The Conquest of Gaul: December 2018

Friday, December 21, 2018

The Best Albums of 2018: Albums of the Year

The following artists released works that were truly above and beyond in the field of music. These are the people and albums that may define a generation, a time, perhaps a whole decade. No one had better music than our top three artists this year, and after you listen to them, I'm certain you'll agree.

The order of this list was the most I've ever struggled over one of these, so enjoy...

Albums of the Year

3. Janelle
Monáe
Dirty Computer
Pop/R&B : Listen

Janelle Monáe is the most talented, the most interesting, and the most extraordinary person in the universe. But apart from being The Special, she's also really great at writing catchy pop and R&B songs that impart social consciousness, personal empowerment, and self-aggrandizing that comes off as purely earned confidence. She is the only person who could right a song about partying in limousines and make it something you're supposed to learn from. She is a national treasure, and a limitless well of ability that seemingly has no end to its breadth.

Dirty Computer is the first album Monáe has created without putting on a persona, outside of her ever-expanding Metropolis musical universe. And while I was a bit disappointed that we wouldn't see more of the creative pool that spawned "Tightrope," "Cold War," "Primetime," and "Dance Apocalyptic," we did get "Take a Byte," the juiciest beat in the history of beats or juice. We also get an absolutely brilliant collaboration with Grimes on the shade-throwing/girl power anthem "Pynk" --(as an aside, I loved this duo when they teamed up on Grimes' Art Angels single "Venus Fly," and hope they keep it up well into the future)-- and the monster rap of "Django Jane." This is a gift we don't deserve.

Not enough can be said about Monáe's lyricism here, or anywhere really. She deftly and expertly crafts rhymes, raps, and gorgeous ballads with equal relish and every singer everywhere is better for it. "I Like That" is one of the most striking and enlightening looks into Monáe's own backstory--from growing up poor in Atlanta, to her troubles at school--and how she became a badass super queen because of it. And on the previously mentioned "Django Jane" she comes so correct that, somewhere, Big Boi is fainting. She hits her beats so hardcore that you'd think her life actually depended on getting all those thoughts out.

The artistry in songwriting is also incomparable to anyone else in R&B right now. The funk put into "Jane's Dream," a song that only exists as a transition blurb, is unnecessary, but showcases how important consistency and storytelling is to the artist. The way the chorus of "Screwed" blends into "Django Jane" is so perfect you could listen to just those 10 seconds and get enough of the song to be satisfied. The way "Pynk" fades so that just Monáe's beautifully delicate vocals remain to highlight the equally delicate subject matter (I'll let you figure it out). The backing vocal loop on "I Like That" mimicking the best of 60s Motown. These are just examples pulled from dozens of moments on Dirty Computer that show Monáe is a bonafide star, a talent with no equal.

2. Idles
Joy as an Act of Resistance
Punk rock : Listen

From the opening moments of Idles' second album, you understand that the world is headed in the wrong direction. The industrial bass drones aren't here to welcome you to the promised land, but rather to warn you that the next 42 minutes are penance, a flagellation for all of humanity's sins. As "Colossus" morphs from its Jesus Lizard opener to its Black Flag conclusion, however, you understand that the gauntlet you will run is not like any other. This is going to be punishing and exciting at the same time.

"Brylcreem, creatine, and a bag of Charlie Sheen" begins the album's most successful entry into modern culture, "Never Fight a Man with a Perm," which apart from having one of the most amazing titles of any song ever, is as concise a treatise on Idles' influences as possible: there's post-punk guitars, punk lyrics, noise rock drums; and then the transition to a 3/4 chorus is straight out of a shoegaze manual. The song also is one of the best examples of Joe Talbot's poetry--"you look like a walking thyroid / you're not a man, you're a gland," he yells at his target, alt-right gym bros (if that wasn't incredibly obvious)--there's no obfuscation here.

And the examples of his wordsmithery can be found on every song: "this 'snowflake' is an avalanche" from "I'm Scum," "look at this card I bought because I love you" on "Love Song" (which, P.S. is a terrible love song, not to be played at weddings), "the mask of masculinity is a mask that's wearing me" on "Samaraitans" (which also has the play "I kissed a boy and I liked it" screamed at fever pitch, maybe the best vocal performance on the whole album), and "I go outside and I feel free / 'cause I smash mirrors and fuck TV" on "Television."

Idles created one of the best and harshest albums of 2017 with their first full-length Brutalism. Never before has an album so lived up to its name as that one. And it too was exactly what we needed to hear. But if Brutalism was the best at describing 2017, Joy as an Act of Resistance is the best at RESPONDING to 2018. Here we find Idles at their loudest, their most discordant, their fastest and their most furious. Every sound is dripping with glorious reverb and harsh, angular production. One of the few to wear their influences so obviously on their sleeve and yet still sound original, Idles fills the space with nasty, greasy textures culled straight from Swans and late-career Neu. Everything has only improved with their increasing anger.

"Rottweiler" is perhaps, and I don't say this lightly, the greatest closing track in the history of rock music. It is beyond normal musical consumption. Loud and angry certainly, but what punk music isn't? But the end, how the suite speeds up, changes key, becomes more degraded in texture. It changes from angry to apocalyptic, from loud to brutal, from fast to warped. This song will break your mind. But... it keeps going...

Keep going...

Smash it...

Ruin it...

Destroy the world...

1. Mitski
Be the Cowboy
Art pop : Listen

Two years ago, in the process of trying to distill all of 2016's great albums down to 25, or whatever arbitrary number I was aiming for then, I remember listening to this album, Puberty 2, by a Japanese-American woman that sounded, just strange. Somehow I liked it, I still can't explain the experience of it the first time, but it was like hearing all your favorite bands play over top of each other that, by pure coincidence, made an entirely new, coherent sound that was greater than the sum of its parts.

It's 2018, and Mitski has returned, and in that intervening time she honed, crafted, narrowed, specialized, and perfected every aspect of her uniquely unwieldy, undefinable sound. Be the Cowboy isn't just an opus, it defies explanation, it defies awe. Pop music shouldn't be this complicated. Art shouldn't be this listenable. What is this? There's a love ballad that has random industrial noise, a synthpop anthem that doesn't have a rhyme scheme, a country song that becomes an ambient drone, and a Billboard-charting single where she sings the word "nobody" over and over for a minute straight. What is this? The most depressing themes are given the most upbeat music while the most beautiful testaments to love and its eternity are played as dirges. What is this?

The major points of the album are "Old Friend," "A Pearl," "Nobody," "Washing Machine Heart," and "Two Slow Dancers," and we shall go through all of them. "Old Friend" is a folk ballad describing two exes who want to stay friends (or perhaps never got over each other) meeting in secret to...talk--just talk; "Meet me at Blue Diner / I'll have coffee and talk about nothing" Mitski sings, her feelings so delicate that a whisper would destroy them.

"A Pearl" has maybe the best poetic imagery of this or many years. "I fell in love with a war" Mitski croons, describing that temptation to return to an unhealthy relationship just so she can try to save him, "and nobody told me that it ended." Now in a new relationship, her need to be in the toxins is a beautiful mess, "it left a pearl in my head, and I roll it around every night, just to watch it glow." This is all played over a bombastic guitar and horn combination like arena rock, pointing to the necessity of the argument.

"Nobody," written while Mitski was traveling abroad alone, is probably the most descriptive image of loneliness and isolation in popular music in the modern era. "My god, I'm so lonely, so I open the window, to hear sounds of people;" she only wants to hear people, because maybe that is enough to satisfy the need for human connection. When she finally realizes nothing will end her solitude, all she can do is weep "nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody" over and over and over, because, well, there's nobody.

"Washing Machine Heart" is played for straight synthpop, even Italo-disco, with a Vangelis-esque repetition, 808 clap track and everything. But the fact that Mitski doesn't even attempt to create a verse structure of any kind is as maddening as it is inspiring, her run-on sentences giving Faulkner a run for his money. How is this even musically possible? She doesn't fall into anything resembling a normal pattern until the chorus, half of which is just solfege. This woman is impossible.

And then we end our journey with "Two Slow Dancers," the dictionary of human feeling condensed into a song. Is it literal? Are the dancers Mitski and her interest at a high school reunion? If it is, it's even sadder than the metaphor. Two people who missed their chance at true love with each other in their youth, now aged past the point where they can reconcile that fact, forever trapped in lives apart from each other, except this...one perfect moment, where they can dance with each other in the empty gym, the smell of wood and dust transporting them back to when "it would be 100 times easier". But that time is gone.

Mitski dabbles in everyday love, picks at loneliness, but her main concern is time, and how it ruins everything. Those dancers were meant to be together, but they never will be. That washing machine heart will never be used. That pearl will never go away, the oyster only adds to it. The Blue Diner with the old friend is only a temporary escape. Her thesis is most clearly explained on the elegy "A Horse Named Cold Air," which is at once her starkest instrumentation and Mitski at her most experimental: "I thought I'd traveled a long way, but I had circled the same old sin." Time's arrow neither stands still nor reverses. Now is now, it can never be a long time ago.

And that's it everyone! The Second Baltimore Music Festival has come to a close, but here's to a better 2019, and the great music of 2018!

If our Albums of the Year aren't enough to hold you over, check out our Honorable Mentions or this year's amazing Runners Up.

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

The Best Albums of 2018: Runners Up

The following artists and their works were excellent and more than worthy of a listen, or several listens. They proved to be exemplary beyond the other totally great artists in our Honorable Mentions section.

And so we begin...

Runners Up listed alphabetically

Courtney Barnett
Tell Me How You Really Feel
Rock : Listen

Courtney Barnett is not afraid of you. Not of your judgement, or your physicality. Not of your loudness, your ignorance, or your calls for "Pedestrian at Best part 2." After a stint with Kurt Vile where she exorcised all her folk demons, Barnett returns with a glorious, fuzzed-out ode to self-empowerment, and a devious look at modern life. Picking up where she left off on Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, she plays the guitar like there's an urgent need to get it out, and her songwriting is as visceral and crunchy as ever. Tell Me How You Really Feel proves that the best artists don't have a sophomore slump, they just power through. Barnett's idiosyncratic brand of Aussie-surfer rock is reflected in both how relaxed she is talking about serious themes, as well as her obvious accent, and it makes the album feel like a Melbourne breeze. Truly a great time for parties or for arguing with the patriarchy, grab your six-string and let's march!

Father John Misty
God's Favorite Customer
Folk rock : Listen

Joshua Tillman's music as Father John Misty has previously been almost oppressively soft, like being trapped in the plush blanket that's slowly suffocating you. And while I didn't particularly care for the musicality of his last effort, Pure Comedy, which was released just last year, it did mark a dark-yet-intriguing turning point in his lyricism. With God's Favorite Customer, he's finally got it all in one package. His sarcasm is biting, the music is catchy and original, the satire is hilarious, the sounds are infectious. "Date Night" alone could take an entire article to describe, its harsh production makes the guitar almost too clear, like a knife made of ice; and the lyrics are so intensely sardonic--Tillman takes on the persona of a pick-up artist/men's rights activist hitting on a woman at a bar--he could win a rap battle that would simultaneously light his opponent's hair on fire. It turns out that God's favorite is brutally honest, meta, and profoundly frustrating.

Low
Double Negative
Dream pop : Listen

Have you ever been in awe of beauty? Experiencing Double Negative is like seeing a statue of Mary cry: humbling, confusing, exhilarating. Everything you once questioned seems perfectly clear, and all of your doubts leave like butterflies at morning. Low has been making delicate, minimalist pop since the 90s, but until now they've eschewed electronics as though they feared an infectious disease. Their embracing of them here is not only revelatory, it's revolutionary. The low buzzes and thrums obfuscate any true song structure, leading to a meditative drone that only serves as the silver platter on which to serve Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker's vocals, which float like light beams through an open tomb. If this album doesn't reduce you to tears, it's because you have long since given up on humanity. This is proof that there are still beautiful, new things in the world.

Kacey Musgraves
Golden Hour
Country/Pop : Listen

Country, as a modern genre, is pretty devoid of new ideas. So when someone who has been almost solely responsible for the best writing in the industry decides to release her own work? Well that turns heads, and rightfully so. Kacey Musgraves has been in country for years without much fanfare, more keen to take up the booth than the mic, but finally shines through on Golden Hour. Technically her fourth album (bet you didn't know she actually had that many), it includes standard country fare like "Slow Burn" and "Butterflies", ballads like the beautiful closer "Rainbow," and "High Horse" is a straight-up disco song. This much variation isn't supposed to travel Country's halls, much less stop in each room to offer coffee and dessert. The warmth and congeniality that burst through every note is so inviting, like wrapping yourself up in front of the fire.

Parquet Courts
Wide Awake!
Punk/Dance-punk : Listen

"And fuck Tom Brady!" A. Savage screams at the end of album opener "Total Football," a scathing indictment of toxic masculinity and divisiveness in politics. The song calls to mind the better Clash songs that hide a deeper meaning behind fun rhythms and silly-sounding lyrics. Of course, most of the band's hatred toward TB12 is more related to their New York background than any sort of problem he may or may not represent, but the line is a great segue into the strange and entertaining world of Wide Awake!, Parquet Courts' sixth album (if you include that one they released as Parkay Quarts), and their best since 2012's Light Up Gold. The 38-minute runtime is so overly-listenable and bouncy you would forget that half of it is meant to impart some kind of meaning. Almost more brilliant than each song's writing are the transitions from one to another; the album flows so seamlessly you'll wonder how you got to closer "Tenderness" without taking a breath, but that's all part of the genius.

Pusha T
Daytona
Hip hop : Listen

If you know rap, you know Kanye West almost always saves the best beats for...everyone else. While he has brilliant songs of his own, and even released his own brilliant album this year, Daytona is proof positive that the man is a born producer. And Pusha T is no slouch either, his rhymes here are punchier and meaner than ever, leaving only destruction in his wake as he skates over the inventive hooks. And when he's not harshing his haters, he's hating on the perpetrators of sexual violence that led to #metoo, while at the same time setting up a safe space for his features (another Kanye specialty: letting the feature have the best bar). The sounds here run the full gammit, from Kanye's typical soul and R&B samples, to the more familiar Pusha T bass drops and subwoofer blowouts, and all of them backup the rhymes perfectly--not too ostentatious, not too veiled, but just right. Daytona was the first to be released of Kanye's 21-minute trifecta (the others being his own Ye and his collaboration with Kid Cudi, Kids See Ghosts), where each song is straight to the point, with nary a superfluous bridge or extra verse in sight. --An aside: Pusha drops a line about being as good as Dylon, the fictional Trinidadian rapper who "spits hot fire," made famous in Dave Chappelle's skit "Making the Band," and it's the most amazing moment in all of rap this year.-- Then there's "Infrared," which might have the best sample-loop hook in all of 2018, and is such a worthy last track that Drake had a whole diss track ghostwritten for him to respond to it.

Robyn
Honey
Electropop : Listen

Robyn's first album in eight years opens with a shimmering trail of synths, soon breaking into her usual beats, but these are different, more subtle, more tender. Honey is the culmination of nearly a decade of touring, writing, and more importantly to the narrative, life experience. It lacks the bombast and four-on-the-floor brashness of 2010's Body Talk, but it still contains all the closeness and vulnerability. Many of the beats are incredibly complex (not that Robyn shies away from complexity) as in the natural percussion of "Human Being," or the nearly experimental "Beach 2k20." She also doesn't forget to show you her roots on the disco-funk of "Because It's in the Music," probably the album's most upbeat and cheerful song. Robyn's voice flits over the lithe and fluid music while maintaining a feeling of timidity and reserve, still guarded after being hurt so many times. While elsewhere, like "Send to Robin Immediately," her singing soars, loud and proud, calling forth the spirit of Annie Lennox, an obvious influence, with both her gospel-style delivery and lyrical composition. And then, praise be, we have "Ever Again," the funkiest, sultriest, all-around greatest post-breakup song that's ever been made. If anyone can make being newly single sound fun, it's Robyn, and she steps into her role with a gusto and bravado that makes other pop stars wilt in her sun.

Sons of Kemet
Your Queen Is a Reptile
African jazz : Listen

Shocking news: I'm not a huge fan of jazz. But, every once in a while a new act will pop up that makes you wonder if maybe all those hipsters and beatniks might be on to something. One thing you'll notice right away is Sons of Kemet have their drums and percussion very forward, a change to jazz in general, unless you're listening to Buddy Rich, I guess. But the change is a welcome one, not only providing a much needed freshening of the genre, but also highlighting the band's African roots to great effect. No one will be able to accuse Your Queen Is a Reptile of being unoriginal. It also gets you to move; gone are the days of "listening to the notes they don't play"--the most condescending and pretentious notion in all of music--Sons of Kemet want everyone to party while they dazzle you with exemplary instrumentation and glorious lyricism. And while your queen (and by inference the Queen) may be a reptile, the Sons' queens are warrior women and civil right heroines: Ada Eastman, Harriet Tubman, Angela Davis, Yaa Asantewaa. The vocals, delivered by Michael Alec Anthony West and Josh Idehen, highlight their dissatisfaction with world leaders' distance from the African experience, from the refugee experience, from struggle, from hardship, from racism, from poverty. But in their telling, we are connected to each other, to true human interaction, to the power of people, to the joy of life, to hope, to light.

SOPHIE
Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides
Electronic : Listen

The opening of SOPHIE's debut album is a solemn, piano affair with a few electronic flourishes. It states the Scottish producer's thesis simply and beautifully. That sound...does not last. Almost immediately after "It's Okay to Cry," we are dropped in to a nightmare world of overblown bass, staggering synths, piercing percussion, harsh static, and near-Seussian world building delivered in both mocking falsetto and disturbing kidnapper-modulation. In fact, the next duo of songs, "Ponyboy" and "Faceshopping," are the two most hardcore songs you'll hear this year, easily crushing Death Grips' "Black Paint;" SOPHIE could open for Converge and probably upstage them. Now, Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides is not just random noise--far from it--when you are able to finally discern the song from the cacophony, you achieve a brief glimpse into the infinite possibilities of electronic music. And the album does calm down some from that opening salvo; "Is It Cold in the Water?" is both eerie and beautiful, with a synth pattern that epitomizes its namesake and a layered vocal performance that soothes as you drown in SOPHIE's sea. All that said, Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides defies traditional explanation--its sounds are too alien--but it is kooky with a hidden beauty, and it has what it takes to be an anthem for all the kooky people.

Kamasi Washington
Heaven and Earth
Contemporary jazz : Listen

2018 was pretty good to jazz. For the first time in a long time, albums from America's first original genre not only received widespread recognition (as opposed to hipsters and snobby purists), but sold/streamed well too. Kamasi Washington, for those who don't know, is a saxophonist and composer who is probably more well known from his contributions to Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly and Damn, Thundercat's Drunk, or Run the Jewels' RTJ3, than from his own music. But such a travesty is no longer acceptable. Heaven and Earth, Washington's sixth album (the first three are self-released so, you know, good luck), is by far his magnum opus. While 2015's The Epic lived up to its title, running almost 3 hours (!) and requiring three discs (!!) in physical copy, Heaven and Earth is not only easier on the phone battery, it's also tighter, more cohesive, and infinitely more listenable. This is the type of jazz you put on at a party to seem sophisticated, but with the added bonus of no one getting bored. Washington's extreme talent on the horn is showcased in great tracks "Can You Hear Him" and "The Psalmnist," while his tremendous composition skill is evident in every note. Along with Washington is a set of players that could be compared to the old greats--their set-ups and solos are brain melting. If you're looking to get into what is often considered a dead, or at the very least, esoteric, art form, Heaven and Earth is an amazing place to start.

Stay tuned, readers. Later this week, we'll be releasing our Albums of the Year listicle!

If our Runners Up aren't enough to hold you over, check out our Honorable Mentions!

Monday, December 17, 2018

The Best Albums of 2018: Honorable Mentions

Welcome to the second annual Baltimore Music Festival, where we listen to everything and then rank our favorite albums of the year. Just as last year, there are three categories:

Honorable Mention, where the largest number of albums end up, those that were fun, interesting, and definitely good enough to warrant a stream or two;

Runners Up, where seven to ten albums reside (depending on how generous we’re feeling), those that were excellent and of high enough quality to land on your shelves as physical copies, or at least purchased from iTunes/AmazonMusic/GooglePlay;

Albums of the Year, the top three albums, those that are truly transcendent, the ones you’ll be reminiscing about while your grandchildren won’t stop playing whatever passes for popular music in 2048.

Shall we begin?

Honorable Mentions listed alphabetically