I don’t know about you but we (well, I) just stopped eating the Christmas leftovers a week or so ago. It may cause me to grow a third ear but that'll just help me keep up with all this music.
The following are all the records I accumulated during 2019 that I hadn’t yet mentioned - usually, because I had very little to say about them, or they took a while to sink in.
Months or years from now I’ll put some of them on and have a blast, but for now, most of them fall into the pleasant/fun-but-not-quite-exhilarating category. In other words, life on a pretty good day.
Let’s go in ascending order of excellent-ness.
Tune-Yards: Nikki Nack (2014)
This is a pretty good record, but a huge letdown from 2010’s W H O K I L L. This one is similarly weird and almost as inventive, and if I'd gotten it first it would sound just fine.
B+
Carly Rae Jepsen: E*MO*TION (2015)
Mr.s Jaybee looks at me weird when I get records like this. No dear, I’m not creeping on the young women. Besides, said young women are usually one third my age, and Ms. Jepsen is merely one half.
Re the actual music, I am in awe of its almost pathological catchiness. Between I really really really really really like you and give me love, give me love, give me love, give me love, give me love, give me love, give me love there’s really no doubting where she stands on um, interpersonal questions. I almost want the young lady to take a rest midway through the album (which she does at cut 5). But then again, like I said she’s much younger than me.
B+
Van Dyke Parks: Song Cycle (1968)
Recognize that name? You should. He’s worked with Randy Newman, Little Feat, Brian Wilson, JoAnna Newsome, Harry Nilsson and a huge list of others. This is his very first album
It’s oddly Americana-ish for a psychedelic time and too weird for immediate enjoyment. I suspect it’s a grower but mostly for those odd occasions when you’re feeling completely alienated from the modern world. And who could blame you?
B+
Los Lobos: Colossal Head (1996)
These guys just impress the hell out of me. There’s a real fuck you attitude to this one. I mean, how many good records do they have to make to have you sit up and notice??
The guitar really stings on this one. They’re way past La Bamba, artiness and white acceptance. Here the just rock.
B+
Angry punk music, great dynamics, and a singer with a big deep voice. It’s closer to mid-tempo rather than the breakneck speed punk is more famous for. The main advantage of this is you can tell exactly what they’re mad about.
B+
Same old LCDSS but unlike The Sound of Silver, this one is very consistent. It doesn’t have anything undeniably great like "All My Friends" but I like the consistency of this one.
B+
This is less cerebral than TV on the Radio. More impassioned, too. The vocals are simply overpowering. This is a weird mix of gospel, hard rock/punk and a few other things I can't name. It’s not an easy listen. By the time it’s over you feel like you’ve worked out. But every time I put it on I rank it higher and higher.
B+
REM: Unplugged Completely (1995) Bootleg
I’d been looking for something like this for quite some time. They had their MTV set before I had cable and so I only heard bits of it here and there.
This pulls all of that set together with some other acoustic performances right around their commercial peak.
There are a few versions of this, that encompass their entire career. This one’s from 1991 or so and sticks to that early middle period that may consider the band’s peak.
A-
Rihanna: Anti (2016)
Who (in my demographic) would know what to expect from this critically hailed record by a fiery and sometimes problematic young lady. So what’s here?
A great voice. Excellent tunes. And no dumb crowd-pleaser songs. (Well, ok, I guess “Sex With Me” counts.) But I actively enjoy each of these songs. And they are songs, not just tracks with a voice over it.
This young lady may have some questionable choices in her life but she has made none of them here.
A-
Alvvays: Anti-Socialites (2017)
This one falls right smack in the middle of my current comfort zone: catchy pop from female-led bands.
This one is more methodically catchy, which I guess has its shortcomings. But while she might also really really really etc like you, she has a little more to say about it than just that.
A-
And so now that I've gotten all that off my chest I look back on the last year and find that my focus on catching up on the decade has caused me to ignore records actually released in 2019 altogether.
Jesus H. Christ, I've got work to do.
