Final Four Flashbacks: Wilco X Doves = Nirvana

Before the big sportsball exhibitions kick off tonight, wanted to highlight some really good releases that’ve come out in the past week — as well as some solid retrospectives on a few beloved bands/albums. In honor of this evening there are four of them and they cover the past four-plus decades, taking us all the way back to the dawn of Sunshine and the late 70s.  So without further ado, let’s jump in the time machine and see where we land.

First stop is the gritty pit that was LA in the late 70s and an article from Pitchfork on one of that era’s key bands, the punkabilly quartet X, in honor of the recent reissue of its debut. It does a good job setting the scene and explaining how the band emerged from (and rebelled against) that landscape before walking you through the first album. Like most trips down memory lane, it’s easy to get lost fixating on the things that seem silly in hindsight (what the fuck was I thinking — turtlenecks AND a ponytail?) — be it the ridiculous names the members adopted (frontman/bassist John Doe, guitarist Billy Zoom, drummer DJ Bonebrake — only frontwoman Exene avoids the eye roll there), the fact the band was mixing rockabilly with punk and still trying to be tough (which is a little like Marty threatening to knife you at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance), or that for some reason the Doors figured heavily in their history (aside from covering that band’s classic “Soul Kitchen” here, keyboardist Ray Manzarek shows up several times on the album and produced several of their albums).

If you focus on those things it’s easy to miss how cool these guys really are — the interplay between Doe and Exene’s voices (which in contrast to the atonal screamers typically in a punk band are really quite good), the ripping solos from Zoom, the breathless bedrock of Bonebrake’s beats. Somehow it all works, and forty years later there’s still no one that sounds like them. Their early albums are consistently solid (Under the Big Black Sun‘s still probably my fave) and I had the pleasure of seeing them live a few years ago and they hadn’t lost a step.  Give this cut from the debut a try:

We’ll leave Los Angeles and make our way to Nirvana, via Chicago, as this next band would say, because somehow Wilco’s classic Summerteeth turned 20 recently. (Exhibit 9763 I am OAF) Stereogum does a really good job talking through the album and its creation (as well as its impact) so definitely recommend giving it a read.  For those who aren’t familiar with the band or have never listened to this album (which — if this is true, let’s fix both those things immediately) it’s great insight into a great album.  I’m actually one of the people who will tell you (“wrongly, but earnestly,” in the author’s words) this is actually the best album Wilco ever made.  It’s certainly my favorite.  Twenty years later this is still the album of theirs I listen to the most — far and away.

Despite the frictions encountered while making it, the album is filled with beauty — heart-lifting songs one minute, heart-breakers the next — and zero down spots.  In terms of quality, that is — the melodies here are absolute killers and Tweedy’s lyrics had never been this honest and open before — but they’d also never been this wrenching.  As the article (and Tweedy’s recent biography) explain, both he and the band were not in a great place at this point, and that bleeds through in the songs — there’s a gutshot desperation behind a lot of them, whether covered up with poppy tunes as on “Can’t Stand It” and “I’m Always in Love” or left stark and unvarnished as on “She’s a Jar,” “We’re Just Friends,” and “How to Fight Loneliness.”  You can tell this album wasn’t something that was easily acquired — this took and reflected a toll — but that’s what made it so powerful.  It felt exactly like the refrain from “A Shot in the Arm” — the ashtray says you’ve been up all night — and it was that brutal, beleaguered vulnerability that drew you in (and still does). This was the first album of theirs I fell in love with and a glimpse of their impending gem Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which is the one most folks point to as their masterpiece (and don’t get me wrong, it’s amazing), but for me this one’s the pinnacle. See for yourself here:

Next we’ll head back to the west coast and the soggy streets of Seattle to commemorate an unfortunate anniversary, the 25 years since Kurt Cobain’s death. In order to mark that occasion NME ranked every Nirvana song — from the studio albums to the slew of forgettable demos and B-sides from the disappointing With the Lights Out box set — so there’s a lot to get through. (102, to be precise.)  I disagree with the author to an extent — I tend to trust artists to put out their best material and am rarely impressed by unreleased tracks (a perspective largely unchanged here), so don’t think Cobain’s every thought/song was borderline genius like he seems to — but he gets it right when it counts and has some interesting context on the classics so is worth a skim.  (Note: unless you’re a true believer like him you can skip most of the fluff and tune in once the studio albums start kicking in halfway through.) Unquestioning idolatry aside, I agree with him on two key points — in general In Utero beats out Nevermind (its unbridled power just speaks to me more than the melodic polish of its predecessor these days) and his top pick is also mine (its combo of slow-fast shifts alongside their patented quiet-loud dynamics make it an absolute juggernaut) — so kudos for not going with the knee-jerk votes. See if you agree with us and take a trip to the muddy banks of the Wishka while you read:

Lastly we’ll jet to the home of NME and the land of political upheaval (I should say — non-US based political upheaval), the fabled anarchy in the UK, for the impending return of the underappreciated Doves.  (As well as the ten year anniversary of their farewell, Kingdom of Rust.) To celebrate Stereogum ranked the band’s top ten songs, walking you through a bit of the band’s history (and why you should care) first.  They do a good job spreading their picks across the band’s four albums, rightly capping it with one from their classic debut, which remains my favorite. (Though I might have picked the title track or “The Man Who Told Everything,” or even the mostly wordless “Firesuite” as emblematic alternates.)  As the article describes, these guys always had an epic edge to their songs, one that was transportive and cinematic in its effect, which is why it’s such a shame more folks haven’t heard of them. Glad to hear they’re recording new stuff, though — in the meantime step up to the sampler platter and see whatcha like.


We’ll bring it back to the present and head into overtime with a few quick shots before the buzzer — first the latest single from Kevin Morby’s upcoming album Oh My God. Similar to previous single “No Halo,” this latest one (“Nothing Sacred/All Things Wild”) is another slow-burner devoid of his customary guitar.  It still works, though — Morby’s voice is as compelling alone as it is dancing over the six string, so hopefully the rest of the album is as good as these (and his previous albums). Give it a listen here:

We’ll keep things subdued with this one from former Walkmen guitarist Paul Maroon who teams up with Panda Bear (aka Noah Lennox) on the sleepy gem “I Don’t Need a Crowd.” It’s built around a vintage Maroon riff, all lovely reverb and shimmer, and you expect frontman Hamilton to come in like normal (he does, just on a completely different song, the single’s flip side).  Lennox holds his own, though, and it’s a pretty affair.  No word on a full album or anything else at this point, so we’ll have to enjoy this for now:

Since we’re already mellow, let’s keep the vibe low key with the latest from the Lumineers, whose upcoming album (the aptly named III) is due out this September. Since their last album original member cellist/singer Neyla Pekarek has left, replaced by violinist/singer Lauren Jacobsen, but that hasn’t led to a discernible change in the band’s sound.  At least not yet — frontman Wesley Schultz’s voice still draws you in, as do the narrative lyrics (this time about an alcoholic woman named Gloria), so let’s hope things continue once the full album arrives. In the meantime enjoy the first single:

Since we’re on a roll we’ll go with one more downbeat track before picking things up a bit, this one from the ever lovely National and the latest single from their upcoming I am Easy to Find (due out 17 May). This one hearkens back to pre-electronic era Boxer/Alligator offerings and is everything there is to love about these guys — stately sound, poignant lyrics, and just plain pretty.  Yet another gem in a long line of em — pop it on and bliss out:

Time’s running short so it’s time to turn up the temperature as we build to the big finish, starting with the latest track from Rooster and Animal, aka the beloved bluesy duo Black Pistol Fire, “Black Halo.”  Similar to the recent single from the Keys (who these guys get compared to a lot and I like just as much) there’s nothing special going on — they’re not breaking from what they normally do or tossing in any wrinkles — but like I said for those guys, there’s something to be said for consistency and durability.  These days I don’t want wild surprises or trendy new fads (no avocado toast and shocking revelations for me, thanks) — these days I’m quite happy with a bourbon or beer and a plate of steak and potatoes. So if you’re in the same place, check in with our boys and enjoy a little ramble with the Rooster:

We’ll close with a three before time expires, in this case the latest in a flurry of offerings from Vampire Weekend leading to the release of their much-anticipated double album Father of the Bride (due out 3 May).  First is the simple, yet infectious “Sunflower,” which aside from a trippy video directed by Jonah Hill (and featuring Jerry Seinfeld in a deli) sports a catchy little riff and frontman Ezra Koenig’s characteristically crazy cadence (“suuuuuUUUUN!FlowER! in tha mooooooooooooooooooooooorning”) that get firmly lodged in your head. Then there’s the more traditional “This Life,” which finds Koenig singing about love and life with his usual earnest splendor. The game winner is the B-side, though, and the almost unbearably pretty “Unbearably White.”  Its lyrics about a seemingly stalled relationship are compelling enough, but the real knife in the heart is the song’s riff, which is as pristine and lovely as that field of snow.  Give it a listen here:

That’s it for now — until next time, amici… –BS

 

Spring Forward — Less Sleep, More Songs

Of course it being the weekend and finally having an opportunity to sleep in a little, my body decides to wake up even earlier than during the week (4am instead of the normally sporty 5), compounding the deficit we’ll all shortly have with the extra hour of sleep we lose tonight.  Whether you lose a bunch like me or you lose just the single hour tomorrow, there’s a ton of new stuff out to help you wile away the time.  It’s another sign of the coming spring after a long stretch of cold, barren months — new songs and albums popping up like bright green growth from last year’s bulbs. It’s a welcome sight and hopefully bodes well for a bounty harvest. Since there’s so many I’ll bore you less with my insights than normal (the eight of you got your wish!), so without further ado let’s kick off a round of Sunshine Speed Dating!

DING! “Hi, what’s your name? Grian? How do you spell that? Oh you’re in a band? What’s it called?  Oh…….[long pause] you know that place is filled with assholes and idiots, don’t you…” [cue both parties looking at their watches, neither of whom are actually wearing one] First up meet Fontaines D.C., a band from one of the best places on earth (Ireland) whose name calls out one of the worst (this shitbox) and whose frontman’s (Grian Chatten) I’m still not sure how to say.  Don’t let the monikers keep you away, though, as these guys have some pretty catchy tunes on their debut, Dogrel, which comes out in April.  None moreso than the lead single, “Big,” which is the perfect soundtrack for one of these rounds — bright, energetic, and just about two minutes long.  Give it a ride here:

Next!  “Oh you look familiar — Czarface, isn’t it? Something’s a little different, though — did you ombre your hair?! No? You just brought in another emcee?  Mmm…I dunno, I still think you did something to your hair…”   State of the strands aside, the touch of color Czarface bring to their already good getup is Ghostface, teaming with his Wu brother Inspectah Deck (along with Esoteric and 7L) for the first time since that band’s official albums. This group continues its recent pattern of pairing with another big name act to make an album (along with their overall hit or miss streak), dropping this on the heels of last year’s partnership with MF Doom. Similar to that one, it’s got a couple good tracks on it, including this puppy, “Mongolian Beef,” so check out the latest fishscale here:

 

Next up — “Oh hi! Good to see you again — Will, isn’t it? Ha, yes, not Will-i.am, that guy’s a bit of a clown. You have spent the last few years re-recording your early material as synthy dance tracks, though, so…” [insert awkward silence and shuffling] The Will in this case is Toledo, the frontman/brainchild of Car Seat Headrest, and while he has spent more time reworking (“improving”) old songs than I’d like (as on last year’s Twin Fantasy), it seems like he’s been writing new material based on some recent shows. One of those tracks is “Can’t Cool Me Down,” which despite the nearly two minute synth intro (honestly — if one more band starts dicking around with synths………..) is a pretty catchy tune.  We’ll see what else he churns out — in the meantime, see what you think:

Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeext! “Oh hello! My that’s a lovely accent you have.  Oh all five of you have it — meoooow!  Where are you from again?  Oh nice — ha yes I’m sure you all have a tremendous amount of thunder down under, but I’m quite fine not seeing it firsthand, thanks…” The lads with the didgeridoos in their Dockers here are the Aussie quintet Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever who look to be coming back from their full-length debut last year (which landed at #13 on my list) and releasing some new material.  The first single is “In the Capital” (which apparently will be followed by one called “Read My Mind,” based on the cover) and it’s another winner in the vein of War on Drugs or Roadkill Ghost Choir — bright guitars, shining melody, and the perfect soundtrack for a drive on the coast with the windows down. Take it for a spin yourself:

NEXT! “HELL-o, laaaaaaaaaaDEEZ… Pleased to make your acquaintance.  Or should I say ‘acquaintances.’  Cuz there’s three of you.  I’m good at counting. I took math a bunch.  In school.  What?  No I’m not nervous. Why would I be? Girls don’t terrify me. I read an article on what they search for on porn sites and it totally didn’t make me break into a sweat…” (Side note — I’m very worried about what’s happening in Iowa, Missouri, and Maine… special shout out to the Uzbek women as the globe’s sole proponents for research on MILfs) The ladies in question here are Mary Timony’s posse from Ex Hex who are back for the first time since their debut, 2015’s aptly named Rips (which landed at #13 on that year’s list), and it sounds like they’ve lost none of their edge the past four years.  They’ve already released a couple singles from the upcoming album (It’s Real, due out March 22nd), but this third one “Rainbow Shiner” is my favorite so far — another ripper right in line with 80s rockers from Joan Jett and Heart (and their debut). Break out the leather and Aqua Net and crank up the volume:

NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEXT! “What’re you doing here? I thought you were dating the Waxahatchee lady? She’s got a pretty voice — I love her first couple albums.  The covers you two have been doing together are pretty great, too.  Hey has anyone ever told you you sound a lot like Bob Dylan?  Oh all the time?  Literally every person you meet?  Well that’s a bummer.  You really do sound just like him, though…”  That’s right, the boy who sounds like the bard is back again, ready to drop another album full of gems on a mostly unsuspecting population.  That’s a real shame because Morby has quickly become one of my overall favorites, dropping a string of great albums the past few years — City Music landed at #4 on my 2017 list, Singing Saw at #6 on my 2016 one, and Still Life at #10 on my 2014 one.  He’s back with another full length (Oh My God, due out April 26th), which he says will tackle religion and spirituality.  Seems like a dicey proposition, but based on the initial track will likely be worth a listen.  It’s a different subject matter for him and maybe as a result so is the sound he’s surrounding it with — in addition to the hand claps there’s also flute, sax, and piano with almost nary no guitar to be found.  It still works, though, so we’ll see what the rest of the album brings — in the meantime check out “No Halo” here:

LIGHTNING ROUND! “Oh man! You used to be in the Walkmen! (You guys were one of my absolute faves) But now you’re doing solo stuff (that’s also been really good, very glitzy and Sinatra-like) and you did one album with the dude from Vampire Weekend (I know he left, but you’ll be fine — that’s why you’re here!) but you also did an album with your old guitarist in there that no one heard about (Dear God). It came out three years ago?  Eesh, I’m really sorry — well I really like the one song I found, “Proud Irene” — I’m going to go look for the rest of the album now.  Hope to see you again soon — good luck!”

DING! “Oh hey, you’re the guy who sounds like Dave Grohl when he sings!  I love Dave Grohl.  He seems like the coolest dude.  I’d love to have a drink with him or just hang out. He is just so funny! And MAN what a drummer — our generation’s John Bonham. Do you know Dave Grohl?  Oh right sorry — no I really like your band Pile too.  I’ve written about em a couple of times on my blog.  Well, don’t get too excited, literally like eight people read it.  But I try. One day I’ll break into double digits… Anyway, I really dig you guys. You really rip when you let loose.  I’m glad to hear you’ve got a new album coming out (Green and Gray, due May 3).  The first single is pretty cool — I’m not sure what a “Bruxist Grin” is (is that the smile of a Marxist Teddy Ruxpin or something? I should look it up…) but it sounds cool.  I’m looking forward to the rest of the album — hopefully it rocks a little more than Hairshirt, that was a little weird…”

DING! “OOOOH Chemical Brothers, you guys NEVER come to the States.  It’s an honor!  I saw the video for “We’ve Got to Try” and it’s pretty great.  Where’d you get the idea to have a dog drive a racecar? And then become an astronaut! Ha, that was really funny.  My dog doesn’t do much but snuggle and fart — sometimes at the same time.  Just like my wife!  I kid, I kid.  Anyway, I’m glad to see you guys have a new album coming out soon (No Geography, due April 12th) — your ninth!  That’s super impressive.  You guys are always really good — I’m looking forward to hearing the rest of the album.  By the way — can you please do some shows in the States? I’m too lazy to travel and afraid of foreign food — just fast food and golf carts for me.  Just like the President!  Wait where are you going? It’s nothing to be ashamed of!”

DING! “Wow. That is a huge glass of red wine, Mr Berninger.  What is it, merlot? Remember that scene from the movie Sideways? ‘I am NOT drinking any fucking merlot!’ That was a pretty funny scene.  That guy kind of reminds me of you.  Bearded, smart, kind of cranky and forlorn. Do you know him? I think we’d get along well together — I mean, YOU’D get along well together.  I’m nothing like that… Anyway.  I love your band — the new single’s nice.  The female vocalist was a nice touch, but I wish you guys would let up with the electronic stuff a bit, though.  You trying to be Radiohead or Bon Iver?  Wait Justin Vernon is really tight with your guitarist? And they were actually in a band together and curated a festival last year? Oh wow right, I forgot.  Anyway, you guys always make my year end lists (2017, 2013, 2010, and 2008) and Boxer’s one of my all-time faves.  Yeah yep, I write a blog, one day people will read it, it’s about the love of the music and doesn’t matter how many people hit it, I know, you’re right.  Boxer, though, what an amazing album.  It was the soundtrack to one of my old relationships and its explosive end.  Yeah it was a MESS. That is kind of a dark album. Time, too.  Man oh man, what a show… but we get out of it — you’re right. I’m glad you’re in a better place, too, Mr Giamatti — hey do you mind if I have a sip of that merlot?”

DING! “Dan Auerbach! Man I love your band.  You and Carney have been faves since thickfreakness. I’ve seen you live like a gajillion times.  There was one stretch where either you or the band were at Lolla for like five years straight.  It was almost like you were the house band! I’ve written about you a ton too — Attack and Release was my album of the year back in 2008 and Turn Blue came in second in 2014.  What? Oh yeah I have a blog.  No, not many people read it, you’re right.  Ha yep, you have more albums than I have readers, that’s probably true. Very funny, Mr Auerbach…  Anyway, I know you’ve been busy producing a bunch of people the past few years — Pat too — but I’m really glad to hear you two have an album coming out soon. Yeah I know it doesn’t sound very different from your other stuff, but that’s ok — the world could use a little consistency and rock and roll right now.  Yeah, I know Greta’s doing rock and roll — have you heard their lyrics though? Fucking cornball fantasy nonsense and cheesy cliches about getting high when you’re low. Wait you guys have a line like that too?  In this song?! I’m sure it’s just a coincidence — I didn’t mean you guys were corny.  I love you guys — come back!”

DING! FINAL ROUND!  “Oh hey Local Natives! You guys are great — and back with TWO new singles?!  Who are you trying to impress?  Ha oh right, me, that’s why you’re here. “Cafe Amarillo” was nice and I really liked “When Am I going to Lose You.” I saw Kate Mara in the video for that one — she’s really pretty.  Did you get nervous talking to her? That never happens to me, but I hear it does to some people. Particularly when you think about what they’re thinking about.  Like — do you know what girls in New England look for on the internet?  Squirts, and I don’t think they’re talking about the beverage… Anyway, you guys are great — I love how chill your albums are.  Your last one made my year end list (Sunlit Youth, #8 in 2016). What?  Yeah I have a blog.  No, I know not many people read it.  Yeah I could see why you’d think that’s a big waste of time.  Yeah particularly when I’ve been doing it for over ten years.  For this page.  Other ones were…..exactly the same.  But yeah, you guys are great.  Hey it’s really been fun to talk to you — where’s Berninger with that fucking merlot…”

As You Are, As You Were: A Story of Seattle’s Black Days

In the midst of the whiplashing weather this week — going from the dead in 60 seconds deep freeze to springtime 60s and back again — I plowed through Mark Yarm’s Everybody Loves our Town: An Oral History of Grunge, which I stumbled upon back home at Myopic a few months ago.  As indicated by the title, it tells the tale of the rise and fall of grunge, the rocketship that burst into the heavens in the early to mid-90s, turning legions of kids into flannel-sporting shoegazers, before blowing apart almost as quickly on reentry.

It follows the same format as Lizzy Goodman’s Meet me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011, which chronicled an equally epochal (and ephemeral) moment in music, leveraging the memories of the era’s key participants — everyone from band members and producers to journalists and standers-by — to remind us how that moment (and its seminal albums) came to be. What’s unavoidable in comparison to that book, though, is how differently it makes you view the music (and its makers) by its conclusion. As I wrote before, Goodman’s tale was full of really good bands — the Strokes, Interpol, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, the Rapture, the Walkmen, the National, Grizzly Bear, Vampire Weekend, Kings of Leon, the Vines, and the Hives, among many others — being made by people who (for the most part) seem like folks you’d want to have a beer with.  They seem funny, self-deprecating, and passionate about the music they were making, and each of their bands have at least two outstanding albums, if not more, among them.

Contrast this with those found in Yarm’s book and you’ve got basically four bands who weren’t mostly (or completely) terrible — Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains — and a scene full of delusional, pretentious dicks, a significant chunk of whom also happen to be raging drug addicts and/or alcoholics.  Almost nowhere in their recounting is a love of the music they were making — which when you go back and listen makes sense because outside the big four most of these bands have at best one mediocre album to their name, and that’s being generous — but almost everywhere is this cloying sense of entitlement — an endless litany of people saying they were a better singer/drummer/guitarist than this person, that their band was better than this band, that they should have gotten this magazine cover or record deal or be the ones who were famous.  It’s an exhausting, frustrating, read as a result — which apparently shouldn’t be a surprise, because as one of the journalists says early on, “Seattle isn’t a glamorous town at all. It was pretty pathetic. Very depressing.  That’s where this music came out of…Grunge isn’t a music style, it’s complaining set to a drop-D tuning.”

And that’s what we get — nearly 550 pages of backbiting and bitching, talking about a scene (and sound) no one seems to particularly like much (but still want the credit for creating/guiding/driving).  Where Goodman’s book makes you look back more fondly on the titans and want to investigate the smaller bands around them, Yarm’s makes you question even liking the big bands to an extent and want to completely avoid the smaller ones because of the cumulative effect of disgust you get from their deeds/disposition. If Goodman’s book was full of the equivalent of happy drunks, Yarm’s is full of their opposite, hateful, destructive disasters you want to steer clear of at all costs.  Goodman’s tales of excess involved people who got fucked up and danced, jammed, or goofed around, the rooms seemingly filled with warmth and laughter.  Yarm’s, on the other hand, are filled with people who got fucked up and fought (each other or strangers, verbally and/or physically),  destroyed things (rooms and/or relationships, mostly just because they could) and/or OD’d, the rooms seemingly filled with bile and belligerence.  Goodman’s drunks are the ones who hug you and tell you they love you, Yarm’s are the ones who punch you in the face, fuck your girlfriend, and take a dump on your coffeetable after they smash up your apartment.

Almost no one escapes unscathed — only Nirvana’s Krist Novaselic and the ever-unassailable Dave Grohl come off looking like upstanding human beings, as does Pearl Jam for their decision to stop doing interviews at the height of the frenzy to focus on their music instead of how to become more famous.  The vast majority that remain invoke varying degrees of revulsion in the recounting for being self-important, self-indulgent, and/or otherwise shitty to their fellow man. It even affects some of the big four — the Alice guys’ drug and booze fueled debauchery (aside from the very sad tale of frontman Layne Staley) was disappointing, and the same goes for several of the guys in Soundgarden (aside from the sad fate of frontman Chris Cornell). The complaining and outright disdain for those around them (including their fans) is oppressive, like a flannel after a heavy rain. (One comical discovery to that point was the latter band being referred to as Frowngarden due to their perpetual demeanor.)

It’s all very unfortunate — due in no small part to the high number of deaths that occurred during this span, which number nearly in the double digits (most by overdose, with one homicide and one very famous suicide as well), but also because of how important some of this music was to people.  I remember vividly when Nirvana started blowing up, becoming an omnipresent part of my teenage years, plastered on every magazine and TV screen you found.  I was in middle school and remember hearing “Teen Spirit” for the first time in a Sam Goody, standing there captivated by how loud the drums were (and how angry/indecipherable the singer’s screams were) while watching the cover with the tiny penis spinning from the ceiling. I remember listening to the follow-on In Utero in the car with my dad, cringing when Cobain sang about cancer turning someone black in “Heart-shaped Box,” but identifying instantly with the album’s anger as my mom was nearing the end of her battle with that plague.  I remember waiting eagerly in line at the mall for the second Pearl Jam album to come out and listening to the third one incessantly while working shifts at the local ice cream store, cramming whipped cream-filled piroulines into my face almost as quickly as the riffs raced by in its blistering lead single,  “Spin the Black Circle.” (Pearl Jam may not be responsible for my days as a doughboy, but they were certainly witness…)  And I remember even then the moments that gave me pause — inscrutable lyrics that were passed off as poetry, pretentiousness that was passed off as genius, mediocrity or the willfully weird that were passed off as legendary greats, as well as untold songs and scenes about drug abuse that were passed off as passe parts of the party instead of worrying cause for alarm.

Each of those glimmers from my adolescent memory are highlighted in withering incandescence here and the additional focus makes you realize all of the fame, hype, and pressure almost couldn’t have happened to a worse group of people — not just in terms of temperament (ie good things happening to shitty people), but more in how they’d be able to handle it once it arrived. And based on their own testimony, it was a recipe for disaster — self-destructive behavior spun out of control (far too often fatally), delusion and disagreeability led to fractious divorces and disputes, egos and insecurities spiraled into depression or self-obsession, with the end result being the music suffered and the people who most needed help often didn’t get it.

It’s a truly depressing mess made all the worse because the music plays such a small part of their recollections.  Grohl is one of the few who talks about music being the one thing he knows he’s meant to do and one of his overarching joys. For almost everyone else it seems like just a job or an excuse to sportfuck and get blackout drunk or high. (Or a way to continue deluding yourself with misguided thoughts of your own greatness — you’re right, guy, Cat Butt didn’t get as big as Pearl Jam or Nirvana because you refused to sacrifice your “artistic integrity.”  NOT because you’re in a band called Cat Butt and the music sucks. Christ…) How the music industry coopted and cannibalized the good parts of the moment is well known and unfortunate, but so are the lesser known elements that helped them along — the bands and individuals whose actions this book lays bare.  This one’s a disappointing reminder on the perils of power and its ability to reveal people’s true natures.

A Winter Weekend Wonderland: Waltzes, Secrets, and Songs by Sailors

Now that the temperatures are finally starting to climb above Antarctic resort levels and I begin to regain sensation in my fingers (back home in Chiberia they’re expecting temps to jump between 80 and 90 degrees this weekend!), thought I’d crawl out of my igloo to highlight a couple of salmon I caught swimming by under the ice. Since my last post a few weeks ago I’ve been obsessed with The Last Waltz, partly because of how negatively drummer Levon Helm talked about it in his autobiography, but also because of how good I’ve always thought it was. I remember first seeing it way back in high school when I got home from being out one night (probably at something totally rad like chess club or raging with the mathletes). The local access station always showed a weird mix of stuff in the late night hours — Three Stooges blocs, All in the Family or Laugh In mini-marathons, bad B-movies, or old concerts — and I always found a bunch of things that caught my fancy.

This night they were obviously fishing from the latter category and I remember watching with curiosity as it opened with this strange (but lovely) orchestral music, as well as interviews with these shaggy guys I didn’t recognize — including what appeared to be a crazy homeless guy curled up on a couch (who I later learned was keyboard/pianist Richard Manuel). Once they got to the music, though, I was grabbed from the outset — this country-tinged shuffle of an intro quickly followed by the drummer growling, “When I get offa this-a mounTIN, ya knoooow where I wanna go — straight dooooown the Miiiiiiiiiiiiiississippi Rivah to tha Guuuuuuulf-a Meeeeeeeexicooooooooooooooo!” in the opening classic “Up on Cripple Creek.”

It’s a great song, to be sure, but something about the band itself prevented you from looking away — whether it was that crazy homeless guy banging away at the keys with a voice that sounded a little like Ray Charles, or that drummer who looked like a lumberjack and sang out of the side of his face, or the other organ player who looked like a physicist and had an untameable mane of hair exploding from his bald spot’s perimeter like the President’s does now. To say nothing of the skinny guitarist with circle glasses ripping off riff after riff without breaking a sweat, or the bassist with the voice that emerged in a series of sweet honks, or the endless parade of legends — Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, and a couple of Neils (Young and Diamond), among others — coming out one after the other across this warm, opulent stage.

It was magnetic — the way each person sang a different song, each song spanned a different genre, and so many superstars wanted to say goodbye to these strangers I’d never heard of. (In addition to them playing for nearly three hours and almost everything they sang being so dang catchy.) To hear Helm talk about it so harshly made me wonder if I’d missed something or had somehow gotten it wrong, so I went back after reading his book to make sure this wasn’t yet another item from my youth that I’d overvalued or outgrown (like Cavaricci pants or role playing games). And while the movie is still amazing — it’s almost worth watching just to hear the exchange between Robertson and Clapton as they trade licks on “Further On Up the Road” and see the smile on Clapton’s face when Robertson crushes the so-called god of guitar, or the tingle-inducing end of “It Makes No Difference” when Hudson appears, invoking what might be the first/only time in human history where you think to yourself “FUCK yeah, saxophone!” — what’s captivated me the past few weeks has been the 40th anniversary audio edition, which has nearly another hour and a half’s worth of material that I never knew about.

Thanks to Helm’s account I learned more about how that day went down, with the band playing basically non-stop for four or five hours, doing essentially a Band concert on its own before each of the allies and influences started coming out to play two to three songs a piece (vs the single songs that show up in the movie), along with several encores and rehearsals. For some reason they didn’t film all of the above, only recorded most of the audio, so there’s a bunch of treasures I’d never heard until I started mining my obsession the past few weeks. And while I think it’s fair to say the movie captured most of the concert’s best segments, there were a bunch of really good songs that somehow didn’t make the cut — the New Orleans tinged (or titled) “Life is a Carnival” and “Down South in New Orleans,” the swinging hoedowns of “Rag Mama Rag” and “W.S. Walcott Medicine Show,” or the uniquely Band-ish tracks like “This Wheels on Fire” and “King Harvest.”

Hearing all this made me understand Helm’s distaste a little more — not only because the Band sounded so good (Helm’s gravely growl in particular is a delight, making songs from the first two albums sound better than they ever did on the records), but also due to the haphazard chaos of the movie, which missed several key moments. (Helm was specifically annoyed with how Muddy Waters was handled, with the great track “Caldonia” left out as well as the legend’s intro/exit.) That said, I still think writ large this captures a magical moment in time — a band in its prime giving a monster farewell show with some of the biggest names of the day — that definitely lives up to the mantra of “leave em wanting more.” Check out some of my favorites and see for yourself:


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We’ll close with the regular assortment of one-offs — first this article from Stereogum on the anniversary of beloved Built to Spill’s classic, Keep it Like a Secret, which turns 20 today (exhibit 12760 why I am O.A.F.) It does a good job walking you through the album and its many gems — I had the good fortune to see them perform this in its entirety two years ago back home and it was like a one hour waking dream. Warm, shapeshifting, and hazy around the edges, this thing’s perfect from top to bottom. Pop this on and hop onto the cloud:

Next comes a surprise single from Interpol, “Fine Mess,” whose album last year was the good-not-great Marauder (although it topped body double Gabriel’s year end list, which just shows his taste is as questionable as our appearance), and it hearkens back to the band’s early years, all nervous energy and twitchy guitars. It’s unclear whether this is part of another album or an extra from the last one, but it’s a good listen regardless — give it a spin here:

Up next comes the much-anticipated return of fellow New Yorkers Vampire Weekend, who released two songs from their upcoming album Father of the Bride this week. It’ll be the first album without founding member Rostam Batmanglij and their first since 2013’s Modern Vampires of the City(number 7 on that year’s list), so the band plans to come back strong by making it an 18-song double album. “2021” is a slight little throwaway, but “Harmony Hall” is a solid song, sporty a lovely little guitar riff that doubles on itself before adding in pianos and building to a bright chorus. Hopefully the rest of the album leans towards this one vs the former:

Next comes another surprise return, this time from former Libertine (and tabloid trainwreck) Pete Doherty, who’s been touring with a new side project, the Puta Madres (which means “jolly sailors” in Spanish), and plans to release their debut soon. Doherty has apparently cleaned up his act after years of trying to kill himself with drugs and booze (he even reconciled with former bandmate Carl Barat, recording a new album three years ago I somehow missed) and while the shambolic energy of that former unit’s early years is missing, it’s still a pretty good song. I’ll be curious to hear the rest of the album when it comes out — give this a ride in the meantime:

We’ll close by circling back to the start and another offering from America’s Hat, this time with the latest single from Canadian punks Pup who plan to release their third album Morbid Stuff in the coming months. Thankfully it doesn’t sound like they’re straying from the formula that’s gotten them this far (no dreaded synthesizers in sight), tossing off another catchy, high energy ripper. Let’s hope the rest of the album follows suit — check out “Kids” while we wait:

Until next time, my friends… –BS

Words and Guitar: the Lizard, Loft, and Levon

Since the wind is howling outside like a frigid tornado and it’s therefore too damn cold to do anything else, thought I’d pop in with a couple recommendations that’ve kept me company by the fire, three auto-biographies for folks familiar to the eight of you that you might find worth a spin.

First comes the coffeetable sized book about the beloved Lizard (aptly named Book) — because if anything says “I’m warm and inviting — place me out in the open so children and random visitors can rifle through me,” it’s these guys, one of the loudest, heaviest, and flat out ferocious bands around. Comic irony about the book’s format aside, it’s a great read — aside from quick backgrounds on each of the members, told first in the individual’s words and then added to by the remaining three members, it walks through each of the band’s albums, from the drum machine origins of Pure to the disappointing departure of Blue.  Bassist David Sims leads most of those discussions, giving interesting background on the recording process writ large, as well as recollections (and recommendations) for specific songs on each album.   There’s validation in hearing that your favorite albums/songs are some of his/theirs as well (Goat, Liar, and Shot rank highest, and Down is acknowledged as one of the weakest), but it’s also fun to go back to albums/songs you’ve written off and try them again because they’re his/their favorites. (“Trephination” and “Too Bad About the Fire,” for example, or virtually all of Blue, which they still like/rank higher than Down.)

There’s also a ton of great photos of the band, both at gigs and behind the scenes (the blood-splattered guitar of Duane Denison with no explanation raises a tantalizing array of questions), and loads of stories/additional context from non-band members, such as producers, writers, and fans. The ode to the first second of “Boilermaker” is one of my favorites — both because it’s spot on and because not many bands elicit this level of adulation. (I’m afraid to look, but highly doubt there are blog posts or articles about the intricacies of 21 Pilots songs.) Here’s a taste:

“The opening second of Liar is hands down the greatest opening second of any album ever recorded…Part of its charm is how hilariously self-defeating it is to put the climax of your album within its first second…if Liar were a splatter flick, it would start with the woodchipper scene.  It’s getting cold-cocked without even seeing the face of your attacker.  No matter what volume your stereo is at, it’s too loud…it’s like walking in mid bark…it’s opening the door to find the Jesus Lizard rehearsing (or worse) in your living room…[it’s] an abrupt jolt coming in midsentence, seeming to send the message, “Uh, the party’s already started, where the fuck have you been?'”

Next comes the tale of Tweedy, as remembered by Jeff himself, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back). Apparently Santa is one of the eight readers here, as she heard my wish and delivered this to me just after the holiday, and I’m glad he did because it’s a fast, enjoyable read.  Despite what you’d guess based on the tone of most of Tweedy’s music, he’s got a really good sense of humor (saying a signature on one of the pictures in The Loft had been “eradicated by the power of sad mid-tempo rock,” for example) and he’s often self-deprecating, which helps keep the mood light, even when he’s talking about pretty serious stuff — whether it’s the well-publicized breaks from the Jays — Jay Farrar from Uncle Tupelo and Jay Bennett from Wilco — or his equally well-publicized addiction to painkillers.  Tweedy seems intent on not glossing over things to make himself look good, owning up to elements that helped lead to those breaks and providing details that really drive home that first point (such as admitting he would steal painkillers from his dying mother-in-law when he was in the grips of his addiction).

It makes for a resonant, sympathetic read — from his childhood in Belleville, Illinois, a tiny town outside St Louis with “the longest Main Street in America,” where his dad worked for the train company (the town’s main employer) and his mom would put up posters for his early gigs (while also adorably taking money at the door) to the formative days of Uncle Tupelo, trading music with Farrar and his family, and the birth of Wilco in the wake of the former’s demise. Tweedy unsurprisingly knows how to tell a tale, and he walks us through a lot in the book’s ~300 pages — aside from the aforementioned episodes, he also details a lifelong insecurity and anxiety surrounding his music that seems surprising for someone of his undeniable skill.  (It also leads him to admit to something I’ve long suspected, his “trying…to find ways to undermine songs,” which seems like a form of self-defense now that you know where it’s coming from.) Both for what he’s gone through and how he chooses to portray it, Tweedy really endears himself to the reader and makes you connect to the music in new ways, now that you’re armed with additional context and detail.  Reiterates the suspicion that he’s a guy you’d like to hang out with for a couple hours — or at least I sure would… (if for no other reason because he knows about ridiculous things like this video, which he mentions in the intro as something guaranteed to make him smile, and it certainly worked for me. Be sure to stick around for the “solo” a little over a minute in…)

Last up comes the story of The Band as told by its drummer, the famed wild man Levon Helm, in This Wheel’s on Fire. It’s an equally vivid read, as one would expect with a narrator like Helm, taking you from the cotton farms of his youth in Arkansas to his formative years on the road with Ronnie Hawkins, which ultimately became the farm team for the future hall of famers. Both segments of his life feel like relics of a long-ago past — the sharecropping, segregation-era South and the birth of rock and roll — but Helm’s natural storytelling ability makes both crackle with detail.  Whether working the fields in the blistering heat, living in houses with no electricity or plumbing, or working the chitlins circuit, driving thousands of miles and playing hundreds of gigs, often for little or no pay, you can picture everything whether you believe it actually happened or not.  Which is not to imply Helm is embellishing, just that these eras seem so distant despite only being 60 or 70 years in the rearview mirror. (Another such example being his seeing Elvis play a show early on with no drummer because there was a law you couldn’t have one in a place that served liquor!)

Helm’s stories about life on the road during the birth of rock and roll are particularly incredible — playing four to five gigs a day, six to seven days a week, with a lead singer (Ronnie “The Hawk” Hawkins) doing backflips onstage and a piano player hitting the keys so hard the hammers would pop out like popcorn. Driving all over the South, playing torrid sets and getting in bar fights (and at least once blowing a place up for not paying them), before driving all the way to Canada to repeat the process. It sounded like barely contained bedlam — but man it also sounded like fun…

Through it all Helm’s country phrasings liven the proceedings, with lines like “so cheap he could squeeze a nickel hard enough to make the buffalo shit” or “stunned like a hog staring at a wristwatch” (or even calling harmonicas “harps”) giving everything a warmth and geniality as if you were sitting around the campfire listening to him tell stories.  Even when he gets to the Band era, which gets a lot more complicated and dark despite the fame and success, the stories are still engaging and give you insight into another key period in our history, the Vietnam/Woodstock era of the late 60s/early 70s.

Similar to Tweedy and Sims, Helm is refreshingly honest, talking candidly about the band’s output (essentially the Big Pink and its self-titled successor are the only two albums he rates highly) as well as its ultimate demise (he spares no sharpness for Robbie Robertson and his decision to pull the plug, in addition to causing their decline in the first place by taking almost all the songwriting credits).  It was surprising to hear how much he hated The Last Waltz, which I still think is pretty great, but based on the circumstances at the time (as well as what it sounds like got left out of the final product) makes sense in his telling.  It’s an entertaining read, whether you’re a devotee of the band’s music or not.

That’s it for now — hope you enjoy these.  I’ll see you once the ice hurricane lets up…

–BS

Walk Across the Welcome Mat: Many Happy Returns

We’re in strange new territory here — the government remains closed for longer than it ever has before, and I’m older and mangier than I’ve ever been before.  No coincidence those get commemorated on the same day — if ever there was a corollary to the constant disappointment, stupidity, and ineptitude in DC, it’s me. And so on this esteemed day in history I wanted to do my part to give fellow furloughers something to celebrate in the form of good music.

It’s been a pretty bountiful first couple weeks to the new year — maybe a positive sign this year is going to break from the bludgeoning slog of the past few? (I wouldn’t be Sunshine if I didn’t foolishly think so!) — and there are seven things worth flagging for folks so far.  First up comes a pair of singles from the Raconteurs’ return, Jack White’s first super side project featuring solo songman Brendan Benson and Jack Lawrence/Patrick Keeler from the Greenhornes. We haven’t seen the band for a decade, as White has spent his time recording crummy solo records and generally growing more cantankerous/crazy on his ranch outside Nashville.

Similar to another formerly-beloved frontman whose previously unimpeachable taste and talent has largely disappeared in recent years, Billy Corgan, White also seems to misunderstand what made him great.  I caught him last summer when he was touring his most recent material and ended up leaving early — “I used to have a girl drummer so if I have a girl drummer and play old songs people will think it’s amazing! I also used to rip off tight, glorious little guitar solos and people would lose their minds so if I do lots of them — and longer! — then that’s even BETTER!” Instead it was a pale, vainglorious reminder of past glory, like trying to fit into your high school clothes as if two or three decades hadn’t passed. As with Corgan it’s frustrating to see someone you enjoyed so much fall so short of that mark now.  Maybe this reunion is what White needs to get back on track, though, as the first two singles — “Sunday Driver” and “Now That You’re Gone” — are promising starts.  The latter has White tossing out bright little licks to balance Benson’s vocals while the former has White front and center, shouting lyrics into the mic atop a beefy guitar riff.  We’ll see how the rest turns out — the band always fell into the solid, not stellar category for me before, but I’ll take a little more solid and reliable these days.  See what you think:

Next comes the return of another act who ghosted the past decade, Seattle solo man David Bazan — better known as Pedro the Lion — who hasn’t shown up wearing that moniker since 2004.  Bazan is known for his warm voice and intimate lyrics, often about love/relationships, and his debut It’s Hard to Find a Friend remains a well-loved favorite. (Check out tracks like “Big Trucks,” “Bad Diary Days,” and “Of Minor Prophets and their Prostitute Wives” to see why.) Bazan’s spent the intervening years rattling off a string of solo albums (seven by my count), but decided to return to Pedro last year, playing a few shows to test the waters and ultimately recording a new album (the appropriately named Phoenix, which will be released next week — 18 Jan).  He’s released three singles so far — “Yellow Bike,” “Model Homes,” and my favorite, “Quietest Friend,” which is a lovely tune in line with those from his twenty-years-gone debut. Hopefully the rest of the return lives up to these.  Give the latter a listen here:

Up next comes the latest single from UK outfit UNKLE, which used to fuse hip hop and electronic elements in thrilling, unique fashion on its early outings (their 1998 debut Psyence Fiction remains a classic) before shifting to a more eclectic mix in recent years (2010’s Where Did the Night Fall landed at number nine on that year’s list). Their last album was a disappointment (2017’s The Road, Vol. 1, which was a down-tempo, overly theatrical slog), but the first cut from the upcoming album (The Road: Part II/Lost Highway, due out 29 Mar) sounds like a return to their early days.  Sporting an Al Green sample and a shuffling trip hop beat that’s tough to ignore, the song calls to mind fellow British legends Massive Attack in both mood and delivery.  (Which is almost never a bad thing…) The album looks like a long one with 16 songs on the track listing (minus tiny little interludes), so hopefully the remainder fall more in line with this one.  Check it out in the meantime here:

Last of the listens comes from Rob Sonic’s latest album, Defriender, which snuck in silently at the end of the year and almost went unnoticed — by everyone except my new bestie Numu, I should say, which is the unblinking eye of Sauron and SHALL not be defeated! (Seriously, everyone should download this app — it catches everything!) It’s his first since 2014’s outstanding double feature where he dropped his third solo album, Alice in Thunderdome, as well as the second chapter of his equally excellent partnership with Aesop Rock in Hail Mary Mallon, which dropped Bestiary. Unfortunately this one’s a letdown compared to those two — Sonic’s lyrics are still sharp as ever, but the beats are uncharacteristically weak this time around.  Except on this one, “Air D&D,” which is a vintage cut I’ve listened to a bunch.  Maybe the album will grow on me — in the meantime crank this one, which besides the throbbing Prodigy-style beat opens with the line I want to start most conversations with these days:

We’ll close with some worthwhile reading material, each a retrospective on a classic album or band that are worth revisiting.  First comes this article from Pitchfork on the Buzzcocks’ Singles Going Steady, which marked the end of the band’s brief reign and remains a much-loved classic. The article does a good job charting the band’s rise and its place in punk’s pantheon (as well as its importance overall) and it — like the album — is a good entree for the uninitiated.  I had the good fortune of catching these guys a few years ago at Riot Fest and it was a treat, as I was too young to catch them in their prime.  They still put on a good show all these years later, so pop this one on Spotify and give it a read.

Next comes a look back on the Flight of the Conchords — the THIRD thing on this list making a return after nearly a decade away (what’s next, my chronic acne and inability to talk to women?) — by the folks at Vice.  The duo recently popped up on Colbert with a new song (the characteristically funny “Father and Son”) and did a full reunion special in London late last year that’s showing on HBO and quite good.  The article recaps the band’s hey day, while also lamenting its departure (as paralleled in “The Bus Driver Song,” which he uses as a centerpiece for the conversation). It’s a good read and reminder of how funny these guys were — for me, I often think of the hair helmet and crack up and wish I could take attendance at meetings because of these guys. Definitely worth watching the special, too.

Last comes this retrospective from Rolling Stone on the Band, Dylan’s former backing band that became a full on force in its own right later on.  I quibble a bit with some of the rankings (whether Levon Helm hated it or not, The Last Waltz is an absolute gem and the best introduction to their songs), but it does a nice job giving some history and context for each of the albums (and the band’s often tumultuous state at the time).  Definitely a band worth knowing — songs like “Up on Cripple Creek” and “The Weight” are timeless, and “The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down” and “Ophelia” (among countless others) ain’t too bad either.  Give it a read — and definitely track down The Last Waltz if you’ve never seen it before. It’s an epic close to a band and an era.

Until next time, my friends… –BS

Groundhog Day and the Interminable Winter — The Best of 2018

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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jeff20tweedy_warm15. 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.

MI000442080314. 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…)

HopeDownsArt-1529346058-640x64013. 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.

61J3O91OozL._SS50012. 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.

a.211. 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.

young20fathers20_20cocoa20sugar_20album20cover10. 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.

51J2B2z2yZbL._SY355_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.

71ZiRPBeh2L._SY355_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.

1055067. 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.

Nation_of_Two_album6. 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.

Father20John20Misty20GodE28099s20Favorite20Customer5. 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).

1058464. 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.

Parquet20Courts_Wide20Awake3. 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.

51oRReFVchL._SS5002. 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.

DIGITAL_NRNS_5x5_600dpiRGB_8705e1cb-d9e4-47c2-b934-a5e160b08630_1024x10241. 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.

Warm Voices, Wu Brothers, and a Song About Antarctica

I’ve been holed up as part of the annual holiday hideout, stuffing my face with libations of all forms while working on the year end review (I’m sure the eight of you are fiending for it, but rest easy — I’ll post it in a week or two), but wanted to surface in the interim to highlight a couple catches I made in my cave. First is the latest single from fellow Chicagoan Jeff Tweedy’s new album, WARM, which dropped last week. I’m still working through the album (early indications are you might see it in a couple weeks), but there’s no point sitting on this one as it’s an instant winner. Bright melody, smart, slightly sad lyrics — another gem from Jeffrey. (And while you’re listening, give a look at the music he says helped make him who he is, courtesy of Pitchfork. Some interesting selections and insights, particularly his love of Missy and “The Message.”)

Next comes the first single from the upcoming Czarface album. Their last one, a pairing with fellow rap/comic hybrid MF Doom was a surprising disappointment, sort of the equivalent of bacon ice cream. (“I like both of these things separately — why are they not better together!?”) This one’s another collabo and finds the team adding another Wu member, however temporarily — that of Ghostface, one of the few Wu-bangers still rapping. (Meth, when will you ever come back???) Hopefully this one’s an indication of what’s to come, as it’s a return to some of the best stuff off the early Czar albums (and on point with the best turns off Ghost’s recent offerings). It’s a solid listen — give it a ride here:

Following that comes the latest from the ever-productive Bob Pollard and beloved Guided by Voices who released two EPs yesterday (part of the two others they plan to release, which I guess form together like Voltron to make up their first album of the year — one of two planned so far). As I recently wrote, some of the new stuff sounds really good (“Cohesive Scoops” and “My Future in Barcelona” among them), but this one wasn’t in the setlist the night I saw them. It’s another winner, though — hopefully the rest of the album keeps up the trend. Give it a listen here:

Shifting gears a little we’ve got the first single from the Chemical Brothers’ upcoming album, which will be the duo’s ninth. They’ve remained a steady force, albeit in the background compared to current electromonsters like Aoki, Skrillex, and others, but the material has been consistent throughout. Maybe not as irresistibly exhilarating as Dig Your Own Hole or their live album Brothers Gonna Work It Out (one of the all-time best DJ sets), but there have been moments like that amidst more nuanced, mature offerings. We’ll see what this one has in store for us — so far it’s got a solid song with an entertaining video to get us started. Check it out here:

Last up we’ve got a seasonally appropriate offering, a new Christmas song from the Minus Five, which pairs Death Cab frontman Ben Gibbard with a pretty winning song about spending the holiday in Antarctica. It’s even got a cute video with a penguin — what more could you want? So strap on your Santa hat and give it a listen — and I’ll see the eight of you in a few weeks with the vaunted year end list!

— BS

(What’s the Story) With Oasis, Neko, and Andrew Bird?

It being a long weekend and all, I figured I’d face the wrath of sixteen angry eyeballs if I didn’t post something for the faithful to consider, so here I am with a couple items to keep you busy on your day off tomorrow. First comes a really solid article off Stereogum on the 20th anniversary of Oasis’ B-side compilation The Masterplan. The article does a good job reminding everyone just how huge this band was in the early 90s, based largely on their enormous first two albums and their totemic “Wonderwall” and “Champagne Supernova,” which formed the soundtrack for proms and unrequited love mixtapes worldwide. (A part of me still listens for that slight drone and hushed guitar part every time I go to the beach, so deeply has that latter one been imprinted on my brain.) Aside from those albums, though, the band was also throwing out multiple B-sides that were as good or better than the main tracks — that line from the article about Oasis’ B-sides being better than most other bands’ greatest hits was a real argument back in the day, and it’s tough to dismiss when you hear songs like “Acquiesce,” “Talk Tonight,” and the title track.

Oasis in that span really was living that Midas moment where everything they did was huge — gigantic songs, iconic videos (back when those still mattered), sold out tours and festival slots to carpets of people as far as the eye could see. (Their live album — a double album naturally, as one could not contain all the hits — was titled Familiar to Millions and whether they were referring to the band itself or every word of their songs, both were applicable.) I remember seeing them back home on the Morning Glory tour and it’s still one of the loudest shows I’ve ever been at — Noel had a literal wall of amps probably 20′ high behind him in addition to the normal arena speakers and despite being in the nosebleeds my ears rang for over a week. The Masterplan was intended to capture all the moments outside those anthemic albums and it does a decent enough job, but for one-time diehards like me who remembers driving all around town to tracking down the import singles it misses some old favorites. Thankfully we’ve got the internet, so I’ve kindly collected those additions for you below — there’s simple beauties like “Sad Song” and “D’yer Wanna be a Spaceman,” as well as rockers like “Round Are Way” and “Step Out” and the soaring Beatles-like close of “Whatever.” Put with the best stuff on Masterplan it again boggles the mind — these were all B-sides, songs they felt weren’t good enough to land on the official albums! — which reinforces this paragraph’s initial point: this band was firing on all cylinders and was untouchable at this point, and would remain so for several years. That they faded some after that was inevitable, whether from the fame, the infamous infighting, or the sheer laws of the universe (what goes up MUST come down, after all…) but for this span they gave us an incredible number of huge songs. So dust off your aviators and pop the collar on your Croc polo to show off your puka shell necklace and take a trip back to a simpler time here:

Next we’ve got the latest single from the lovely Neko Case’s latest album, Hell-On, which has been a hit or miss affair for me so far. Similar to her last album, the underwhelming (at least in impact, but not title) The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You, Case’s lyrics occasionally veer towards the overly ornate or unnecessarily cryptic, which prevents her characteristically catching melodies and otherworldly voice from connecting the way they used to. Which is unfortunate because there are some winning moments on the album — the soaring conclusion to “Halls of Sarah,” the imagery of the line “sorry dyed my mouth gumball blue” from the song of the aforementioned color’s name, the beautiful pairing of Case’s voice with Mark Lanegan’s gruff baritone on “Curse of the I-5 Corridor.” (One of the album’s best.) Far too often those moments are buried by the aforementioned frustrations, though, and the effect is lost.

It’s not clear what’s driving the change — Case has always come across as a fierce warrior of a woman with a spirit as indomitable as that incredible voice, though her lyrics were slightly tinged by the sadness of heartbreak. Perhaps it was that glimmer of vulnerability that made her songs resonate so strongly, that juxtaposition of minor weakness with the ferocity of everything else around it. Now that it’s gone, either eliminated thanks to personal happiness or consciously buried behind the armor of cryptic lyrics as a defense mechanism, the songs often fall flat. They sound lovely enough in most cases — honestly, Case could sing that you’ve got terminal cancer and your entire family just died in a horrific bus crash and you’d probably still swoon — but the impact isn’t there like before.

This is a woman who could destroy you with a single line — think of tracks like “Star Witness,” or “That Teenage Feeling” that had several daggers thrown straight at your heart. Or “Magpie to the Morning” and “The Needle has Landed.” Or “I Wish I was the Moon” and “The Pharoahs.” Or “Maybe Sparrow” and “Vengeance is Sleeping.” Those and so many others were undeniable because of that glimmer of weakness (even when glimpsed amidst vows to harm/murder the transgressor) because you could identify with that feeling. You knew what Case was referring to and had been there before. Contrast that with recent songs about “oracles of the maritimes,” songs about God (he’s a “lusty tire fire” among other things), or songs about the last lion of England (aka Albion, because even the location we’re singing about must be obscured). It’s just not clear what Case is getting at anymore. It’s a bit like a crossword puzzle — you can figure out what the words are, but their greater meaning is missing — and that emotional vulnerability (or just the ability to connect emotionally) is sorely missed. See what you think, though, with the aforementioned track about the English lion — if nothing else it sports a pretty little video, so there’s that:

We’ll close with the latest single from fellow Chicagoan Andrew Bird, an off album track where he contrasts another characteristically lush, languid melody with lyrics comparing our combative political landscape to the Spanish civil war (which hopefully is mere hyperbole and not a true harbinger of things to come — I’m too pretty to be shot at). It’s a pretty listen, whether you agree with the sentiments or not — give it a whirl here:

Songs For Socks: A Three Hour Tour

In the spirit of the 18-inning marathon the other night between the Sox and hated Dodgers, as well as an equally epic recent show, I thought I’d drop in with a soundtrack for Socks to close out your weekends. The latter individual accompanied me to said show, the latest appearance of ever-prolific fave Guided by Voices, who amazingly played my favorite venue in town and dropped another near-three hour, fifty song fun bomb on the crowd. They sounded great as always — and who’s going to complain about getting nearly 180 minutes of music in a room as cozy as your living room? (assuming of course it’s not something dreadful like The Chainsmokers or Imagine Dragons) — but it wasn’t a home run like usual. The difference this time was in how they sequenced the show, opting to frontload a lot of new stuff at the top — including multiple songs from the THREE ALBUMS the band plans to release next year, let alone the two they’ve released in the past year — which kept the energy lower than normal as the crowd waited to hear something they recognized.

This isn’t a knock on the quality of the newer material — in particular songs like “My Future in Barcelona” and “Cohesive Scoops” sounded pretty great — it’s just that thanks to the relentless pace of the band’s releases, it’s virtually impossible to keep up and connect with everything they put out. Normally the band will sandwich new stuff between some old favorites, allowing the crowd to sing along to the songs they know while appreciating the unfamiliar in smaller doses. For whatever reason they changed things up that night, with frontman Bob Pollard (aka “Robert Fucking Pollard” as the shirt someone from the crowd gifted him said) kept telling the crowd it was going to be like a fireworks show where all the hits would come at the end (after also reminding folks several times the band HAD no “hits,” which outside of chart position and name recognition I would strongly disagree with).

That got me to thinking about Socks and other noobs in the crowd who might be seeing the band for the first time and missing what makes them so great. The value and technical skill shine through (because again — three hours, fifty-plus songs for guys who can rip when they want to is nothing to sneeze at), but burying the best stuff til the end might not make the best case. It’s sort of like showing up to a first date in cargo pants and ordering seltzer and a side salad (both things wifey did on ours) — you might be obscuring your best qualities and making the other person work a little harder to see them than you should in a first impression.

That’s where I come in — because I love this band so much and because I think it’s nearly impossible with someone as prolific as they are to not find SOMETHING you like in their holdings — I came up with what my setlist would be if I were king for a day. (Which I’m sure will happen any day now…) That way the Sockses of the world can get a better sense of what these guys can do and maybe fall for them like I did. (Just like I did my cargo-wearing wife.) Because these guys are really good — as I’ve written before, despite needing an editor from time to time (a position I will gladly fill if asked), they go from sounding like the Who and Kinks one minute to Stone Temple Pilots, Neutral Milk Hotel, and REM the next, all without sounding hackneyed or cliched. And with close to thirty albums and hundreds of songs under their belt — a quantity that would impress regardless of the commensurate quality (honestly, seeing them live and play songs called out from the crowd, I’m amazed they remember the music for so many songs, let alone Bobbo remembering all the words) — there’s a lot to like.

So give it a spin and see what you think. I treated it like a setlist and not a greatest hits list, and therefore folded in stuff from Bobbo’s side projects (mainly the Boston Spaceships), songs sung by other members of the group (vs just those by Uncle Bob), and some covers, and tried to capture a little bit of everything — the polished and the raw, the rippers and the retro, the new stuff and the classics. I kept it in line with a regular GBV show (ie the fifty-odd song, three hour range) and thus inevitably left a ton of great stuff out, but there should be more than enough here to pique your interest and show you a good time. Soft, loud, pretty, weird, I tossed em all in and tried to build to a crescendo, leaving you with your fist in the air and ready to take the day. (Just like I hope the Sox do tonight…) So Socks, here you go — THIS is Guided by Voices…

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We’ll close with a couple one offs from the past few weeks, just to keep the party going. First up is the latest single from Run the Jewels, who tossed a track out for the recent Venom movie, “Let’s Go (The Royal We).” Thankfully the song sounds better than the movie looks (despite the excellent Tom Hardy starring) and it finds Mike and El still in top form. Nothing new or crazy here, just hard hitting beats and lyrics from the pair as always. They’re allegedly in the midst of recording their fourth album, so hopefully we don’t have long to wait for more. In the meantime, give it a listen here:

Next we’ve got the product of another collaboration, this time mega-DJ Diplo, producer Labrinth, and pop star Sia, as the collective LSD. The trio released a mini-EP last month with three songs, one of which is the relentlessly catchy “Thunderclouds.” The other two tracks were a bit underwhelming to me, but this one is a hands-down winner, particularly the stuttering “HEY-EY-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo!” hooks that get lodged in my brain for hours every time I hear it. Pretty good time at the shopping mall — give it a spin and see how resistant you are:

Last up is the surprise reappearance of half the legendary Daft Punk, this being Frenchbot Thomas Bangalter who resurfaced with a short set masquerading as a single, “Riga (Take 5).” In line with the lengthy spirit of this post, it’s a 14-minute slow burn that, similar to the best stuff from his normal act, relentlessly builds towards an explosion. Recorded last year for the film of the same name (a small Latvian film apparently, so don’t beat yourself up for not having heard of it), Bangalter cut this in one take, which is pretty impressive and reminds you of how amazing their live sets were. (In contrast to a lot of the electro crap now, which is all pre-programmed, pre-recorded bullshit.) It sounds just like Daft and gets you moving just the same, which is never a bad thing. Hopefully there’s more to come (either from him or the duo) in the near future. See what you think here:

That’s it for now — until next time, amici…

–BS