2019 Music

Last year, I kept a list of every 2019 record I heard. Originally, the idea for this was so I would have a better idea of what new music I liked, so that I could recommend things to people who came into the record store I worked at. I kept the list going after I quit the job. Now, having kept a fairly exhaustive record of my reactions to things -- I gave records a little numeric notation, a scale of 1 to 4, that I ended up marking with the occasional plus sign or point-five -- I feel the only way to put this note-taking exercise behind me is for me to boil it down into an actual list. I will begin with my favorite records, and work my way down, until I get to a place where I no longer am interested enough in the records or the talking about them to continue. Or at least this was my idea, back when I began drafting this post, at the end of 2019. Now I think I will mostly just run the list I made down, with as little notation as possible, for the sake of throwing out a scrap of paper I scribbled it down on. I include links to Bandcamp where available. I might come back and revise these blurbs if bursts of insight come to me. Writing about music sort of feels useless generally, or at least not as interesting to me as writing about comics or books. However, this is a list that varies significantly in genre, so I do want to give a general idea of what is happening on a record, but just attributing things to a reductive genre is offensive to me. I can't say I'll do my best, but I will at least do something.


1. Purple Mountains - Purple Mountains

When I first heard word of David Berman's suicide, I actually grinned. I had listened to this Purple Mountains record a good deal before that point, as I was in a pretty miserable place in my life. I was moving out of Baltimore under duress, feeling like a hostage in my own home, trapped in all of the circumstances of my life. I would listen to these songs first thing in the morning, last thing at night. I would sing these refrains to myself. These songs were a companion to me in dark days, and thought my darkest thoughts for me while I struggled to come up with alternatives. All I could come up with was to keep on living and wait for things to change.

Despite the large shadow Berman's suicide casts over this record, I very much do not wish for him to be consigned to the realm of art for those who romanticize despair. His book of poetry, Actual Air, and the earlier Silver Jews records, were hugely influential on my writing and worldview, because they're able to capture this sort of deadpan mystic perspective that is moving and beautiful while never seeming to chase after the obvious sources of those effects. That the Purple Mountains record boils things down to this classic country songwriting approach, that's then just saturated in despair, has this weird object lesson quality in the dangers of seeing things too clearly, so that they can be summed up straight-forwardly. After he died I went back to a bunch of his older songs, trying to chase the spirit of life in its prime. Now that he's no longer among the living, he dissolves into this body of work, that's funny and human and observant and makes a hell of a lot of people, myself included, look like bad writers by comparison. I am saying all these words that amount to nothing so that when I stop talking we're reminded of the dignity of a moment of silence.

2. Caroline Polachek - Pang

Months later, I listened to this record all the time. I had spent a lot of time with the Chairlift album "Something" back when it came out-- something about the headlong rush of its melodies felt so joyful and euphoric I really became addicted to it. I know people don't believe in "guilty pleasures"
 anymore, but the way I engaged with that record, at the expense of other music, felt unhealthy. This feels less like that and more graceful, crystalline. I still listened to it plenty. These song structures feel really weird, like there's less in the way of choruses, and the flow of one piece into each other is more like how a poem or short story will follow its own internal logic to get to a revelation. Maybe I think this just because of how "New Normal" ends with stating a variation on its title. Having these songs in my head and playing the record really feels like trying to catch a moth in my hands or something. Listening is like watching video to try to figure out how a magic trick is pulled off.

3. Billy Woods / Kenny Segal - Hiding Places

Dove into this rapper's back catalog after hearing this, and a few of those records are stellar as well. This makes sense as a breakthrough, though, as the production is just amazing. It's so stripped down, but the repetitions never feel like just loops? Instead feeling like the blues being played, but in very precise spaces and atmospheres. Which then is the perfect backdrop for the raps, which are so clearly enunciated, shouted with this perfect precision, articulating a politics of disgust. I would contextualize this stuff as like post-Def Jux "smart rap," which is totally different from the way that like Death Grips or whatever felt initially like a followup to the Def Jux version of "loud rap."

4. 101 Notes On Jazz

In a lot of ways it makes sense, if you're mentioning this one at all, to put it at the top of a list, as a sort of absurdist gesture is the only way to pay tribute to it. A collection of voice memos, recorded in the car, over jazz, where the performer does this sort of NPR/jazz radio voice. This would be my favorite comedy record of the year, and it aligns very nicely with like Joe Pera Talks With You. I love that it's not coming from a "comedy" perspective and feels fresh and unique.

5. Weyes Blood - Titanic Rising

I was never particularly close friends with Natalie Mering, when we both lived in Baltimore. I did like to fantasize, last year when she was going on tour with Father John Misty, that she would get sick of that dude being an insufferable tool and kill him. Since that murder did not occur, I have to concede she is probably much closer in spirit to him than she is to me. Still, credit where it's due, this record rules. I don't know how much of a good idea it even is to chase this sort of seventies MOR vibe but what gets attained here WORKS in this way that feels both lush and gauzy in a way where both aspects contribute to an emotional effect.

6. Dustin Laurenzi - The Music Of Moondog

Jazz versions of Moondog melodies. A no-brainer, but obviously so much of jazz comes down to execution, the execution is strong.

7. Carla Dal Forno - Look Up Sharp

In retrospect, sort of surprised this one placed so high. I liked the song "I'm Conscious" a lot though, and also when I first heard it there seemed to be a sort of impossible amount of space and atmosphere, where I felt like the rhythms were in my own body, and the space created was perfectly attuned to it. In time I came to view it more like normal music but my initial experience was more miraculous, especially since I wasn't as into this person's earlier records nearly as much.

8. Jaimie Branch - Fly Or Die II: Bird Dogs Of Paradise

Saw Jaimie Branch rip a set with a totally different band than the Fly Or Die band and it was killer, I don't know why this is the only band on record? But they are a very good band and their first one was pretty widely liked for a jazz record.

9. Matmos - Plastic Anniversary

I think this is the best Matmos record in a while, maybe since The Rose Has Teeth In The Mouth Of The Beast? I haven't listened to it that much however as I never downloaded it because I intended to buy a CD of it but was frequently broke enough other things took priority.

10. Julia Reidy - In Real Life

Previous Reidy releases have been solo acoustic guitar things which I normally find boring but thought she could pull off, this adds synth and vocodered vocals, really makes for a weird thing but in a way that makes the older stuff make sense in terms of being good because this reaches elsewhere. Also Black Truffle records always look amazing, even when, as in this instance, I have no idea what I'm looking at.

11. Lily & Horn Horse/Banny Grove - 4 Partners Road

Lily's from Palberta, though she also has this duo with a dude and a new band that's like Liz Phair style? I liked this stuff a lot, she's very prolific and it's usually at a very high quality. I was listening to cassettes the other day and was saying what's cool about tapes is you can find out you have stuff you forgot about and not have other things you would think you would have. A good format for noise musicians and improvisers, but also very prolific songwriters.

12. Lazy Magnet - Tide

Longtime fan of this genre-hopping project, and I gotta admit that this shoegaze record is probably a bit closer to my ideal preferences than the industrial-ish synth-pop he made that I was also pretty into. "Kicking Over Tables" is my favorite song on here. He also put out a record called Mahogany which is more of a This Mortal Coil/that-era-of-4AD kind of thing that has a song on it called "The Air You Breathe Is" I like a lot.

13. Big Thief - Two Hands

"Not" is the song of the year, listened to it many many times. I do suspect the band's membership to consist of cornballs, and I have also heard their songs at a Whole Foods. But I am a cornball, and I go to Whole Foods to buy pastries and iced tea. I am always going to be suspicious of bands who put out records on Saddle Creek but we're all just people! I can't hold my suspicion that someone probably doesn't like "weird" music against the music they make if it just means they are focused and efficient when it comes to doing what they want to do, which is connecting emotionally with an audience of people who need it.

14. House And Land - Across The Field

Folk duo including the guitarist Sarah Louise, whose solo records I also like a lot. They, like Anna And Elizabeth, make folk music in the sense of performing traditional material, but update it and get mildly avant-garde with choices in arrangement, comfort with drone as a harmonic element.

15. Anadol -  Uzun Havalar

Uses some electronic grooves, nice atmosphere, I don't know, I am very tired and writing these out of order.

16. Park Jiha - Philos

Minimalist acoustic composition, indebted to traditional Korean music, one track includes a spoken-word poem performed in English.

17. Yves Jarvis - The Same But By Different Means

I mostly heard this at work and thought it was good but didn't really go back to it, can't say I know the songs, good D'Angelo inspired atmosphere. After I moved to Philly I mentioned this to a stranger who was explaining the music he made, and it turned out he thought this dude was THE DUDE, like a big inspiration, but just hadn't mentioned it because it's an obscure point of reference when you're just trying to say you make r&b and you can just say it's like Solange.

18. Not Waving/Jim O'Rourke

If I have ever talked to you about music at all I feel like you would know I love Jim O'Rourke, kinda feel like it's impossible to love music and not be into Jim O'Rourke at least as a producer/arranger. I know nothing about Not Waving's music, actually, and should probably investigate.

19. Simulation - Death's Head Speaks

A collaboration between two artists my friend Sara Drake has done work for: Matchess' Whitney Johnson, who Sara provided the art for a 3-cassette boxset for, and Gel Set, who Sara did a music video for. These are songs, I think, but also works of deep texture and transforming shapes. The label Hausu Mountain also put out great work by Moth Cock and Khaki Blazer, but I am basically always fans of those dudes and so it doesn't seem notable.

20. Charli XCX- Charli

Looking at this sheet of paper I wrote this list out on, I originally had this record at the bottom, but that can't be right, and is very dishonest. This slot was occupied by Oren Ambarchi's Simian Angel, but now I feel like I can just easily have this be a list of 25 records and not have that one on there at all! It's easy to underrate or overrate this sort of high-energy pop music intended for dancing based on how much you define your personality by that being the sort of thing you're into.

21. Tomeka Reid Quartet - Old New

Jazz quartet led by a cellist. Feels influenced by Abdul Wadud but like... Wadud doesn't consistently rip in a rhythmic way on records. Like, yes, the first two Julius Hemphill records and the work with Arthur Blythe, but his solo stuff and the work with Anthony Davis & James Newton is in a more chamber-music sense of space and delicacy which isn't what's present in Reid's quartet (though it is more present in other improv contexts). The quartet is a ripper. Mary Halvorson plays guitar in it.

22. Writhing Squares - Out Of The Ether

Missed my chance to see this band live due to their show starting while I was still at work. In that garage-rock/psych vein but the only variation I can fuck with, where the b-side is a single extended jam. There's drum machine, and saxophone, so maybe more a la Suicide or the Stooges' Fun House than a more reductive idea of what's punk.

23. Maurice Louca - Elephantine

This one's great, really feels like an inheritor of that Mingus Black Saint And The Sinner Lady tradition. Feel like that's every rocker's favorite jazz record. Louca's Egyptian, and also plays in the group Dwarves Of East Agouza with Sam Shalabi and Alan Bishop. This is like a big band thing that pulses and gets huge.

24. Caterina Barbieri - Ecstatic Computation
 
Barbieri makes sort of minimal electronic music, each record I think consists of the sound palette from a single synthesizer, but good! I  don't know. I was hoping to see her play a set in March, then Coronavirus shut everything down. I like to imagine the crowd would've been a wild mix of nerds and people out of their minds on research chemicals.

25. Big Brave - A Gaze Amongst Them

The best metal thing I heard ends up lamentably low on the list but still definitely notable. I don't know, this list sort of skews "accessible" as far as I'm concerned, or my thinking was informed largely by my being in a retail space, and while I can suggest this record to metal listeners, I probably would've been reproached if I were to just put it on in the store. I apologize to music for prizing a sort of background utility over overpowering force in the ordering of this list. Another way of putting it is I'm just not much of a metal guy - I'm more of a huge pussy - but this was my favorite metal record of the year. Female vocals, which I guess is uncommon in metal but does show up with bands I like, like King Woman and Couch Slut.

I could probably keep going and listing records that I liked pretty well but I feel like best-ofs lose their utility at a certain point, and that is probably around five or ten and this list is already useless. I think many of the deeper cuts, the weirder overlooked stuff it's good to mention for the sake of support, you would see if you browsed my collection on Bandcamp. I haven't even listed my favorite reissues/archival releases, which I will do now:

1. Blue Gene Tyranny/ Peter Gordon - Trust In Rock

How much do I love Blue Gene Tyranny's Out Of The Blue? So much. That's an outlier in his catalog, which makes this record, a document of the concert where some of that material was debuted, very exciting. Saw a conversation between reissuing label Unseen Worlds and a guy on Twitter where the guy said the energy was similar to the Langley Schools Music Project, and the label was like "But with chops" and that kinda does sum it up. There really is a lot of feeling here. It's difficult to imagine what it would've been like attending this concert and seeing these pieces performed.

2. June Chikuma - Les Archives

Chikuma's most known for doing video game soundtracks, notably to the Bomberman franchise, which is interesting and I wish there was a way I could listen to those in order as the palette available to her developed: The Bomberman Hero soundtrack, which is influenced by drum and bass, is on Youtube. This is a reissue of her "real" (i.e. non-commissioned) music, dating from the eighties and it's wild, mixing electronic programming with written string parts in transforming movements. I really value how crazy something sounded to me on first listen, and this seemed deeply psychedelic or I wished I could've been high so it could've been more confusing, though I still found it very disorienting.

3. Sachiko Kanenobu - Misora

This, on the other hand, is very soothing. Produced by Haruomi Hosono at the tail end of his Happy End days, a woman singer I guess considered a Japanese Joni Mitchell who moved to the U.S. and was friends with Philip K. Dick. This record's great.

4. Prince - Originals/1999 5-disc Expanded Edition

I love Prince, 1999's one of his better records, the expanded version has a bunch of weird stuff on it. Originals is demo versions of songs that were hits for other people. Neither feel like cash-ins although Originals definitely is.

5. Marvin Gaye - You're The Man

Mix of political material and Christmas songs, I kinda feel like I don't even know how I feel about Marvin Gaye's more popular material? Besides overhearing a conversations at the store where someone was dismissive and I thought they were an idiot. This stuff's really good. Roland Kirk performs songs from What's Going On on his record Blacknuss so that speaks to something.

6. Michael O'Shea

Solo acoustic jams on an invented instrument. Apparently this guy played with Alice Coltrane at some point? Either way spiritual jazz is probably a good touchstone. But also: This record was originally issued by Dome Records, aka Graham Lewis and Bruce Gilbert from Wire. Which tells you nothing about what it sounds like but does point to the fact that those dudes (and Colin Newman) have had really interesting careers characterized by a sense of exploration.

7. Ryuichi Sakamoto - A Thousand Knives

This might be the only Sakamoto record I like. I definitely consider Haruomi Hosono's solo work "better" than Yellow Magic Orchestra and while Sakamoto's career is also far-reaching enough I do consider it of interest when I see his name credited, it's not necessarily a guarantee I'll find it appealing.

8. Antoinette Konan

Not sure I have the skillset to explain this record in an appealing way. Mixture of eighties electronic pop sounds with traditional African percussion instrument (that I don't really know what it sounds like) and a vocal style. This might make it sound like "world music" in a corny or pejorative sense but that's not really what comes across.