I don't have much to say about this year in music, other than it was good. A lot of good coming from a lot of places.
I'm unsure if I have the energy to keep making lists like this after this year. I'm not even sure how or if I'll tackle a decade list in a similar way. I do enjoy putting my thoughts into words and coming back to them down the road. Music being such a big part of who I am, it's always a good landmark to where I was that year. In the very least, I think I need a new platform. This blog is so clunky and old (any ideas?). At any rate, I enjoy contemplating why one piece of music fits me better than another, which inevitably leads to lists like this, and I enjoy making them "pretty," as it were. So, with that said....
HERE WE GO.
First off, the miscellaneousness...
PREVIEW LINKS PROVIDED IN BLUE
FAVORITE CONCERTS OF 2019
1. Riceboy Sleeps
@ Paramount, Denver, CO
2. Thom Yorke
@ The Chelsea, Las Vegas, NV
3. Bon Iver w/ Sharon Van Etten
@ Red Rocks, Denver CO
4. Elton John
@ Vivint, SLC, UT
5. Mogwai
@ Metro, SLC, UT
6. Low
@ Velour, Provo, UT
7. Brian Wilson w/ The Zombies
@ Sandy Amphitheater, Sandy, UT
8. Deerhunter/Washed Out
@ Ogden Amphitheater, Ogden, UT
9. Stereolab
@ Metro Music Hall, SLC, UT
10. Stef Chura
@ Kilby Court, SLC, UT
11. Flaming Lips
@ Ogden Amphitheater, Ogden, UT
12. Vampire Weekend w/ Soccer Mommy
@ The Complex, SLC, UT
13. Goo Goo Dolls
@Usana, SLC, UT
14. Kali Uchis
@ The Complex, SLC, UT
15. Caroline Rose
@ The City Library, SLC, UT
16. Molly Burch
@ Kilby Court, SLC, UT
17. Beach Fossils
@ The Depot, SLC, UT
18. Sunmi
@ ShowBox SoDo, Seattle, WA
FAVORITE FILM SCORE
Motherless Brooklyn \\ Daniel Pemberton
Runners Up
Uncut Gems \\ Daniel Lopatin
Ad Astra \\ Max Richter
Marriage Story \\ Randy Newman
Joker \\ Hildur Guðnadóttir
Honey Boy \\ Alex Somers
Midsommar \\ Bobby Krlic
(a lot of goodness in the film world this year)
FAVORITE SOUNDTRACK OF ORIGINAL SONGS
Motherless Brooklyn
FAVORITE E.P.
Some Place Else \\ MorMor
Runners Up
Let's Try the After (Vol. 1) \\ Broken Social Scene
Black Star Dancing \\ Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds
I've included a rough idea of what to expect from the "genre," but some of this stuff simply refuses to be classified. See for yourself.
10
Keepsake \\ Hatchie
dream pop/rock
A fairly straight forward, but delightfully pretty dream pop record from Australian singer-songwriter Hariette Pilbeam and company. I enjoyed their
EP from last year, but this album blew away any expectations I had. Every song feels innocent and nostalgic, and full of a genuine sweetness that's hard to ignore. Like listening to an album your kid sister made or something.
9
Ribbons \\ Bibio
folk/electronic/rock
English musician Stephen Wilkinson was easily one of the most consistently pleasant artists this decade. Because he doesn't tour as Bibio, he likely has a lot of time on his hands with which to pump out album after album (and EP after EP) of genre bending goodness. He's covered everything from
folk,
dance,
electronic, and
pop, to
funk,
rock, and
ambient. Which brings us full circle to
Ribbons: A lovely and sometimes haunting collection of folk(ish) ditties inspired by the English countryside. Like most Bibio albums, it plays out very visually, as if the soundtrack to an old photo album. Often serene and sometimes melancholy,
Ribbons ends a very prolific decade with dignified benediction.
8
folk/rock
About 2 minutes and 54 seconds into the album, singer/songwriter Adrianne Lenker releases a primal howl, her guitar screeching close behind. It's a sound never heard again throughout
UFOF's run time, but it's a dramatic exclamation point on a
haunted opener, and a ghost that lingers for the rest of the album. That restless unease floats amidst the beauty here and always had me on edge as I listened, as if waiting for something to break. Lenker sings of family, love, and anger with a natural poetic delicacy carried along by simple but effective melody, letting the emotion do most of the heavy lifting. It's a delicacy I somewhat missed on their second album of the year,
Two Hands. Perhaps I need to revisit that one. In any case,
UFOF is a masterwork that adds some much needed spice into the genre.
7
rock/electronic/folk
I've seen a lot of people lament the direction Justin Vernon has taken with Bon Iver over the last few years, which I sometimes find humorous as it occurs to me that I appreciate the project now more than ever. Seeing them live at Red Rocks certainly helped, of course. But so did this relatively (by Vernon's standards) down-to-Earth collection of folktronic gospel tunes. Vernon has always been a willing collaborator, but i,i finds the artist bringing the collabs to him, and producing some oh-so-shiny gems in the process. His insistence on sonic exploration and a new found optimism make this an inspiring and worthy entry into his impressive catalog.
6
Anima \\ Thom Yorke
electronic
Thom has had a rough decade, and it's shown in the tunes. Radiohead's 2016 album
A Moon Shaped Pool was one of the saddest in a career of sad albums as multiple tragedies fell upon members of the band, including Thom separating from the mother of his children who then died not long after. While
Anima doesn't bring much good news, it does find Thom reaching for answers to the personal and cultural tragedies he's been witnessing, and spinning some of his very best solo work in the process. Whether he's coming to terms with loss on the tender "
Dawn Chorus," or cursing the "goddamn machinery" on "
The Axe," Thom always seems to be right instep with what I'm feeling. Guess that's why he's muh favorite. Be sure to check out the
Anima short film on Netflix. It's essential.
Also, I made him laugh at a concert in Vegas. That was pretty choice.
5
The Practice of Love \\ Jenny Hval
experimental pop
The title track of
The Practice of Love focuses on spoken word poetry about love and a conversation contemplating one's place in the world, specifically when one is a thirty-something without children. I happen to be a thirty-something without children. So even though there's not much going on in that track, I felt it. It sort of feels like the centerpiece of the album, even though it's pretty uneventful. Surrounding it are similar meditations on life, love, nature, sexuality...what it means to be human. Only they're on top of beautifully structured "pop" tunes reminiscent of
Enigma or other early 90's New Wave jams. The Practice of Love ends up being an album of meditation that happens to also slap on occasion. And I dig the hell out of it.
4
Miss Universe \\ Nilüfer Yanya
rock/pop
I knew nothing of this talented young upstart before
Miss Universe dropped, but drop it did. I was instantly blown away by her fully formed sound and confident charisma. And, of course, them guitar chops. The first few songs throw down so convincingly that you think you've got the album figured out, but in between quirky self-help interludes Miss Yanya switches it up and it becomes a genre mash that's somewhat hard to pin down. Relatively typical themes of love and sex abound, with the charm and voice of someone who's been at the game for years. Not bad for a newcomer. I'm really excited to see where she goes from here.
3
experimental/ambient/found sound
A lot of artists experimented with sound in interesting ways this year. Matmos made an entire album off of the sampled sounds of plastic, while Holly Herndon created music with the help of AI technology. Both of those are very curious and interesting listens. But the one that stuck out to me this year was Jonsi and Swedish composer Carl Michael von Hausswolff's Dark Morph project. Wanting to explore the effects of climate change, specifically to ocean life, the duo took to the seas of Fiji to encounter and record humpback whales, shrimp, Fijian bats, and dark morph herons. Then, they did what they do best. The results are a mesmerizing, mysterious, strangely organic, sometimes scary and often beautiful call of the wild. Jonsi's forays into the ambient world have always had an organic, found-sound flavor to them, but Dark Morph puts you right in the middle of a struggling alien ecosystem. The power is in realizing it's basically our back yard.
2
Titanic Rising \\ Weyes Blood
baroque/dream pop/folk
Natalie Mering has been around for a bit. This is her fourth proper album. But my first sampling of her was a show-stealing guest spot on the 2017 Perfume Genius track "
Sides." So, when
Titanic Rising came about, I was intrigued. And yet, nothing could have prepared me for this magical journey. At once nostalgic and fresh, Mering channels the ghosts of the 70's and creates a voice all her own in the process. Airtight compositions, angelic vocal harmonies, and enthusiastic hand claps all brilliantly produced to perfection as she sings of love found, love lost, and just making it through the day-to-day in a world that doesn't make those things easy. It's about reaching into the optimism of the past and pushing through the shit of today. It's about welcoming the apocalypse with a hopeful perseverance. Maybe it's about
playing hymns as the
ship sinks. But it's not about doom. "True love is making a comeback," she sings. And you can tell she truly believes it. Which makes me want to believe it, too.
1
Fear Inoculum \\ TOOL
metal/progressive rock
In an increasingly impatient world, the rewards of true patience are ever so vital, and oh so glorious. Thus is the power of Tool's
Fear Inoculum. An album that asked fans to wait 13 years. An album where each song (not including digital interludes) clocks in at over 10 minutes, the
longest being a whopping 15:44. An album that is far from an "easy listen," but that still
knocked Taylor Swift off of #1 in its debut, with a CD package that cost $50, and no
concert bundles. A superficial victory, for sure (she was back on top the week after), but a humorously symbolic one being an anti-Swift album in so many appropriate ways. It is not meant to be consumed and quickly disposed of like every other plastic thing in this world. It is meant to be absorbed with time and repetition. It's meticulously detailed, and almost deceptively complex. It's some of the most talented musicians on the planet at the top of their game. It's a metal album where the drummer is the shining star. It's spiritual, inquisitive, humble, and a little angry. It is somehow the perfect album for this moment in time and quite the grand finale for the decade. And it was worth the wait.
26 \\ The Poison Tree \\ The Good the Bad and the Queen (2018)
