#white trash revelry | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

socrateswept · 2 years

Text

Jazz/Prowl fic preview

It was late. The moon sat full and hungry in the sky. Enviously watching the diners as they drank their fill. But that was probably just Jazz projecting.

It never was enough for him anymore.

He tilted his head back. Draining the last dregs of his energon down to the final drop. Licking his lips to chase the flavor after he was done.

Outside the bar the sounds of revelry was muted. Thick layers of corrugated steel dampening the worst of it. It was a cheap place. One that couldn’t even afford a proper neon sign. Serving Energon so low quality it was almost sludge.

That didn’t stop Jazz from wanting to go back in.

He was full though.

But in a question of could Jazz do more the answer was always yes.

A drunken couple pushed past him on the way to the the alley. Stumbling over their feet. Giggling too loud. The mini shoved the speedster against the wall and kissed him. Hands going lower than polite in public.

Jazz watched them. Head tilting like a lizard. Lips pressed into a hard line.

They were totally going to frag against the wall.

He could join them. Slide in as smooth as astroglide. They were so blitzed they wouldn’t need much convincing. Maybe he wouldn’t even need to say anything if he popped out his spike. Many mechs have told Jazz that it was his best feature.

The speedster gasped porn star fake as his partner clumsily groped his chassis. Slobbering over his red paint.

He must really love the guy if he was putting up with technique like that.

How sweet.

Jazz threw his glass. It shattered next to their heads. They pulled apart panicked. Optics completely blown.

“Not that I’m not enjoying the show, but you guys should move on. Enforcers patrol this area frequently.” Jazz grinned at them.

“Oh it’s just you Jazz.” The speedster slurred. “Yeah. Okay, thanks for the warning. We’ll go home.”

“No problem.” Jazz waved. “Seeya next time.”

Wrappers crinkled under his feet as he walked away. Trash was piling up in the street. The waste removal bots were probably drunk out of their minds too. Every night was a party in the Steelworker’s block.

It was his favorite place in the whole city.

So many places and people to get lost in.

Jazz wandered with no particular destination in mind. Admiring the string of lights someone weaved across an entire row of apartment balconies. It was almost like the night sky.

Not that any of these mechs would have seen the stars before. Polyhex was an industrial city. The resultant pollution from those industries left the sky covered in a soft purple haze.

The only thing visible through the smog was the moon. And only because they dragged it so close to the planet the Senate kept making noises about how its current trajectory would lead to it crashing into Cybertron in a thousand years give or take.

Jazz had gone up there more than once.

It was a paradise. There were energon fountains on every table and the floors were so clean you could eat off them.

The nobles were good screws too. Always so breathy and yielding.

He might have stayed up there if they hadn’t caught on to the fact that he was the one who assassinated the president of the mining association.

His argument of hey a mech has gotta eat hadn’t impressed them much. Jazz was lucky that Mirage had enjoyed their time together enough to help him off Luna-1.

Polyhex was a classic place for lowlifes and scum to hide out in. Jazz blended right in.

Though apparently nobody told this enforcer that. He was a cute little guy. Fresh black and white paint with a shiny badge to match. Probably just graduated.

The enforcer was walking around, his notebook out, writing out citations for littering.

Polyhex native enforcers never bothered with it. Not in the Steelworker’s block. Most they did was drive around looking for mechs they could shake down for bribes.

But this new enforcer— no doubt he wanted to clean this city up. Wanted to make the world a better place.

Jazz could practically taste the idealization on him.

Exactly the kind of mech he loved to wreck.

Knock those lofty believers from their high perches and drag them into the mud with the rest of them.

Lucky him, a smile tugged Jazz’s lips upward.

He meandered closer to a blitzed out mech slumped on a stoop. His legs were splayed distractingly wide, but Jazz kept his eyes on his face. He plucked a random piece of metal out of the litter surrounding the mech.

“Hey.” Jazz nudged the insensate mech with his foot. “I’m taking this.”

“Hmm?” The mech groaned. Lifting his head up. “Sure. Go ahead, my mech. The world should be shared.”

“No.” Jazz said, firmly. “I’m stealing this. You better stop me.”

“You can’t steal what is offered freely.” The mech said, bewildered.

Jazz sighed and held the metal scrap under the mech’s nose. “This is a beloved token of affection from your Conjunx, alright? I am stealing it away. You will never see it again.”

“It is?” The mech squinted at it, blinking blearily. “I didn’t know I had a Conjunx.”

Just when Jazz thought he would would have to come up with a new plan the mech reached out sloppily. Crying out, “Stop thief!”

The sound of enforcer siren’s piercing the night was everything he wanted.

A wild grin tore across Jazz’s face.

He just barely remembered to keep hold of the metal scrap he ‘stole’ as he transformed. Revving his own engine too loud he zipped down the road.

The growl of the enforcer’s engine wasn’t too far behind him. Perfect. He didn’t want to actually lose him.

Jazz took corners too fast. Easily zigzagging around mechs that were passed out in the street. He was used to it, but the enforcer wasn’t. Through his mirrors he watched him struggle. Breaks squealing as he dodged around careless party goers that staggered into the road.

It made him want to laugh.

He bet if he wasn’t chasing him he’d be yelling at them for obstructing a roadway.

Somebody left out a berth propped up against a fridge at the perfect angle to make a ramp and Jazz wasn’t one to ignore a sign from Primus.

His speedometer crept higher and higher as he approached it. Spark thrumming. His wheels wobbled when he hit the ramp. The vertical climb coming faster than they could take. Jazz kept going. And soon they left the ramp entirely.

He soared through the air.

So many warnings flashing over his HUD he went temporarily blind.

Resetting his optics, he blinked and the edge of the building was coming up too fast and too close. For a moment he was worried he fragged up.

Then he transformed. Using the extra momentum to help him clear the roof. He hit it hard. Bouncing off the chipped aluminum as he rolled. Jazz was breathless when he finally stopped. Staring up at the moon

He had to do that again sometime. Though it wouldn't be anytime soon. He torqued one of his axles when he landed.

Jazz had better amp up the charm. If he couldn’t talk his way out of this he wouldn’t be able to make a speedy getaway.

Geez, that would be embarrassing. Having to escape from another prison.

He’d never live it down. His reputation would be in shambles.

Gingerly, he rose to his feet. Stumbling over to the roof’s edge he peered down. The enforcer was transformed. His sirens gone silent in shock as stared up at Jazz.

He blew him a kiss and winked.

Blitzed mechs who had seen Jazz make the jump broke out into applause. Chanting his name. Laughing, he waved at them. Even giving them a little bow. He did love an audience.

The enforcer wasn’t impressed. He scowled furiously. “If you don’t come down from there you’ll get a resisting arrest charge in addition to the thievery charge.”

“But, officer I can’t come down. I hurt myself when I landed you’ll have to come to me.” Jazz said, theatrically.

The enforcer— bless his little spark— actually began to scale the squat diner Jazz was on top of. He was pretty nimble. Hands finding dents in the pockmarked metal to use as hand holds. They don’t teach those kinds of moves in the academy.

A kaleidoscope of colors danced on the white of his doorwings.

Gaudy party lights turned into something magical.

Jazz wanted to run his tongue down the edge of them. Halfway convinced they’d taste as electric as they looked.

The enforcer cursed. Fingers scrabbling at the smooth walls near the top of the building. No more blaster fire dents to use. He was as helpless as a sparkling.

Jazz caught him by his wrist. The officer locked eyes with him. Frozen with the knowledge that if Jazz pushed him there would be nothing he could do about it. He’d fall. Right into the midst of a bunch of mechs Jazz had riled up.

But Jazz pulled him up instead. Letting him scramble aboard.

The enforcer stared at him. His mouth parted slightly in shock. Mm. That was a nice expression. Jazz wanted to kiss it off of him. His thumb traced little circles on the enforcer’s wrist guard.

He leaned in and the enforcer pulled away. Tugging his wrist out of Jazz’s grasp. He didn’t look at him when he spoke.

“….Thank you for the help. But!” The enforcer leveled a glare at Jazz. “You are still under arrest for thievery. I’m officer Prowl and I’ll be taking you down to the station for processing.”

“Nice to meet you officer Prowl.” Jazz said, ignoring everything else he just said. “It must be my lucky night to be stopped by someone like you.”

“Lucky for the person you stole from, you mean.” Prowl said, dryly. “Where’s the item you took? The charges are based on the monetary value. Depending how expensive it is I might be able to argue for more leniency.”

“Aw. No special favors for saving your life? That should cancel out the charges entirely.” Jazz pouted.

“This is my special favor. Normally they just do a flat sentencing of 500,000 years no matter the value. I’ll be making sure you get the appropriate sentence.” Prowl put his hands on his hips.

“Well alright then! Since you're going out of your way for me I guess I’ll cooperate.”

Jazz popped the metal scrap out of his subspace and set it on the ground. “Tada!”

Prowl stared at it.

“You— it’s garbage. You were fighting over trash.” He said, flatly.

“Hey, this could be worth a lot of money on other planets. Like Hemisyl! Great place. Adventurous aliens.” Jazz paused. “Very adventurous aliens.”

Prowl pinched the bridge of his nose. “This was a waste of time. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

He headed over to the edge of the roof and Jazz couldn’t have that, could he?

Slinging an arm around his shoulder, Jazz dragged him back.

“Don’t be in such a hurry to leave. You just got here. C’mon relax a little. I’ll buy you a drink.”

“I’m still on shift for the next half joor. I have responsibilities to this city I am not going to neglect.” Prowl shrugged him off. “Besides how were you planning on getting a drink? We’re currently on top of a condemned diner with no way down.”

“You should have more faith in me.” Jazz said.

He leaned over the edge of the roof. “Hey fellas! Can somebody toss me up a couple of high-grades?”

The mechs below were currently engaged with watching an absolutely plastered construction build dance on a table. They were taking bets on how much longer the table would hold up under his weight. That was one way to show off your construction skills, Jazz supposed.

A mech broke off from the crowd and shouted, “I got you Jazz hold on.” He threw the bottles up with surprising accuracy, if a little bit too low.

Jazz really had to strain himself to catch them before they smashed against the wall.

Oof.

His axles were screaming. He slowly negotiated himself upright. Placing an elbow on the ledge to aid himself. He turned around with a casual grin.

“You want the Razzle-Dazzle or the Spark Melter? They’re cold.”

“Neither. What part of I’m on shift do you not understand?”

Jazz burst out laughing. Nearly folding over. Prowl's scowl steadily grew uglier the longer he watched him. He straightened back up.

“Ah. I’m sorry I don’t mean to laugh. It’s just you are so serious. Even though you’ve already done more work today than most Polyhex enforcers manage in their lifetime.”

He held out the Razzle-Dazzle. “Why don’t you ask me some questions over the engex? I know pretty much everyone in these parts. Think of it as keeping your informant sweet.”

Prowl took the bottle from his hand. “Really? I couldn’t tell what with everyone screaming your name, Jazz.”

Jazz shivered. Imagining Prowl screaming his name in a very different context.

“Is that why you didn’t bother to introduce yourself? Because you thought I already knew?” Prowl popped the lid off his bottle and smelled it. His nose wrinkling at the waft of engex.

“Yeah. I’m pretty infamous. You must be new. Where’d you originally come from?”

“Iacon city. It’s where I graduated.”

Jazz whistled. “Wow. The capital. Who’d you piss off to get sent here?”

He ripped the bottle cap off his drink with his teeth and swallowed down a heady mouthful. The burn crawled up his throat and into his mouth.

“I didn’t piss anyone off.” Prowl took a cautious sip of his drink. Grimacing at the taste. “But if you have any information on Senator Proteus I would be grateful.”

“You pissed off a sitting senator? You’re a dead mech walking.” Jazz said, admiringly. “Proteus is so crooked they had to hammer him straight when he was a sparkling.”

“I know. But I had to do something. He was clearly embezzling the funds meant to help house the homeless. What else was I supposed to do?”

“Mind your own business like everyone else was?” Jazz suggested. Thumb scraping at the label on his drink.

“But it was so blatant!” Prowl protested. “He didn’t even try to hide it. Leaving a paper trail a mile wide. Even the stupidest thieves try to cover their tracks. It was insulting.”

Prowl must have somebody real powerful looking out for him. That was the only conclusion Jazz could have made as to why he was still alive.

“He didn’t need to hide it, because you’d have to be drone stupid to mess around with a senator.”

“It shouldn’t be that way. There’s mechs getting the 500,000 year sentence over pin-chips. While Proteus stole trillions from the most vulnerable and he didn’t even get a slap on the wrist. Justice if it is not enforced equally is not justice!” Prowl hissed, so worked up that the air from his vents shimmered with excess heat.

Passion was a good look on him, but this wasn’t the kind of passion Jazz had lured him up on a roof for.

He cleared his vocalizer. “And yet with speeches like that you still think you didn’t piss anyone off in Iacon?”

Prowl drowned the rest of his drink in a long swallow. Slamming his empty bottle on the ledge.

“I didn’t make them angry. I scared them.” He said, savagely.

Then he ruined his impressive display by turning around and trying to walk away. Wobbling so much he nearly slipped off the roof.

Jazz cursed and grabbed him just under his door wings. Hauling him safely away from the edge. Prowl wasn’t much help. Barely able to keep his feet under him. Forcing Jazz to hold up most of his weight.

His strained joints twinging was his only warning before he buckled. Taking Prowl with him. They landed in a disorganized pile. The roof vibrating from the impact beneath them.

Prowl’s elbow somehow had migrated to his face in the fall. Oof. That was going to dent.

Jazz adjusted Prowl’s limbs so they were no longer in danger of destroying his nose and laid there. In no hurry to try to get himself upright.

Prowl didn’t move either. Limply resting his head on Jazz’s chest. Optics glowing at half power.

“Someone can’t hold their engex. Are you really that blitzed already? It was only one bottle.” Jazz teased.

“I never went out to parties. Olway— Allllwa— ‘Always studying. No tolerance.” Prowl slurred.

“Don’t tell me this was your first taste of high-grade. I would have gotten you something more fancy if I had known.” Jazz said, dismayed.

“It was good. Sweet. With lots of sch— sparkly lead. I liked it.” Prowl tried to pat Jazz’s cheek and nearly took out an optic.

A Razzle-Dazzle was sweet in a sickening way. Bottom of the barrel stuff. Only tweakers who burnt their taste receptors thought it was any good. Only thing worse was a Spark Melter.

#transformers #maccadam #tf fanfic #socwrites #prowl #jazz #jazz x prowl #rough draft #preview #This is planned to be a oneshot #But I am honestly in love with jazz's everything here #I have written lots of stuff that wouldn't be able to fit #in this narrow slice of their life #The temptation is killing me

16 notes · View notes

linernotesandseasons · 2 years

Text

My 22 Favorite Albums of 2022

Wow. Here I am in 2023. Moving on to a new year and a fresh start, but pausing momentarily to recognize my 22 favorite albums (plus three bonus EPs) of 2022! A year of extreme change for me personally, and a rollercoaster of highs & lows. The highs: I am now working in music, chasing my lifelong passion, and happier in a career than I ever thought I could be! I work in marketing & operations for three small venues in Denver (Larimer Lounge, Globe Hall & Lost Lake Lounge) and it has honestly, deeply been a dream come true! I saw 87 shows this year (not counting the about 50 different sets I saw across three music festivals!) and I also worked at roughly 100 more. I saw 15 of the 25 artists on this list live this year! Music has been everywhere around me all of the time! When I started this music blog in late 2011, I looked at this annual end of the year favorites list as just a part of what I wanted to do in writing about music. Then there were years, where it felt like it was the only thing I wrote. These last couple years, it feels like just a small part of explaining my love for music. I write excessively on my social media after my favorite shows, spilling my heart out. I have been able to lean into what makes my favorite music actually my favorite, and appreciating the magic of songwriting. The lows of my year led me to fall for songs that can make me cry. Like sob cry while they play on loop for hours & days at a time. Songs that teach me more about myself. Songs that feel like they were written for me. Songs that feel like growing old & growing up. Songs that (as I found myself saying often this year) felt like friends. Songs that I turned to when I needed them most. Songs that helped me survive and helped me get out of bed in the morning. Songs that I will keep with me forever. I’ll talk about them all in more detail below of course, but here it is! In no particular order (unless you know & love our english alphabet) My 22 Favorite Albums of 2022! Long Live Music!

ADEEM THE ARTIST / White Trash Revelry

2022 was a year of extreme change for me personally; full of unsettled-ness & uncertainty, so it feels good to start this year’s list in a familiar spot… In the exact same place we started last year! With an artist, Adeem the Artist! whose songs have become so familiar & comforting to me. Like we grew up together. Like we were friends in a past life, or back in high school. I guess with that being the case, I can start by giving you a brief history of this music writer’s background, in hopes it’ll make you better understand this list and better understand why I love Adeem’s heart wrenching, life questioning, classic country songs so much. Well… here we go. The first time I remember being excited about music was KLOVE & KMTS. Local christian & country radio stations. I was raised a baptist preachers’ kid, in private christian grade school, high school & college. I fell in love with some of the “good” christian bands (Switchfoot, Relient K, The Newsboys, Delirious?, MXPX, Bleach, Sanctus Real, Pillar, Michael W. Smith, ok we’re getting off track), but in my later high school days I met my public school, baseball playing, redneck friends and with them, it was all classic country. Now I’m not talking Willie, Waylon, & Johnny Cash, this is early 2000’s classic country. That means Brooks & Dunn, Travis Tritt, Garth, Toby Keith, Aldean, Luke Bryan, Lonestar, Billy Currington, the list goes on. Maybe not a foundation of essential artists, but if you’ve ever sung “It’s A Great Day To Be Alive” at the top of your lungs in the bed of a pickup truck to a mountain sunset, I think you might understand.

The familiarity I found on Adeem the Artist’s second proper album goes deeper than simply the country songwriting. Opening track “Carolina'' has been a favorite of mine since it was faster & finger-picked and called “A Light in Carolina'' back on Adeem’s self released Forgotten Songs & American Dreams back in 2019. I spent a couple of glorious spring drives around rural North Carolina backroads belting “You’ve got a lot of skins to wear as you try to figure out who you are.” Now slowed with glowing acoustic strums and holy pedal steel, “Carolina” stands as a marker. Adeem is still Adeem. They’re still trying to figure out who they are. And it still doesn’t matter what people say. The fact that this song has grown with Adeem (and with me!) shedding skins & names & other outward, physical, insignificant things, just proves its power. I quoted Adeem in my review last year, saying that they hoped their songs helped you “drift with the water’s pace toward wholeness” and well… Here we are, still drifting. From there White Trash Revelry simply lifts off. “For Judas” is a gorgeous piano ballad, a songwriter’s masterclass, that imagines Jesus & Judas, young lovers kissing in the rain, falling for each other… in the Northeast Minneapolis arts district. When this song first hit me, Saturday evening, December 3rd at 5pm, I slow danced myself around my old kitchen, cracked another beer, and texted my old friend Stephen (the one who most appreciates good songwriting!) and said “LOVE SONG OF THE FUCKING YEAR.” The classic country sound of “Heritage of Arrogance,” “Run This Town” and “Going To Hell” recall all those country songs I grew up listening to on country radio, but the lyrics couldn’t be further from the racism, sexism & homophobia that have defined country music for me in the last 15 years. In fact, Adeem has made a point to stand up against those things. To make music that sounds so much like classic country, but is made for everyone. Songs that address that very racism, sexism & homophobia head on. In this way, by being explicitly accepting, Adeem is creating a safe space for everyone to enjoy these songs, to tap your boots, to belt along when they sing “Do you wanna go to hell children, with Adeem the Artist? They play Country songs in heaven, but in hell we play them loud!” Heart of the album gut punch “Middle of a Heart” tackles what is unfortunately a familiar American songwriters’ tale of late. Over hushed finger-picked guitar Adeem tells a tale of a boy with a gun, a freezer full of fresh deer meat, and of course, the ensuing American tale of recruitment & money, love & war. And then the aftermath of mental health and the suicide rates of veterans here in the good ol, gun lovin’ US of A. Through the entirety of White Trash Revelry, Adeem is cementing themselves as an essential voice in the folk/country singer-songwriter scene. A queer, non-binary Country Musician, singing about the world as they see it. Telling me stories, asking the questions I want to see asked. And as they build a career, I can follow along. Like a friend. A friend who deep, deep down, just really loves Country Music.

“I gave my body & blood for the power of love / and hoped that I would conquer sin / but I never even rose again… / He had short, neat curls that were shadowed black / and I was fumbling around with the weather app / wondering if he could ever love me back / sometimes these things are hit or miss / with the perfume trails lingering behind / I caught an urge and the nerve to take his hand in mine / and if didn’t rain at the perfect time / it’s probable we wouldn’t have kissed / in the Northeast Minneapolis arts district… Oh I write this down for Judas… Oh all of this was for Judas…”

BARTEES STRANGE / Farm to Table

When I wrote about Bartees Strange’s debut album Live Forever for my favorite albums list back in 2020, I referred to it as nostalgic. I referenced The National, Bon Iver, Fall Out Boy, mid 2000′s emo, pop-rock, & hip-hop as touchstones for his blossoming sound. I wrote how those influences made his songs feel familiar, like old friends. Well, when I press play on his sophomore record Farm to Table, and the sweet, melancholic riff of “Heavy Heart” drifts in, I get that exact same feeling! A song about allowing yourself to recognize the heartbreak of the past year, tenderly specific lyrics setting it in time & place “You look so nice in a cherry scarf, we should go to Toronto more often” and then a rolling build to an epic, exploding, unexpectedly monster riff! Bartees is back! With Farm to Table, Bartees has cemented himself as a superstar, an artist I will see every time he comes to Denver, and someone at the forefront of his sound. From the midwest emo of “Mulholland Dr.” to the pulsing, droning, hip hop influenced, name dropping “Cosigns,” to the gorgeous, swelling sadness of “Black Gold,” Strange is staking out his own place in indie-rock. One of my favorite musical moments of the year can be found about three minutes into the menacing, driving “Wretched.” A song that has basically already taken off (the first chorus literally lifts the song off the ground) before dropping into a dark, acoustic guitar-led second verse. As it builds again, you can feel what’s coming, the band syncs in together, smiling at each other from across the room, ready to cut loose. Right before the second big drop, Bartees lets out a pure, unadulterated “Wooooo!” and the song just GOES! Bartees talked a lot about the family aspect of his band behind Farm to Table saying “I had so much pressure to work with fancy people after Live Forever - I’m so glad Chris (producer Chris Connors) & I decided to do it ourselves in our spaces, with our world of friends. It’s so easy & beautiful to grow with friends, to become a family, and to create something new.” The family nature of Farm to Table can be felt through the radio waves and it is a joy to listen to. This is complex & heartfelt indie-rock, with mathematical midwest movements and a hip-hop ethos. Bartees Strange brings a larger-than-life, DC meets Oklahoma, lighthearted, heartbreak, colorful vibe to his writing. Like he says on the mid-tempo (but stick around for the outro!) “Escape This Circus “There’s a fault in our stars, there’s a rock in my shoe!” It’s not too late to jump on the bandwagon and find your new favorite indie-rock star. Bartees is blowing up!

“I took the keys to the lake / I said to God what I said / I know the folk on the road / I know they don’t wanna move today / I wish I could die in the morn / Sometimes it’s hard but you know I’m thankful…”

BLUEBOOK / Optimistic Voices

Sometimes songs & albums find you right when you need them. I had heard about Bluebook for years, knew they were Denver legends, knew about their seriously broody-Angel Olsen meets Sharon Van Etten apocalyptic lounge music. I also knew that Bluebook has grown into a supergroup behind primary songwriter & bassist Julie Davis, featuring Hayley Helmericks (Monofog & Snake Rattle Rattle Snake) on drums, Jess Parsons (old linernotes&seasons fav Glowing House) on keys and Anna Morsett (The Still Tide) on guitar. But it wasn’t until this year, in anticipation of their headlining Globe Hall show in December, when I sat down and gave Optimistic Voices my full attention. It started when I read Julie Davis’ writing on social media to promote their Globe show. “I’ve got seeds on my mind” Davis’ Solstice-tinged post began. She talked about Winter themes. About

“the growing darkness as the days get shorter, and a gradual withdrawal & burrowing inside, both into my home & into myself-”

then she paused, in this moment, you can feel her thumping bassline pick up, willing her song to life, pulsing through “--but the seeds!” she remembered!

“They keep coming to mind, like coded messages to the future, they contain a plan for new growth, and they are here with us, all around, right now, waiting. They will wait through the wind & the snow until the ground receives their communication, and, at some future date yet unknown, they will grow.”

In the immortal words of midwest author Michael Perry at my all time favorite music festival Eaux Claires in Wisconsin “The metaphors almost write themselves!” There is a magic in the way Davis writes, but the coded message I needed to hear is one that holds a more practical, everyday kind of magic. It is contained in the words Plan & Communication. Magic is great and all, but it doesn’t just happen. These seeds have a plan. They work towards that plan. They have goals, schedules, mile markers on their move towards magic. They communicate. With the ground, with the elements, with each other. They communicate their plan. They work their plan. Then, and only then, does magic happen.

Bluebook turns their plans & communication to magic on this deeply moving, darkly impressive album. Full of driving basslines, swelling & stabbing synths & guitars, and stately lyrics about religion, ketamine therapy, ear infections, flowers & mental health. Optimistic Voices pulses with energy and moves slowly but with intention. When Bluebook finally closed their Globe Hall set long after midnight with a cover, it was one Davis referred to as a “true Solstice song.” At that point we were mere days before the shortest day of the year, and less than a week from Denver’s coldest day in 30 years. The closing song and title track of Optimistic Voices is from Wizard of Oz. If you’re familiar, you may know it as a bouncing, ecstatic number full of joy & expectation. Although they keep the original lyrics, in typical Bluebook fashion, their version broods with sadness, mystery (is that a Brad Cook synth I hear?!) and a deep, deep winter magic. “You’re out of the woods, you’re out of the dark, you’re out of the night” Davis encourages us in her best somber Florence Welch tones “Step into the sun, step into the light. Keep straight ahead for the most glorious place on the face of the earth or the sky. Hold onto your breath, hold onto your heart, hold onto your hope…” With those words on that night I felt the light returning. Felt the days getting longer. The solstice has passed. The nights are dark & long, but not forever. There is a light in the eastern sky. I repeat the refrain again with Davis and the night is over. Like the rest of my most favorite albums from this year, Optimistic Voices was there for me when I needed it. It helped me get through some of the shortest days and hardest weeks of my year. Like always, I turned to songs for comfort & survival. “March up to the gate and bid it open.”

“Shifting in the dark / lifting toward the spark / there’s a rope that pulls you up from the dark / in the box you found / a reason for reaching up around…”

CLEMENTINE WAS RIGHT / Can’t Get Right With the Darkness

Clementine Was Right makes the kind of songs that remind me why I love music so much. Songs that reference places & seasons & people. Songs that want to jump back in the river. Songs that want to ride shotgun with you all Summer, drinking Dr. Pepper and singing out the open window with the hot wind in your hair and between your fingers. These are far bigger than just songs. These songs have families & friends & other lives to live somewhere down the road. To hear songwriter, poet, & frontperson Mike Young tell it, Clementine Was Right is a family affair. Not so much a band as an idea. A community building & changing, morphing & rolling along with songs to sing and places to go. The lyrics are his work; he is a poet, fiction writer & songwriter originally from Northern California and then all over. Currently based out of Denver, so we get to claim Clementine as a local band. He talks about moving & relocation saying “I hate change and I keep doing it! Movement, upheaval, crumbling, transit-trying forever to go home, calling each new stop another home.” In the songs on Clementine’s magnificent second record Can’t Get RIght With the Darkness, I too have found some kind of new home.

Can’t Get Right With the Darkness was recorded in Memphis, TN, straight to a 1969 Ampex tape machine. There are a whole host of musicians on it (people that Mike calls “talented & rowdy & tender & golden hearted”). The songs explode out of the radio with life & love, regret & loss, a postcard of American rock & roll, with silly drawings on the back in gel pen from all your queer friends. Musically, Clementine Was Right sounds like everything & everyone I grew up listening to. This is cosmic scoot bootgaze sweeping western emo tonk classic American rock&roll country music. Springsteen, Petty, etc… Lyrically Clementine’s songs are the kind that stick with me. Mike writes with his heart on his sleeve about all the things I love about life. These songs make me want to do better, dance bigger, swing harder & run faster. I spent most of fall & winter 2022 in a pretty dark place. I was facing my own fears. Admitting that maybe I've spent most of my adult life running away. That I was afraid to make decisions, afraid to take charge of my life. I don’t feel like I’ve escaped that period of my life, that time in my thoughts yet, and maybe I never will. But I’m working on things and trying to get better. When I fell for Clementine, I immediately clung to the writing & poetry and the overarching idea that everything is gonna be ok. That even if you make the wrong choice, take the wrong road. You will come out alive. When I listen to Clementine, I have an unexplainable, rock solid feeling that I haven’t lived my best days yet. For all the nostalgia and saudade present in Young’s writing, at their core, these songs fill me with hope. Like when I wake up in the morning I will have new friends to make, new songs to sing, new places to see, new careers to chase, new windows to open or roll down, new lyrics to sing or scream or mumble out into the bright, wide open air, a new life starting over every day. I want to close with some of the ramble lyrics/poetry that Clementine uses for their social media videos. Young’s partner is the incredible poet Gion Davis (go find his poetry book “TOO MUCH”) and I absolutely love the way the poems & the songs & the music weave together in a nonsense jumble of joy & sorrow & happiness & heartbreak & curiosity & adventure! Long Live Clementine Was Right!

“I am not going to live for a thousand years. I am not a redwood tree or a deep sea sponge. You are running away from your own death that has brushed past you like many tall ferns in the dark. Your life has no witness but you and occasionally your friends who love you. It is devastating. It is the best day you’ve ever had… You can take a year, you can try a year, you can try a lot, you can try two oceans. You can try to say your friend’s name until it’s a face. Was it loud enough?... It doesn’t matter who sang the first line. I need to see people-sized people in the sun. I would like to make something that when you open it, makes a quiet shift. It doesn’t matter if we’re not friends yet. I am calling from the exact center of my fear. Here we are as the sighs get less & less fake. 1% is whispering something about fireflies and the last 1% is wondering if silence is the best wondering you’ll ever reach. I used to live in the desert, but now I live anywhere. So the band gets bigger, confusing, bigger, to include everyone I’ll miss. The desire for rescue is the wrong map to intimacy. I used to live anywhere, but now I just keep visiting. How do you know if the songs work? You ask strangers what they do with their ghosts. You don’t want faces to be numbered, you want them to answer your stories with theirs. You don’t need to harmonize with anything but all the secret windows you’ve been waiting to open in your chest. Singing along is a light under the door of longing. Your new friends sing along with your old friends' daughter and the picture she drew of the band as guests of the lava. Love don’t know I’m coming, love won’t let me stay. It moves you, which is to say you keep going. You sing along…”

ETHEL CAIN / Preacher’s Daughter

There is an undeniable darkness emanating from Ethel Cain’s official debut album Preacher’s Daughter. Many of the songs sound lifted from some 99 cent red box horror movie; palpable fear & self-hate crashing suddenly into jump scares and waves of wailing noise. Six plus minute songs of burning, brooding evil; reeking with violence, sex, motorcycles, drugs, guns, booze, incest, abusive relationships, and American red, white, & blue religious bullshit. To listen to these songs is like watching one of those horror movies, squinting between fingers covering your eyes; scared to see what comes next, but unable to peel your eyes & ears away. By far the darkest evil Cain uncovers in her writing, is the sin of the Christian church. The black heart at the center of her America’s evil. Ethel Cain grew up like me, but a million miles from me. Born in Florida, a preacher’s kid, indoctrinated in the church, questioning her upbringing, but filled with a deep nostalgia for her youth. When Ethel came out to her family (and consequently the community, cuz if you grew up in a small town you know that’s how it is) as a trans woman, it marked a turning point. In her words “It was war. We were a house divided. It was me versus my whole town.” She distanced herself from the church and started making music on garageband and trying to find collaborators and chosen family. In the midst of that searching, Ethel has created a musical world all her own. A sonic enveloping, a fashion career & a style where she can be herself. An album that runs an hour and 15 minutes and never lets up. She is telling stories, she is relating to old friends from small towns & similar upbrings, and most of all, she is 100% herself. An artist with a singular vision. Preacher’s Daughter is a challenging listen, but it makes me feel as viscerally real as any album on this list.

There are songs on Preacher’s Daughter that I can’t listen to without thinking about my own high school years. Amidst all the darkness, there is an 80’s love story in the twinkling pop of “American Teenager” an anti-war anthem that prays to Jesus & daddy & Dale. An empowerment anthem at the end when Cain belts “I’m doing what I want and damn I’m doing it well” This is the only roll-down-the-windows song (and maybe a glimpse at the magic Cain could make if she sold out of her darkness for a lighter side?!) and it immediately takes me back to small town back roads in western Colorado. I remember my lifelong best friend Stephen would play a piano melody for me at his house. Something he wrote that sounded like growing up. Like the end of everything and the beginning of everything. We would be at his house in Silt at midnight. Still time to walk to the train tracks and the Gofer foods or Kum & Go and get chips or corn nuts or a gas station hot dog and a 64oz Dr. Pepper and maybe some cigarettes or later a 6-pack of beer. We would take whatever we bought out under the overpass, where the train tracks ran through, and we would talk about whatever shit. About what we wanted to do with our lives. About the same shit I’m still talking about now. We would rent one of Ethel’s crappy horror movies from the redbox and go back to his house to waste the rest of the night. We’d talk about how we missed our girlfriends, about how we didn’t know what we wanted to do with our lives. About how I still don’t know now. I write all this because this is what I like to remember and this is what Ethel’s songs remind me of. I want her to know that I understand. When the guitar crashes into “A House In Nebraska” and sweeps the whole song away into the madness of growing up & letting go, I feel what it means to her. I feel the pain she feels. When I feel so alone, these are the kinds of songs and albums I look for. When the second half of “Televangelism” finds a light and the piano strikes a match and begins to sing, I hear my friend Stephen’s piano. I’m back home in my childhood bedroom. Somehow, Ethel Cain has conjured up a world that I can live in. In the darkest corners of her world, there is light and there is friendship. These songs are masterpieces and they tell stories of darkness & evil. But maybe, when we turn the lights off and sit in the dark after midnight, telling these stories; we can hold hands and feel a little less alone. Because there is someone out there who feels just like me.

“You & me against the world / you were my man and I your girl / we had nothing except each other / you were my whole world / then the day came and you were up & gone / and I still call home that house in Nebraska / where we found each other / on a dirty mattress on the second floor / where the world was empty save you & I / where you came and I laughed / and you left and I cried / where you told me even if we die tonight / that I’d die yours / these dirt roads are empty / the ones we paved ourselves / your mama calls me sometimes / to see if I’m doing well / and I lie to her and say that I’m doing fine / when really I’d kill myself to hold you one more time… / you know I still wait at the edge of town / praying straight to God that maybe you’ll come back around / I cry every day and the bottles make it worse / cuz you were the only one I was never scared to tell I hurt / and I found photographs of our school on the day we met / I thought you were so beautiful / it was love I guess / and you might never come back home / and I may never sleep at night / but God I just hope you’re doing fine out there / I just pray that you’re alright / and I feel so alone, and I feel so alone out here / I’m so alone out here without you baby…”

FKA TWIGS / CAPRISONGS

“Hey, I made you a mixtape” begins FKA twigs phenomenal third album CAPRISONGS. If you know me, you know how happy it makes me for FKA twigs to make me a mixtape! Tahliah Debrett Barnett is an English singer, songwriter & dancer who goes by FKA twigs. She lets that mixtape start slow (honestly the way most good mixtapes do!) and opener “ride the dragon” (all of CAPRISONGS song titles are styled in all lowercase) sets the stage for personal fav “honda.” From here, the album dives in. “So yeah one morning… I don’t know, Monday or somethin’' begins track two. A man’s voice recounts “Summertime, you know, all tired and shit, sleep under my eyes, lookin’ at myself in the mirror… who’s that? Anyways, I’m one of a kind. Well… people like me are one of a kind. When life gives us lemons, we just take in the essence… Anyway, don’t look back, don’t look back, keep drivin’, know what I’m saying? Leave the sourness behind… Leave it to the streets. That’s it. O-T-S-S. Only the strongest survive. Honda, baby!” From there, it’s easy to get lost in the entrancing beats that make up the rest of CAPRISONGS. Rumbling waves of late night afro rhythms, hip-hop, r&b & soul, chanted choral backgrounds, auto tuned wails dancing intertwined with frail falsetto, Twigs shapeshifts her way through beats & breaks, interlacing bangers with spoken word interludes, cassette tape clicks & hisses, transporting you to HER world, a capricorn sun, an artist in charge.

I fell in love with this album way back in snowy January, the kind of tropical transportation I needed to escape my winter unemployment reality. My littlest sister had texted me a long, sweet text about life & growing up and then she followed it up with “and maybe more importantly, FKA twigs new album is mindblowing.” These are the kind of connections I look for in music, sharing songs & albums with friends & family & loved ones, bonding over “THIS SONG” or “I can’t wait for the new album” or “Let’s definitely go see her next time she comes to Denver!” CAPRISONGS is a slithery masterpiece, rewarding on multiple listens, equally strong as wintry background heaters or summer party bangers. FKA twigs is building a monster discography (I hear “Cellophane” is killing it on tik tok right now?!) and CAPRISONGS is as much fun as you’ll have dancing in the kitchen late at night this year. If you missed it when it came out a year ago, go get it now!

“This is for the hard dreamers / been sad for a while / All the indigo & lightbeamers / been sad for a while…"

FLORENCE + THE MACHINE / Dance Fever

Of all the inevitably titled “covid albums” written or made during lockdown during the global pandemic, Florence Welch’s Dance Fever has my favorite origin story and most direct & literal writing about what it was like for those of us who lost live music. I relate 100% to the opening of “Choreomania'' where Welch deadpans “I am freaking out in the middle of the street, with the complete conviction of someone who’s never had anything actually really bad happen to them.” Before covid, live music was my outlet, my drug, the one place where I felt like myself. During covid, I felt so lucky in my situation (an introvert who actually enjoyed lockdown haha, I kept my job, didn’t lose anyone, lived my life completely unscathed by the pandemic) but I would bemoan to close friends my “loss” of live music. I felt a hole in my life, an essential part of my life, my joy, was ripped away. Florence addresses this idea directly on Dance Fever as she struggles with herself, questioning her career, her “addiction” to performing, and the kind of deep, deep questions I dealt with this last year. The kind of questions that have potential to rip your life apart and destroy everything you love, but open up your future to unfathomable, life fulfilling possibilities. If that sounds a tad over dramatic… well, it’s Florence + The Machine! She’s built her career, cult fanbase & self-mythology on the melodramatic overdramatic… So let's dive in!

Dance Fever is a loose concept record about the dancing plague (or Choreomania, derived from Greek “Choros” meaning dance and “Mania” meaning madness) that struck Europe in the 1300-1500’s where hundreds or thousands of people, would take to the streets and dance erratically, sometimes to exhaustion and even death. It is one of the fascinating, horrifying google history rabbit-hole kinda things that keeps you up at night, but Florence is no stranger to cult-like dance events. Her brooding opener “King” starts exactly where any important pandemic record should start “We argue in the kitchen about whether to have children, about the world ending and the scale of my ambition, and how much is art really worth?” Welch states bluntly. Dance Fever gives us a sometimes unsettling glimpse into Florence’s private turmoil through the most personal, autobiographical writing of her nearly 15 year career. Florence feels vulnerable here “I was never as good as I always thought I was” and “what strange claws are these scratching at my skin, I never knew my killer would be coming from within” but she needs to work these feelings out in songs, she “needs to go to war to find material to sing” and by the end of the first five minutes “King” explodes with defiant self confidence. Make no mistake, with all her inner struggles, Florence is still a force; a woman finding herself, a changeling, a shapeshifter, a superstar artist belting “I am no mother, I am no bride, I am KING.” Sooo… I guess she’s not having kids then. I shiver every time I hear her sing that line so matter-of-factly, like your friend telling you she’s figured out the secret to herself. In case there was any doubt about the inner turmoil and where it would leave her, Welch whispers out the ending over soft harp strums “I was never satisfied, it never let me go… Just dragged me by my hair and back on with the show…” Was this her cold hearted decision, or some demon or angel inside her, something that great artists have that forces them to create? From there, her choice to sing & dance & perform gets easier. “Free” is the most Antonoff-y of the bunch, with a huge, bubbling chorus and the simple refrain of “I hear the music, I feel the beat, and for a moment when I’m dancing, I am free!” The quiet centerpiece of the record “Girls Against God” is a masterclass in writing that makes me cry & laugh in equal amounts. The funny (“I listen to music from 2006 and feel kinda sick” and “in my darkest fantasies, I am the picture of passivity. Waiting for you side of stage, suppressing all my private rage, but as my sister said… I’D PROBABLY LAST SIX DAYS”) are seriously laugh out loud funny, but the depth of “I know I may not look like much, just another screaming speck of dust” and “I met the devil, you know he gave me a choice… A golden heart or a golden voice” gives the listener a completely explicit glimpse into Florence’s brain & heart. Deadly. Florence sacrifices herself for these songs (perhaps overdramatically, but like I said, It’s Florence + The Machine!) many times over, like in “Heaven is Here” (which made an absolutely fantastic concert/cult ritual opener) where she confides “every song I wrote became an escape rope, tied around my neck to pull me up to heaven” and gorgeous closer “Morning Elvis'' (which she sang with Ethel Cain in Denver, a true favorite live music moment of 2022!) where she bemoans “after every tour I swear I’ll quit, it’s over boys now this is it, but the songs like children beggin’ to be born…” So let’s close by talking about the cult-ritu-errr, live show!

On October 1, I walked the Platte River bike path in a gorgeously warm, t-shirt autumn sunset, to Ball Arena, to the choreomania dance party, ren faire magnificence that is a Florence + The Machine show. The setlist was perfect, Florence is the one of the most physically impressive live performers I’ve ever seen (she ran the length of the arena floor, sprinting barefoot, whipping the crowd into a frenzy of sweat & love. Six songs in they played “Dog Days” and half way through the song Florence took time to talk saying

“Hello to anyone who is joining us for the first time! It’s quite an intense experience. And then, to anyone out there who may have been brought along. Or who is chaperoning someone, and you’re wondering… ‘what the fuck is this?!’ Is it a cult?! Is it some kind of massive, haunted house experience?! Is it some kind of British, pagan dance ritual?! Am I safe?! Well all I can say to anyone who has been brought along is… It’s really so much better if you just give in to it! Like really give in. And I promise that if you just do every single thing that I say… You’ll be absolutely fine! So the first thing I’m going to do Denver, is I’m going to need every single person in this arena to put their phones AWAY! And if you all can help me out, take a look to your left and right and if you see anyone with their phone out I want you to very politely -and you can use a british accent I won’t be offended- say, excuse me please would you mind putting your phone away so that we can have a collective experience! Now that they’re all gone.. IS EVERYBODY FREE?! We all spend so much time on screens and separated from each other, so now I want you to tell each other that YOU LOVE EACH OTHER! TELL EACH OTHER THAT YOU MISS EACH OTHER! You do not need to share or post this moment, BE HERE NOW WITH THE PEOPLE THAT YOU CAME WITH, WITH THE PEOPLE THAT YOU LOVE!”

I cried, I laughed, I hugged new friends, I told strangers I loved them, and then we all danced together. Choreomania? Dance Fever? It may be slightly overdramatic, but that’s pretty much all I want.

“What a thing to admit / that when someone looks at me with real love / I don’t like it very much / kinda makes me feel like I’m being crushed / is this something that you would like to discuss? / and it’s good to be alive / crying into cereal at midnight / if they ever let me out / I’m gonna really let it out…”

JEAN DAWSON / CHAOS NOW*

I honestly don’t remember where, when or who I heard about Jean Dawson from (or why the hell I hadn’t heard of him until this year?!), but once I heard his lilting, lonesome single “PIRATE RADIO*” (all the songs on CHAOS NOW* are stylized “CAPS LOCKasterisk”) in late September, I was 100% hooked. Especially when contrasted with the ballistic, ferocious, singalong rage of “SICK OF IT*” which was released two weeks later, Jean Dawson’s third album CHAOS NOW* is the sound of an artist about to take over the world. If you read all the reviews, interviews and think pieces about Jean Dawson, they all talk about the way he smashes and melds genres, sometimes in the same song, in the same verse. He pulls from punk, hardcore, hip hop, rap, grunge, emo, goth, pop, etc… But instead of talking about who or what he sounds like, I want to talk about what makes Jean Dawson so special. A true student of music, Dawson grew up on thrift store CDs, limewire and youtube ripped mp3s on his ipod, listening to everything on long bus rides between Sinaloa, MX (where his mother is from and where he grew up) and San Diego, CA (where his father is from and where he went to school). He practiced piano at Guitar Center as a teen because he didn’t own one. Now he makes the most gigantic, out-sized bedroom rock & roll you’ve ever heard. You can feel his youthful energy exploding out the speakers on nearly every song on CHAOS NOW*. Whether he’s channeling early 2000’s acoustic pop-punk on the bouncy “GLORY*” teaming with Earl Sweatshirt on the sweet, string symphony, stomp folk of “BAD FRUIT*” (which could honestly pass for Viva La Vida era Coldplay, remember Jay-Z had a verse on “Lost+”?!) or channeling the glory days of rap-rock on the thrashing “0-HEROES*.”

When I tell people about the music that I love (like really, truly, deeply, lifetime love) it’s sometimes hard to pinpoint exactly what it is about it that makes me love it so much. Most often, it has to do with lyrics. When a writer is able to put into words exactly what I’m feeling. The feeling of being understood, like the writer is seeing the world exactly like me. Like we both “get it.” But there is also an energy to the music. The final piece of the puzzle fits when we get the chance to celebrate the songs and the feelings together. In the same space (a sacred space) with like minded people who “get it” too. A release, a drug. For me, it’s the most important thing worth chasing. It’s why I quit my job a year and a half ago and tried to find my way in music. Well, I got that chance with Jean at Cervantes in October, and it was absolute magic. Lost in a crowd that pulsed & lifted, sweated & shifted; moving as one, screaming as one, echoing Jean… Being together… This album, like so many of the albums on this list, needs to be experienced live. When Jean released CHAOS NOW* he wrote this about his masterpiece: “I’ve been trying to put this album into simple terms and sentences but the more I try the harder it becomes because it’s simply not simple. It is a love letter to all the children that will grow up to change fractions of the world for the result of a greater whole. I hold no lofty ideals on music making rather I wish to serve as a proverbial sludge hammer to doors that have been left locked for kids that not only look like me but feel like me. Music making has been the greatest gift I’ve been given so far that I give you all of me / every emotion every splinter in my step / feel free to use me as a mirror to see you if you wish. I hope to share moments with you / to be a minor theme for your laughs / yells / cries and everything in between. I’m growing up in your eyes, ears and arms. With this little time we have on this big blue green rock I hope that it is well spent with those you love and no fear under your chest !GO FOR IT! CHAOS NOW*”

“I’m sick of it / on the cliff / nosedive / I’m the new black oblivion / off the shit / over it / live & die with my motherfucking happines…”

MUNA / MUNA

I can still picture the exact date, time & place that I really fell in love with Muna’s absolute banger-filled, self-titled, third album. It was a gloriously golden midwest morning, August 4, 2022. I was driving an hour into St. Charles, Iowa to volunteer on set-up crew at the Hinterland Music Festival. Driving past endless corn fields and sweating out a hangover from the night before. I picked an album from one of the artists I had kinda forgotten was playing HInterland. Muna’s huge singalong, dance-along pop songs hit me like a jump into a ice cold Summer lake and I was hooked.

Of course I’d been blasting the Phoebe Bridgers-assisted, late 90’s/early 2000’s feel good gay rom-com first single “Silk Chiffon” since late 2021, but the rest of the album matches the opener’s energy. These are mega-huge pop-songs, club ready, sung confidently, and played with a hella good full band. Fast forward three days and I’m dancing, singing & sweating it out in the pit to my first Muna set at Hinterlands. It was everything. Phoebe came bouncing out to sing her “Silk Chiffon” verse of course, they covered “Mr. Brightside,” they were perfect. Fast forward two weeks and I made this Muna playlist and basically learned all the lyrics.

Fast forward-forward two months and I’m back in the pit with Muna at the Gothic Theatre here in Denver, screaming & dancing & sweating & crying & laughing with the teenagers & the queer kids. So, what’s so special about this album you ask? Maybe part of it has to do with me needing a “break up” album for the first time in a long time. From the positive, work-hard-make-myself-better pulse of leaving/running anthem “Runner’s High,” to the regret vs. growth ache and deep thinking of “Home By Now” (bonus, it’s really, really fun to scream “why is it so hot in LA in late October?!”) It seemed like this album is full of lyrics that hit home, sung to melodies that really stick. When I looked at my spotify wrapped in December, it wasn’t really a surprise that the song I played and sang the most in 2022 is the emotional, power ballad “Kind Of Girl.” The Sheryl Crow-meets-Oasis, acoustic steamroller “Kind Of Girl.” is essentially a self-care manifesto. A morning wake up challenge and maybe my favorite vocal performance of any song this year. I talk about lyrics a lot in these reviews, and “Kind Of Girl” (and really this whole album) felt like the lyrics I needed, right when I needed them. Writing about being yourself, owning your choices and life direction, being proud of who you are, and working to change what you wanna change. It’s powerful, powerful stuff. For girls (and anybody!) who’s been told they’re “too much” or “scary” or ‘you’re taking things too far and pressing too hard” join me in rolling my window down on Downing St., in the late Summer morning air and sing with Katie “I could get up tomorrow, talk to myself real gentle, work in the garden.” then the ending that matters most, “Yeah I like telling stories, but I don’t have to write them in ink… I could still change the end…” An ellipsis that leads to a future life. Go make your own decisions. Take charge of your life. Don’t be afraid to change the end.

“Have you ever heard about how when a person’s in a maze? / they will tend to walk in circles thinking they are going straight / they can’t see the bigger picture, so they get stuck in a loop / in the end, I was afraid that that’s what you & I would do / but I still have my moments / where every reason feels a lot like an excuse / I wanna ask you / would we have turned a corner if I had waited? / do I need to lower my expectations / if we’d kept heading the same direction / would we be home by now?...”

OPEN MIKE EAGLE / Component System with the Auto Reverse

Back in October, when Larimer Lounge booked Los Angeles by way of Chicago rapper Open Mike Eagle for January 8, 2023, my closest co-worker and #1 music recommender told me I really needed to listen to Michael W. Eagle II. Conveniently, he had a new album dropping the same day we announced the show titled Component System with the Auto Reverse. Two songs in and I knew this album would end up on my end of the year favorites list. This is thoughtful, “elegant-rap” a masterclass from an emcee at the top of his game. Open MIke coined the genre-term (you know I love genre-terms!) “art-rap” at the start of his career in 2010 and it fits, although he bemoans it on the career questioning “I Retired Then I changed My Mind” laughing “I conjured up a gremlin, how do I get rid of you? / ‘what the fuck is art-rap?’ in every damn interview.” To me, it is the humor Open Mike infuses with the deep, life questioning queries, that makes Component System special. He makes me laugh out loud, like in the intro to the woozy “Circuit City” when he drawls “I’m a brand new man doing the same dance / it only seems confusing because I changed pants.” or the banging closer when he raps “I play the wall like a special titan, I ain’t a wizard but I wrestle like him / The only wand I know detects metal items.” The pop culture references (both popular & obscure) are everywhere on these songs. Bill Cartwright, The Pharcyde, Quelle Chris, The Bushwhackers, Big Bird, Golden Girls, Among Us, Scott Rogowsky, Biz Markie, the list goes on. Most notable is Open Mike’s tribute to the late great MF DOOM simply titled “For DOOM.” An inspired, two minute glimpse into how heroes can mold you into who you are.

Like Open MIke, I grew up making my own mixtapes. Not the fancy kind, I didn’t have the tape system with the auto reverse, but I made myself mixtapes of my favorite christian rock songs for the tape player in my 1993 Subaru Outback. When I got a laptop in college I graduated to mix cds (I kept calling them mixtapes though!) and would make them meticulously for friends and family (and myself!), for special occasions, seasons, & secrets. I would rip youtube mp3s of clips from our favorite TV shows, funny vines, or quotes that were important. Finding any of those mixtapes now is like a window into who I was, who I was growing up to be. In the same way, this mixtape from Open Mike feels like a portal into his world. Who he is, what he worries about, what makes him laugh, who he is growing up to be. A brand new man doing the same dance.

“I still got the same worldview / a brain full of old school rules / and memories like flesh wounds / the cure isn’t in a test tube / it’s the sound of my son belly laughing in the next room…”

ORVILLE PECK / Bronco

To be honest, I did not expect to love Orville Peck’s sophomore album Bronco as much as I do. I had his debut album Pony (get it?) on my 2019 favorite albums list and I said I loved it for its “shoegaze, tumbleweed rumble and sweeping western imagery.” I saw Orville a few times over the last couple years at Mission Ballroom and then Red Rocks, as his legend grew and I had been absolutely blown away by his stage presence. Orville’s origin story is the stuff of legends by now. Gay drummer for Canadian punk band dreams up an even gayer cowboy alter ego and conceals his identity with a fancy fringed mask! Suits get fancier, friends get famous-er, stages get bigger, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Hollywood, Miami, Orville Peck is now a superstar. The thing about all the fringe & feathers & glitter & rhinestones is, none of it would work if the songs weren’t good. On Bronco, Orville has doubled down on his classic songwriting, attention demanding voice, and storyteller’s heart. He ditches a few of the tumbleweeds and some of the lonely cowboy vibes on Bronco in favor of more polished, big stage, big lights, big city performances. But the melodies, the lyrics, the way the songs pick up and just go, is pure country songwriting. I fell in love with Bronco thanks to my ex-partner Lila’s love of his songs & his persona. When I hear these songs, all I hear is her; working from home, headphones in, belting lyrics in an exaggerated Orville delivery, happy & oblivious to anyone who may be listening. We fell in love with Bronco together and wore it out during a couple days of long drives in the midwest in the Summer of 2022. No matter what, I hold those moments close and think of them and her everytime I listen to these songs. That’s what music does and I couldn’t fight it even if I wanted to. Music marks time & space.

Bronco starts as far from where Pony started as possible. It’s been three years and a lot of stages, and where Pony started as slow and dark as Orville gets (“the sun goes down, another dreamless night”) Bronco kicks in with rhythmic guitar, fast rolling drums, and hot, blond surfer boys on the beach in Daytona. By the time the swoon-worthy croon of “The Curse of the Blackened Eye” hits its stride, it’s clear that Orville is crafting songs his way. His choruses are bigger & catchier, his instrumentation is simple & direct, these melodies & lyrics are strong enough to stand on their own. They ride on Orville’s commanding voice and storytelling theatrics. He sneaks in a Tanya Tucker reference in the uptempo “Lafayette'' and his geographical mile markers journey this album from the West (Malibu, Mendocino, The PCH, The Hexie Mountains, Mulholland, Denver, Reno, the Badlands) to the South (Mississippi, the bayou, Daytona) to the northeast sun and all the way across the sea (Bez Valley, Sofiatown, the Kalahari, Johannesburg, The Thames & Waterloo). As with many country artists, the thing that has always set Orville Peck apart, is his golden voice. Instantly recognizable, his melodies sung in a way only he can sing them. The real magic in the story of Orville Peck, is his ability to simply be himself. Our country & culture is currently waging an all-out war on queer kids (from attempting to ban all things trans-affirming to don’t-say-gay laws etc…) and as always happens in dark times, we turn to artists to rebel and to speak truth. Orville shines a light, a larger than life queer cowboy. Queer country has been a theme on this list (from Adeem to Clementine to Orville to keep reading cuz you’re gonna love Willi Carlisle!) and I think about how much that would’ve meant to some of the kids I grew up with in rural western Colorado. Now more than ever we need our Orvilles. I think about the people I love to sing songs with. I think about the people who make you feel like yourself and how valuable that is. Find those people, hold onto those people, be yourself around them and never change. Finally, I think about singing these songs with Lila. I imagine years from now, walking into some dark, dusty dive bar on the outskirts of Denver. It’s karaoke night, or a drag show, or a wednesday. The singer is tall & strong; commanding your attention. The jukebox is blaring Orville, pedal steel whining, drums rolling. The singer is dressed like Orville (well, maybe the South Broadway Goodwill version of Orville) but they look good. They step to the mic and look around and then the music pauses before kicking in “Hurry over and cry Lafayette!” They command the bar, they demand your attention. Maybe it is Orville. He played last night in Salt Lake after all. You try to look at the eyes behind the mask, but it doesn’t really matter cuz the songs sound so good. You order a Tecate and a shot of Jamo. You move across the floor and start to sing along. The music fills you up and you feel like yourself. The sun goes down. The show goes on. The songs will always be there.

“I don’t want you to be afraid / let me see you cry / oh I, I got an hour or so / take my hand and let it go / call me up anytime / c’mon baby cry / I can tell you’re a sad boy just like me…”

OTOBOKE BEAVER / Super Champon

Another 2022 live music highlight for me, was the opportunity to work side-stage security for Otoboke Beaver at their sold out show at Globe Hall back in October. I knew they were a big deal, but I hadn’t really been able to give their album a full listen, mostly due to it being… a little fast-paced and abrasive vs. my normal listening habits haha. When I finally dug in a couple of days before the show, I knew I was in for a treat. This is blisteringly, breakneck fast, Japanese punk; with a fun, tongue in cheek approach. Otoboke Beaver formed in Kyoto way back in 2009, and Super Champon is their third album. “Champon” is a Japanese noun that translates to a hodgepodge or a jumble. Indeed, these 18 songs (lasting just over 21 minutes!) bounce around and change direction so fast, that it’s almost easier to listen to the album as one whole “super jumble” song! The women of Otoboke Beaver (Accorinrin, Yoyoyoshie, Hirochan & Kahokiss) challenge gender norms in classic Punk fashion with “I am not maternal,” “I won’t dish out salads” & “You’re no hero shut up f*ck you man-whore.” The former is the opening track and finds Accorinrin challenging her maternal instincts, a rough translation of the lyrics is “I love dogs! I’ll deliver a puppy but not a baby!” Second track “Yakitori” (perhaps the catchiest, bounciest riff & melody on the album) abruptly cascades into a wall of sound & fury with Accorinrin screaming “Destroy!” Otoboke maximizes the entirety of Super Champon (only two songs run over two minutes) with super tight, technical riffs, punishing drums, and a relentless energy that pinballs between anger & humor. There are no contradictions in the world of Super Champon (even when the song is called “Leave me alone! No, stay with me!”) Instead, Otoboke thrive in the chaos & calamity, letting contradicting feelings co-exist, laughing at pain, and good naturedly calling out those who need calling out. But it is very clear from both the album and their live show, that they take no shit. Finally, from the steps side-stage at Globe Hall (the place where I’ve grown with other linernotes&seasons favs Charley Crockett, Liza Anne, Lucy Dacus, Rainbow Kitten Surprise, Arlo Parks, the list goes on and on!) I got to see one of my favorite live shows I’ve ever seen. Otoboke are as deliriously fun on stage as they are on album, instigating the crowd, stirring up the pit, crowd surfing with guitars, posing with each other, and clearly having the time of their lives. Otoboke Beaver is already on their way to bigger stages here in the US (see y'all at the Bluebird!) but if you can’t make it to their live show, take 21 minutes and blast Super Champon for your next rage room session or dance party!

“A tenacious, sulky, troublesome ass / fallen in love with falling in love / i have no time to waste on you / looking for a one night stand / abso-fucking-lutely out of the question / you dirty old fart!”

PINKSHIFT / Love Me Forever

Baltimore’s PInkshift has a charmingly unlikely origin story for a punk rock band. Three east coast kids with immigrant parents, meeting at Johns Hopkins University, bonding over a love of NIrvana, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, Foo FIghters & No Doubt. Singer Ashrita Kumar & guitarist Paul Vallejo recruited drummer Myron Houngbedji when they heard him practicing “Helena” by My Chemical Romance in the Johns Hopkins music practice rooms. They consequently dropped their STEM majors in favor of dismantling the patriarchy with punk rock. Their debut album Love Me Forever reminds me of everything I loved about punk growing up. The drums are fast & hard, the riffs are huge, spiraling & diving, exploding into chugging rhythms and firework solos. Then there are Kumar’s vocals; attention demanding screams & shrieks, powerful yells, and throaty melodies delivered with the kind of sneer that drives home the anger, angst & uncertainty found in the lyrics. This isn’t your sugary Simple Plan, Good Charlotte pop-punk, this is modern punk, with heavy hints of grunge & alt-rock. Most of the reviews I read about Love Me Forever used words like “muscular” and “burly.” I had the privilege of working lead on PInkshft’s show here in Denver at Lost Lake in October, and it was, to put it emo-ly, a highlight of my year. I watched Kumar sit quietly, almost unnoticed at the corner of the bar, writing in their journal (maybe the beginnings of Pinkshift LP #2?!...) heard the rest of the touring party, polite and hardworking; load in, sound check, and as most touring bands who play Lost Lake do, run out for food. When PInkshift finally took the stage, it was like something unleashed. Vallejo & Houngbedji come out of their shells on stage, laughing & wild, clearly having the time of their lives. Kumar on the other hand is almost unrecognizable; a frenzy of energy, screaming & whirling, commanding the room. Punctuated by moments of meditation & calm. This is a band destined for bigger stages and wilder crowds. It’s also impossible to ignore the diversity on stage, a band led by kids of color, in genres that have, in my lifetime, been unfairly dominated by white males. At their show at Lost Lake, it was evident by the kids I saw in the crowd; diversity that can be hard to find at shows in Denver. A safe space, and one that Kumar referenced when they spoke from stage. They talked about a crowd that looked like them, about the band’s desire to create spaces like the sacred one at Lost Lake. I want to close with the last paragraph I wrote on instagram. It’s where I directed most of my creative writing this year, and it encapsulates the feelings I felt after one of my favorite shows of the year. Walking out onto Colfax after hanging with Pinkshift. “This is it. This is the future. The world is ending. We’re all dying. Soon. Scream about it. Feel it rise from your gut to your lungs, in your chest, in your mouth. Scream it out. Together. Throw yourself into the pit. Smile & laugh & bruise your body. Wake up sore. Sing along if you know the words. Thank you PInkshift. This one was special.”

“Sometimes I dream a perfect dream / where I return back to a place / where I was born in the garden of a soul / in the garden I was born…”

QUINN CHRISTOPHERSON / Write Your Name In PInk

It was nearly four years ago when Alaskan songwriter Quinn Christopherson took my music world by storm with his tear-jerking masterpiece “Erase Me.” Against an austere Anchorage Museum backdrop, Quinn screamed his heart out (at times delightfully irreverent) in a queer anthem. For the next few years, I wore out “Erase Me” and secret fav “Raedeen” (the sweetly dark family story full of details both cheerful & nauseating). After that, Quinn hunkered down in Alaska and disappeared for a few years. When “lead” single “Bubblegum” finally dropped in Fall 2021, I knew this collection of songs was gonna be special. Truthfully, I knew before that; when I started following little snippets of Quinn’s life via social media and felt the way I always feel finding a new artist to love. I love the way he writes about life, I love the way he includes all the mundane, seemingly meaningless details and I love the way Alaska permeates his writing. When I listen, I feel like I’m there. Most of all, I love the way he writes about family. Parents, siblings, spouses, cousins, nephews, they are all central characters in his songs. When he finally released Write Your Name In Pink (his official debut album) he wrote

“I’m insanely proud of this record. I put in pride for my family, empathy for our past, recognition of growth, and most of all Native & Queer joy & hope. God I hope you like it.”

Since then, it has been a delight to sink into Quinn’s writing. His voice matches his lyrics so well, soft & purposeful, cheery at the edges, you can almost hear his smile sometimes. Musically, Write Your Name In Pink glows with synth washes, gentle drum pads and moody vocal swells that build the songs from whisper beginnings to sing along outros (see powerful opener “Thanks” that closes with Quinn wailing “I don’t know what I was looking for, but I knew when I found you!” over & over over stately strings and swirling vocals). Although most of the songs sit easily in an indie-pop groove, Quinn’s lyrics scream out with all the details of a life lived, an open door into the world of an artist who really, truly cares. Of course, there are all my favorite small details. Crushing spiders, fixing up a home, nephews in school, Jackets & bikes, carving your names into trees, rollerblades, tiramisu, puka shells, puffer vests, the list goes on. Some are Alaska specific, most are things that all of us recognize. Deeper than that, Write Your Name finds Christopherson digging into his own mind, trying to be better, trying to grow. In “Bubblegum” he grows up along with us (from 6 to 17 to 21 to 23 to 25 to 26…) facing his vices, his changes, all the while repeating “I don’t know who I am.” Later, in the pulsing pop of “Uptown” he indulges in drugs & alcohol, all the while repeating “I don’t like who I am.” Quinn writes in a way that matters to me. He tells his stories, deeply & lightly, in a way that makes me feel like I’m his friend. To listen to this album, to pay attention to his songs, is to share in that friendship. To understand someone and to feel understood. That if we were to meet and talk, Quinn would understand me. We’d already be friends after all. We would jump on the trampoline and eat oats and talk about Celine Dion. These are the kind of albums that I’ll hold onto. Friends in music forever.

“I hope the kids we raise are ambitious, don’t play it safe / have a lot to say, live a long life and get paid / I hope they don’t grow up too fast / travel the world & come back / realize it’s who you’re with, not where you’re at / I hope they dye their hair & get tattoos / are a good sport with a good attitude / I hope they remind me of you…”

R.A.P. FERREIRA / 5 to the Eye with Stars

R.A.P. Ferreira was another co-worker recommendation, a Wisconsin rapper I was unfamiliar with till this year. Then we had the opportunity to see him live at my favorite small venue that I don’t work at (love you Hi-Dive!) and these songs cemented themselves as friends for life. Rory Alan Philip Ferreira has released a ton of music under multiple different names & projects (including milo & Scallops Hotel) over the last 13 years. Featuring on songs with Open Mike Eagle, Armand Hammer, Busdriver & Anderson Paak and creating his own record label, Ruby Yacht. Stylistically similar to Open MIke, Ferreira’s laid back, lackadaisical delivery is delightfully nimble, dancing between silly & melancholy, chuckling at himself, and dancing all over varied adjectives. His beats are more minimal than Open Mike, soft jazzy brushes & piano, lo-fi-diy noise, static synths squeaking to life, laying a babbling brook of calming sounds for Ferreira to rap over. Lyrically, Ferreira is an elegant wordsmith. He shows off his midwest magic (having lived in Wisconsin, Maine, Tennessee & LA) and blends seemingly random household objects (a meyer lemon, a tiny lamp, a tin of altoids, a Hydro flask, a spark plug) with cosmic ideas both thought provoking, challenging & comforting. LIttered with lines to hold onto, Ferreira is childlike in his innocence (“first fear was vanquished / first fortress was made of blankets”) and scholarly in his thought (“I wrote this rap to make the sunrise”). The emotional center of the record, the brooding “mythsysizer instinct” features Hemlock Ernst (the rap alter-ego of Future Islands frontman Samuel T. Herring who released a rap album on Ferreira’s Ruby Yacht label) crooning over warbly synths and Ferreira’s most direct mental health advice as he says “My sadness a hound dog and he creeps beside me.” This thread of songwriting is deep within me and I’ve touched on it a few times over the years. In Arlo Parks’ “Black Dog” (off of last years’ fav Collapsed in Sunbeams) or Josh Ritter’s The Beast in Its Tracks from way back in 2013, I’ve clung to the medicinal magic of these songs that acknowledge the hound dog of sadness creeping beside you, always there, an ache under the surface; how to befriend it, how to live with it, how to move on. This is powerful stuff from R.A.P. Ferreira and his poetry across 5 to the Eye with Stars is not to be missed. LIke he says on the horn assisted, late night AM radio jazz of opener “fighting back” “I know it’s epic poetry that keeps the cosmos orbiting…” Epic poetry indeed Rory.

“I find myself a leaky faucet and get to wrenchin’ / the word’s henchman / bench pressin’ sunrises / sometimes it’s overwhelming to be helming the creation of everything / or so I imagine / true magic at my fingertips / down to the wingtips / down to the creases / down to the meat & potatoes / down to the beaten cables / down to the streets & fables / and deeper still, you gotta be for real…”

RAVEENA / Asha’s Awakening

Picture if you will, the seeds of an epic idea. A late 20’s mega-talented pop musician has a wild idea for a concept album. She plans to blend her Punjab Indian heritage with her Queens, NY upbringing. She will recruit some of her all time favorite musicians (both Indian and otherwise!), she will use authentic Indian instruments, mixed with modern pop production, r&b, disco and early 2000’s hip hop. She will dive into her favorite influences like Bollywood soundtracks from the 70’s, Timbaland, Alice Coltrane, & M.I.A. Oh yeah, she also loves kitschy sci-fi so the lyrics will recount a story straight from her sci-fi novel about a Punjab space princess named Asha (translates to “desire”) exploring space & time, love & loss, discovering her sexuality, new ideas & new planets! It’s a lot of space to cover, but Raveena’s songwriting is intoxicating, sexual, and expressive, and Asha’s Awakening blooms with her singular style & vision. Raveena’s parents immigrated to the US in the 80’s from Punjab, India to escape anti-sikh riots, and her heritage is not only present but celebrated in the story of Asha. She blends all her influences so cohesively, that her album comes out sounding exactly like the mix that would be blasting on whatever futuristic music player Asha might be bumping in her spaceship!

My favorite thing about Asha’s Awakening is how creatively it world builds, how openly Raveena invites you into her spaces and how gorgeously meditative & invigorating these songs are when you really give them your full attention. Raveena uses authentic Indian instruments like the tabla, bulbul turang, bansuri flute, swarmandal and sitar. She features some incredible Indian musicians like Rostam & Asha Puthli (oh and also Vince Staples and TWEAKS!) giving the album a modern/futuristic feel. Finally, she layers ambient sounds; bells, chimes & bird chirps that really make you feel like, as she describes “stepping into an Indian garden at 6am on a Summer day.” Some of my personal musical touch points for the first half of the album are the upbeat dance pop of Caroline Rose, or the less guitar-y, more glitch poppy side of Hippo Campus. I can’t hear “Time Flies” without thinking of the laid back pop, complex & intricate instrumentation, and aching vocals of Texas band Sun June (a real linernotes&seasons deep fav). After the spoken word interlude “The Internet Is Like Eating Plastic” the second half of the album is far more meditative and laid back. Yes, there are spoken word pieces, breathing exercises, and a meditative 13+ minute closer! Of all the albums on this list, Asha’s Awakening is the one I would most recommend getting lost in. Play it start-to-finish with good headphones. Let your mind wander space & time. Let it create visions of pink flowers as big as planets and spaceships with headlights like disco balls. Let your body sink into the sensual & relaxing rhythms. Let both your body & brain be expanded and give in to Asha’s world. When you get to the end of the album, Raveena will leave you with a reminder, “Remember that this space of unconditional love and this protective field of light is always here for you to return to…”

“She wants to follow me to valleys in Kathmandu / She wants to fuck & trip & eat them flowers ‘til she ain’t blue…”

SADURN / Radiator

The story behind the creation of Radiator; Philly bedroom-folk outfit Sadurn’s debut full length, is as sweet & magical as the songs on the album itself. With a batch of bandleader and primary songwriter Genevieve DeGroot’s songs to record, and covid making normal studio adventures challenging; the four friends that form Sadurn holed up in a cabin in the Poconos for the ultimate quarantine adventure! “It was kind of just a house” DeGroot admits “We call it ‘the cabin’ but it was just an airbnb that had some wood paneling” With a backstory like Bon Iver’s For Emma (but with friends!), it’s like you can feel the warm camaraderie of the band spilling out all over the songs that make up Radiator. They tell stories of blanket forts in the loft, the control room set up in a bedroom (so they could listen to takes together, all four snuggled in bed) and drummer Amelia Swain says “When I listen to the album, I get this wash of memories of how it felt to be finally back together again with my friends. It makes me remember how good it felt to be together. To have a sense of belonging - I really can hear that in the music.” Stories like this, friendship like this, really can be heard in the music. From Typhoons’ magical recording-session-camp-out-fort-fest way back in 2013 (that produced one of my favorite albums of all time White Lighter) to Big Thief’s lightning-storm-creek-dip-forehead-to-forehead playing on their records, friendship & camaraderie can be felt through the radio waves. Radiator is not just an album made by friends, it’s inviting YOU to be a friend too!

The songs on Radiator are soft & secret, unhurried & present. The kind of songs that can be passed over, like street art that someone in a rush doesn’t notice. Degroot spoke of their desire to keep the “lo-fi” aspect that the members of Sadurn had worked hard to create, and the recordings on Radiator are perfect. LIke you’re in a room with just the band, listening to them tell you their stories. Opener “snake” builds from Degroot’s whispered intro “Honey, I was wrong…” (could that be the greatest intro lyric to a break up album ever?!) to a measured garage-y rock. An inward-looking break-up song, with hope at the end (gulp, maybe what I needed this year?). Degroot masterfully tells us about what they’re working on in the aftermath, but closes with

“I want you to know that I’ll be holding that line and I believe in all your mercy / and in the weight of the tide as it is pulling you back towards me / you know that I am always yours if you’ll still have me / though you’re tired from that long walk over the chasm / but my idea of love is that it’s lasting…”

In fact, most of the songs on Radiator seem to take place in the months (or years) after a break up, as Degroot also plays with time a bit (“I watched a whole forest grow from seeds, before you got up…” on the magnetic & measured “golden arm”). Echoing my own inner turmoil, there are the everpresent, contradictory ideas of going back & moving forward, explained perfectly as “going our separate ways but just in the same direction” on the upbeat indie-rock of “special power.” Through it all, Degroot handles their heartbreak with a gentle, thoughtful ease. There are moments of crying in the shower, “carefully built boundaries,” and hard goodbyes (like on the gentle, fingerpicked “moses kill” that instantly recalls Adrianne Lenker of Big Thief’s solo work). Degroot is clearly doing the mental work to grow, and their friends are right alongside, imbuing what could be a cloudy gray collection of songs with sunlight & flowers, hugs & tears & kisses. These songs have been playing in my headphones a lot as I walked around Cap Hill & Cheesman Park in Denver since October, working through my own relationship ending; and the light they create has been building a little home for me. A home where swirling, opposing ideas can talk it out in my brain. As Degroot would put it “It’s ok what I’m feeling, it’s alright if I’m crying / and maybe there’s some good coming, although I cannot find it / and I know that light humming on the back of my eyelids…”

“Your mind is like a like a fishnet and mine is like an icepick / sometimes it’s not enough and sometimes I think it’s perfect / and I get so messed up cause I don’t know if it’s working / I’m standing by the window, I can’t wait to let the light in / I can’t wait to let the light in…”

SAMPA THE GREAT / As Above, So Below

The common thread running through the heart of Sampa the Great’s sophomore album As Above, So Below, is her native country of Zambia. She spoke of how important it was for her to record the album in Zambia and have it produced by a team of Zambian producers. Sampa Tembo is a 29 year old singer & rapper born in Zambia; based more recently out of Botswana, then California & Australia. If you play through the album at full volume, you’ll see pretty quickly why she goes by Sampa the Great. In the midst of heavy beats, swirling psychedelia, ethereal choirs & live drums, Sampa grounds & threads every song with her singular voice. A compelling mix of live musicianship, A-list features, and entrancing & invigorating songwriting, Sampa is staking her claim as a modern voice to be reckoned with. Sampa takes control for most of these songs, both singing sweetly and rapping fiercely over rhythms & vocal washes both ancient & modern. She skips & bounces brightly over a gentle melody in “Tilibobo” then practically growls her verses out on the monstrous “Can I Live?” A raging highlight of the album, “Can I Live?” is a collaboration with legendary Zamrock band W.I.T.C.H. (who I was lucky enough to see live last year at Treefor Music Fest!) and it climbs from driving, jungle beats, led spiraling upward by Sampa’s dazzling verse, then proceeds to leap off the edge into fiery guitar psychedelic pyrotechnics. Zamrock is a genre born in Zambia, a blending of traditional African music with psychedelic rock & roll, blues & funk, and hearing it blending in seamlessly on a modern hip-hop album is delightful. The choice to record this album in her homeland was one that means a lot to Sampa, who came to prominence while based in Australia; and the choice to work with Zambian musicians & producers imbues her songs with an authenticity & vibrancy that explodes through speakers and sounds like, as Sampa would say, “my freest record yet.” She raps & sings in both English and the Zambian language Bemba, she blends modern hip hop production with authentic African instrumentation and she blends features from African legends W.I.T.C.H. & Angelique Kidjo with hip-hop powerhouses like Joey Bada$$ & Denzel Curry. Through it all, this is Sampa the Great’s album. A singular vision, a portal into an artist’s world & home. A journey to Zambia with Sampa the Great.

“All of this lineage, the journey / this spirit is funny / can’t replicate a shooting star / I can be hard / I can be soft / I can be everything uder the stars…”

TOMBERLIN / i don’t know who needs to hear this…

I had a long and meaningful journey with the new Tomberlin record this year, and she ended up with 3 of my top 5 most played songs on the infamous spotify wrapped. I want to start by pointing out that this is the most perfectly sequenced record I can remember in the last few years. From the gorgeous soft brushes, juno synth, & jazzy touches of brooding opener “Easy,” to the peaceful rhythms of “Born Again Runner” & “Tap.” By the time we get to the heart of the record, the roaring guitar solo from Cass McCombs in the epic “Stoned” and the pulsing growl of “Happy Accident” it matches any album on this list for emotional heft. By the time the winter-morning-radiator-creak of “idkwntht” mumbles it’s way out gorgeously, this is a top five album of the year for me . Besides the sequencing and the gorgeous, understated musicality, Tomberlin’s writing here is stellar and she tackles all my favorite topics. She is 27, a Baptist preacher’s kid, so it’s no surprise that challenging religion is a theme (“Born Again Runner” is a masterpiece) but her move to New York has her writing about finding beauty in nature in the city (“I’m not a tree, I’m in a forest of buildings”) and magic & brain gardening (!) (just listen to all of “Sunstruck” and read the lyrics, it is an all-time classic for me). “Sunstruck” rides a quietly bubbly riff (like a small, indoor water feature) barely rising above a whisper, the kind of song I love, but one you could miss if you’re not paying attention. If you do listen closer you’ll be laid flat by the emotional weight, the deep truths about life decisions, and the simple metaphors about growing up, choosing to be alone, dealing with a breakup, and the work needed to discover who you really are. These have always been questions and struggles for me, but in 2023, it felt like there was nothing else. The entire record has a calming simplicity to me (both musically & lyrically) and I really felt like growing with this record was like growing closer and getting to know a new friend. Who they are, what they like, what they’re afraid of, what deep questions they’re struggling with, what makes them truly happy, what makes them cry, what dumb things make them laugh, what little things they notice when they’re out walking, what they want out of life, what they want people to remember about them when they die...

I was lucky enough to get to see my new “friend” in person twice this year, and both were wonderful & special. First, at Larimer Lounge back in June, while I was working, I was able to duck in and catch most of her set, when I hadn’t really listened to the record fully yet, and from that stage, I realized it was special. I wrote after that night

Tomberlin is hard at work building something magical. She’s “not tired / just wired for late nights staying up / reminding me I’m still alive.” She’s “looking for hope in a song or a run or a deep breath…” She “left behind some pain to get to the magic thing…” and this album & this live show is a magic thing. Special in ways that you have to listen & pay attention to. Like that warmth in the breeze. Like the smell of the rain. Like the change of the seasons…

The second time I marked some time & space with this record was in Raleigh, North Carolina at Hopscotch Music Festival. A late night set at a packed Pour House. A sacred place I’ve wanted to visit for years. Sacred songs in sacred places. Safe against a sidewall, Tecate in hand, listening to Sarah Beth Tomberlin sing me stories of growing up. In moments like that, I’m lost & found and I honestly don’t think I’ll ever need anything more. Thank you for this record Tomberlin, I’ll keep this one close forever.

"I went looking for myself by myself / and it wasn't close to easy, but it sure did help... / a year passes and some seeds take root / your garden is growing and mine's growing too / and the work's not always fun / but it's better than staring at the weeds & the mud / we left behind some pain / to get to the magic thing..."

WALTER MARTIN / The Bear

Perhaps no other album on this list spoke to me as deeply on the topic of growing older, as Walter Martin’s The Bear. In a year where I felt my age harder & realer than any year before, I think I was searching for writing just like this. The Bear was recommended to me by Will Sheff of long time fav Okkervil River, and after listening through (and probably crying and probably pouring myself a dark beer) I was blown away by Martin’s writing & musicianship. Musically, this is a true songwriter’s album, Martin recorded all the demos with just him and a guitar. He enlists some of my all-time favorite musicians Josh Kaufman (The National, Josh Ritter, The War on Drugs, Hiss Golden Messenger, a ton of other stuff!) Eric D, Johnson (Fruit Bats) and Sam Kassirer (Josh RItter) as well as Oscar-nominated composer Emile Mosseri. All this results in rich, jazzy flourishes enveloping Martin’s songs in fireplace wine & whiskey warmth. A lifer of a musician, Martin played in New York bands Jonathan Fire*Eater in the 90’s and The Walkmen in the 2000’s. He references that life a few times on the album (most notably on “The Bear” “I had a dream that I was in a mid-level rock&roll band, played every shithole night club across this entire land”) but it’s clear he lives a different, more rural life now. Wilderness abounds here; there are bears, crows, buffalo, foxes, evergreens, and ice & snow. But it is the wilderness in the recess of his aging mind that Martin chases so beautifully. There is the acknowledgement of growing older, of thinking about death (he talks about “trying to build a body of work that I’d be ok to be buried with”) and giving the listener a feeling of comfort & connection,

When Martin explains his writing on The Bear, he is direct, saying “These songs explain who I am and why I make this stuff.” I think most of us want to leave behind some sort of work or memory like this. To have people know you. Know who you really are and why you think like you do and why you make the stuff you do. Never is this more evident than on the achingly beautiful closer “The Song is Never Done” where Martin speaks deeply and honestly about his dreams & his family, about the morning sunlight and his life’s work. He talks of painters, his cousin, his children, eternity, the raging sea, the fallen tree, how he wants to be remembered, how he exists in circular time. He lets us in on a secret, he has been working for years on writing the perfect song (“No it’s not this one, it’s another one” he chuckles, making me chuckle and actually laugh out loud through my tears) and he encapsulates this feeling as “Cause then I will be fully known. And lonely won’t be so damn alone.” This is, to me, what I too am spending my own life working towards. It is what I spend my time & life in music for. There is a truth, there is a great happiness, there is a knowing of oneself. Underneath everything, there is recognition of a great sadness, a grand canyon of ache. But the right song, the morning light through the window, the way those drums and lap steel match up in a timeless rattle, can help us to celebrate that ache. To pull our pants on, brush our teeth, and face the day. To smile through our tears and not only face the world; but do good and pursue our life’s work. To get to know ourselves deeply and share that with others. To live another day. Because, like Martin points out, The song is never done…

“Well there’s a big blind bear who roams this road late at night they say / you’ll see her in the shadows as she walks her lonely way… / so I sit here at my window where I dream someday she’ll pass / I see the rhododendrons I planted and I think how time moves so fast / like the moonlight & the electric light / projecting paisley patterns on the grass… / and I don’t know where my memories should go / good & bad I cherish them so… / I don’t know Lord, I don’t know / I don’t know how the story should end / and as I look up at that night sky, music begins / and stars are everywhere / come on, come on, come on, just take a look up there / they fill the darkest corners of the darkest air / and they go where satellites would never ever dare / and then suddenly over there I see the bear…”

WILLI CARLISLE / Peculiar, Missouri

I want to open this review by quoting Willi Carlisle’s writing from the centerfold of the digipak cd version of Peculiar, Missouri. It serves as a mission statement, a scene setting, a mystical late night tale told around a campfire by a wild man named Willi, and it goes like this…

“Amidst the great resignation & impending climate disaster, I hear the hundred-year-old echo of migrations recorded & forgotten, the old spiritus mundi in the Arkansas pines. I hear the words of forebears who lit the way for us, the great-great-grand-so-&-so’s who forged our misery & our delight in genetic code & microfilm. The yowling bastards who got us into this mess never shut up. And we’re different than them, yeah? Thank Dog! But we did come from them. They gave us songs & slogans to repeat and revise, and I wanna hear them… It’s like a miracle, this inchoate rushing, this river of history. It washes us towards the end, the big mystery. Are we bathed in its bloody backwaters? Todo pasa en este mundo? It rolls over us like a manic-episode & a makeout session, like the broad-shouldered lad at the square-dance. It crushes us like a covered wagon thrown from a skyscraper. But things ain’t hopeless, no, not yet! Not while we’re livin’...”

And so it is that we meet Willi Carlisle. A sweet, mythical giant from the MIdwest & Arkansas. A historian & a folksinger; a poet & a storyteller. Traditional Folk music like the kind Carlisle is professing his love to on his sophomore album Peculiar, Missouri, always has its roots deep, deep in the past. Willi holds the music of that past holy; paying his respects with fiddle, accordion, banjo, mando, dobro & tambo, and some songs that sound like they could’ve soundtracked square dances on midwest summer nights 70+ years ago. Lyrically, Carlisle pushes past the past, staying true to himself with songs about queer love & acceptance, mental health, and fighting against homelessness, racism, & corporate America. In the genres Carlisle traffics in, those lyrical themes can be regrettably uncommon (although not as uncommon as you’d think, as alternative country & folk is full of young, progressive songwriters making waves and selling out shows, railing against corporate country’s racism, sexism & homophobia). But these are also genres that revere talented players so Carlisle must pay his dues with some classic sounding songs. The upbeat numbers, like the countrified-zydeco-graceland-romp of all inclusive, singalong opening jam “Your Heart’s a Big Tent” or the breakneck, Bakersfield country slide of the Johnny Cash recalling, outwardly humorous, inwardly socially-conscious and politically challenging “Vanlife” practically burst with joy; spilling over with Carlisle’s welcoming smile & tongue-in-cheek lyrics. “The Down and Back” could be played at the square dances Carlisle loves to call (he talks about his and others’ roles in creating safe spaces in square dancing and how “queer futurism insists that these deeply rooted behaviors can create a future out of what feels like a near apocalyptic present.”) Then, there are the songs that really prove Carlisle’s worth as a songwriter. The crooner tremble of ‘I Won’t Be Afraid” belies Carlisle’s sneaky wit & irreverence when he sings “I’ve done some dumb shit and I’m gonna do some more” & “I’ll wake up early and haul ass!” “LIfe on the Fence” is the most obviously queer song of the bunch, an aching country twanger about Memphis & Texas, crying in public, & bisexuality.

Truthfully, there are two songs on Peculiar that, to me, are lifers. Songs that only Willi Carlisle could write. Songs that to this day, I can’t listen to without crying. The title track “Peculiar, Missouri” is an outwardly humorous, spoken word tune about a panic attack in a midwest Wal-Mart (a “come-apart in the cosmetics aisle”) that references Carl Sandburg and takes a few magical twists & turns to contemplate life & death, love & the meaning of it all on the long drive home; looking out the window at the shooting stars. “I sure wish I knew what we were supposed to do with ourselves. If you get any good ideas, won’t you let me know?...” Maybe one of those good ideas can be found in “Tulsa’s Last Magician,” a seemingly simple folk tune about a seemingly simple life. As Carlisle says “There’s no good tricks but old ones” and his writing here magically weaves magician metaphors into memorable moments in a life that just might save us all. For those of us who think that no one quite gets quite what we are, this is our song. Space & time & stories & magic.

"This record is in praise of those dead folkies whose honest seeking brought us this unsettling, awkward, fumbling epoch. I’m asking you, them, us: what is it that we can’t find? Who is there but us? Who else will make the world fair & just? We orphan ourselves, we drive sixteen hours, we break our bodies, we uproot whole continents in search of love, in search of our deepest human right. What foolishness! What violence! I foam & dance & sing, and look upwards for the shooting star. Stay weird, stay wild…”

ZETA / Todo Bailarlo

So we have made it all the way to Z! One of my favorite music experiences in 2022 was my first trip to Boise, Idaho for Treefort Music Fest. One of my favorite new finds at Treefort was Zeta. Originally started as a punk band in Lecheria, Venezuela in 2003, Zeta is currently based out of Florida & North Carolina after moving to the US to chase their dreams of being touring musicians. They have toured relentlessly in the US since then, building little communities wherever they go, sharing food & music & progressive ideas from their hometown. I actually saw Zeta first at Lion’s Lair in Denver, the night before I left for Treefort and I then proceeded to see them multiple times over the course of my five days in Idaho and was repeatedly blown away by their energy, their positivity, their righteous anger, their rhythms and their NOISE! This is punk music at heart; loud & raucous, guitars wailing, drums cascading, music by the people, for the people. With their hearts planted firmly in their native Venezuela, Zeta imbues their brand of punk with afro-caribbean rhythms, cumbia, calypso, salsa, samba, bossa nova, latin jazz, a ragtag orchestra collective, swelling with electricity, a fire to be LOUD. “Todo Bailario” translates to “To Dance It All” and these are definitely songs made for dancing. Whether the sensual, swirling kind, engulfed in the rhythms from off the coast of the Caribbean Sea, or the sweat-soaked, mosh-pit, screaming kind, skin to skin with new punk friends, raging over injustices together. So many of the albums on this list were favorites of mine for their lyric writing. I’ve always loved songwriters who speak to me. The kind of lyrics that make me feel understood. Songwriters who write so openly, with such honesty, that to get to know their songs, makes me feel like their friend; Zeta’s songs do exactly that, but through the music alone. I may hardly understand any of the words they are singing, but in the way that they play and the joy that they exude both on stage and on the album, I feel understood. The way that they let the energy of their music create a community, from Venezuela to Florida to Colorado to Idaho; I feel like an integral part of that community. Like I play a role in this lifeline of music. I feel like their friend. I can’t wait to see my friends in Zeta again in Idaho at Treefort 2023!

“Heal! Heal! Heal the earth with your hands…”

EP BONUS

IMMIGRANT’S CHILD / Papalotl

NIA ARCHIVES / Forbidden Feelingz

RITMO CASCABEL / Ritmo Cascabel

Two local Denver bands with heavy Latin influences and one UK jungle/drum & bass DJ, producer & songwriter. The Papalotl EP from Immigrant’s Child is full of brooding indie rock that follows shredding guitar into heavier psych rock. RItmo Cascabel mixes similarly psychedelic rock and explosive rhythms with traditional Latin Cumbia. Finally, Nia Archives makes “future classic” music full of breakbeats & reggae samples, equal parts chill & danceable.

“The song is never done…”

“Music marks time & space…”

3 notes · View notes