2019 Albums of the Year; 30–21.
30. Turnover — Altogether
The New Now Via Then
Man, what a cool album. That’s the only word I can use to describe it. It’s as if they listened to the emotional fun that The 1975 had while making “I Like It When You Sleep…”, injected it with that Studio Apartment Loneliness perfume and, honestly, just wrote a bunch of really great songs. They have that really confident, sports jacket kind of old guy cool that Huey Lewis and the News had, along with that deep, sad joydream kind of vibe that ‘Hummingbird’ from Local Natives had a few years ago. Then there are those cool post-ironic synths, a la that Kurt Feldman project The Ice Choir. A little surf rock splash in there? So choice.
Check Out: Much After Feeling
29. Local Natives — Violet Street
Alternative
Hummingbird was one of my favorite records of 2013 and has come up often as a watermark for the standard of genuinely great alternative music. “You & I” off of that record revisits me in dreams and in other songs’ hooks that try to recreate its deeply emotional motive. I wasn’t crazy about their previous record, but with this record coming back as something fresh and new, you can see they were back at writing some deeply beautiful and inspired work. “When Am I Gonna Lose You” has the same kind of reach as the aforementioned single and I think it’s going to be one that stands beside it (or replaces entirely) as a song that gets Local Natives the nod each and every time they release something. There is a vibration and a hum in the way the vocals are layered in their songs, a golden harmonic that holds on just a little bit longer than other bands trying to do the same thing. This is music that is open, that embraces you tenderly. Music which is easy to deeply believe in.
Check Out: Cafe Amarillo
28. Car Bomb — Mordial
Revolution For the Mechanical Beast
The record begins with a beautiful spread of audiocolor, similar to a movie score in the hands of the masterful combo of Barrow and Salisbury. Shortly thereafter, we’re pummeled by machine gun fast guitar chugging and laser bullet spindles and monastic metal chanting. Car Bomb have never pulled short of satisfying their immediate desires from moment to moment within each of their songs, going from holy revelations to self immolation in a heartbeat. Their rapid shifts of time signature make it hard to find a groove, but you know there always is one to find, and when you get there, it’s heavy and it’s boundless. I love some of the tones that these guys will pull out of their single ringing notes, only to, by the end of it, hear it marvelously fizzle out into a miraculous digital twinkle. The entire audio universe of the ending of the song Dissect Yourself might be my favorite thirty second sound bite of the year. I hear so much Burton C. Bell influence in the vocals of this record sometimes, I won’t believe he hasn’t been a guest on at least one of these songs. By far one of the most interesting records on this entire list.
Check Out: Fade Out
27. Tyler, the Creator — Igor
Reveries
This record feels like the sound of a million thoughts finding their way to the surface and thriving in the light. I remember when the record dropped, a few of my hip-hop friends were instantly writing it off, more than likely because it didn’t have a bevy of verses. Tyler is out on a limb on this one, honestly reminding me a bit of the way Kanye came out with his sound with College Dropout and Late Registration, completely taking the sound that hip-hop was used to and altering it, shaping it into the ideas he had at any given moment instead of plugging in verses followed by choruses and repeating. This isn’t about boosting clout and claiming your right as king of any hill. Tyler’s last record was a dreamjourney, wandering through floral hallways lucidly and marveling at either static or nuclear meltdowns or both, and this one has the same sense of broadly spread horizons and endless corridors, but if we’re comparing dreams, there are less pockets of untangling the endless knot in a thin gold chain here than there are shimmering beautiful pools and smiling and waving at friends and lovers you’ve since forgotten beyond the bridges you’ve burned. For me, this one feels the most “,the Creator” that Tyler has ever been.
Check Out: NEW MAGIC WAND
26. Clairo — Immunity
Natural Pop
Over the course of the year, there are a lot of things that I end up liking for deep and complex reasons. Nuanced and specific, nostalgic and innovative. Deeply spiritual. I honestly don’t believe there is anything on this record that I can describe this as. As I was going back and listening to Clairo’s record to revisit some of my feelings on the record, I realized that this is one of those albums that is just a simply great album that was put together without taking itself too seriously, without going to distant lengths to impress or to be something that it isn’t. It’s very pretty. There are flaws and simplicities. And it’s these human traces that make the intelligently written hooks pop that much more. There is a restfulness about these songs, something about the way that it’s produced and the way that she delivers her honest lyrics that feels self-confident, or at least self contained. It’s either that she knows her audience or simply doesn’t care that we’re here. That positive energy and strong presence of esteem really helps lift this album to a place above other albums trying to have this same sense of effortless bliss. PS, there was a lot of great stuff that came out this year, but I think that ‘Bags’ might be the song of the year.
Check Out: Sofia
25. Bad Heaven, Ltd. — Strength
“Coward Rock”
Slow and sad and depressing are some simple words that come to mind when trying to describe the songs on this record. There are desolate stretches of vocals that careen like afterthoughts through an empty house, thoughts and words that are born with the sole purpose of haunting the rooms that they enter. There are a few comparisons I can draw to older Sub Pop bands like Sebadoh in the way that it shows its grunge and flannel, or the way that the guitars seem to have an expressive joy within the sad glow similar to some of the more composed Neutral Milk Hotel songs from Aeroplane. Like artists who have that certain finesse when it comes to creating collages without making their work look like a pile of macaroni necklace arts and crafts, this ‘supergroup’ of Nth-wave emo artists use distortion and static in a way that feels second nature.
Check Out: New Boy
24. La Dispute — Panorama
Poetic Aggression
My history with La Dispute always, always goes back to Such Small Hands and the supremely dedicated delivery of the word “darling.” One of my best friends continued to rally behind them, and because I love his passion and dedication to any cause he backs, I continue to come back to them. In fact, Rooms of the House was my favorite record of 2014 for lots of the same reasons this one ended up being one of the greats of the year. The lyrical earnestness and honesty, the way they make emotion the core of their music. Where many bands would unleash a blaze, La Dispute restrains the sharp edge and lets the listener bear the weight of their own thoughts and reflection within the moment they’ve built. In these moments, the band and the listener unite as one infinitely faceted participant. While there are specifics in the stories of Jordan Dreyer, the moments he frames are both personal and universal, the internal dialog and observation of a narrator who has seen us all walk the same streets which we both behold and regret.
Check Out: Fulton Street II
23. Black to Comm — Seven Horses For Seven Kings/Before After
The Sound of Being Bridled to a Bridge to Nowhere (But You Continue to Cross)
Ruthlessly experimental and aggressively terrifying, these two albums are companion pieces to one another. The sounds within bore deeply into the temple of your mind’s eye and shift the bricks of the foundation slightly out of position by degrees. Machinery wails and screams, digits ache and whine. This collection is more of a feeling than an album, more of a narrative than music. There is intention here, however; not merely sounds strung together for a background toss and a spooky wade through atmospherics. There is pacing. There are themes which are revisited. The best submersion into this one is with an open mind to the vision it’s trying to share with you, or better, an open mind willing to shape the clay which it is wetting. Dragging one’s self through the chasm of Seven Horses For Seven Kings is a journey in itself, one which earns the cleansing which Before After provides. While they were released months apart, these are one vision experienced with different eyes, in different lights, even in a way as different people. Pressurization / Depressurization.
Check Out: Asphodel Mansions
22. Drab Majesty — Modern Mirror
Leather, Chains and Smoke Machines
There is such a deep sense of authenticity on this record. It sounds directly extracted from the likes of Depeche Mode and Duran Duran and doesn’t come across as supremely cheesy or novelty or like they’re desperately trying to exist in another time period other than this one. This is created earnestly and without any tongue-in-cheek, “We Love The Eighties Lawl” snide humor. These are brooding songs that swirl in a lush darkness, truly a goth revival, complete with the desire to sway baroquely. Man, there is perfection in the way the drums and drum machines sound on this record.
Check Out: The Other Side
21. The Get Up Kids — Problems
Checking In With Old Friends
(So yeah, I’m gonna reference it. In the first sentence.) `Something to Write Home About’ was a record so timeless that it forever obscured the band who wrote and performed it under the glowing eclipse of themselves. But I was lucky enough to see them live in the past year, and they played songs from their other records and it helped me remember that this band’s discography is absolutely filled with brilliant tracks and a brilliant energy. There is a sense of nostalgia that might root itself in a second-wave emo touchstone, but still branches and stretches out into a bigger, older, wiser sound that continues to age beautifully and gracefully on this record all the way out in 2019. There’s a cool fuzz around the guitars, a dazzling hum throughout the keys, a rattle to the drums that still feels remarkably like a bunch of young kids writing their first music notes to earnest poetry they scrawled in Mead Marble Notebooks. It’s the composition and the arrangement of the songs that tell the tale of how these are godfathers of an entire movement, progenitors that still wield the tools of an entire genre they helped architect. These are no longer songs simply for her, songs that we get to hear, they’re songs written for themselves; they’re songs for us.
Check Out: Common Ground
