Tuesday, December 27, 2022
going once, going twice, now i'm sold

Here's some music I loved this year.

Albums/EPs:

Plains - I Walked With You A Ways

Katie Crutchfield and Jess Williamson channel some of the most classic country, but also fully embrace their love of 90s stars like the Chicks and Shania while bringing out the very best in each other (which is saying a lot). I don't think they'd ever made music together before this, but it sounds like they've been attached at the hip for years.

billy woods - Aethiopes/Church

Incredible beats, incredible bars, and enough of both to stretch across two incredible albums in one year. 

Chat Pile - God's Country

We're far removed from the days when my weekends would revolve around going to the Emergency Room (the venue, not the hospital), but it turns out that I still love bands that sound like they think Big Black should be louder. I can't wait to see them in February. Although, I responsibly wear ear plugs to shows now, so I won't have tinnitus for 2-days afterwards.

joyride! - Miracle Question

I'm a sucker for this kind of pop and punk, but not pop-punk and very emotional, but also not emo shit.

Martha - Please Don't Take Me Back

10 huge hooks (plus one little piano interlude) packed into an economical 35-minutes.

Why Bonnie - 90 In November

I think it's really fucking rude that their tour with Sun June isn't coming to Vancouver and it's on a Tuesday in Seattle.

Westside Gunn - 10

Westside Gunn is a helluva rapper, but he's really next level as a curator and 10 puts the latter skill on display. Stove God Cooks shows up enough that it could just as easily be his Reasonable Drought follow-up. There's a track with Busta, Raekwon, and Ghostface. There's a Griselda posse cut produced by the Alchemist to close out things out. There's Run the Jewels (turns out I actually like them when they're not rapping over a recording of a transformer being strangled) and A$AP Rocky guest spots. And there's Black Star absolutely throwing down over an S tier Conductor Williams beat.

Jeff Rosenstock and Laura Stevenson - Still Young

Laura Stevenson is my favourite singer and I fucking love Neil, so I can listen to this (and their last EP) on a loop.

Lande Hekt - House Without A View

I'm still waiting for a new Muncie Girls record, but I will take these Lande Hekt solo records that sound like Muncie Girls records.

Spoon - Lucifer on the Sofa

There was a long time where, for some reason, if you'd asked me about my favourite bands, Spoon wouldn't come up. But they just kept on putting out great records and rolling through town and putting on great shows. They're still doing it and in my old age, I've finally stopped taking it for granted.

Songs:

billy woods, Boldy James, Gabe 'Nandez - "Sauvage"

It's fucked up to be on a rap song and spit out a verse that's more cerebral than Boldy James', but billy woods continues to be on another level. I'm not sure if it counts as a hook if it's really just a coda, but Gabe 'Nandez sounds cool as hell doing it, so who cares.

Chat Pile - "Why?"

This song would sound heavy handed if it weren't for the fact that you can walk around downtown in basically any major city in North America and the lyrics should be drilling themselves into your brain. Why do people have to live outside?

Ethel Cain - "American Teenager"

Like a Lana Del Rey song if it made you pump you fist instead of stare at your feet. This made Obama's year end list too, so now Barry and I have a second thing in common besides thinking it's cool to blow up Yemeni pine nut farmers with a drone. Oh sorry, I mean, we have one thing in common now.

TF, Roc Marciano, Mephux, Conway the Machine - "Olathe"

Marci does double duty with the production and an incredible verse and everyone comes correct, but also I'm an idiot and I crack up at the Nems/"bing bong" Conway line every time.

End It - "New Wage Slavery"

No war but class war.

Angel Olsen - "Ghost On"

Every year it seems like there's one Angel Olsen song that really gets me and this year it's this one.

GloRilla - "FNF (Let's Go)"

Song of the summer. Let's goooooooooooo

Westside Gunn and Black Star - "Peppas"

I don't really want to get into all the other shit they've been up to, but Black Star are still very good at rapping.

LCD Soundsystem - "New Body Rhumba"

Turns out James Murphy is still pretty good at this.

billy woods - "Pollo Rico"

The beat is absolutely bonkers--I don't think it's actually a Radiohead sample, but it sure sounds like it--and billy woods seems to have an endless stream of bars. I've loved hip hop so much since Rap Traxx 2, but I can't think of much that I've loved more than the last couple years of billy woods projects.

FIDLAR - "Sand On The Beach"

The Blink 182 comeback single would've sounded like this if they could still write songs.

Fontaines DC - "Jackie, Down the Line"

They've always been able to write a hook, but this one's a proper choon, if you know what I'm sayin'

JID, 21 Savage, and Baby Tate - "Surround Sound"

I wasn't not going to get taken in by the "Ms. Fat Booty" interpolation. 

Pusha T - "Diet Coke"

Turns out you only need to rap about one thing if you're really, really good at it.

TaTa, Kyle Richh, Jenn Carter, Dee Billz, Jay Gelato, Miah Kenzo - "41 Bop"

I'm a sucker for a posse cut and this one goes hard. As a child of the 90s, I default to that golden age sounding New York boom bap stuff, but there's some serious shit coming from all these NY drill kids. I love how they flip the "Jesus Walks" beat and even though I'm old as hell, I still think that Stevie Wonder line in Miah Kenzo's verse is funny as hell.

Craig Finn - "Messing with the Settings"

Craig Finn's written enough songs that mention eulogies, it was about time that he wrote one that is one (a fake one though, of course).

Blondshell - "Kiss City"

This one starts pretty slow and it's catchy enough, before exploding in the last third in a way that just dug it's way into my brain.

Taylor Swift - "Bigger Than the Whole Sky"

In the age of Spotify--especially if you're Taylor Swift, someone who actually makes boatloads of money from Spotify--I don't really get why some of the songs only make the bonus edition of the album, but this one's one hell of a bonus song. Musically, it sounds like what she actually wanted to do on Lover and lyrically, it avoids any "sexy baby" moments. I don't really consider myself a "Swifty" (Swiftie?), but when she's good, she's real good.

GloRilla and Cardi B - "Tomorrow 2"

Cardi's my favourite Bernie Bro and she goes hard as fuck on this song. It's a nice little co-sign for rap's breakout star of the year from someone who remains one of rap's biggest stars even though she hasn't put out an album or even a mixtape in 4-years.

Grace Ives - "Lullaby"

Every once in awhile you let Spotify play and it starts spinning some track you don't know and it's a bop instead of some garbage that ends up on your Wrapped because they keep feeding it to you.

Shows:

Bikini Kill w/Table Sugar - September 11th @ The Capitol Theater, Olympia, Washington

This show was originally scheduled for March 13th, 2020 and it was worth the 2+ year wait. But really, I've been waiting to see Bikini Kill from the first time I heard "Rebel Girl," when they'd already been defunct for a couple of years. Was there a big nostalgia factor? For sure. But they sounded like they'd never left at all. Unfortunately, there's still an urgency to a lot of what's being screamed in those 25-year-old songs, so it's good to have them back, even if you kinda wish they weren't so relevant in 2022.

Phoebe Bridgers - August 20th @ The Orpheum, Vancouver, BC

I was in the second last row and it was really hard to see Phoebe, but the energy at this show was really something else. There are so many bands that I fell in love with at 15, or 20, or 25-years-old and while I don't really connect to new acts like that anymore, it felt great to be in a room with a bunch of kids who were seeing one of their bands. Joy's contagious and it was nice to be surrounded by it.

Freddie Gibbs - May 3rd @ The Commodore, Vancouver, BC

Me and Freddie Kane are about the same age, but it sure seemed like we were the only ones at the Commodore that have to choose the second age bracket in survey dropdown menus, so there was an energy that was similar to that Phoebe Bridgers show... except for drug rap. There's a handful of MCs that can credibly lay claim to "greatest working rapper" and Gibbs is one.

LCD Soundsystem - December 13th @ Brooklyn Steel, Brooklyn, NY

11 1/2 years ago, I flew across the continent and went to NYC for the first time to see one of LCD Soundsystem's "last" shows with my friend Becky. It was my sole reason for going--I had to see them one last time. This year, it was more convenience. I was in Philly already and it's a pretty short train ride to the city, so why not? Becky's since moved to Toronto, but surprised me with a phone call reply to my text "it's weird to be in New York and not be bugging you about hanging out after work" to let me know she was in town too, so we met up for drinks and talked about the show (amongst other things). A lot's changed over the last decade, but turns out James, Nancy, and co are still pretty good live. I was about twenty times less drunk this go 'round, for better or worse.

Ethel Cain - August 21st @ The WISE, Vancouver, BC

Turns out nature's not really healing very well, but it was still fun to solo a show for an act that I didn't care a ton about going in, but came out of as a convert--just like the old days.

It was nice to have to pare my list of favourite shows down for the first time in 2-years too.

now playing: all that stuff up there

Friday, November 04, 2022
all we want from you are the kicks you've given us

Thursday, September 15, 2022
i read it in a fanzine/it wasn't even in/some big dumb glossy magazine

Speaking of nostalgia tours, I'm pretty stoked for this. Tickets are on sale here with the presale code MSPUSA22.

now playing: Manic Street Preachers - Yes

Monday, August 22, 2022
say it like you mean it with your fists for once

I like Phoebe Bridgers a lot and I think Ethel Cain is pretty great, but I've also seen some bands/artists I've loved for a long time in the last year: Spoon, Spiritualized, Freddie Gibbs, etc. And honestly, while both lives shows were great for what they were, it wasn't the performances or the music that put them over the top of artists whose songs I've obsessed over at different times of my life. 

But man, it was so great to be in a crowd that was just amped to be there. That's not meant as a slight against the crowds at any of the aforementioned shows. And if you could call it a "problem" I was certainly part of that problem. But a bunch of 30-50 year-olds watching Spoon just don't have the same energy as mostly 20-somethings (and at the Phoebe Bridgers show, some teenagers too).

I knew Phoebe Bridgers was significantly more popular than when she rolled into Vancouver on the Boygenius tour, but was pretty shocked to log onto Ticketmaster first thing in the morning for the presale and get a pair of tickets in the second last row of the Orpheum. I was even more surprised to see a friend's Instagram story of her playing a massive outdoor venue in Montreal that I later found out was the same venue they use for Osheaga. Needless to say, everyone who showed up last night (and I'm assuming tonight as well) really wanted to be there. And it fucking ruled.

From the walkout (which was soundtracked by "Down with the Sickness") onwards the crowd went absolutely nuts. And basically every person in the place stood the entire time--at the Orpheum. I'm sure if there was someone loud and out of tune right by me I might be thinking differently, but it was also incredible to hear Phoebe joined by a chorus of voices swelling up around every word she sang. And, hey, if you're worried that the kids might not be alright, they drowned her out during "Smoke Signals" for the "fuck the cops" line.

The performance itself was great. Every song was accompanied by a beautiful pop-up book style animation that unfolded behind the band, Bridgers owned the stage and, much to the crowd's excitement, the floor as she wandered around the floor right before the main set ended. 

I know a lot less about Hayden Anhedönia bka Ethel Cain. I know I think "American Teenager" is going to end up as one of my favourite songs of the year, but I've only been going to shows where I like the artist enough to risk a bout of Covid for, and one song generally doesn't pass the bar. That said, I just got over a bout of 'rona, so when they released more tickets for tonight's show earlier this week, I snapped one up mostly out of curiosity.

She was clearly a little green, which makes sense! And the band was pretty sparse--just vocals, guitar, and drums, plus some prerecorded backing tracks. But the thing that stuck out was just how much the vast majority of the crowd was connecting to the songs. 

I assumed that "American Teenager" was the hit--the song you save for right before or for the encore itself, but they tore right through it as the second song. Not that that mattered, as much like the night before, people were there for every song. It was actually "Crush" from last year's Inbred EP that got the biggest pop, with the crowd gleefully shouting along with "I owe you a black eye and two kisses/Tell me when you wanna come and get 'em."

Both shows were worth checking out in and of themselves, but thinking back 10, 15, 20 years about how formative some music felt for me and just how much I loved it, really made me happy to be there. It's not that I don't love music now--I absolutely do. But the things you fall in love with when you're 20 just hit a lot different than the things that you decide you like or even that you're still in love with at 40.

I'm never going to see Sonic Youth for the first time again (and then run down the street to see Wilco for the first time). Or Sleater-Kinney in a little college campus event room. Or whatever other things I still hold dear after all these years, but it was a blast to be around a bunch of people who were making their own memories.

now playing: The Hold Steady - Your Little Hoodrat Friend

Sunday, August 07, 2022
brain burner

Thursday, July 21, 2022
tried to fuck me, called me a liar/ so I shot him in the head, set the house on fire.

Wednesday, January 05, 2022
going, going, gone

 Here's some music I loved this year:

Albums:

• Laura Stevenson - s/t
• Lucy Dacus - Home Video
• Faye Webster - I Know I'm Funny haha
• Squirrel Flower - Planet (i)
• Japanese Breakfast - Paprika
• Mach Hommy - Pray for Haiti
• Boldy James and the Alchemist - Bo Jackson/Super Tecmo Bo
• The Hold Steady - Open Door Policy
• Cassandra Jenkins - An Overview of Phenomenal Nature
• Wednesday - Twin Plagues