#like i’m having the time of my life with the majority of rhyme anima’s songs but i see most people think they’re mid songs

[akkivee]

this one’s mine lol

[eng-hypnosismic]

[INTERVIEW] Kimura Subaru for MyNavi News

You can check the original interview here 

Twelve male seiyuu take on the roles of rappers in the rap song project “Hypnosis Mic”. Top-of-the-line instrumentalists and composers come together to create original music, and call attention. To celebrate the release of all 4 original CDs, MyNavi News is conducting a cast interview with each of the 4 Division Leaders. Part 1 is an interview with Ikebukuro’s leader: Subaru Kimura!

Around middle school, Kimura became fascinated by the rise of hip-hop and Eminem, and in high school, he spent all his time going head to head against his classmates in freestyle rap battles. Currently, Kimura performs live as a member of the hip hop group NEW JAPP HEROZ. Hypnosis Mic brings together rap and voice acting, and Kimura talks about the struggles of the work, as well as the charm behind the rap.

- What did you think when you first got to know about the “Hypnosis Mic” project?

Kimura: I felt like “This finally happened! I’ve been waiting for this!”. I used to rap before but I couldn’t find much opportunities to do it. I used to rap in clubs, or do lives during the night, but as expected, the image we get from it is not very good. Besides, in the end, I still identify myself as a voice actor first and foremost. But when I heard about the project, I thought “Eh? Can I rap as a voice actor? Can I extend my wings in front of everyone?” (laughs). I was really happy because I wanted to do this.

- Kimura-san, what made you get into hip hop?

Kimura: I was born in Germany in 1990 and I came to Japan in 1997. Back then, my mother bought an album compilation of popular 97’ songs. Moving from Germany to Japan was a major turning point for the family and there was a variety of kind of music playing around the world, my parents said “Let’s preserve our memories with music” and bought the cd for me. There were songs by artists like M.C. Hammer, Run D.M.C, eminem, etc.

- So the CD your mom bought was your first contact (with hip-hop), right?

Kimura: There were a variety of songs in the CD, but there was a great amount of hip-hop in it.  I said “What a strange feeling, I’m addicted!”. My father is an opera singer, my mother is a solo singer, I’m part of a classic family, because of that I’ve been playing violin since I was three years old. So it was a shock when I found out about hip-hop. “I never heard of it in Germany” (laughs).

- That must’ve been a huge shock.

Kimura: “Oh wow!” And then I got addicted. After this, I started reading books related to the subject, while listening to the CD. Those songs have a lot of messages in it, I wanted to know more about the deep part of it. From then on, I got really into it. During elementary and junior high school, my friends would make my friends listen to the songs I like and it used to make me feel a great sense of superiority over the face they used to make (laughs). It was a good feeling.

- “The face the friends used to make” (laugh). What kind of songs were those?

Kimura: I think it was a song called “Parteechecka (Bright Light Mix)” in ZEEBRA’s album, “The Rhyme Animal”.

- Hip-hop is a culture formed by people who seek to build peace

Where does Kimura-san think is the charm of hip-hop?

Kimura: In a general way, it’s a way of living, a lifestyle. It has this “violent” image, but it is made of people trying to escape from it. It all began with youth fighting against the violence. It seemed too violent for me at first, but I got overwhelmed by the fact the roots are people trying to build peace. Not all rappers are necessarily gangsters. Hip-hop is a lifestyle in which people try to enrich their lives.

- The “Hypnosis Mic” world is also born from those roots. During your high school times, Kimura-san used to freestyle and have a lot of rap battles, but when you talked in the radio, you said you began to feel attracted to the lyrics more precisely rather than improvisation.

Kimura: That’s also the power of Japanese language, when I realized that one word has a lot of meanings, I thought it was interesting. “The person is saying this, but the meaning is this”, and those kind of implications are contained in rap, that’s how I thought. Of course, there are people who can do this in freestyle, for example, R-shitei-san will use and reuse phrases against opponents in rap battles.

- When you understand the context, you understand the meaning put in it.

Kimura : When I listened to those people (rappers), I thought it would be wonderful to see the link between the word and the meaning, it was an amazing thing to understand. I’m a bit obsessed with Eminem, he’s really poetic genius when it comes to his lyrics. In the first verse of “Lose Yourself,” he uses words like “him” and “his,” but he’s really talking about himself.

- It was a famous song that from the movie “Eight Mile” released in 2002, starring Eminem himself.

Kimura : Eminem has “Slim Shady” and other famous songs, I was struck by some words he said in an interview, it was something along the lines “I didn’t say it, it was Slim Shady who did”. He represents through his lyrics what’s inside of him, describing himself and portraying himself by using “he”. So I felt the aesthetichs there. I was struck by the greatness of the meaning put in such lyrics. It’s a good sense of gain and excitement when you realize it later. It makes you want to listen to more songs and pay more attention to the details.

- You write lyrics yourself, right? In Yamada Ichiro’s song, “Ore ga Ichiro”, you went under the name Koura Bintaro(2).

Kimura: Even in this song, there are a lot of wordplays. Specially in the second part. It is inspired by the Anime “Neon Genesis Evangelion” the “There are still some things you haven’t seen, Our motive power ends the darkness” part, or also the “Even if it rains tomorrow I believe in my friends” part. You can’t notice just by listening, when you look at the lyrics paper, you will go “Really?” and you will think “Rap is really awesome”.

- It’s the kind of lyrics that make you want to pay attention to it

Kimura: Even a simple “That’s cool” is ok. It’s also ok if you shake your head because you dislike it. Immerse yourself in the lyrics a little, and you’ll be fascinated. There are a lot of professional rappers and attractive lyrics in it, so it would be nice if you could check “Hypnosis Mic” out.

- This time, there is the mix of two-dimensional content for women and Japanese rap, it’s a combination never done before, but in “Hypnosis Mic”. What does Kimura-san, who is familiar with rap, think of it?  

Kimura: It’s not a story that happens in our era. It’s set somewhere more like in “TOKYO TRIBE” and “HiGH&LOW” (1). However, it is a new attempt, expressed only by pictures, aimed for women. We were worried, “will they (women) be as excited by this as we hope?”. As expected, there’s this “Hip hop = something that burns” image.

- As the project progressed, has the worry vanished?

Kimura: Yes, the project is made by professionals, so I decided to not worry about it and go for it. Eventually I thought about how worrying wouldn’t help much. I will just do the best rap. I’m not lying, I thought that if I did a good rap, people would listen to it. There are so many easy and understandable rap songs in the world. But this time the mindset was “Let’s make it an easy rap, but a serious one”.

- The staff also has the desire to make real rap for the female audience?

Kimura: There was this case. Because of this, we discussed a lot about the lyrics. For example, when singing the “Hypnosis Mic - Division Rap Battle-”, I thought some word choices were hard to understand as a rap when I looked at it for the first time. In Ichiro’s “Given Anima (life), that’s Karma” I saw no “vision”. I was wondering how to express it, like “is this really interesting?” for the staff’s stories and all.

- How did that discussion go?

Kimura: The staff told me "Regarding All Stars, they want to make a song that get people hooked first time they listen to it, therefore they want to produce an intriguing/mysterious awesomeness”. “I don’t fully understand but it is amazing” I said jokingly. After hearing that, I thought I was rather shallow (laughs). Of course people in major projects work in a different way. I want to create something with the emphasises on how realistic it can be, therefore I was just thinking to impress (lit. to pierce) one person. On the contrary, the staff’s thought  “let’s make something that everyone would think is sick”. We were working with totally different vision - I kept thinking that, undoubtedly, these people are amazing.

- Actually “Hypnosis Mic - Division Rap Battle -” is the type of song that the more you listen, the more addicted you get.

Kimura: Exactly. When I notice, the song is in my head and I’m mumbling the lyrics. That’s how powerful this song is.

- Kimura-san, you always tell your fans “listen to rap” during interviews for your other works. Why do you recommend rap to them?

Kimura: In general, because I wanted to change the “rap is scary”, “It’s a dangerous world” image. That kind of image still persists and stands out, and this was one of the reasons I couldn’t just say “I’m doing rap”. Of course there is the other side, but I want to say that Japanese rap now is pretty clean, “Rap is not that bad”. Even if you don’t like it “Just listen to it once, it’s absolutely amusing”.

- If you listen to it, you will know the charm. Do you have a favorite piece to recommend?

Kimura: There’s this recent, “Modern Times” by Punpee was released this year. The first song “2057”, is a song about you from 40 years later talking to the you in 2017, “Me who’ve become an old man”; voice actor Asou Tomohisa is in it. When the rapper himself does it, lacks a bit of reality; that’s why it’s super good when the reality is able to be portrayed by a professional voice actor.

- Then, if the reader is interested in rap, they have to check it. Now, tell us about the charm of the unique rap done by the voice actors that we can listen through “Hypnosis Microphone”.

Kimura: Professional rappers rap about their reality, right? But “Hypnosis Microphone” is made of voice actors representing characters. By that, you can understand the characters through the feeling the voice actor plays on the rap. In that case, on top of voice actors’ natural “power to utter words”, along with emotions of the characters, I think piercing through a person [‘s soul] by singing is possible. I think voice actors are as strong as legendary rappers in their ability to express the intensity of a message. I am serious.

- The emotions of the characters enhances the strength of words.

Kimura: At the live stage in AGF, Cypress Ueno-san and UZI san said that “The feelings and power that the voice actors put behind their words are amazing”, my heart stopped for a second (laughs). It was amazing to hear something like this from professionals, I guess that’s the strength of voice actors.

1.  These are movies in which the setting is an “alternate Japan” rife with street gangs.

2. Thank you Kaoarika for the correction!

© Jp-Eng: Eng hypnosismic

© MyNavi News

[fieldsofplay]

Top Albums of 2019

Top Albums of 2019.

25.  William Tyler – Goes West

For those of you reading along, I want to thank you for sticking with this blog for basically an entire decade at this point. Jeez, where does the time* go? To that end, I’m gonna put out a decade list sometime next week, so to keep my sanity somewhat in check, this years tops list is going to be a little more abbreviated than usual. A few less records, a few less words, but still the same self indulgence you’ve come to know and expect.  To that end, William Tyler.  Tied for my favorite cover art with IGOR.  This is beautiful finger-picked cosmic acoustic guitar music with some nice flourishes added by Brad Cook and the usual suspects.  Perfect for fall days.  I accidentally heckled him at a concert about the Andy Griffith show, but I was only trying to say he shouldn’t be ashamed about liking that program.  The shame still haunts me, much like this music. *A fictional social construct

24.  Floating Points – Crush

Now I’m not going to sit here and pretend to know much about electronic music.  I don’t know the deep history, I don’t know the technical lingo, but like pornography, I know it when I hear it.  Much has been made about the impact opening for the XX and being limited to minimal gear while doing so had on Sam Shephard, and I’ll admit the differences from Elaenia is palpable.  Where that album felt minimal, Crush is maximal, bursting with colors and ideas, not unlike the beautiful painting that adorns its cover.  I never quite knew what the phrase Intelligent Dance Music was supposed to mean, but to me, that’s precisely what this is. You could dance to “LesAlpx” if you wanted, or you could just throw it on headphones and drift away to its unceasing pulse. Find you a man who can do both.

23.  Nerija – Blume

Let me be the first to tell you that jazz is back! Centering largely in London, there is thrilling music being made by the likes of Sons of Kemet, The Comet is Coming, and this year, by Nerija. Breathing new life into a long moribund form (at least until Kendrick Lamar started featuring jazz musicians on his albums), Blume literally does just that, unfurling jazz from a long dormancy.  While I’m not normally a fan of the guitar in jazz, here it keeps the whole thing moving forward, as the horns swirl around in a supportive role and the percussion cooks.  “Riverfest” is the best exemplar, as the guitar chimes with joy while the cymbal-crashes enliven the vibe.

22.  Florist – Emily Alone

A tale as old time (song as old as rhyme): member of ambient-electronic band puts out solo acoustic album, about the sadness of moving to LA and finding oneself.  No one is reinventing the wheel here, but I can’t help but feel little touches of Florist’s electronic full-band output in Emily Sprague’s solo record—the way the words repeat, subtly, but building meaning with each little phrasal repetition. Plus, the ocean is a recurring image, and dear lord do I miss the sea. If you want to listen a sad girl sing sad songs accompanied by acoustic guitar, you aren’t going to do better than Emily Alone this year.

21.  Kevin Morby – Oh My God

Possibly the best Kevin Morby record?  No one else would say that, but I will.  If so, why is it so far down the list? Well, when you consistently put out amazing records year-after-year it becomes difficult for any individual album to make an imprint on the “culture.” I think “Seven Devils” is possibly his finest tune.

20.  Sacred Paws – Run Around the Sun

My friend David turned me on to this band right before I was about to embark on a road trip up north in the middle of the summer, and let me tell you, that was the perfect time to first experience Run Around the Sun.  Noodly guitars burst out of every seam on this record, as bubblegum lyrics tie the whole shebang together.  If you ever wondered what the Shangri-las would sound like if Johnny Marr played lead guitar, I give you Sacred Paws.

19.  Jamila Woods – Legacy! Legacy!  

On Legacy! Legacy! Woods takes the R&B of the excellent Heavn and applies a jazzier sheen, to excellent results.  One need look no further than the track titles (“Frida,” “Miles,” “Basquiat,” “Baldwin,” “Sun Ra” etc.) to see that Woods is consciously engaging with the titans of history, and here, while she doesn’t exactly reach the heights of those innovators, she certainly begins to carve out a legacy of her own as one of the best voices in a currently thriving R&B scene.

18.  Mt. Eerie & Julie Doiron – Lost Wisdom, Pt. 2

On Lost Wisdom, Pt. 2 Phil Elverum (of The Microphones) and Julie Doiron (of Eric’s Trip) recapture the magic they bottled on the first Lost Wisdom back in 2008.  It is hard to imagine sparer music than this, but the duo make so much of a pair of voices and few plucked guitar or banjo lines.  As with all of his music of late (for obvious reasons), loss hangs all over Elverum’s output, but here, the loss is more mood and less of a literal presence (with the exception of the blistering “Widows”).  Few songs I can think of capture a single, specifically odd phenomenon quite like “When I Walk Out of the Museum.”

17.  DIIV – Deceiver

As capital-G guitar music recedes further into irrelevance, it’s good to still have a band like DIIV kicking around, who make shoegaze like it’s still 1991.  And it’s a good thing they are still making their beautiful walls of feedback, as heroine has repeatedly knocked this band off the rails of what appeared to be a very promising career.  This is ominous, portentous music, that swirls with white noise and black despair.  Shoegaze is premised on making beauty out of the squall of overdriven electric guitars, and DIIV make beauty of the squall of 21st century opiate addiction.

16.  Earl Sweatshirt – Feet of Clay

Earl continues the excellent experimentation of Some Rap Songs in the (slightly) more structured Feet of Clay.  Whereas Some Rap Songs felt like fragments, the tracks on Feet of Clay (almost) feel like “songs” proper.  Earl continues to quickly sweep the ground out from underneath you, whether it’s in the form of oddly woozy backing tracks that can’t really be called “beats” or the sub 2-minute run times, but he seems to pack slightly more structure into those abbreviated entrants, even if there are a lot less of them than there were on Some Rap Songs.  Right now no one is pushing the boundaries of hip-hop like Earl, and each new release, even if the total run time is under 15 minutes, is a thrilling event.

15.  Better Oblivion Community Center – S/T

Yes, last year I had Boygenius as my number one record, but if I’m being frank, and I am, this is the better collaborative album put out by Phoebe Bridgers.  At first blush a record between the up-and-coming Bridgers and the largely has-been Conor Oberst seems like a desperate grab at continued relevance by the latter, but having seen them live, I must admit the pairing makes perfect sense.  The energy between the two is infectious, and while they share a common fascination with emo, they really draw the best out of each other.  Bridgers plays the Emmylou Harris role from I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning to perfection, and Oberst plays the Kenny Rodgers in “Islands in the Stream.”  For a period I could not turn on Radio K without hearing a song from this album, which is strange because, as a college radio station, every hour is usually completely different.

14.  Chromatics – Closer to Grey

In a certain way, Chromatics are victims of their own tendency towards self-mythologizing.  Their last two official albums were absolutely perfect slices of Italo-Disco, equal parts late night ennui and seething dancefloor longing.  There was way more guitar on those albums than most anyone would appreciate on first glance, and yet Ruth Radelet’s smoky vocals were unquestionably the star.  In the interim Johnny Jewel (the mastermind behind the band and basically everything on Italians Do it Better) famously destroyed all the copies of the long teased Dear Tommy after a near death experience, provided essential music to Twin Peaks: The Return (which included multiple Chromatics performances at the dear Road House), and then suddenly dropped Closer to Grey out of the sky, with neither warning nor fanfare.  This record is everything you would want a Chromatics record to be, but perhaps that is part of the reason it didn’t really make a major impression. It felt a little Chromatics-by-the-numbers, right down to the cover of “The Sound of Silence�� to open it up.  I absolutely love this album, and if it weren’t for the incredible quality of albums put out this year, it would certainly be a top-10 or top-5 in any other year (hell, in the terrible-for-music 2018 it would have been number one by a mile).  Perhaps the biggest frustration is just how fucking good “Light as a Feather” is.  It hints at a version of Chromatics influenced by Portishead, and now that’s all I want more of.

13.  Thom Yorke – ANIMA

Doubt it if you will, you sneering youngsters, but Thom Yorke and his more well-known band are currently making some of the best music of their careers.  Just as A Moon Shaped Pool was a much needed return to form after the completely forgettable King of Limbs, with ANIMA Yorke gets back to what made The Eraser so compelling all the way back in 2006.  While a fondness for Aphex Twin is no longer at all exceptional in rock music in 2019, it was in 2006, and with ANIMA, Yorke gets back to the creepy, clicky, paranoid distrust of modern consumer culture that is solidly his wheelhouse.  Bonus points for using Netflix and a pairing with PTA to make America care about a long form music video again in 2019.

12.  Black Marble – Bigger than Life

I would call black Marble my favorite new band of the year, but the thing is, they aren’t new, just new to me.  Bigger than Life is their third record, and first for Sacred Bones (whose distinctive album art is what first caught my eye).  Because their music is comprised solely of arpeggiated synths, melodic bass, and clinking drum machines, overlaid with melancholicly narrow vocals, it is easy to accuse Black Marble of being a little same-y.  However, if you, like me, worship at the temple of New Order, than this is the band for you.  I have lived with their three extant albums the last couple months (the second, It’s Immaterial, being my favorite), and in reality, this is really the only music I want to listen to.

11.  Big Thief – U.F.O.F. / Two Hands

If you’re reading this than you likely already know how much I love Big Thief, and you might be a little surprised that one, if not both, of the records they put out this year is not sitting atop this list based on how much I’ve professed my love for this band over the course of 2019.  So here’s the thing, the highs on both of these albums--“U.F.O.F.” “Not”--are better than anything else anyone has done this year, but to my ear both records suffer from a flew blah-ish passages that prevent either album, on its own, from achieving top status.  However, if you borrow a few tracks here (Cattails, Contact) and a few tracks there (Shoulders, Two Hands) and made one album out of the highlights of both sessions, you would unquestionably have the album of the year.  That Big Thief gave us two records brimming with amazing folk rock ideas is a blessing.

10.  Sharon Van Etten – Remind Me Tomorrow

Hey, do you remember Sharon Van Etten put out an amazing record in 2019? I bet you don’t.  The culture moves so fast these days that albums from January might as well have been released five years ago, and it seems to me like this record slipped off a few peoples’ radars as the year progressed, which is a shame, considering how damn good it is (her best imho).  There are few runs on an album I’ve enjoyed more this year than “Jupiter 4’s” electro-throb into “Seventeen’s” Springsteen chug into “Malibu’s” comedown.  Bonus points for being my dear friend Hadley’s downstairs neighbor for all those years.  Ah Brooklyn, how I miss thee.

9.  Black Midi – Schlagenheim

Yes, that most reliable of music-critic tropes: the hot young band from London.  Black Midi made waves with a legendary youtube video of their live show, and having seen it in person, let me tell you, even that now infamous video doesn’t do them justice.  Much like its gobldy-gook made up title, Schlagenheim is an amalgamation of strands of music that don’t really fit together but somehow they pull off with aplomb.  At times they play with the hardcore fury of Minor Threat, while at others the proggy interconnectivity of Rush at their most arena-rockish, all with a weird dash of David Byrne wiry energy holding it all together.  If they come to your town, go see them, just don’t stand in the front unless you want to be swept into the maelstrom.

8.  Helado Negro – This is How You Smile

Did you love Little Joy (the Strokes sideproject) but wish it was occasionally electronic and periodically in Spanish? If so, I give you Helado Negro. This is the prettiest record of the year; it never goes above a certain emotional register / decibel range, but it inhabits the spectrum in which it lives like a ghost in its occasional electronic flourishes.  This is a record for someone with a long drive with something to think about. “Seen my Aura” is simultaneously funky and restrained, acoustic and electronic, and emblematic of the joys of This is How You Smile.

7.  Sturgill Simpson – Sound & Fury

Each of Sturgill Simpson’s last three records have been fundamentally different from one another, and each has been excellent, which is almost impossible to accomplish.  Metamodern Sounds in Country Music introduced many, like myself, to a new voice in an often overlooked medium, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth dusted off the horns from Elvis’s stax-era and romped around, and now with Sound & Fury Sturgill looks to the outlaw tradition (and ZZ freakin Top) he’s so-often been associated with, but rarely resembled, to crank out an incredible record that is far more “rock” than it is “country.” Throw on a heaping of 80’s-era Springsteen synths and you have the recipe for a record that makes me very, very happy.  The two halves of “Make Art not Friends” have little business coexisting within a single track (the first half sounds like Tangerine Dream, the second half Arcade Fire) and yet it is precisely in this tenuous cohabitation that Sturgill has produced his best record to date.

6.  Vampire Weekend – Father of the Bride

Vampire Weekend started out their career being accused of stealing from Graceland and ended up becoming Paul Simon.  Funny how that works out sometimes.  Modern Vampires of the City has become, next to Sound of Silver, the definitive record about life in New York during my era (2005-2016).  On the follow up, the band, newly shorn of Rostam Batmanglij (whose solo record is also phenomenal, even though he’s maybe one of the worst performers I’ve ever seen), decamped to California, and Father of the Bride revels in both the California sun and a well earned sense of accomplishment.  “Hold You Now” is my favorite song of the year, it is simply stunning.

5.  Bill Callahan – Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest

There is a bit of theme developing here at the top of the list: established artists putting out arguably their best work deep into storied careers, and no one on this list is deeper into a more storied oeuvre than Bill Callahan.  Between Smog and under his own name, Callahan has been releasing consistently great albums since 1992, and to me, Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest is his finest work to date.  Having found domestic bliss, so the press materials state, Callahan is content to sit back and let that world-weary baritone spin out all the comforts of a well-worn chair near a fire in a hearth.  This is the type of record that gives you hope that happiness isn’t the exclusive provenance of the young.

4.  Purple Mountains – Purple Mountains

If I were to really sit and write out all of my thoughts about David Berman this blurb would probably be 10 pages long, at least, so rather than spill a bunch of digital ink lamenting the loss of a true inspiration, I’ll just try and stick to the album itself, which is almost impossible now in the wake of his suicide shortly after its release.  Even on first blush this was a difficult hang, clearly the product of someone who lost their wife to a series of poor decisions / mental difficulties, and who hadn’t come to terms with it.  Understandably so.  Berman remains endlessly quotable, right up to the very end, and “we’re just drinking margaritas at the mall” remains emblematic of his ability to compress the tedium of middle american misery into a single haunting, yet, hilarious, image.  While “Nights that Won’t Happen” lives on as his suicide note directly to the fans (“The dead know what they’re doing when they leave this world behind” ; “all the suffering gets done by the ones we leave behind”), and it is hauntingly beautiful, it still makes me cry every time I hear it. As does most of this record. So the song I’ll carry on with me, and can still actually listen to, is “Snow is Falling in Manhattan.” Just a beautiful song from a beautiful man.  

3.  Tyler, the Creator – IGOR

I really don’t have the words (well, clearly I have some) to express just how impressed I am by the arc of Tyler’s career.  The one-time shock-rap flash in the critical pan quickly turned into forgettable homophobe who perfectly fit a description of Eminem’s fan base I once heard: kids who call their mom a bitch to their face.  The first startling change came with Flower Boy, which came right on the heels of his step out of the closet.  Flower Boy is a really great record, but it still largely sounded like Tyler, just a more mature version who stopped saying cringe worthy shit.  IGOR is something entirely different.  I honestly don’t even know what to call it. It’s not a rap record, and there are honestly entire tracks on it where I’m not sure what it is he does on them, but my god, this thing is incredible.  It’s basically a Parliament album for the end of the world, and if the earth is going to burn down around us, we might as well dance our way out, which is precisely the party Tyler has orchestrated here.  I cannot wait to see what he does next.

2.  Angel Olsen – All Mirrors

All Mirrors isn’t just clearly Angel Olsen’s best album by a clear margin, it is the best pop album made by anyone in sometime.  Just like black clothes make anyone a little slimmer, orchestration can make any pop song sound symphonic, but most pop acts don’t have the power of Angel Olson’s voice to match the bombast of the string section and percussion.  It feels like the term Beatlesesque has started to fade from the critical lexicon, but this music is truly akin to the orchestral richness of “I am the Walrus” or “A Day in the Life.”  People celebrate Lana del Ray for her torch songs (and I really liked Norman Fucking Rockwell, even if it didn’t quite make this list in a stacked year) but no one carries a torch like Angel Olsen.  I was initially reticent to catch her live show this tour, it was on a weeknight, it was cold, I had to go downtown, I’d seen her a couple times already, yadda yadda yadda, but I knew deep down I really wanted to see if she could recreate the power of these songs on stage (the inverse of how that equation usually goes).  Reader: she did.

1.  (Sandy) Alex G – House of Sugar

House of Sugar may not be quite as experimental as IGOR, or as pop-perfect as All Mirrors, but it takes those two impulses and melds them together into what is my favorite album of the year, even if strictly speaking it may not be the “best” as measured against the other entrants in this top 3.  “Hope” was actually a “hit” song on the local college radio station, and understandably so; it sounds like Elliott Smith and tells a comprehensible story about a friend who died from an overdose.  But “Hope” is jut one facet of House of Sugar, which is a veritable hall of musical mirrors.  “Walk Away” is hypnotic in its repetitions, “In My Arms” is a legit straightforward acoustic love song, “Sugar” sounds like The Knife (no joke), “Sugarhouse” could have been on The River, and while I already said “Hold You Now” is my favorite song of the year, “Gretel” has something to say about that.  I saw a show right when this album came out, and as the band left the stage for the final time the soundguy cued up “Gretel” not, I’m guessing, because the band requested it, but because it rules and he just wanted to share it with everyone as they receded into night.