I think that's very true. I kinda wish I was able to equally enjoy all forms of music, but there are entire genres I just can't seem to get into (big band, reggae, most jazz tbh).
I actually meant that in a much more specific way: not just that there were clearly a few genres you favored, but that some of them felt very much "of a kind" with a dozen others. Or maybe that's just my lack of knowledge about some of these genres, since all the really long songs that were 90% just looped beats all felt kind of the same to me (with the exception of that Blanck Mass song, which stood out for some reason.
Most of those before Beyonce I can't shame you for not knowing. Except Bon Iver, shame on you old man. And I guess Mac Miller (though that song is an exception, I'm not usually a fan).
Good news, I actually just forgot Bon Iver was in the first half (that's when I wrote the question; I recognized a few after). Like many (I assume), I first heard him because of "Skinny Love."
Depends on the song, and even for the songs it can change. For example I have these hue light bulbs that react to sound in my apartment. And I definitely listened to all of the Skeppet track while just looking at the lights and loving the trance state.
But often, the longer songs are just really good for getting me into a state of mind, rather than the actual trajectory of the song.
The background/foreground thing is a big distinction on my end, because of the focus stuff I mentioned to Swan earlier. I ended up just listening straight through, and if I liked something, I saved the link. I saved them into three lists (there was some overlap, with songs ending up on more than one list):
First, a list of songs I just liked and wanted to hear again.
Second, a list of songs my wife might like, that I'll listen to again and consider putting on a tape for her.
Third, songs that would make good background music for work (almost all lyric-less).
I'll have to re-listen to that first list to say for sure, but it's possible that TEEN song at the very beginning could end up being my favorite. It'll definitely be on the short list.
General overview:
Over the course of the year, I collect songs that particularly stood out to me into a playlist. I listen to this playlist a few times over the course of the year and some tracks fall out and some tracks stand out even more.
Before I start getting serious about the list, I "seed" the songs into a pre-ranking. Where I order the songs on a gut feeling about where the song will end up. What this is supposed to reflect is that when it comes to my favorite music, there will often be an advantage to whatever I heard most recently. As I listen to the songs to get my thoughts in order, they can rise or fall up or down (or off) the list.
To directly answer your question, I did try to put them in an exact order, but I'd suspect that there's something like a +/- 5 spots on each song. But if you go beyond 10 spots, I'd say there's a discernible difference in my own enjoyment. At a point in time of course, they'll change "rankings" forever as I age. I do aim for the rankings to have some personal meaning because I actually like going back through the lists and having the thought, man, how did this song end below that song when it's clearly so much better?
Dig. This is how I assumed you did it, and it's probably how I'd do it, too. It's more or less how I compose my lists for the film countdowns here, too.
Thinking about the investment the only way I ever make these. To be totally honest, the amount of effort I put into this is embarrassingly large, and it feels like work a lot of the time. But I know how much I love going back through old lists of mine, and it's the only way that I'm able to functionally have some sort of journal of what the music is compelling from me at a given time.
I don't know if this is the kind of thing everyone does, but thinks is weird, or if you just happen to be talking to someone else who thinks this way, but I don't find this strange or embarrassing at all. I find making lists and turning over things and comparing them in my mind to be very gratifying.
In my case, it's usually to-do lists. Over the years I've scribbled (or typed) out dozens of to-do lists, sometimes about whatever, but usually about web development; either features for an existing site, or entirely new sites. Lots of it never happens, but I find creating them enjoyable, and often clarifying.
Honestly, I think taking anything you think about with any regularity, and going over it or writing it out or something, is inherently valuable, and increases your understanding of it (and your own thought process) in lots of intangible ways.
I've done top albums since 2012, when it was part of a challenge of an old music community I was part of at that time. That community is dead now, but I kept the habit because of how rewarding it felt.
Fun fact: at various times I considered starting a music forum to run alongside this one.
I didn't really dive fully into songs until last year. And I really enjoyed it and it'll probably end up being the "best" of the 3 lists because it's more accessible, and it's more personal to a specific feeling. The albums list will do more of a traditional evaluation, though certainly still self centered because, cmon, it's me still.
Well, I've already gone back and listened to last year's list (the ones that are still there, at least), so I'll gladly listen to this year's list, too, if you do another.
To be honest, I looooove trying to figure out music that will fit people. If you (or anyone else) is looking for recommendations, hit me up with any criteria (or none!).
That fifth "o" convinced me you're not just being nice, so I will definitely take you up on this.
Spotify has radio like Pandora, but it also has access to full albums, personally curated playlists like "Discover Weekly", and artist pages with "related artists" sections.
That last one is what I used to do: I'd go on Napster (late-stage, subscription-based Napster, which actually was probably the thing most like Spotify at the end), start searching, and when I found something I liked, I'd go down the rabbit hole of Related Artists, where one leads to another to another, and so on. That ended up requiring a fair bit of time and focus, though.
I really love it, personally. I've found a lot of great stuff I wouldn't have heard before. I think the "Discover Weekly" playlist is what you're looking for. After you get it and listen to the kind of music you like for maybe a week (so they can figure out what you listen to), they start making a weekly playlist for you with recommendations. You can just turn that on and find some great new stuff. And then there is the radio section, which is just like Pandora as far as I know. Man, I sound like an ad, but yeah - it's cool.
Wow, sounds like a good fit, then. I gave up unnecessary spending for Lent, so I can't try it for maybe a month, but I might give it a go then. The customized recommendation thing sounds promising, though so many of those things are just okay (be it movies or music or whatever). Would you say it does a decent job with your tastes, based on your listening history?
Yeah, I do personally believe Spotify does a great job of curating to your specific taste. And from what I've seen, a lot of people feel similarly. I've heard some people say they can't live without their "Discover Weekly" playlist. Obviously take that for what it's worth, I don't mean to build it up too much, but I do think Spotify does a good job.
12. Cottam- Breaking Through The Pain Barrier [Deep House]
11. Anthony Naples- Mixes For My Mates [Mixes For The Floor]
10-1 (With Blurbs)
10. Toby Gale- DNA Party [Dance/Pop/Meaningless Fun, Meh. Directionless Fun, YAY!] We can get caught up in justifying fun. I think it can be justified, but why? I think fun can be explained, but why? I think explaining why fun could be explained could be fun, but why now? DNA Party effortlessly side-steps the whole conversation with a: hey, I think you’ll like this. Your first steps into colorful world, the new taste on your tongue; lay down your good habits for a bit.
9. Seabuckthorn- I Could See The Smoke [Folk/It Can Feel Good To Get Knocked Down] I love feeling like I have a grasp on music. I love feeling like I’m really starting to get a handle on the underlying language. But man, I also love releases that hit me sideways and make me feel like I don’t know anything. Isn’t folk supposed to be the intimate genre? The one where you can see the fire, half a lit face, an acoustic guitar, and it’s just the two of you? How could it also encompass this record, where the music seems better fit to play over the formation of canyons, the breaking up of continents, aeons of geological progress? Each of these songs have tremendous scale, coupled with the breadth of styles on display… I mean, at this point I’m gonna quit talking and wait for the follow-up album to tell me how this story could even progress.
8. Thunder Tillman- Jaguar Mirror [Kosmische/Your Guided Tour To Thunder] The duo call themselves a shaman and a visionary. While I’m skeptical of how sincere that description is (this being the internet and all), it works pretty well to describe the feeling that the music brings about; how it feels like guided meditation. My intuition is that this started as a way for them to contextualize how they made music, possibly when they were trying to locate their spring of creativity. How having a producer/drummer seems to both guide and interpret the work of a gifted perspective; how the percussion shapes a structure waiting to be filled with inspiration, then how the finished work is contextualized for the audience (both via the production and seemingly as the primary media contact). It also helps explain the conflicting qualities of the music; handled yet unimpeded. Similar to how groups of people seem to be easier to understand than individuals.
7. Jefre Cantu Ledesma- In Summer [Experimental/Noise/How Sounds When Blood Rushes To The Part Of Your Brain That Makes You Feel Like You’ll Never Die] I don’t think I’ll be able to really pin down how happy I am that JCL’s work exists. There are so few artists that operate in the area of beautiful noise with this sort of precision. It’s experimental noise, sure, but it’s so easy to listen to. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of experimental music that sneaks up to me in a daydream; and JCL, I will never stop loving you.
6. Lil Siva- Jimi [UK Bass/I’m Glad You Speak, Even When It’s So Little] Three: She says time is against her, but it’s not that she doesn’t have enough. It’s that it’s bending itself so that she experiences the same pain again and again; feeling the same realization, the same commitment to change, the same failure to actualize it.-- Four: Hands in your pockets with your head angled toward the ground. Just barely reacting to the fragments of communication that you pick out when people try to interact with you. Never truly bothering to put it together; you’re not concerned about reacting to the sentiment of what's being spoken, just speaking enough until they leave you alone.-- Five: Someone he knew a long time ago that’s changed so much that he’s not sure if it's worth taking on their new baggage; he’d never even consider it if was anyone but a friend.
5. Simon12345 & The Lazer Twins- Cheveux Propres, Cheveux Gras [Tech House/T-420] The first track sounds like a premonition about the next Terminator, where there’ll be a robot assassin from the future who’s sent to destroy all the other terminators from the other films. Then that robot kills John Connor. The rest of the EP sounds like we find out that the robots that sent it are these cool ass rave-bots, so everything turns out hella sweet and they party forever.
4. Don't- Forget It [Bedroom Pop/How Much Of This Takes Place In A Shared Space?] An outline of a relationship judged by the distance between the fantasies and the actual events. The beginning, where she recognizes herself as an object of interest to someone else, but she’s worried her specifics will break the spell; she wants to be that fantasy for them rather than end up disappointing. The winding down, where after all this effort she put into this dream their indecision is ruining their chance to connect. The immediate after, where she sees how the other person has rewritten the history of the relationship, and they’re congratulating themselves on the resilience to move on from this invented pain. The long after, she still misses all these sweet moments, and she can forget how they left her heartbroken. Left weak by the world, she’d be unable to fight the allure of old fantasies; she’s just asking not to be put through it again.
3. Serpentwithfeet- Blisters [Post-Gospel/Without Light I Don’t Know Where Not To Look] Hearing it, I get the sensation I’m listening to an arcane language. Something with primordial truths; axioms I can only take short glances at before I’m overwhelmed and my gaze is forced away. It articulates how individuals interact with the great underlying forces of the world; fleeting, personal brushes against the edge (we don’t actually get to fight physical embodiments of evil like the stories say). The lyrical mixtures on the EP are thick and abstract, but consistent. References to rejected motherhood where the child refuses to take nourishment from the sole person who could provide it, the umbilical becoming gossamer, the hole left in the belly. Relationships that have turned the inner monologue, what kind of person am I if the ones that care about me would risk running away into the dark than spending their love on me? Residing in the dark for so long that you feel a blindness pressing through your open eyes and pouring down your neck.
2. Chinese Slippers- House Party [Lightcore/If I Can Just Keep My Balance For 60 More] This artist speaks my language, and is eager to interpret music for me. Viibrate and Shellfish Lovers already got their place in the sun during the tracks list, but take “Want Me” a reappropriation of a Young Franco track. The original’s backing music is far too smooth and self assured to complement the lyrics of confusion and rejection, while the track here is breathless and scattered. 1inamille transforms the backing music to sound like it’s playing from a JRPG on the Gameboy Advance; you and I are a team. The speed of these tracks is uncomfortable; decorum isn’t being followed. Something urgent is going on. Like how you feel when life is moving unnaturally quick; unfairly speeding up at a rate where you’ll never feel like it’s going at the proper rate, always a step in front of you as you stumble to stay upright.
1. Moses Sumney- Lamentations [Neo-Soul/My Sighs Are Many And My Heart Is Faint] The Book of Lamentations describe an absolutely desolate Jerusalem. How great the things that she once had are now gone. How those that destroyed her profit, and how her enemies laugh at her ruinous state . How the few survivors have starved and wasted away while looking for some sort of grace. It’s a few moments of absolute anguish with no redeeming qualities.-- We start with a bit of wistfulness for the time when he’ll have the opportunity to lay his troubles to rest. When he was young, he used to sing to himself about how his inherited life won’t get him off track from the life he wants, but now that he’s older he’s worried he squandered his gift from his younger self; not sure they’d be proud to be a part of the person he is now. If someone approaches him in his deeply wounded state, while he’s still reeling from the loss of any self recognition, he doesn’t trust himself to be able to be what they’re looking for.-- In the infrequent releases Moses has to his name so far, there’s some reverence for the idea of implied opposites. Feeling desperately alone implies a deficiency, but also that the missing pieces do exist. The idea includes a healthy skepticism of total delight, and an embrace of utter despair. So this sort of EP might not just be a tumble in heartache, but it also could be drawing back a sling; it causes me to think of his current state, and I think of this primed potential energy.
Educate me on short releases, if you would. I've only been vaguely paying attention, but it seems like less music is released all at once, on an album, but comes out more piecemeal. Is that what you're referring to?
Educate me on short releases, if you would. I've only been vaguely paying attention, but it seems like less music is released all at once, on an album, but comes out more piecemeal. Is that what you're referring to?
It's basically where I group EPs, 12'', singles, and mini-albums.
They each used to have specific, technical differences because they'd actually come on different sizes of vinyl. But now it's pretty vague, so the main distinction I draw is between Short Release and Album. I don't have a good consistent definition, but typically if it's over half an hour and has at least several songs, I'll call it an album. But it definitely is more of a "feeling" sometime, as there are projects much longer than 30 minutes (like Sufjan Stevens All Delighted People EP) that I'll consider a short release, and projects that are under 30 minutes but just "feel" like albums to me. Those tend to be exceptions though.
There is a release that'll certainly be in my albums list that is specifically called an EP, but my gut feels like it's an album, and it's a little over 30 minutes.
Usually there's more variety in non-EPs on the list, but actually this year might be all straight up EPs, I didn't actually check.
Note: the bulk of these descriptions will resemble a journal more than communicating what the music sounds like. I’m bad at that, and other people are better, you’ll probably just have to listen to the song at the bottom.
Youtube Playlist (starting at #25): https://tinyurl.com/mvuvpkg 25. Eluvium- False Readings On [Ambient/Modern Classical/Showering Leaves] I’m suspicious of the album because it feels like it cheats. There have been so many beautiful moments that accompany it each time I listen. The wind in particular seems a popular co-conspirator; it mixes with the constant choral hum, as if this prayer was was being channeled rather than sung, wind moving through the body and out the mouth. It’s happened every time, and I feel compromised because of it. But I’m not going to hope it stops.
24. Oren Ambarchi- Hubris [Kosmische/Oh Milgram, It’s The Least I Could Do] I walk a bit unpredictably, a bit more vigorously. I break into small sprints, I stay on my toes. The compulsion is a bit unique from other music. It’s not that it’s taking over, or that I’m losing myself in it. It’s that it feels impolite not to respond. What is it even asking me to do? I’m trying… am I making those people over there uncomfortable? Do I have some communal responsibility here? But there’s so much energy, and the flights of improvisation are so inspired that it seems simply rude not to reciprocate in my mild way. In a sense I’m relieved, because it could have asked for even more.
23. Mohammad- Pèkisyon Funebri [Drone/Ah, But This One Has Chanting] I’ll be up front. Not much has changed. And that really means a lot for a band that really doesn’t have much to distinguish between songs in the first place. To be honest, if you played songs from multiple albums, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell you where they were from. Even with that considered, I don’t find myself wishing they’d switch it up. The only wish that comes to mind is that they keep going until there’s enough of their music that I could fill an entire waking day listening to only their sound, unrepeated. They have about 10 hours to go, but considering their unusual dedication to this one pure sound, we might actually get there.
22. Various- Radiating Light: Orchid Tapes & Friends [Is Healing A Genre?] There seems to be a subliminal self-governance to groups that recognizes a desire to stay together. The members, willful and independent as they may be, release a piece of identity to the collective, expressing their happiness by performing a role that keeps the group together. Every time I listened to this comp I’d recognize a new artist that came to me in 2016. How Orchid Tapes were able to bring artists like Owen Pallett, Katie Dey, Yohuna, Blithe Field, and more into a single satisfying whole; I just don’t know. Family can do that to you.
21. Ian William Craig- Centres [Ambient/Gentle Noise/Write Again Soon] The static that coats much of Ian’s music seems like it was produced by coaxing it out of something like a pump organ (and there’s some of those here as well). The noise doesn’t seem menacing at all, resembling something more like a coil of distressed spirits either to be soothed by lullaby or embraced until calm. Ian tangles with it a bit, his voice and melodies get swept up, cloaking one another.-- When you really get used to loving a specific artist’s output, it can start to feel like a pen-pal relationship. I feel like I’m opening up a package with a note on top: I think you’ll love what I’ve found. Maybe this is discounting the artist’s hard work, but it feels as if it was just like a matter of collecting it all, like seashells on the beach.
20. Beyonce- LEMONADE [R&B/Pop/And To Let Collaborators Into An Open Heart?] You know, we shake our heads at the professionalized PR responses of celebrities. We complain about politicians not speaking their hearts. We demand honesty from our icons. But damn, imagine the pressure not to be open. I get to basically say anything I want all the time, with the (relatively) predictable responses of the people I know well. So when I see something this personal, at this level, from someone who is an industry unto herself, I delight in how bold it all is. Part of that recognition on my part developed from what I saw as a weakness on the record: the track Freedom. Freedom comes off as thoroughly focus-grouped future background music for advertisements; the chorus is depressingly non-descript, Kendrick continues his uneven streak on major pop-songs, and it contributes nothing significant to the arc of the album (I’m also not a fan of Daddy Lessons, but it’s contributes to a special part of the narrative). Freedom feels broad in that I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being sold something, and it’s what I expected on a record like this, but it’s actually the exception. I’m not just excited for this album itself, but also the ripples it may have caused for pop music. I’d love nothing more than a wave of albums like this that I can share a common understanding on, a method to break into those guarded thoughts of acquaintances; one of those shared touchstones I can finally join in on.
19. Machinefabriek- Minuten [Avant-Garde/11 Tracks, Each 1 Minute Long, Loop Them] I feel like I'm on the defensive from the get-go here, but I promise you it’s a less opaque project than you might think. The loops themselves have a bit of variety, but they tend to be small bursts of static and sparse field recordings. You are invited to loop each track for as long as you want (the link below is an hour long, but you should feel free to exit whenever you’d like). Maybe you’ve played around with your own loops in the past. Maybe you remember feeling content as they played again and again; feeling no need for it to change for other people. You should see that idea through to the end, even if it’s only repetition. The question “What’s music worth?” has been asked a lot, for this album you get a pretty exact answer, if only through attention spent.
18. Marie Davidson- Adieux Au Dancefloor [Minimal Synth/I Used To Love C.L.U.B.] When it comes to genre critiques contained within the targeted style, Hip-Hop has reigned supreme for over a decade (at least). You could even make a decent argument that genre critical hip-hop is a subgenre in itself (though with a fair amount of conscious hip-hop overlap). This seems relatively anomalous within music. Sure, there’s a lot of genre discussions in their surrounding communities,, but there’s not many musical culture discussions within the releases themselves, especially not electronic music. Enter Adieux Au Dancefloor. This album criticizes dance/club culture while showcasing what makes it great, what makes it unique. Davidson has been struggling to reconcile how bare and proud dance can be with how superficial the communities are, how calculatingly indifferent, how vapid. It’s not that she’s even seeking to root out all superficiality everywhere, it’s just tragic to her that it’s happening in this space she loves, the space that should stand tall against the exact thing that contorts it. How could music so exposing be wasted on a culture that holds their guards so tight? If this is actually her goodbye, I respect her greatly for leaving a letter at the door.
17. Various- PC Music Volume 2 [Post-Pop/Very Nearly More] I can’t really make my normal arguments for why a comp is on an album list. It’s a bit uneven, there’s sometimes a bit of whiplash between tracks (especially transitioning from a highlight Monopoly to the mess that is Poison). So it’s not that this release resembles an album in spirit, it’s that this comp rides on the individual heights, and it feels unfair to omit it. Here’s the best argument for the release I can make, see: Top 100 Tracks entries #81, #42,and #1.
16. Radiohead- A Moon Shaped Pool [Chamber Pop/Alt. Rock/I Hope You Don’t Either] Radiohead’s legacy stands tall over every successive album, but truthfully, it’s not something I even resent. It presents this unique situation, where each song isn’t just a piece of an album, it’s a part of a larger mythology. How would Burn The Witch have fit on In Rainbows? Is the “edge” in Desert Island Disk the same “edge” as Lucky’s? How would Glass Eyes flow into Sail To The Moon? True Love Waits, conspicuously held from the studio for decades despite the grassroots adoration by fans, appears on the album accompanied by breathless discussion on what the act of a song being included could mean. Yes, the obsessive regard the band is held in changes how the music is perceived. Yes, Radiohead can’t just put out an album and have it be considered on its merits alone. Yes, the traditional relationship of listener and music is irrevocably tainted by the strength of the brand. Yes, nothing I write here can match either the fervor of the deepest fans or the relative objectivity of a more distant listener. But I won’t say I’m not glad it’s happening. There are hundreds of albums in a given year where my first moments with it are establishing a new relationship with an artist, where there is some sort of purity in my lack of outside knowledge. Here I am compromised, and as such I also think about what music sounds like when you’re both listening and considering your own bias. Maybe it’s not fair that many of the lyrics and sounds on AMSP would have been ignored if it were on an album by any other artist, not fair that it’s intensely scrutinized by a thousand investigative minds because it’s Radiohead, but even then I can’t say the situation isn’t a rare and wonderful thing to exist.
15. Katie Dey- Flood Network [Glitch-Pop/Lo-Fi/When I Say It’s Alright To Touch Me, It’s Not That I Don’t Care, It’s That I Want You To] By now I would have thought I’d have a good idea of what my consistent physical stimuli mean. Like when I listen to Katie Dey, I feel a slight buzzing all over my skin, my gut feels empty (but not hungry?), and my movements become stuttered [I become motionless, notice it, and flurry my actions to catch up]. I’m curious if we used to be better at reading our bodies, back before our reliance on words. I’m so very used to using terms to express ideas (though I might not actually be good at it). So much so that there’s a basic frustration when my body won’t just tell me what’s going on; I’ve become over-reliant on the semblance of objectivity that words provide. Flood Network creates an approximation of this disconnect; most of the album is made up of odd yet pleasant bursts of energetic noise with the occasional decipherable lyric bubbling up. The majority of my experienced life are in those kinds of sensations; those odd yet pleasant stimuli that are only in the background because I put them there (that’s what they get for seeming indirect). Here, I love it when a discernable lyric is revealed, because it gives me just a bit of solid ground. It takes a bit of focus, but it gets me closer to recognition. Shouldn’t I be doing that all the time? How did I get to the point where I stopped looking for “aha!” moments about my own body? When did I decide I was above trying to decode physical sensations?
14. David Bowie- Black Star [Art Rock/Jazz/Our Coda As Overture] You might be tired of this album being tied up in David’s death, so here’s a short list of context free moments before I dive into talking about just that: the surprisingly fluid and pleasant shift from the meandering drums of Dollar Days to the crisp mechanical backbeat of I Can’t Give Everything Away, the charming melodrama of his voice on ‘Tis A Pity She Was A Whore, the mesmerizing melodic shifts back and forth on the title track. -- If I could, I’d like to bring up transitional space just once more. There’s a piece of a game called “The Beginner’s Guide” where your approach to a transitional space is given the spotlight. Some unconsciously see it as a trap or impediment; some approach it backwards, looking at everything that came before as they close themselves off; some find the lack of purpose relaxing and remain in the space for great lengths; some dive into the space as the past is sealed from them, eyes fixed forward. This record has such a distinct sound from the rest of his catalogue. It doesn’t make sense that an album as dramatic and invigorating could be created in that transitional space at the end of life. Dying doesn’t make sense, and that’s a feeling I want to keep; I don’t like what I think I know about it, and whatever conflicts with that is precious.
13. Jamila Woods- Heavn [Soul/Some Summer, Long From Now, Close To Her Heart] Beyond all the prevalent things to love, the stunning vocals, the varied and playful production, the seamless integration of talented collaborators, the down to earth but high minded messages, possibly my favorite thing about Jamilia is how she harmonizes with loaned moments. She borrows from sources as varied as Mr. Rogers, The Cure, childhood rhymes, Dawson’s Creek, the lord’s prayer, John Denver (and probably many more, including the hook on Blk Girl Soldier, which remains on the tip of my tongue) but they all coalesce through her. It fully cements her relatable and intrepid charisma, already a force on message and delivery alone. I hope someday I hear this album in the background as I enjoy the actualized life she wants for me and all others; because that seems like the only proper ending to the album.
12. Huerco S.- For Those Of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have) [Ambient/The Calm Determination To Burn So Bright That The Contours Of Your Character Could Be Recognized In The Silhouette You Leave Behind] I’ve found myself in the possibly reckless position that I rely on music to make sure I routinely check in on the various parts of my psyche. I feel release on discovering a great album of a certain genre each year. I attributed that sense to a sort of genre satisfaction, like I need a certain vitamin in my music diet to stay stable. But I’m wondering if the feeling truly stems from how certain types of music cause me to consider certain parts of my life. It’s like how I love taking personality tests and really getting involved in what each question means; why it’s worded the way it is, and whether I should answer my interpretation of the words, or what I think the author meant. I believe I comb through these tests as a sort of check up. I’m so caught in the present that I don’t trust myself to follow any sort of self-made structure, so the closest I can get is cultivating an appreciation for things that provide that sort of check up structure for me.-- The album itself has an odd collection of low and high end, formless tones and light scratchy textures. Looked at individually, the sounds seem arbitrarily put together, but their collective compass points along a singular bearing, as if they were debris from another song’s mastering process. The outline is so sharp, and the guiding hand so composed, that the shadow of that initial track seems almost tangible.
11. A Tribe Called Quest- We Got It From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service [East Coast Hip Hop/Boom Bap/Pixel Art And The Old, Old School] I don’t claim to know exactly why it’s not this way anymore, but way back, in the way before, philosophers used to offer up accounts for just about everything. We’d get their epistemology, their metaphysics, their ethics, their aesthetics; and a multifaceted sense of the person rose up out of the intersections between those concepts. The person lived on through an understanding of the insights and inevitable faults of entire sets of ideas. Legacy has changed a bit, now the path to the everlasting seems to be the pursuit of a narrow but perfected idea. It’s not better or worse, but it can feel stale. Maybe it’s not the way I think it is, or maybe it was never the way I thought it was; but when I heard this record I felt like I knew, and I felt that I’d been longing for the old ways. Which is honestly a bit odd, as I’m not even a big fan of ATCQ’s heyday. But this album offers up a perspective that isn’t designed to convey a single message, rather communicating a full worldview. You can sense the appetite for expression, never settling for one sound or one topic, especially not when the hibernation has been so long and they’ve been so far from the mic. Somehow they’re able to avoid the missteps that accompany these sort of huge statements. Well, there are those god awful Jack White parts...
10. Pinegrove- Cardinal [Indie Rock/It’s Not That I Forgot I Said It Before, It’s That I Feel It Again] Sometimes I just get a sense that a track is the last track of an album. There’s something about it, the way it might tie the rest of the album together, the way that it’s reflective but also gathering momentum to get out of the album’s gravity well and on to what’s next. It’s not the most accurate sense, it triggers on the wrong song sometimes (and I can get upset with the artist for it). I get this last track feeling on all of Cardinal. If the band shares my sensibilities, this album might have felt easy to sequence. I give a lot of credit for due effort given toward track order, but my gut tells me this album could have been put together any way (which I recognize probably isn’t true). I’m typically very particular about listening to an album in order, but on Cardinal I just hop to a song and start from there. It makes me feel like this album is continually existing in a loop on some radio frequency, and I just get to tap in for a few songs at a time. I don’t get that feeling that I left something incomplete if I put the album down, allowing it to be a steady companion throughout the year. Sometimes I get intimidated by an album’s arc, knowing that I’ll actually feel uneasy if I’m interrupted. There’s no pressure here, like a comfortable conversation with a friend (one that’ll forgive my obnoxiously repeated sentiments).
9. Solange- A Seat At The Table [Soul/I Never Earned Your Invitation, But Thank You] I don’t like learning new things. I love bringing context and nuance to old things, but I can’t stand starting fresh. If I can parse something as a mix of some other, older ideas I can trick myself into starting something new. I feel entitled to subtlety and I don’t take proper care to understand the basics. Then when I fail to understand the refined idea I’m left discouraged and sour. As hard as it may be to admit, I need a helping hand. -- While the connection is clearly a product of this particular year, I can’t help but think of Tarot. It’s partially because of the basic nature of the album where each piece flows as a short meditation on the range and trajectory of life. But it’s also because of the focus on granularity, taking care to keep each song discrete from one another (and this is helped rather than hindered by the spoken intermissions, which as a trend has seen vast improvements in the last decade). Be willing to fall, but by your own moral compass. Be cognizant and suspicious of your place in society. There are pieces of your life, trauma, responsibilities, that you cannot escape, it’s time to accept its fixture in your horizon without compromising your vision. Take a moment to say goodbye, but it’s time to start considering our resettlement. Take respites from fighting, otherwise you might give up for good. Even if I keep going until I’m out of view, I hope you’ll follow the lights I left for you.
8. Lambchop- FLOTUS [Lounge-Country-Ambient-Vocoder-Pop/Gold Panning For Character Makes You Wish Your Sand Was Valuable To Anyone But You, But You Wouldn’t Fight To Keep It] Supine on the bed, just before sleep, processing your day out loud. Not trying to connect it all into some grand meaning, just letting the day pass from mind to tongue. I think of mouths often during this album, these touches on the vocals give the impression of a mouth partially full of water. There’s a focus on enunciation, a playful relationship with words, the kind of odd bits of fun that occupy so much of our lives but are left out of the curated tale we put in our autobiography. It has an improvised quality that sounds like you are hearing a thought process in real time; you hear the things that would be left out of the edited tale, it gives you a sense of the day-to-day person. You can hear the actual search going on, not just the results like so many albums that describe journey after the fact. It makes me think of a lounge musician, who plays the same club every night. A sense of profession and duty, but something where the regular patrons would get a sense of the everyday going-ons of the singer under the soft spotlight, just out of the center of attention; a communally overheard inner-monologue. The album tempts me to appeal to a lot of schemas, so much so that I recognized it for once. I have this warehouse of analogies in music that can be counterproductive at times. I can actually feel my brain turn from thoughtful pursuit into something more resembling an auto-complete. Like when I think of the music as therapy. My typical comparison is that an album is like therapy in that it helps me sort through my own thoughts in search of a moment of clarity. But that’s not quite the quality of that brought me to the idea of therapy for this album. Instead I think of all the other moments in therapy, how you dig and shovel through the piles of loosely held thoughts, the process of excavation isn’t just the will to search and sudden gratification. There’s a process to this sort of therapy. Like dumping out your backpack, with everything scattered all over the floor; the first step towards figuring it all out. I’ve always had an obsession with having everything I’d ever need in the trunk of my car. My car is an absolute mess sometimes, but I claim I need it all. The first car I ever had had a trunk like this, but when that car suddenly blew a gasket and became inoperable, when confronted with the accumulated pile of necessity, I shrugged and handed my problem off to the scrapyard. This year, I forced myself to go through my current trunk, and honestly, most of it was garbage. I think this compulsion to keep comes from a belief that the personal is sacred. This item is a piece of my history, how could I get rid of it? But the stress of carrying all of these pieces of “my personality” can become unbearable, and when I take the time to look; man, I actually don’t care about most of this. I can come out of the process cleaner, more flexible, once I let it go. Every once in awhile, I’ll find an idea that lasts and because I’ve taken the time to ponder these concepts it’ll stick. A random internet comment on the album: “it’s too long in a good way”. Yeah.
7. The Field- The Follower [Minimal Techno/And You Belong, You Do] I have the same thought in the back of my mind each time I heard this album: this is your least favorite Field record. I thought that’d be it for this album, seems pretty hard for a record to develop a positive identity when the overriding initial idea is “least”. I knew I enjoy it, but just that sense of it suffocating below 4 other personal giants seemed like it’d swallow up any lasting relationship. But the record was just a bit too compelling, I always wanted to sample it again, and I was able to push through. The music became a soundtrack to deciding if I’m doomed to be a fanboy, if this list will eventually be just nominally my pursuit to find my favorites, but actually just a collection of that years releases by Mohammad, Animal Collective, Julianna Barwick, Radiohead, Matthew Dear, Ian William Craig, JCL, The Field, and so on. The topic was easy to get lost into; that familiar meditative quality caught up and suddenly I had a newborn to place into the family, one whose cumulative affection was already bursting at the seams.
6. Bon Iver- 22, A Million [Glitch Pop/2 Bent Ellipses,Overlapping At The Bottom, Nearly At The Top] Symbology and music make a good pair. Music has a proximity to speech but often intentionally skirts just beyond the reach of direct and absolute understanding, symbols have a proximity to written language but often maintain a vague set of subjective boundaries that play off of the aggregate associations one forms to shapes. Numbers also show up prominently on the album, and this informs a sensibility to the album, possibly interesting, naturally divisive. Letters are prone toward chaos, and numbers are mandated into order. Hit 7 letter keys at random, hit 7 number keys at random, it’s likely only 1 set is going to have prescribed meaning. Much of my enjoyment for this album comes from this sort of mismatch, trying to square the circle of lyrics and music. The songs’ melodies and structures seem clearly cinematic and are forcefully confident that there’s a story here. But the lyrics are small, seemingly disjointed phrases, ones that can seem logical when considering a single line, but not when strung together. Each moment has specific purpose for just its length, with no obligation toward sustained meaning. If it weren’t for the specific motion of the music, you might guess there’s just no connection between the lyrics at all, but your brain is compelled to puzzle out what the connection could possibly be. The phrases seem more like symbols than series of words. The normal reciprocal relationship in music, where you are swept into a melody or lyric, and in turn you seek understanding of the other, which gives you even more insight into the first, seems absent. And the further you get involved in one, the greater the urge to connect it to the other, and the greater the frustration at being so tantalizingly close but lacking a solution. You might give up altogether; the difference between the resentment of an arbitrary obstacle and the allure of a designed puzzle. (The difference, in my case, would be its completion)
5. Julianna Barwick- Will [Ambient/It’s Strange To Think The Voice In My Head That’s Always Provided Comfort In My Anxious Moments Has Aged Along With Me] For someone that puts a lot of care into the structuring of their personal history, I’m sure wrong about it a lot. I’ve thought a lot about being trapped in the present and expanded upon it a few times in these lists, but I’ve been dead certain that this feeling was a phenomena unique to the last several years. I’m listening to Nebula, and I’m realizing how mistaken I am. I remember being 8 or 9 years old, and feeling trapped on a waterslide. The slide was admittedly pretty long for what it was, lasting 2-3 minutes, and from the beginning to the end you were in a pitch black tube (strikes me as odd for a slide now, usually they have a few openings at least). I’m a big fan of these longer slides (and terribly nervous of the ones that are straight drops), but it was one of the most distressing experiences of my life up until that point. After the first 30 or seconds of enjoyment, I felt a strong sense that I was going to be trapped in the dark forever. I panicked and screamed and cried, all within what couldn’t have been much more than 100 seconds. I was certain, absolutely certain that I’d never see light again. This memory was triggered by a ghost of a lyric (often the closest you’ll get to understanding the vocals): I will live through the dark. I remembered a wave of memories where the only way I could possibly move beyond the present was listening to my inner voice tell me that I’ll get through it. A china tea cup with a gold rim and lined with charcoal, the light through the slats in the closet when I promised to grow old, the piece of a broken headlight with a touch of grey. I can feel close to my conflicting feelings on being trapped in the present. My intense fear of death appreciates the sense that I’ll live forever, but feels helplessly unable to control of the flow of my life; I’ll live until I’m spit out the other end into non-existence. I feel trapped and intensely free (I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with dichotomies). I wonder if part of the reason I love artists like Julianna Barwick (ones with a consistent aesthetic over their discography) is how it soothes my sense of being trapped in the present because I can connect with the memories of other moments I heard similar sounds that I heard on their other albums. Maybe it gives me a small sense of continuity, portals to travel back to the other times I heard the artist. Maybe I should just listen to old favorites more.
4. Daniel Lanois- Goodbye To Language [Instrumental/I'm In Some Strange Bed, Comfort, Comfort] While the album is deserving of more than this one association, this is my go to nap album. I love napping outdoors. I can easily absorb myself in nature. Small amounts of time seem to stretch forever, or really it seems like I can just step out of reality. I forget that I exist. I would have assumed that’d mean time would disappear because I’m not managing it (I’m often late because of lapse in concentrating on time) but instead I’m often surprised by how little time has passed in a given song. As if the only thing binding time to me is my recognition and subsequent acceptance. The tones don’t always seem to register as such, like garbled or backward speech, I can recognize it as a note, but the fuzzy aura rejects any efforts to pinpoint a center. This is a tough album to talk about, because I’m just so heavily taken by the sensations. It doesn’t heavily benefit from associations (a linchpin of my adoration for many records) but rather it’s just a slow drip of enjoyment into my ear, coating my brain. I think this is what it’s like to be pet as a dog, a general sense of the embrace of a benevolent caretaker whom I can’t quite understand distinctly.
3. TV Girl- Who Really Cares [Sample/Indie Pop/When Schools Taught Me That Sex Was What Happened When You Shared Love, It Only Really Made Me Think I Wanted It With Everyone] I used to see everyone as individuals. They were all complicated algorithms to be figured out. Groups of observations formed into loose rules that would be inevitably, violently overthrown by a radically incongruent datapoint. Every stranger was a possible new archetype. Nothing seemed entirely certain. Now I tend to divide people into me, like mes, and others. I don’t care as much about individuals anymore. I don’t wonder what the informally-known think of me like I used to, and I’m not sure I like it. For better and worse I ended up being content with the me and like mes. I like that I don’t overhaul my personality with each person I talk to, but I also really miss the incentive to figure other people out. I wish I thought as highly of the average person as I do musicians, I wish I thought more people were worth getting into cryptology over. I doubt the album is enough to overthrow the system of me, like mes, and others, but while listening the scope of the like mes grows.-- The record is petty, but the pettiness is presumed reciprocal and fair, an even break in the games we play. It still doesn’t shy away from the contentious and adversarial way that love, sex, and pride can intersect. It tussles with its numerous trivial feelings until it reaches heartfelt and sneakily profound moments of awareness. It feels consistently nostalgic, both in the pseudo-timeless nature of the production (timeless as in, could reasonably come out in the 90’s, which is when the world began as far as I’m concerned) and the way it manipulates the filing system of my brain to brings up my youthful methods of thinking, and the people I miss. Shane, Andy, Chase... My mind is screaming at me to hold on to this feeling, maybe I could have been TV Girl.
2. Lorenzo Senni- Persona [Minimal Trance/There’s A Classic Balance & Dilemma, Trying To Be Better Vs Trying To Accept Yourself, I’ve Gotten Too Comfortable With The Second, Let’s Move] To start, yeah, it’s half an hour long and it was literally released as an EP. But it felt disingenuous to put it on the short releases list, because every time I put this on, my instinct called it an album. I’m not sure why I felt so strongly, it’s not as if I believe EPs and other short releases are inherently less powerful than albums, but the thought of leaving Persona off this particular list gave me a pang of moral anxiety.-- Persona is like a sentence of pure punctuation. I don’t feel that I’m peering into someone else, it doesn’t make me feel like a different version of me; rather it makes me feel like the most authentic, most animated version of myself. Each time I hear it I’m able to fully connect the present to the next step. I feel as it I know exactly what to do (possibly a dangerous belief!) and the willpower that I so frequently lack is suddenly overwhelming. I hesitate to call it an alternate state of mind (often the backbone of my experience with other pieces of music) as it seems less an alternate and more what’s left behind after every alternate is dismissed. There aren’t any shadows of a doubt when the rays seem to be omnidirectional. Everything positive about the word engineered.
1. Kero Kero Bonito- Bonito Generation [ElectroPop/Sometimes If I Think Too Hard...] I just put the radio on Heard a song, I can't stop thinking about it
When I first heard Kero Kero Bonito, I dismissed it as a gimmick. It seemed like the PC Music affiliated group was taking the collective’s ambiguous appreciation/satire approach to pop and applying it to childlike media. My dismissiveness wasn’t even in reaction to anything in particular on the album, just a general skepticism of anything cloaked in childlike qualities. Theoretically I should be a prime target for childhood stories, because they should have easily decipherable argument structures and a motivation to tackle fundamental issues. But my skepticism has grown because generally when I try to interact with childlike media I try to immerse myself, I bump up against inconsistencies, and then I’m told that I’m looking too closely. It feels like a punishment for being myself, and in turn I’ve given up on a lot of it out of frustration. It seems like it’s just something I’m not meant to interact with, and I figured Bonito Generation would be just another iteration of the same old process. When I need a hand, no matter where I am I pick up the vibrations
I didn’t learn I was wrong all at once. I simply liked the production at first. I noticed how the lyrics were wonderfully cute without striking me as cloying. I became curious about how I found this tolerable, I looked for possible pieces of subversion that my subconscious might have picked up on without bothering to let my aware mind in on it. And there is a lot of coded rebellion in the lyrics, but it’s not what kept drawing me back; I actually liked the straightforward messages on the songs. There’s a hint of production seizing Marxism on Break, but I also think it’s important to take time off. When I return to Try Me again and again, it’s not just that it’s comparing the interaction of businesses and potential employees to that of a shopper looking through an aisle of dolls with “try me!” stickers, it’s that it’s an honestly fun and empowering song. It’s such a refreshing change of pace, not because simplicity and practicality should always rule, but because it always seems like most artists operate in a space where you pick a side; you either consider the philosophical or the pragmatic.
I sure don't know if making me was part of the plan But that's what happened, and I'm cool with that
If coming of age stories are about how we eventually have to trade our childhood lessons for adult ones, doesn’t this in some way represent a failure in our childhood lessons? It seems like childhood lessons are the forms, the pure essence of ideas that are uncomplicated by “real life”. It’s a reversal of the analogy of the cave; we start out considering the sun, the forms, then we’re brought down to earth, then we’re expected to distance ourselves even further, choosing the shadows on the cave wall. I think of someone who still thinks in these forms, someone who doesn’t immediately compromise them upon meeting the real world. There are a few words to call someone that still holds these pure ideas, one is naive, another is principled. でもわいてくるよ、やる気 [But I feel the motivation welling up] 始まる一日 波に乗りたい [The day begins, I want to ride the wave]
I’m concerned that I’ve become unprincipled. I’m not sure how it happened, but I think it’s because whenever my former principles came into conflict, I’d try to cobble together some sort of compromise principle instead of acknowledging a disconnect and making a choice where one principle was selected above another. Making a conscious choice that assigns any sort of value, even just a hierarchical one, is an uncomfortable position because it seems like what you’d need to do is start figuring out the *prime* principle and assign some sort of ranking from there, but that end seems neither realistic nor desirable. I’m not sure it’d even be useful beyond the instant it was created; just like how this list represents a moment, not a definitive statement. Life looks better When you're on your trampoline
I recognize that this sort of struggle for purpose exists only because of my fortunate position in life. Within my personal canon, 2016 as a year is the first where I have a stable footing in every aspect of life. My sense of déjà vu is set off by seeing the same season from the same place, and I’m not as frightened by that as I thought. I’m in a position I really care about, trying to turn safety nets into something… bouncier.
I hit the street Feeling good to be me
I’m in that place they warned me about, where “what’s next” runs out, and I’m trying to decide what that means. When you're old and wise you'll find All the shots you've got Bring back the time it's easy to believe Yesterday was so sweet
So the song KKB did at the concert for the encore, I thought it was a new one or just a weird experiment they liked to perform for the encore. Turns out it's "Build It Up," which I actually had not heard before until tonight. Probably my fave KKB song now. Really shows all three at their best. Gus and Jamie are two of my fave current producers but I don't feel they let themselves shine often like they do in this song, which is the perfect blend of their great producing abilities and Sarah's vocal bubbliness. Funnily enough, despite being an older song of theirs (2014) it's exactly how I want their next album to be - more experimental and wild to change it up a bit, while retaining that fun, energetic, bubbly quality of KKB. Listen to the song if you haven't before and you'll get what I mean.
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