Record Roundup: 22 for 22 (Part 1)

There's no single reason why it took me so long to complete my "Best Of 2021" series, just life - in all its stress, strife, wonder, and joy. But all throughout everything that was going on and while I was doing my darnedest to put some shape to the music of last year, I was listening - passionately - to music from this year. And there has been plenty of brilliant stuff, more than enough to fill a dozen roundups. In order to keep myself (and you) from getting overwhelmed, I'm starting off with 22 albums across all genres, split in two parts. Future posts will drill down further into each genre. 

Find songs from most of these albums (some are only on Bandcamp) and follow along with my 2022 listening in these playlists:

Of Note In 2022

Of Note In 2022 (Classical)

Of Note In 2022 (Electronic)

Of Note In 2022 (Hip Hop, R&B & Reggae)

Of Note In 2022 (Jazz, Latin & Global)

Of Note In 2022 (Rock, Folk, Etc.)

Of Note In 2022 (Out Of The Past)

Classical

Laura Cocks - Field Anatomies It's only fitting that an album of "blisteringly physical works for flutes" comes in an exquisite package, hand-collaged with dried flowers and decorated with beeswax. The beauteous outside, however, belies the often fierce sounds inside, as Cocks (known for their work with the ever-questing Tak Ensemble), goes toe to toe with some very extreme conceptions of what can be done with a flute, breath, the body, electronics - and some even less expected sources of sound. Bethany Younge's Oxygen And Reality, for example, was composed for piccolo, electronics, balloons, and hardware, and includes at least as much rhythmic breathing as anything else. It also features Cocks in seeming conversation with theirself, as half-heard spoken sentences cross the soundscape. That's the second track; the first is David Bird's Atolls for solo piccolo and 29 spatialized piccolos, which kicks things off with what sounds like someone taking oxygen from the flute before eventually exploding in dazzling swirls of gleaming sound. 

Jessie Cox, whose work was recently heard on the excellent Wavefield Ensemble album Concrete And Void, contributes Spiritus for solo flute, which alternates meditative tones with busy flurries of melody. "Contributes" is the wrong word, however, as the collaboration between composer and performer is as deep as it gets on Field Anatomies, beautifully detailed in the conversations on episode 22 of the Tak Editions podcast. The two other pieces are You'll See Me Return To The City Of Fury for glissando flute and electronics by DM R (Diana Marcela Rodriguez), both jarring and space-age sleek, and Produktionsmittel I for amplified flute, aluminum foil, glass bottle, and fixed media by Joan Arnau Pàmies, frantic and animalistic even when its just the sound of crinkling foil. All of these works are fully formed and as rewarding as they are demanding. Field Anatomies is a remarkable piece of art, which will cause emotion and inspiration to sprout faster than the packet of seeds that comes with the special edition CD.  Act fast, in any case: only five copies remain.

Weston Olencki - Old Time Music The Tak Editions podcast also gave me the opportunity to focus on the mind of Olencki, which was perfect (though not required) prep for their music, as represented by this monster of a tape from Tripticks. The three works here astound in their invention, conceptual gravitas, and sheer listenability. Wittily titled Tenor Madness, the opener puts sax player Anna Webber through more changes than a dozen fake books as she interacts with some very messed up electronics derived from  short extracts of over 300 albums spanning recordings of the (improvising) tenor saxophone from 1939 to the present. And that should give YOU an idea of how Olencki's mind works! A Vine That Grew Over The City And No One Noticed is a four-part work for "two electro-mechanically controlled banjos, homemade magnetic resonators, solenoid motors, AM radio transmitters, vintage transistor and tube radios, railroad spikes, mason jars, carriage bolts, South Carolina red clay distortion unit, 60Hz ground hum, field recordings, and neural net re-synthesis of seminal old-time repertoire and Markov-driven Scruggs-style banjo picking." I swear I hear a snippet of John Lennon's Well Well Well in there, too...but for all that it's compulsively listenable, a drone that sounds as old as Appalachia and as new as the Boeing Starliner that just connected to the International Space Station. The last piece, Charon Guiding The Weary 'Cross The Long River (Or, How To Care For A Dying Instrument), is comprised of a similarly baffling array of source material, including "hydrophonic recordings made of the Connecticut River transduced through found slate roofing tiles," and would probably give the titular hell-bound oarsman a chill up his demonic spine.  Kudos to Olencki for putting as much thought into how the end products sound as he did into making them. Drastically original and staggering stuff.

Christopher Trapani - Horizontal Drift On the title track of Trapani's latest portrait album, Dan Lippel plays a quarter-tone guitar through software of the composer's own design called LoopSculptor. The piece incorporates tropes from Delta blues and other genres native to Trapani's hometown of New Orleans, resulting in a 10-minute trip through museum of hazy half-memories. The title seems to do double duty, referring both to American expansion and the interactions of various loops across the software's grid layout. The unusual instrument, the engineer's approach to sound, and the emotionally resonant results are paradigmatic of the whole album, which opens with Targul, a piece for vioara cu goarna, a horn-enhanced instrument similar to a Stroh violin. Played with seemingly casual mastery by Maximilian Haft, the sound is not unlike a gramophone, with a sharp, tinny edge that blends perfectly with the sketchy, truncated phrases of the music. Haft also finds himself in a sort of duet/competition with electronics played through megaphones, adding immersive depth to the attenuated sounds. Trapani also puts new-music piano maven Marilyn Nonken through her paces in Lost Time Triptych, a piece for scordatura-tuned instrument that manages to be inspired by both Gerard Grisey and Bob Dylan. The other works, including Linear A, for microtonal clarinet (Amy Advocat) and electronics, Forty-Nine, Forty-Nine, for a MIDI-controlled equal-tempered Fokker organ, and Tesserae, for viola d’amore (Marco Fusi) grab the attention as well. Trapani continues to prove himself to be smart, playful, and fearless explorer on this triumphant collection.

Pathos Trio - When Dark Sounds Collide The first thing that struck me upon listening to this was how richly it was recorded, with the percussion of  Felix Reyes and Marcelina Suchocka fairly leaping out of my speakers and taking up space in my living room like blow-up furniture. The piece, Evan Chapman's Fiction Of Light, begins with Alan Hankers delicate (and delicately enhanced) piano, which only gives the drums more presence. Two-thirds of the way in, things get glitchy and pulsating and we're in the realm of a Radiohead remix. The group's versatility is further proven by Alison Yun-Fei Jiang's Prayer Variations, which includes some very subtle work from Reyes and Suchocka, letting Hankers takes center stage, before they drop the "boom." It's a dynamic and satisfying piece, as are works by Alyssa Weinberg and Finola Merivale. Hankers' own Distance Between Places ends the album on a brooding note. Each work was commissioned by Pathos and has an accompanying video by Four/Ten Media (Chapman is a co-founder), lending even more of a sense of occasion to this excellent debut.

Eric Nathan - Missing Words I got a great sense of kissenkühlelabsal from Whitacre Hill's horn in the first part of Missing Words, performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. And in case you think I've lost my mind, "kissenkühlelabsal" is a word Ben Schott invented to describe "the ineffable pleasure and instant relief of a cool pillow." Every movement of this six-part work is in fact based on one of Schott's words from his Schottenfreude project, which turns into a great excuse for Nathan to produce reams of chamber music, from sparkling to introspective, and have it performed to a fare-thee-well by BMOP, the American Brass Quintet, cellist Parry Karp and pianist Christopher Karp, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Neave Trio, and Hub New Music. Whether you know the words or not, this is a delight to listen to, although it did require some fingerspitzentanz ("tiny triumphs of nimble-fingered dexterity") to get the booklet out of the CD package so I could read the liner notes!

Electronic

Carlos Nino & Friends - Live At Commend, NYC For some reason it took me years to find out that the innovative label RVNG had a performance space and store in lower Manhattan. Now sadly on hiatus, at least I got to spend one blissful night in that jewel-box of artistry back in 2019, listening to sets by Phong Tran and Adam Cuthbért. But I wasn't there on November 16, 2021, when Nino assembled this crack lineup to make peaceful, yet intricately textured music. Adding to Nino's bells, chimes, and percussion were the great Laraaji (electric kalimba, vocals, and iPad), Surya Botofasina (keyboards), Photay (Buchla, 808, and electronic drums), and Will Logan (drum set). That should give you an idea of the sound dimension you can enter when you press "Play" - and I hope you do.

The Living Earth Show and Danny Clay - Music For Hard Times Composed/organized by Clay as "calming strategies" for musicians stuck at home, these 15 gentle, twinkling tracks find Living Earthers Andy Meyerson (percussion) and Travis Andrews (guitar) and, in Book Two, a cast of dozens including the San Francisco Girls’ Chorus and students from the San Francisco Conservatory (who sent in tracks via Dropbox) finding their way towards the light. Let it shine on you.

Debit - The Long Count Just in case your existential dread has been too well alleviated by the sweet sounds above, here comes Delia Beatriz using machine learning to process the "ancestral technology" of Mayan wind instruments, creating a disquieting dreamscape that pays homage to a culture that has not so much been forgotten but "purposefully erased." Whether the Mayans would find anything to recognize in these sounds is unknown, but I think they would appreciate the effort - and we can enjoy the spare, spectral beauty either way.

Hip Hop & RnB

FKA Twigs - Caprisongs As someone who has championed Twigs since before she was FKA but was disappointed in both her long-form releases (LP1 and Magdelene), this album - she calls it a mixtape - is a balm to my ears. While still on the leading edge of electronic RnB, there's a sense of play and lightness on these 17 tracks that's a far cry from the overly considered work on those earlier releases. Whether it's the presence of new collaborators like producer El Guincho, who worked on most of the album, or just the fact that she considered it a mixtape rather than an album allowed her to fly more freely. A breezy, but deeply creative, caprice.

Pusha T - It's Almost Dry Four years after the perfection of Daytona (my #3 album of 2018), "cocaine's Dr. Seuss" is back with his fourth album, collaborating almost equally with his two greatest partners, Pharrell Williams and Kanye West - and nearly hits those same heights. The album starts with three knockouts, the first two produced by Williams and the third by West. Brambleton opens the album with a door-knock snare drum and spooky keyboards as Pusha details his sense of betrayal after his former manager claimed credit for his stories. Let The Smokers Shine The Coupes deals out a deeply funky groove as Pusha once again finds new ways to be the king of coke rap, saying "If kilograms is the groove/I done sold the golden goose." 

Then, in a masterstroke only West could come up with (and that Pusha T begged for), Dreaming Of The Past drops the hammer with a slightly sped-up sample of Donny Hathaway's take on John Lennon's Jealous Guy. The ice-cold vibe warms right up as Pusha practically duets with Hathaway while reminiscing about the good old days when "We hollowed the walls in back of bodegas" and "Gun stutter, make the drumline like Grambling." Even as he relitigates his old life, he's self-aware enough to point out that he "Didn't have to reinvent the wheel, just a better design." But even so he tries out some new things, like the way he floats his voice over Williams' nagging groove on Call My Bluff. The final track, Pray For You, combines old and new as Pusha T takes a "side step back into the duo/The kings of the Pyrex," by having his brother Malice (aka No Malice) join him on the song. Over a churchy track by producer/singer Labrinth that flashes back to Prayer, which opened Clipse's unreleased debut album (finally available!), Malice brings the heat like the old days, which has me both dreaming of the past and eager for the future.

Kendrick Lamar - Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers In one of the instantly busy hot-take threads that popped up when this eagerly awaited album dropped - Lamar's fifth and first since the Pulitzer prize-winning Damn in 2017 - a friend of a friend said, "I like the rapping but I wish the music was more hip hop." This reminded me of another exchange where someone asked if Revolution #9 was a Beatles song. My response was that, while it's an unwieldy sound collage, it is a Beatles song by virtue of being on a Beatles album. Mr. Morale comes from a similarly imperial view: it's all hip hop because Lamar is a hip hop artist, and one of such creativity and stature that he can bend whole genres to his will. To be clear, there are sonic references to reggae, jazz, r&b, and, of course, many sub-genres of hip hop - but like iron filings on a magnet, they all adhere to Lamar's wiry form, moving the genre along rather than leaving it behind. 

Lyrically, Lamar is on another plane than most rappers, dishing out a memoir's worth of tangled reflections, observations, stories, and histories. The dense firehose of words is often challenging to sort through and revealing enough to occasionally cross into "TMI" territory. But as Lamar himself says on Worldwide Steppers: "I am not for the faint of heart." He then continues with a few lines that give a hint of the micro and macro concerns of the album: "My genetic build can build multi-universes, the man of God/Playin' "Baby Shark" with my daughter/Watchin' for sharks outside at the same time/Life as a protective father, I'd kill for her." The cover depicts him with a child in his arms, a crown of thorns on his head, and a gun in his waistband, all signifiers for the world's weight, which he feels heavily on his shoulders. In Mother I Sober, which features featherweight vocals from Portishead's Beth Gibbons, Lamar remarks, "I'm sensitive, I feel everything, I feel everybody/One man standin' on two words, heal everybody." That sense of responsibility may have led him to overstuff the album, which runs an hour and 13 minutes. But Lamar is a visionary artist and incapable of being less than fascinating at this point in his career. It's still early days for my relationship with Mr. Morale - for all I know a song that now feels half-baked might prove to be a favorite in a few months. An essential listen.

Next time: Latin, rock, folk, pop, etc. 

You may also enjoy:
Celebrating 2021: New Year, New Music

2019 First Quarter Report: The Albums
Record Roundup: One Day In 2018

Best Of 2019: Hip Hop, RnB, and Reggae

For my listening, the year in hip hop was so dominated by Bandana by Freddie Gibbs and Madlib (#5 of The Top 25) and Jesus Is King by Kanye West (#24/25) that I was tempted to think it was a down year for the genre as far as quantity goes. But then I looked back and found a wealth of great records. Beyond Solange’s wonderful When I Get Home (#25/25), there were just a few RnB albums that reached for greatness. As for reggae, there was nothing that made it into the Top 25 but there were some great releases that should not be overlooked. Press play on this playlist or below and read on for all the scoop. 

Hip Hop

First Quarter Report: The Albums

C-Bo - Animal

G&D - Black Love & War The “G” is Georgia Ann Muldrow and the “D” is Declaime, AKA her partner, Dudley Perkins. Their talents as producers and vocalists blend marvelously, with Muldrow either soulful or imperious (a touch of Grace Jones) and Declaime’s thick and gritty flow the perfect contrast. The production veers from earthy jazz to psychedelic soul, while still remaining thoroughly contemporary and 100 percent hip hop. A few lyrical infelicities and a couple of snoozy cuts kept this out of the Top 25 - but it was close. 

Tyler The Creator - Igor I’ve had a hands off approach to the Odd Future crew (except Frank Ocean) since inception, finding them - especially Tyler - unable to back up their bravado with anything I wanted to listen to more than once. But word that this album was different began creeping into my consciousness shortly after it came out and when my daughter insisted I listen I took a chance. And it’s fantastic - a self-produced and nearly seamless blend of singing, rapping, electronics, and emotional depth far beyond most hip hop. That latter point is based mostly on how the record makes me feel as opposed to an in-depth look at the lyrics. But love and loss are front and center, with some of the crestfallen bitterness explored by Andre 3000 on The Love Below. Also, as proven by his incendiary performance on the Grammys (all hail Charlie Wilson), Tyler has tapped into his creativity and talent in all dimensions. Further big things remain to come for this complex and nuanced artist. 

Danny Brown - Uknowhatimsayin While still not at the level of 2016’s pitch black Atrocity Exhibition, there’s still plenty of the outrageousness and wide-ranging musical exploration he’s led us to expect over the years. “Reliable” is not a word I would have expected to use for Danny Brown, but he’s become someone you can count on - maybe next time he’ll thrill us again, like Killer Mike does on his verse for 3 Tearz.  

Earl Sweatshirt - Feet Of Clay Rather than wondering when Sweatshirt is going to break out of what seems to be a numbed state of being, that seems to have become sort of the point. Along with smudged textures and foggy beats, whether self-produced, as most of this EP, or when Alchemist steps behind the boards for a track. If this is him coasting, still quite fascinating. 

Pusha T - Coming Home (feat. Lauryn Hill) With the world still reeling from Daytona (#3/25, 2018), perhaps it's wise that Pusha-T didn't put out an album in 2019. But he did put out two great singles and guest spots on a number of tracks. Inspired by an uplifting beat from Kanye West, et al, Coming Home is a bittersweet but still gritty track that rides the line of speaking some truth about mass incarceration while still offering hope to those affected by this national tragedy. Not coke rap! Lauryn Hill's turn is beautiful, too, much more than a mere hook. We also got Sociopath, with its great mid-song "charcuterie" skit, and a bit of catnip for Succession fans. Hear all of his work from last year in this handy playlist.

RnB

H.E.R. - I Used To Know Her Now that Gabriella Wilson is a certified Grammy fixture, inspiring awe with both her melodic inventiveness and ripping guitar solos, hopefully people are finding their way to this album, which displays more versatility than you might expect from those televised extravaganzas. And if the record could have used a little judicious pruning, consider the fact that Wilson is only 22 - she has plenty of time to figure out when less can equal more.

Burna Boy - African Giant Maybe I was supposed to put this on the Best Of 2019: Jazz, Latin, and Global, but I willed it into this category because I wish more contemporary R&B was this suave, smooth, and funky. His Nigerian roots would show through in any genre, however, and it's wonderful to see him break through outside his native land after nearly a decade of recording. 

SiR - Chasing Summer This is the longest and most clearly defined release from Top Dawg Entertainment's resident crooner. Even with starry guests like Kendrick Lamar, it's an intimate and spare affair, fully modern but with enough touches of classic soul to ground it firmly in tradition.

Anderson .Paak - Ventura It seems almost cruel to expect more from someone so talented, who consistently makes albums that go down so easily it would be easy to downplay the art and craft that go into them. But I can't help thinking that .Paak has been grooving on past glories with each album since the mind-blowing Malibu (#19/20 in 2016). Still, there is much pleasure to be had on Ventura - ignore it at your peril.

Lizzo - Cuz I Love You (Deluxe) While she's not as good a rapper as she seems to think she is (maybe leave that to Missy Elliott, who guests on Tempo), and she might sing bigger than she has to, her larger than life exuberance is impossible to deny. Even with a few dud tracks, enough of that personality comes through to make this a defining album of 2019. She's on a fulcrum point, however - any more concessions to commercialism and she will become bound to her moment rather than owning it.

FKA Twigs - Holy Terrain (feat. Future) While I didn't find Magdalene as static as LP1, the creeping Kate Bush-influenced obscurantism was a turn-off, except for this terrific single, also the best thing Future has done in a while. I know I'm swimming against the tide here, as Magdalene nearly broke the internet when it came out, but I can only like what I like. And I like this song A LOT.

Frank Ocean - In My Room Two singles, this one and DHL, are all we got from Ocean in 2019, with Blonde - one of the best albums of the century, never mind the decade - now three years in the rear view. Beautiful stuff in any case, especially the minimalist bedsit romance of In My Room. I would hesitate to make any predictions about what his next album will sound like based on these as I have a feeling it will be more full of sonic surprise than either of them.

Charlotte Dos Santos - Harvest Time I still find Dos Santos's 2017 album, Cleo, sigh-inducing, so I hope this wonderful filament of a song signals more from her in 2020. 

Reggae

Lee "Scratch" Perry - Heavy Rain This album was the best of the three the 83-year-old Perry put out in 2019. Mostly made up of dubs from Rainford, which came out earlier in the year, it improves on that album either by adding the trombone wizardry of the great Vin Gordon or the studio magic of the legendary Brian Eno, or simply by swathing some of Perry's less-than-scintillating vocal moments in washes of echo and effects. Great to have Perry collaborating with Adrian Sherwood again, who steered him into waters more creative than Spacewave, who produced the mostly tedious Rootz Reggae Dub. 

Prince Fatty - In The Viper's Shadow In which the Brit master of roots and dub assembles a murderer's row of vocalists, from Big Youth to Cornell Campbell (who I also wrote about here), to sing or toast over his killer tracks. The biggest surprise might be the soaring vocals of Shniece McMenamin, who holds her own in this august company. More from her, with Fatty producing, would be the exact opposite of a bad thing. 

Koffee - Rapture After taking note of her excellent single Throne in January, it took Koffee winning a Grammy for Best Reggae Album - the first woman to do so - for me to even realize she had an album out. But she also kind of doesn't, as Rapture is a mere 15 minutes long. Either way, the 19-year-old shows great promise on this short showcase, whether spitting auto-tuned fire over dancehall beats or singing soulfully over rootsier tracks. Looking forward to a true long-player - soon, please.

Hollie Cook - Dance In The Sunshine Maybe now that Koffee has broken the gender barrier at the Grammys, Cook will get the recognition she deserves. Until then, we will just bask in the warmth of her presence whenever she chooses to release sweet songs like this single. If you're still unfamiliar with this wonderful singer and songwriter, start with her self-titled debut, which was my #3 album of 2011. Or you could check out Twice, which landed at #5 in 2014. Then there's Vessel Of Love, my #7 album of 2018. She's just great!

What turned your head in these genres in 2019? Let me know! There’s also more in this archived playlist - and follow this one so you know how 2020 fares.

You may also enjoy:
Best Of 2018: Hip Hop, RnB and Reggae
Best Of 2017: Hip Hop, RnB and Reggae
Best Of 2016: Hip Hop and RnB

Best Of 15: Singles & EP's

By now we know that not only is the album not dead, but the resurgence of vinyl (and now even cassettes) seems to be mostly album-based. While the black plastic discs are still a tiny part of the overall music market, they are one sector that has shown continuous improvement over the last few years, which is something to celebrate. Even so, there is still a place in the output of artists for short-form releases like singles and EP's. In some cases, an artist will do their best work in this area. In others, it's just a stopgap before their next album. Either way, I would hate for these great songs to get lost in the shuffle - literally - Read on for my favorites from the year just passed.

The Redeemed

If you've been following closely, you will know that I was a big fan of the early EP's of Tahliah Debrett Barnett, who performs as FKA twigs. So I was surprised to find her first album, last year's LP1, to be a bit of a snooze. So I'm happy to report that M3LL155X (pronounced "Melissa") finds FKA twigs at the top of her game, from the fabulously creepy cover and video, to the mesmerizing songs. Producer Boots helps construct dark soundscapes for twigs' melodic and lyrical flights of fancy, without ever letting the momentum lag. I might be the only one who feels this way, but if her EP's are this good, why bother with albums?

Appreciation for the Staple Singers is on the rise with the release earlier this year of Faith & Grace: A Family Journey 1953-1976, the first comprehensive look back at their extraordinary career. Mavis Staples, however, is very much in the present, having made two albums with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy in recent years. While there was nothing truly wrong with those records, they failed to catch fire for me. She's now working with Son Little, a Philadelphia-based musician making a name for himself with an updated take on soul, blues and R&B. Your Good Fortune, the four song EP they put out in the spring, bodes well for the future. All four songs find Mavis in great voice, with the first two written by Little and the last two classics. It's tough to take on Blind Lemon Jefferson's classic See That My Grave Is Kept Clean and make it fresh, but she digs deep and pulls it off, with an energy belying her 76 years. Long may she reign.

Serving No Wine...

In the case of the haunting All Is Forgiven by Alekesam, I'm starting to wonder if it is forgivable to put out a song this cool and then...nothing. Hopefully 2016 will see more to come from the talented duo of Sal Masakela and Sunny Levine.

Moses Sumney is also deeply talented, a singer of originality and spiritual depth and a songwriter who traverses folk, soul, and jazz with the ease of a natural polymath. After last year's brilliant Mid-City Island EP, this year he gave us Seeds and Pleas, two ethereal meditations that are hopefully part of something bigger.

The music of Jordan Lee, released under the name Mutual Benefit, has a rare combination of sturdiness and fragility to it, which makes it enormously appealing. Not For Nothing, his entry in Weathervane Music's Shaking Through series, is a fine countryfied addition to his catalog. As his last full-length album was 2013's brilliant Love's Crushing Diamond I'm hoping for more than one song in 2016!

New Blood

The first time I saw Spires, it was almost like a live rehearsal, but the last time I saw them they tore up the Mercury Lounge in front of an audience that had no idea who they were, blasting through a short set of their hyper-driven psych rock. Their five-song self-titled official debut finds them slightly tamed, but still tunefully pursuing their vision of the late sixties. Keep up with their songs here so you can sing along when you see them live - which you absolutely should.

As a micro-genre, I'm not sure "doom folk" ever took off, but John Joseph Brill's band Burning Beard gained some attention as a prime mover in that area. Now he's on his own and has released a four-song EP, Pieces, and a single, The Grape And The Grain, that are the strongest things he's yet done. He seems to come by his world-weary, sepulchral voice honestly and he knows how to write songs that are built to last. 2016 could be his year.

I came across Novelty Daughter when she opened for TV Girl one sweaty night at Shea Stadium last August. I loved the mix of big beat electronics and her honey-toned jazz-inflected voice, which made for a beguiling combination on stage. Now you can hear it for yourself with Day Of Inner Fervor, the lead off single from her debut album, Semigoddess, out 3/25/16. Be hip - preorder.

Old Favorites Return

My #1 album of 2014 was Hiss Golden Messenger's Lateness Of Dancers, which left me hungry - even starving - for more songs from M.C. Taylor. He had a busy year on the road promoting that brilliant album so I consider us fans lucky to have gotten the Southern Grammar EP, which featured two new tracks alongside a smoking live version of the title song. He Wrote The Book is one of Taylor's warm-blanket specials, a comfort to my soul, and Brother, Do You Know The Road? is the kind of song you can really inhabit, a widescreen tale told through music. New album in October - I think I can contain myself until then.

Beck's Morning Phase had the #2 spot for me in 2014 so my antennae were up when I got notice of a new release at the beginning of the summer. After the acoustic elegies of Morning Phase, I knew he would have something different up his sleeve. But I didn't expect a bid for song of the summer, which is essentially what he gave us with Dreams, a spectacular slice of pure pop, gorgeously produced by Greg Kurstin. Supposedly, there's more delights along these lines coming soon. Until then, keep dancing to Dreams.

Both my wife and I had our mind's blown a few years ago by Any Port In A Storm by Scott & Charlene's Wedding, the project of Craig Dermody, an Australian singer-songwriter. As described in his classic (to me, anyway) song Fakin' NYC, he literally came to NYC with a dollar and a dream, managing to make a go of it with his incisive lyrics and jangly take on 90's slacker rock. The melodies are always great, even when he sings off key, and his guitar solos always give me a buzz. Delivered brings the story forward with three tight new songs along with an epic (for him) and wonderfully sloppy cover of Elton John's Bennie And The Jets. When a formula is this good, why mess with it?

Field Music, the band helmed by David and Peter Brewis, has often gone on hiatus to allow them pursue other projects (see under School Of Language, Slug and Frozen By Sight). While they did release Music for Drifters earlier in 2015, a nice series of instrumental cues for a 1929 documentary about Shetland Island fishermen, it's now been nearly four years since their last album of songs. So I was pretty excited when they dropped The Noisy Days Are Over to tease Commontime, their fifth album, which is due on February 5th. This clever song pokes fun at aging with an intricate and spiky arrangement that owes as much to late Steely Dan as it does to mid-period XTC. Good fun is on the horizon.

Also on the horizon? David Bowie. I'd pull a mic dropping "need I say more?" at this juncture but I do need to say a little more. I mean, have you watched the video for the outrageously stylized Blackstar yet? If not, get to the biggest screen you on which you can find YouTube and watch this thing. Even if there wasn't an album coming on January 8th, Bowie's 69th birthday, this one song would be evidence of an ever-questing master working at top form. I'm still trying to catch up with him on this song and Lazarus, the other single, which is also from a musical he's producing based on The Man Who Fell To Earth. Has the Star Man become a Blackstar? We'll just have to wait and see...

All the songs above, except Novelty Daughter's, are in this playlist - put it on shuffle or play it straight.



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Best Of 15: The Top 20
Best Of 15: Out Of The Past
Best Of 15: Reggae
Best Of 15: Hip Hop

Best Of 15: Classical & Composed

Best Of The Rest Of 14: Synths & Who's New (To Me)

Synthesized But Not Synthetic

Thank god Matt Taibbi is back, because Rolling Stone had the worst Best Albums of the Year list of, well, the year. U2, Bruce Springsteen? Only Jan Wenner thought those albums were among the best of 2014. And Taylor Swift at #10? I heard Wenner broke his sacroiliac contorting himself to pander to so many audiences. But one big thing they did get right was putting Thom Yorke's Tomorrow's Modern Boxes on there. Much coverage focused on his method of releasing it as a BitTorrent file, but after you've downloaded the thing (you can also get it from Bandcamp) the music is what matters. And the music is very good, with Yorke's angelic tenor sounding better than ever over slightly off-kilter electronic grooves. Perhaps the only thing keeping TMB off my Top 20 was a slight sense of over-familiarity - as if this is pretty much the album we would expect him to make. But if Yorke is content to tread water, I'm happy to paddle next to him in his rarified ocean.

Fans of Washed Out and M83 should also delve into the soundscapes of Michael Hammond, composer, sound-designer, and singer, released under the name No Lands. An arty and ambient take on synth pop (think Talk Talk's Spirit Of Eden), debut album Negative Space is gorgeous and never ceases to be intriguing. 

Although some reviews seemed to expect dance music from Patten's Estoile Naiant, it was really a series of electronic collages that kept moving forward without resorting to cheap rhythmic techniques. Mouse On Mars is in his DNA, just as Kraftwerk and Neu are in the DNA of Finland's Siinai. Their album Supermarket was expertly executed and focused on telling the story of a trip to, yes, the supermarket. Delightful and eerie in equal measures. When I think of Siinai, I often think of Seekae (something about the vowels), who released two albums in 2014. The Worry, the more song-based of the two, finds him working out some personal stuff over moody and colorful backgrounds. I like his plainspoken voice better than James Blake's and find him less pretentious overall. Find Seekae.

It could be coincidence or it could be the ripple effect of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's Oscar-winning soundtrack to The Social Network, but either way three of the year's most striking electronic albums were also soundtracks. Mica Levi's score to sci-fi art film Under The Skin creates a chilling mental movie using very simple elements. I wouldn't have expected such bleak rigor from the leader of the irritating Micachu & The Shapes, and I hope her dark night of the soul continues. Cliff Martinez of Drive fame is always worth listening to and kudos to the producers of The Knick for going with his anachronistic electronics instead of a period score. As always, Martinez's work is as slippery as a murderous icicle and just as cold. Son Lux has long been a favorite of mine and a nice end-of-year surprise was having his Original Music From And Inspired By: The Disappearance Of Eleanor Rigby drop on Spotify. Beautiful stuff, on the more ethereal side for him but with that signature feeling of consequence throughout.

I was on the Twigs tip before she was FKA and eagerly awaited her first full-length. As much as I tried, however, I did not swoon for LP1, finding it static and over-thought, although I did like Video Girl. At first I thought part of the problem with her album was that Alejandro Ghersi, better known as Arca, didn't produce the whole thing. His &&&&& EP was so stunning, as was his work on FKA Twigs early EP2 (not to mention the stuff he did for Kanye West on Yeezus), that I thought he could have saved LP1. But then his own album, Xen, came out and it was just as stiff, seeming to wither on the vine while I listened to it. The one highlight was Thievery, which burst from the general torpor with a beat straight from the dancehall. Hopefully Arca and FKA Twigs will get over themselves and serve up something more tasty in the future - they've both got the talent to do it.

Feels Like The Very First Time

Here's a quick rundown of some folks I heard for the first time in 2014 and who I now consider in the club, so to speak. They weren't all new artists but they were new to me.

I loved Courtney Barnett's draggy sound, witty lyrics, dynamite guitar and pure rock'n'roll attitude, all of which suffused the catchy, heartfelt songs on The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas. After seeing her rip the Bowery Ballroom apart by turning all those qualities up to 11, I know she has an even better record in her. Can't wait.

Eddie Dixon's Bump Key, which I might have found on Bandcamp myself if he hadn't contacted me first, was full of fractured Americana. I've also been having a ball discovering his earlier albums.

I had a wonderful night in Nashville thanks to Wild Ponies and Catherine Ashby and I've really enjoyed reliving it through their recent releases, Things That Used To Shine and Tennessee Tracks. Both records are filled with great music and great potential.

I've long enjoyed Sylvie Simmons writing in Mojo Magazine and elsewhere - who knew that she was hiding her quirky light as a singer-songwriter under a bushel? Her debut album, Sylvie, was beyond charming.

Ian William Craig is an operatically-trained Canadian tenor who knows his way around the studio, seeming to construct the spooky, layered pieces that make up A Turn Of Breath out of scraps of half-remembered sound. Striking stuff.

Richard Dawson has one of the weirdest takes on British folk I've ever heard, torturing an out-of-tune guitar till it bleeds. It's hard to tell if he knows exactly what he's doing on Nothing Important but I can assure you it sounds like nothing else.

Ben Howard's cinematic folk is far more conventional, touching on Coldplay at times, but there is a passionate heart beating underneath it all, and the tracks on his second album, I Forget Where We Were, often build to a real intensity. 

When Nick Mulvey was a member of the Portico Quartet, they were nominated for a Mercury Prize. He was nominated again for his solo debut, First Mind, which draws on folk, jazz and latin rhythms some of the same nubby-sweater warmth of classic Cat Stevens. His voice is a reassuring burr and he packs a lot of incident, melody and intelligence into his well-arranged songs.

Lastly, TV Girl's French Exit was a fun trip on the lighter side. These guys know their sixties pop and their St. Etienne and put it all together into shiny, smart packages with a faint sense of amusement. Don't let them have all the fun - join in.

What new discoveries did you make this year?



Still to come: Classical & Composed and Out Of The Past.

P.S. Since Thom Yorke hates Spotify as much as Taylor Swift (although perhaps for different reasons (and they're both dead wrong)), he is not represented on the playlist above - don't let that stop you from hearing Tomorrow's Modern Boxes.