By Biff Hust. “If I woke up tomorrow morning with my head sewn to the carpet, I wouldn’t be more surprised than I am right now.” This is what I kept thinking over and over in November 2016. Now I just repeat the title of my favorite album thirty years ago over and over on a loop: “Nothing’s Shocking.” So it’s no surprise to me that my favorite album of the year consists of loops and samples and repeated mantras all done in an abstract, beautifully disjointed and raw style. Earl Sweatshirt’s opus Some Rap Songs is a combination of the brevity, simplicity, and focus of punk rock and the other worldly, spontaneity and mystical qualities of good jazz. Since this album came out it has been on a loop when I’m in the car by myself; I also put Jeff Tweedy on every now and then to come out of the cold, introspective world Earl creates only to enter a warmer yet just as introspective one Tweedy creates. Both of these albums capture my mood and the palpable yet jaded angst I sense in our society today. These albums are one and two for me this year. Earl gets the slight nod just because it’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard yet so compelling to listen to. I’ve been singing Jeff Tweedy’s praises for years now and finally feel vindicated that people love his “first” official solo album. Continue reading
Year In Music 2018
The Year In Music 2018: Antony’s Picks
By Antony Lyon. Last year, my music listening habits surprised me; now I suspect they heralded the new normal. I make a lot of playlists – thirteen this year by my count. I enjoy the deliberate process of making a soundtrack for the moment, and I spent a lot of my listening time putting them together. My two most-spun albums this year were not from 2018. One was U2’s Songs Of Experience, which is a late 2017 album. Predictably, I listened to it a lot. As with any old friend, I (almost) forgive its flaws and only hear its virtues. As I said last year, it’s not an album that will convert late-period-U2 skeptics, but for the believers among us, it deepens a great band’s legacy. By a mile, my most-spun album is Teenage Fanclub’s Songs From Northern Britain. This 1998 album, a pastoral folk-rock exploration emerging from the Scottish Highlands, received a lovely polishing with a new remaster this year. This remastered edition coincided with a moment in my life, and now the album occupies one of those mystical spaces for me. I’m destined to listen to it on a walk in the Highlands and to weep like a child. I can’t wait. Continue reading
The Year In Music 2018: Spencer’s Picks
By Spencer Davis. Typically, great art is borne of terrible times. So in these days when hate is rising everywhere, days when some are questioning the decline of democracy itself, you’d expect that “serious” music—particularly music with a strongly political bent—would be experiencing a renaissance. Yet it’s confounding that two years into this critical juncture in history, we’re seeing so little music that speaks to the moment, that provides a vital commentary on the state of our union comparable to the creative explosion of the 1960s or the literary revolution of the interwar period. Music is still searching for a way to do something new, and the best answer anyone’s come up with so far is to cross-pollinate genres or historical influences in a way that aspires to accomplish a seamless new blend—hopefully obscuring the fact that there’s nothing truly new or original about it.
But while my 2017 list bemoaned a particularly weak crop, I’m happy to say that in 2018, the road is curving back in the right direction. And there are even signs that maybe, just maybe, this historical moment of ours could be on the cusp of sparking the next great creative explosion. My hope begins with this year’s brilliant new evolutionary leap from Leon Bridges. Continue reading
Shadows & Noise 