Best Of 2019: Rock, Folk, Etc.

As the “rock is dead” or “whatever happened to rock & roll” discussion continues in seeming disregard for the actual health of the genre, it occurs to me that those making those statements and asking those questions might have a very limited definition of the music. That’s a nice way of saying that there are a lot of Kiss, Def Leppard, and Bon Jovi fans out there - and if they’re not finding what they need in new records, the fault may lie not in their rock stars but in themselves. I mean, I’m a Zeppelin fan, but I don’t need to listen to pale imitations like the regrettable Greta Van Fleet (remember them?) to get my fix. In any case, I found more than enough to get my pulse up, including albums that were in my Top 25 like Zam by Frankie & The Witch Finger (5/25), Devour You by Starcrawler (11/25), Satis Factory by Mattiel (13/25), Sombrou Duvida by Boogarins, or Commit Yourself Completely, the scorching live set from Car Seat Headrest. 

Then there were swaths of indie rock of a gentler nature throughout the Top 25, whether the world-beating songwriting of Ocean Music, Julia Jacklin, Tiny Ruins, and Hiss Golden Messenger, who held the first four spots, or Molly Sarlé, Angel Olsen, and Jane Church, who could be found further down. This year I even had a massive pop record from Billie Eilish, which had plenty of dark thoughts to fill the needs of goth-rockers looking for a spider bite. 

What you’ll find below is more of the same variety of flavors from these realms, all of it nearly as excellent as what I had on that main list. Believe me when I say that if this is your area of interest, your view of 2019 will not be complete without these records. 

As I did for my Classical list, albums I’ve already covered will be referenced with links to the original posts, while other albums and EP’s will be blurbed below. Press play here or below so you can listen while you read. 

First Quarter Report: The Albums

Michael Chapman - True North

Hand Habits - Placeholder

Cass McCombs - Tip Of The Sphere

Sunwatchers - Illegal Moves (they also put out a cracking live set)

Record Roundup: Poptones

Edwyn Collins - Badbea

Best Of 2019 (So Far)

Baroness - Gold & Gray

Crumb - Jinx

Record Roundup: Rock Formations

Jay Som - Anak Ko 

Tool - Fear Inoculum

Amyl & The Sniffers

Bon Iver - I,I

Ex Hex - It’s Real

Ocean Music - Fan Fiction For Planet Earth

Record Roundup: American Harvest

Tyler Ramsey - For The Morning

Elana Low - Loam

Andy Jenkins - The Garden Opens

Charles Rumback & Ryley Walker - Little Common Twist

John Calvin Abney - Safe Passage 

Courtney Hartman - Ready Reckoner

Jonathan Wilson - ‘69 Corvette

Molly Sarlé - Karaoke Angel

Daughter Of Swords - Dawnbreaker

Tate McClane - Jackpine Savage

Rebecca Turner - The New Wrong Way

Wilco - Ode To Joy

League of Legends

Leonard Cohen - Thanks For The Dance While there is a little of the too-neat phrase-turning that dampened my enthusiasm for some of his late-career albums (Popular Problems, for one), there are also many devastating and surprising lines (“I had a pussy in the kitchen and a panther in the yard”) to make this intimate completion a fitting capstone to Cohen’s career. Son Adam Cohen’s settings for these recitations are appropriately reverent, finding hidden chords in his dad’s speech. Cohen fans should feel a debt of gratitude to him (and guests like Beck) for bringing this to fruition. 

Hunt Sales Memorial - Get Your Shit Together Everyone who has heard Lust For Life or actually listened to Tin Machine knows that Sales is one of the greatest drummers alive. In his amusingly-named solo project he puts his devastating swing beneath some brick-hard rock and then sings over it all in a gruff and strangled voice that is an encyclopedia of hard living. While it may occasionally occur to you to wonder if he should be singing at all, you'll probably be singing along - or laughing too hard to care. 

Patrick Watson - Wave Watson has been flying progressively under my radar since the heights of Wooden Arms (#2 of 10 in 2009) and Adventures In Your Own Backyard (#14 of 20 in 2012), but, then again, this is his first album in four years after the disappointing Love Songs For Robots. He is nearly in full contact with his muse on this gorgeous collection, however, and even throws in a few new tricks of an almost cinematic nature. This is songwriting of great depth, realized by production that combines organic and synthetic sounds to intoxicating effect. Welcome back.

Folk-ish

Mega Bog - Dolphine Erin Birgy gives us more than enough sublime folk-rock (with touches of bossa nova and yé yé) to make it easy to overlook the random weird bits. Save the pieces, as TV Guide used to say - and they are marvelous pieces. 

Rachael Dadd - Flux Offers some of the same incantatory pleasures as This Is The Kit (their singer, Kate Stables, is a collaborator) though Dadd's take on Brit-folk is slightly more oblique. The arrangements, including horns, are often surprising but quickly make perfect sense. Listen and let the pieces come together in your head.

Nev Cottee - River's Edge His last album, Broken Flowers, was one of the delights of 2017, landing at #12 on my Top 25, so expectations were high for this one. While he uses many of the same elements - his gravelly voice, the enervated tempos, a quilt of starlit guitars - somehow the sum total just misses the heights of Broken Flowers. It could come down to the songs, which have less dynamic tension, making the album almost an ambient experience. But, still, Cottee is one of a kind and a presence I value greatly.

Post-Punky

UV-TV - Happy Post-punk power pop worthy of both storied traditions and a mite bit more gloss compared to their 2017 debut has in no way dampened the energy of this trio. Now that they’ve relocated to Brooklyn, I’m looking forward to catching them in concert. 

Bodega - Shiny New Model While their wry critique of late capitalism is still in evidence, this EP adds some sugar to Bodega’s tart no wave blend. Plenty of fun and kind of thrilling when they flex their pop muscles. 

Dry Cleaning - Sweet Princess & Boundary Road Snacks and Drinks Florence Shaw's talk-singing (OK, it's more like talking) slots this UK group into an area alongside Young Marble Giants, The Raincoats, The Slits, and the like, which is one of my favorite areas. And that what she's talking about ("...a mixture of inner monologue, YouTube comments describing memories of songs, and phrases collected from adverts on TV," as Shaw put it in an interview) over the sturdy sturm-und-jangle of the band is so resolutely of this moment only makes these EP's more fun. Catch them at their first U.S. date at Saint Vitus on March 6th.

Stargazer Lilies - Occabot I spotted these masters of monolithic and hazy shoe-gaze on tour dates with  Pale Dian (who I saw open for Cheatahs in Austin and I think my ears are still ringing). Working with Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow has added melodic focus and further studio manipulation to their sound, making the musical visions of Kim Field and John Cep even more lethally compelling. This is their fourth album but feel free to start here if you're unfamiliar. And bring your earplugs to Saint Vitus on April 22 - or a venue near you.

Versing - 10000 This two-guitars-bass-and-drums band from Seattle has only improved since I saw them open for The Courtneys a couple of years ago. Tighter songwriting, more interest in the guitar interplay, and an uptick in the passion quotient means that maybe the next time I see them they'll be headlining and the crowd will leap to their feet like we did when Silver Velvet started up.

W.H. Lung - Incidental Music Opening their debut album with Simpatico People, a 10-minute journey of blissful motorik rhythms, pulsing synth, and guitar arpeggios is a bold statement of purpose for this trio from Manchester (of course they're from Manchester!). But that the rest of the album lives up to that overture makes me think there's a bright future ahead for them.

Historian - Hour Hand and Spiral Again Chris Karman put out two albums as Historian in 2019 and has already followed them up with Distractions, which came out in January. So dive in! There are many ruminative rewards to be found in his atmospheric chamber pop, which has only grown more assured since his first album, Shelf Life, from 2013. Spiral Again is a little stripped down for him (fewer strings), but he still manages to build up clouds of sound with what he has on hand, making either one of these a fine point of entry into his world.

L'Epee - Diabolique I was not aware that Emmanuelle Seigner - actress, wife of Roman Polanski - had a sideline in singing. And if you had told me so, I might have dismissed it out of hand. But this collaboration with Anton Newcombe (Brian Jonestown Massacre) and The Limiñanas is completely convincing. Seigner's dark-hued vocals combine perfectly with the driving, hypnotic rock cooked up by her bandmates and there's a bit of kicky sixties revivalism that never gets slavish. Could be a one-off, but either way it works!

Drone Shots

75 Dollar Bill - I Was Real Call me a curmudgeon, but this is the record I’ve been waiting for from these guys since first reading a description of them in an Other Music email. And you know that was a while ago, so I can be a very patient curmudgeon. By both expanding and deepening their drone jams, Rick Brown (percussion) and Che Chen (guitars) have made the Brooklyn via Sahara soundtrack for the next time I have to hike from Pioneer Works back to civilization - or mass transit, at least! Preferably that will happen after seeing them on stage. 

Earth - Full Upon Her Burning Lips Stripping down to drummer Adrienne Davies and guitarist Dylan Carlson has given Earth a way out of the cul de sac they found themselves in after their last album, which was heavy with guest vocalists. Carlson’s riffs are still monolithic but they’re also more organic, with a prairie wind blowing through the spaces between the notes. Davies has plenty of air and nuance in her drum patterns, too, while still remaining absolutely implacable. One of their best yet. 

Sunn O))) - Life Metal While I don’t think they’ll ever top Soused, their collaboration with the late, great Scott Walker, part of what impresses here is their exquisite control over tone and impact. It’s almost a dictionary of malevolent guitar noises, with a few added bonuses, like the vocals and cello of Oscar-winning Icelandic composer Hildur Guōnadódottir, and supported by bass, synth, and pipe organ.The only thing that would make it better (besides Scott Walker) is a searchable index so you could instantly find the snarl, feedback or power chord you need. 

Psych-Out

Levitation Room - Headspace The difference in this aptly-named L.A. quintet's take on psychedelia lies in their light touch. There's plenty of guitar fireworks, but there's still a crisp elegance to everything they do. Pushing their sound and style into songwriting of a more striking originality is the turn of a key keeping them from greatness. The packaging from Greenway Records is exceptional, even by their usual standards - grab a die-cut copy while you still can!. 

Poptones 

Clairo - Immunity While not nearly as fascinating as Billie Eilish, neither did this bedroom pop singer go the full Jack Antonoff route like Lorde - and thank god! Her simplicity and faux-naive approach maintains most of the charm it had when she was just posting from her iPhone onto YouTube. Not every song is a killer, but enough are to make you think she can go further.

The Drums - Brutalism “I know some good luck/And a good fuck/A nice glass of wine/And some quality time/Is gonna make you mine/(But it's not what I'm trying to find)” - imagine those transparent lines sung in a sunny tenor to an indelible melody over bright electro-pop and you’ll get a good idea of what Jonny Pierce is up to here. The fact that he keeps it up song after song is something of a marvel.

Faye Webster - Atlanta Millionaires Club Ultra-modern countrypolitan stylings from a young woman who could be Natalie Prass's little sister. Then she veers into woozy R&B on Flowers, throwing in a guest verse from Father and reminding you that she really is from the dirty south, not just name-checking it in the album title. If her next album went even further in that direction, you would hear no complaints from me - although Prass might start looking over her shoulder.

100 Gecs - 1000 Gecs Cut up random notification sounds from your phone, loop them, sprinkle with some Raymond Scott fairy dust and beats from hip hop and digital hardcore, then .zip to them your friend. Have her auto-tune the heck out of her voice and sing and rap in ways that ride the line of catchy and annoying. Master for streaming services and ta da, you're Dylan Brady and Laura Les. This is pop, as XTC once declared, and so it is. It remains to be seen, however, if they can remain interesting longer than Sleigh Bells did.

Beck - Hyperspace As a venture into pop territory, this is often much more successful than Colors, his previous album. But it also barely recovers from the Beck-lite of Saw Lightning and the Mellencampian idiocy of Die Waiting. But keep listening, because the last track is one of the best things he's ever done. His vocal performance alone on Everlasting Nothing is astounding, but it's the lyrics that stick the knife in more than once. In honor of that achievement, I'll let him have the last word on 2019: "And I washed up on the shoreline/Everyone was waiting there for me/Like a standing ovation for the funeral of the sun/In the everlasting nothing."

P.S. There's more goodness from 2019 to be found here and to make sure you don't miss the gems of 2020, follow this playlist.

You may also enjoy:
Best Of 2018: Rock, Folk, Etc.
Best Of 2017: Rock, Folk, Etc.
Best Of 2016: Rock, Folk, Etc.
Best Of 15: Singles & EP's
Best Of The Rest Of 14: Old Favorites, New Sounds

Leonard Cohen

"There is a crack, a crack in everything/That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen, Anthem

"I know you're really great," a Columbia Records exec once said to Leonard Cohen, "but are you any good?" The answer, thank god, was no. Cohen was no good at being a cog in the pop music machinery that keeps the music business humming. He was no good at toeing the folk music line, moving further and further away from being a guitar-toting troubadour into his own chilly blend of synth-noir-gospel-muzak. In fact, the transition from Various Positions, the 1984 album that contains the original recording of Hallelujah, to 1992's The Future (via I'm Your Man, 1988), is a quieter but even more startling musical transformation than when Bob Dylan went electric.

I think it may have been Various Positions that caused that uncomfortable conversation with his label boss in the first place. Perhaps it was at that same meeting that Cohen was informed that Columbia was done releasing his albums in the U.S., putting out the album on Portrait, a subsidiary label, and only in Canada. How ironic that the album containing one of Cohen's most covered songs wasn't deemed fit for wide release. I guess those head honchos were not yet aware of the "long tail" - and it's a good thing John Cale buys import records!

The Columbia guy was right about one thing: Cohen was great, one of the greatest poets to grace the world of music. There are endless lines to quote, from love songs to apocalyptic prophecies, words to puzzle over, and words to take to heart. How lucky that he could also come up with melodies, or find the right collaborators to create them, to hang his brilliant words on, and could deliver them in a voice that, post-Dylan, seemed at first rather sweet and which was always persuasive. The fact that he even tried is down to Dylan, whose example led Cohen to come back from his never-ending Greek vacation to see if there was a place for him on the folk scene.

The story I heard had him coming to New York with a sheaf of songs, hoping to get Peter, Paul & Mary or someone like that to record them. He showed up in Judy Collins's living room and tentatively strummed a few chords and sang Suzanne and one or two others. She was immediately taken with the man and the songs, recording Suzanne and Dress Rehearsal Rag in 1966 and putting Cohen on the map as a songwriter. The next year, Collins literally pushed Cohen back on stage, launching him as a performer. We owe her a lot for being his champion, which really only worked because her engagement with his work was so sincere. "His songs carried me through dark years," Collins wrote in her autobiography, "like mantras or stones that you hold in your hand while the sun rises or the fire burns." I can relate. "It's Father's Day and everybody's wounded" - just one line that has helped me as much as therapy. Thank you for finally saying it!

Now that Cohen is gone, dead on November 10th at the age of 82, we can see his career as a whole in all it's beautiful idiosyncrasy, marveling at the perfect capstone of his last album, You Want It Darker, which came out just weeks ago. Brilliantly produced by Cohen's son Adam, there's a pitch black slinkiness married to European and American melodic tropes (with a dash of the Synagogue on the title track) that ties up many of Cohen's virtues in a fascinating package. Speaking of packages (Cohen liked his puns), one of his virtues was his carnality, his recognition of the body - a burden and a blessing - and the leavening that lust can bring to love. The biggest clue to me that the new album might be his last were these lines in Leaving The Table: "I don't need a lover, no, no/The wretched beast is tame/I don't need a lover/So blow out the flame."

He was already singing about Suzanne's "perfect body" back in 1967, his continental sophistication making the open sexuality seem suave rather than just the fantasies of another horndog. He was like your perpetually cool older brother, a man of the world who had seen it all and done it all before you even realized it could be seen and done - and always with style, grace, compassion, and seamless craftsmanship. He was also generous, giving the many musicians on stage with him their due in charming introductions and solo spots. One of his most magnanimous acts was allowing the singer Anjani Thomas (who accompanied him on several albums, including The Future and Dear Heather) to rifle through his old notebooks and create songs based on the lyrics she found there. The result, an album called Blue Alert, is one of my favorite products of Cohen's career, and one that is criminally underrated.

On a remarkable live recording of the two of them in concert in Poland in 2007, Cohen makes a lengthy introduction, which concludes: "These are songs that Anjani and I wrote about the little places, about the little loves, about the little corners." Here's to all the little things that loom so large because they matter so deeply to each of us. Cohen was one of the few that recognized them as worthy of being the subject of poetry and song, inscribing them in our hearts and in the firmament forever. Above all, here's to Leonard Cohen's indomitable humanity, a quality I fear we shall miss with a sharper sting over the next four years.

Rather than try to outsmart the master, I'll show my gratitude with a few words from the last song on Blue Alert:

"Thanks for the dance

It's been hell, it's been swell

It's been fun

Thanks for all the dances

One two three, one two three one"

Here's a quick playlist of some of my Leonard Cohen essentials - subject to further refinement, because he deserves no less:

Best Of The Rest Of 14: Old Favorites, New Sounds

At the beginning of every year I start a Spotify playlist called Of Note In [insert year] which is my place to dump interesting sounding tracks, whether its  things I read about, songs people recommend, or new releases from artist I follow. If it's not on Spotify I have to work a little harder to keep track but I have other ways. If you use Spotify and want to keep up with most of what I'm listening to, you can follow the playlist and then you will get a little notification whenever I add something to the list. That way you can avoid that "Wow, I could've had a V8!" moment when I start posting my best of lists. Get a leg up and start following Of Note In 2015 now.

Having done the heavy lifting of the Top 20, now it's time to draw attention the other things that got me going over the last (nearly) 12 months. First up: new records from some familiar faces.

Old Favorites, New Sounds: 

While I loved the last two albums by The Strokes, I thought Casablancas' first solo album was awful. Phrazes For The Young seemed to play to every one of his weaknesses, with out of tune singing, stilted melodies and a cheap sound. Tyranny by Julian Casablancas + The Voidz is a different beast altogether, and it is a beast, with a sound that bolts blistering guitars to boxy electronics and features what seem almost like random noises that drop in and out, in a strange approximation of dub techniques. Casablancas distorts his voice more than ever, which is ironic considering Tyranny is supposed to be a concept album about wealth inequality and an overbearing security state (I think). I can tell that he thinks what he's singing about is really important, and for some reason that's enough for me. Also, there is an almost operatic sweep that comes through, especially on the nearly 11 minute Human Sadness, which makes for exciting listening. The ambition Casablancas brings to Tyranny is almost overwhelming, with through-composed song structures, deep layering in the production, and a slight sense of mania. I didn't know he had this in him, which is a rare thing to say about an artist I'm so familiar with. While it would make me sad if there were never another Strokes album, Tyranny makes me wonder if Casablancas has actually outgrown them. There's no end to where he goes from here.

When Lucinda Williams is in her sweet spot, it's almost always good, and much of her first double album, Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone, is very good, if not quite at the level of her last album, Blessed. But West Memphis is one of her greatest songs ever, with Tony Joe White adding extra swampiness to possibly the grooviest song about injustice since Dylan's Hurricane. 

EMA's The Future's Void had much that fascinated but it was not quite the major statement I had hoped for. Still, nobody does quite what she does so I was glad for a follow-up to the shattering Past Life Martyred Saints, one of the great records of the century. Even quirkier, The Pink Caves, the second album from German-American band Fenster found them hoeing their fragile little row with more great songs and homemade sounds, and indie stalwarts Cibo Matto returned with Hotel Valentine, their most entertaining album since Viva La Woman. 

Almost Like The Blues is now in the pantheon of great Leonard Cohen songs, no matter if the album, Popular Problems, didn't entirely live up to its promise. Now 80, Cohen has certainly been more productive of late than Aphex Twin, who took 13 years off before releasing Syro. Expectations ran high, naturally, and while it was a very good album, with some of his jammiest tracks yet, it wasn't the roadmap to the future that he used to provide. Speaking of elder states-people, do yourself a favor and listen to the first five songs on Marianne Faithfull's Give My Love To London. If the rest of it had kicked that much ass, it might have been in my Top 20.

Brian Eno celebrated his new bromance with Underworld's Karl Hyde by putting out not one but two fine albums, Someday World and High Life. The first found the two finishing some of Eno's old pop songs in the vein of Wrong Way Up, Eno's 1990 collaboration with John Cale, and the second was filled with expansive yet incisive jams that announced Hyde as an afro-beat inspired guitar magus. Parquet Courts also put out two scrappy, fun records but might want to contemplate bringing a little more focus to their thing next time. Of the two, Sunbathing Animal had more staying power with me than Content Nausea.

Coming next: Hip Hop.

7 From 12

The mist of the new year is starting to clear and some of the records that will define 2012's soundscape have emerged to take over my eardrums. Here are seven that have been exciting me of late.

Breton - Blanket Rule EP I have been burning with anticipation for their first full-length since it was announced last year so this free EP came as a nice surprise to bank the flames. But this is no odds and sods collection - the four new tracks are finely-wrought and fascinating, featuring layers of gritty sonics. Among other signs of increasing mastery, singer Roman Rappak displays a new sensitivity on How Can They Tell, which evokes feelings of confusion, betrayal and sorrow over a slippery background. While you can download Blanket Rule from Soundcloud, this is a band that takes their physical product seriously so I highly recommend getting the exclusive CD from FNAC, which features an excellent bonus track called Not Gospel, which you won't find anywhere else. BIG IMPORTANT NOTE: Breton are making their NYC debut at Mercury Lounge on Wednesday, March 21. There are still a few tickets available and all it takes is $10 for the privilege of saying you were there when.

Field Music - Plumb The Brewis brothers have cooked up another collection of intricate and witty pop to follow up their magnum opus, Measure, which was my number three album of 2010. Considerably shorter than that double album and filled with often very short songs Plumb has the flavor of a suite. It's tough to imagine them not performing the 35 minutes of music in one continuous burst. It's amazing the level of detail they shoehorn into 1:53 and I have the feeling I will be discovering new nooks and crannies for a long time. I was also impressed with their cover of Leonard Cohen's Suzanne for a Mojo compilation. It seems there is even more range to these guys than I thought!

Brooklyn Rider - Seven Steps This string quartet has a well-deserved rep for a wide-ranging repertoire and excellent, passionate playing and their new album does not disappoint. It opens with the title track, a group composition(!) that explores the many ways that long lines can be combined with skittering and plucked sounds to create various moods. Christopher Tignor's threnodic Into This Unknowable Night follows almost with a sense of relief from the sturm und drang but soon becomes unsettling. The composer' samples, percussion and AM radio add texture and detail to the drawn out chords. With their expansive view of music I suppose a trip to the 19th century shouldn't come as a surprise (and they have performed Mozart brilliantly in concert), yet it is still notable that more than half the album is taken up with Beethoven's 14th String Quartet in C# Minor (Opus 131). The more you listen, however, the more it makes sense. This confounding work, published a year before Beethoven died, opens with an amorphous, miasmic movement that was part of the inspiration for the music in Scanners, the David Cronenberg 1981 creep-fest and it is full of frissons. The combination of short and long movements, shifting keys and unexpected variations has me shaking my head thoughout the work's seven movements each time I listen. Brooklyn Rider tackle the demanding piece "guided by the spirit of free play rather than the heavy weight of the auteur's pen," so in a way this is just another performance of a canonical work. But the context is unique and when you circle back to the start of the record, the quartet's commitment to communicating the perpetual freshness of great music becomes blindingly apparent.

Sleigh Bells - Reign Of Terror There may be more noise around this band than there is on their records so I'm not going to add to it at any length. Suffice it to say that if you liked their debut, you will likely find this almost equally diverting. Guitarist/producer Derek Miller and Singer Alexis Krauss give us some more of what we want (cartoonish guitars, distortion, programmed beats, breathy vocals and distortion) while pushing into some new, more emotionally reverberant areas. The key track for me is You Lost Me with its weeping glissando guitars. While the verses are pure teen noir, the chorus of "I don't want you to see me this way/But I'm ready to die" seems to reflect Miller's mother's recent battle with cancer. And as someone who has watched three people very close to me die of the disease, this certainly struck a chord with me.

Hospitality - Hospitality This debut record (besides an EP in 2009) is as warm and welcoming as the band's name, and as expertly put together as something by label-mates Spoon. The lyrics are easily relatable and Amber Papini sings then with a few different voices - pixieish, wry, confessional. It's like a night out with someone you haven't seen for a while but are so glad to have in your life again. The more you listen, the more details you notice in the arrangements. It goes down easy but there are rougher edges lurking underneath the chiming guitars. They betray their inexperience only in the slight overuse of a few tricks, like adding a beat to the bar to emphasize the words ("Don't-You-Know"), something they do on three songs. But this short and sweet album introduces a delightful new group to the world we call Indie.

Leonard Cohen - Old Ideas Look up "elegiac" in a dictionary and you won't be far from the overall mood of this collection, but there's more variety here than you might notice at first. From the sly blues of Darkness to the gospel shadings of Show Me The Place and the folk basis of everything, this is the most "Americana" record he's put out since 1984's Various Positions. The lyrics, of course, are deep, witty, and endlessly quotable. If you're new to Cohen, this is maybe not the best place to start - but start! I envy you your journey.

Prodigy - HNIC Part 3 Speaking of endlessly quotable, how's this from Look In My Life MSTR: "The fire in my heart could burn up the planet/The plans in my head are putting me on a hammock/In the Canary Islands, with my canary diamonds"? This free mixtape is neither a career defining masterpiece like the first in the series nor a solid placeholder like the second, but more of a sketchpad, although one with a few thrilling moments and no real weak spots. One of the high points for me is simply titled ex and features an energized P spitting flames over the sparsest of beats. Download it for free and get the rush for yourself. Keep in mind that this is just the warm up for the official H.N.I.C. 3 release, which is imminent.

 

 

2009 Wrap Up: Highs, Lows, Reissues & Buried Treasures

Highlights: Leonard Cohen at Radio City (at last!); Grace Jones at Hammerstein (give Hurricane, her latest, a try - it's magnificent); dancing to Michael Jackson at every party (why did we ever stop? Did we get enough?); watching Stephen Stills rip it at the Hall Of Fame concerts on HBO (go to 2:09 in the clip); Lou Reed/Metallica was cool, too; discovering DJ/Rupture's Mudd Up podcast; taking my daughter and nephew to Girl Crazy at City Center (can't have too much Gershwin); DJ'ing New Year's Eve again; and my 120 gig iPod.


Lowlights: Death of Michael Jackson (more on him another time) and so many other valuable musicians; playing requests at my New Year's Eve DJ gig (if you ain't going to dance to it, don't ask for it!); getting a targeted marketing email from Amazon trying to sell me the new album from self-justifying woman-hitter Chris Brown (this was related to my buying history how?); and yet another year with no new music from Portuguese genius Gecko Turner.

Reissues: This year was dominated by that four-headed elephant in the room: The Beatles remasters. And rightly so - whether you swing stereo or mono, this was a necessary upgrade, if even only for the packaging. The biggest surprise for me was Magical Mystery Tour. Finally, all the takes George Martin mashed-up to create the final masters blend beautifully on Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane and the rest sounds terrific, too. Chuck out those clunky jewel-cases with those indifferent CD's and get this behemoth now.


However, there were other reissues of note: The Who Sell Out and Tito Puente's Dance Mania got well-deserved deluxe editions. The Who's fake radio station shows the contrast between British rock and the culture it was blowing up. It's outrageous, polished, profound, hilarious, and it rocks. Tito was simply el rey of mambo and this album (and it's successor, included here) sealed his rep. The production gleams and displays all the interlocking parts of his amazing band like an exposed V12 engine. A pinnacle of Latin music and music in general.


Buried Treasures: While the resurgence of Rodriguez continued to amaze (check out his Daytrotter session), it was undiscovered wonders from Death and Tim Buckley that forced 2009 listeners to reassess some piece of the past. 


For The Whole World To See, Death's lone recording, is a six song blast of proto-punk, with an almost proggy expansiveness to songs like "Politicians In Their Eyes." Aside from a misguided drum interlude (I hesitate to call it a solo), this record is fresher than many sounds recorded today. But in 1974, these three African-American brothers from Detroit had their fingers on a pulse only they could feel. Keep an eye out for the film of their startling story. 


Live at the Folklore Center, March 6th, 1967 finds Tim Buckley pouring his heart out to a crowd of 35 enthusiastic fans. Sometimes compared to Nick Drake, Buckley typically burns at a much higher intensity and this stunning performance is no exception. His high tenor is lush and impassioned and his guitar playing is deft - in short, he's at the top of his game. Did I mention there are six (six!) Buckley songs that appeared nowhere else? Whether you're an old fan or a curious newcomer, this is essential listening. Thanks to Izzy Young and the Buckley estate for giving this collection a long overdue airing. 


In two weeks: Enough of 2009. A review of Spoon's latest serving, Transference.