Top 30 Albums of 2019

30. Chat Pile - This Dungeon Earth EP

29. Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - And Now for the Whatchamacallit

28. Guided By Voices - Sweating the Plague


27. Mariee Sioux - Grief in Exile


26. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Infest the Rats' Nest

25. Gruff Rhys - Pang!


24. Chat Pile - Remove Your Skin Please EP

23. Beck - Hyperspace

22. Pond - Tasmania


21. Weyes Blood - Titanic Rising

20. Guided By Voices - Zeppelin Over China

19. The Desert Sessions - The Desert Sessions Vol 11 & 12

18. Guided By Voices Warp & Woof


17. Ex Hex - It's Real


16. FEELS - Post Earth


15. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Fishing for Fishies


14. Robert Forster - Inferno


13. Messthetics - Anthropocosmic Nest


12. Cherry Glazerr - Stuffed & Ready


11. Xiu Xiu  Girl with Basket of Fruit


10. Big Thief - Two Hands


9. Lorelle Meets The Obsolete - De Facto

8. Thom Yorke - ANIMA

7. JPEGMAFIA - All My Heroes are Cornballs


6. Big Thief - U.F.O.F.


5. Caroline Polachek - Pang

4. Purple Mountains - Purple Mountains

3. Angel Olsen - All Mirrors


2. black midi - Schlagenheim

1. Le Butcherettes - bi/MENTAL

Spotify Playlist: Addicted to Self-Control

Cherry Glazerr - Stuffed & Ready

I'm a sucker for 90s nostalgia, and in the current shitshow in which we live, it seems amazing to me now that angsty rock peaked well before the decade was over. Not that Cherry Glazerr is an exercise in nostalgia; while their music leans heavily on "grungy" loud-soft dynamics, it just as much recalls Japanese Breakfast's dream pop and Metric's synth rock. And, not to pigeonhole Clem Creevy, whose emotional palette is far from monochrome, but a pure strain of anger is a prominent part of it, and in the current state of things, it's hard to believe it ever went out of style. In the album's most cathartic moment, Creevy screams "I see myself in you and that's why I fucking hate you!" It's a sentiment that might look banal on paper, but when it comes around, it's earned. When Cherry Glazerr released its third album Apocalipstick in early 2017, Creevy was, in her own words, an overconfident teenager, and is now more world-weary and cynical. She conveys a relatable sense of wrongfootedness, her jabs tempered with self-effacing humour. Stuffed & Ready, however, is not the dirgy, mopey album it might sound like I'm describing. It's a pop album powered by genuine humanity and meticulous songcraft. I'd say it's "stuffed" with hooks and "ready" to rock you, but I'm not a complete and utter fuckwit. Instead I'll say that in a better world, Stuffed & Ready would be a massive hit, but paradoxically, a better world would be unable to produce it.

RIP Ginger Baker

RIP Peter Edward Baker

19 August 1939 - 6 October 2019

This is basically a memorial blog now.

Lorelle Meets The Obsolete - De Facto

One thing I might not have noticed on my first listen had I not known already is that Mexican band Lorelle Meets The Obsolete's fifth album is sung entirely in Spanish. Lorena Quintinilla/Lorelle's vocals are typically half-whispered and placed low in the mix, so I have trouble understanding what she's singing anyway. This particular creative decision is a pointed response to the clusterfuck at the border. I don't speak Spanish, but "La Maga" doesn't need a translation.

2016's Balance introduced more streamlined songwriting to the band's palette; as in the past, and particularly on that album, elements of the band's songs are familiar, even radio-ready, but are used as springboards for songs with less conventional payoff. "Líneas En Hojas"'s bass line evokes "Billie Jean", but it's more of a trance than a floor-filler. "Resistir"'s chords would be at home as the intro to a garage rock song, but the song never progresses beyond them, instead gradually adding sound to ramp up the drama. De Facto walks a fine line, relatively immediate in its appeal without filing down the band's edges to the extent that it could be reasonably described as their "pop" album. It is both their strongest album melodically and their most abstract.

Spotify Playlist: David Berman

RIP David Berman

RIP David Berman

January 4, 1967 - August 7, 2019

Spoon - Everything Hits At Once

In the scheme of things, a Spoon "best of" compilation isn't the worst thing that's ever happened, but it's legitimate to question whether it needs to exist in 2019. Streaming having taken over music consumption, you can listen to any of thousands of playlists on Spotify or dive into the band's catalogue itself.

As these things usually do, Everything At Once presents a skewed version of Spoon's history. Casual listeners can get by without hearing the band's first two albums Telephono and A Series of Sneaks and their least regarded album, 2010's Transference (none of which get a look-in here), and the band would prefer to steer the next potential super fan away from those albums while keeping the compilation concise. The selection is tilted disproportionately towards Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and They Want My Soul rather than consensus favourites Girls Can Tell and Kill the Moonlight. This might be the band's personal taste for their own work. When it comes to omitting the first two albums, the argument could be made those albums' comparative rawness would stand out, but it's harder to argue that "Anything You Want" or "All the Pretty Girls Go to the City" couldn't easily take the place of "Do You" and "Inside Out".

Purely on its merits as a collection of songs, Everything Hits At Once holds up. Quibbles over what could have been included or excluded only underscore the strength of Spoon's catalogue. Its sequence competently corrals a bunch of songs recorded over a 20 year period, but the title almost inadvertently alludes to one of its shortcomings; by design, everything hits not so much at once, but one after the other without reprieve. There's nothing wrong with that approach, but I prefer the push and pull of Spoon's albums, and you don't get that here without the minimalist atmospherics of songs such as "Paper Tiger" and "The Ghost of You Lingers" or acoustic numbers such as "10:20 AM" and "Vittorio E", but hopefully Everything Hits At Once will implore people to discover that for themselves.

RIP Dr. John

RIP Malcolm John Rebennack 

November 20, 1941 - June 6, 2019

Happy Birthday to the Following Albums (6)

The following albums all have significant birthdays this year.

Happy 5th Birthday, Run the Jewels' Run the Jewels 2!

Happy 10th Birthday, Dappled Cities' Zounds!

 Happy 20th Birthday, Blur's 13!

Happy 25th Birthday, Nas' Illmatic!

Happy 30th Birthday, The Cure's Disintegration!

Happy 40th Birthday, The Clash's London Calling!

Happy 50th Birthday, Scott Walker's Scott 4!

Spotify Playlist: eatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepuddingeatthepudding

RIP Scott Walker

RIP Noel Scott Engel

9 January 1943 - 25 March 2019

Dr. Giraffe's Cellophane Cruise Ship: Courtney Love - Uncrushworthy (1990)

K Records' Courtney Love was a duo consisting of Lois Maffeo and Pat Maley, whose output was limited to a few short EPs and singles in 1990 and 1991 and some later compilation appearances. There's nothing else to say about the duo, so here's "Uncrushworthy" from the EP of the same name.

Wait, what?

Reports vary as to the name's origin. Maffeo claims it came "out of nowhere", Love claims she and Maffeo were roommates and Maffeo found the name in her diary, which she stole, while an unsourced claim goes that the two were indeed roommates, but came up with the name together. Another unsourced claim states that Love and Maffeo were never roommates and that Love angrily told K boss Calvin Johnson to force the duo to cease and desist. In any case, Maffeo began her solo career under the name Lois soon after. Love didn't release anything under her own name until 2004's America's Sweetheart. Snail Mail covered "The 2nd Most Beautiful Girl in the World" from the Uncrushworthy EP in 2018.

 
https://ravenandcrowstudio.com/journal/seven-inch-sunday/

Spotify Playlist: 🙃