#also imagine the fucking four part harmony on this. the arrangements would go INSANE

[peppersjam]

My Top 10 Albums of 2019

2019 presented me with a handful of incredible events and memories (I turned 30, I got married, etc.), while also serving me a big challenge (my partner is temporarily living on the other side of the country). In a poetic world, these things would have a significant impact on the music that I listened to and loved, but no, not really. This year is pretty on the nose for me, music-wise. Oh, except that I got really into Taylor Swift in the second half of the year.

Before we hop into boring Steve's boring top 10 list, let's revisit the 2018 list. The only album on the list that I barely listened to in 2019 was Cardi's Invasion of Privacy. Everything else gets at least semi-regular spins, although I'd elevate Historian, boygenius, and Big Red Machine above these others.

My biggest disappointment this year was Charli XCX's CHARLI, which is a solid album, but it didn't grab me nearly as much as Pop 2 did a couple years ago. It hasn't stuck in my rotation.

Runners up:

Bon Iver - "i,i" (I love it when I listen to it, but for some reason I'm not often compelled to listen to it)

Ariana Grande - "thank u, next" (Staple of early 2019, but fell off)

Carly Rae Jepsen - "Dedicated" (Great, but I'd rather listen to E•MO•TION)

Taylor Swift - "Lover" (Some true standout tracks, like Lover and Paper Rings, but too many cloyboys and CRJ rip-offs)

Weyes Blood - "Titanic Rising" (I could see this growing on me over the years, like a Radiohead record)

And the pre-2019 albums that should've made my respective yearly lists:

Beyoncé - "4" (2011)

Beyoncé - "BEYONCE" (2013)

Big Thief - "Capacity" (2017)

Big Thief - "Masterpiece" (2016)

Perfume Genius - "No Shape" (2017)

Snail Mail - "Lush" (2018)

Taylor Swift - "Red" (2012)

10. Big Thief – U.F.O.F

Early in the year, I "discovered" Big Thief. I don't know how I missed them before. Specifically, the song "Masterpiece" got right up in my brain and has been hanging out there since. Then Big Thief gave us U.F.O.F. which was yet another great Big Thief album. See #3 below.

9. Andrew Bird – My Finest Work Yet

Look, I'll stop putting Andrew Bird records on my end-of-year lists when he stops making them.

Andrew Bird turned a corner with the release of Are You Serious where he basically acknowledged that he was now going to work with other people and write scrutable songs. It was a good album, but My Finest Work Yet refines this Andrew Bird 2.0 and delivers some of his... finest work yet ("Sisyphus," "Manifest," "Olympians"). While I still prefer earlier Andrew Bird (A Nervous Tic Motion into Fake Palindromes into Measuring Cups... my gosh, that's 10 incredible minutes of music), I understand why he's moved on to something else.

8. JPEGMAFIA – All My Heroes Are Cornballs

I've been in a rap rut. Kanye is putting out self-indulgent gospel albums. Chance and Drake are boring now. JAY Z is working with the NFL.

But the rut is mostly a lack of imagination on my part. There's a lot of rap out there that hasn't made it through my naive filter, and I want to seek more of it out in 2020. Case in point: JPEGMAFIA. He's weird, political, funny... all the things that the aforementioned rappers aren't (or at least, aren't anymore). All My Heroes Are Cornballs is the most hypnotic rap album I've listened to in years. The glitchy beats and effortless flow makes it impossible to turn off mid-album.

7. BROCKHAMPTON – Ginger

GINGER is a proper follow-up to the SATURATION trilogy. While Iridescence had some good tracks on it, the overall experience was jarring (not without reason, given what the group was going through with Ameer). GINGER reads (ok, plays) like an album in a way that the Saturations never did. While it may be spiritually linked to the Satursation, it's a complete departure sonically. Even though it's more constrained and less bombastic than their hits from that era, it feels much bigger and, ahem, More Important. That might not be to the taste of some of their fans, but I'm happy to have both versions of BROCKHAMPTON in my music library.

6. Lana Del Rey – Norman Fucking Rockwell!

Music publications couldn't get over the fact that on NFR!, Lana, yes LANA DEL REY, was wordsmithing at a high level. Is it that hard to believe that someone would become a better poet as they gained more life experiences, inching closer to the mystical 10,000 hours? Some of the praise may have gone a little overboard (and, frankly, seems rooted in a narrow, misogynistic view of Who Can Do Music Good™️™️™️), but I agree with the underlying principle of the praise: that this is a collection of well written and well performed songs. It has my favorite album closer of the year, "Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have - but I Have It." I get chills just thinking about it.

5. Clairo – Immunity

I enjoyed my first listen.

On my second listen, I wondered if it was maybe too simple. I didn't listen again for several months.

But then, when I was working from Pittsburgh the week before Christmas, I listened again. And I couldn't stop listening. It's simpler music than many of the albums on this list, but it appeals to me for the same reason I had a fixation with Snail Mail's Lush this year: it's incredible that songs that sound so "simple" (and I truly do not mean simple in an insulting way) can still be different than anything we've heard before, and can still transfix us in new ways. Behold ye, the power of combinatorics!

4. Vampire Weekend – Father of the Bride

Channel Orange to Blonde was 4 years. There's nothing you can do to get your favorite artists to make music faster. There's some beauty in that... that if an artist is financially successful enough, they don't need to rush.

Modern Vampires of the City to Father of the Bride was 6 years (i.e., 20% of my lifetime). But at least there are no duds here, and "Harmony Hall" might sneak into my hypothetical favorite-songs-of-all-time pantheon.

3. Big Thief – Two Hands

Oh, but then a few months later, Big Thief gave us another album. They started working on it right after they finished U.F.O.F, which tracks based on every interview I've read with Adrianne Lenker. She talked about the insane touring and album release schedule they've been on in the past four years, but her point wasn't "I'm getting tired," but rather "let's see if I can do this forever." I saw them play at The Fillmore after they released Two Hands and I got the sense that Adrianne has to make and perform music. She was uncomfortable engaging in the standard nearly-identical pleasantries that artists share with the audience. She was shy. She was surprised to find that we were hanging on her every word and chord. It was relatable. She's the closest to a genius I've seen in an indie rock band in the last several years, although I'm sure she'd hate anyone calling her that.

That genius produced Two Hands, an affecting indie rock record that practically demands that you close your eyes because you need to experience it and only it.

2. Tyler, the Creator – IGOR

This year, I listened to IGOR over and over again. The hooks, verses, beats, and vibe are all infectious. Boring Steve says "hey, look, it's just a great album." I don't have a deeper thought about it. I eagerly await Tyler's next project.

1. Nilüfer Yanya – Miss Universe

This year, like 2009 a decade ago, was an exciting year to be an indie rock fan. Vampire Weekend and Bon Iver cemented their elder ("elder") statesperson statuses, Big Thief came into their own as a true force of nature, and acts like Clairo and Nilüfer made me extremely jazzed about the Ghost of Indie Future.

Nilüfer has a unique and delightful voice that punches through some really fun songwriting and arrangements. Like, what a dumb, awesome lyric:

Although I cannot tell if I'm paranoid

Or it's all in my head, it's all in my head

Miss Universe is her debut full-length album, and it's a lovable and off-kilter thesis statement for what I assume will be a lovable and off-kilter music career. I can better explain why some of the other albums on this list are great, but suffice it to say, the system rewards unique performances.

[omegatheunknown]

...In which I thoroughly (yet naively) survey Metallica.

More than a month ago I finished reading Masters of Doom, which in addition to being an interesting history of PC Gaming’s pioneering id Software and stirring nostalgia about the halcyon days of 90s first-person shooters, made frequent and compelling reference to the influence of heavy metal on the aesthetic sensibilities of John Romero (though he’s ultimately more of a Dokken fan, which I can’t speak to.) Listening to the actual soundtracks of Doom, Doom II, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D led me straight into a curious survey of Megadeth, then Metallica, briefly Slayer, Anthrax, back to Metallica, Exodus, Sepultura, Suicidal Tendencies, Overkill, back to Megadeth and then back Metallica, over and over Metallica. I am listening to Metallica now. 

Can’t say I’m sure why. Without meaning to sound condescending, I’d always assumed if thrash metal appealed to me, it might have happened when I was a teenager. Perhaps environmental factors were at play, but at my most susceptible and angst filled years, the garage rock revival was in full swing, as was something of a (perceived? I will never know if this was a widespread thing. I wasn’t nearly as online then) grunge renaissance. Grunge was locked in as tonal and aesthetic sensibility and my friends’ bands were grungy pop punk with a bit of emo sprinkled on top. As I said, the questionable excesses of youth, complete with pretension about what is good (The Stooges, The Pixies, The Strokes and NIRVANA) and what is silly and ridiculous (Nu-Metal’s relative strength and the silliness of bands like Korn and Slipknot did not help Metal’s esteem.) A respect but low level of enthusiasm for Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden didn’t manifest anything serious any time in the last fifteen years. Thrash’s underground roots put some doubt in the mind re: whatever vague supposition my teenaged peers and I had about the opposing forces of punk and metal (though I do remember actual arguments with a fan of what I described as ornate but soulless arpeggios who thought PJ Harvey’s oeuvre was unsophisticated and boring.) There’s a lot of grunge’s DNA in early Metallica. Which kind of makes it all the more bewildering that I haven’t been here before. All that wasted time listening to Mudhoney! Also, not to spoil the ending, how bewildering it is that Metallica absolutely fell to pieces in the 90s.    Kill ‘em All is a stupidly exciting record. Had I been around to hear it in the 80s, it would’ve melted my brain. I assume if I heard it in the 00s it would’ve done the same. I think part of the issue with Metallica is that when I was a precocious kid/tween they were not nearly at their best and the only second hand exposure you get to a well-established but no longer thriving band is their hits, and even post-survey I don’t particularly care for ‘One’ or ‘Enter Sandman.’ (Then again, at the height of Metallica v Napster you’d think young Zaq would’ve been a little more curious... and those mp3s would’ve be right there...) Anyway, Kill ‘em All: devastating and fun. Imagine if Mötley Crüe was ever any good (were they?) No, that’s insane. And gives a person very little to go on. High energy from the jump, utter shred. Reminiscent only of a slower, hopelessly outclassed version of the same thing, which is to say I think if you slowed a track like The Four Horsemen down you’d end up with a dreary sounding Sabbath number but why would you want that? (A different day perhaps.) Definitely the sexiest of the Metallica albums, just a little bit of the electricity of hair metal bleeding in at the edges, though the most wicked excesses are in flurries of virtuosity. “Bass solo, take one” -- much as I enjoy ‘Hit the Lights,’ ‘Jump in the Fire,’ ‘Seek & Destroy’ (and other imperative calls to action,) I think the bass solo ‘(Pulling Teeth)’ that splits the album is my favourite bit. Ride the Lightning -- actually, speaking of Cliff Burton, he of the improbable bass solos -- supposedly he planted the seeds of music theory/actually thinking about the music in his bandmates’ heads, leading to acoustic guitars, curious instrumentals and harmonies winding their way into the sophomore album. This probably also led them to getting way ahead of themselves and veering out of their lane, but in the meantime, Ride the Lightning is a lot more varied to listen to than their debut. Yes, it continues to wail, but it wails in new and exciting ways. ‘Creeping Death’ and ‘Trapped Under Ice’ are the choicest tracks. ‘Fade to Black’ is a pretty good song by the standards of a power ballad and is a nice dimension to add to the album but I’d point out that it portends Metallica’s inevitable doom.  Master of Puppets is considered (nearly anywhere I’ve looked) the undisputed champion of thrash metal albums. I would kinda love to have a dissenting opinion here, but it feels impossible to deny. It is stunningly heavy and loud and kinetic. It’s definitely a twin to its predecessor, they share a layout, right up to track 4 being a power ballad. As a set they’re the Pokemon Red/Blue of Thrash. Anything other than the subtle evolution in the playing and production would’ve been weird as hell -- album number three and they nearly perfect the genre. On the subject of Metallica’s power ballads, I’d make the point that ‘Welcome Home (Sanitarium)’ is the pinnacle of their efforts -- gorgeous and grotesque in equal measure. And like Ride the Lightning follows ‘Fade to Black’ with an extra-heavy track, ‘Sanitarium’ is followed by the vicious gatling gun of ‘Disposable Heroes,’ as emphatic an anti-war song as one could imagine. Again special mention to a Cliff Burton feature -- ‘Orion’ is an oddity in the Metallica canon, can’t imagine there’s anything else like it that I’ve missed. It’s the most appropriate space marine soundtrack I’ve ever heard, it previews a much nerdier version of Metallica that starts writing about horrors from outer space. My impression is that long after I’ve moved on to another passing phase I’ll retain a fondness for their instrumentals, all five of the main ones are excellent.   ...And Justice for All just isn’t as good as the previous two. This is becoming less about Metallica and more a tribute to Cliff Burton, but fact is -- his phenomenal bass lines are the secret sauce, and in the absence of Burton (and apparently due to Ulrich’s hearing loss?) the bass is often lost in the mix. It still wails, though relying more on arpeggios and prog-y tempo changes and layered arrangements -- with ‘loud’ as the governing principle in the mix, the instruments all have a bit of a unnatural synthetic quality, the effect is much more processed than the earlier albums and it occasionally sounds like a flat wall of sound... which is about to become a theme, oh boy. Though it does convincingly sound like a mutant off-shoot of the Ride the Lightning/Master of Puppets aesthetic, just a shaggier and excessive cousin prone to wild mood swings. Seven of the nine tracks are at least six and a half minutes long. At 9:48, ‘To Live is to Die’ is the first song in the catalogue that I would consider straight tedious (Though the title track is about the same length and it’s quite good!) At the end of the album, ‘Dyers Eve’ appears as a great redeemer, probably the best expression of what they were trying to do here. Oh yeah -- ‘One.’ Honestly it gets there. It’s a very pretty song. I think what I don’t like about the ballads is Hetfield’s voice when he’s singing (as opposed to when he’s growling, yelling, barking) may as well be someone trying to do a Brad Roberts impression. Though maybe that’s not the issue, I always enjoy The Crash Test Dummies. Metallica/Black Album. I don’t like this. Or, I don’t like it very much but I recognize it’s pretty good. Definitely has its moments (’Of Wolf and Man,’ ‘Through the Never.’) Seems like an odd stumbling block. This was a massive hit. ‘Enter Sandman’ is a classic rock song. Of sorts. It ain’t thrash, though it’s definitely still a heavy metal album in the vein of Black Sabbath and the like. Reading about the composition I understand they were tired of what they had been doing, they felt like impostors and wanted to strip it back some, and in that sense it’s an accomplishment. It’s dark and heavy and somber and pretty sad in parts. I feel like if Metallica had collapsed into the sea and never been found afterward/gone their separate ways this would’ve been an interesting finale, but as it stands, through the lens of history I have to reckon with the fact that this is the first of four albums produced by Bob Rock and it’s easily the best of them. It’s going to get worse before it gets... less worse. Which is not to say I don’t appreciate the orchestra and the cellos and a bit more variation in the compositions but... whither Thrash? ‘Holier Than Thou,’ silly as it is, captures a bit of the lost spirit, Maybe it’s exhausting to be that band for too long. It’s a perfectly natural thing to want to progress and not make the same album over and over again, but I can’t help but feel like they abandoned their perch atop a style where they were the greatest of all time to be (at first) a pretty good metal band and then a ‘hard rock’ band. This is Jordan switching to baseball and then for some reason trying ice hockey. I’m reasonably sure ‘Nothing Else Matters’ sucks pretty viciously, though Metallica writing a love song has a conceptual appeal and I could understand people liking it. Load. Gosh, what an appropriate title. I think if you asked Chad Kroeger what his favourite Metallica album is, he’d absolutely say Load. Metallica skipped over grunge and went straight to post-grunge. It’s also so long! There’s so much of this very mediocre album.  Reload. What the fuck is this. It starts off with the Soundgardenesque (well, Rusty Cage-esque) ‘Fuel’ with its fun but asinine chorus, it doesn’t do anything particularly interesting after. Just like its sibling, it’s almost eighty minutes long of sluggish, middle of the road 90s rock.  Garage, Inc is amazing by comparison to anything else put out by Metallica in the 90s. Two discs, the second compiling covers from as far back as 1984, 1987′s Garage Days EP and the b-side to some awful Load song that’s just four Mötörhead covers. ‘Whiskey in the Jar,’ of course, but also ‘Am I Evil?’ Sabbath’s ‘Sabbra Cadabra’ and an exuberant cover of Queen’s ‘Stone Cold Crazy.’ It’s not solid gold but there’s a lot of stuff to like. S&M (Symphony and Metallica, but... you know.) Definitely has it moments, particularly with the older stuff -- ‘Call of Ktulu,’ ‘Master of Puppets,’ ‘The Thing That Should Never Be’ with symphonic accompaniment is very cool.   St. Anger is the big ‘comeback’ album that came out when I was 15 and thus acutely aware of big music releases. I feel like I could’ve skipped the opening paragraphs of this essay and just written that as explanation of why I didn’t care about Metallica. I’m sure there was some good heavy metal happening around the turn of the century but at the time this was happening, Limp Bizkit, Saliva, Staind, Kid Rock, Godsmack, Sevendust, Slipknot, Drowning Pool, Korn, Trapt and Linkin Park (probably the best of the bunch? right?) were the biggest things in metal. Hence, in 2003 we are gifted... Nu Metallica. The title track is very bad. There are no guitar solos to be found. There aren’t any ballads to be found (that’s mostly fine.) I’ve done three tracks. I’m not listening to the rest of this. It’s just not worth it. Death Magnetic was a big surprise as a I soldiered on. Bob Rock is gone, Rick Rubin is in. Say what you will about Rubin (another time, perhaps) but for whatever reason, after a twenty year hiatus (1988-2008,) the thrash is back. I was beginning to grapple with the idea that Metallica had been past their prime my entire life, and while that’s still probably true, here they are at least dabbling with the style that made them such a big damned deal. Which is not to say this is an amazing album. It’s good though! But you can hear, even on the opening track, how exceedingly compressed the sound is. Everything is loud on this album! Without exception! All the time! It’s all peak! Consequently it’s a tiring thing to listen to all the way through. Apparently there are different versions available that turn down the mix a bit, but the Spotify version is evidently the original, as it is just a brutal onslaught of noise. It’s not a great album to sit through, but individual tracks are welcome. There’s even an instrumental for the first time since ...And Justice For All. Lulu (with Lou Reed) -- Laugh all you want, I don’t think this is as bad as Load and Reload. It’s really god damned weird, sure, and it’s not ‘good’ by any conception of (what is ‘the good,’ etc) but it’s at least interesting here and there.  Hardwired... to Self-Destruct suggests a certain inevitability to the path. With or without the play-acting in the 90s (Hetfield has speculated that Ulrich and Hammett were interested in being a U2-sized band complete with the frivolous and monolithic pretensions) they might have ended up here anyway, a bunch of dudes in their 50s making a heavy metal record that is doomed to be nowhere near as vital and electrifying as the groundbreaking stuff of their youth, but is practiced, professional and what the fans have come to expect. It’s pretty good, but there’s no chance it’s their best work. Read a review that called it their best work in 25 years, which is... damning with faint praise, but definitely true. Anyway they’re in the zone. ‘Moth Into Flame’ is a pretty good example of what we’re dealing with here -- thesis, antithesis, synthesis, in this case, arriving at ‘generic Metallica.’ If there’s more Metallica on the way it’ll be pretty much like this, chugging along like Springsteen or the Rolling Stones. It seems super unlikely they’ll ever surpass their first five albums, but I think that’s true of just about every band ever.  In conclusion, I’m not doing this same process for Megadeth. :P