If you feel like you’ve been here before, you’re right. This year was a stutter, a jerky repetition of words and events, offering the briefest feeling of progress before being ripped right back to the beginning. It was Sisyphus with his hill or that old joke about Pete and Repeat sitting on a log and we just could not keep Pete out of the water. (Who’s left? Repeat!) So it’s only appropriate the year ends exactly the way it began — I take a much needed trip back to my beloved city by the lake, am reminded how much I love it and need to get back for good, but then have to return to Sucksville, USA where scandal is plaguing the White House, key figures are fleeing the chaos, and the government is shut down. Who said variety is the spice of life — I want more white bread and water!
If last year was about surviving the follow on waves to 2016’s avalanche of shittiness, this year was just about hunkering down and waiting for the thaw. You did what you could for a while — change jobs, change routines, try to minimize the damage and avoid another cave-in. Watch some shows, build some fires, read some books and just unplug. After a certain point, though, insanity became expecting anything different, no matter how many times/ways you tried to avoid the final outcome. That snow was just not stopping, so you could choose to exhaust yourself in a futile attempt to dig out, or just wait for it to stop and hope you still had enough feeling in your limbs to stand up when it did.
It felt like lots of folks made the same decision to just George Michael and lay there — there weren’t many big name releases during the year, just a flurry of debuts and mid-level offerings, and that sort of exacerbated that feeling of fatigue. No marquee returns or thrilling discoveries to fill you with excitement and knock you out of your funk, just a creeping numbness from more of the same, both in music and the real world. Stupid tweet or insane policy decision? Meh. Mediocre concert or middling album? Blah. I’m too tired to get worked up — I’m just going to pull the covers over my head and go back to sleep.
It wasn’t all bad — the new job (or rather the people surrounding me in it) was a daily delight, in spite of the same raft of headaches and infuriating immobility, while the new companion (the furry snugglebug currently asleep on my lap) was an overwhelming, unrelenting joy. (I don’t think there’s a better demonstration of pure love and happiness than someone getting a raging erection at the mere sight of you every day when you come home. I’ve honestly never felt more loved.) Getting to see the beloved Lizard give a flawless performance in my favorite room in town for the first time in ten years was pretty great, too. For the most part, though, it was a race to the weekend when you could hole up and hide out in your house for 48 hours — sanctuary through separation, happiness through hermitry. Anything to avoid the cycle of the last few years and spare yourself some damage.
There were glimmers of hope things might be changing. The onslaught of men doing terrible things to women thankfully seemed to slow this year — but not before it claimed one of my absolute favorite bands (and last year’s top album), The Orwells. The tidal wave of celebrities dying also ebbed — but still swallowed two personal favorites whose loss affected me for months — Scott Hutchison and Anthony Bourdain. (Even now, half a year later, it’s still difficult to listen to that music or watch those shows.) Still the snow kept falling, though, no matter how slow or sparse at times. So you sit, and wait, allowing it to silently build up around you, knowing that it has to stop soon.
This year’s crop of crooners is the smallest in years — compared to last year’s 25 and the previous year’s 27, this year has a paltry 15. There’s three Scottish bands, three Aussies, two Chicagoans, and a skinny kid from Arkansas, with an almost even split between returning favorites and debuts (old faves get the slight edge with eight acts that have shown up on previous year end lists). That scarcity feels appropriate in light of the year, as everyone waits to see the ground again so something new can grow. Despite the diminished number, though, there’s still some really solid stuff here — some moments of punky brashness to soundtrack the resistance, but for the most part the list is filled with what the year was short of — prettiness and warmth. In order to do something — ANYthing — to break the pattern of the past few years, we’re also going to change things up and go low to high this year, hopefully mirroring our future trajectory and building towards our return to the top. I hope you enjoy the ride.
And like I said last year, remember — winter only lasts so long, and the weather is warming…
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15. Jeff Tweedy — WARM: the most recent release on the list, it’s the latest offering from fave fellow Chicagoan Tweedy on what’s being billed as his first solo album. (I guess even though he wrote all the songs on 2014’s Sukierae that doesn’t count since his son played drums?) Regardless of categorization, it’s another solid outing from what’s turned into one of the most reliable and tireless American songwriters. (Who along with his normal companions, the ever-excellent Wilco, is also one of its best bands.) As a long-time fan — and as Tweedy outlines in his companion biography, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back), which I hope to soon read (ahem — listening, Santa?) — this is something as a surprise, thanks to a history of fractiousness within his bands, public struggles with drugs, and a frustrating habit of warping songs until they’re almost willfully dissonant sometimes. And yet in spite of all that, he “leaves behind a trail of songs, from the darkest gloom to the brightest sun,” as he puts it on the opening “Bombs Above” — and the vast majority of them are really, really good.
The same holds here — songs like “Don’t Forget,” “Let’s Go Rain,” and “I Know What It’s Like” are instant winners, while slower, softer tracks like “Having Been Is No Way To Be” and the hypnotic “How Will I Find You?” also stick it in the net. Tweedy’s lyrics remain sharp, occasionally flashing a quiet menace that catches you off guard beneath the warm voice and pretty melodies — pushing back on folks encouraging him to revisit his substance abusing days in “Having Been” or an unnamed antagonist in “Some Birds,” sweetly crooning “I’d love to take you down — and leave you there.” Overall, though, the tone is in the title, and this album is the red brick Tweedy sings about — warm when the sun has died.
14. Courtney Barnett — Tell Me How You Really Feel: the sophomore album from outback songstress Barnett is a trip back to the time when combat boots and flannel were king and cargo pants weren’t simply items you were allowed to wear once a year (who says youth is wasted on the young? #neverforget) Barnett perfectly captures that era’s angsty rage, sounding right in tune with previous strong female soloists of the era like Alanis Morrisette, PJ Harvey, and Tracy Bonham. What sets Barnett apart — aside from her thick, burned out accent, which makes numerous lines that much more enjoyable to sing/listen to (such as on “Nameless, Faceless” where she languidly stretches “I wanna waaaaaaaahk thru the paaaaahk afta daaaaaaaaaaaak” as if her mouth was full of taffy) — is the sarcasm and self-effacement she folds into her confessional lyrics.
On tracks like “I’m Not Your Mother, I’m Not Your Bitch” or “Crippling Self Doubt and a General Lack of Self-Confidence” you don’t have to go farther than the titles to get a sense of how she spikes her bitterness with a little levity. And in doing so she makes what could be off-putting or difficult to fully embrace (not that spending time with an angry woman isn’t enjoyable, like riding bareback on a porcupine) go down that much smoother. Tracks like “City Looks Pretty” and “Charity” are bright balls of energy, while “Need a Little Time” and “Walkin’ on Eggshells” slow things down to add a little soul. What shines through throughout is Barnett’s warmth, both in voice and personality, which keeps you coming back for more — that and that amazing accent (d-did I studdaaaaaaaaaa, maybe a liddle bit…)
13. Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever — Hope Downs: the debut album from five more Aussies, these boys come in with a brisk ten song, thirty-odd minute winner owing equal debts to the Smiths and Television, showcasing the jangly shimmer of the former with the hypnotic, swirling guitar parts of the latter, while adding a touch of their homeland’s characteristic swagger to round things out. It’s technically their debut, though follows quickly on the heels of two really solid EPs of almost the same duration — 2016’s Talk Tight and 2017’s The French Press — and finds the band continuing to sharpen their attack.
I discovered them this year in Hotlanta at Shaky Knees and they put on a good performance — the triple guitar/vocal attack of Fran Keaney, Tom Russo, and Joe White worked really well with the three often meandering in different directions before snapping back together. Take tracks like the opening trio of “An Air Conditioned Man,” “Talking Straight,” and “Mainland,” which crackle with energy as examples. Songs like “Sister’s Jeans” and “Cappuccino City” show a slower, more languid vibe to round out the jittery sizzle. All in all a solid “debut” (or continuation of their previous EP run) — look to these guys for more in the coming years.
12. Welles — Red Trees and White Trashes: the debut album from a scrawny beanpole with a mop of wild hair from Ozark, Arkansas, this was the most unabashedly hedonistic pleasure of the year. Part sixties psychedelia, part southern blues and Seattle grunge, Welles (formerly Jeh Sea Wells) embraces the ethos of ZFG and the classic trappings of sex, drugs, and rock and roll so fully it could be comical — there are literally songs about sex (“Do You Know How to Fuck”), drugs (“Codeine”), and rock and roll (“Rock and Roll”) here — but the hooks are strong and the delivery sarcastic and self-aware enough to pull it off.
It’s a good thing he did, too — aside from those three winners, there’s tracks like the opening “How Sweet it is to Love,” “Seasons,” and lead single “Life Like Mine,” which besides being a great song has the year’s most flippant/funny question embedded as the chorus. (“How fucked up have you got to be to live a life like mine?”) As I wrote before, Welles is a sneaky good guitar player, showcasing his chops on tracks like “Hold me Like I’m Leaving” and the smoldering “Seventeen,” and his raspy roar goes well with both the lyrical content and mood of the music throughout. All in all another nice homage to the early nineties and definitely someone worth watching in coming years.
11. Kanye and Company — The Five Weeks, Five EP Mixtape: this one’s representative of a lot of this year. Kanye was running around saying/doing a lot, some of it great, some of it ridiculous; unfulfilled hype and unrelenting bluster were flowing in abundance, both from him and those around him; and amidst all the bombast and buffoonery there were still some moments to savor (though not as many as there used to be, and now with the question of cost thanks to what comes with them). As the eight of you already know, Kanye and friends holed up in Wyoming for five weeks last summer to go on a recording spree and what came out of it was five EPs-not-albums that had moments of greatness, but mostly felt undercooked and rushed. It accompanied another slow-moving trainwreck in public by the ringleader in chief (some portions of which occurred next to the clown commander in chief), which further heightened the backlash to the music and highlighted its flaws. And yet after the dust finally settled and we could focus on the music, we still had some pretty good tunes for our troubles.
From “Yikes” and “Ghost Town” on Ye to “4th Dimension” and the title track on Kids See Ghosts or “If You Know You Know” off Daytona, these were winners of old that had you reaching for the volume when they came on. The problem is most of what remained, like most of what’s out in the rap world writ large (or the real world, for that matter), is an underwhelming, hit or miss mess. Gone are the gods of the golden age who not only had something to say (more than their material possessions/obsessions, that is), but could also fill an entire album with those thoughts and an equal number of banging beats. Today’s “superstars” are a porridge of pale comparisons to those titans — either marrying a missive to a moldy beat or molding a monster hook to a missing message (or if they do manage to get both right, only do so once/twice vs throughout an entire album).
You might say it’s unfair to compare the Migos and A$AP Mobs of the world to forebears like Outkast and Wu-tang (or even modern Kanye and Nas to yesteryear Kanye and Nas), but that’s the cold, unavoidable reality. You watch things like Hip Hop Evolution on Netflix and remember what was possible — the number of outstanding albums from Pac, PE, Tribe, and Cube, or the untouchable debuts from Snoop, Biggie, and Dre. Try arguing that most of today’s acts fall anywhere near that level of quality or consistency, even for a single album. You can’t — and so we’re left with memories of what was, both in the genre and these guys’ previous material. That and a pretty good mixtape, in this case. Things done changed, indeed.
10. Young Fathers — Cocoa Sugar: back for their third or fifth outing depending on how you count, the Scottish trio of mad scientists continue their eclectic run, stitching together a wild array of sounds for the year’s most unique, exciting listen. Part hip hop, part R&B, part electro, part transmission from outer space, this one shifts styles with the rapidity of spinning the radio dial back and forth. Rather than sound scattered and chaotic, though, it feels more like a butterfly languidly flitting about the garden, sampling a thought here and a genre there. At turns lovely and loud, soulful and slamming, it also reinforces the power of the album format, rewarding the listener for digesting its twelve songs as a unit vs a series of random singles. (It also has a beautifully iconic cover, further pushing back on the disjointed, anonymous streaming life these days.)
Tracks like “Fee Fi,” “Wow,” “Wire,” and “Toy” crackle with jittery energy, while songs like “Lord” and “Picking You” are pure prettiness, shining with soulful vocals. Others fall somewhere in the middle, dancing between moods as that radio dial spins. “Tremolo” opens with an ethereal church organ before snapping almost immediately to a bleep bloop electro beat, with vocalists Alloysius Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole, and Graham Hastings sing-rapping overhead until the organ returns with a flourish a minute later, brightening the song like an old cathedral as the sun emerges from behind a cloud. Lead single “In My View” walks a similar line, slowly introducing pieces one by one before building them to a cohesive climax three quarters of the way through. It’s a powerful effect and an often thrilling listen as a result — another solid winner from these iconoclastic highlanders.
9. Mastersystem — Dance Music: Outside the near daily indignities or infuriations by those elected to represent us, one of the hallmarks of this year was an ongoing, dull drone akin to a ringing in your ears after an explosion. (That and a commensurate sense of anger and disorientation at what just transpired.) Day after day, you found yourself questioning one of three things — “what the fuck just happened?” “Am I going insane?” And “Why does no one else seem to care?” (If not all three simultaneously.) Most times it was the result of the idiotic things those people said or did in the news so you’d turn to music or other artistic endeavors for an antidote or escape, but sometimes you’d find yourself confronting those same questions there despite your best efforts.
It happened as you flipped through the channels, catching commercial after commercial about the final episodes of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, for example, and it happened as you flipped through songs on your drive to and from work, catching song after song from the last few Frightened Rabbit albums and former frontman Scott Hutchison’s final project, this debut album. The barrage of bad news from current events was challenging enough, requiring the nightly fortitude of a recovering addict at an all you can eat bourbon and blow party, but unexpected reminders of these two’s untimely deaths were even more taxing. What the fuck just happened, indeed?
Those feelings take on additional weight on this album — in part a reflection of the wider world and a response to its exasperating events, Hutchison and his brother (along with brother duo number two-o, the Lockey brothers) drop an album that is at turns loud, brash, beleaguered, and bludgeoning. Over its brisk nine song, 35 minute duration, the Lockeys create a swirl of guitars over Grant Hutchison’s pulverizing drums, channeling the disorientation and frustration so often caused by the outer world, while brother Scott delivers some of his bitterest, bleakest lyrics yet. And that latter part is what made this album so hard to listen to for a long time — not only hearing Hutchison’s voice and remembering the awfulness of what happened, but also because his lyrics in light of that event take on a whole different meaning and twist the knife even more.
You could listen to lines like “There’s no good explanation for the road that I have taken — I used to want to fly, but now I don’t…I can’t wait to end the day, most the time; if the curtain dropped tomorrow, I wouldn’t mind” from the opening “Proper Home” and hear someone who’s content with where they’re at and could die tomorrow with no regrets. Unfortunately, you could also hear that as someone who’s all but beaten, begging for the blackness of the end. It comes up again and again — “In the race to lose I’m winning…It’s so hard man, just keeping time…if I make it to next year” on “Waste of Daylight.” “An appalling teacher, lessons learned, lost in a deep abyss. The voice gets weaker and weaker still, were we really born for this?” in “Notes on a Life Not Quite Lived.” And then the captivating, crushing closer, “Bird is Bored of Flying” — “There’s such a place as too far, there’s such a thing as too much…I’ve come as far as I can go…I’ve seen all that I care to see, become what I don’t want to be.”
Parsing these, and any countless cousins from Hutchison’s Rabbit albums, is a perilous, though unavoidable affair. Similar to when similarly troubled and beloved Elliott Smith took his own life, I found myself going back through the albums and catching lines that possibly foreshadowed the awful end. Also similar to Smith, though, who was reportedly doing better at the end than in previous years, most accounts in the wake of Hutchison’s passing talked of how happy and excited he was about this side project, eager to take to the road to show the fans what he’d been working on. The same goes for Bourdain — he had just been to Spain with his good friend Jose Andres and was in France with his best friend Eric Ripert at the end, none of whom noted anything out of the ordinary.
And that’s the danger of trying to make sense of the senseless — you can drive yourself crazy looking for cryptic cries for help in the songs/shows, just because you want the loss to be logical, the missing to have been caused by something that was missed. Unfortunately, I don’t think that was the case here — with Hutchison or with Bourdain. These were people who had lots of loving people around them who would have done anything to help if they could and who would know better than anyone if things were spiraling out of control — unfortunately their presence and their vigilance weren’t enough to beat back the feelings of pain and/or despair that these two felt. And so we’re left with their legacies — both of what they did while they were alive, and what their deaths meant to those who knew or appreciated them.
For me, it means we got one final album to enjoy Hutchison’s singular talents — another album mixing cynicism with optimism, defiance with defeat, and love with loss. We got more great lines (“It’s times like this we turn to hate as the fucks I gave evaporate” on “Teething,” for one) and several more great songs (“Notes” and “Old Team” are both winners, and the build of “Bored” is epic — by the time it gets to the end it’s a miracle Grant’s drums are still intact and you wish they had been able to have this as a setlist closer night after night it’s so good. I listened to this one obsessively the past few months.) It’s a lot more intense than regular Rabbit records, which again is probably due to the world it was made in — the big one showering down on you in the nightly news, and the small one beating down on you in the shower — but in both those aspects it’s a perfect distillation of those ingredients and a worthy capstone to a career. It still hurts to think of it in those regards — a capstone instead of a stepping stone — but like so much else that’s been happening, just or fair doesn’t seem to make much difference. So take it for what it is and enjoy it as you can — it’s a solid, sludgy little brute of an album and a fitting farewell for a flawed friend.
8. Gregory Alan Isakov — Evening Machines: after touring with his homestate Colorado Symphony Orchestra playing gussied up versions of his already pristine songs, Isakov took the last two years to write new material, his first since 2013’s outstanding The Weatherman. And what he returns with shows the benefit of that time on the road, fusing his characteristically lovely melodies with an added lushness that brings the songs further weight and beauty. You hear it from the outset with the opening “Berth” — aside from the strings that glide in midway through, there’s the symphonic swell with a minute to go that just wallops you and leaves you swooning.
The rest of the album mirrors that majesty and beauty. Songs like “San Luis,” “Southern Star,” and “Bullet Holes” are all stunners, and “Caves” is so stirring you might run through the wall in your zeal. Even softer, statelier songs like “Wings in Black” and “Chemicals” — or “Was I Just Another One,” which is so delicate it floats along like milkweed on the breeze — are winners. Isakov always sounds like he’s singing by moonlight — aside from the title’s reinforcement of that point, he asks the listener “won’t you sing me something for the dark, dark, dark” on the song of the latter phrase’s name — but this is not a cold or dreary album. It, like his voice, is warm and inviting, while also shot through with exhaustion. It’s the equivalent of a couch next to the fire after hours shoveling snow — you could stay there for hours, and in fact might never get up. Enjoy the glow.
7. The Boxer Rebellion — Ghost Alive: this one’s an aptly named phantom, one I missed when it was apparently released back in March only to appear like an apparition thanks to my little musical savior, Numu, which valiantly stepped into the gap with the demise of Record Bird. (Sidebar: Numu is a great little app — I highly recommend downloading it since the Bird flew the coop and iTunes is stupid and removed the “new by my artists” alerting feature.) Even the usually infallible AllMusic still doesn’t have it listed in the band’s discography, so I don’t feel bad for sleeping on it. Thankfully ole Numu helped me stumble onto it, though, because it’s another solid listen. The band’s sixth album and first since 2016’s Ocean by Ocean (number eight on that year’s list), this one finds the band returning to their roots and jettisoning the synthy sheen of their last outing (which this notorious hater of said instrument allowed under the “one and done” clause of his strict Antithesynth Laws).
It opens with lead single “What the Fuck,” which came out last September, almost precisely on the anniversary of the previous November’s events that had so many muttering that phrase over and over. (And still does on a near daily basis…) In spite of its applicability to current events it’s instead sung to an apparent lover and you can hear the venom dripping off the words despite lead singer Nathan Nicholson’s dulcet croon. The album moves to calmer waters after that — whether literally on tracks like “River” and “Rain” or metaphorically on soaring swooners like “Love Yourself,” “Here I Am,” and “Don’t Look Back.” It’s another lush, lovely affair from the London foursome — hopefully this ghost materializes for more soon.
6. Vance Joy — Nation of Two: the aptly surnamed Australian lovebird is back with his second album, his first since his solid debut four years ago, 2014’s Dream Your Life Away (number five on that year’s list), and despite that normally meaning a change in administration, there’s no such shift in what’s running his world. Love’s still the leader, and Joy celebrates it in almost each of this one’s thirteen tracks. Similar to his debut, Joy writes as someone still in the heated throes of a burgeoning romance, with that sense of urgency and desperation (and thus at times an embarrassing overbearing, but because of that underlying sincerity and sweetness you let it pass), and doesn’t do much to change the formula here. Which is not to say it’s a stale retread or attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle — people have been singing to/about their heart’s captors for hundreds of years, so he’s got PLENTY to work with before things get old.
Similar to some of the big hitters from his debut, songs like “Lay it on Me,” “Saturday Sun,” and “Take Your Time” are upbeat winners that work like wildfire on a crowd. I caught him again this summer and there’s something perfect about seeing thousands of people singing in full-throated unison on a sunny lawn — Joy’s one of the few acts that’s meant to be seen in full daylight and open air instead of the dark confines of a club. And while those songs live up to his last name, it’s the album’s slower stuff that really hits hard. Tracks like the opening “Call if You Need Me,” “I’m With You,” and “Crashing Into You” are all beautiful little gems. It’s a simple, yet winning recipe — warm Aussie accent and voice, sweet lyrics about love, winning melodies and hearty hooks that will have you singing along — and a ukelele. What’s not to like about that? Here’s hoping he’s got at least another four years in office.
5. Father John Misty — God’s Favorite Customer: This one marks a thankful return to form for former fave Misty who had lost me completely after the bloated, self-important bombast of his last album, Pure Comedy. That album found him endlessly sermonizing on a range of topics, half-heartedly sing-speaking long-winded lyrics that continually reminded you how smart/funny/amazing he thought he was — and if there was one thing the world needed more of this year, it was an oblivious bloviator telling everyone around him why he was the best/smartest around. Thankfully Misty jettisons the sanctimonious self-fellation for some straight-forward sincerity here, getting back to what worked so well on his first two albums. It only took a near-divorce and mental breakdown to get him there.
Thanks to that heartbreak — a separation from his wife, the Honeybear whose courtship and romance was so memorably, lovingly captured on his second album (number five on 2015’s list) — Misty stops prattling on about everyone else’s perceived inadequacies and focuses on his own. In doing so he gives us ten really solid songs — songs that showcase the sometimes dark, sometimes laugh out loud humor of his early efforts, mixed with the sincerity and self-effacement that was so sorely missing last time around. Which is not to say this is a light-hearted album — the opening song is titled “Hangout at the Gallows” and has a “chorus” line of “I’m treading water as I bleed to death” followed by a wail that sounds like he actually might be dying. After that frolic in the flowers come nine more beauties, songs about being holed up in a hotel dealing with the break from his wife, as well as reality, while possibly careening towards suicide. (“Mr Tillman,” “The Palace,” and the nakedly honest “Please Don’t Die,” among others.)
It’s not all doom and gloom — songs like “Date Night” have Misty singing with some swagger (despite lamenting within that his mojo’s gone), while “Disappointing Diamonds Are the Rarest of them All” has him juxtaposing a buoyant melody with hilariously oddball ways to describe his relationship. (“Like a pervert on a crowded bus, a glare of love bears down on us…like an oil tanker tipped at sea, this love’s contaminated me.”) The majority of the album finds him in a far more fragile state, though, probing his inadequacies in “Just Dumb Enough to Try” (“You can take what I know about love and drown it in a sink…you can take what I know about you and maybe fill a small balloon”) and even turning to the man upstairs in desperation on the title track (someone he notably doesn’t believe in, as he winkingly suggests with the “favorite customer” tag.) It’s unfortunate it took this upheaval to get such a lovely return to form, but you hope the process and pain got him to a better place (personally and professionally).
4. We Were Promised Jetpacks — The More I Sleep the Less I Dream: the fourth album from this excellent quartet, the boys from Scotland are back with their first album in four years (2014’s Unraveling, which I somehow missed on that year’s list — I apologize to each of you for the oversight, as it’s a great album). In line with the title, this one’s a dreamier affair than previous outings — instead of characteristically roaring guitars, they’re cloaked more in reverb this time, creating a gauzy haze for frontman Adam Thompson’s thundering howl to punch through like a siren through the fog. Opener “Impossible,” along with later tracks “Hanging In,” “Not Wanted,” and the title track (which adds an ominous edge to the dreaminess) highlight the new approach well.
There’s still some rippers — tracks like “In Light,” “Make it Easier,” and the frenetic “Repeating Patterns” are all excellent examples of just how hard these guys can hit — but overall it’s a more muted, mature affair. It works really well, though — the softer shimmer lulls you into a fugue, allowing the louder parts to land all the harder, like being awakened by a punch to the jaw. I got a chance to see these guys again when they came through town recently, headlining for the first time in the big room, and they left us wanting much more, keeping their set at almost exactly an hour with no encore, and despite the disappointment for not hearing more it reiterated two things — one, these guys are outstanding live — their enormous tempo shifts hit like monster waves crashing on your head — and two, they have a ton of great songs, of which these fit in seamlessly. A really solid outing from a real fave, these guys are worth adding to your arsenal.
3. Parquet Courts — Wide Awaaaaake!: back for the first time since 2016’s Human Performance (number three on that year’s list), the tireless band of Tex Yorkers storm in with another baker’s dozen for their catalog, this time adding a groove to their punky repertoire that was previously unseen. If the next two albums on this list are the antidote to all the awfulness around us, this one represents the attitude it often invokes first — a hearty “GOFY!” and an urge to punch you in the jaw. Recorded with hipster porn producer Danger Mouse, it’s the band’s most eclectic outing yet, evidence of both their restlessness and their producer’s kitchen sink approach to recording. And it mostly works — “Violence” marries a 70’s cop drama riff with Frontman I Adam Savage’s shouted verses before transitioning to the simmering “Before the Water Gets Too High” and the shimmering “Mardi Gras Beads,” the latter of which finds Frontman II Austin Brown crooning of love and the titular trinket.
These new wave outings are bookended by classic Courts, the opening “Total Football,” which breaks into an invigorating sprint 23 seconds in, and the irresistible “Almost Had to Start a Fight/In and Out of Patience,” which breaks into one twice during the chorus, frantically sending you running around the room before easing you into the lovely “Freebird II.” (Which sports one of the most satisfying moments of the year, shouting “freeeeeeeeeee, I feel freeeeeeeeeee, like you proooooooomised I’d beeeeeeeee” at the soaring end.) The rest of the album bounces between these modes, the vintage and the voyage — “Normalization, “NYC Observation,” and “Extinction” fall in the former camp, while “Back to Earth” and “Death Will Bring Change” form the latter. The title track is the most Mouse-ian alien of them all, something that sounds nothing like its surroundings yet somehow works (and somehow found these miscreants playing on Ellen, which has to be a sign of the apocalypse). It’s a bold move for the band, placing their more experimental impulses typically explored as the band’s alter ego Parkay Quarts right alongside their more excellent, in-character offerings as the Courts, and while I personally want more of/solely the latter, they fuse enough of that essence into the former to make it more palatable and enjoyable than it often is on those side projects. Good on em for pushing the envelope.
2. The Hunts — Darlin’ Oh Darlin’: the sophomore effort from the seven singing siblings from small town Virginia (their debut landed at number nine in 2015), this album was a precious commodity over the course of the year. It is pure, unadulterated heart — painfully earnest, beautifully crafted, and so openly loving it’s almost too much to bear, like a puppy who’s whimpering because he just wants to sleep on your lap. As with that pooch, you find yourself feeling protective of that honesty and love, so rare have they become in this current state of affairs. And so I found myself feeling similarly protective of this album, unable to turn to it too often for fear of sullying its pristinity, like a field of freshly fallen snow — that and a fear of potentially damaging myself as if staring into an eclipse, being ill-equipped for such unadulterated warmth and emotion.
It’s a pretty remarkable thing — listening to it you constantly wonder how these seven kids a) can write about such issues with the gravity of someone decades their seniors and b) how they haven’t had this amazing loveliness beaten out of them a hundred times over by now. It’s a bit like finding a dinosaur wandering around your backyard — this shouldn’t exist in the modern world. Writing this on the day of the former president’s funeral, it’s the perfect accompaniment to that backdrop, something you could picture coming from the radio in his barracks during WWII. Not only the sentiments of love and companionship, but calling each other “darlin” and “dear” in the process. This is an album that makes you miss your grandparents, as well as the way they (and the former president) talked to each other and treated folks.
The title is comprised of the album’s bookends, the opening “Darlin'” and the closer ten songs later, “Oh Darlin’,” and aside from the similar name they’re sonic companions, featuring a slightly different use of the core melody. They’re both lovely, as is everything else here — “Along the Way” and “Heaven Knows” are should-be hits in the vein of the Lumineers, “Peace be Still,” “Far,” and “Love of Mine” are uplifting winners, while songs like “Travel,” “Standing Small,” and “Years” are more stately, subdued gems. I honestly can’t say enough about this thing — the harmonies are knee-buckling, the sentiments are lovely, and the melodies are instantly memorable. Simply put, I wish there was more of this in the world — we’d be a lot better off if there were.
1. Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats — Tearing at the Seams: if the previous album was all heart, this one represents pure joy. From the first time I listened to it I knew it was going to be here come year’s end, and likely at the top, so deep and instant a connection did it forge. Back for the first time since their amazing debut (2015’s eponymous album, which landed at six on that year’s list), they walk you in slowly on the lead track “Shoe Boot,” innocently shuffling along with a little drum beat and bass groove as if nothing was amiss. By the time they count in the horns twenty seconds later and blow away your resistance (and possibly bad mood), you’re done. What follows is twelve songs of soul, swing, and sunshine that borders on the spiritual at times. It hearkens back to 60s-era Stax and Motown, at times Wilson Pickett or Booker T and the MGs, others a medley of Smokey, Sam, and Otis — all without sounding derivative or hackneyed.
As the album title implies, this one’s stuffed almost to overfilling with honest, earnest emotion, updating the sound of those ancestors without merely replicating it, all while making you forget the world around you — if only for 45 minutes. It’s a blissful spin while it lasts — “Boot,” “Be There,” “Intro,” and “Baby I Lost My Way (But I’m Going Home)” live up to the band’s name as sweaty party starters, while “A Little Honey,” “Say it Louder,” “Coolin’ Out,” and “Still Out There Running” shimmer like sun off the water. Rateliff has an amazing voice, shifting effortlessly from soothing croon to stirring wail, and songs like “Hey Mama,” “Babe I Know,” and the title track show the power in the progression, leaving you (and him) a breathless heap by the end. It’s a fantastic ride, one I took over and again this year. We caught them live a couple times this year and each time it was a celebration, people reveling in the music and the band reveling in the response. Here’s to more of the same in the coming years.
