#fy!qm's favorite albums of 2019

[fuckyeahqueermusic]

FY!QM’s Favorite Releases of 2019 Part 1

I know you were all waiting with bated breath for my annual list of favorite releases from the year and I apologize for the delay. December and January were trash months at my job and I had zero energy to write, but as of today that is all over! So as a gift to myself I finally finished writing this up. Let’s pretend I just had to think really really hard about my favorites and that’s why it took so long.

Part 1 is all the releases that I really liked, but either a.) are kinda honorable mention material or b.) I couldn’t think of a ton to write about it lol. They’re in no particular order because I do not care! You should go listen to all these! The usual disclaimer applies: these are just my favorite records from this year, I am no authority on what is the best and what isn’t, I just am an expert on what I like, and it’s this shit. All album titles link to my favorite song off of each record on bandcamp because I hate Spotify a lot even though I begrudgingly use it.

Part 2 will come out tomorrow because I really want to capitalize on the Super Bowl, y’know?

The Menzingers — Hello Exile I think it is safe to say at this point that The Menzingers is one of guitar music’s most consistently good acts. They are passionate sing-a-long creating machines, and with Hello Exile they gave us a new heap of them to yell along to at their shows. And having seen them play some of these live, I can confirm they are perfect for that setting.

My only criticism of Hello Exile might be that it doesn’t go anywhere unexpected, and the band is maybe a little too comfortable in the niche they’ve found for themselves. Though I guess there is something to be said for doing what you know and doing it incredibly well. But these guys are great songwriters, and I’d love to see them push themselves a little harder to evolve.

Empath  — Active Listening: Night on Earth I saw Empath open for Touche Amore and La Dispute a few months back and had no idea what to expect, but they fucking RIPPED and were far and away the best band on that bill (no offense to LD or TA. Actually maybe to LD; one of them had a fucking himalayan salt lamp sitting on their amp).

But anyways, Empath is fucking weird and chaotic and so much fucking fun, with bizarre synth textures, harsh guitar, and absolutely frantic drumming. And this album is all over the place, holding itself together with a through line of nature samples, bringing small moments of calm and a chance to breathe before everything comes crashing down again. I’d love to see them at a headlining show full of their fans, because this is music that deserves that kind of energy.

Catbite — S/T I love ska and I will never apologize. Catbite is one of the most exciting new ska bands out there. They’ve only been around for two years, but they’ve already found their niche and solidified their identity as a heavily second wave influenced band that grew up in the third wave, who are the forefront of the fourth. They’re the future of ska and I am so pumped to see them eventually get the full recognition they deserve in this genre.

Future Teens — Heartbreak Season I truly cannot believe “Frequent Crier” bops as hard as it does. This song about all the places to cry while you lament a relationship that ended years ago will have you dancing while you weep, and that pretty much sums up Future Teens’ whole deal. This album can gut you, but you’ll be so busy bopping along you won’t even mind.

Aaron West & the Roaring Twenties — Routine Maintenance  I know it’s cheating, but you should just read what Spencer wrote about this album; he put it perfectly. While I don’t immediately love this one as much as We Don’t Have Each Other (I love a divorce album and it is a top tier divorce album), it is the better record, and I’m so glad Aaron has started to figure out his new place in the world and that Dan Campbell is telling us his story.

Aly & AJ — Sanctuary  The cover of this EP is truly one of the worst album covers I have ever seen. I like to describe it to people as “naked opera gloves milk bath. Also they are SISTERS.” Every art direction decision they have made for this EP has been truly bonkers! But despite the horrendous, horrendous cover, Aly & AJ have come through with a tremendous set of jams once again! I am not sure how it happened, but between 2017’s Ten Years and this EP, they have become one of my favorite pop acts, creating mid-tempo synthy jam after mid-tempo synthy jam. They are far from reinventing the pop wheel, but they have figured out their niche and perfected it. If you haven’t listened to Aly & AJ since “Potential Break Up Song,” it’s time to dive back in, because you’ve been missing some of the most solid pop made in the 2010’s. (Also, they believe in evolution now it’s FINE). 

Sleater-Kinney — The Center Won’t Hold Okay, so this one is a cheat, because The Center Won’t Hold is not one of my favorite albums of the year, but the more time I spend with it, the more it has become my most respected album of the year.

I don’t really like this record, but I do think it is a great album. It is ambitious and surprising, a huge departure from their previous work, which critics and fans much smarter than me have examined at length. Sleater-Kinney could’ve easily crafted another album like No Cities To Love, which itself was an evolution from the sound they departed with on 2006’s The Woods, but it was an evolution that felt natural. It was easy to see point A to point B. With The Center Won’t Hold, point C is way on the other side of the map, and there is no easily discernible direct route. And while whatever is happening on this record isn’t totally my thing, I respect that they took a big swing. It’s a huge shame that it cost them Janet Weiss, though, and I don’t know if that is a loss they’ll ever truly recover from

[fuckyeahqueermusic]

FY!QM’s Favorite Albums of 2019 Part 2

Happy Super Bowl Sunday, here have a list of my favorite albums of 2019. You can click here to read part 1 if you missed it, but part 2 is all my absolute favorite releases from the year. Two of them aren’t even EPs, let alone full albums, but it is my list and I am the boss so I can do what I want!!

Obviously a ton of great music was released this year, but I think compared to 2018 it was a little lacking. Which is understandable, that was a bonkers killer year for new music, but I’m already psyched for all that’s coming out in 2020, and I have a feeling I am going to have a hard time doing a round up of everything I loved come next December (or January....or February, who’s to say!)

Anyways, onto my favs of 2019!

Carly Rae Jepsen — Dedicated Okay, so first off we have to talk about how one of the first working titles for this album was “Songs To Clean Your House To”, and how it is a CRIME we were deprived of that. Well, it will always be the real title in my heart.

So, Dedicated is not Emotion. It was never going to be Emotion, and that is okay. It is still an absolutely meticulously crafted, nearly perfect pop record. One that’s not only is full of great singles and individual certified bops (”Julien” anyone????), but actually works as a whole record, an increasing rarity in the mainstream pop landscape. But you can feel how much CRJ cares about what she puts out, and while some songs are weaker than others, there is no filler, and every track has something to enjoy on it. She is still the QUEEN of mid-tempo jams, with “No Drug Like Me,” “Too Much,” and “Automatically In Love” already up in the pantheon of all time mid-tempo jams. Some folks might have been disappointed we didn’t get Emotion 2.0, but I am thrilled CRJ wants to keep growing as an artist, and that she isn’t content to keep releasing the same thing over and over again, even though she very easily could.

Telethon — Hard Pop Telethon is hands down one of the best rock bands in the game right now, and I am thrilled they finally seem to be gaining a bit of traction outside the extremely cult following they’ve been building over the past five years. They have hooks for days, their music a master class in power pop song writing, combined with some of the densest lyric writing I have ever seen. Lead singer and lyricist Kevin Tully crafts each song like a short story about millennial mundanity and quarter life crises: using the exhaustion of finding a new apartment to examine long simmering anxiety, or trying to figure out if contentment is settling, and being too tired to know if you can tell the difference, while getting asked if you have weed at a terrible house party. It’s an album that feels like your late 20’s and early 30’s, with just enough optimism from a synth line to let you know that maybe everything will be okay in the end, maybe not, but it’s not stupid to hope.

Also they are not afraid of a ska influenced breakdown, and for that I must salute them.

Great Grandpa — Four of Arrows This is far and away my most listened to album of the year, and it only came out in October. Every song is masterfully crafted to stick in your head, and whenever I put on “Bloom,” “Rosalie,” or “Treat Jar,” I HAVE to listen to it at least three times in a row. The songwriting on this album is just fucking astonishing, and it completely runs the gamut from acoustic driven indie to 80’s big power chord pop rock, without feeling incongruent at all. It is incredible that this is the same band that made Plastic Cough only two years ago. Not that their debut was bad, but this album is just such a massive leap in skill and sound that it is truly amazing. Just a completely beautiful record from front to back, and I am so excited to see where this band goes next.

that dog — Old LP For the last 3 years that dog’s one semi-hit from 1997, “Never Say Never,” has been in my top 5 played songs of the year on Spotify (it currently has 186,000 plays. I would wager about 100,000 of those are me). I would argue it is the catchiest song ever written. It was on an album, Retreat From The Sun, that is back to back to back catchy jams. that dog should’ve been one of the most famous bands in the world, and I have been lamenting hard for some time that we never got more music from them. They broke up in 1997, scattering to the winds to be involved in making some of your favorite music (Josie and the Pussycats soundtrack anyone???)

Until last year. Anna Waronker got the band back together and that dog released their first album in 22 years, Old LP. And it’s like barely any time has passed. Old LP is practically perfect 90’s pop-rock, insanely catchy with enough of an edge and interesting flourishes (they credit basically a whole orchestra in the liner notes) to make you want to put the whole thing on repeat for a few hours. Or maybe that’s just me. Either way, I am so happy that dog is back in some capacity, and here’s hoping this is not the last we hear of them. 

(Also I picked this live performance of “Bird On A Wire” cause Allison Crutchfield from Swearin’ is there???)

Fireworks — Demitasse single This is not an album, or even an EP, but this is my list and I can do what I want and that includes fawning over a single from what is sure to be one of my top albums of 2020. Fireworks’ reunion was my biggest surprise of the year. They are a band that defined the last decade for me, their lifespan cut too short due to a crowded market and evolving too fast for their audience (they should be The Wonder Years level of famous and beloved, as they were, no offense to Soupy and the boys, the superior band). But after four years away they returned with a 6 minute slow burn of a song, solemn and sparse, until the full band crashes in more than ¾ of the way through. The first time I got to 5:08 in the song, the mix of pure catharsis and active anger that they disbanded in 2015 and we were denied new material from them until now I felt guaranteed Higher Lonely Power will almost certainly be THE album of 2020.

Team Dresch — Your Hands My Pocket “7 Perhaps even more important than Fireworks comeback, the biggest music news of 2019 for me was Team Dresch’s reunion. They are a band that I trace pretty much all my modern musical tastes to, and they are hugely influential to me and so many others in what they proved was possible for queer music to be. When that reunion ALSO came with new music, I about lost my mind. “Your Hands My Pocket” sounds like no time has passed since Captain My Captain came out: perfect hooks, heartfelt earnest lyrics, the vocal trade off between Jody Bleyle and Kaia Wilson, and all the queer pop-punk jubilation I want. The b-side “Baskets,” is classic Team Dresch emo (and yes I will argue to the ends of the earth that Team Dresch is one of the best emo bands of the 90s), with big volume shifts and longing vocals (and that bridge!). The only bad thing about this release is that there’s not more! Maybe if we all beg hard enough, they’ll make one more album.