Wednesday, January 10, 2024
i came prepared for absolution, if you'd only ask
Jess Wiliamson - Time Ain't Accidental
i came prepared for absolution, if you'd only ask
Here's some music I loved this last year:
Albums/EPs:
boygenius - The Record/The Rest
The first EP was (what I assumed was going to be) a cool little one off: three friends who managed to find the time to bring a couple of songs each and record them together and then use it as an excuse to tour. The Record sounds like a real band. You can mostly still tell whose songs are whose, but there's a cohesiveness to the whole. But you probably knew all of that, because between 2018 and now Phoebe Bridgers blew up and then Boygenius really blew up. The Rest was technically the leftovers from the LP sessions, but they sound just as good as the main course.
Militarie Gun - Life Under the Gun
One of my favourite music writers, Tom Breihan, described this as "Agnostic Front trying to become Guided By Voices," and it turns out that rocks as much as it sounds. Catch them in March at the Rickshaw with Spiritual Cramp (who you could describe the same way as Tom described the Gun).
Earl Sweatshirt and the Alchemist - VOIR DIRE
There's been rumours of an Earl/Alchemist collab for years but also as those years passed Earl's music's got so weird (and wonderful) and abstract, I figured it would just never happen. I definitely didn't think it would sound like this if it ever did happen. The Alchemist at his best and Earl at his most accessible since I Don't Like Shit...
billy woods and Kenny Segal - Maps
I think I've probably said that billy woods "could rap the dictionary and make it sounds fascinating" and this isn't quite that, but the depth and colour he brings to the least glamorous parts of being a touring musician on Maps is about as close as you can get. He's been making incredible records for much longer, but the frequency of releases since Hiding Places combined with an unwavering quality release over release since then is amazing.
Jess Wiliamson - Time Ain't Accidental
Maps is an airplane record. One about jet setting around in a blur and how sharp the sounds and smells of home are after you've been gone. Time Ain't Accidental is a road trip record--an album that captures the American ideal of soaring down the highway. About getting away from where you were to make something new. It feels like that opening riff from "American Girl." It feels free.
Sun June - Bad Dream Jaguar
If Time Ain't Accidental's about new beginnings, Bad Dream Jaguar's about holding old things together. That's true, but also wouldn't it be annoying if I kept doing this for each subsequent album on this list? Catch them with Slaughter Beach, Dog in a couple weeks.
Miya Folick - Roach
I didn't really get the release strategy for this record--lead single "Oh God" came out way back in April of 2022 and by the time the record came out over a year later, ten of the thirteen songs we're out. But also I didn't get sick of any of them.
Wednesday - Rat Saw God
Maybe "diverse" is the wrong word, because it's all indie rock, but it runs the gamut from songs that would fit on a Gillian Welch record to moments that could be plucked off of an 80s Sonic Youth album and everything in between. They didn't grab me when I saw them live this year, but Rat Saw God's been in constant rotation.
Ratboys - The Window
Still disappointed that Rat Tally record came out last year and ruined a shot at a 2023 rat trifecta.
Armand Hammer - We Buy Diabetic Test Strips
I'm sure I'd seen the signs before, but I never noticed them before this album was announced and I looked it up. And then I noticed them--at least in certain neighbourhoods--in every American city I visited this year: we buy diabetic test strips. A reminder of the truly bleak state of American health care--and that's saying a lot because BC's sucks. Maps found billy woods rapping about the minutiae of his every day life, but his other 2023 release dives headlong into the darkness from the album title down (that's not to say that Maps is particularly easy listening). Elucid and woods always seem to push each other and various times on their latest it sounds like they're going to push themselves into a void. If you passed out and woke up in some kind of Mad Max future, "Trauma Mic" would be the first thing you heard.
Songs:
Olivia Rodrigo - "get him back!"
This could've just as easily been "bad idea right?," but I'm a sucker for gang vocals on a chorus and the gang of Olivia's sound deliriously fun plotting their revenge together.
Chapell Roan - "Red Wine Supernova"
Speaking of deliriously fun, Chapell Roan crams more punchlines into 3-minutes than Donald Glover does on all the Camp songs, except it doesn't sound like she's trying really hard to do it. She fits just as many hooks in as well.
End It - "Familia Finito"
After I read Dan Ozzi's incredible profile on The Armed, I started joking that this was the year I became a "hardcore guy." And while that hasn't happened and that Armed record didn't hit me as hard as I wanted it to, this song sure did.
Earl Sweatshirt, Vince Staples, and the Alchemist - "Mancala"
Earl and Vince have been a dynamic duo since the Odd Future days and they blessed us with two collabs on VOIR DIRE. This one's my favourite because of the gospel sample and the little "speak to Vince 'bout it" ally oop at the end of Earl's verse.
Hotline TNT - "If We Keep Hanging Out"
The shoegazey stuff is all well and good, but this lo-fi, mostly acoustic non-album loosey is my shit.
Ratboys - "The Window"
Julia Steiner wrote this song after her grandmother died in June 2020. She didn't die of Covid, but because of Covid, her grandfather couldn't go in person to say goodbye, so he stood outside her open window to do it and a lot of lyrics are direct quotes from what he said to her that day. I can't imagine how painful that must have been, even if it made sense from a scientific perspective. To be with someone--to love someone--for so long and to be present, but not able to be by their side in their last moments is truly heartbreaking. So even though I adore this song, sometimes I have to turn it off, because it makes me want to bawl my eyes out.
Jenny Owens Young - "Knife Went In"
It's probably not healthy, but who hasn't been in a place at some point in their life where they want to be with someone who has the same scars as them? I definitely don't want that now, but this captures that feeling pretty perfectly.
BigXthaPlug - "Texas"
This sounds like it could've come straight off of Who is Mike Jones? and that's about the highest compliment I can think of.
The Menzingers - "Hope is a Dangerous Little Thing"
I can't believe that no one told me to listen to this band, because if I had to describe them, it'd be "music for old guys who love the Hold Steady and the Weakerthans."
Samia - "Honey"
Obligatory do you wanna get emotional and hang out in New York? song. Also, name checking Porches and following that with a cover of "Country" was pretty cute.
billy woods and Kenny Segal - "Soft Landing"
billy woods' ability to absolutely cram a song full of "if you know, you know" references while simultaneously conveying exactly what he needs to even if you don't get any of the in-jokes is fully on display here. You probably loved it, if you caught the Prodigy (the Mobb Deep guy, not the electronica guys) lines, but if you didn't you could still relate to that moment of peace when you're looking out the plane window over flyover country. It's a quiet puzzle.
boygenius - "Cool About It"
This record, err I mean, The Record, has Julien songs and Phoebe songs and Lucy songs and then there's a couple that just sound like boygenius songs and those ones are the best.
FIDLAR - "Centipede"
There was that period where FIDLAR stopped writing songs like this and then all of a sudden a few of years ago they started again. And like, I get thinking you can't do the same thing forever, but also what if you're really really good at it? The boys are back.
Domo Genesis, the Alchemist, Earl Sweatshirt, Vince Staples, and Action Bronson - "Elimination Chamber"
These guys could've really phoned it in and it still probably would've been passable. Instead they all dropped one of their best verses of the year (and at the end of the song you know that they know it). I'm a mark for a pro wrestling sample on a rap song too.
Miya Folick - "Get Out Of My House"
The hookiest song off of one of my favourite records of the year and maybe the best song from her live set too.
Dim Wizard w/Superviolet, Jeff Rosenstock, and Illuminati Hotties - “Ride the Vibe”
David Combs, who also plays in Bad Moves, uses Dim Wizard to put out the occasional tune with a rotating cast of collaborators. Basically, he writes a song and then goes through his indie rock rolodex and invites whoever he thinks fits best to jam (see also: "X-Games Mode" featuring Ratboys and Mike Krol).
This one's about a friend coming into a bar he was working at to share an early recording of Babies' "Breakin' the Law" with him (the Kevy in the chorus is Kevin Morby) and listen I don't now how fucking bad this song would've had to be for me to not make myself love it. Turns out it's excellent on its own merits though.
Fatboi Sharif, Roper Williams, and ELUCID - “Scrabble Board Pieces”
My music taste really runs the gamut, but if I think back to periods where there was one genre I was really into, rap and noise stick out and this one marries the best of both.
Maple Glider - “Don’t Kiss Me”
Here's one that simultaneously bleak (but also probably very familiar to any woman) and beautiful (which anyone can lean into).
Thrash Palace - “Go”
I kinda thought we'd heard the last from EMA, since she hadn't really put any original music out for over half a decade, but then all of a sudden there was this song that answered the question, "what if EMA fronted a 90s Sub Pop band?" that came out as via the Sub Pop Singles Club. 10/10, I'll never doubt you again, Erika.
Boldy James and Nicholas Craven - “Brand New Chanel Kicks”
When I got out of the hospital from a car accident that sounded many magnitudes less bad than the one Boldy was in, all I could do was get ripping high on oxy and watch Archer. Instead of lying around, he recorded some of the best bars of the year from a wheelchair the day he got out.
Shows:
Laura Stevenson plays The Wheel with Completions and Katie Malco @ the Vera Project, Seattle
When I was walking from my hotel to the show it seemed like I was going to the same place as an increasingly larger group of younger women (which would check out) who were dressed vaguely like cowgirls (which doesn't, but what do I know about youth fashion?). Turns out Shania Twain was playing at Climate Pledge Arena which towers over the Vera Project. I wrote about this show here.
The Walkmen @ the Showbox, Seattle
I'd been approaching 00s bands getting back together with increasing trepidation. The shows have all been at least fine, but I think my nostalgia for seeing a lot of these bands was more about what it felt like at the time and--this is on me--it does not feel like that now. The Walkmen really seemed like they were thrilled to be playing together again though and that joy was contagious. Contagious enough that I had to catch myself and remember I was pushing 42, not 24. I wrote about this show here.
boygenius with Carly Rae Jepsen, and Illuminati Hotties @ PNE Amphitheatre, Vancouver
It's still very fun to see a band that the vast majority of the crowd absolutely adores. I wrote about this show here.
Lingua Ignota with Chat Pile @ the Rickshaw, Vancouver
This whole show was dark and loud and weird and wonderful. It's the kind of thing I would've crammed into the Emergency Room or some other quasi-legal venue to see 10 or 15-years ago and it was awesome that they packed a 600 seater instead. Chat Pile put out one of my favourite records of 2022 and managed to translate the dense, heavy vibes of God's Country to a live setting.
There's no other way I can think of to describe Lingua Ignota than powerful. Kristin Hayter's been quoted calling her songs "survivor anthems" and her performance was simultaneously deeply captivating and deeply uncomfortable. Musically, and artistically it was incredible, but it also felt unsettlingly voyeuristic to watch someone express the pain of past abuses on stage with such raw emotion.
It was the last tour for her Lingua Ignota songs with Hayter explaning that "this music has been excruciating to perform, and I know that what is healthiest for me is to stop performing it." It was a privilege to experience her doing it for one of the last times.
Miya Folick @ the Rio, Vancouver
I've fallen in love with a lot of Miya Folick songs over the last decade or so and she played exactly zero of the ones that came out before her most recent LP, but this show still rocked. Folick can really wail when she feels like it. And while there's less of that on Roach, it was still a treat to hear her sing live for the first time.
now playing: most of this stuff up there
