#the same with synthi-rockers

[depechexmood]

(Cringy) German magazine articles Part 4:

“Dave Gahan: The tattooed Ex-Punk”

“The singer of the British synthi-rockers was born on 9th May 1962 in Epping/England. He grew up together with his older sister Suzy and his little brothers Phil und Pete in Basildon in the county of Essex. His father John left the family when Dave was three years old. His mother Sylvia didn’t have an easy time with him. After school, he tweaked motors and sold them; besides, he got negative attention by the police for being a wild graffiti sprayer. As a punk, he met his girlfriend and present wife Joanne Fox at a concert of the punkband Damned when he was 17 years old. Both married secretly in 1985.”

Source (Martin | Alan | Andy)

[obtusemedia]

Ranking Lady Gaga's albums, from worst to best

Being a Lady Gaga fan can be an exercise in frustration.

Gaga is far more ambitious than most popstars — I doubt we’ll ever see Ariana Grande or Ed Sheeran make an album as left-field as Born This Way or ARTPOP. But she's also far less consistent, with numerous misbegotten projects.

Gaga's undeniably successful, with five #1 hits, an Oscar and multiple iconic music videos to her name. But her messy album rollouts and tradition of underperforming lead singles make her feel like an underdog compared to the more polished, precise careers of her contemporaries like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé or Bruno Mars.

Gaga is kind of a mess. But she's our mess. This album ranking will cover some records I can't stand — albums that make me constantly hit the fast-forward button, or albums I ignore altogether. But there isn't a single record on here that wasn't a bold move. Even the "back to basics" albums made strong aesthetic choices.

So let's dive into the career of the most fascinating Millennial popstar.

#8: Cheek To Cheek (2014)

This really shouldn't count. It's a Lady Gaga album in name only. But, technically it's a Gaga album, so here we are.

I've got nothing against Gaga having fun playing Rat Pack-era dress-up with Tony Bennett. She's a theatre kid at heart, and I'm sure every theatre kid would kill to make a Great American Songbook covers record like this. It sounds like she and Tony enjoyed themselves, so I'm happy for them!

...but I'm sorry. I can't be objective about Cheek To Cheek, it's the opposite of my taste. There's only so many bland lounge ballads I can take.

BEST SONGS: I have to pick one? "Anything Goes" is cute, I guess.

WORST SONG: "Sophisticated Lady"

#7: A Star Is Born (2018)

Let me first make this clear — A Star Is Born, the movie starring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga? It's a masterpiece. It's electrifying and tragic and I'm still upset it didn't sweep the Oscars that year. There's even a cute dog! You won't hear me say a bad word about it.

But A Star Is Born, the accompanying soundtrack? It's extremely hit-and-miss.

Yes, it includes arguably Gaga's best-ever song and one of the greatest movie hits ever written, "Shallow." And there's plenty of other great tunes in the tracklist too — "Always Remember Us This Way," "I'll Never Love Again," the "La Vie En Rose" cover.

Even the country-rock songs from Bradley Cooper (who, reminder, is not a professional singer) are mostly good! "Black Eyes" RIPS, and "Maybe It's Time" feels like a long-lost classic.

But sadly, there are so many mediocre filler tracks on this thing. The second half of A Star Is Born's hour-plus runtime (Gaga's longest!) is padded with generic songs like "Look What I've Found," "Heal Me" and "I Don't Know What Love Is." The only good one out of the bunch is the silly, intentionally-bad "Why Did You Do That?"

In the movie, these filler tracks serve a point – they're meant to show Gaga's character selling out. They work in the movie when you hear them for a few seconds and see Cooper make a drunkly disappointed scowl. But I don't want to listen to them, and sadly, they make up half the album.

In other words — A Star Is Born would've made an incredible six or seven-song EP. But as an 63-minute-long record? It's a slog.

BEST SONGS: "Shallow", "Always Remember Us This Way," "Maybe It's Time"

WORST SONG: "Heal Me"

#6: Joanne (2016)

After Born This Way and ARTPOP, I get why Gaga needed to make a more lowkey, back-to-basics album. I also understand that many of these songs have extremely personal lyrics for her.

But is a down-to-earth album what I really want from our most outré popstar? Not really.

Luckily, Joanne is better than that description suggests. Yes, there are some bland acoustic ballads and awkward hippie-era throwbacks (two styles that are really not in Gaga's wheelhouse), but there's also some Springsteen-style heartland rockers! And those go hard in the paint.

Joanne works best when Gaga works the record's dusty aesthetics into her brand of weirdo pop, like on the sizzling "John Wayne," the winking "A-YO" or the delightfully extra Florence Welch duet "Hey Girl."

The record also has "Perfect Illusion" — a glorious red herring of a lead single that sounds nothing like anything else on Joanne. It's a roided-up mixture of woozy Tame Impala production and hair metal histrionics, and it rules. It might be Gaga's best-ever lead single! (at the very least, it's her most underrated.)

And there is one slow tune that's unambiguously great: "Million Reasons," another solid Gaga lighters-in-the-air power ballad pastiche.

Despite what some Little Monsters may tell you, Joanne isn't a disaster. There's some great stuff in there, and even the worst songs are just forgettable. But it's still far from her best.

BEST SONGS: "Perfect Illusion," "Diamond Heart," "Million Reasons"

WORST SONG: "Come To Mama"

#5: Chromatica (2020)

When Chromatica was released near the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it had been seven years since Gaga had released music in her classic gonzo-synthpop vein. I can easily picture the record serving as an "ugh fine, I'll give you what you want" response to the many Little Monsters annoyed with Gaga's half-decade of folksy ballads and Julie Andrews cosplay.

I'll say this about Chromatica — outside of The Fame Monster, it's her most consistent record. There's not a single track that's a glaring mistake. And the three singles — "Stupid Love," "911" and the triumphant Ariana Grande duet "Rain On Me" — easily stand among her best tracks.

But although "all bangers, no ballads" album sounds rad in theory, it doesn't really succeed in practice. Chromatica is solid, but it's also a very same-y record. It feels like Gaga had one really great idea for the album ('90s club music with super-depressing lyrics) and repeated it over and over and over again to diminishing results.

There are some songs that are able to separate themselves: the three singles, of course, as well as the goofy "Babylon" and "Sine From Above," the Elton John duet that's the closest Chromatica gets to a ballad. But by the end of the album, you feel more worn out than electrified.

Also — and this is probably unfair, but still — Chromatica came out just a couple months after another retro-dance blockbuster pop album: Dua Lipa's magnum opus, Future Nostalgia. That's not a flattering comparison.

BEST SONGS: "Rain On Me," "Stupid Love," "911"

WORST SONG: "1000 Doves"

#4: The Fame (2008)

Out of all of Gaga's records, The Fame is most like a time capsule. It REEKS of late '00s/early '10s pop — which isn't an entirely fair criticism, seeing as Gaga popularized that era's sleazy, synthy aesthetic. It's also not a bad thing! I don't mind a little nostalgia!

As you already know, The Fame's singles are masterworks. "Just Dance," "Poker Face," "Paparazzi" — these tracks have titanic legacies for good reason. And although it's probably the least-beloved of this album's hits, despite being a total banger, "LoveGame" should still be commended for having arguably the most Gaga lyric ever (you know, the "disco stick" line).

And even though those tracks are front-loaded on The Fame, there are some gems deeper in the tracklist. "Summerboy" is basically Gwen Stefani covering The Strokes (so obviously, it's great). "Eh, Eh" is adorable. "Starstruck" is the most 2008 song ever recorded, with aggressive Auto-Tune and Flo Rida showing up to make Starbucks jokes.

Sadly, The Fame still feels like Gaga before she became fully-formed at certain points. The back half has a number of songs that feel like generic club tracks forced by the label, and "Paper Gangsta" is one of the clunkiest songs in Gaga's catalogue.

But at the very least, the bad songs on The Fame at least serve as little nostalgia bombs for that era of pop. And the best songs are untouchable classics.

BEST SONGS: "Paparazzi," "Just Dance," "Summerboy"

WORST SONG: "Paper Gangsta"

#3: ARTPOP (2013)

For much of Gaga's career, she's been ahead of the curve. She tries something, and a year or a few years later, other popstars try something similar to diminishing results.

That doesn't just apply to the successful stuff, like Gaga's extravagant music videos inspiring many copycats from 2010-2013. It also applies to the mid-late '10s trend of legacy popstars making a controversial record with risky aesthetic or lyrical choices that backfired: reputation. Witness. Man of The Woods.

Gaga did this first, with ARTPOP — arguably the most abrasive, and bizzare major label album released by a major modern popstar. And she did it better, because unlike Swift, Perry and Timberlake, Gaga's weirdness was for real. And it was in service of some prime, hyper-aggressive bangers.

ARTPOP isn't Gaga's best work — some of her experiments on it are major misfires, from the obnoxious "Mary Jane Holland" to the bland Born This Way leftover (and Romani slur-utilizing) "Gypsy."

But when ARTPOP is on, it's ON. The opening stretch in particular, from "Aura" to "Venus" to "G.U.Y." to "Sexxx Dreams," is chaotic synthpop at its finest. Those songs took Gaga's classic sound to an apocalyptic, demented extreme, and they're fantastic.

"MANiCURE" is a great glam-rock banger, "Dope" is another classic Gaga piano ballad, the title track is some sikly-smooth dreampop; even the misguided, clunky trap anthem "Jewels N' Drugs" is bad in a hilarious, charming way!

Trust me: ARTPOP will go down in history not as a flop, but as a gutsy, underrated record from a legend. Less Witness, more In Utero.

BEST SONGS: "G.U.Y.," "Venus," "Sexxx Dreams"

WORST SONG: "Gypsy"

#2: The Fame Monster (2009)

Objectively speaking, this is probably the best Gaga album.

It's her one record with no fluff, no filler — only 34 minutes and 8 tracks, all of them stellar.

It's the record that took Gaga from "wow, this new woman is a fresh new face in pop!" to "this woman IS pop."

It's the record with her signature track, "Bad Romance," which was accompanied by arguably the greatest music video of the 21st Century. (It also has my absolute favorite Gaga track, the relentlessly catchy "Telephone.")

I don't think I need to explain what makes mega-smashes "Bad Romance" and "Telephone" and "Alejandro" great, nor the accompanying legendary deep cuts "Speechless" and "Dance In The Dark." They speak for themselves.

However — the sleek, calculated perfection of The Fame Monster, while incredible, isn't something I return to often. It's just not the side of Gaga that's my favorite. That honor would have to go to...

BEST SONGS: "Telephone," "Dance In The Dark," "Bad Romance"

WORST SONG: "So Happy I Could Die" (but it's still pretty solid)

#1: Born This Way (2011)

One of my favorite podcasts is Blank Check. The concept of the show is to analyze each movie by a famous director — in particular, those who had big success early on and then got a blank check to make whatever crazy passion project they wanted. Here's a great example: because Batman was a massive hit, Tim Burton got to make whatever Hot Topic-core movies he wanted to for decades, from Edward Scissorhands to a creepy Willy Wonka remake.

That long-winded tangent is just to say: Born This Way was Lady Gaga's blank check. By early 2011, she had conquered the pop universe, notching hit after hit after hit. Every other pop star was copying her quirky music videos. So the label let Gaga do whatever she wanted — and she didn't waste that opportunity.

Born This Way is wildly overproduced. It's both extremely trend-chasing (those synths were cutting edge at the time but charmingly dated now), but also deeply uncaring about what the teens want (I don't think Springsteen and Queen homages were big at the time). And I love every messy, overblown second of it.

From the hair-metal/synthpop hybrid opener "Marry The Night" to the majestic '80s power ballad "The Edge of Glory," Born This Way starts at an 11. And Gaga never takes her foot off the pedal for the album's entire hour-plus run time. Clanging electric guitars, thunderous synths and Clarence Clemons (!!!) sax solos collide into each other as Gaga champions every misfit and loser in the world. It's gloriously corny in the best way possible.

Born This Way is also the perfect middle ground of pop-savvy Gaga and gonzo Gaga. It doesn't go quite as hard as ARTPOP, but the hooks are stronger. And the oddball moments are tons of fun, from the sci-fi biker anthem "Highway Unicorn" to the goofy presidential-sex banger "Government Hooker" ("Put your hands on me/John F. Kennedy" might be the greatest line in pop history).

Born This Way will always be my favorite Gaga album. It's armed with nuclear-grade hooks, slamming beats, and soaring anthems. Although it's not as untouchably pristine as the Mt. Rushmore of '10s pop classics (for the record, that's 1989, EMOTION, Lemonade and, of course, Melodrama), Gaga isn't best served by meticulousness. She's proudly tacky and histrionic, and so that's what makes Born This Way an utter joy.

BEST SONGS: "The Edge of Glory," "You and I," "Marry The Night"

WORST SONG: "Bloody Mary"

[happymetalgirl]

Lindemann - F & M

The surprising part is not Rammstein’s Till Lindemann and Swedish Renaissance man Peter Tätgren releasing another album together after the two minds met on 2015’s debaucherous Skills in Pills; it’s that the duo’s sophomore collaboration together coincided with Rammstein’s return from their ten-year silence this year. It’s not the wildest thing in the world for the two releases to come out the same year, but I just wasn’t expecting it with how much Rammstein was clearly putting into their self-titled album this year. And I don’t just bring this up for the mere statistical content; it will come up later.

While this project (Lindemann) is a duo on paper, and while Per Tätgren’s instrumental talents drive that front of the duo’s music, Lindemann, as its being named only after the Rammstein frontman, is more of a solo project in spirit, with Tätgren serving his usual purpose as a hired gun to help Till Lindemann achieve his artistic vision. Much like how his Rammstein compatriot Richard Kruspe had chosen to do on his side project, Emmigrate, Till Lindemann sang entirely in English on his solo project’s debut record, Skills in Pills, for which the Rammstein frontman had clear artistic reasons. While not shy about taboo or uneasy topics in Rammstein’s music, Till Lindemann’s poetic talent has given extra artistic depth and creativity to the band’s approach to such challenging subjects, their fearlessness to write songs about the most uncomfortable of topics becoming a big part of their notoriety and identity, and their singer’s astute wordsmithery allowing them to do so beyond mere shock value. With Skills in Pills though, the Rammstein singer wanted to express himself and his promiscuous side more personally and in primal honesty. The songs on the album generally revolve around sex and Till Lindemann’s personal experiences and fantasies. And the readily understandable and more upfront English lyricism (in comparison to his German lyricism) really highlights the primal lust within the various songs, with songs like “Fat”, “Ladyboy”, and “Golden Shower” being pretty self-explanatory by their titles alone. It’s an album that really captures that overwhelming urge of being really horny for something and just being like “ugggggghhhh, I just wanna fuckin’ get pissed on right now! AAAAGGGHH!!!”. While that’s not my thing, I get the feeling. There’s no song about eating ass, though, which is a travesty. But I’m sure someday we’ll get a Rammstein song about eating ass. The highlight of the album though, is probably the morbidly comical “Praise Abort”, on which Lindemann complains about having too many damn children because he only has sex without a condom and is jealous of all his friends who can indulge themselves rather than some thankless offspring. Musically, the album isn’t too far off from the industrial metal the German’s main band makes, though with a focus more on rocking grooves rather than crushing metallic power.

On F & M, standing for “Frau und Mann” (man and woman), Lindemann returns to writing in German, which does see a return in lyrical complexity and creativity, but not as consistently as it was on Rammstein’s album earlier this year. The album starts out with the invigorated arena chugging of “Steh auf” (Stand up), whose chorus’ emboldened call to get up out of bed is given some foreboding eight-string treatment by Tätgren. The speaker of the song is eventually revealed to be not just Lindemann urging us to get off our asses, but a character in a much darker tale, a child begging their wasted or perhaps even fatally overdosed mother to get up and take them to the circus. It’s a fucking grim piece of poetry in the same vein as “Puppe” off the self-titled Rammstein album, another testament to Till Lindemann’s ability as a compelling poetic storyteller of the most ghastly variety.

At its best, the album is full of the kind of poetically insightful and captivating writing that Rammstein is known for, and with the powerful instrumentation to back it up. And while it peaks early with “Steh auf”, there are plenty of worthy tracks on F & M that seem to have been written in a similar mindest to what much of Rammstein seemed to have been written in. “Allesfresser” (German for omnivore) is another synthy, dancy, and unsettling banger about insatiable consumption that at first seems to just be about plain old indiscriminate gluttony, but the song seems to be about relating that to overconsumption on a larger scale, humankind eating up everything in the world carelessly and to the sound of music as a representation of our distracted obliviousness to the effects of it.

The industrial metal banger “Gummi” (rubber), about a latex suit fetish, both sounds and reads like something that would have been right at home on Skills in Pills, while the similarly BDSM-motifed song “Knebel” (meaning “gag”) is this kind of comedically pathetic, poetic, woeful, and intentionally surface-level meditation on the general struggles of life (by a speaker who seems like the archetype of a frustrated disenfranchised man with ample privilege) over some bare acoustic folk instrumentation interspersed with this expression of loving “you” with a gag in mouth, which seems more about this kind of person actively silencing anyone wanting to interject their own perspective into his masturbatory meditations on destiny and the hardness of life, which explodes suddenly into a metallic tantrum of “I hate you.” All in all, pretty funny (or maddening) song depending on how you look at it. In a similar vein, “Ach so gern” is another accordion-laced, campy, café-folky ballad about a womanizer recounting in seemingly increasing insecurity his pushy sexual conquests. The kitschy tone of the song leads me to believe that this character is being made fun of, but it is hard to read that in the lyrics’ portrait alone.

Another tongue-in-cheek cut, the choir-backed industrial rocker “Platz Einz” seems to be a similarly silly portrait of deluded overcompensation about the egotistical, autofelatiolic attitude of a bigtime music star. The cleverness of the song is in the tone of course, and the bombastic production certainly helps out with that, though it’s such a closely performed piece of acting that it’s uncanny distastefulness makes it a not so fun song to listen to, which might be kind of the point.

The song the album’s title is derived from “Frau & Mann” simply lists a whole bunch of opposites as if to point out how silly the reductiveness of everything into binaries is, leaving the inclusion of man and woman in that list to be, well... I don’t think I need to spell it out. While I appreciate the lyrical concept of breaking down gender binaries, the song musically is kind of bland and features this kooky “ay ay ay!” sort of chant that I just can’t take seriously, but maybe that’s also part of the point.

The album is not without its flatter moments though, songs that feels like they might have been odds and ends or unfinished projects from Rammstein’s most recent recording sessions, as they sound similar in tone and structure despite Peter Tätgren’s embellishments. The second track “Ich Weiß es Nicht” is a more industrially heavy, yet also dancy, track about the confusing haze of amnesia, not the most lyrically or musically creative track on the album. The song “Blut” is a big choir-backed lament seemingly about self-harm in the form of cutting or even suicide. The lyrics are kind of vague and romantic, but it’s possible there’s something I’m missing in the tone of it all since I’m not a native speaker. “Schlaf ein” is probably the most underwhelming song on the album, a kind of cheesy orchestral piano lullaby, not really doing anything at all musically exciting or lyrically interesting. It sounds like a generic part of a kid’s movie soundtrack and the flowery imagery is nothing new for Till Lindemann, who is punching quite below his weight on this one.

On a more mixed note, while the shoulder-shrugging lyrics of the closing string-laden ballad don’t really do much for me, the gradual swells of the instrumentation and Till Lindemann’s vocal performance over it are enough to make up for it.

It can’t be said for certain, but for better and for worse, much of F & M seems to be made up of leftovers from the latest cranking of Rammstein’s creative mill, tracks that might have been made into B-sides on that album. There are some bright highlights that would have sounded great on that album in place of other tracks, but perhaps deemed too thematically redundant, like Till Lindemann had the choice to include either “Puppe” or “Steh auf” on Rammstein’s seventh album and ultimately went with “Puppe”. And despite its several eccentric moments and arguably more consistent composition, F & M lacks that flamboyant character that Skills in Pills had, and it seems more like a decent Rammstein leftovers album than a Lindemann solo album.

I’ll still take it/10

[sinceileftyoublog]

Live Picks: 2/14-2/18

Opeth

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Ridiculous metal and ridiculously-stacked folk! All-star level hip hop!

2/14: The Exile Follies, Old Town School of Folk Music

The name “The Exile Follies” refers to the touring combination of three artists experiencing self-imposed exile from the band they became known for, way back in 2002: Grant-Lee Phillips (from Grant Lee Buffalo), John Doe (from X), and Kristin Hersh (from Throwing Muses). Eighteen years later, the trio is reuniting for a tour, with a solo set from each, some collaborations, a lot of banter, and perhaps new songs.

2/14: Opeth, Riviera

The most recent album from the Swedish progressive metal band, September’s In Cauda Venenum, was released in both English and Swedish. There’s not much difference between the two versions. “Garden of Earthly Delights” contains a synthy hum with the band’s trademark prog instrumentation, as does “Heart in Hand” and the loud-quiet-loud “Next of Kin”. “Lovelorn Crime” is a slow burn. “The Garroter”, a song about inequality and apathy under a dictatorship, starts with flamenco guitar and piano, turning into a dark, jazzy ditty. In general, the band is as usual great at composing instrumentals that mirror the song’s subject matter. “Continuum”, for instance, is about the loneliness felt after the dissolution of a relationship; the echoing hi hats are emptiness, manifested. Yet, “Universal Truth”’s title translated into Swedish is “no truth is universal,” a cheeky move from a smart band who sings about the things that divide us politically and socially, not to be cynical but recognizing of the oppression that plagues many across the world.

Swedish hard rockers Graveyard open.

2/15: Machine Head, Metro

We previewed Machine Head’s set at Concord Music Hall two years ago:

“Oakland thrashers Machine Head enjoyed somewhat of a critical renaissance towards the beginning of the decade. While their early material was as authentically heavy as can be, their late 90′s and early 2000′s albums unfortunately delved into the realm of Limp Bizkit-like rap/nu metal. On 2011′s Unto the Locust, thankfully, they rediscovered their hard and experimental edge, as did they on the sweeping 2014 epic Bloodstone & Diamonds (the first with new bassist Jared MacEachern).

Unfortunately, the record they released earlier this year, Catharsis, falls back into the same rap trap as 1999′s The Burning Red and 2001′s Supercharger, the worst stereotypical metalcore swinging riffs with overzealous delivery from lead singer Robb Flynn. One can only hope that these songs are more tolerable live. Either way, thankfully, judging from the band’s recent set lists, it seems they know that their best music was the one-two-three punch of the Grammy-nominated 2007 album The Blackening, Locust, and Bloodstone.”

Since then, they’ve released two non-album singles, “Do Or Die” and “Circle The Drain”, the latter released today. This tour celebrates the 25th anniversary of their seminal debut Burn My Eyes, which they’ll play in full at some point during the night.

Wolf Parade; Photo by Pamela Evelyn & Joseph Yarmush

2/16: Chance the Rapper & Common, United Center

The two team captains for tonight’s All-Star Celebrity Game will also be part of the main festivities. Common will introduce the players before tip-off, while Chance is set to perform at halftime, unfortunately including material from his latest and lamest, The Big Day.

Common is also performing at Offshore, a rooftop on Navy Pier after the Slam Dunk and 3 Point Contest, with DJs Aktive and Dummy.

2/16: 2 Chainz, PRYSM

Known originally for the strength of his undeniably goofy singles, over the past few years, 2 Chainz has proved he can release some truly great albums. 2017′s Pretty Girls Like Trap Music did what Migos’ Culture thought it was doing, presenting buoyant lyrical flow over trap beats, while last year’s Rap Or Go To The League was a look inward at the man himself while still offering plenty of turn-ups. He’s stayed busy in 2020, too, dropping a new track with Future (2-minute banger “Dead Man Walking”) and curating a compilation of artists signed to The Real University (T.R.U.), his imprint, entitled No Face, No Case. He features on 6 tracks, including the unexpectedly soulful state pride anthem “Georgia”.

2/16: Wolf Parade, Thalia Hall

At one time a dynamic five-piece, the Wolf Parade that made Thin Mind, released last month, is a trio, after multi-instrumentalist Dante DeCaro amicably left the band last year. The combination of the aesthetic whittled down to guitar, keyboards/synthesizers, and drums and the idea behind the record--exploring technology and what it’s done to our minds--makes Thin Mind the first Wolf Parade record that feels like it’s been done before. 

Lyrically, there are constant references to glass, a cover that allows us to immerse ourselves in screen, a mirror by which to reflect, but not a symbolism that ascends above the aforementioned oft-explored dichotomy. “They pull you one way / They push you back again, I know / To sow division / Poisoning minds,” sings Dan Boeckner. He’s right! But the point at which he sings, “Nobody knows what they want anymore,” it goes from an astute observation to one generated from the type of person to refer to social media as “The Twitter.” Other times, Thin Mind is on-the-nose political. “The Static Age” is inspired by a collection of short stories about a leader out of touch with his populace, as if the band is trying to say, “Sound familiar?” Instrumentally, even a funny song like “Julia Take Your Man Home”, a self-aware dirge about toxic masculinity, is hobbled by a plodding groove.

Still, Thin Mind is a Wolf Parade record, which means it’s undoubtedly got some great songs. Drummer Arlen Thompson’s work stands out, his electronic drums providing the backbone to the zooming “Forest Green”, his synth and drum fills lending a quintessentially spooky quality to the theatrical “Against the Day”. And when the band talks about the isolating nature of technology not as it relates to some generic conception of humanity, but themselves, it comes across as personal and true. “Tuning into static and my mind is frayed / I could’ve been asleep by now,” Boeckner sings on the catchy “Wandering Son”, a song about the ebbs and flows of a touring musician’s closeness to his family. Perhaps the most genuine sentiment on the whole record comes courtesy of Spencer Krug. “Be as kind as you can,” he sings on the emotional centerpiece. Unlike much of Thin Mind, it’s a far-from-novel idea that never gets old.

Bedroom rockers Jo Passed open.

2/16-2/18: Shakey Graves, SPACE

We previewed Shakey Graves’ set at the Riviera in 2018:

“If you first heard Shakey Graves through his overblown single 'Dearly Departed', you were probably as skeptical as I was to hear that his new album Can’t Wake Up was supposed to be a revelation. Well, it’s not album of the year, but it’s a very impressive transformation from earnest folk singer to indie rock curator for Alejandro Rose-Garcia. Using a choir of voices on many songs to convey his mental monologues, Garcia creates a world where he’s 17, and then 27, having existential crises and feeling invincible at the same time. Tracks are breezy ('Kids These Days', 'Backseat Driver') and dreamy ('Counting Sheep', 'Dining Alone'), and the wide array of instruments on the record, including lo-fi synthesizers, like on the drum-machine-addled ‘My Neighbor' and 'Big Bad Wolf' and buzzing 'Foot Of Your Bed', add to the chaos that makes the record so ultimately effective.”

Since then, he’s released a cover of Roger Miller’s “A World So Full Of Love”, but he’s been playing new songs at his shows. Expect to hear some of them during his three-night stint at SPACE for his For The Record acoustic tour.

[yuli-ban]

Anarchy in Prague vs Belle Grand-Mär: A Moddie Death Battle

If you invaded my home, I’d send you 12 gauges up the arse. However, if you wasted me and stole my laptop, you’d undoubtedly find copious evidence of two stories that have a very similar style but ultimately shoot off into two wildly different directions. So I’ll spend this post detailing how the two are similar and different.

Anarchy in Prague (Anarchie) and Belle Grand-Mär (BGM) both occupy a style that doesn’t seem to have a proper name, for better or worse. The inspirations are the same: start with FLCL, draw a line to JSRF: Jet Set Radio Future, connect those to Scott Pilgrim and Kill La Kill, add stupid amounts of retro video gaming, and sprinkle with the likes of The World Ends With You, Gravity Rush, Steven Universe, Mirror’s Edge, Star vs. The Forces of Evil, Powerpuff Girls, and various other shows, video games, and comics.  Both of them star downer female protagonists with somewhat similar personalities— Venus in Anarchie, Belle in BGM. In both cases, you could easily reframe the story to turn them into an antagonist and suddenly realize that they’re probably villains. 

The differences are in presentation. I’ve called Anarchie “a spiritual successor to Scott Pilgrim” for a damn good reason— if you were to compare the two, you’d quickly notice quite a bit of crossover in themes. For example, one of the reasons Scott Pilgrim works is because it abuses the Willing Suspension of Disbelief clause by having people casually responding to extraordinary events occur in an ordinary world. In any other story, if Matthew Patel burst in from the ceiling and demanding a battle to the death with Scott Pilgrim, there’d be immediate chaos in the audience (after people put away their smartphones, but this was before that era). Scott Pilgrim, the movie and comic, just ran with it. It was like an everyday event that people couldn’t be arsed to care about. A robot is kicking Scott’s ass? Yeah, whatever, there’s free pizza. It’s so deadpan, it’s beautiful. But it’s not so “taking nothing seriously” as to become obnoxious. It was not the first to use this trope (hell, the mainstream comic industry is pretty much built off of this sort of thing!), but it’s my favorite. 

The fact it was a loveletter to gamers and music fans was a plus. Scott Pilgrim and Anarchie are crazy, definitely. Hopefully I can make Anarchie that good that others “get” that it’s meant to be a spiritual sequel. 

BGM is on another level of insanity entirely, at Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann tiers compared to Anarchie. The characters are still meant to be relatable and recognizable, but they’re also not.  Anarchie plays with the moddies as a counterculture, but its main characters are still purely aging Millennials. BGM’s characters are iGeneration-esque moddies in full. The world is far less recognizable and more video game-esque (making it fun to deconstruct it), and the events are flashier and more over the top.  Anarchie, I'd say, is like 'Scott Pilgrim meets Regular Show', if you also threw in a sprinkle of ワタモテ and set it to synthy riff rock. It’s also more of an action-oriented slice of life/Bildungsroman.  BGM is like Scott Pilgrim meets Steven Universe, with a hefty dose of Star Vs. The Forces of Evil, Fooly Cooly, Kill la Kill, and Tank Girl and threw in a whole league of old school Nintendo games and gave it a Jet Set Radio Future-ish, chiptune punk inspired soundtrack. It’s a more straight action-adventure story,  a la Teen Titans, or Young Justice. It's Young Justice with a cutesy artstyle.

I suppose one could even argue that Anarchie is a hipster story, or at least a rocker story, while BGM is a moddie story. But now I’m just rambling. I think it would be better to show you what I mean.

[coreygoestoconcerts]

Last Night: Riverboat Gamblers, American Sharks

New feature here. I’ve been writing reviews/recaps/thoughts about shows “on this day” in past years, and my more recent work has all gone on Glide Magazine. However, I don’t write reviews of every show I go to for Glide, so when I do attend something that I don’t plan on reviewing for them, I’ll post a quick batch of thoughts here under the banner “Last Night.”

Last night I went to see Riverboat Gamblers and American Sharks play a show for free week at Austin’s Barracuda. For those that don’t know, Barracuda is the new venue in the spot where Red 7 used to be. It’s been Barracuda for a few years now, but it’ll always be Red 7 to me.

Full disclosure, the front men for both bands, Mike Wiebe and Roky Moon respectively, are friends. I go way back with Roky, to when we were both in the Houston indie/punk/hipster scene when he was playing with the recently reunited Roky Moon and BOLT! the first go around. So I’m particularly biased here.

That being said, it was really fun time. I saw a lot of people I know, so it was a lot like an Austin local family reunion. I kind of kept my head down and avoided talking to anyone because since I quit drinking I’m kind of an antisocial prick. Whatever. I honestly waffled on whether to go because I have a perfectly good bed I could have been in (old man talking), but I finally dragged myself out and got there just as Eagle Claw was finishing up their set. Perfect. I don’t know anyone in Eagle Claw!

In all seriousness, they sounded pretty good. When American Sharks set up their stuff, we got treated to some funny moments of soundchecking. It ended up being a particularly long soundcheck for whatever reason. My favorite moment was Roky saying “check” into the microphone repeatedly, eventually bantering to the impatient audience, “check check check check. This is all you’re getting tonight, folks. Check check check check. This is a free show after all. Check check check check. I don’t know what you expected. Check check check check.” Hilarious. Roky doesn’t get enough credit for how funny he can be at times.

Once they played, American Sharks really blew the roof off the outdoor venue. I haven’t heard a band that loud and heavy in a long time, and most of the shows I go to are metal shows. To pack that much of a punch, especially in an open air venue, it really made that soundcheck worth it. My ears were ringing all night. Hooray for permanent hearing damage.

I honestly am not the most familiar with the band’s songs, but there were some really awesome moments that made me feel bad for not digging in sooner. In particular, some of the heavy, HEAVY, sludgy parts appealed to some of my primal metalhead proclivities.

Riverboat Gamblers came on afterwards and brought it, as always. I’ll have a lot more thoughts on them when I write up the “On This Day” feature for their show last January during free week (the one with crazy Japanese rockers Peelander-Z), but I will say that I appreciate the hell out of what they do. Mike Wiebe’s energy is off the charts and often reminds me of my favorite punk rock front man, Cedric from At the Drive-In. It makes sense because they came up in the same sort of historical context, that late 90′s/early 00′s semi-poppy post-hardcore punk.

I think that’s what I like about Riverboat Gamblers so much. It’s rare you hear bands like this nowadays, that are still together anyway. ATDI kind of did this sound on In/Casino/Out and El Gran Orgo, and then there was stuff like Hot Water Music, probably the most accurate touchstone if you wanted to describe Riverboat Gamblers to somebody. That was one of my favorite eras of music and the Gamblers’ music just makes me happy to hear.

I left a little early because I am old and cranky, but these guys really do always put on a great show. We are incredibly lucky in Austin, Texas, to just go down the street and hear this stuff for free every January. Also, just to throw it in there, as I was leaving some guy called Crawl with a black metal logo was playing ambient, synthy, doomy metal shit by himself with a synthesizer and a drum kit. Austin’s got it all, baby.

[tgaoe]

Andy’s 2017 Music Report

Favorite Albums, Favorite Songs, and other assorted temporally-specific ramblings.

Preamble

I. Dearth I listened to less music this year than I did last year, partly due to the immense amount of time required to finish my Master’s Degree, and also because I slept better. You may recall from last year’s treatise that I experienced something of a listening renaissance late in the year, turning to music during nights spent sleepless for work-related anxiety. 2017 marked my fourth year in my current job, and the first during which I began to feel confident in my own professional competence. Hence, less anxiety, fewer sleepless nights, less music. So it goes.

II. Duplicity, Disaffection Another reason. Prior to November 21st, I spent an inordinate amount of time listening to a single band, the band that made my #1 record from 2016. They were also my most-listened to band of 2017. I went deep into their back catalogue, full immersion, and I found such joy and pleasure in doing so. The band helped me through a fraught, life-altering personal ordeal. I traveled to see them play and it was cathartic. However, on 11/21 it was revealed that the leader of that band may have betrayed much of what he/they claimed to have stood for as steadfast advocates for kindness, equity, and empathy. The woman or women he hurt are the primary victims, but secondarily his hypocrisy destroyed a community of people who connected strongly with his music. I believe in rehabilitation. But I also doubt I’ll ever be able to listen to this band the same way again, if at all. I share this troubling information because it undoubtedly colors this list. For weeks after the revelation I only listened to songs sung by women, maybe to offset the damage somehow, maybe to avoid connecting with another secretly awful man.

III. Disappointment Last year I wrote extensively about how the absence of releases from legacy acts resulted in my exposure to an unusually large number of new/emerging artists. That trend of exposure continued this year, for unfortunate reasons. Most new releases by old favorites proved little more than pleasant. Though something like 20 albums from 2017 fall into that category, only five or six made my list of favorites, and even some of those did so despite caveats. I suspect this may have to do with the current circumstances of my life more than with the music itself, at least in some cases. For instance, Sleep Well Beast will not appear below, but I am the only National devotee I know who doesn’t love it as much as their previous records. Time will tell, I suppose.

IV. Derelict I devoted significantly less time to this project this year than I did to its previous iterations, probably 20 hours vs. the usual 40-60. I usually track favorites all year and begin writing in October. This year I was much less diligent, not commencing writing until mid-December. It shows, I’m afraid. I did not keep an actual Favorite Songs list, nor did I keep a running record of micro-moments.

Blame the Master’s. Over five months of work my research project ballooned to 18,415 words spanning 118 pages—characteristically about twice as long as it needed to be. It’s a mystery how I mustered the energy to eke out another 6000 words for this thing after all that.

V. Dingus As always, forgive my assumption that readers of this monstrosity possess a certain level of familiarity with prevailing music culture. The writing reads better that way. Also as always, please forgive the preposterous pretense that anyone would want to read this, the bloviations of yet another obsessive 30-something white man desperate for your attention.

My 19 Favorite Albums of 2017

19 favorites because 19 was how many favorites I had.

19 The World’s Best American Band White Reaper Big, stupid, shameless riff rock; a record as fun as its title is ridiculous. The band almost has the chops to live up to it too, blazing through ten hook-dense, hedonistic rockers with fatalistic abandon. No introspection here, folks. The only lesson White Reaper has to impart is, “If you make the girls dance, the boys will dance with ‘em.” Noted, dudes.

18 Cigarettes After Sex Cigarettes After Sex How to Make the Sexiest Music Ever, Apparently

1) Start with early Interpol. 2) Slow it down. 3) Tighten it up. 4) Strip away the fuzz. 5) Replace Paul Banks with Greg Gonzalez, a man whose smoky, sultry voice I mistook for a woman's until just now. 6) Drop the nonsense lyrics in favor of straightforward stories, proclamations, and invitations, all specific and intimate like the first xx record.

The result: a collection of variations on "Fade Into You" sans twang. Almost unfathomably sexy. The sexiest.

17 The Nashville Sound Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit I don’t love this album, but I do love all its songs. The Nashville Sound should have been a solo record with an accompanying full-band live release a few months later. The 400 Unit is so talented, so utterly professional that they can’t help but sound canned, over-produced, in a modern studio. Any old band off the street can be made to sound that way. What makes the Unit special is that this is how they sound live. They sound perfect. Perfection on record isn’t much fun.

Jason Isbell is the best songwriter of his generation. Case in point: Leonard Cohen’s “Chelsea Hotel No. 2,” his best song and a contender for best song by anyone, famously concludes with the couplet, 

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel That's all, I don't think of you that often

Isbell manages to casually convey the same sentiment through implication on Sound’s “Molotov”: 

Another life but I still remember A county fair in steamy September In the Year of the Tiger, nineteen-something

He remembers, but not that well, not the year. He doesn’t think of her that often.

16 Need Your Love Sheer Mag The opening salvo of “Meet Me in the Street” and the sort-of title track tells you everything you need to know about Need Your Love, the surprising segue of anthemic nails-hard rebel rock into heartfelt, slinky soul-funk. Sheer Mag is everything 70s rock, all facets, plain and simple, in timbre, tone, and demeanor, fitted to modern pop structure and sensibility. Massive riffs, throaty hollers, cavernous sonics, never not danceable. The last 40 years never happened.

15 Something to Tell You Haim Four years ago I passionately engaged in a pointless internet debate on the false premise of the superiority of Haim vs. Lorde. Of course this was less about the actual artists than it was the debaters’ desperation for validation of our own tastes and preferences at the expense of others’, which is a stupid thing insecure young white men do for some reason. However, looking back now and comparing the two entities’ work and public personas does reveal fascinating differences in their approaches and cultural placements, especially considering the rollouts and receptions of both artists’ follow-up records. I’ll write more about Lorde later (spoiler), but she crafts songs that achieve timelessness and universality seemingly unintentionally, through trope subversion and highly specific and personal writing. Haim achieves the same through something like the opposite approach.

Every Haim song feels like a glossy new product behind a high-end shop window, displayed uniformly, calculated and designed for maximum value and mass appeal. I’ve said this before, but Haim recordings sound like money, sound expensive. Because they are. Haim recordings are light, airy, sleek, tight, and huge. The lyrics strive for universality by exploring standard romantic emotional states in the most vague, impersonal, situationally unspecific possible manner. We do not know the identity of the “you” in these songs. Hell, we don’t really who the “I” is. We can project whoever we want. These songs are perfect manufactured products. That may read as negative criticism, but it is not. The total orderliness of Haim songs forces order on anarchy. Haim songs make the world simple, make it make sense. Every question has an answer, every problem a solution.

There is an exception that proves the rule here, a more experimental Haim song that towers above the others by subverting those established expectations of order, transcends them to depict in actuality the true messiness of love. That song is “Right Now,” and it is a monster jam, likely the best song Haim has ever written. The structure is confounding, the melodies don’t time out naturally, nothing musically makes sense, is rational, in the same way feelings don’t and aren’t. There is a call-and-response with which it is almost impossible to sing along because the response comes in like half a beat later than every other pop song has trained us to expect. Feedback blares, clicks click, hums hum. “Right Now” is imperfect, and in that it is the most perfect Haim song. It came not from an assembly line, it came from a soul. Or souls. “Right Now” even allows a single reference to an actual specific event, a quiet conversation overheard through a window, which, even though still somewhat vague, gives the song a level of personal meaning to the narrator missing from, you know, every other Haim song. More like this please.

By the way, this short PTA-directed performance film is incredible, and suggests that everything I wrote in that second paragraph may be negated when the band plays live.

14 Graveyard of Good Times Brandon Can’t Dance Brandon Ayers's collection of mom's basement DIY songs plays as much like a friend's great mix cd as it does a solo artist's album, intuitively-sequenced and formally experimental in the sense that the dude seemingly tries any musical idea that occurs to him, and there are so many here: stoned weirdo neo disco, 80s soft rock, wall-of-sound shoegaze, earnest folk, synthy dance rock, 90s industrial and more, all effortless, catchy and united aesthetically by competent use of limited production resources. Ayers's lyrics are always either smart or hilariously, knowingly dumb as he explores a kind of mundanity inherent to a life of low-budget hedonism, as well as how much he loves his dogs, mom, sister, and grandma. Can't go wrong with that.

13 Villains Queens of the Stone Age Josh Homme and Britt Daniel have much in common culturally, both mid-40s men who have spent nearly two decades each as highly unlikely sex symbols, sustaining multi-decade rock careers, stalking stages with maniacal, borderline-predatory confidence. But musically they’ve shared few qualities until now. Villians has airless, precise grooves similar to some Spoon records, but, you know, with that Queens menace and evil. The QoTSA has always been a band about perfect playing, but this time Homme brought in preeminent funk racketeer Mark Ronson to help shape Villains. The result is the shortest, most accessible record the band has ever made. Actually, it is not the shortest—it just feels that way. Villians cooks, showcasing the same old Queens, aggressively showy and prone to extended digressions, but with arrangements more focused, lightweight, and compressed than ever before.

Make sure you stick around for the entire song. Trust me.

12 I Love You Like a Brother Alex Lahey What is happening in Australian that the country keeps producing these witty, confident female punk singer/songwriters? Alex Lahey’s style certainly mines a similar humorous vain to Courtney Barnett, but her approach is more energetic and less erudite. I always feel held at a distance by Barnett’s music; listening to it is almost a purely intellectual exercise. Lahey’s, however, has a casual immediacy that makes me want to smile and laugh and dance.

The title track is both punk as hell and sticky-sweet, a genuine love song from a sister to a brother, insanely catchy and refreshingly sincere. I am no one’s sister, and my brother and I, though we love each other, have never had a connection quite like the one Lahey documents here. Still, I so feel this jam. It follows the album’s opener, “Every Day’s the Weekend,” an actual love song, albeit one about having fallen for a broke, emotionally elusive charmer. “Fuck work, you’re here, every day’s the weekend,” is lyric of such powerful brevity, so effectively conveying the feeling during those times when someone exciting has unexpectedly exploded into your life. The hilarious “Perth Traumatic Stress Disorder,” another gatestormer, follows, and then the album starts to mutate into something more complex and interesting.

I Love You Like a Brother begins as an aggressive punk record, but slowly warps into atmospheric, radio-ready stadium rock. On a couple occasions this may be to its detriment, but as a whole the album serves as a solid testament to Lahey’s versatility as a writer. The lyrics of “Awkward Exchange” are comparatively anonymous to the earlier tracks, but the open sound, dynamic structure, and wordless chants beg for massive festival singalongs. It might happen. It should happen. The two approaches combine on “Lotto in Reverse,” perhaps Lahey’s greatest triumph here, an inward-focused dirge grafted onto a massive, hooky rock song that more than earns its prominent placement on Spotify’s Badass Women playlist.

11 Go Farther in Lightness Gang of Youths Christian music is terrible, almost all of it. Not just because it all still sounds like U2, but because none of it deigns to explore actual life as a flawed human who happens to be Christian. This is so intentionally. The Christian music industry is insidiously Randian; cynical and deplorable. Gang of Youths is fighting back, hard.

Singer/songwriter David Le'aupepe is a vulgar spiritualist, kind of a like an Australian David Bazan or Sufjan Stevens in the way he publicly struggles to reconcile his faith with his human proclivities. His studious lyrics often recall very early Bruce Springsteen, with their expansive vocabulary and wide-ranging cultural literacy. The band met in church (like U2!), yet the man swears with relish and documents his perceived failings as well as his issues with the spirtual institution to which he belongs. Get a load of this, from “Perservere,” which is actually my least favorite song on the album:

But God is full of grace and his faithfulness is vast There is safety in the moments when the shit has hit the fan Not some vindictive motherfucker, nor is he shitty at his job What words to hear, and I’m a mess by now 'Cause nothing tuned me in to my failure as fast As grieving for a friend with more belief than I possessed

Imagine that at Sunday service! If all Christian music was this nuanced and genuinely introspective then, well, Christian music wouldn’t be a ghetto. It would just be more music.

This album is long, almost feature-length, most of its 16 songs stretching beyond five minutes. Fortunately, the wealth of ideas and arrangements sustain the length, if only just barely. Gang of Youths are adventurously egalitarian in their consummate unoriginality, adamantly subscribing to the notion of Ecclesiastes 1:9, content to let Le’aupepe’s compelling narratives give the band identity as their arrangements freely pillage ideas from the most successful indie rock bands of the last decade, mostly those who can now fill arenas; the Killers, the National, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, LCD Soundsystemm Bloc Party. My favorite songs here pound forward relentlessly like Titus Andronicus. On some songs Le’aupepe’s words tumble out uncontrollably like Gareth Campesinos, on others his voice could be mistaken for Matt Berninger’s low growl.

Also, I’d be remiss to not mention how appealing I find it that there are no white people in this band. It’s rare and refreshing to hear this kind of massive music from a cultural perspective so different then my own.

10 Hot Thoughts Spoon Spoon is a band of consummate constants and variables. The band knows exactly what defines it, what listeners like, and they always deliver while also changing just enough to surprise. Every record, every song, reliably has three particular elements: an airtight hard rhythm groove, simple, catchy, repetitive; a masterful command of pop structure; and Britt Daniel’s enigmatic brand of ultracool, vaguely sexual vocal swagger. The other sounds around those elements, the atmospheres and tones, change with each record. Hot Thoughts delves deeper into the psychedelic G-funk timbres the band played with some on They Want My Soul, as Daniel continues to explore nonthreatening, acceptable ways to express desire. In short, it’s another Spoon record, and it rules.

9 Strangers in the Alps Phoebe Bridgers I keep coming back to lyrics. Lyrics draw me in like nothing else, the more smart, personal, and specific the better. Lyrics don’t come more specific and personal and smart than Phoebe Bridgers’s. She tells vivd stories, recounts memories of events and emotions by conjuring indelible, detailed settings and images with devastating depths of feeling, mostly over quiet, close-miced acoustic guitars underlaid with noninvasive strings and other atmospherics. Prepare to be haunted.

Though she sometimes doesn’t bother and the songs don’t suffer for it, as on the incredible “Smoke Signals,” Bridgers can also write the hell out of a chorus. Try not to get “Motion Sickness” stuck in your mind.

Strangers in the Alps does take a production risk I would understand some finding off-putting. Sometimes sound effects supplement and/or match lyrical events; a plane flying overhead, a boot crunching leaves, the kind of thing. It’s strange at first, but ultimately sets the album apart from others by similarly earnest stool-seated strummers.

8 Near to the Wild Heart of Life - year’s best title Japandroids I’ve seen this band play three times. The third was this year. Those previous had been with friends, and before the shows we drank and goofed around, celebrating our affection for each other and getting just the right level of lit up. This year I took a vacation day from my professional job, drove to St. Louis alone, and waited in line alone while reading a screenplay by one of the guys I used to go to shows with, eventually watching the show alone while nursing a single beer. It wasn’t the same. But it was still good.

Japandroids write what they know. Seven years ago what they knew resulted in a masterpiece, an album more relatable to me at the time than any other. Indeed, Celebration Rock remains my all-time favorite record, its ragged, propulsive riffage and emotional narratives of kinetic nights with close friends still have the power to take me back to that time, when I had more energy and a will to wildness. However, over the long interim between albums, the Japandroids’ lives and mine ceased to resemble each other. My closest friends moved. I have bills and a career and a generally pleasant, stable life—one distinctly not wild. Meanwhile, those dudes are evidently still globetrotting, every night out there swilling top-shelf tequila to nurse the heartache of intercontinental romance, living hard and loving harder. I no longer relate. As a listener I’m an observer now when I was once a participant. However, while I don’t connect with latter day Japandroids experientially, in a way the fact that Wild Heart still plays great for me despite that suggests that Japandroids is a legitimately great band on a musical level, rather than one just great for its ability to bash out messy, meaningful feelings..

These dudes are not shy about their laziness as songwriters, at least in terms of prolificacy. They release music as soon as they’ve reached the requisite minimum quantity of great songs, and it takes them forever to do so. Like the two previous Japandroids records, Wild Heart has only eight tracks, and they cheat even to amass that many. While Celebration Rock included a (totally awesome, raucous, thematically-appropriate) cover song, this time one Wild Heart track is an interlude, barely a song (“I’m Sorry [for Not Finding You Sooner]”), and another is just bad, sounding like a high school garage band trying hard to write a Japandroids song (“Midnight to Morning”). They really shouldn’t have let that one through. But man, the other six songs still kill with the same ferocity as before, some with an increased sense of melody and hook, and they all sound great live and feel great to shout along with, which, let’s be honest, is mainly what this band is for, and has always been for. The shouting just means a little less to me now.

7 Don’t Be a Stranger Nervous Dater Rachel Lightner has the gift, my favorite gift. She expels what she considers her worst qualities, and she does it through great songs; extremely catchy, smart, driving, dynamic punk songs. She does it publicly, with casual confidence. She makes it look easy and, most importantly, normal. Feeling how she feels is not unique. Sharing those feelings legitimizes them, creates a community around them. I mean, look at these lines:

Cause when things get quiet I feel uneasy I need my friends or at least just the sound of the TV To keep these things in my head from screaming “You’re inadequate! You’re a piece of shit! You could run forever but you’d never get away with it! And if people really knew who you were, They’d probably cover up the ground that you walk on with spit!”

If you can’t relate, then I envy you. If you can, and if you like punk, you need this band.

The players behind Lightner are also great, building arrangements that match incidental turns in the lyrics. The lines above are from the title track. Listen for how the song bends and nearly breaks as the narrative does the same, then recovers before almost breaking again. The band follows a formula, each instrument doing a specific job. Drums, bass, and one guitar lock into rhythm, while a lead guitar incessantly plays highly-involved tasto solo hooks. The band rarely veers from its set aesthetic, and when it does, it does so with purpose.

Occasionally a male member of the band will cameo, supplementing Lightner’s self-excoriations with early-2000s emo-screaming in the background. It’s a signifier that, intentionally or not, effectively ties Lightner’s music back to that era, an era that very intentionally excluded and delegitimized women’s voices. As has been proven time and time again in recent years, that was stupid. Women do it better. The contemporary women making emotional, personal punk music are doing it so well that nobody’s come up with a term like “emo” to dismiss it. I love being alive right now.

6 Big Fish Theory Vince Staples For when people ask what kind of music I like, that impossible question almost only asked by those who do not share the obsession, I have developed a stock answer of surprising accuracy. The smartest versions of punk, rap, and country. Country is a fudge, designed to open up a conversation about what “smart” country is. Dorks call it “alt-country.” Anyway. That’s a separate essay. You may have noticed that Big Fish Theory is the first rap record on this list. I am not tapped in to most contemporary rap. The slow, repetitive codeine scene doesn’t do it for me, and rap is more about single songs and premium playlist placement than it is about albums now. The album-focused rappers are dinosaurs. Four fossil-rap acts made solid records this year, and three made my list. Ranking them was difficult, and I am not at all confident in my final assessments. Vince Staples could have ranked highest another day.

Some days I like Big Fish Theory more than DAMN. Vince Staples’ world is less complicated, more concentrated and angry. Some days unnuanced anger is what I want. For fuel. Case in point, compare the two’s thoughts on the President and the country. First, Kendrick, hinting and contemplative:

Homicidal thoughts; Donald Trump's in office We lost Barack and promised to never doubt him again But is America honest, or do we bask in sin?

And Vince:

Tell the President to suck a dick, because we on now Tell the one percent to suck a dick, because we on now Tell the government to suck a dick, because we on now

And, of course, both men appear on “Yeah Right,” every bit as glorious a linguistic whirlwind as could be expected.

Also, I don’t know another rapper more musically experimental, forward-thinking, and adventurous than Vince Staples, including Kendrick. Vince is admirably without ego here (humble!); often letting the music overtake his voice, having faith in listeners to look up his words if they so desire. Much of Big Fish Theory is essentially modernized Chicago house with rapping, while also proudly West Coast. And it bangs, hard.

5 Melodrama Lorde This one took time. It took reading younger people’s perspectives to appreciate, grow to love. The first listen felt cold, staid. Pure Herione had been an instant rush, a loud announcement of a new, exciting pop personality, fully steeped in enthusiastically appropriated pop tropes of the time and letting Ella Yelich-O'Connor’s novel personality shine atop it all. Melodrama is different. She doesn’t shine, she seethes and writhes. She’s growing up in front of us, with surprising, precocious wisdom and emotional maturity.

There is nothing particularly contemporary about the sound of Melodrama. It’s less jokey, more earnest than Pure Heroine. And ultimately, despite that it does not provide the same sugary pleasure rush of its predecessor, Melodrama is far superior. It doesn’t sound like a time period, it sounds like first love and first heartbreak, because it is the manifestation of those. It sounds timeless, orchestral without an orchestra, because it is those things.

One track is a notable exception to the timelessness, and that makes it almost impossibly special. I will elucidate later in the Favorite Songs section.

4 DAMN. Kendrick Lamar Has there ever been an artist so deft at balancing/blending pure creative expression with commercialism? Until DAMN., Kendrick had achieved that balance through compartmentalization, by creating knotty, esoteric records, masterpieces, while also featuring on the most crass chart-bait singles imaginable. Another case in point: Kendrick made “For Free?” and appeared on the “Shake it Off” remix the same year. DAMN. inextricably fuses the two compartments without compromise. Almost every second of the album is both at once. Every song has earworm hooks and brain-breaking lyrical density. The record is jammed with potential singles, yet still works as a whole… even when listening to the tracks in reverse order. All hail. DAMN. is unquestionably the best album of the year, but even so, and even though I flew 1500 miles to see him play it live his hometown… it is not my favorite this year. DAMN. somehow isn’t even my favorite rap record, a late-breaking change-of-heart that took me by surprise.

3 RTJ3 Run the Jewels It’s too long. Let’s get that out of the way. But it’s all essential. For months I said that cutting “Hey Kids” and “Thieves!” would have made a better record. I was wrong. “Hey Kids” is the weakest track, for sure, but Killer Mike’s verse is straight up canonical, despite the relative frivolity of El-P’s bars and the idiocy of Danny Brown’s feature. “Thieves!,” on the other hand, after some close-listening and Genius deep-diving, is one of RTJ3’s best tracks, a massively ambitious dystopian sci-fi narrative that subtly riffs on Hamlet. Part of that ambition is manifested in a structure quite different from the straightforward presentations we’re used to from these guys; listening without the proper context doesn’t provide the furious pleasure typically associated with Run the Jewels.

Killer Mike & El-P were in an unenviable position prior to releasing this album. RTJ1 surprised everyone, even its makers; a no-stakes lark that happened to be much better and more special than that due simply to the sheer volume of talent involved. Expectations for RTJ2 had been high as a result, and they were exceeded as the band chose to treat the project with seriousness and gravity, leveraging their newfound fame and cultural relevance/reverence for conscientious advocacy. The result, RTJ2, is an unimpeachable classic, one I will listen to for the rest of my life. How could they top it, or even match it, without repeating themselves? By ratcheting up the ambition even further, and with it the risk.

Run the Jewels had been many things on their first two records; angry, funny, aggressive, stoned. Introspective was rarely one of those things. On RTJ3, the duo turn their focus inward, exploring feelings, emotions, and motivations as they apply to the external world in a manner they had never done previously. They also continue to make hilarious dick jokes.

The first and last four tracks are the best work they’ve ever done, the bookends especially. I didn’t appreciate just how great “Down” is until seeing the group close a couple live sets with it. The friends with whom I saw those shows and I were confused by that choice, but it caused us, or me at least, to listen to the song differently, to consider it as the type of song to close a set. Turns out, the choice was a great one. This band has become a band about hope manifested as anger and action, and no track conveys that notion better than “Down,” no RTJ album does it better than their third.

2 Turn Out the Lights Julien Baker Julien Baker creates stadium soundscapes using only a clean electric guitar and/or piano filtered through looping pedals. Many artists try this and fail. Especially in a live setting, it’s a cynical trick often deployed to impress perceived plebes, as I’ve seen Ed Sheerhan and, sadly, Elvis Costello, do in person. But for Julien Baker it is not a trick. It is seamless, unnoticeable; technical mastery not for its own sake, for impressing an audience, but for empowering expressions of deep feeling.

Turn Out the Lights is so much more than its production and arrangements, however. Baker is one of the most talented living writers, singers, and performers. Her percussion-less, entirely solo arrangements exist only to serve the themes of her songs. She’s one woman, onstage or on record, alone with the power of a full orchestra as she looses her interior on the world, her battles with addiction and depression, her fight to square an existence as a Christian and queer person, and her longing search for love and meaning through it all, the constant quest to hurt less.

1 After the Party The Menzingers If this were a list of “best” rather than “favorite” albums of the year, After the Party would be much lower, possibly not even included. There’s nothing innovative or original happening here, nothing generation-defining, no new ideas or calls to revolution. But there is an endless well of energy, feeling, and hyper-competent rock musicianship. The Menzingers have one of the most able rhythm sections working, serving the songs of two extraordinary writers, who seem incapable of picking up guitars without creating stadium punk hooks as indelibly catchy as they are heavy. This is smart, pure, meat-and-potatoes rock music, the meatiest and starchiest.

Beyond the wholly satisfying drive and force of the band on a primal musical level, these dudes have a real working-class, post-religious Midwestern mentality, despite hailing a little too far east to fully qualify. Many of these songs deal with how to gracefully age and settle while maintaining an uncommon resistance to traditional values. It should come as no surprise how strongly I relate. Earlier I mentioned Japandroids, how their initial records depicted the romance of early-20s debauchery and intense friendship. The true triumph of After the Party is how the The Menzingers manage to write about moving forward, building lives with partners, embracing careers and domesticity while also looking back fondly at bygone wild days without romanticizing them, fully owning that a calmer life is a better one, but allowing that the past was pretty damn fun.

After the Party may not become a timeless classic like other records on this list might, but this year it was the album to which I connected most. It was, and is, mine.

A Few of My Favorite Songs of 2017

8/7 “Truth Hurts”/“Water Me” Lizzo Lizzo should be a huge star. She’s like André 3000 good. She’s my Beyoncé.

Including these songs here is like an honorary Favorite Album spot. I listened to the two singles back-to-back more times than I did most albums this year. Lizzo has talent in excess of her excess of confidence and swagger.

Music journalists could not shut up about the two times Rihanna rapped on record this year, a little on the Kendrick album and on the only good 45 seconds of the N.E.R.D. album. Both instances earned effusive and universal praise. It bothers me that Lizzo doesn’t get that type of attention. She raps, sings, and writes far better than Rihanna, better than most pop stars working, really, and she often does it all in the same song, the same line.

“Truth Hurts” is a total kiss-off rap banger, insidiously catchy as it deconstructs and rebuilds the chorus of “Black Beatles” into something much better and exponentially more driving than its lugubrious origin. “Water Me” is an aggressive funk jam that Lizzo goes nuts over, showing off the full range of her voice, trying about a hundred different modulations and weird ideas. They all work, and together form some truly transcendent pop.

Check out her older stuff too, including a couple unlikely collaborations with Sadie Dupois from Speedy Ortiz (!) for my punk friends.

7 “What Can I Do If the Fire Goes Out?” Gang of Youths This isn’t another “Younger Us,” a song that so fully represents a period of my life that the opening chords still sometimes have the power to make me tear up. But it does take me be back to another time, and moves me in a similar way to the Japandroids classic. I haven’t told many people about this, but though I didn’t openly quit the church until a few months after graduating high school, I had struggled to maintain faith for a few years, even while playing in a devoutly evangelical Christian rock band.

“What Can I Do If the Fire Goes Out?” takes me back to a specific morning, a bone-cold, see-your-breath morning, driving to school my sophomore or junior year, listening to the first song from the second Spoken album and weeping at the lyrics’ longing prayer for help and guidance. In hindsight, Spoken made objectively bad music; comically derivative and poorly-structured. Throughout the Gang of Youths album, and especially on “Fire,” similar sentiments are explored and depicted more articulately, with far superior musical acumen. I’ll never believe again, but it’s nice to be made to have those feelings again, to experience unforced sympathy for another’s spiritual struggle.

6 “Right Now” Haim See the last paragraph of the Haim album entry above.

5 “Even” Julien Baker Julien at her most simple, most distilled, uncharacteristically just 4/4 quarter-note strumming an acoustic guitar, showing us that her layered productions would be nothing without the powerful songs beneath them. And what a song, karmic allusions and memories of conflicts.

It's not that I think I'm good I know that I'm evil I guess I was trying to even it out

Yeesh.

4 “Supercut” Lorde That word, and its power. Until recently no expression or single word existed to describe that wistful wash of isolated, curated romantic memories, warm-tinted flashes of the loveliest tiny moments of a lost relationship, ignoring fights and infidelities, only seeing sunshine. The good parts. And knowing its nature, indulging it with caution, recalling fondly and reliving without desire to return or recreate. “Supercut” could not have existed at any other time, on any other album, by any other artist. Lorde took the most modern of language and forged a work of art of crushing emotional truth; timeless, indelible, perfect.

3 “HUMBLE.” Kendrick Lamar I saw Kendrick play his first ever solo headlining arena show in his hometown. When it came time for “HUMBLE.”, the music dropped out after the initial “Hyeuh, hyeuh!,” and Kendrick let the crowd rap the entire song acapella while he just gazed around, observing in awe. The moment was magic.

2 “If We Were Vampires” Jason Isbell I’ll be honest. I don’t know how to write about this one without getting inappropriately personal. It’s been a hard year for me in certain relevant ways, and this incredible song has not helped matters.

1 “God in Chicago” Craig Finn The adjective “cinematic” doesn’t do justice to “God in Chicago,” which, despite lasting a mere four minutes and forty-five seconds, and not being cinema, is one of the best films of the year, a devastating, seedy road trip romance with a tight plot, loveable flawed characters, and an ambiguous ending. Craig Finn fronts my favorite band of over a decade, and yet this is the best thing he’s ever done. Every detail matters, every word and phrase considered and intentional. It’s Craig’s “Chelsea Hotel No 2,” a quiet meditation towering over an oeuvre of louder, more sensational and populist work. I love this man.

Appendices

I. Albums I enjoyed and/or listened to often but did not become favorites for whatever reasons Allison Crutchfield, Tourist in this Town Arcade Fire, Everything Now Big Thief, Capacity Broken Social Scene, Hug of Thunder Bully, Losing Charly Bliss, Guppy Cloud Nothings, Life Without Sound The Dirty Nil, Minimum R&B Drake, More Life Fat Joe/Remy Ma, Plata O Plomo Father John Misty, Pure Comedy Feist, Pleasure Craig Finn, We All Want the Same Things Japanese Breakfast, Soft Sounds from Another Planet Jay-Z, 4:44 Jens Lenkman, Life Will See You Now LCD Soundsystem, American Dream Migos, Culture The National, Sleep Well Beast Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, The French Press Ryan Adams, Prisoner Sampha, Process Sylvan Esso, What Now Tigers Jaw, spin The War on Drugs, A Deeper Understanding Waxahatchee, Out of the Storm Wolf Parade, Cry Cry Cry Worriers, Survival Pop Yaeji, EP2 Yr Poetry, One Night Alive

II. Albums with which I was simply unable to spend enough time So many. Basically any album on any list covered on this site—the ultimate resource for end-of-year music dorkery--that I didn’t mention in my document I would have at least given a cursory try. That’s my normal process. There just wasn’t time.

III. A vain attempt to string together some final thoughts I’m exhausted, too exhausted to force a cute unified narrative onto my experiences with music this year beyond what I already have. As for the future… I’m excited, in a different way than normal. I don’t know what’s coming out next year. I haven’t done the requisite research. I’m into the idea of just letting it happen, letting New Music Fridays reveal themselves week-to-week.

Haha, just kidding. As soon as I post this I’m jumping in headfirst, making a 2018 Most Anticipated List. Sayonara suckers.