Best Albums and Singles of 1996

This list was occasioned by another Brad Luen poll and I'm not surprised it mirrors the final results given how much of his audience are Robert Christgau fanfolk. Still, despite the fact that my album list is tellement Xgau-influenced, 1996 was when I started to step more surely as a critic. Seasick remains crucial for me in this regard. With no other hype than that it came in the mail, Seasick was one of the first albums I didn't get right away but kept at until I fell in love. It's a subtle puppy too; you have to listen hard to hear how Roddy Bottum & Co. are smiling through gritted teeth, Hershey's Magic Shell surface pulled at by a disturbing undertow. I'll never forget a friend singing the outro of "Butch" to her two-year-old godson and stopping awkwardly as the gently repeating "I like you"s start to become angry shouts, a perfect distillation of the album's itchy power. If you've never heard Seasick, then know it's a tense classic that will come to you with patience, not prudence. 

Even the one outlier album, We Are Puppets, came to me via Xgau's rave for Tiger's 1997 Shining in the Wood EP, their only Stateside release. This is more of the same, a lot more since their songs are so samey. The band got a lot of British press at the time since they were such unlikely rock heroes. They dressed funny, sported mullets, and their lyrics betrayed a past in (can it be?) farming. We'd call them heshers in the American Midwest, a demographic typically attuned to metal or classic rock. Tiger, though, were firmly indie rock with lead singer Dan Laidler coming off as an ebullient Mark E. Smith over a vaguely motorik/charmingly incompetent sound/beat. Beefing up the joy were two (three?) gal singers whose frequent interjections provided relief from Laidler's whine. Their goal seems to have been to have as much fun as possible and they succeeded from the sounds of it. But realizing that fun was not a sustainable way of life, they broke up before the release of their second album Rosaria (Tugboat, 1999). Their incandescent oeuvre deserves a two-disc comp collecting the full-lengths and all the stray tracks that'll sashay into and out of your life like a karaoke Saturday night. 

The first two are still teaching me about the head/record-spinning intersections between race/ethnicity and popular music. Is Endtroducing..... hip-hop at all? From it but not of it? Did Josh Davis (aka DJ Shadow) have the cultural authority to explain "Why Hip-Hop Sucks in '96," the album's sole faulty moment and, tellingly, one of the tracks proving that was Endtroducing.....was not, contrary to the Guinness Book of World Records' claim, "the first album to be recorded using only sampled sounds"? Sugar and Poison, David Toop's quiet-storm reclamation project, strands Curtis Mayfield, Luther Vandross, and the Isley Brothers in Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish Cycle where they could be perceived more easily by the demographic who needed no such push to consume Toop's ambient augmentation project Ocean of Sound. Is this a fundamental mishearing of R&B or a world-historic widening of its remit?

(By the way, while waiting many years to find an actual copy of Sugar and Poison, I tried to recreate it via Napster et al. and Loleatta Holloway's "My Way" was toughest to locate. Today, the streamers have neither Dennis Edwards: "Coolin' Out" nor Charles Jackson: "Passionate Breezes." But luxuriate in "My Way" now before the copyright overlords yank it. Note, though, you'll be missing Toop's segues between songs along with his fever-dream liners. But you can read them at Discogs here while you draw back from the uncomfortable cover art.)

My favorite lyric on Call the Doctor remains "Push to the front so I can see/It's what I thought/It's rock and roll." I love that active verb "push" because it gets at the band's hunger to become rock gods while the bored "It's what I thought" gets at their frustration over not being there already. Du calme, young'uns, your chance will come next year with Dig Me Out. My favorite lyric on Diary of a Mod Housewife remains "She makes her bed first thing in the morning/So she won't crawl back in" because, as I told Rigby in an captivating interview at the time, she was the first person ever to offer a good reason for making a bed. She responded by teaching me about strategic cleaning - tidying only the big things in a room (e.g., a bed) so that it looks like you cleaned harder than you did. 

Secrets is here for "There's No Me Without You," my vote for one of the ten most gorgeous ballads ever recorded, especially the de facto coda beginning at 2:58 in the link above, and especially especially the money shot at 3:33 with its shameless descending "no me, no me, no me." Babyface composed it but Braxton lifted it into the ether.  

Make 'Em Mokum Crazy is stoopid. House of Music is smart, scholarly even. And as a long-term agnostic re: live albums, I was stunned by how much Filthy Lucre Live overwhelmed me. It helped listening to it one afternoon with my metal friends who dug it too. It's Never Mind the Bollocks recharged with metal grandeur, a stance the band earned after twenty years as the next rung on that Elvis-Beatles significance ladder.

My singles list is more instinctual and reflects the era during which I began DJing at gay clubs and a few het events. I'm proud to say I broke a lot of these on the dancefloor. S.T.A.B. Paradise: "Fuck Me" was a one-off "Sweet Pussy Pauline" variant from two Italian producers/DJs. I spun the Hypnotic Bass Mix and my floor ate up its crotch-grabbing, lowest-common-denominator house bottom and filthy harangue on top. To paraphrase Lester Bangs on bubblegum, bitch tracks are the bottom line of rock and roll. Stretch 'n' Vern present "Maddog": "I'm Alive" was a peak record which for me meant just before closing; I had only three hours at most to build drama so I chose tracks that went for the jugular every time out. "I'm Alive" repeats a thin slice of "Boogie Wonderland" like an itch it can't scratch, then uses the original's opening horn peal as its climax. Recombinant disco at its most ecstatic. 

I wrote about Livin' Joy: "Don't Stop Movin'" a bit in the lead essay to the Village Voice's 2004 Pazz & Jop but all traces of it online have disappeared. I deemed it "a thrilling articulation that hard work and brains (even genius) may not pay off." Italian disco yet again but this one hit big in Europe. Tameko Star's vocals rush past themselves and the track speeds by at 130 BPM which casts doubt on the "Hang in there, Baby" lyrics, like maybe you can't, you won't fulfill your dreams. It adds complexity to what initially came off as a hyper, overtaxed version of Soul II Soul's "Keep on Movin'." But listening back to both just now, "Don't Stop Movin'" feels like the more inspirational number. It gets your ass off the couch whereas "Keep on Movin'" can't be bothered with its luxurious, even privileged 93 BPM. I've always much preferred "Back to Life" anyway.

Judy Torres: "No Reason To Cry (Glenn Friscia's All Night House Party Remix)" is an astonishing uprage [sic] of the freestyle classic. Like so much of the best dance music, it evokes the sound of a club with electronic noise up in the rafters and a pitiless, thumping bass drum pounding at your soles. The Torres vocal can barely compete with all the chaos even when the chorus gets a brief, echoey moment to shine. I swear I could feel air whooshing out of the club amps and blowing my hair back whenever I spun it. 

"C'mon N' Ride It (The Train)" is religious music. Even the a cappella will make you want to sit atop of pillar for 45 years. "I'd Rather Ride Around With You" hit #2 on the Billboard Country chart with no chorus! Not just a mere song, "Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix)" is a natural formation. "Common People" is the best song about class (or class slumming) I know. "Fu-Gee-La" was the last time we could hear Lauryn Hill without the cultural static that became attached to her (or that she attached to herself; her tardiness is now her primary text). "Ironic" isn't. “Pony” took a mighty swig of bicarb. And “It's All Coming Back to Me Now” is the only Celine Dion track I genuinely love. It kills at karaoke where you can inject some camp into the kitsch, if necessary. 

1. DJ Shadow: Endtroducing..... (Mo Wax/FFRR)
2. Sugar and Poison (Virgin import)
3. Sleater-Kinney: Call the Doctor (Chainsaw)
4. Imperial Teen: Seasick (Slash/London)
5. Tiger: We Are Puppets (Island import)
6. Amy Rigby: Diary of a Mod Housewife (Koch)
7. Toni Braxton: Secrets (LaFace)
8. Make 'Em Mokum Crazy (Mokum)
9. Toni Tony Toné: House of Music (Mercury)
10. Sex Pistols: Filthy Lucre Live (Virgin)

1. Quad City DJs: "C'mon N' Ride It (The Train)" (Big Beat, 1996)
2. Reba McEntire: "I'd Rather Ride Around With You" (MCA, 1996)
3. Los Del Rio: "Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix)" (RCA, 1996)
4. Stab Paradise: "Fuck Me" (Happy Vibes, 1996)
5. Stretch 'n' Vern present "Maddog": "I'm Alive" (Grandslam, 1996)
6. Livin' Joy: "Don't Stop Movin'" (MCA, 1996)
7. Pulp: "Common People" (Island, 1996)
8. Judy Torres: "No Reason To Cry (Glenn Friscia's All Night House Party Remix)" (QPM, 1996)
9. Fugees: "Fu-Gee-La" (Ruffhouse/Columbia, 1996)
10. Alanis Morissette: "Ironic" (Maverick/Reprise, 1996)
11.  Ginuwine: “Pony” (550 Music/Epic, 1996)
12. Celine Dion: “It's All Coming Back to Me Now” (Columbia/Epic, 1996) 

Pazz & Jop 2018

 Albums:
10. Kids See Ghosts: Kids See Ghosts (GOOD/Def Jam)
The key moment here is a reverse Louis Prima sample sending Santa back up the chimney. Because despite references to Lacoste, Loewe, Miuccia Prada, Herzog & De Meuron, and Art Basel, a feeling of deprivation pervades this Kanye West/Kid Cudi entry in GOOD Music's line of EPs. In short (24 minutes to be exact), here's yet another reminder that a hip-hop life of luxury can cover up a lot of pain. What lifts it above standard-issue sad sackery is a generosity inherent in the myriad weird sounds and the latest tour through Kanye's sample bank. Most generous element: the 24 minutes.

9. Tal National: Tantabara (Fat Cat)
My favorite hectoring disco of the decade remains Dabke: Sounds of the Syrian Houran, recorded a mere 2,500 miles away from this Niger collective's latest, greatest album. But both provide shelter from a decade-plus of EDM's drop abuse. Finally - dance music with no give to it! "Est-ce que tout le monde vous êtes chauds? Vous êtes prêts? C'est Tal National sur la place! On y va!"

8. Parquet Courts: Wide Awaaaaake! (Rough Trade)
Ok, sure, their lyrics are self-righteous. But it took about 15 listens to notice because this is where these hard-working Americans reach for broader appeal without compromising their punk 'n' roll one iota. Funk moves and keyboard textures and beer hall choruses and Danger Mouse's sparkly production all help the (I'd say) righteous anger go down. And yo - doesn't the world's currently reigning greatest English-singing/lecturing guitar-bass-drum combo deserve to be self-righteous?

7. Gazelle Twin: Pastoral (Anti-Ghost Moon Ray)
A pungent counterpart to the Parquet Courts album, Elizabeth Bernholz's latest slab of electro art-stomp out-Fever Rayed Fever Ray this year. Funny sometimes, enraged always, these hymns for the international underclass of precarious laborers evoke a world where "it's the Middle Ages but with lesser wages." It begins with Bernholz sarcastically intoning "much better in my day" 46 times in 2:50, a barn burner I will play/post upon encountering any empty nostalgia. It ends with a truncated, sardonic take on the traditional British army recruitment song "Over the Hills and Far Away." All throughout, hard work is no virtue and synthetic sounds wrack your nerves. Manna: when Bernholz maintains the Baba O'Rileyisms of "Little Lambs" into the next track with a only slight key change.

6. Cucina Povera: Hilja (Night School)
A pungent counterpart to the Gazelle Twin album, Hilja is what might happen if the KonMari Method were applied to an album. Or if an album were recorded at the end of the world. Or maybe the beginning of the world. Much of these spare, searching tracks sound like water chants from the dawn of humankind. Glasgow-based, Finland-born Maria Rossi's recitations seek life in spooked-out spaces. But for all its otherwordliness, the sonic signature feels rooted in a precarious present. Thoughtful definition of cucina povera provided. "A style of southern Italian traditional cooking associated with precarity and making-do."

 5. Eartheater: IRISIRI (Pan)
Alexandra Drewchin's Eartheater project reminds me of a more songful, less shticky Lisa Suckdog. Here a pitch-challenged b-girl, there an ethereal space sprite, she persona-plays as a matter of course because "this body is a chemistry mystery / these tits are just a side-effect." Her ubiquitous harp glissandi find the outer limits of the universe. And she brought along my favorite art-music gals (Odwalla1221) for the flight.

4. Kali Uchis: Isolation (Virgin)
"But why would I be Kim? I could be Kanye." And right before that, a Smiths reference! So damn right she could be Kanye with an album of such bent, what's it say here on Discogs, "contemporary R&B, neo soul, bossanova, reggaeton, trip hop," whew.

3. Double Dee & Steinski: Lesson 4: The Beat (https://ddsteinski.bandcamp.com/)
The only time I get oldmanyellsatcloud.jpg with young folks (I hope) is when I remind them that it took me *three years* to find a bootleg of Doug DiFranco and Steve Stein's world-turning 1985 EP The Payoff Mix/Lesson Two/Lesson 3. But now I feel all old man again because this 40-years-aborning follow-up elicited virtual tumbleweeds. Over eleven minutes of funk tumble, "Lesson 4" strings together the voices of preachers condemning the demon beat of various popular musics. But the three-minute "This Music" might be even better. Some dorky music expert claims to know a little bit about hip-hop (I think). But the mixmeisters take him to school by filling every nook with their sample wizardry.

2. Cupcakke: Ephorize (Bigger Picture)
"Crayons" is the best-ever LGBT anthem (why, yes, we are brave for takin' anal). "Spoiled Milk Titties" is the best of the two or three songs in popular music history to make me blush. "Duck Duck Goose" and "Cinnamon Toast Crunch" are the best songs to chant repeatedly and annoy everyone in your vicinity. "Total" and "Fullest" are the best songs that should have stormed Billboard's entropic Hot 100 in 2018. And Elizabeth Eden Harris is the best damn rapper on the planet right now.

1. The Verboden Boys (Belfast Chapter): Band From Reality - The Complete Demos (Doggy Bag)
OMG! You're not into extratone, the world's fastest new genre?!? Actually, it just sounds like gabber to me, at least according to the samples provided in this useful Bandcamp Daily feature. Luckily, I scrolled down to the comments where I was informed that this album's speed setting was "absurd." Apparently part of a collective with chapters in Melbourne and Antwerp, these Verboden Boys manage to shape their noise assaults into song-like blats with discrete parts. I'll admit that some of this is mere sound effects if you admit that "Call the Police" belongs on a list of the wildest, most uncompromising hardcore punk blurs ever. 

Singles:
10. Kacey Musgraves: "Space Cowboy" (MCA Nashville)
A rejoinder to Cole Porter, Neil Young, and, let's see here, Steve Miller, Clint Eastwood, Jamiroquai, The Jonzun Crew, and, why not, Space Cowboy (Sly Stone too?). And all because there's actually a comma between the two words of the title.

9. Cassie: "Don’t Play It Safe" (Bad Boy)
Cassie Ventura hasn't hit the R&B Top 40 since 2006 when her last (and only) album-not-mixtape was released. So the heft of this sleek noir is completely unheralded. Its modest drama and moody synths earn it a place on my forever-forthcoming sequel to David Toop's disquiet storm collection Sugar and Poison.

8. Cardi B ft. Kehlani: "Ring" (Atlantic)
Such an adept already that she can make music out of sobbing to the sound of silence, i.e., the phone that won't ring. Crucial assist from Kehlani who tugs at our tear ducts. And like "Don’t Play It Safe," it's over in under three minutes. Punch out that ballad and move on.

7. Ravyn Lenae: "Sticky" (Atlantic)
Slinky-not-sticky workout from a R&B hopeful who changes vocal register every few seconds with a confidence belying her 19 years of age. Produced and co-written by The Internet's Steve Lacy who performed the same functions on the best (and funkiest) track from Kali Uchis' Isolation.

6. Lil Yachty ft. Playboi Carti: "Get Dripped" (Capitol/Motown/Quality Control)
5. Chief Keef ft. Playboi Carti: "Uh Uh" (Glory Boyz Entertainment/RBC)
For one rapper on the way up and the other hangin' in there on a raft of mixtapes, I can understand the appeal of giving a guest spot to one of the most eccentric rappers of the era. But you run the risk of having him upstage you, especially since Carti's timbre gets even more eccentric in guest mode, something akin to Fire Marshall Bill as a toddler. Keef fares better in his hyper verse. But Carti owns the track by whining the title hook amidst an envelope of backward swirls. And on "Get Dripped," both principals get stuck in a winningly obnoxious video game loop.

4. Migos ft. Nicki Minaj and Cardi B: "MotorSport" (Capitol/Motown/Quality Control)
Under the influence of Simon Reynolds' masterful auto-tune essay, I would place Culture II on my top ten today. The key was this observation from Sadmanbarty which Reynolds highlighted: "The backing vocals (not the ad libs) sound like murmurs from a Martian crypt." And now I cannot get enough of the tension between those presumably spiritual moans and the sinful ethos of never having too much jewelry, Saturday night and Sunday morning slammed together. But this lead single was an easy sell given that the two reigning queens of hip-hop go toe-to-toe here. No matter who comes out ahead, though, those murmurs throw the entire track into an epistemological tizzy. Where is thing this coming from?

3. Travis Scott ft. Drake: “Sicko Mode” (Cactus Jack/Grand Hustle/Epic)
Like bartenders who overpour and restaurateurs whose dinners double as lunch tomorrow, recording artists who offer several songs in one provide the best (but not necessarily the healthiest) consumer value. "Sicko Mode" is no Beyoncé: "Countdown." But you feel almost as drunk/stuffed afterward. (burps)

2. Doja Cat: “Mooo!” (RCA/Kemosabe)
Not since Gino Washington's 1964 masterpiece "Gino is a Coward" has so much room been discovered in democracy. Washington proved his prowess by deeming himself a coward. Doja Cat boasts she's a cow and goes viral. Both risk ridicule on their soapboxes and reap sublimity in return.

1. Childish Gambino: “This Is America” (mcDJ/RCA)
This is pop too where a song can get refracted into discourses without end. That "This Is America" seems designed to engender that effect matters only insofar as the ploy works. On that front, the sometimes Donald Glover succeeds. The song's most life-affirming aspect is that a black man has inspired a cottage industry dedicated to interpreting his ambiguities and, with a # 1 hit, he can enjoy all that money grandma told him to get. Miraculously, however, "This Is America" succeeds as music too. I fell in love with its rumble on my brother-in-law's shitty car stereo before I saw the discourse-multiplying video and I continue to discover all manner of pleasures in its supposedly skeletal mix. And it's all about refraction in the end. Like "Sicko Mode," song gets refracted into several songs, a form suitable for a new Gilded Age in which American workers get refracted into flexible labor, most definitely including the rapper/actor/director/writer/etc. up top.

Albums:
1. The Verboden Boys (Belfast Chapter): Band From Reality - The Complete Demos (Doggy Bag)
2. Cupcakke: Ephorize (Bigger Picture)
3. Double Dee & Steinski: Lesson 4: The Beat (https://ddsteinski.bandcamp.com/)
4. Kali Uchis: Isolation (Virgin)
5. Eartheater: IRISIRI (Pan)
6. Cucina Povera: Hilja (Night School)
7. Gazelle Twin: Pastoral (Anti-Ghost Moon Ray)
8. Parquet Courts: Wide Awaaaaake! (Rough Trade)
9. Tal National: Tantabara (Fat Cat)
10. Kids See Ghosts: Kids See Ghosts (GOOD/Def Jam)

Singles:
1. Childish Gambino: “This Is America” (mcDJ/RCA)
2. Doja Cat: “Mooo!” (RCA/Kemosabe)
3. Travis Scott ft. Drake: “Sicko Mode” (Cactus Jack/Grand Hustle/Epic)
4. Migos ft. Nicki Minaj and Cardi B: "MotorSport" (Capitol/Motown/Quality Control)
5. Chief Keef ft.  Playboi Carti: "Uh Uh" (Glory Boyz Entertainment/RBC)
6. Lil Yachty ft. Playboi Carti: "Get Dripped" (Motown/Quality Control)
7. Ravyn Lenae: "Sticky" (Atlantic)
8. Cardi B ft. Kehlani: "Ring" (Atlantic)
9. Cassie: "Don’t Play it Safe" (Bad Boy)
10. Kacey Musgraves: "Space Cowboy" (MCA Nashville)

New to me:

Loud Sun: "Teen Pyramids" - Mysterioso dream chug with lyrics that mention Tom Petty. But who does that filtered voice remind me of?!?

Minihorse: "Slow Song" - Deadpan cover of a song off the first Sleater-Kinney album, all the better to highlight S-K's songwriting genius.

Spiny Normen: Spiny Normen - Never-released mid-1970s hard psych from Houston with ooky Mellotron hooks. Even the flute works. Fall in love with "Arrowhead."

Oh Yes We Can Love: The History of Glam Rock - Where the new, intermittently incredible All the Young Droogs collection burrows deep, this five-disc 2013 box treats glam as a mode instead of a genre, casting a hair net from Noël Coward to Goldfrapp. Includes a track from Gay Dad's hyperbolically underrated (not an oxymoron) Leisure Noise.

San Francisco Disco Preservation Society (https://sfdps.org/https://sfdps.org/) - A repository for historic live DJ mixes, some reaching deep back into the 1970s. They're up to 209 right now and the ones I've heard have done what great mixes always do - introduce me to new classics or  recontextualize old faves in the mix. The best so far come courtesy of DJ Wendy Hunt. Her Live At Prelude - One Car Crash 10-14-80 contains an astonishing mixing moment at 54:25 when she lays the superior Disconet remix of Poussez!: "Never Gonna Say Goodbye" over Kano: "It's a War." The most eclectic is Old Disco - May 20, 1981 which moves from power pop (The Elevators' "Girlfriend's Girlfriend") to Broadway-bound DOR (The Quick's "Sharks Are Cool, Jets Are Hot") to str8-up new wave (the Night Version [!] of Duran Duran's "Planet Earth), then a few masterpieces (Yarbrough & Peoples' "Don't Stop the Music" into Taana Gardner's "Heartbeat" into Billy Squier's "The Stroke"), then twenty minutes of disco ludetopia (Magnifique's "Magnifique" into "Lime's "Your Love" into ABBA's "Lay All Your Love on Me") and, towards the end of the evening, it climaxes where it must with The Skatt Bros.' sado-disco chestnut "Walk the Night." And more!

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today: The Best Albums of 1998

I was all set to share a list found in the recesses of my hard drive of my fave albums of 1998 until I discovered it was online at MTV.com here. So here's a minor tweak and reshuffle because Come On Over was 1997 and the Kim cuts drag down A Thousand Leaves. I make no apologies for the preponderance of anthologies and compilations. The 1990s was the great reissue decade (all hail Rhino's heyday!) and 1998 fell several stories from 1997's sugar high.

1. Queer to the Core!: Queer Rock From the Vaults! (Quick Nuts) - We still have no clue who released this bootleg plucked from the bins of Atomic Records in Milwaukee. But I've never been able to shake how it epitomizes the alternately frustrating and glorious position of the queer historian. More here and still for sale cheap on Discogs.

2. The Music in My Head: Indispensable Classics and Unknown Gems From the Golden Age of African Pop (Stern's Africa) - Still my favorite African pop compilation. I reviewed it and Mark Hudson's delirious novel to which it was the de facto soundtrack for the Chicago Reader.

3. American Pop: An Audio History (West Hill Audio Archives) - And still my favorite box set ever. Gawd, its nine discs continue to educate although my one-disc distillation sieves out the poppiest (and weirdest) (and punkiest) moments.

4. Fat Beats & Bra Straps: Battle Rhymes & Posse Cuts (Rhino) - 90% of the rap I quote comes from this vicious collection of gripes and disses. Bow down to her, bitch, cuz she's the shit: Roxanne Shanté.

5. A Night On South Bitch (Max) - The finest bitch tracks comp extant. I'll see you after the function!

6. Sean "Puffy" Combs: Changing The Sound of Popular Music (Bad Boy Promo) - Cheating. But these Puffy-helmed hits honor the man who helped make 1997 the greatest year for singles since 1981.

7. George Clinton & The P-Funk All-Stars: Dope Dogs (Dogone) -The first "real" album on the list by a man for whom the importance of The Album meant precious little.

8. The Perfect Beats: New York Electro Hip-Hop + Underground Dance Classics 1980-1985 (Rhino) - Four volumes proving not only that disco never died but that 1981 was the greatest year for singles ever.

9. Suckdog: Onward Suckdog Soldiers (Tray Full of Lab Mice) - Here for the 20-second masterprank "I Knelt 2day Where Jesus Knelt."

10. Unkle: Psyence Fiction (Mo' Wax/London) - For years it had been an open question which turntablists would be the first to sample Olivia Record rockers BeBe K'Roche, to paraphrase Eric Weisbard's Jungle Brothers entry in the Spin Alternative Record Guide.

Pazz and Jop 2015

http://www.villagevoice.com/pazznjop/critics/2015/kevin-john-6594553

Albums:
10.  Jazmine Sullivan: Reality Show (RCA) - "Stanley" should've been a single. 

9. Downtown Boys: Full Communism (Don Giovanni) - And nothing less. 

8. Sleater-Kinney: No Cities to Love (Sub Pop) - A great fortysomething album. Ten anthems about wanting no anthems, no new wave, no cities. Just some good friends, decent weather, and a job to weather The New Gilded Age.

7. Heems: Eat Pray Thug (Megaforce) - The former Das Racist rapper's first non-mixtape sounds disjointed at first. "Flag Shopping" and "Patriot Act" evoke the terror of post-9/11 racism so indelibly that you wonder why the entire album isn't devoted to the theme. But the love songs and virtuosic boasts restore the humanity denied in "Flag Shopping" and "Patriot Act" with everything feeding into an indelible evocation of one gloriously confused soul. All that's missing is a flat-out monster hit and "Pop Song (Games)" is so transcendently stoopid that he should have no problem sneaking up on himself to record one next time out.

6. Courtney Barnett: Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit (Mom + Pop) - No surprise I first encountered (and fell in love with) this Australian avant gardener on NPR for this is the class of NPR rock - well-made and never too hard/formally exciting. She's a helluva rhymer and drops specifics like a seasoned country pro. She does stream of consciousness as well as a young you-know-who. And she's always cognizant of how economics impinge on our every relationship, especially when she's trying to hit on a gal in a public swimming pool: "It's a curse, my lack of athleticism/Sunk like a stone like a first owner's home loan."

5. Future: DS2 (Epic/Free Bandz) - Right, he serves the base. But everyone wants to know if he serves the superstructure as well. (Answer: Of course he does. But how?)

4. Tame Impala: Currents (Interscope) - They need to lay off their Synergy albums and start inhaling some Tantra because a masterpiece like "Let It Happen" deserves to shift on for fifteen or twenty minutes.

3. Le1f: Riot Boi (XL/Terrible) - Finally, Khalif Diouf finds the right unfocus. This is avant-rap as Swatch watch and its phantasmagoria promises years of cataloging.

2. Makaya McCraven: In The Moment (International Anthem) - I don't know from jazz. But these remixed and rendered live recordings rock out at a Tortoise pace, beatier and more repetitive than America's classical music ever gets.  

1. Odwalla88: Earth Flirt (Ooga Booga) - Vinyl only, one side only. 11 songs in 14 minutes, the worst the last at over 3 minutes. Two arty Baltimore gals create skeletal tracks with cut-up poetry, looped vocals, and occasional scuzz guitar. Think Sonic Youth or Big Stick with most of the space carved out. The deadpan voices, looped and not, are at turns haunting and fun. Subjects include lipgloss, purses, blush, how to wire wrap a stone, Holly Hobby, Jack Skelly, and not wanting to do your hair today. The future.

Singles:
10. Fleur East: "Sax" (Syco) - Not as chorusless as Katy Perry's "Dark Horse" but close enough to make pop radio sound a bit fresher for four minutes. In compensation, we get three middle eights (or is one actually a pre-chorus?). And check out this X-Factor graduate's debut album Love, Sax and Flashbacks which is often too eager to please but has the distinction of featuring not a single ballad.

9. Sakanaction: "Shin Takarajima" (Victor) - I'm at a loss to determine why I've gone absolutely gaga for this alt.rock theme song (translation: "New Treasure Island") to a film adaptation of a manga series called Bakuman. With a vaguely proggish sensationalism, it seems to be in love with its own brilliance as the guitar solo riffs off the koto-like hook and a delayed ending conveys the feeling of not wanting the song to end. The amazing video (which is unavailable on Youtube in the States but try here) parodies an old sketch show and will convince you that you'll never attain such heights of coolness.
 
8. Taylor Swift: "Style" (Big Machine/Republic) - I admit that it took the Superfruit/Pentatonix boys for me to hear the majesty of the chorus through the neon noir production. But once there, it became clear that this was her most assured and mature work yet with the auteur getting as horny as the listener. Special thanks to whatever machine allowed her to sing the "take me home" section so powerfully. 

7. Keith Ape featuring A$AP Ferg, Father, Dumbfoundead and Waka Flocka Flame: "It G Ma Remix" (Hi-Lite) - A Korean/American collaboration/miracle that would sit at #2 today for the way it pulls off that spare-yet-busy trick. Even slower and more irritating than the Future album but way more fun with all sorts of clanking sound effects and recessed hollers to keep you dumbfounded. If you can resist shouting out hook of the year "Orca ninjas go Rambo!" 400 times a day, you are a stronger soul than me. 

6. Travi$ Scott: "Antidote" (Grand Hustle/Epic) - The Houston rapper suffocates himself willingly in weed clouds as several different messages in a bottle wash up on shore in lazy surf. Each verse has its own unique identity (with the second a masterpiece of changing same) and would throw everything off balance were it not for a luded-out Lee Fields sample holding it all together. A track with no windows but many doors.

5. Macy Rodman: "Lazy Girl" (self-released) - Wow! Judith Halberstam's The Queer Art of Failure (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011) has it own soundtrack now! Rodman is a transgender woman who documents a trans reality with high humor - avoiding the work that goes into getting ready for the public sphere in the hopes you're not misgendered (or worse). She certainly didn't avoid work on this track which gets busy in dance, dream, and exhausted rap modes.

4. Odwalla 88: "What The" (Vague Reference) - And Věra Chytilová's Daisies has a new soundtrack! Their greatest hit. Check it out here.

3. Years & Years: "Shine" (Polydor/Interscope) - Stuart Murdoch's twee-as-fuck film version of God Help the Girl was so winning, so mouth-foamingly irresistible that the principals were bound to do something remarkable on their own. But lead art dork Olly Alexander is savvy enough to know there's no longevity in twee. So he hires Greg Kurstin, formerly of Geggy Tah and currently enjoying the spoils of his co-credit on Adele's "Hello," to doctor up this song for his new wavey dance outfit and aims right for the top of the charts (almost got there too as it stalled at number two in the UK). The result is a pop formalist's delight - wordless hooks as mnemonic devices, soul amped in the second pre-chorus, a middle eight which cuts the second chorus in half. Worth every gotdang point.

2. Naomi Elizabeth: “The Topic is Ass” (self-released) - Where once the bird was the word, now the topic is ass. Ms. Elizabeth does something of the impossible here - she rejuvenates swear words in an era of overuse by accessing a child's misuse of them ("What’s the ass that runs the country?/The President of Ass!") and comes up with a nonsense classic in the process. And what music would score this project most appropriately? Why, an electroclash update of "Baby Wants to Ride," of course!

1. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis featuring Eric Nally, Melle Mel, Kool Moe Dee, and Grandmaster Caz: “Downtown” (Macklemore LLC) - This musical-number-cum-pop-smash could have reached Michael Jackson levels of universality if Mack & Lewis hadn't made think piece fodder out of race and privilege and sexuality. So go ahead and resist it. The rest of us will stretch out our arms in an orgy of community formation along with secret weapon Eric Nally - a nicer but even dorkier version of that dude wielding nunchucks in Ghost World with the rare capacity to be hilarious and beautiful at the same time. He's my favorite person in the universe while the song's playing. Video of the year too, duh. 

Albums:
1. Odwalla88: Earth Flirt (Ooga Booga)
2. Makaya McCraven: In The Moment (International Anthem)
3. Le1f: Riot Boi (XL/Terrible)
4. Tame Impala: Currents (Interscope)
5. Future: DS2 (Epic/Free Bandz)
6. Courtney Barnett: Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit (Mom + Pop)
7. Heems: Eat Pray Thug (Megaforce)
8. Sleater-Kinney: No Cities to Love (Sub Pop)
9. Downtown Boys: Full Communism (Don Giovanni)
10. Jazmine Sullivan: Reality Show (RCA)

Singles: 

1. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis featuring Eric Nally, Melle Mel, Kool Moe Dee, and Grandmaster Caz: “Downtown” (Macklemore LLC)  
2. Naomi Elizabeth: “The Topic is Ass” (self-released)
3. Years + Years: "Shine" (Polydor/Interscope)
4. Odwalla 88: "What The" (Vague Reference)
5. Macy Rodman: "Lazy Girl" (self-released)
6. Travi$ Scott: "Antidote" (Grand Hustle/Epic)
7. Keith Ape featuring A$AP Ferg, Father, Dumbfoundead and Waka Flocka Flame: "It G Ma Remix" (Hi-Lite) 
8. Taylor Swift: "Style" (Big Machine/Republic)
9. Sakanaction: "Shin Takarajima" (Victor)
10. Fleur East: "Sax" (Syco)

I forgot:
Svantana: "Working as a Waitress in a Cocktail Bar" (self-released)
Missy Elliott feat. Pharrell Williams: "WTF (Where They From)" (Goldmind/Atlantic)
Lil Mama: "Sausage" (WorldStarHipHop) 
Ata Kak: Obaa Sima (Awesome Tapes From Africa)
Janet Jackson: Unbreakable (Rhythm Nation/BMG) 

Pazz and Jop 2014

Albums:

10. Objekt: Flatland (PAN)
This British-born, Berlin-based wannabe technomancer's Freerotation DJ set is friendlier and more varied. But it's also 90 minutes long. Flatland captures his concentration in digestible form. For a lark, we asked 100 IDM enthusiasts in a blindfold test to identify which of these eleven tracks was the interlude. Not a single one could answer because all eleven sound like interlocking devices, hence the well-chosen Objekt moniker. Or perhaps "étude" is the more appropriate designation since except for some mushy moments in the middle, each track is a study in how to maintain a beat no matter how many squiggly noises you throw at it. Not really danceable and maybe not all that intelligent. But definitely Music, a product as coldly functional as a Nest thermostat learning how to read humans.

9. Toni Braxton & Babyface: Love, Marriage & Divorce (Motown)
Heterosexuality  - the ultimate novelty. From "Love is Strange" to "My Baby Daddy" to "Somebody That I Used to Know," it provides variety and he said/she said drama. But yo - when I called for a disco takeover, I didn't mean at the expense of all R&B and non-EDM-infused hip-hop ever. Babyface's disappearance from the Hot 100 as well as Braxton's need to reality TV it up in order to stay relevant are tragedies of the highest musical order. The creators of one of the five most gutwrenchingly gorgeous ballads in recording history ("There's No Me Without You") deserve better. So while this is the best soap opera/quasi-concept album since Koffee Brown's Mars/Venus, I prefer to hear it as an angry rejoinder to the erasure of black voices on the radio/charts, especially in "I Wish," the one track Braxton wrote so nakedly by herself: "I hope she gives you a disease/So that you will see/But not enough to make you die/But only make you cry/Like you did to me." 

8. Jason Derulo: Talk Dirty (Warner Bros.)
To gain a sense of the confused state of R&B in the teens, Talk Dirty repackages 2013's full-length Tattoos which was released only as a five-song EP in the States as if such distinctions mattered anymore. And, surprise surprise, the lead single was the well-named EDM stomper "The Other Side." Nevertheless, this was the giddiest ear grab of 2014. The promises of marriage don't prove Derulo the most generous love man standing; the ever-cascading hooks do - marching bands, bubblegum pops, sexy slide whistles, iPhone 5 Lollipop Kids, Balkan Beat Box horns. Best song: "Trumpets" which reminds me of "You Remind Me of Something" and all the other songs that get my honeys hot. Best hook: an almost prelapsarian running time of 37:54.

7. tUnE-yArDs: Nikki Nack (4AD)
Gunning for artist of the decade, Merrill Garbus streamlines her Pere Ubu-Laura Nyro fusion while remaining impatient, demanding, and almost maniacally extroverted. Even through the unpredictable phrasing and uncategorizable detail, she seems more relatable now in both personal (procrastination worries, a love song to her support network) and political modes (the West as cannibals). Her "Paper Planes" can't be far behind.

6. Run The Jewels: Run The Jewels 2 (Mass Appeal)
Still austere like the dystopic 1970s/1980s sci-fi flicks their synths (and sometimes raps) evoke. But this second collaboration between Killer Mike and El-P showcases many austerities, several abrasive ones to a track, an abundant austerity, if you will. That helps the words go down until...you read the words which evoke the existential terror of the present dystopias in Ferguson, Staten Island, Cleveland, where next. If "From the womb to the tomb/Why do we fight to live?" seems a bit lightweight, try "It's all a joke between mom contractions and coffin fittings." And if it sounds like they're wallowing, know that they're already recording Run The Jewels 3.

5. Pinch & Mumdance: Pinch B2B Mumdance (Tectonic)
As with the disappearance of R&B artists from the Hot 100, we should be fuming about the elimination of MCs from the weightless nu-grime pumped in the 2014 Rewind issue of The Wire. But Mumdance has already proven himself and then some in the realm of grime proper with the arresting clangfest "Take Time" featuring Novelist. So why shouldn't he indulge his arty instrumental side here? This mix, available the previous year for free here in slightly different form, takes a while to get going. But soon the industrial grind starts to give off sparks, especially with the flushing cash registers on Mumdance's own "The Sprawl." Don't think Dizzee Rascal sans Dizzee. Think the climactic triptych from Ministry's Twitch as aesthetic strategy.

4. Parquet Courts: Sunbathing Animal (What's Your Rupture?)
They've already become indie rock gods by recalling damn near every band in the Pantheon. So today, I invoke The Feelies for their ability to leave you "tingling with a head full of empty," a description courtesy of John Piccarella that suits even better the barn-raising title track/song-not-single of the year. Tomorrow, I shall invoke Pavement for the band's tense, kinetic way with the slow ones. The next day, The Fall for their fecundity and totally wired danceability. And I cannot wait for their equivalent of The Complete Peel Sessions. It's gonna be a stunner.

3. Wussy: Attica! (Shake It!)
I am too down with the Apollonian, to choose a word beloved by Alfred Soto. Although I didn't think it possible, the bar band of dreams' fifth album just might be their best yet even though "Bug" so does not hint at death metal (wha??) and they haven't, and will never, surpass Sonic Youth in the distorto-guitar sweepstakes. Such caterwaul has no play in their modest, but heroic, project which is to locate the humane in a world of broken dreams and burning homes, a sensibility echoed by their benevolent and frankly beautiful fanbase. But, to paraphase Xgau on another modest act, if Wussy are ever to escape the cult status they're sick of, they'd better pick up some pizzazz somewhere, say, from...

2. Miranda Lambert: Platinum (RCA Nashville)
...country's reigning artist. I'll tackle the low point ("Automatic") later. But the fact that I even want to salvage it should demonstrate my love for this album. It's spunkier, rowdier, flashier than either Pistol Annies outing. And it's a veritable shrine to the craft of songwriting with choruses that buck our expectations and codas that could survive a nuclear blast. Just in time for that godawful Dangerous Minds "exposé" on "how mind-numbingly formulaic and shitty Country pop music has become" (hells no I won't link to it).

1. Mindtroll: EP #4 (Bandcamp)
Four songs with a total time shorter than my #9 single. Face it - albums are just so 2013. These four arty goofballs create a spare yet busy sound in Brooklyn with a sugar intake that suggests a less funky but equally fractured Stick Men. Subjects include falling into a well and making a pun out of it, avoiding a gangsta cat who won't hesitate to slash your tires, not falling for a toddler's bullshit, and losing your hat which latter song splinters into four different directions in under two minutes. Sounds includes seagulls, meows, and voices shouting over one another. "Baby Sluts" skewers the nuturing instinct as scandalously as She Mob's "Teacher." But Mindtroll know the ways of the child. They're brats trying to romance our kneecaps. And if you have any tolerance whatsoever for hyperactive self-indulgence, you might just pick them up.

Singles:

10. Capital Cities feat. André 3000: "Farrah Fawcett Hair" (Lazy Hook/Capitol)
Would that all listicles could be so soulful. Tom T. Hall will cover. Drag queens already have.

9. Jack J: "Something (On My Mind)" (Mood Hut)
No surprise this ten-minute slab of melancholy jazzy house comes from a cold climate (Vancouver). The chattering, unstable drums, the Vitamin D-deficient keyboards moans, the desolate sax peals all add up to a soundtrack more appropriate for an aimless wintry walk than the dancefloor. The walk might clear your head. Or it might be your final destination because you have nowhere else to go.  

8. Fly Young Red: "Throw That Boy Pussy" (Fly Young Red)
Nicki Minaj, allow me to point you to the best ass eater although he won't be dining at your prodigious mounds. Hells yes this is here because Fly's so damn fly and his ode to man-to-man anilingus is as nasty as it wants to be. But mostly it's here for the reference to Biz Markie's "Just a Friend" which signals Fly's intention to take up a place in hip-hop history. I look forward to 25 years from now when some queer (or not) rapper references "Throw That Boy Pussy" as a matter of course.

7. Dominique Young Unique: "Throw It Down" (Sony)
Now that Ms. Unique has placed four singles (see below) on my top ten lists so far this decade, I'm forced to ponder her failure to generate buzz alongside Azealia Banks or even Minaj. Maybe she puts so much care into her music that she forgets to radiate personality through her raps. In any event, "Throw It Down" brings the noise, rings the alarm, throws it down, all that, with PE squeals for texture, a Knight Rider rip as connective tissue, and a chorus that does nothing but stutter. Stutter toughly, that is.

6. Le Youth ft. Dominique Young Unique: "Dance With Me" (Sony)
Unique's rap is mere decoration here. But it serves to slam home this silky dance track's central conceit - a stream of consciousness exhumation of TLC's "No Scrubs." In typical disco fashion, it doesn't need to sit still to honor the past. History on the fly, in the mix as it were, simultaneously looking back and pushing forward.

5. Rae Sremmurd: "No Flex Zone" (Eardrumma/Interscope)
Here's hoping these two teens from Tupelo never lose their stuffed-up, adolescent timbre because they could get over by rapping their iPhone contacts. Instead, they had the catchiest chorus of the year and a motto that forbids not boasting but being mean. Then they spend the rest of the track boasting.

4. Clean Bandit ft. Jess Glynne: "Rather Be" (Atlantic/Warner)
There was no reason why this UK #1/US #10 should have worked. Brits who took the Pet Shop Boys' fantasy of Debussy to a disco beat a bit too seriously, this cello-violin-drums-laptop combo portended the worst case of arid talent and virtuosity superseding all other signs of pop life. But their previous hit, "Mozart's House," impressed me by ridiculing classical (and any other) types who think EDM is repetitive ("it is re-repetitive!" they boast) and "Rather Be" disarmed me completely. My favorite music moment of 2014 occurs when the beat drops out of the chorus not to construct a mini break but for sweet eccentricity's sake. And the lyrics contain a poptimist motto for the ages: "Know with all of your heart, you can't shame me."

3. MC Bin Laden feat. MC 2K: "Passinho do Faraó" (KLProdutora)
An evangelical Christian with a flock of kids in costumes to do his crazed musical bidding, MC Bin Laden reduces the already spare sound of baile funk to whatever step is just above acapella. His rhythms sputter like a steam engine, frequently breaking down or swerving off course unpredictably. Vocals and sound effects hang together in irritating repetitions. No clue what's going on lyrically here. Something about a pharaoh with a voice intoning "tumba...tumba...tumba" over and over. But this is just a placeholder anyway for his overall oeuvre every example of which I've adored including the dozens of numbers he performs like spontaneous outbursts of song on the streets. Best of all, he's avoided the ostentaçao (ostentatious) variant of baile funk because, according to this informative Afropop Worldwide article, it "encourages poor people of the favelas to spend money that they don’t have." In short, his music is spare yet busy, even rich, just like Mindtroll's. Hmmm - seems to be a theme nowadays.   

2. Stitches: "Brick In Yo Face" (Stitches_TMI)
A Facebook friend wondered how he'd get a job with that AK-47 tattooed on his face. But he branded himself for the sins of us drips living the straight and narrow. And you should bow down to him because this is one lumbering dinosaur of a cartoon. Go ahead and spend your energy determining how real his commitment is to dealing bricks of cocaine. I prefer to thrill to the moment when he screams "I love selling blow," easily the money shot of the year. Live, he hoists mock bricks filled with flour at select lucky fans. Stitches, I promise to take one to the face...if I don't have to work the next morning.

1. How To Dress Well: "Repeat Pleasure (A. G. Cook Remix)" (PC Music)
Unlike "Brick In Yo Face," the output of the London-based PC Music empire rarely got past the theoretical stage. Too much of it sounded like twisted ideas about housey chart pop and chirpy video game soundtracks rather than the thing itself - fascinating to ponder but rather abstract in the end. But label owner A. G. Cook's radical reconstruction of How To Dress Well's (né Tom Krell) swirly neo-soul transcends ye olde parody/pastiche distinction. On one level, it's a prank on the order of "I Knelt 2day Where Jesus Knelt" in which Lisa Suckdog switches the speed on a 33-rpm Christian record to 45-rpm for the last word of the title hymn. Cook severely pitch shifts Krell's vocals for a woozy, psychedelic effect akin to the opening of The Poppy Family's "There No Blood in Bone" before the singing eventually proceeds untreated. He even seems to honor the song's gravitas with a backdrop of nothing more than huge held synth chords. Then Krell revs into his falsetto for the line "pleasure repeats on and on/even broken my heart will go on," the song's gushiest, most vulnerable point, indeed its climax. But Cook extracts only "broken my heart will go" and repeats it well past the point of absurdity. It's juvenile and obnoxious, a bad joke. Unlike Celine Dion, his heart will not go on as the remix now means to bleed the song of its gravitas. And then a miracle happens. Cook clings to the repetition so long that it becomes an element in its own right. It is a pleasure that repeats on and on. He loves this thing so much that he structures yellow stars and pink clovers around it. The immense chords return, firing off like a steel mill furnace now, and so does a brief spell of untreated singing. And then the repeated pleasure comes back like an inevitability, cocooned in the warmth as a gargantuan chord change sends it into the stratosphere. I hear an idiot transmission from outer space. I hear David in A.I. Artificial Intelligence safe for eternity under the watchful eye of The Blue Fairy. I hear all the dorks and misfits who ever found life in the repetitions and gimmickry of popular music floating in peace at last amongst the deities. 

 Albums
1. Mindtroll: EP #4 (Bandcamp)
2. Miranda Lambert: Platinum (RCA Nashville)
3. Wussy: Attica! (Shake It!)
4. Parquet Courts: Sunbathing Animal (What's Your Rupture?)
5. Pitch & Mumdance: Pinch B2B Mumdance (Tectonic)
6. Run The Jewels: Run The Jewels 2 (Mass Appeal)
7. tUnE-yArDs: Nikki Nack (4AD)
8. Jason Derulo: Talk Dirty (Warner Bros.)
9. Toni Braxton & Babyface: Love, Marriage & Divorce (Motown)
10. Objekt: Flatland (PAN)

Singles
1. How To Dress Well: "Repeat Pleasure (A. G. Cook Remix)" (PC Music)
2. Stitches: "Brick In Yo Face" (Stitches_TMI)
3. MC Bin Laden feat. MC 2K: "Passinho do Faraó" (KLProdutora)
4. Clean Bandit ft. Jess Glynne: "Rather Be" (Atlantic/Warner)
5. Rae Sremmurd: "No Flex Zone" (Eardrumma/Interscope)
6. Le Youth ft. Dominique Young Unique: "Dance With Me" (Sony)
7. Dominique Young Unique: "Throw It Down" (Sony)
8. Fly Young Red: "Throw That Boy Pussy" (Fly Young Red)
9. Jack J: "Something (On My Mind)" (Mood Hut)
10. Capital Cities: "Farrah Fawcett Hair" (Lazy Hook/Capitol)

And I didn't even have room for Shamir's gloriously fruity "On The Regular," Katy Perry's chorusless-but-not-really "Dark Horse," Usher ready to get down on "Good Kisser," etc.