2021 Music: Here We...Keep Doing This

 I guess I just blog once a year now. I've had lofty ideas about trying to post at least once a month with a check-in of my favorite music from that month, but I just don't sit down often enough to do that. It's like a PA at work, I start listing my accomplishments in January and forget about it in February, and then I have to do a big deep dive in December to figure out what I did all year. So happy December!

If we can call it happy. Omicron is here to prolong this hellscape. Disappointing trial results from the vaccines for young children are here to keep me on edge through the majority of 2022. Another year just passed us by and we continue to wait.

But music keeps happening. Music is how I keep time. Again, I keep track of music as it comes out. I just don't write about it.

In 2021 we lost some giants. Rest in peace, Gared O'Donnell. And Gift of Gab, Biz Markie, and many more.

Sorry, some things I had to just get out there. Seems like the perfect mood to write about great music. Let's go. Not ranking this year, just going in kind of chronological order, to help keep time or whatever. All of this stuff was great and I felt weird whenever people shrugged about the music that came out this year. Either they didn't get it, they weren't looking in the right places, or they were just looking for something different from me. I will say it was nice that there was no big marquee album topping everyone's list this year. 

Here we go. Divided by season because whatever, why not.

Best of Winter 2021 (the pre-vax)

Jazmine Sullivan - Heaux Tales

I forget where I first heard of Jazmine Sullivan but it was recent. Late 2020. Enough to get hyped on this when it came out because her voice is amazing and does so many unique things and I dunno. It's a great voice. This album has such a great feel, divided by interludes that seem as important as the music itself, about what life is like for these Black women. It also means there are like 7 actual songs, so it's almost an EP. But every song matters.

Viagra Boys - Welfare Jazz

This should have been a joke album. It is pretty funny. And the joke lasted all year long...I can still listen to these songs and chuckle about this dude acting like a toddler who doesn't need a woman telling him to clean his room or brush his teeth. Very basic but funny. But it's not just that. The music on this is AMAZING. A pounding beat, all sorts of garage post punk sounds, a saxophone. The synthy "Creatures" is pretty much a perfect outsiders song straight out of the 80s but also timely. I really want to see this band live. Like, I want to see any band live, but this would be quite the show. 

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - Carnage

Dude, this album. It is tense. Since Skeleton Tree, these guys have been on another level. They've always been brilliant, but they keep outdoing themselves somehow. I don't even know what to say. It's Nick Cave, who has become maybe the most consistently brilliant lifer in modern pop music. If you know, you know.

Best of Spring 2021 (the vaxxed dayz)

serpentwithfeet - DEACON

I didn't know how he would follow up the brilliant soil, my #1 album of 2018. That one was an impossibly heavy exploration of Black queer struggles. When I heard this one was going to be a positive, uplifting celebration, I was a little reluctant (it took me a whole 5 seconds to preorder the album on vinyl when it was announced) but figured I'd trust him to follow his muse. What we got was an impossibly light celebration of Black queer love. All the deep love but also silly things like wearing socks with sandals and super catchy a capella trumpet sounds. 

Squid - Bright Green Field

I'll admit that I was initially drawn in by how goofy the sing-speak sounded with the adventurous post punk sounds. But the lyrics were quite interesting and I stuck around more enjoyed the rhythm section and the guitar noodling and got some real feeling from the vocal stylings. Mostly, the music is an adventure that hits me in all my spots. This is maybe the kind of band I'd be in if I had the talent/dedication. Super dynamic, you really feel every beat as it bounces all over the place, builds, explodes, bounces around some more, pulls you in, pushes out out, and keeps going.

McKinley Dixon - For My Mama And Anyone Who Look Like Her

This should have been so much bigger. I think the only thing working against McKinley Dixon is the inevitable comparisons. Whenever I try to talk about him, I fall back on saying he sounds a bit like Kendrick Lamar. Who is the GOAT in my opinion, and most opinions. I'm not trying to compare him to the giant, but he flips his flow around in similar ways and the jazz music reminds me of To Pimp a Butterfly. It's conscious, it's experimental, it's highly entertaining, it got me interested in hip hop again after a bit of a lull. Endless creativity. The way he starts with something super catchy, then immediately breaks it to speed up the flow, destroys the beat to rebuild...how in the hell is he only at 10k monthly listens on Spotify? Buy his stuff on Bandcamp.

Best of Summer 2021 (here comes Delta...)

Death Goals - The Horrible And The Miserable

I think I just listen to little enough chaotic hardcore music that when I give it another chance I love it so much. This album takes so many sharp turns, it's pure exhilaration. This is just two dudes. Somehow. The heaviest stuff. Anything that makes you feel this alive in 2021 needs to be savored.

Backxwash - I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES

Speaking of hardcore. The heaviest stuff. Unforgiving hardcore/industrial hip hop. I was blasting this in my Honda Fit one day on my drive home from work, and I am a late 30s white dude, and some teenagers pulled up next to me, I just nodded while the hardest stuff they'd likely heard that day blasted out of my economy car, and they just yelled "you're amazing" which made me feel pretty good about my life choices. At least I made their day. Again, you find what makes you feel alive these days and for me some days it's Black trans industrial hardcore hip hop.

We Are The Union - Ordinary Life

Some days it's white trans ska. I don't make the rules. But I totally dove right back into the ska scene 25 years after it changed my life and set me on my path of musical discovery I've been following to rewarding destinations after rewarding destinations. WATU is special. I've listened to most of the big ska releases of 2021 and most of it feels like a retread (there are still some great bands still doing great things), this album is about Reade's struggles and rewarding path toward her coming out as trans. It's striking in how relatable it is, even to this cishet dude. Songs like "Broken Brain" about struggling with getting your brain to pay attention instead of getting lost in itself, or "Everything Alone" about making poor decisions out of boredom/loneliness. It all leads to the great climax in "December," about shedding the old identity to become one's true self. The horn lines are catchy, the whole thing is catchier than any pop song I heard this year. Ska still has something to say.

Dave - We're All Alone In This Together

Very British. He just raps in a way that makes me feel it all. Like in the first track with the lines like "Me and him got more in common than he thinks but I tell him it's nothin' big so I can go on and live with myself." It's being alone, it's being together. He can rap for 9 minutes with no beat and it just pulls me in. Together. There's also plenty of fun songs with clever wordplay like "Twenty To One" which finds many different meaning to "Twenty to One." It's just great stuff.

Emma-Jean Thackray - Yellow

This one is wild. Some of the grooviest, funkiest beats. It's basically jazz fused with funk, all about the planets and astrology and a kind of spirituality that I don't quite align with personally, but it'd be hard to resist a cult if it were led by Emma-Jean Thackray. She has a wisdom about her, the music builds and feels like freedom? I don't know, it's a good escape from this crazy world to look beyond the stars, or at least beyond the moon.

Tyler, The Creator - CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST

I'm finally getting into Tyler. It seems like he's just matured so much since the OFWGKTA days (did I acronym that right?). But he continues to elevate the form and simultaneously be more relatable and simultaneously be super catchy. I don't know. Others have written about how this is him going more into straight up rap and rapping the hell out of it. I guess that's true but there's more to it than that. The way the beats morph but it makes sense with every zig zag the sound takes. Like a mixtape or scanning different radio stations but every beat hits just right. Does this mean anything?

CHVRCHES - Screen Violence

Like everyone else, I loved the first two CHVRCHES albums, didn't care much for the third. I had very little interest when this one was announced. But it's great, it has the same creative bombastic energy of those first albums with a horror-ish theme. They got a John Carpenter remix, after all. And got Robert Smith to show up on a track. I like it because it's triumphant. The best moments are related to horror films, but those triumphant parts of horror films where you are able to breathe, like when Nancy brought Freddy into the waking world or when Sydney kicked Ghostface's ass. Triumph over the horror.

Amyl and The Sniffers - Comfort To Me

I remember checking out their last album because everyone talked about how great it was, but I just didn't care for it. I'm not sure if I changed or they changed, but this album is perfection. Perfect rock and roll. Or punk or whatever you want to call it. It has that energy that makes it hit harder than anything else. It's simple, but her voice hits just right, the drums, the few guitar chords, it's just what I want. I don't know how to explain it. I've always loved punk, and this hits those nerves in just the right way.

Low - HEY WHAT

I listened to a bit of Low in the early 2000s I think. They were interesting but not so interesting that I'd continue to follow them. Checking back in 20 years later due to all the hype they were getting, I was shocked that this was the same band. A completely unique approach to melody, to song structure, while still being super catchy and feel-good. I love the way the fragments of sounds make beats, kind of like what Fugazi was doing back in the day, but with more vocal harmonies and pure gorgeousness (note: not saying Fugazi isn't gorgeous or not the best band ever) and 2021 energy.

Best of Fall 2021 (Boosted just in time for Omicron!)

Xenia Rubinos - Una Rosa

Honestly this is probably my #1 of the year. There's a lot of great stuff out there that made me feel alive, a lot of unique takes on things, and this one did both in such a great way. I listened to a bit of Xenia Rubinos and even got Black Terry Cat on Bandcamp because she showed up attached to two of my favorite artists: Deerhoof ("Singalong Junk" from Mountain Moves) and Battles ("They Played It Twice" from Juice B Crypts). With this new album, I can certainly detect the similarities (some real Battles energy on "Ay Hombre," some Deerhoof vibes in the playfulness across genres), but she is something totally different. The beats on this album, the soulful vocals, particularly the Spanish sung portions, the Laurie Anderson-esque distortions, this is an album that brings together so many of my favorite things while being something completely different. It's a revelation. I love it so much.

Gustaf - Audio Drag for Ego Slobs

This is what post punk is supposed to sound like. I hear a lot of bands these days that get labeled as post punk, but this gets the feeling just right. It's as immediate as punk, it's got the funky bass lines, it's playful. It's pretty simple. It's just right.

Some More Hearty Endorsements

These were on the cusp of making the above list because they're also great.

• Madlib - Sound Ancestors
• Tune-Yards - Sketchy
• Esther Rose - How Many Times
• For Those I Love - For Those I Love
• Dawn Richard - Second Line
• Sons of Kemet - Black to the Future
• black midi - Cavalcade
• Gary Numan - Intruder
• Laura Mvula - Pink Noise
• Yola - Stand For Myself
• Catbite - Nice One
• Indigo De Souza - Any Shape You Take
• Moor Mother - Black Encyclopedia of the Air
• Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
• Deerhoof - Actually, You Can
• Maxo Kream - WEIGHT OF THE WORLD
• The War on Drugs - I Don't Live Here Anymore

Annual Post for 2019 Music

Hello dear readers,

I imagine the best way to build up a loyal readership base is to rarely post on this thing. I don't want to overload people, you know? Well I'm sorry to interrupt my silence with the one reliable post I like to make. The music retrospective!

I wanted to list all my favorite albums of the decade but I didn't have much time for that. I still might make a list but not try to write about them yet again because I just wrote about all the things in those yearly retrospectives as well as An Ear For An Era. So it was revisited just a bit ago. I am trying to finish up my top 100 songs of the decade playlist, because that's a fun way to do things and it's somewhat related to another project I'm working on - a podcast! But that's a different entry.

2019 was a year I was on Spotify. It's a weird world. I still purchased vinyl for most of these, I'll try to do so for at least all the albums I love enough to put on a list like this. But the nice thing about streaming services is that very few of these albums are ones I would have known to check out if it wasn't so easy. Most of them were things I gave a chance on and got hooked onto. My tastes seem to be drifting off in other directions. I'm more interested in something that probably has a name but I will call singer-songwriter-R&B. Like, soul that is more of an individual statement by the artist? I don't know, but I was into a lot of that instead of my usual indie rock. And a renewed interest in punk rock, particularly that fronted by women. I guess I'm starting to get somewhat bored by bearded dudes that look like me.

I was also less into hip hop this year. I liked a few albums but none cracked this list for me. Maybe my brain just couldn't process it enough. Having said that, there are a few hip hop albums I highly recommend in the Honorable Mentions list below.

So here comes the list. There are fourteen. I'm not ranking them this year because I'm back in the "ranking something so subjective seems so silly" mode. There was also no clear #1. If it's on this list, I found it very compelling and found myself going back to it a lot this year. Call it a 14-way tie. It's in more-or-less chronological order.

Sharon van Etten - Remind Me Tomorrow
She took what I loved about some of her songs from previous albums and made a full album of it. Just great get-your-fists-pumping music with lots of passion and empathy. I don't have a lot of words about this but I was very into it.

Le Butcherettes - bi/MENTAL
I just found this band last year when they opened up for Hot Snakes. I was blown away by their performance. This is their first new album since then and it's a quite good payoff. Good chaos rock full of righteous rage. Empowering words, and a musical style that fits somewhere between DC angular hardcore and Detroit jangle rock and hits you in the jugular? Does that make any sense when describing a Mexican punk band?

Adia Victoria - Silences
So badass. Kind of reminds me of listening to Tom Waits, even though it's pretty different. At least vocally. I think she could play Tom Waits songs and Tom Waits could play Adia Victoria songs and I wouldn't bat an eye. There's a knowingness to her vocals and lyrics. Kind of the blues with that Waits style of drunken music that accompanies the vocals but not quite in lockstep. More of a companion that understands you and shares your world view but doesn't need to talk about it all the time.

Kelsey Lu - Blood
Kind of reminds me of why I first got into Jesca Hoop. Very similar vocal delivery. Very haunting. Probably a little more range though. Sometimes she goes off and reminds me of a singing saw. That with the strings that come naturally with her cello background feels like it's swirling around you like a tornado but not, like, damaging anything. You know?

Jamila Woods - Legacy! Legacy!
Maybe my favorite sung album of the year. And the hip hop beats just pull me along. I'm having a hard time describing why I love this album, it just feels so right. It's soul and it's hip hop and I know those genres have spent so much time together, and I don't know why this is unique but it just is. It's like nothing else even if it's like other things. Definitely making sense here.

Otoboke Beaver - Itekoma Hits
This is so fresh to me. The bursts of noise, it reminds me of the punk I was into in the early 2000s. Like Refused. That level of precision to the explosions of noise, but this is a new noise. It has a youth factor about it. It takes me back to high school even though that was half my life ago. Infectious energy with frequent start/stop tempos. I think that basically explains the awesomeness that is Otoboke Beaver.

black midi - Schlagenheim
Mathy. It gets me. From Battles to Deerhoof to The Ex, rhythm section driven chaos is extremely my jam, and we can put black midi on that list. I don't feel like working anything else about this. If you haven't heard of them but like those listed bands you should check them out.

Purple Mountains - Purple Mountains
It reminds me of great 70s singer songwriters of great wit such as Harry Nilsson and Warren Zevon, all of whom are dead. I always meant to check out Silver Jews but they remained on that list of someday. Someday passes at some point. When David Berman passed, I finally checked out his work, starting with this solo effort released very shortly before he took his leave. It's an eerie listen to hear these lighthearted songs of depression because it feels like a suicide note. But it's so catchy and inviting. It makes the whole thing so damn disturbing but irresistible.

Gauche - A People’s History of Gauche
It sounds like Sleater-Kinney at first and then it evolves into sounding like Black Eyes. Very adventurous and wonderful. I mourn the Priests hiatus just a little bit less knowing it could lead to more Gauche. Punky and funky and the right kind of off-putting.

Bleached - Don’t You Think You’ve Had Enough?
I feel like this was very underappreciated. Bleached was always very poppy in their punk, and here they leaned even further into that to a somewhat Blondie-esque sound. I loved it. The whole album is catchy, maybe catchier than most of their older stuff. And when they do decide to rock, such as on “Daydream” and the payoff of “Shitty Ballet” (a song I don’t care for until suddenly I love), it’s that much better.

Sleater-Kinney - The Center Won’t Hold
It might not be the best Sleater-Kinney album of the decade, but there was something very compelling about it that I kept listening to it. And the 1-2-3-4 punch of the last four songs beginning with “Bad Dance” is a real knockout. If that were an EP it would be right up there. It speaks so clearly to the urgency of this moment in history. I just wish it had worked out with Janet Weiss.

Baby Rose - To Myself
Uncanny how much she sounds like Nina Simone but still so modern. Beautiful, sometimes heartbreaking, and always with a haze of “cool” over everything. This would be great in a movie soundtrack to really elevate a scene of intensity

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Ghosteen
It’s just so vulnerable. So moving. A really heavy listen. The last album Skeleton Tree was one of my top albums of the decade and I can’t decide if this one is even better. Every time he sings the title phrase in the song “Waiting for you” I just get chills and have to stop whatever I’m doing. It might hit closer to home now that I’m  a father, and I hate to say that because great art can make you feel things regardless of your personal context. But an already amazing album is deepened by the very heavy weight of its subject matter and knowing what happened to Cave and his family. You have to be ready to listen to this, though there is no preparing for what it contains.

Kim Gordon - No Home Record
I didn’t give myself enough spins on this one, but it was so great when I did. I was always partial to the Kim songs on Sonic Youth albums, and her other projects (like all SY related side projects) were very avant garde. This solo album strikes the same balance the great SY albums have, where it’s plenty weird and interesting but there’s a pop anchor to grab onto. But very different in other ways. More electronic in an industrial sense, without sounding like anything else I’ve really listened to. Maybe brief hints of Nine Inch Nails, but it sounds very new.

Those are the ones. Here are some honorable mentions.

As mentioned above, Malibu Ken, Little Simz, Rapsody, and Danny Brown. Plus People Under The Stairs.

Mike Krol, FEELS, Uranium Club, Petrol Girls, Titus Andronicus, Yeesh, Battles.

Better Oblivion Community Center, Stella Donnelly, Wilco, Angel Olsen.

Nekhane, Helado Negro, Calexico & Iron & Wine, Bill Callahan, Jesca Hoop, Esther Rose.

Mekons, Hot Chip, Pixies, New Pornographers.

Carly Rae Jepsen, Charly Bliss, Kitty Kat Fan Club.

An Ear For An Era: 2016

Remember 2016? Sure you do. It was so recent. Yet so long ago.

A tense time, a sad time, a time with a few breaks from the sad tension...

We did go to Universal Studios and the Simpsons area they have there. That was great. And we went to Germany, which was legendarily great. In January, we took a short vacation to Florida and an even shorter two-night cruise to the Bahamas. It was on that cruise ship when we found out that David Bowie had died.

And that just kind of kicked off the year that would be 2016.

Blackstar by Bowie is about as great a swan song as any artist has delivered. It has the sounds of a restless artist putting everything out there in a final purge of energy. A scream, not a sigh. Jazz and industrial and rock and whatever words you use when you describe Bowie's career in full. It's all there. And yet, there was probably more in there lost to the afterlife. The last song is called "I Can't Give Everything Away." Even so, he gave more than most any artist in our lives. I can't say enough even though I've said nothing. Bowie.

David Bowie "I Can't Give Everything Away"

Iggy Pop recorded an album with Josh Homme called Post Pop Depression. It was great and inventive and I spent much of the year worrying he would join his compatriots in the afterlife. Especially since last time I saw him live (I can't believe I have seen him three times!) he talked a bit about probably not being much longer for this world. But he continues. And Post Pop Depression is an awesome album. But even that album title!

Savages are a kind of direct descendent of Iggy Pop's post punk innovations, and their second album Adore Life is super engaging and makes me want to go to 1979 in Germany or something.

I feel like people didn't freak out enough about Emily's D+Evolution by Esperanza Spalding. I know it got some rave reviews, which was why I decided to give it a shot when it eventually hit the $5 bin. But I just finally listened to it now and wow. This is so much. It's funky, it's post punk, it's so much in addition to the "jazz" label. Not that jazz has limitations. But as much as I heard she was branching out or whatever, I did not expect this. I need to listen to it more times.

Freetown Sound by Blood Orange was another great singular vision of high creativity. Usually something with as many guests as this would feel a bit scattered, but this was a clear statement and so of the times in 2016 (and today, it's only 2 years later after all, things don't change that fast...).

Another respite from the challenges of living in 2016 was Welcome the Worms by Bleached. Pop punk in the true sense of the word is the catchiest music to me. And no song was in my head in 2016 as much as "Wednesday Night Melody."

Bleached "Wednesday Night Melody"

And back to sadness of losing great artists. Do I write about Charles Bradley here? He lived until 2017 which puts him outside the class of 2016, but he put out his final album Changes that year and it was really something. Screaming eagle indeed, his voice was unrivaled in its passion.

Perhaps my favorite album of 2016 (there were two frontrunners and I'm going to go ahead and exercise my right to not pick a #1) was created by someone who is fortunately still around, but an exploration of loss in the wake of an unspeakable tragedy. I'm speaking of Skeleton Tree by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. Every song on the album gives me deep feelings of love, loss, dread, and a little bit of hope. It is a masterwork. If Cave were someone besides Nick Cave, it would be a career defining album. But his catalog is so vast and incredible that I can't even attempt to quantify that. But in a year like 2016, this was (potentially tied for) the greatest thing an artist could release.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds "Girl in Amber"

Leonard Cohen had already teased the idea of dying when he was promoting You Want It Darker, but it was still a shock when he departed shortly after its release. But he went in the way of Johnny Cash, with a string of late career masterpieces on the way out (only Cohen stuck with original compositions the whole way through). You Want It Darker was everything you want from the master. Funny, reflective, intelligent, and yes, darker.

Hip hop in 2016 was kind of amazing. To briefly shift gears from the people we lost in 2016, there were great hip hop albums by Chance the Rapper, Aesop Rock, and De La Soul. Particularly De La Soul. ...And The Anonymous Nobody was a great comeback/re-introduction/modernization of a classic crew.

And then there was Danny Brown. Atrocity Exhibition is an album that I hesitate to call a hip hop album because to my ears the only thing that makes it hip hop is the rapping. The music itself is a combination of post punk and industrial and electronic and all sorts of influences.

And Run The Jewels, that's always good. RTJ3 came out on Christmas or something like that, so it basically counts as 2016.

But of course the other best album of 2016 was a reunion and a farewell and a wake for a fallen artist. Phife Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest left this world but not before recording We Got It From Here...Thank You 4 Your Service. Furious but hopeful, pushing boundaries in a way that evokes their classic 90s output while still sounding fresh, it's almost like a debut album in how much energy and purpose it has. This is not the album 2016 deserves, but it's the album we need after a year like 2016.

A Tribe Called Quest "We The People"

And I also have to mention...
Prince. Technically no 2016 music so all I can say is thank you for your service.
Sharon Jones. (She had a posthumous 2017 album though, so we'll talk about her next time)

Other Things:

• The Falcon - Gather Up The Chaps. The kind of sort of maturity of the latest Lawrence Arms album kind of sort of reflects onto this album but also not. I like The Falcon.
• Open Mike Eagle - Hella Personal Film Festival. Continuing to evolve and be great.
• ANOHNI sang a lot about drones and death and destruction on Hopelessness. A beautiful and sad album reminding us that Obama was still deeply flawed, which can be a hard thing to fathom now in 2018.
• Midwest Farmer's Daughter by Margo Price is beautiful, yes it is. Artists like this are why I can never write off "modern country music." 
• Kendrick Lamar's untitled throwaways are gold!
• Santigold's album 99 Cents was kind of a stark contrast to the general bummer of 2016 with some positivity and fun. It was good to have a break.
• case/lang/veirs was a great reminder of this Neko Case fan of how great K.D. Lang is.
• Sam Beam and Jesca Hoop put out a collaborative album and I liked it like I like both of them. Great complementary voices!
• Frank Ocean doesn't belong down here but I don't have time to write about Blonde enough. I really need to listen to it a bunch more times anyway.
• Kool Keith had a pretty great comeback in 2016 with Feature Magnetic.
• I quite liked Hypercaffium Spazzinate by The Descendents. 
• Dan P's music is really good for playing for my son.
• Avalanches returned! It was lots of fun! Danny Brown works well for their style.
• Bon Iver went off the deep end (in a great way) with 22, A Million.
• This:

Mac McCaughan "Happy New Year (Prince Can't Die Again)"

Next Time:
2017 shall be the last one of these, it would appear. Not soon enough, as it's near impossible to find time to write this and update playlists with a newborn around. 2017 was the year of...stuff. I think it broke the '7 narrative I've been building in this thing. I think 2016 was better. I still need to work out what the highlights actually were though.

An Ear For An Era: 1986

How are we already past the halfway point of the 80s? I actually have surprisingly little 80s music relatively. Don't worry, we'll be slowing down soon. Here's 1986.

A big deal was the introduction to The Beastie Boys. License to Ill came out way back here! When hip hop was Run-DMC and Fat Boys. I don't know, I knew they were early but this is kind of crazy considering how long they stayed relevant. They like to say their names in their songs, don't they? It's hip hop for suburban white kids but it's done with passion and respect for the craft. Not that it was particularly more advanced than what Run-DMC was doing (this was the year of "It's Tricky") but they managed to keep their take on it cool for decades. Props for that.

You know who else has a band name of two B words? Big Black. I felt a little guilty listening to Big Black on an ipod but such is the nature of this project. Maybe I'll do a vinyl version one day. Anyhow, Big Black just killed it with intensity on Atomizer. Like, Kanye, Yeezus was a great album and I'ma let you finish...but Atomizer is the most intense industrial record of all time! Yes, the drum machine named Roland that sounded like a machine gun and guitars that sounded like they were being played with locomotives along with Albini's signature snarl, it's some heavy stuff man. Sorry I'm posting the most popular song in this case, but if that's what it takes to get converts so be it. Also sorry I'm posting a youtube instead of a physical record. Come over sometime and we'll listen to all sorts of Albini on wax.

Big Black "Kerosene"

Such a curiosity Enjoy! by The Descendents is. Two tracks are devoted to the most juvenile humor which I don't find enjoyable at all. There are some great pop songs on there though to balance it out. And then there are some kind of art punk tracks on here that just elevate it to such a different level. And I quite love those arty tracks (one is almost 8 minutes long!); it's just a weird collection.

I think The Edge Of The World is my favorite Mekons album. It recalls the Pogues in how the songs just beg to be sung along to. You just want to be with a big crowd of like minded people to sing these. The album has a lot of variety but that underlying aspect follows through the whole album. Listening to it, the word "shanty" came to mind. These songs are shanties. Appropriately enough, here's another song for my wake.

The Mekons "Shanty"

They Might Be Giants' self-titled debut is just so perfectly nerdy. If I ever have a child I'm going to play a lot of this band because that's the style of nerd I want to raise. A bit kitchen sink and very clever. The other thing to say about this album is that as much informed by the 80s as it seems, I'm having a hard time resolving in my head that this came out the same year as the other things. The other things are oldies. TMBG seem contemporary and/or timeless. Both.

Paul Simon. Graceland. One of those guys that you can just listen to and marvel at the lyrics. And it's pretty catchy. The appropriation of African musical styles seems a little less grating when Paul Simon does it than when Vampire Weekend did it, but I don't know if i have a justifiable reason for saying that. But you can be my bodyguard...

Nick Cave, post Birthday Party...he's got The Bad Seeds! Sure, it's album #4 with them, but I guess it's the first thing in my collection. Another glaring omission I'm sure some of those albums are. But Your Funeral...My Trial has to be one of the best. The creepiness and intensity from The Birthday Party is still there, just in a (very slightly) more subtle format. It kind of reminds me of Tom Waits' output from this era in its own odd way...just the circus and loopiness and intensity. The songs just create settings for a theatre bizarre thing to go down inside.

My favorite singer/songwriter of all time is still Elvis Costello. I haven't had much to say about his output of the past few years but boy did he turn it around in 1986. Two albums, vastly different, that happen to be my two favorite albums of his. First was King of America, notably missing the Attractions. In their place were some legendary American studio musicians that would be collectively known as The Confederates. But yeah, whatever. I don't need to re-hash the wikipedia entry here. This album is one of my favorites because I prefer his ballads and it hits all the right notes for Costello ballads while still being all over the place. The sorrow in hope. The romantic hopelessness. It's optimism about contradictions. It's also something about his delivery, the passion behind it. In 1986 you could feel every tear in his vocals (this is true whichever homonym for "tear" you use).

(If I could find a youtube video of the studio version of "I'll Wear It Proudly" it would be here. Find it on spotify or whatever because it's great!)

I don't want to be a gossip, but that passion had to have been at least partially inspired by some turbulence that was happening at the time...the break up of The Attractions paired with his blossoming relationship with/marriage to Cait O'Riordan. The best art comes out of turbulence. And Blood and Chocolate...that's turbulence. I guess it's kind of ironic that this is the album that reunited him with Nick Lowe as well as The Attractions, as it's nothing but tension and would be the last album with any of those parties for a while (not to mention his record label). Such a great break-up/kiss-off album that helped me through some tough times in college. There's fire here reminiscent of his early albums but with a wiseness that he couldn't have pulled off a decade earlier. But the wiseassness of those early days is there as well in songs like "I Hope You're Happy Now," probably the most helpful track of them all when dealing with a breakup. Even the ballads are either sarcastic (Home Is Anywhere You Hang Your Head) or downright creepy (I Want You). Those two tracks are back-to-back and will get the listener comfortable in their atmosphere before the jolt of "Honey, Are You Straight or Are You Blind?" (possibly the closest link to classic 70s Attractions) clears the palate for the brutal and confrontational back half. King of America might be my favorite 15-song-sequence but "Blue Chair" through "Next Time Round" is five songs of perfection. And all of this tension in the production of the album, the tension of what I assume was Elvis' mindset in these days, it all comes down to this song here. There were two very different takes of the track and rather than eventually pick one to put on the album they were spliced together in a not-so-subtle fashion. Two opposing sides. Forced together uncomfortably and...it just fits.

Elvis Costello and The Attractions "Battered Old Bird"

Other things:

• Kronos Quartet have also been around forever! They've gotten pretty cool with the indie rock kids these days, but even back in 1986 they were reaching out to the rock & roll audience with a cover of "Purple Haze" done Kronos Quartet style.
• More Scratch Acid! Their 1986 output was pretty varied stylistically. Lots of different things going on, almost to the point of being poppy at times. Only a few choice intensely hardcore tracks. It's an interesting progression. Of course I prefer the ones where they go all out like "Flying Houses"
• Last week while I was listening to 1986 there was some really really bad traffic due to snow and subzero temperatures. And then this song by Mojo Nixon came on and I just wanted to do exactly what he said in the song. (Damn it "Get Out Of My Way" isn't on youtube either!)
• The Dischord/DC scene was changing all the rules of hardcore these days, wasn't it? One Last Wish seemed to be Guy Picciotto's next band after Rites of Spring. And other Rites of Spring members. The 1986 EP (not actually released until 1999 but I figured I'd follow the recording date in this case) is full of short songs and matches the intensity of RoS. And short-lived Ian MacKaye project Egg Hunt put out a couple songs that serve as a pretty good bridge between Minor Threat and Fugazi without really sounding anything like either. And other bands were pushing things forward, but I don't feel qualified to fully squish all of that information here.
• You know who was probably a bigger influence on those emo whatever bands of the early 00s? The Smiths. Talk about whiny! But I still quite love a few of their tracks even if it took me a while to come around to them. The Queen Is Dead is the album of 1986 but of course my favorite track is non-album track from that Louder Than Bombs compilation "Ask." Probably because I have shyness and it's a comfort for that.
• A Kind of Magic by Queen is kind of a mix between their rock tendencies and pop tendencies. There seems to be a one, singular vision to this song, an overarching theme of oneness. Very cohesive.
• Ok maybe Polka Party isn't a Weird Al "classic" but I still have very specific memories about listening to the tape in my dad's truck. Listening now I'm a little less enthused about the majority of this album, but "Dog Eat Dog" may be one of his greatest songs. A Talking Heads style parody, it was my introduction to that legendary band and he gets it just right.
• One of my favorite Prince jams! Kiss!
• Another year, another great song from Carmel: "I'm Not Afraid Of You." Dark brooding music but hopeful and ultimately just a super strong anthem.
• David Bowie. "Magic Dance" from Labyrinth. This is where our culture was in 1986.
• Sonny Sharrock's "Broken Toys" is some great jazz guitar. Not that I know anything about jazz guitar besides Sonny Sharrock. 

Next Time 'Round...
Boogie Down Productions AND Eric B & Rakim! Hip hop's game keeps getting stepped up! Favorite Cure album! Dag Nasty. Dinosaur Jr. Appetite for Destruction. Operation Ivy stuff. Some band called the Pixies? I finally get to another Sonic Youth album? And who's this Yo La Tengo?? And no Weird Al album in 1987??