is a trio from Slovenia that specialize in creating textured, "imagined" folk music (in that, it's not arranging a real, traditional song). Their sound is experimental and often uses handmade instruments and an extreme knowledge of ethnomusicology. There's a woman ululating, a bluegrass banjo, and a Nordic fiddle...and that's the first song. The layers of seemingly disparate cultures mixed together on the four epic tracks include bits of Sufi, jazz, and Hungarian folk. The compositions are written like something off Swans' The Seer, while the production is closer to a Jonny Greenwood film score. And while all that sounds eclectic, and weird, and maybe insane, I can tell you from listening to it multiple times: it's incredibly soothing. You could easily spend hours divining each note like tea leaves, looking for something cosmic and eternal; that's definitely a valid take. Or, you could just put it on while you cook dinner; everything needs a dramatic soundtrack.

So, I certainly hope you give world music a chance. Some of my favorite albums of the past several years have been international releases. Take for instance, the now immensely popular Rosalia, whose El Mal Querer garnered critical acclaim and international attention. But her first album, Los Angeles, is a dark, traditional Catalan album that, despite not knowing a single full-phrase of Spanish, had me near tears multiple times. Or, the totally recognizable pop of CHAI, an all-female dance-punk band from Japan whose songs are so catchy you try to sing along (but, you know, they're in Japanese).

World music is a "genre" that's more than just a genre, it's an endless canvas on which to explore, draw, and create. Happy listening

10 Bat for Lashes Songs to Listen to Before 'Lost Girls'

2019-09-05T15:19:00.001-04:00

Tomorrow will see the release of Natasha Khan's fifth album as Bat for Lashes, Lost Girls. While it looks to be another jaw-dropping exercise in gothic romance art pop, there's no reason we can't go over some of the best work she's released thus far.

Shall we begin...

10. Sarah
Fur and Gold (2006)

Fur and Gold is the debut album by Bat for Lashes, and it contains much of the musical thesis and inspirations that would shape the rest of her work. "Bat's Mouth," "The Wizard," and the much discussed "What's a Girl to Do?"--the song that brought Khan into a sort-of mainstream, with its silly-yet-creepy music video--all have flashes of Bjork, Talking Heads, PJ Harvey, and Kate Bush. But those are clearly practice runs for "Sarah," a mix of Portishead trip hop and Phil Spector R&B that pushes the album over the edge from "interesting" to "amazing." It's also one of four Bat for Lashes songs that include a name that is the same as an extended family member, leading me to believe that Natasha Khan is stalking me (/s).

9. Pearl's Dream
Two Suns (2009)

Bat for Lashes' sophomore album, Two Suns, is almost uniformly considered her opus. The singles, including "Pearl's Dream," are moody, fantastical, and dreamy. "Pearl's Dream" however, relies significantly more on electronics, and its lyrics start the point-of-view portion of Two Suns which begins to fully embrace the concept album theme. The brilliance isn't just in the song's difference from the rest of the album, but that the difference is in a DREAM. The lyrics start as typical storytelling, but soon become almost nonsensical: "had a big machine riding your shoulder;" "when the battle was done, I was promised my son/Sun." The beat is the fastest on the entire album, and the vocals begin to blend together in a Sondheim-esque duet. "Pearl's Dream" is one of the finest examples of experimentation turned pop.

8. Clouds
The Bride (2016)

"Clouds" is the closing track from Bat for Lashes fourth album, The Bride, a(nother) concept album about a woman whose fiance dies in an accident on the way to their wedding, and her journey overcoming grief. The premise is dark, and the album was Khan's most experimental to date, with several passages that acted more as soundscapes, spoken word, or simply poems with the barest wisps of musical backing. "Clouds" may be Khan's sparsest, barest track however, coupled with the most beautiful vocal arrangement of her career. The song is designed for maximum tears, the catharsis of a woman that finally understands we all experience tragedy, but that even the most traumatic of losses can be cleansing: "Rain, I will take as a sign / Rain, heavy grace I did find / Rain, wash me clean through the night / Rain, divine, divine, divine." To live beyond your loss is to truly honor them.

7. Sleep Alone
Two Suns (2009)

Returning to Two Suns, "Sleep Alone" is the first notion we get that this album will not be like Fur and Gold. A twangy guitar, mixed far in the back almost to the point of sounding sampled and compressed, leads off before vocals and a nearly EDM drum/bass beat comes in. The verses are punctuated with seemingly random choir chirps, as Khan sings perhaps the most telling lyrics of her career: "Lonely, lonely, lonely / My mother told me, the dream of love isn't too hard to dream." A seminal work in the Bat for Lashes pantheon, the song, and its tone, would follow Khan through her career with other entries like "Honeymooning Alone" from The Bride, or "All Your Gold" from The Haunted Man.

6. In God's House
The Bride (2016)

"In God's House" was the first single off The Bride and to say it was shocking is a massive understatement. The song opens with dark synths and repressed backbeat that is closer to a Depeche Mode b-side than anything Khan was known for at the time. When her vocals come in, they're hollow, as if delivered by someone completely devoid of happiness, echoing and forlorn. The song is the crux of The Bride's story: the point where the fiance is killed in an accident while the titular bride waits on the altar. The chorus changes tone: while the lyrics themselves get darker, the harmonies turn from minor to major, and an Edvard Grieg fairytale-inspired synth loop runs continuously. We always knew that Khan could bring a room to full emotion, but "In God's House" showed that she could stop people in their tracks.

5. Peace of Mind
Two Suns (2009)

There's been a constant comparison between Khan and Leslie Feist (aka, just Feist). Certainly not a bad musician to be compared to, considering every Feist album is highly regarded, and nowhere is the comparison more apt. "Peace of Mind" uses full chorales to back-up the ending lines, which are delivered at such full throat that they almost blow-out the meter. The song builds from a simple hollow-body electric guitar and autoharp strum until, layer after layer, it feels as if a full orchestra and marching band has joined in. Brilliantly mixed timpani replaces the normal drum kit, making the beat resemble organized thunder, as a lonely tambourine chimes almost out of time and without flourish, like the child made to pick their instrument last in music class. A heavier baroque composition has never been heard.

4. Marilyn
The Haunted Man (2012)

The Haunted Man is Bat for Lashes' third album, and a personal favorite. Its themes and sonic delivery are moving, and varied, and gorgeous, and beyond talented. "Marilyn," is a song that's basically about someone emulating the famous Marilyn Monroe photograph where she's leaning out the window of a Ford Thunderbird. But unlike much of what led to "Marilyn" in the album--mostly dream pop with a dark edge, the TV On The Radio-ness of "All Your Gold," and the wonderfully strange "Oh Yeah"--this song begins, after a short, weirdly pitched synth opening, with a MASSIVE kick drum loop reminiscent of "Blue Monday." The fact that the overlying song is something like a silly love song makes the juxtaposition all that more intriguing. It returns after a brief interlude toward the end even bolder and louder, like the triumphant entrance of a Caesar. This is the happiest Khan has ever sounded in a song, and its strange combination of drum machines, detuned vocal samples, and lighter than air vocals makes it endlessly replayable.

3. Let's Get Lost (with Beck)
Let's Get Lost (2010)

Fortunately, this song was released as a standalone single, so I'm spared the indignity of admitting in bold titles that this song debuted on the Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack, and was probably the only salvageable part of that film. Beck's easily malleable style and Khan's delicate singing make an excellent pairing. The rhythm is delivered by a deep kick sample and wood block loop occasionally paired with claps or Atari plosives. The music is mainly a single harmonic Wurlitzer drone, punctuated by a Peter Gabriel-esque flute menagerie between verses. The heavy lifting is done by the vocals. Khan has never sounded more imploring, engaging, and fully realized as she is here. No doubt buoyed by the production budget that comes along with Beck (and a $68 million film), her voice fills every space left behind by the sparse instrumentation, and her duets with Beck in the chorus are delivered expertly. Any film would be lucky to have this song on its soundtrack five times over, and is probably the only good thing to come out of the entire Twilight franchise.

2. Daniel
Two Suns (2009)

This first single off Two Suns, "Daniel," catapulted Bat for Lashes into the mainstream (if only for a short while), and for astonishingly good reason: the song is jaw-dropping. Apart from being one of Khan's warmest and fullest songs instrumentally, it also showcases a complete mastery of lyrical imagery. The synth horns that fade-in the start provide no real glimpse into the world this song will eventually build. A rich drum pattern complete with a Joy Division floor tom progression and subtle use of percussive wind effects runs throughout the song. The strings are kept at a distance, often at an almost eerie pitch until they come into the fill the space after one chorus ends and another verse begins. And when it comes to verses and choruses, "Daniel" has some of the best in pop music history. I fear that starting to provide examples will lead to a flood wherein I just write the entire lyrical content, but there are worse things. The line "when the fires came, the smell of cinders and rain, perfumed almost everything" is already a splendid poem, until you realize the song starts with "when I first saw you, I knew that you had a flame in your heart"--the flame made fire that consumed them. "Into our mouths the tears crept, just kids in the eye of the storm" is followed by an absolutely brilliant Wizard of Oz reference: "And as our house spun 'round, my dreams pulled me from the ground, forever to search for the flame, for home again"--the storm of feelings eventually destroys all hope of a stable relationship. This is the most sumptuous breakup song ever written.

1. Deep Sea Diver
The Haunted Man (2012)

An admission: I may be putting way too many personal feelings into this song that makes me place it as Khan's greatest single effort, but I digress. "Deep Sea Diver" is the closing track of The Haunted Man, and it acts as showstopping elegy. The music is soft and delicate: a muffled jazz kit is used for the drums, while a feathery piano plinks in an ethereal loop, punctuated rarely by a bell or an LCD Soundsystem synth. But the true beauty is once again in Khan's lyrics and subsequent wordless elation. Opening with a brilliant call back to "Daniel" she sings "You came running out of the dark, with the tears in your eyes, but this time I'm not afraid, 'cause my heat's ablaze." The song is full of spellbinding imagery: "You're a deep sea diver, tides are turning in your favor;" "The moth and the moon saw a new religion being born;" "Said you'd been taken over by a deep blue animal." But most importantly is the final line of the song, a plea for whoever it addresses to not let go, to not be consumed by grief, depression, or loneliness: "Darling if you can't see out, you know that I can hear you shout." People do care. This world is not a cold, dead place, and there is always another way. The light at the end of the tunnel only gets further away, it never goes out. "Deep Sea Diver" is begging you not to let go, to keep fighting, because even if you can't see that light, tunnels carry your voice farther than you can see. We can hear you. Khan ends the song better than words could, with an unformed call, one that says it gets lighter out here. Just keep shouting.

P.S. Once again, this list was very difficult to create. A shout out to all those BfL songs I really, really love but didn't make the cut: What's a Girl to Do?, The Wizard, Prescilla, Travelling Woman, All Your Gold, Oh Yeah, Laura, A Wall, Rest Your Head, Honeymooning Alone, Sunday Love, Never Forgive the Angels, and I Will Love Again.

P.P.S. Stupid Spotify has literally every BfL song EXCEPT "Deep Sea Diver"? What the actual f***? Anyway, here's an upstanding citizen's YouTube upload. Trust me, it's worth the tears.

10 TOOL Songs You MUST Hear Before 'Fear Inoculum'

2019-08-29T12:17:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow, for the first time in thirteen years, the epic progressive art-rock monsters of TOOL will release their highly anticipated (putting it lightly) fifth album, Fear Inoculum. So, on this, the eve of said release, let's take a look at the 10 best songs in TOOL's catalog.

Narrowing the list down is something of a Sophie's Choice task: the band's collection is full to the brim with songs that push genre boundaries, confuse even the most studious of music theorists, and just rock hardcore. That said, this list is totally definitive and there can be no argument /s

Shall we begin...

10. Sober
Undertow (1993)

TOOL's first hit single is as important an entry in their discography as any of the mind-bending entries that came later. While "Sober" might not showcase a lot of the prog-rock signatures that came from future releases, or that were even on the same album for that matter (like "4°" or "Bottom"), the song did present to a wide audience many of the sounds that would become TOOL signatures: prominent bass lines, complex drum timing, staccato accent guitar work, and Maynard James Keenan's vocal power (and tendency toward irreverence). "Jesus, won't you fuckin' whistle" has to be at least as famous a line in 90's alternative as anything half-mumbled by Cobain or Vedder.

9. Ænema
Ænima (1996)

The title track (technically? I mean, they're spelled slightly different) from TOOL's sophomore effort is anything but sophomoric. Certainly the most harshly critical songs off an already incredibly angry album, "Ænema" is the genesis of the TOOL army's favorite saying, "learn to swim." The song sees MJK pointing out every type of terrible person who lives in Los Angeles and then hoping a biblical-scale natural disaster destroys it all. Is he being sarcastic? Is he serious? There's probably a fine line there. "Ænema" also sees Adam Jones playing some of the heaviest and loudest guitar moments on the album, even during the almost-pleasant bridge section.

8. Parabol/Parabola
Lateralus (2001)

Yes, it's technically two songs, but one really cannot exist without the other. Once you hear "the transition" as it was meant to be heard, you can never hear either without the other again. Additionally, the combo showcases everything that TOOL was working with on Lateralus in minature (if you can call a nine-minute duo "miniature"). MJK sings half of the song's philosophy like sweet nothings, and the other half like he's trying to out-shout the void. The tandem also presents the full spectrum of TOOL's musicianship: the first section played as softly as a lullaby, then exploding into all that math rock glory that Lateralus and 10,000 Days would make them known for. This may be TOOL's most musically emotional moment.

7. The Pot
10,000 Days (2006)

"The Pot" is one of the best examples of how utterly insane Justin Chancellor is. The sheer speed and complexity of the bass line that opens the song and continues through the various choruses shred the mind. Here is also one of the finest examples of Adam Jones' technique of using the guitar as an accent instrument: for the most part it follows the bass line, and otherwise plays short notes that highlight the strong points of the song. Not to say that is anything less than a feat, following that bass line I'm sure is just as difficult on a guitar, and anything more than just accenting MJK's yelps of "HIGH! HIGH!" would drown the song in too much noise. "The Pot" is the perfect example of the old saying "if you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."

6. Hooker with a Penis
Ænima (1996)

Starting off with an industrial-inspired guitar drone, TOOL's most direct song, "Hooker with a Penis," quickly explodes into aggressive speed-metal power chords and then resets again, within seconds, to a song that fits the grunge scene that 1996 was currently speeding away from. In what might be the angriest MJK has ever been, he recounts the story of a delusionally self-important fan that bitches at him about "selling out," before MJK goes on to explain how consumption of any kind is technically selling out, so that guy (did incels exist in 1996?) can fuck off. The song detours a bit into post-grunge/STP territory before returning to the thrash metal from the opening. Yeah! Boo that guy! That guy sucks!

5. Schism
Lateralus (2001)

The songs only get WAY more complicated from here. Rick Beato has an excellent video dissecting this one from a music theory standpoint but let's go through step-by-step. First off, Justin Chancellor again for the win. The bass line that opens "Schism" is one of the most famous in alt-rock because, who the hell would write that? Adam Jones once again comes in to follow, showing the same speed and dexterity on guitar, and Danny Carey (first mention) plays some of the craziest off-time jazz drumming that has been heard or will be heard. No one is playing the same song, no one is on the same beat, and yet everything lines up juuuuust in time for the refrain. MJK is also sings some of his most philosophical lyrics at just below boiling. Everyone shines and the whole is greater than the sum of its stellar parts.

4. Forty Six & 2
Ænima (1996)

So...Chancellor is the greatest bassist of all time, right? Jones doesn't even try to keep up with this one, but does expertly pluck around the outside, always inviting the listener to focus more, glean more information. The structure is more straightforward, but it's disguised by the incredibly complex interplay between guitar, bass, drum, and vocal. Chancellor and Carey are clearly in their own jam session that's half Rites of Spring and half Trout Mask Replica. MJK is singing over every type of volume and intensity at a standard 4/4, and Jones is just...off, somewhere, playing a crazy stream-of-consciousness that intersects our dimension every once in a while. There's a reason this is the TOOL song most start-up garage bands try to imitate, it sounds awesome and blows the lid off if you can do it. But that's a very big if.

3. Lateralus
Lateralus (2001)

This title track IS spelled the same, and is the granddaddy of every armchair music theorist's wet dreams. The syllable counting and time signatures are almost infamous at this point, clearly following a spiral pattern of Fibonacci's Sequence. But having the idea to do a song like that is one thing; actually executing it is another entirely. It starts like so many others off Lateralus, a plodding-yet-intriguing guitar plinks a fairly complex pattern, while drums begin to swell until all the sound TOOL is capable of floods in at once. Then it all disappears so we can begin the call for Cthulhu that is anything this complicated and based on euclidean math. "Lateralus" is also a massive showcase for Danny Carey's use of tabla and other more "organic" drums that would be prominent on the album's closing triplet of "Disposition," "Reflection," and "Triad." Apart from the insane time signatures, "Lateralus" is structured almost like a movie: it ebbs and flows with a call to action, a point of no return, a lull while our hero hits a setback, and a climactic 20-minute CGI battle scene. Except this SONG is better than 90% of movies.

2. Jambi
10,000 Days (2006)

One of the few TOOL songs that starts off with the heaviest section right in your face, "Jambi" is also one of the heaviest in all of TOOL's catalog, and one of the few that features Adam Jones' guitar prominently. It once again, like most songs in the group's later releases, has some crazy time signature that...I can't...someone just tell me what it is, okay? It also features some of MJK's most personal lyrics performed in one of his most complex deliveries. "Shine on forever, shine on, benevolent Sun," he sings as he wishes for his loved ones to never leave. The song also features one the band's few overt allusions to their prog-rock influences: the instrumental break could have been culled directly from Pink Floyd's Animals. The layer upon layer builds and builds into the most face-melting finish in TOOL's career.

1. Third Eye
Ænima (1996)

"Third Eye" is TOOL's longest song that isn't 50% sound effects, and is also their clearest thesis statement. By the time the 13-minute trip is over, you have a significantly better understanding of what the band is about, where they come from, and where they want to go. The song begins with (shockingly for TOOL) a sample, of a stand-up routine by the late, great Bill Hicks, who TOOL have mentioned many times was a major influence, even including a portrait of him on alternate covers of Ænima. Being over 13-minutes long, "Third Eye" is also TOOL's most clearly prog-influenced song: there are many movements that lend it a suite-like feel; much of the instrumentation is experimental in both writing and production; and MJK's lyrical delivery includes mournful singing, whispered spoken word, and the now-famous Maynard Scream. Listening to "Third Eye" is like listening to an entire album. Some bands don't showcase this much versatility in careers that span double the release count of TOOL, much less combine all that into something cohesive and digestible. "Third Eye" is the entryway that guided millions of listeners into an understanding that rock could be more than just three chords and a guy yelling. "Third Eye" is the key that allowed millions, including myself, to understand that music could be something...more.

Welcome back, TOOL. It has been a very, very, very long time.

P.S. As I stated in the opening, this list was incredibly difficult to whittle down. The runners up include, but were not limited to: Sweat, Jerk-Off (Live), Opiate, Prison Sex, Bottom, Swamp Song, Undertow, 4°, Stinkfist, Eulogy, H., Jimmy, Pushit, The Grudge, The Patient, Ticks & Leeches, Triad, Vicarious, Rosetta Stoned, and Right in Two.

The 50-ish Best Albums of 2019...So Far

2019-06-21T14:40:00.002-04:00

There's been a lot of really awesome music so far this year. New voices, old stand-byes, establishment acts completely reinventing their sound; it's all here.

Note: I have not listened to everything, there are probably even more albums NOT on here that are really great too. Feel free to berate me as needed.

There's too many ridiculously good albums to put them all in order, so here's a random collection, followed by the top arbitrary countdown.

But first, the unsorted list of random cool musicians you should totally check out:

American Football
American Football (LP3)
Emo
Listen

Amyl and the Sniffers
Amyl and the Sniffers
Punk
Listen

James Blake
Assume Form
Contemporary R&B
Listen

Chai
Punk
J-Pop
Listen

The Chemical Brothers
No Geography
Electro
Listen

Stef Chura
Midnight
Indie Rock
Listen

The Comet Is Coming
Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery
Jazz
Listen

DΔWN (Dawn Richard)
new breed
R&B
Listen

Desperate Journalist
In Search of the Miraculous
Shoegaze
Listen

Drenge
Strange Creatures
Grunge
Listen

Billie Eilish
When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
Dark-Pop
Listen

Ex Hex
It's Real
Rock
Listen

Fontaines DC
Dogrel
Post-Punk
Listen

Ariana Grande
thank u, next
Pop
Listen

HEALTH
Vol. 4 :: Slaves of Fear
EBM
Listen

Holly Herndon
PROTO
Experimental
Listen

The Japanese House
Good at Falling
Synth-Pop
Listen

Durand Jones & The Indications
American Love Call
Neo-Soul
Listen

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
Fishing for Fishies
Psychedelic Rock
Listen

Ladytron
Ladytron
Synth-Pop
Listen

Jenny Lewis
On the Line
Pop/Rock
Listen

Lizzo
Cuz I Love You
Hip Hop/Pop
Listen

Kelsey Lu
Blood
Experimental
Listen

***NOTE: Lu's version of 10CC's "I'm Not In Love" is the Cover of the Year

Malibu Ken
Malibu Ken
Experimental Hip Hop
Listen

The National
I Am Easy to Find
Indie Rock
Listen

Karen O
Lux Prima
Trip Hop
Listen

Anderson .Paak
Ventrua
Hip Hop
Listen

Pip Blom
Boat
Indie Rock
Listen

Pond
Tasmania
Psychedelic Rock
Listen

Jessica Pratt
Quiet Signs
Folk
Listen

Priests
The Seduction of Kansas
Post-Punk
Listen

Show Me the Body
Dog Whistle
Hardcore
Listen

Solange
When I Get Home
R&B
Listen

Mavis Staples
We Get By
Soul
Listen

Sunn O)))
Life Metal
Drone
Listen

Teeth of the Sea
Wraith
Post Rock
Listen

Hayden Thorpe
Diviner
Chamber Pop
Listen

The Twilight Sad
It Won/t Be Like This All the Time
Post-Punk
Listen

Vampire Weekend
Father of the Bride
Indie Rock
Listen

Jamila Woods
Legacy! Legacy!
Funk/Soul
Listen

10. Cave In
Final Transmission
Post Rock
Listen

Is it a terrible curse, or a blessing, that tragedy brings about the greatest art? Like Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' Skeleton Tree, Final Transmission is Cave In's response to the sudden death of their bassist and co-vocalist Caleb Scofield. While the eulogy is technically an unplanned one--most of the songs were recorded as demos while Caleb was still with them--the gut-punch of his tragic loss can be felt in every single note. Like Joy Division's Closer or Mother Love Bone's Apple, the album takes on more prescience when you realize that the man recording it wouldn't see its release. But for the remaining members of Cave In, if this is indeed their final transmission, the album is just that: a release.

9. Denzel Curry
ZUU
Trap
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To say there was a lot of hype surrounding Curry's newest album is the understatement of the year. 2018's TA13OO was the best hip hop record of last year, not just the best trap record. And the singles leading into the release of ZUU, "Ricky" and "Speedboat", were so fantastic that when the album was finally released, the disappointment at its length was palpable. Running under 30 minutes and including two skits, ZUU is not what most people were expecting. But don't let the brevity fool you, Denzel Curry packs every second to the brim. ZUU may not be nearly as dark as TA13OO, but the beats hit just as hard. "Ricky" showcases Curry at his productive best, warping samples and vocals alike to fit a twisted square peg into a distorted ellipsoid hole. Rick Ross' feature on "Birdz" is some of the best work he's offered up in years, and the sheer volume and anger on closer "P.A.T." provided by Curry and PlayThatBoyZay is enough to destroy even the most veteran of eardrums.

8. Xiu Xiu
Girl With Basket of Fruit
Abstract/Noise
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Normally I would try to shoehorn a King In Yellow or Call of Cthulhu reference in when something is this...disturbing. But not only have I played that out in previous reviews (usually for Swans), but it's also not nearly close enough to the horror broached within the sonic confines of Xiu Xiu's horrible grotesquerie. To quote Fantano, "what a horrible way to treat sound." Girl With Basket of Fruit is such an insanely twisted statement, with Xiu Xiu doing their best to immediately and permanently ward off the faint of heart. Teaser single "Pumpkin Attack on Mommy and Daddy" was the most demented song I had ever heard, with its dusty sound, jerky samples, and weird weird weird weird weird...until the album came out and I seriously considered Sheppard Pratt. "It Comes Out as a Joke" includes the most mind-shredding lyrics of all-time: "A pig wearing a maid's apron and cap / Riding a tomato on rubber wheels / It looks at its pocket watch and points a hoof / 'You! Go to the World of the Unborn!'" I...I have nothing for that. At one point, in "Amargi ve Moo," Jamie Stewart descends into literal babbling: "blblblblblblbllblblblblbllblblblblblbllb." There's no words or pictures I can use to describe the experience. Like the Matrix, you cannot be told what Girl With Basket of Fruit is. Listen and you'll be one of us...one of us...one of us...

7. Ibibio Sound Machine
Doko Mien
Highlife
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The very first sound you hear when playing Doko Mien are those of only the brightest of neon time machines beginning its start functions. Not surprisingly, a neon time machine sounds like Giorgio Moroder's Midnight Express score: driving, reverb-soaked synth patterns and a four-on-the-floor electro drumbeat that could only be the backing of a Donna Summer disco classic. Ibibio Sound Machine have spent years crafting their exacting sound, and it's not one that can be mistaken for any other band right now. To the hypnotic swirl of electronics they add live jazz percussion, Motown guitars and horns, and the endlessly, effortlessly enamoring vocal presence of Eno Williams, who delivers her dance floor instructions in two languages so well that a translation becomes wholly unnecessary. With each new twist, you can hear ISM having...just the most fun. The title track, "Tell Me (Doko Mien)" is The. Banger. Of. The. Year. Coming straight off a Lipps, Inc. track, the perfect cowbell, the laser delivery of the beat, it is easily the most enjoyable song to pull from these influences since "Blind." I demand you listen to this right now, and dance the night away.

6. Little Simz
GREY Area
Conscious Hip Hop
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Wunderkind: n. one who succeeds in a competitive or highly difficult field or profession at an early age.

If you didn't know, GREY Area is Little Simz' third album, not to mention her four mixtapes and seven EPs, most of which came out before she was 21. So...what are you doing with your life? All of them are beyond the comprehension of your average 21 year old: thematically deep, and sampling from a library that rivals the one at Alexandria. GREY Area doesn't look to slow that pace down, either. While it may be her first truly visible release, it's just one in a long line of compelling, heady, sonic stunners leading to the very spot where she stands now. Simz demands you sit up and pay attention as looping beats perfectly match her rapping "I'm Jay-Z on a bad day / Shakespeare on my worst days." With the backing of names like Kendrick Lamar and Lauryn Hill, you would think talent this fathomless would have been blown-up all over the States by now. Sadly, her well-deserved fame is still waiting, seemingly doomed to the obscurity of many a UK grime artist. But when you're Shakespeare on your worst days, you have a lot to look forward to.

5. Baroness
Gold & Grey
Sludge Metal
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The path Baroness has taken to become the preeminent lords of sludge that they are after Gold & Grey was ridiculously circuitous, to say the least. After releasing Blue Record in 2009 (happy 10th anniversary!), an album so punishing and gloriously awesome that it changed the shape of the sludge scene forever. We didn't just have to be depressed and rock out as slooowly as possible; now sludge could be about westerns, and Norse mythology, and generator parties in the woods. It also cemented Baroness as more than just a Mastodon clone, willing to inject their own southern rock and stoner metal tweaks into a tried-and-true--if a little overdone--method. But they weren't done reinventing themselves. Yellow & Green saw the band take on even more hats from other genres: prog metal, math rock, bluegrass, whatever Fleet Foxes is. It made for an interesting-but-bloated listen. The desire to make double albums is strong in the rock community when you have the Gods of The Wall, Physical Graffiti, and Quadrophenia to gaze upon. The subsequent tour resulted in a massive bus accident that nearly killed every member of the band, and led to several of them leaving. The trauma led to the writing and production of Purple, which...I can't honestly say much about. I listened to it when it came out, didn't care for it. Listened to it again about a year ago, same result. But this...Gold & Grey. If this is the culmination of a career, Baroness may have one of the greatest arcs in metal history. The songs are heavier, but never lose sense of the sing-along quality that made their biggest hits so fantastic. Sure, it's not Blue Record, but nothing ever will be. This is an entirely new breed. As a band, you know you've done right by your fans when you release a full hour of music and everyone still wants more.

4. Big Thief
U.F.O.F.
Folk Rock
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There aren't enough thesauruses to provide the synonyms required to describe the beauty of this album. A picture is worth a thousand words, but can a song be worth a thousand tears? A thousand sighs of fulfillment? A thousand burdens made lighter? There are moments listening to UFOF where you can be totally transported out of yourself, like a cartoon ghost. The delicacy of Big Thief's mission is so abjectly important that every guitar string gets it's own channel, every vocal recorded in a room lined with plush down. The comforting quality of every sound on UFOF is so persuasive and inviting that you'll be completely limp by the end of its brief 43-minute journey, numb and tingling to move again. This album will melt you. The acoustics are so sumptuous you could suffocate in them like the mid-Atlantic summer air. Every song sounds like Big Thief is sitting around you, with their instruments pressed to your ears, trying as best they can to make the world's first ASMR-folk album. There are some strange moments as well: opener "Contact" ends with literal screams, "From" samples glass being dragged across the ground, and closer "Magic Dealer" finishes the album with static loops too harsh for Prurient. The combined effect is just so warm and inviting, yet incredibly intriguing, you won't be able to stop yourself from listening over and over.

3. Weyes Blood
Titanic Rising
Indie Pop
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I find it funny, and slightly annoying, that Weyes Blood has been stamped with the label of "indie" when, if you go back about 50 years, this is what pop sounded like. Late 60s and early 70s pop radio was filled with Carol Kings, Carly Simons, James Taylors, Paul Simons, Janis Ians, and Billy Prestons. And while the 80s' synths, 90s' drum-and-bass, and 00s' bling may have changed how we view pop forever, the musicality of the old ways will never die. That musicality is what Weyes Blood understands better than anyone, helping her to deliver one of the most listenable acoustic pop albums ever. Titanic Rising is like a thesis statement for an art history PhD candidate. While this hasn't always been the M.O. of Natalie Mering, having played bass for the experimental post-rock Jackie-O Motherfucker to kick-off her career, she has seemingly come to accept the genre that best fits her solid, alto, Karen-Carpenter-esque voice. And before we get too far, let's talk "Andromeda." I have never heard a song about slowly, procedurally falling in love, much less one that is this complex and beautiful. Listening to Titanic Rising, you get the uncanny feeling that if Mering had just been born a generation earlier, she would have conquered the charts and raked in millions. Her lyrics are heartfelt and powerful, and her arrangements are new and compelling...if you just forget the last 40 years happened.

2. Tyler, The Creator
Igor
Hip Hop/Contemporary R&B
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If you can honestly say that you didn't listen to "I Think" at least three times in a row after hearing it, you are either a very good liar, in total denial, or you didn't hear it. Every song on Tyler, The Creator's fifth full-length solo album is its own statement of purpose: sometimes a musical theme, sometimes a political message, but always goal-oriented. It feels kind of silly writing about Igor like you didn't hear it. It was #1 on the Billboard 200, much to the hilarious chagrin of a fat, trashy, talentless moron whose only claim to fame is yelling his own moniker on other people's songs like the world's longest, saddest, most expensive game of Marco Polo, who shall remain nameless. But unlike that hack's bullshit career, Igor is a showcase of every influence Tyler, The Creator ever encountered, turned up to 11: Motor City R&B, 80s synth-pop, old school hip hop, Italo-disco; they're all here. This is the most successfully experimental contemporary album I've heard since James Blake's debut. The constant vinyl hiss, the extreme mash-up of styles, the harsh mixing, you can just feel that this is the album Tyler has been trying to make his entire life. The exacting perfection of each new twist: "I Think"'s roller rink pop, to spoken word on "Exactly What You Run From...," to the crooning of "Running Out of Time," to a straight-up banger in "New Magic Wand." This is the kind of album that keeps hip hop fresh, proving to Asahd fathers everywhere that, yes, this is music, and it is more important than yours.

1. Sharon van Etten
Remind Me Tomorrow
Indie Rock
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In order to understand the impact that this album has, you have to understand my experience with Sharon van Etten's last album, 2014's utterly stunning Are We There. When that album came out, I avoided listening to it at first because it was labeled as "folk" which was not something I was keen on in 2014. But eventually the lack of a question mark in the title and its gripping black-and-white album art drew me in and...it changed my life. Maybe only from a musical perspective, but when you spend a lot of your free time talking about, listening to, and writing critiques of music, that's a big deal. Are We There was the first time I thought everything I knew about music was wrong. And five years is WAY too long for you to be away, Sharon.

How then, can I even begin to describe how Remind Me Tomorrow makes me feel? It's like, listening to your best friend's album, after no one but you believed in them, and it's amazing and you just can't wait to tell him how awesome it is and rub it in everyone's faces. I'm actively proud of Sharon van Etten for making this album, and I have no connection to her in any way, personal or professional. Remind Me Tomorrow is sweet and kind, but also has moments of hard rock so massive it can fill an arena. Single "Comeback Kid" belongs in the annals of women's rock history with other epics like "Bad Reputation," "Hit Me With Your Best Shot," and "Barracuda." And album closer "Stay," van Etten's tribute to her newborn, is so beautiful and delicate it will leave you breathless. In between there are manifestos on the difficulty of love ("No One's Easy to Love"), a warning to not waste your youth ("Seventeen"), and a clapback at copycats so hardcore you'll have an hand print on your face ("You Shadow"). Remind Me Tomorrow is as great a collection of short stories as anything in print, and an unforgettable listening experience. Sharon, never leave us.

Best New Music (5.08.2019)

2019-05-08T09:02:00.001-04:00

Big Thief
U.F.O.F.
Indie Rock

It's not very often that I'm at a total loss for words describing how an album makes me feel. U.F.O.F. is Big Thief's way of stunning me to silence.

Big Thief's absolute classic sophomore album, 2017's Capacity, was a showcase of all the different ways the band could produce any number of songs: rock, folk, lo-fi; it was a veritable smorgasbord of sounds, which made for a fun--if at times, a little random--experience.

U.F.O.F. is not random. In fact, every note is so expertly calculated that you can hear their thought process: a collection of songs that express every possible emotion with as little extraneous sound as possible. Little flashes of weirdness, like background screams on the opener, "Contact," or the theremin and static noises on closer "Magic Dealer," keep the traditional instrumentation from turning stale.

"Open Desert" shows its face as your standard Feist cover...that is until it reveals a chorus so beautiful and delicate that to sing louder than a whisper would destroy it. It is a moment so eye-opening and mesmerizing as to produce tears.

"Century" follows a more traditional songwriting format, but includes hints of Joni Mitchell, and a bass line to die for. The inclusion of an Allman Brothers-esque guitar solo is a respite from the sensory overload that comes in the first half of the album; as is "Strange," a tune so jazzy it might as well be a Steely Dan outtake. And "Terminal Paradise" sees Adrianne Lenker effortlessly shape-shift from Beth Gibbons, to Bjork, to Natasha Khan, proving that this sonic landscape is in the deftest of hands.

U.F.O.F.'s major standout is the penultimate track, "Jenni," which takes the lightness and fragility of the previous ten songs and throws them at the wall in a fit of heavy reverb and fuzz-delay so masterfully mixed that My Bloody Valentine would blush with inadequacy. It is a statement that proves Big Thief know exactly what they're doing in every sense.

This is Big Thief's most subtle, most empathetic, most ethereal, gossamer work yet, but they're not begging for your attention. Rather, it emanates from the center of the universe and waits for you to find it and claim your reward. A biblical flood distilled to a wispy dream, U.F.O.F. is--and I don't say this lightly--a perfect album.

Best New Music (4.02.2019)

2019-04-02T15:07:00.000-04:00

Billie Eilish
When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
Dark Pop

Is Billie Eilish an industry plant? That term, "industry plant," is a favorite of displaced music fans that don't like when previously unheard of people become near-instantly famous. Lady Gaga comes to mind. Because these artists didn't spend a decade wallowing in the music underground, known only to obscurists and purists, there must be some kind of conspiracy. That term, "industry plant," is a word that meant something once, but now is just a tagline for trolls to use on anything they hate.

So, is Billie Eilish an industry plant? The point is, if the music is good, does it matter? If Eilish is a plant, then whatever A&R person picked her up should be paid lottery amounts of money every week for life. If Eilish is a plant, then whoever wrote her lyrics (p.s. it's her) should be winning Nobel prizes for literature. Yes, her brother, who writes or co-writes all the music on When We All Fall Asleep, is a well-worn "industry" producer, and certainly nepotism played into him giving Eilish a chance. But the problem is that most nepotists don't stick the landing.

This crew is Mary Lou Retton.

Originally, and for years now, Billie Eilish sounded like one of countless other "dark" "depressed" singer-songwriters: your Lana Del Reys, Lordes, and what have you. However, as Elish's career moved on, her sound became increasingly complex, and the darkness began leaking from her lyrics to her electronics, until eventually we got dark-wave pop masterpieces like "You Should See Me in a Crown" and "Bury a Friend;" songs so brilliant they might define the next generation of pop.

And if we go back to Eilish's lyrics, we can see those have grown more complex as well. Her first songs followed the typical "I'm sad because I'm and artist and no one understands" formula of the aforementioned "depressing" singers. But on When We All Fall Asleep, we get songs like "Bad Guy" that not only stands as an above-average sonic thesis statement for the album, but also transforms a song seemingly about a literal bad guy (i.e., man), into an introspective exploration of the bad part of Eilish's own personality--a metaphorical bad guy. Or the song "Xanny," which uses the tropes of barbiturate drug use in pop and rap to explain why Eilish is leaving her friend group: she's not into drugs, and your overuse of them makes you a boring cliche.

Billie Eilish might be an industry plant, and she might be one in a line of "depressed" singers, but her style (especially visual--seriously watch her music videos), delivery, and utterly unique take on how to present the overtly dismal make her, and When We All Fall Asleep, one to keep an eye on, for sure.

Best New Music (Double Feature! 3.26.2019)

2019-03-26T13:48:00.002-04:00

Ibibio Sound Machine

Doko Mien
Highlife

Who is William Onyeabor? The mysterious figure that totally and utterly transformed African pop music in the 70s, and more so the 80s, has had a sort of boom in modern Western music, thanks in part to an insanely bold choice by--eww--Apple to include his song "Fantastic Man" in a commercial. The song became so popular from that alone that it became an actual charted hit...38 years after it came out.

Now, William Onyeabor passed before the song ever made it anywhere, but by all accounts he lived in self-imposed isolation having found an entirely different path in life. But it is fun to think that while we usually think of non-Western countries being decades behind the US/Europe in their musical taste (e.g., disco being popular in...ahem...East Germany in the late 80s and 90s), this time WE were behind, just now finding popular a song from Nigeria decades after the man who wrote it retired from public life.

This is all to say that the journey of where Ibibio Sound Machine derives their incredibly unique sound begins with the inventive and, honestly, insane sounds of an electro-funk master from 70s Nigeria. Of course, even calling the band IBIBIO Sound Machine is detailing their roots, Ibibio being a language spoken primarily in Nigeria, and many of singer Eno Williams' lyrics are in that language.

Over the course of three albums, Ibibio Sound Machine has fine-tuned a musical quality that can only be called a time machine. The highly processed synths repeat like something from Human League and the use of live percussion and "cheap" drum machines recalls the very best of Lipps, Inc. (like, the one song; you know the one I mean).

The band's self-titled debut really laid the effect on thick, which made for a more novel listening experience than a truly compelling one. 2017's Uyai was a revelation, brightening the production and bringing the Onyeabor influences into the harsh fluorescent light. But this album, Doko Mien, this is the culmination of getting all the ingredients to the witch's brew just right.

Doko Mien transitions from Afro-beat to Italo-disco to new wave to electro-funk to soul so fast and so seamlessly that it blisters the skin; all the while Eno Williams sings so beautifully in two languages that you're brought to the heights of human emotion.

The songwriting is catchy and highly complex, leaving no one wanting. Whether they are creating a ballad like "I Know That You're Thinking About Me", a dance floor banger like "Tell Me (Doko Mien)", or even a soundscape interlude like "I Will Run", ISM have clearly put the work in to make sure every detail is exactly right.

It's rare to witness perfection, but when you do, you never forget. This is a band at the peak.

Avey Tare
Cows on Hourglass Pond
Neofolk

An admission: I have always been slightly fascinated by the various solo careers from the members of Animal Collective. Obviously, Panda Bear is the one most people are immediately familiar with, as he was the most successful out of the gate. And if we all can't admit to ourselves that Person Pitch was secretly the best album of the 2000s, then we just live in a grand delusion.

Avey Tare (real name: David Michael Portner) is the other member of the Collective to venture into solo territory, though it could be said that's unnecessary since he's the primary songwriter of Animal Collective's output. And with Cows on Hourglass Pond, that connection becomes more obvious than ever.

Much of Cows on Hourglass Pond sounds like Merriweather Post Pavilion and Centipede Hz outtakes and b-sides. These are literally indistinguishable from Animal Collective songs. Even his more experimental turns, like the incredibly glitchy "Nostalgia in Lemonade", are familiar territory. And when it's not Animal Collective he's evoking, there's such a strong Atlas Sound influence that no one could blame you if you mistook this for Logos Part 2.

That said, I feel like this review is skewing negative, when in reality it's anything but. To be honest, I think Atlas Sound owes more to Avey Tare and Animal Collective than the other way around, and to be brutally honest, this is the best thing to come out of that group OR any of the members' solo projects in ten years.

Cows on Hourglass Pond is interesting. For the first time in a long time, Tare is involved with something interesting. The sonic choices, production, songwriting--they're all well above average, and they combine for an album that genuinely intriguing and might not only require multiple listens to "get", but will also make those re-listens enjoyable. It's well-paced, composed, and varied.

I only wish more people would make interesting music.

Best New Music (3.18.2019)

2019-03-18T11:16:00.000-04:00

Chai
PUNK
J-Pop

Pop from distant cultures may not be for everyone: it's not in English so you can't really identify with the lyrics, it's mixed high in treble so it sounds louder and more teen-y, and it's often marketed with a bizarre-almost-disturbing childishness with a reliance on cartoons and funny voices. None of those things matter when you listen to Chai's second full-length, PUNK.

That's not to say those things aren't there--of course they are, it's J-Pop--but what Chai does differently is using those tropes for effect, creating a reaction and sending a message that transcends the usual stereotypes of Japan and its pop culture.

While much of PUNK is pure pop, executed and produced to sugar-sweet perfection, where the album truly stands out is when Chai dips into alternative genres. The garage rock of opener "Choose Go!" is performed with as much sincerity as everything else. The dark electro of "Great Job" carries the weight of that sound well, without sounding like a boring copy of a billion other club bangers. And the furious alt-rock of "Fashionista"--half Waitresses, half Sleater-Kinney--proves that if you write great songs, rocking hard knows no language.

Chai aren't worried if writing songs about being yourself, friends as second family, and not caring if some people don't approve of your lifestyle are uncool; as long as you feel empowered, then their job is done, and damn the cool. PUNK isn't the pop we went into 2019 wanting, but it is the pop we need right now.

The Mammoth Task: Album Organization and Its Direct Impact on the Listening Experience

2019-03-04T13:01:00.001-05:00

The work may be complete. For years it has bothered, even angered me, that Pearl Jam’s fifth album, Yield, was full of amazing songwriting and some of the greatest moments in their career, but sounded like the songs were just put in as they wrote them, with no regard for theme, sonic transition, or pattern. Let’s look at their original tracklist:

Brain of J.
Faithful
No Way
Given to Fly
Wishlist
Pilate
Do the Evolution
Red Dot (called Red Bar on Spotify)
MFC
Low Light
In Hiding
Push Me, Pull Me
All Those Yesterdays

The biggest obstacle to reorganizing this into a cohesive storyline is the closer “All Those Yesterdays,” which is actually two separate songs with about a minute of silence between them. Originally designed as a “hidden track,” the “Humus” second half of the song isn’t hard to fit anywhere, but the whole song’s epic length (almost 8 minutes) and the garish blank section means that it will be a sore thumb basically anywhere. But let’s set up some rules…

Rule 1: No Deleting Tracks

As much as we might just straight not like a song a band has released, they did, and there’s nothing we can do about it. I despise (and I know I’m not alone in this) the hidden track that is tacked onto the final song of an album. One, it makes that song’s inclusion in any sort of playlist or collection impossible for the standard collector/listener like you and me. Of course, if Pearl Jam wanted to include the main portion of “All Those Yesterdays” on their own Greatest Hits collection, they have the track that they can cut themselves and include wherever and however they like. Alas, we don’t have that capability so it must be dealt with as is. Two, it can ruin the album as a work of art. “All Those Yesterdays” isn’t as egregious as, say, Deftones' “MX” which has nearly 25 minutes of silence, or Beach House’s “Irene” which utterly destroys an otherwise perfect album with a gross “hidden track” addition to what should have been a perfect song. Sadly, we must work with what we have.

Rule 2: Retain as much of the original order as possible

Even in the worst cases of organization, these albums are generally produced and mastered by people whose job it is to do exactly that. Songs are mixed to crossfade into each other, sound effects move from the end of one track to the start of another, and they won’t sound good if they’re split apart. Also, sometimes even the worst offenders do have tracks that just sound good together. In our example today though, such is generally not the case. The only ones I can find are “Faithful” into “No Way” and “Pilate” into “Do the Evolution”. Those are so good together they can’t really be reorganized.

…

So with our rules established, let’s dive deeper into Yield.

Pearl Jam’s fifth album came out in the height of their feud with Ticketmaster (still ongoing, by the way), and after the less-than-warm reception of their previous album No Code, despite that album having their single greatest song, “Hail, Hail.” But, unwavering, the band, and more specifically Eddie Vedder, was determined to push the boundaries of what was now certainly NOT grunge into a more emotionally complex territory. And that...means slow songs.

But gone were the days of soundscape, ethereal slow songs like “Garden” or “Black”, or even the folk-influenced “Daughter” or arena ballad “Betterman.” Instead we have the inclusion of more emo-oriented songs like “Wishlist” and the country/western “Low Light” that use an almost wall-of-sound recording technique to make them feel warmer and more saturated. This bloat will need to be dealt with thematically more so than by sound alone. There simply aren’t enough heavy, fast songs to break them all up. This means forcing the album into an “act” structure.

For Act One, I suggest we start with the slow emotional songs. We can organize them to slowly build the album to a fever pitch, rather than the opposite (slow songs last), which generally makes the second half drag after hyping the audience up in the first half. That said, I do still enjoy the idea of following up fast songs with slower ones. Despite its jarring effect in the opening slot of No Code, after a trio of grunge necessities in Pearl Jam’s first three albums, I really enjoy “Sometimes” as its opener. Let’s see which song provides the best equivalent.

My choice would be “Given to Fly,” as it not only opens acoustically, but also builds to be louder and heavier by the end. Now, “Brain of J.” is a fantastic opening track, but if it’s not in this position, it needs to be in one of equal importance, so, for now we’ll move it to the closing spot. I also, at this point, recommend moving “All Those Yesterdays” to the exact middle. Pearl Jam did us a favor, giving us an odd number of songs so there’s an exact middle spot, the seventh (13 tracks: #7 is the middle with six songs on either side). This way, the minute of silence can feel like a record flip.

As much as I like the idea of the punk “Brain of J.” as the closer, it’s construction and length leaves a bit to be desired, plus it doesn’t really summarize the sonic theme of the album. The song I think does that best is “In Hiding,” which not only builds to an optimistic fullness, but also has an amazing Zeppelin-Houses-of-the-Holy-esque guitar fade-out. Of course that means our act structure of “all slow songs” at the beginning doesn’t really work, because “In Hiding” has to end it, and something slow has to come after “Do the Evolution.”

Let’s revisit that later…

In addition to the bloated carcass that is “All Those Yesterdays,” we also have to contend with the songs that Pearl Jam seemed to neglect in their later discography: the weird shit.

While a lot of people greatly dislike the more experimental tracks from Vs. and Vitalogy (I’m looking at you, “Bugs”), they are an integral part of what Pearl Jam was in their heyday: a group of people with so many influences they needed 70s puffy sleeves to wear them all. This was reflected in their forays into country, classic rock, heavy metal, punk, psych rock, whatever “Bugs” is, and on our subject most importantly, both industrial and primitive noise. The samples and frenetic editing of “Push Me, Pull Me” and the hand-held percussion and chanting of “Red Dot” mean they need to be placed very carefully within the running of Yield in order for their sounds to feel ingrained rather than forced. What’s strange is that this wasn’t the case with the original tracklist.

“Red Dot” is by far the strangest, so it’s only use is to inflate the ego of the band creating it. Well, okay, its other use is as a palate cleanser between two otherwise disjointed songs. Basically, we’re pulling it out and setting it aside for later.

Despite the noisiness of “Push Me, Pull Me,” it's the only characteristic that makes the song stand out, as it does have a very standard song structure; essentially, it’s the chameleon. So, if it’s placed properly, it can be a palate cleanser like “Red Dot,” an emotional arc, a launch pad, or even a great set-up song. Given we have the build of “Given to Fly” opening, let’s put it in the on-deck spot. Then, considering “Faithful” was designed to follow a heavy song, we have our #3 and #4, remembering that “No Way” MUST follow “Faithful.”

...

So we have 1-4 locked in, as well as 7, 12, and 13. We’ll need to look at the sonic theme and more specifically how the remaining songs end from a technical aspect. Do they cut or fade? Do they build to something or is their trajectory generally flat? Are they warm or empty in the mix? Plus, remember, “Pilate” and “Do the Evolution” have to stay together AND “Do the Evolution” has to have a slow song after it.

Right off the bat, because I still like the idea of the first half being more about building, I think “Do the Evolution” should be in the second half, which means “Pilate” must be as well. So we have 8-9 or 9-10. Now we have four songs that are unattached and could technically go anywhere. First let’s find a slow song to go after “Do the Evolution.” Immediately I thought of “Low Light” because not only is it a sonically interesting juxtaposition to hear western-inspired acoustic guitars after the harsh, gritty chug, but it's also a fairly flat song from a musical storytelling perspective (it doesn’t get faster or heavier as it goes along, or build into something different from its start).

Now we have three songs that must be attached and must be in the second half, so they’re either in the 8-10 slot, or the 9-11 slot. I think it would be WAY too jarring to hear “Brain of J.” after “Low Light” so...in comes the palate cleanser, “Red Dot.” So our entire second half is full. Act Two is complete.

…

Only two songs remain and only two slots: “Wishlist” and “MFC.” Oddly, this is the best order for them to stay in, and let me explain. “No Way” is in our #4 slot. It is Pearl Jam’s best attempt at recreating the feeling of Vitalogy’s inimitable “Tremor Christ,” and of course it pales in comparison, but it is a great song on its own. But like “Tremor Christ,” it needs to be followed by a warm, emotional song, meaning “Wishlist” (which may be their biggest eyeroll moment, but remember we can’t delete). So the guitar heavy “MFC” goes in the #6 spot and actually serves as a great transition from “Wishlist” to the first half of “All Those Yesterdays.” And now Act One is complete, as is our reorganized album:

Given to Fly
Push Me, Pull Me
Faithful
No Way
Wishlist
MFC
All Those Yesterdays
Pilate
Do the Evolution
Low Light
Red Dot
Brain of J.
In Hiding

...

In summary, in Act One we’ve kicked our album off with a strong thematic statement: emotional struggle; and built around it to lead to a great half-time closer. Act Two begins with it’s own theme: frenetic experimentation, which we’ve followed by including most of the faster, angrier tracks, as well as the most experimental one. Then we ended the album with a closer that seems to summarize a character’s journey through the album, having come out stronger on the other side.

We did this by examining arcs within song structure, production techniques, and most importantly, transitions between songs. A LOT of this is by feel, and everyone experiences music differently. You may listen to Yield in its original form and think it’s perfect. You may think the songs I chose as needing to stick together are terrible together. Music is entirely subjective. I highly recommend you try doing this on your own. Take an album you always thought didn’t FEEL quite right, and mix up the order. Try to get the songs to tell a more cohesive narrative, and listen to the transitions. There’s a lot of great albums out there hiding inside mediocre ones, all they need is a little cleaning up.

…

Also, feel free to listen to our new playthrough of Pearl Jam’s Yield on Spotify, as well as others I’ve tried to improve like Queens of the Stone Age’s Era Vulgaris, Crystal Castles’ Crystal Castles (II), and Drenge’s latest Strange Creatures. Yield was, by a wide margin, the most work I’ve done reorganizing an album for quality. Of course not every album is fixable this way. Like Ice-T says in Rick and Morty, “a bad song’s a bad song” and sometimes it’s just not salvageable. Nothing will fix Corey Feldman’s Angelic 2 the Core...nothing.

Era Vulgaris: Reorganized
Strange Creatures: Reorganized

Best New Music (3.04.2019)

2019-03-04T08:33:00.000-05:00

Little Simz
GREY Area
Conscious Hip-Hop

On “Boss,” one of the many standouts from the north London rapper’s new album, GREY Area, Little Simz emphatically states “I disregarded all opinions and continued my mission / Unapologetically I be bossin’ it / Getting better with age / Got it back, never lost it.”

Despite being only 25, Simz (born: Simbi Ajikawo) has been one of the most prolific, most talented, and most underrated pioneers of UK rap. She had released 5 EPs by her 21st birthday, garnering praise from such esteemed artists as Kendrick Lamar and Lauryn Hill. She has collaborated with Gorillaz to critical acclaim, and released a concept album, Stillness in Wonderland, in 2016 to similar reactions in the music press...and yet...no one heard it. While the Kendricks and Joey Bada$$es of the conscious-rap scene were seeing widespread mainstream success, Simz was still waiting for hers.

Not content to just wait however, her new album is fiercely confident and forthright. Her stunning production and smart lyricism is a reminder of her bold talent. Punchy bass and brilliant melodies take you on the rollercoaster ride only Simz could design--vulnerable and open. GREY Area is a heady album that demands the listener’s attention. And Simz’ hard work is all worth it to hear looping beats perfectly match the line “I’m Jay-Z on a bad day / Shakespeare on my worst days.” It’s so good that, by the end of the album, you believe her.

How Little Simz isn’t a massive, monolithic presence in the rap industry by now, I have no idea. Her first two albums were well received and had singles that were ridiculously good, yet somehow she hasn’t connected with a worldwide audience. GREY Area is, hopefully, that big pivotal turning point she needs and deserves. This is the kind of project that the Drakes of the world wish they could get their hand on: brave, energetic, reflective, vulnerable, wise; a gift from a truly gifted artist.

Best New Music (2.26.2018)

2019-02-26T11:19:00.000-05:00

Drenge
Strange Creatures
Garage Rock

The easiest way to explain Drenge’s Strange Creatures is to use “When I Look Into Your Eyes,” the closing track, as a microcosm of the entire album. The bones of the song are simple. Even mundane. It’s a basic acoustic strum, a pretty sing-song melody, and a beat anyone could clap. But in the hands of Drenge, it becomes something much more expansive and dramatic.

The drama begins with singer Eoin Loveless’ voice, which has the wonderful ability to move between characters. Here, on “When I Look Into Your Eyes,” he’s singing with a Morrissey-esque sound, background vocals seemingly coming from chanting monks and Loveless’ guitar chiming selectively through the song. “Prom Night,” another ballad, also has an unsettling sound, but in a different way. Here, the fear rises out of a plodding beat and guitars that sound almost like a carnival organ. A saxophone comes out of nowhere and your first thought is, “did they abduct a saxophonist for this?” The saxophone, courtesy of the Loveless’ father, and most probably played of his own free will, also gives the track a very David Bowie kind of feel, which also helps to move the spooky needle.

It would be an oversimplification to say Strange Creatures sounds like an 80s post-punk album, but it’s definitely influenced by the music of that era. What’s nice about the album, though, is that it pours that decade’s hair product onto a head full of rock and roll. The woozy melody paints Eoin as the narrator in a Carrie-esque tale: visions of him lurking in an alleyway, leaning against a doorframe in noirish mode he watches the horrors unfold. “Something stepped out from under the rubble / Whatever it was it was like Halloween,” he sings. As well as the sax, there are touches of synthesizer on “Avalanches” and expansive percussion on closer “When I Look Into Your Eyes” alongside a haunting vocal chant; small additions that add to the overall feeling of fullness on the album.

On Strange Creatures the wrinkles have been ironed out. Quieted is the scrappiness of the to-ing and fro-ing of the guitar and drums during Drenge’s infant stages, instead thick layers of sound rage on. Something Drenge do particularly well is take the sickly sweet and throw it into the mud, adding a twisted element to the quotidian: “Milkshakes make me sick / Lactose intolerant” or “A boy vomits up his canteen dinner in the high-school’s honeysuckle garden.” This album still sounds undeniably Drenge-y, rattling and crashing along like a ramshackle rollercoaster; your only hope is to hold on for dear life.

Best New Music (2.25.2019)

2019-02-25T10:52:00.002-05:00

Desperate Journalist
In Search of the Miraculous
Shoegaze

There is a distinct fragility and vitality contained within Desperate Journalist’s musical back catalog. It echoes through their work with a courage that cannot fail to delight and inspire in equal measure. The London quartet's third album, In Search of the Miraculous, borrows its title from the 1949 book of the same name by P. D. Ouspensky about his time with mystic George Gurdjieff, and his system of “self-development.” It more than earns the intellectual and spiritual connection.

In Search of the Miraculous is a work of indisputable artistic maturity entwined with sharply beautiful poetic integrity that current fans will recognize immediately. Perhaps more world-weary in places, the album's overall tone is one of hopeful recognition of the complexities of life and love in all its forms. Stalked by shadowy figures and ruinous politicians, it is as if they have not only captured the sound, but also the tumultuous age of their influences; the gloaming indie goth of The Cure and The Smiths hangs in the air, as does the unshakable shadow of an 80's Britain, ravaged and divided.

In spite of all of this, a restless fervor radiates through the layers of fuzz; a refusal not to be consigned to a predetermined fate, allowing the glint of just enough hope to salve the scarred heart of a country crumbling. At a time when our phone screens are filled with news too heartbreaking to hold, vocalist Jo Bevan seeks solace in the bravery found searching for that sublime feeling. As the transcendental lead guitar line in "Satellites" bores into the rapturous chorus and she sings "I was always reaching for you / Oh listen / You eclipse them," it creates a ground swell worthy of elevating them to another level entirely.

Bevan appreciates it can be easy to become numb to the extremes of emotion for fear of being overcome, and still that is why it is so important to keep fighting your own personal battles. In Search of the Miraculous finds Desperate Journalist striving and challenging themselves, happily searching for that sense of the sublime in a world that will outlive us all.