Even though I (and the rest of the human race) am terrible at actually following through with my New Year's resolutions, there's a certain comfort in knowing that I could be a better person, next year, if I really tried. This year, I swear, I'm really gonna try. I will.
I want to see a "1" in the hundreds column on the scale. Even if my weight is 199.9 lbs for just one day, I'll be happy and content. Keto worked for me when I actually committed to it in 2018, and so I'll utilize that again next year. I also want to add some more exercise into the mix, with some more running, some more walking, continued biking, and trying to do an actual, real life push-up.
I want to journal every day. I did this for the month of November; I just wrote a few hundred words about my previous day, trying to make it creative as possible (depending on how exciting my day was, and how hungover I was while writing). So it's feasible to do it all year. (Don't worry, you won't subjected to those diary entries here, I have a private blog set up.)
I also want to make an honest effort to live my life every day as if it were worth writing about. No, this will not be a repeat of Joe's New Summer, when I did something honest-to-god NEW every day. I just want to be able to look back on every day of 2019 and say, yeah, that thing that I did (or saw, or read, or achieved, or watched, or experienced), that thing made today WORTH LIVING.
I want to make an honest effort to explore different music genres. I want to push past my comfort zone of white indie rock. I want 2019's Musical Year in Review to be more diverse than years past.
I want to read a chapter of War and Peace every day of 2019, and follow along at r/ayearofwarandpeace. I actually don't know if those discussions will be taking place again in 2019, but I'll at least follow along on the 2018 archives. There are 361 relatively short chapters in War and Peace, so if I read one a day, then I'll be able to conquer this intimidating beast by year's end.
I want the book club to go well. First meeting is January 12th (where we'll be discussing Beartown), and subsequent meetings will be quarterly afterward. So if we have four book club meetings by the end of the year, I'll be a happy man. (And if the book club devolves into a bunch of dudes just sitting around getting drunk on a Saturday morning, I'll be happy with that too.)
I want to complete, or at least work on, at least one additional goal on my Bucket List. Possibly watch a bunch of movies (#2), start training (#12), play some more drinking games (#16), make some moonshine (#20), brainstorm sandwich ideas (#28), I mean, shit, man, there's plenty I could be doing next year. So let's start doing it.
Of course, I also want to still try to be a good husband and father and friend and not drink so much and keep my job and invest my paycheck wisely and try to keep those Philly kids safe and work on the house and stay positive and enjoy the good times and all the usual bullshit, but I shouldn't need a New Year's resolution to do any of that... right?!
I tend to avoid B-sides and bonus tracks because, generally, there is a reason why the song was left off the album, ya know? If albums are meticulously crafted pieces of art, then the songs that were dismissed from the album were determined by the band to be not good enough for that art.
However, there also exists the rare band that just happens to make TOO MUCH great music, and it simply can't all fit on the album. For these bands, it is strangely rewarding to work through their odds and sods, because occasionally you find a brilliant tune that makes you question why it didn't end up on the album in the first place.
The Hold Steady is one of those bands, and the B-side "Two-Handed Handshake" is one of those songs.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that "Two-Handed Handshake" is peak Hold Steady. All the touchstones are here: the ultra-specific details about that one crazy night, the wayward young adults trying to find their place in the world (and usually finding it in some seedy bathroom), the acknowledgment of the shittiness of it all and the hope that it'll all get better soon. Seriously, is there a more Hold Steady-ish chorus than "We gotta be a little better / We gotta pull it back together"???
So why didn't this make the cut for Stay Positive? Hard to say. I could see an argument for the fact that Stay Positive was going for a bit more melancholy sound in general than the band typically deals with, a sound that wouldn't have meshed well with "Two-Handed Handshake"'s uplifting, fist-pumping singalong.
It's probably the horns. That horn riff is so goddamn great, it would've completely overshadowed everything else on any album it landed on. The horns have been in my head all week. Listen, and let them take over your life too.
TODAY'S "FORBIDDEN" SUBJECT: The video in which I do an interpretive dance to an NSYNC song in fifth grade WHY IT WAS FORBIDDEN: Because it's fucking embarrassing, that's why. For my parents' Christmas gift this year, I digitized 296 home videos from their collection. The catch was that, in order to record them onto the computer, I actually had to sit down and watch them as they recorded. This was an insanely frustrating and monotonous task, as there are only so many times you can watch school musicals and still shots of opening Christmas presents before you start to go fucking crazy. Plus, there's always that uncomfortable feeling that you get when you watch yourself when you were young. I was a dork, a loser, and it was tough watching this dorky loser on camera, embarrassing himself. I was embarrassed. May these home videos never gain a wide audience. That being said...
HOW I WILL WRITE ABOUT IT: I will post the goddamn video.
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The password is pukeonyourbirthday.
Merry Christmas and a happy New Year, ya dumb fucks. Enjoy.
***Spoiler for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia below, if even spoilers for basic cable comedies piss you off (they definitely do for me)***
I didn't watch a ton of new television this year, because sometimes it seems like the amount of new shows coming out is so overwhelming that I'd rather just watch another The Office rerun. I suppose I watched enough that I could cobble together a Top Ten Episodes or something, like I've done in the past. I enjoyed plenty of shows like Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, GLOW, This Is Us, Atlanta, The Good Place, etc., etc.
But I didn't watch enough TV to consider myself a definitive expert in the field, so a lot of what I would write about in such a list would mirror what plenty of TV critics already wrote about (and wrote better). And more importantly, while those shows gave me great pleasure, none of them made me feel something extra, made my chest tighten with emotion. Except one. And I'm still not even sure what to make of it.
Yes, I'm talking about the final episode of Season 13 of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. "Mac Finds His Pride" starts as a series of cheap jokes and ends in the most strangely beautiful thing the show has ever done.
The episode is the culmination of the "Mac is gay" storyline, one that started almost a decade ago. It began as a joke, but in a classic Always Sunny subversion, the joke was never homophobic, but rather commented on how fucking repressed Mac is. It wasn't "ew, you are gay," it was, "clearly you are gay, just come out already because we're tired of your lies and plus we don't care either way."
In Season 12, Mac finally came out of the closet (hilariously, over a $40 scratch-off lottery ticket), and has spent the time since trying to figure out what this means for him as a person, and how he can reconcile his unequivocal homosexuality and his Catholic upbringing (and again, hilariously, a lot of this struggle is undercut continuously by Mac in general being a terrible person in a group of terrible people, regardless of sexuality). In "Mac Finds His Pride," Mac finally grapples with the inner turmoil in a completely serious way.
Not that I have extensive experience with this art form, but I've never been as affected by ballet as I am when I watch this sequence. No, I don't know what it feels like to be Mac. But I know what it feels like to be confused and hurt and overwhelmed. Those feelings are universal. Somehow, this dance sequence is able to thrillingly portray those emotions, and it cuts deep.
What makes this extended scene incredible in the context of It's Always Sunny isn't that a comedy is taking a moment to be serious—Sunny does that all the time, to great effect. It's incredible because it starts serious, and it ends serious, and no joke undermines it whatsoever. If Sunny was playing by its own rules, then at the end of the number, Dennis would pop out and talk about how disgusting Mac is or something like that. But all rules are broken here. The tension ratchets up with each high-flying maneuver, until a room full of hardened criminals give a standing ovation, Frank finally and tearfully admits that he understands Mac, and then... scene. Season over.
The fact that I'm even talking in this serious of a manner about It's Always Sunny is insane. This is a fucking COMEDY SHOW that has spent thirteen years making us laugh with juvenile glee. Season 14 will probably be more of the same. But for five minutes, Sunny dropped all pretenses, and fucking stunned me with a daring, out-of-left-field treatise on love and hate and confusion.
I don't even know if I'm qualified to feel this strongly about this episode. I am a straight male who hasn't been to a high-art dance performance in over a decade. And I don't know if Always Sunny was even qualified to tackle it; they note multiple times in the episode in typical meta fashion how they shouldn't have a straight man portraying a gay man, because "the press will murder us." If that's the case, then I accept fault.
But as unqualified as I am, I cannot deny my emotions while watching this episode of television, and what I feel is gut-wrenching. Always Sunny transcends the political conversation. Mac's dance is universal, and it's fucking brilliant. This was my favorite TV moment of the year, and I look forward to celebrating it even more at the next Emmy ceremony, if there is a goddamn ounce of justice in this fucked up world.
There is a difference between "best" and "favorite." The "best" in a category is well done, culturally important, and critically noted. A "favorite" is just whatever one you like the best, subjectively. Last week we took a deep look at the best Christmas movie, It's a Wonderful Life. But today, on Christmas Eve, I want to just watch my favorite Christmas movie, A Muppet Family Christmas.
Here is the full version as it appeared on TV in 1987, including old-school commercials that aired during breaks. Watch it before YouTube kills it! [Editor's note: YouTube indeed killed the one with the commercials, so here's one without the commercials, but otherwise still completely intact.]
I love this holiday special because it epitomizes what I believe to be the true reason for the season—togetherness. Being with the ones you love is the most important part of Christmas, whether it's your actual family (Mrs. Bear drops everything to accommodate Fozzie) or your chosen family (every Henson-created lovable weirdo gathers to sing Christmas carols). The Muppets show us the true meaning of Christmas through singalongs and bad puns. God bless 'em.
When Nirvana's cash-grab Greatest Hits album was released in the fall of 2002, all my friends and I put it on our Christmas lists, because apparently we had all seen VH1's countdowns of best music videos of all time and were inspired by the dead guy rocking out in a high school gym. My buddy Ed was one of my friends who requested the disc from Santa, and he found it under the tree on 12/25/02, but with a catch—his dad had opened the package, and burned an edited copy of the CD, purposefully leaving off the track called "Rape Me."
Mr. McG**** is one of the most loved and well-respected elders in my life, but he is also hilariously conservative, and I'm not sure I agree with his censorship here. Though who am I to say! I don't have a fourteen-year-old child yet. Maybe in thirteen and a half years I will feel differently with regards to how I expose my daughter to music.
But if I had to guess now, I think I would probably have a conversation with her about the song instead of just hiding it from her. I would delicately explain to her what "rape" is and why it is inappropriate. I would tell her what being "figurative" means, and how Kurt Cobain wasn't necessarily talking about literal rape, but instead expressing his feelings about how the media was treating him, and how he was self-hating, and welcomed the abuse. And I'd probably touch on the fact that the opening guitar riff bears a striking similarity to "Smells like Teen Spirit," which is by design; it's a middle finger to a music industry that used and abused Nirvana's first hit, squeezed every penny out of it, so by playing it again, Cobain is in a sense welcoming that same music industry to continue to "rape" it.
I don't know if this is what I'd actually say to my fourteen-year-old daughter. We'll see. But I want her to hear this song, because it's a great track off a great album from a great band, and so if I provide her with the right guidance, I don't see why she couldn't listen to it. Honestly, I would take more offense if she put a greatest hits album on her Christmas list.
Pam and I are spending our ninth Christmas together this year, and so, for the ninth time in my life, I cozied up on the couch with my loved one and watched It's a Wonderful Life. George Bailey, our protagonist, saves Bedford Falls from collapse by consistently doing what is right instead of what is easy, and in the end, convinced by a nightmarish vision of a world without George Bailey, he comes to appreciate all which he has saved, because it now saves him. "Remember, no man is a failure who has friends" reads the note left to him by his now-winged guardian angel, and the message lands like a fucking hammer to me every goddamn year, as I sniffle and wipe away tears watching that cathartic finale.
But seeing as 2018 has been a cynical year for all of us, let's consider the scenario that we just witnessed, the horrors of the Bailey-less Pottersville, a town of moral corruption and decay. Because once Cousin Eustace has the money all counted, and the multitude of friends pack up and head to their cozy Bailey Park homes, once the last echoes of "Auld Lang Syne" have died, surely George Bailey himself would have to reconsider the terrifying alternate universe that he was witness to, and what it means for him and for his hometown.
Clarence uses the power of God to change the entire world in one crucial way. He states that this is the world in which George Bailey was never born. That's the entirety of it. There are no other corollary rules stated. The world is exactly how it is and how it always was, with the only difference being that George Bailey does not exist.
So we can assume that in this alternate world, what's worse is directly due to George Bailey not existing. Conversely, what's better in the actual, real universe is directly due to George Bailey's influence and interference.
This is frightening to think about, that one man was the only thing standing in the way of a town collapsing, and everyone becoming an asshole.
Let's name a character at random. How about Nick, the bartender at Martini's? We'll have to fill in a lot of blanks here, but bear with me.
What little time we spend with Nick in Bailey's actual reality shows the man to be kind and patient. He has nice words to say to our protagonist as George sits on a barstool and contemplates suicide. He shows real concern. And he steps up and takes action when George gets (rightfully) punched in the face by the husband of a hassled school teacher, kicking Mr. Welsh out and attempting to make sure George doesn't drunk drive (it's the effort that counts here).
But when we enter Clarence's nightmare, we meet Nick again, and he is a heartless bastard. He is suspicious of and hostile toward strangers. He mocks and assaults a homeless man. His jokes about angel wings are cold blooded and cocky after he boots George Bailey out of his restaurant for... ordering the wrong drink? And knowing the homeless guy's name?
My point is that Nick is a fucking asshole in this alternate reality. But the rules have been established, and so we must determine that Nick is an asshole BECAUSE George wasn't born. And Nick was nice in the real world BECAUSE George was born. These determinations have implications.
For instance, we must examine what exactly it means that Nick is an asshole because George was never born. How is that possible? People don't change who they are just because of a tangential influence by a neighbor (this is me being cynical). It must be true that the only thing that was stopping Nick from being a huge dick was the fact that he was with George Bailey.
So either it's just tough to be mean to a nice person (i.e. "George has always been so nice to me, so I'm going to be nice to him"), or Nick was able to buy a house at Bailey Park due to George having the town's best interest in mind (i.e. "George helped me find a home, so I'm going to be nice to him"). Either way, the only reason Nick is being nice to George as he sits there and cries is because of a transaction; George gave something to Nick (kind words, a house), so Nick gives something to George (kind words, protection from a violent drunkard and himself).
We don't have any Nick scenes in the world where George Bailey exists, but when George isn't sitting in front of him, but I have to imagine in that scenario, Nick is still a huge fucking asshole. Being a good person means showing compassion even when there's nothing in it for you, and Nick clearly isn't doing that. George, when he gets kicked out of a bar and mocked, has seen Nick for who he truly is.
Time and again, the masks drop from the town folks' faces, as George discovers the true nature of the people he has worked tirelessly to help.
Ma Bailey needs a son to have motivation to be a nice person, apparently, and with one dead and one having never been born, she becomes a wretched old hag who spits venom at the stranger who shows up at her door.
Uncle Billy has always been a mentally-crippled lunatic, but because he is in the "nuthouse" in the George-less timeline, it's made stark clear that George Bailey was only covering for his mental illness instead of working to get him the help his knotted fingers and knotted brain need.
Harry is dead, because no one was brave enough to jump in the lake and pull him out. The other children just stood around and watched him drown.
Burt the cop literally pulls out his gun and shoots blindly at someone whom he perceives to be mentally ill. George is unarmed and running away, but Burt pulls a firearm and shoots three bullets aimed to kill, all the while innocent bystanders stand dangerously close.
Are we saying that Burt becomes a crooked cop BECAUSE GEORGE NEVER EXISTED?! Because that's the argument that the movie wants us to believe. What George must've realized, as he lay in bed on the eve of Christmas, was that Burt is a crooked cop, full stop. Just because George himself has never witnessed the brutality, that doesn't mean Burt wouldn't hesitate to reach for the holster if it was someone else in trouble with the law. Burt's mask was removed in George's eyes, and no amount of money on the table in front of him is going to change that.
George stands there, in front of his fellow townspeople, in front of well over $35K, and he stands there bug-eyed, terrified, at all the people he thought he knew, before Clarence showed him the truth.
And as I myself lay in bed Monday night after watching It's a Wonderful Life, the tears dried, and I of sober mind, the masks fell away from in front of me as well. What horrors would I encounter in a world without Joe K***? Would my mother see me on the street and sneer? Would my cop brother-in-law attempt to shoot me with his gun? Would countless people be murdered due to the cowardice of others?
Do we currently live in Pottersville? The way America seems these days, maybe so. And that's SCARY AS FUCK.
Still, it's Christmastime, and so I will take this line of reasoning one step further in the name of good cheer and positive thinking. Even if everything I've said above is true, then we still have to take Clarence's last words as the final true conclusion: "Remember, no man is a failure who has friends."
It's always been true that humans are, at their core, mostly despicable creatures, myself duly included. But it's though the decisions we make and the bonds we forge that we can eventually overcome our cruel natures.
George forged a friendship with Nick the bartender through his general good nature and his efforts to make Nick's life more comfortable. This was a decision that George made in life. He could've traveled the world, and he probably would've been happier doing so, but instead he stayed in Bedford Falls and gave Nick a loan. Nick is happier because of this, and despite the transactional nature of the friendship, the bottom line is that Nick is putting more positivity into the world because of the decisions that George Bailey made.
Ma Bailey smiles when she sees George. Even if she wouldn't have smiled otherwise, the main point is that she's smiling now, and that's because of George. Uncle Billy is a useless fuck up, but he's happy, and he tries, and he is that way because of his nephew George.
Earlier, I defined "being a good person" as doing what is right and kind even if there is nothing in it for you. Pretend George Bailey didn't have a big pile of cash in front of him at the end of the movie, because he didn't ask for that. Pretend the townsfolk don't heed the call, and George ends up in jail, and he is sitting in his cell on Christmas morning. That wouldn't change who George Bailey is, and what he's done. Time and again, George helps the residents of Bedford Falls at his own expense, and time and again, Bedford Falls beats him down and destroys him. But he keeps doing what is right.
And if George really were charged with embezzlement and fraud, and came out of jail to a town that had turned their backs on him, I don't think George would've done anything different. I think he still would do his best for his fellow man. George didn't know that he would find himself with $35K, and so that's not why he lived his life the way he did. He lived a good and noble life, even with the possibility that he would never be rewarded. Bedford Falls crucified him before they made him rich, but he held the town on his shoulders, no matter the endgame.
It doesn't matter that Bedford Falls is a crummy, one-horse town filled with assholes. George knew that all along, even before the vision, and yet he kept giving everything while taking nothing in return. Christmas is the time that we should all aspire to be like George Bailey.
Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.
At Mount Zoomer
Wolf Parade
2008
We've already discussed the idea of follow-up albums, and their reputations being affected by the album preceding them, when we talked American Slang. I will probably talk about it again with At Mount Zoomer, only because it's similar but also something completely different.
American Slang was underrated in 2010 because it followed The '59 Sound, the Gaslight Anthem's breakout hit album. At Mount Zoomer was underrated in 2008 because it followed Apologies to the Queen Mary, Wolf Parade's breakout hit album. The big difference is this: American Slang is actually better than The '59 Sound, despite its reputation, but Wolf Parade will never top Apologies to the Queen Mary. Not many bands in general will top that album. So when At Mount Zoomer was released and was dismissed as the lesser of two Wolf Parade albums, that assessment wasn't necessarily incorrect. It did, and does, in fact, pale in comparison to Apologies.
But it's been over a decade since At Mount Zoomer came out, and that decade has given me the time and space to realize that At Mount Zoomer gets A LOT closer to matching the preceding album's genius than we all gave it credit for at the time. In fact, before we get into it and talk about some highlights, let's first take a look at an actual review of the album that I wrote when it first came out in the summer of '08. I copy and paste in its entirety, not only because I want to eventually gather all my blog writing here on PoYB and this is a good way to do it without being cloying, but also because it seems like a good and necessary way to be able to compare how I felt then and how I feel now.
Bang Your Drum June 24, 2008 by Joe K***
I always get incredibly nervous when a band that I love puts out another album. In my mind, there is a lot pressure for a band that was so good in their previous albums to be even better the next time around. Enter Wolf Parade, whose Apologies to the Queen Mary is one of the best albums released in recent memory, if not one of the greatest albums of all time. I've spent many a car ride with that album on full blast, fist pumping out the window, singing along at the top of my lungs, risking a car crash time and time again. Shit though, it's an amazing piece of work.
Now arrives their latest, At Mount Zoomer. Does it measure up? I'm tempted to say no, but to say so would be unfair. Wolf Parade had big shoes to fill, and with At Mount Zoomer they did their damnedest to fill them. It's a solid record, no doubt.
The record kicks off with an almost comical piano riff on "Soldier's Grin." Is that Spencer Krug playing the piano, or a cat meowing? Sometimes I'm not so sure. Nevertheless, it works. Things get interesting on the twitchy waltz stylings in "Call It a Ritual." And "Language City" harks back to the Wolf Parade of old; this song would not seem out of place on Apologies.
What strikes me is the fallibility in Spencer Krug's writing, as compared to his Wolf Parade counterpart, Dan Boeckner. I'm usually inclined to favor Krug; not only does his side project succeed when Boeckner's is shit, but on Apologies it was Krug who provided the best tracks, most notably "I'll Believe in Anything." Here At Mount Zoomer, however, Boeckner provides the top moments. "The Grey Estates" is an epic featuring what could be mistaken for Jamaican kettle drums; likewise, "Fine Young Cannibals" is a dark slinking melody that beckons me to get up and dance in a very promiscuous manner.
Zoomer ends with "Kissing the Beehive," almost prog-like in nature. It has a fucked-up time signature, which is so typical of a prog-rock band, but somehow Wolf Parade reigns it in and manages to not let it get out of control. The first six minutes are excellent, almost a masterpiece. Unfortunately, it slips up during that treacherous and dull four-minute coda; it just drags and drags. Oh well.
No, it's no Apologies to the Queen Mary, but what is, really? As I mentioned before, it's unfair to make comparisons. At Mount Zoomer, as a standalone record, is solid from beginning to end. When it fails, it bounces right back to deliver delicious rock-and-roll. Props to Krug and Boeckner for giving it their all on their sophomore effort. You guys get a very respectable 3 pukes out of 5.
Here in 2018, things have changed; every positive opinion I had of Zoomer has been confirmed over and over with every listen, and every negative opinion I had of it has been softened, or has been confirmed to be flat-out wrong. Let me state right out front that I was wrong about "Kissing the Beehive," because that fucking thing is great back to front, up to and including the bonkers coda. When I was a teenager and taking my first stabs at music criticisms, I thought it was necessary to focus on the negatives even if there weren't many, and even if the negatives were weak. Though I'm not any better at music criticism in my 30s, I have learned to just appreciate good things if they are good. "Kissing the Beehive" is good, no need to exaggerate any slight flaws.
I thought that the brief Spencer vs. Krug was interesting as well, because I was incorrect on at least three counts in just that brief paragraph.
First (and least pertaining to At Mount Zoomer), Boeckner has ultimately proven to be the more durable solo artist in his multitudinous projects outside Wolf Parade, whereas Krug's work is lackluster at best these days.
Second, there are plenty of highlights on Spencer Krug's side of the LP here, which I failed to mention because of a bullshit narrative. I love "Call It a Ritual," an off-kilter waltz. I love "California Dreamer," sunny LA pop music in a dark mirror. I love "Bang Your Drum," featuring a classic Krug-ian caveman yawlp "woah-woah-WOAH" sing along hook.
Third, I was wrong in trying to craft this narrative of Spencer vs. Krug in the first place, because Wolf Parade is truly a testament to the fact that these two brilliant minds do their very best work when they are together. Take "Language City," for example, possibly the best song on the album (incredulously not included in the original review!). "Language City" starts as a straight-ahead Boeckner rocker, but does a wonderful costume change halfway through. I have to imagine that Spencer Krug had an influence there, even though his name isn't in the credits. "Language City" would look a lot different on a Handsome Furs or Operators album. It wouldn't reach the same heights as it does here. For that matter, a song like "California Dreamer" would have been a lot more bizarre and inscrutable on a Moonface or Sunset Rubdown album. It wouldn't've been as grounded.
In Wolf Parade, Krug has his head in the clouds, Boeckner has his feet on the ground, so in combination, they stand incredibly tall.
It's interesting, when you go back and read 2008 interviews with Wolf Parade, most of them are conducted without Spencer Krug OR Dan Boeckner. They are mostly with drummer Arlen Thompson. I have to imagine this was by design. The best way to avoid having to talk about follow-up albums is to not talk at all. They let the record speak for itself. Ten years later, At Mount Zoomer still speaks to me.
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If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Call It a Ritual"
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Stray Observations
You may recognize the album's penultimate song, "An Animal in Your Care," from PoYB correspondent Mandy B.'s list of Best Songs to Fuck To back in 11/2008. It's a great song, but I cannot ever imagine having sex while listening to Spencer Krug slamming the keyboard and yelping like a wounded dog.
"Mount Zoomer," it should be noted, is the recording studio in which At Mount Zoomer was recorded. Naming your album after the studio is a grand tradition (Abbey Road, Music from Big Pink, Nashville Skyline, etc.), but it's kind of lazy too, isn't it? I imagine the band sitting down and saying "hmmm, what should we name the album?" and then just naming the first thing they see when they look around. To Wolf Parade's credit, they originally wanted to name it "Kissing the Beehive," but were afraid of getting sued by Jonathan Carroll.
ALBUM COVER: Wikipedia links to this fansite in their citations regarding the cover art. The fansite alleges that the cover was created by two artists, Matt Moroz and Elizabeth Huey, and that the art depicts two artists in the midst of battle. The assumption is that the "two artists" in question are Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner. But that's all hearsay, because I can't find any other evidence that this album cover explanation is legitimate (a "friend" is the source on the website; surprising that Wikipedia is using such a weak citation). This old Stereogum article is unhelpful. I guess I will assume wolfparade.nonstuff.com is correct until I learn otherwise.
"Kissing the Beehive" has inspired me to create a Top Ten list of best songs over ten minutes in length. Coming soon to PoYB!
Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.
At Hope's Ravine
Holy Esque
2016
At Hope's Ravine is a bizarre little album that I stumbled upon in 2016 and haven't done much with since, to my detriment. It won't rank among the greats, but it offers enough intrigue and novelty to interest me throughout its entire run. I dunno exactly why, but something about this album's inscrutability and mysterious excitement reminds me of House of Leaves, the ergodic literature that I discussed a few weeks ago. I think it has to do with the feeling of, "Is this piece of art just fucking with me by being so obtuse, or is there hidden meaning here that I'm not getting?" It's a feeling I felt reading that behemoth, and I feel it listening to Holy Esque as well. There's a thrill in teetering on the brink of the unknown, but there's also that sinking feeling of not being sure if there's any true meaning behind it. A sugar rush from no known substance.
I actually kind of lean toward the latter here, the more I listen to At Hope's Ravine. Pouring over the lyrics multiple times, I keep getting the sense that a lot of this would feel right at home on the r/im14andthisisdeep subreddit. Take the anthemic centerpiece of the album, "Tear," a song that soars even as it veers too close to I Heart Radio territory for my liking. Here is the climax of that song: "A hope, life will beckon you to a prayer / A hope, these are my prayers they only cover despair." What does this mean? Does it mean anything? Am I just being stupid, or are the lyrics just gibberish?
Let's ask Pat Hynes, lead singer of Holy Esque. Hey Pat, what do these lyrics mean? Pat responds: "These are songs about belonging, fear, love, self-doubt, dreams, religion, release, darkness versus light and escape." Okay Pat, that says about all we need to know.
Thankfully, despite what The Albums That Matter as a music column would have you think sometimes, clear and specific lyrics aren't necessary to make a great album as long as the music is there. I happen to quite like the music on At Hope's Ravine. It's a post punk album that really goes to show how the term "post punk" is pretty broad, maybe too broad. I want to compare them to Algiers, but without the strong political overtones. Also, there's the vocals.
The vocals from Pat Hynes are a wonder to behold. I'd say they are universally great, but I have a suspicion that many people would be turned off by them. E.g. I'm trying to picture a world in which Pamela K*** is enjoying Holy Esque, but I just can't. The closest comparison I can think of to Hynes' singing is to the sounds of a bleating sheep. When he hits those aforementioned anthemic choruses, the squealing vibrato is strange and kind of out of control. And it works, y'all. For me, anyway. Your mileage may vary.
Hynes' backing band in Holy Esque plays with enough variety to keep things moving along in a very indie-rock-'10s sort of way. "Rose" has a catchy but unequivocally peculiar guitar riff that almost sounds like it was influenced by music out of the Middle East. "St." sounds like Interpol doing a post punk version of dream pop, with varying levels of success. The band is able to try to sound like U2 in "Hexx" and then slide immediately into quasi-Nine Inch Nails industrial skronk in "Covenant (III)." I don't really have any qualms about the band here, I like it all, and they don't overstay their welcome on any of these sounds.
All this adds up to a band that somehow pulls off sounding simultaneously wildly diverse but also trite, and an album that simultaneously brings a whole lot of new and exciting ideas to the table while also not really making a huge impact on anyone. It's an album that I truly enjoyed listening to multiple times in a row while prepping and writing, but it's also an album I won't have a strong desire to spin all that much after I hit "Publish."
So it's a decent album, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
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If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Strange"
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Stray Observations
There's really not much biographical information about Holy Esque on the internet (I should know, I went to PAGE FOUR on my Google search). They are from Glasgow; that's about all I got. If they are going for the "mysterious unknowns" angle, they are succeeding. (Though their Twitter feed betrays this attempt by being genial and generic).
Even more mysterious is the fact that they at one point opened for Haim, of all bands. I can't really think of two bands that sound as dissimilar. How perplexed were the Haim fans in that audience when Holy Esque got on stage?
One time, me and Pam were at local establishment Byrne's, and at the other end of the bar there was a drunk local who was laughing a lot, and his laugh sounded just like Pat Hynes' singing voice, all gurgly and loud and unwilling to stick with a chosen pitch. We laughed a lot at that guy, and sometimes I think about him when I listen to the strange tones of At Hope's Ravine. This has been another edition of Dumb Port Richmond Anecdote Time, thanks for reading.
ALBUM COVER: Okay, this is not another instance of me just shrugging my shoulders, because I sincerely tried to do some research, but came up short. My usual cursory search of "at hope's ravine album cover meaning" yielded no results. I thought that the album cover for their sophomore effort, Television/Sweet, might've held a big clue, because that cover features a language written vertically, and I thought maybe if I could figure out what language that was, then the At Hope's Ravine album cover symbol might be part of that language. But I searched every vertically written language on this website, and nothing really matched Television/Sweet's symbols. Another website suggested that the cover was that of a crucifix, and the more I stare at the cover, the more I tend to agree with that guess. I mean, it matches with the band name "Holy Esque" and the allegedly "edgy" nature of the band itself. Let's go with that, shall we? A crucifix? Even though I won't be able to explain WHY it is a crucifix, just like I couldn't explain any other lyric on here.
[Editor's note from 2021: I finally see it. It's a crucifix. I was too busy looking at the gold part, but the color gold is actually the shading on the edge of a 3D crucifix, if that makes sense. DUH. I guess this is kind of like one of those optical illusions that you can really see after staring at it for three years.]
If you laughed at how Pat Hynes described the album above, then feel free to read his description for every track.
Ranking my favorite books that I read this year is a lot different than ranking my favorite music. For one, I don't think I read any books that were released in 2018. I read a lot fewer books than I listened to albums; books are more of a commitment, because, ya know, they take longer than an hour to complete. But the biggest difference is that I have historically not read a whole lot of books in my lifetime, which I'm choosing to look at like it's a positive. It's a good thing because now, when I actually learned to love to read, I have the entire history of books to choose from. I don't have to search for those hidden gems, I just skim right off the top and start with the best of the best. It's easier to just go on a goddamn Wikipedia page for books than to have to figuratively search through the bargain bins for new music, ya feel me?
Anyways, I read enough books this year that I can name my five favorite, but still have difficulty in choosing which five. But the choices are below. They are roughly in order from #5 to #1, but I won't number them because I'm not committed to the order for life.
Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me by Steven Hyden—The only non-fiction on my list was the book that made me laugh the hardest this year. Hyden writes a series of essays with the overarching theme of examining music feuds throughout the decades. He's equal parts knowledgeable, snobby, personal, and hilarious.
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan—An impressive feat of pass-the-baton literature, in which each successive chapter centers around a character who was only briefly mentioned in the previous chapter, and each chapter is written in a different style (memoir, Buzzfeed-esque celebrity gossip column, second-person narrative, a fucking Power Point presentation for christ's sake). Really fun to read.
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski—This was probably the most insane book I've ever read, and I don't say that lightly. The basic premise is that the main character (who may or may not have actually existed?) finds a book called House of Leaves, which is itself a story about a man who finds a secret, impossible hallway in his house and makes a movie about it. So you're reading two stories at once, primarily the story about the creepy house, but also in the footnote, we read along with the guy who found the book originally, and follow along as he goes crazy trying to read the first story. The novel you are reading, House of Leaves, is also a form of ergodic literature, meaning that the way in which the words are written tells as much about the story as the words themselves. So a chapter about historical labyrinths itself becomes a labyrinth of footnotes. When the character finds that the hallway he is exploring is getting smaller and smaller, so too does the text get smaller and smaller. It's just a wild fucking read, infinitely frustrating, infinitely rewarding.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz—But if House of Leaves doesn't sound like your cup of tea, try this one on for size. Oscar Wao is written in such an informal language (lots of purposeful slang and humor) that it felt like I knew the narrator from page one. But the nonchalance nature of the tale doesn't make it any less of a gut-punch by the time you reach the conclusion.
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen—It's possible that Franzen is out of style in 2018, but that didn't make me enjoy Freedom any less. It's one of those novels where the plot is secondary. Plenty happens, but the important part is the characters, and Franzen flexes in building his small but deep world here. He's masterful. Freedom is the book I read this year that I didn't want to end.
When you look at 2018's year in music as a whole, there is A LOT to enjoy. An almost overwhelming amount. I took great pains to whittle it down to twenty standout albums below (for a more comprehensive look, check out PoYB's Top 50 Songs), and even getting it to twenty was difficult.
Conversely, I felt like there wasn't any one album that stood out as an ALL-TIMER. It was really, really easy listing dozens of albums that deserved to be in the Top 20. It was really, really difficult to rank them and pinpoint a #1.
But whether I continue to listen to these twenty albums for the rest of my life or forget about all of them by next February, I will absolutely stand by them now as the very best of the year. I am thankful, as always, for the opportunity to listen to this art as it is made and released.
Thanks for slogging through my musical year in review, dear reader. Please enjoy the music below, because I definitely did.
Honorable Mentions
20. Skylight by Pinegrove
19. And Nothing Hurt by Spritiualized
18. Freedom's Goblin by Ty Segall
17. Master Volume by the Dirty Nil
16. Twin Fantasy by Car Seat Headrest
15. Freedom by Amen Dunes
14. I'll Be Your Girl by the Decemberists
13. Superorganism by Superorganism
12. Future Me Hates Me by the Beths
11. AT WORK by DARK THOUGHTS
The Top Ten Albums of 2018
10. Smote Reverser by Oh Sees
With some albums, you remember exactly where you were when you first heard it, and it made such a big impact that it's kept in rotation long after that moment is over. This past summer, I had an hour-long drive in the car, no wife, no baby, and Smote Reverser was the selection on the Kia's speakers. Volume up to max. Black Sabbath-inspired prog rock blasting out of the windows. Smote Reverser is so heavy that it crushed every other worry from my mind. I don't get many hour-long car rides by myself these days, but it doesn't matter. I could be on the bus, at my work desk, listening to music quietly while Willow sleeps, whatever the case may be, if I have Smote Reverser on, I'm rocking out.
"Truth in comedy" is an improv theory stating that making jokes that are true to life, jokes that the audience can relate to, land harder and make for bigger laughs than, say, absurd comedy (this is according to Improv Encyclopedia, which is not a website I'd ever thought I would visit). Like their predecessors Modern Baseball (Steady Hands is sort of a side project of MoBo while that band is on hiatus), Steady Hands is a young Philly band that create songs that I can relate to on a personal level. Feeling invincible after getting drunk ("40x"), being miserable at a party ("Indifferent Belushi"), even something specific as, um, SEPTA's 15 Trolley being out of commission ("Christmas at the 'Vous"). Singing about drinking at a bar is one thing; singing about drinking at a very specific Philadelphia Bar is another. There's truth in the comedy that Steady Hands performs.
The song that best represents this album:"Saint Lucas"
8. Bark Your Head Off, Dog by Hop Along
This is the sound of a band reaching the next level. Frances Quinlan's powerful voice is still there, of course, and I'll never grow tired of it. But on Bark Your Head Off, Dog, Hop Along's guitarist, bassist, and (extremely underrated) drummer strive to match Quinlan's complexity and intensity, and they get there. The songs on Bark are knotty and complicated. Songs morph into other songs halfway through (that "Not Abel" coda, hot damn). This album took me a lot longer to get into than Painted Shut, but once it finally clicked, and I understood its complexities, it yielded tenfold.
In 2014, I ranked the Voidz's first effort, Tyranny, as my tenth favorite album of the year, because it was "either the best album of the year or the worst album of the year." Virtue, just by comparison, almost seems tame. But the bar is so low that really anything would have seemed tame in comparison; "tame" for the Voidz still includes auto-tuned, fuzzy guitar freakouts, heavy-metal-adjacent breakdowns, warm and wobbly acoustic strumming, everything and anything. The fact that it's a modicum more accessible than Tyranny just means that Virtue could NEVER be considered "the worst album of the year" under any definition. It's definitely, unequivocally one of the best.
The song that best represents this album: Shit, man, this is impossible, but if I had to choose, "We're Where We Were" I guess (but if you don't like that, maybe try "QYURRYUS"?!)
6. Wide Awake! by Parquet Courts
I didn't love Parquet Courts before this year, and when I saw they were working with Danger Mouse for their next album, I figured this might be a good time to stop trying to understand them. But I'm glad I didn't. One of the dumbest things people said after the unfortunate 2016 Presidential Elections was "at least this will inspire some great music." This is an illogical maxim, but if it's like a broken clock (right twice a day), then Wide Awake! is right on time. This is an album that pisses all over the ideas of nihilism and inaction. It's a call to action. It's a twitchy, sometimes minimalistic punk album about big ideas. Parquet Court's thesis was one I could get behind, and it finally made the band click.
The song that best represents this album:"Violence"
5. LONER by Caroline Rose
There are a lot of ways we could describe Caroline Rose's third album. "Multitudinous" could be one; there's all kind of music on this album, ranging from funky jams to modern surf rock to nod-along grooves. "Quirky" might be one; certainly Rose's quirks are on display during all the left turns this album takes. "Joyous" could be one, but so could "caustic"; this is one of those albums that you can easily dance to or brood to, depending on the situation. LONER brings it, whatever that "it" is (or whatever she choose it to be on any given song).
4. what people call self-esteem is really just seeing yourself the way others see you by awakebutstillinbed
awakebutstillinbed is the musical project of emo singer-songwriter Shannon Taylor. Scratch the "emo" part, actually; Taylor describes her music as "extremo." So what makes awakebutstillinbed more extreme than your typical emo? Well, listen to the album's (I'm not going to type the title out again) first song, "opener," and you'll get your answer. After about two and a half minutes of Taylor's twee vocal fakeout, the depths of hell open, and Taylor's voice begins to strain beyond what I thought was possible for human vocal cords. It seriously sounds like she's trying to harm herself. And guys, it gives me the fucking chills it's so damn great. It is the sound of Shannon Taylor feeling so much emotion inside her, that when she finally lets it all out, it's released in this very unfeminine, guttural, blood-curdling yell. I could go on, and I probably will if you want to PM me about it, but for now, why don't we just leave it at this. You like emo because it's short for "emotional." But what if it was so emotional that it literally hurt? You have to check this out.
Every review and year-end blurb you'll read about R.B.C.F. will say some variation of: "Well, they're not reinventing the wheel, but..." That "but" is crucial. It's true, you've probably heard some sort of band like R.B.C.F. A four piece with simple rock songs that move a quick and steady pace. BUT. Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever has perfected the art. They move through their catalog with speed and finesse. There's just something to be said about a band who knows what they are doing and do it well.
Shy Boys once described their sound as "landlocked surf rock," but that might even be overstating it. This isn't the sound of a band who's never seen the ocean, it's the sound of a band who's never left the town they were born. Or maybe, as noted in the song "Basement," it's the sound of someone who spends all their time in their mom's house, creating tight and small musical arrangements. Nothing about Bell House is going to blow your hair back from the speakers physically, but it might just blow your mind. The harmonies are beautiful. The drums really do borrow from the surf rock tradition. The songs wash over you in about two minutes each and then leave you wanting more. I was surprised, and still am honestly, that such a tiny album made such a big impact on me this year.
The song that best represents this album:"Tragic Loss"
1. Dose Your Dreams by Fucked Up
Fucked Up is really the only band in 2018 that fucking went for it. Everything about Dose Your Dreams screams that it wants to be the best, that it wants to be remembered, that it wants to leave an impact. The album does all these things and more.
Fucked Up is, ostensibly, a hardcore band, though you wouldn't really know it by listening to Dose Your Dreams. Damian Abraham has the voice of a hardcore band's lead, sure. It's like an earthquake. But there are a ton of guest vocals on Dose Your Dreams, which make Abraham's impact even greater when he grabs the mic.
Okay, so that's one thing. The other thing is that the music itself very rarely sounds very "hardcore," depending on your definition I guess. But get a load of the title track to listen to some fucking disco, right? There's NIN-inspired industrial rock, there's crunchy '90s indie rock, there's floaty puff pieces, there's shout-along choruses and strings and Abraham yelling into the void. Dose Your Dreams is everything. Like I said, it fucking goes for it.
And another thing. In the interest of really going for it, Dose Your Dreams is also a rock opera. It is, in fact, a rock opera sequel to Fucked Up's 2012 album, David Comes to Life. Here in Dose Your Dreams, David is now a white-collar office drone, and one day he finds a gypsy who blows his mind and takes him to alternate dimensions. Like all great rock operas, the story is muddled and confusing and really not all that important to your enjoyment of the thing, but it just adds another layer to discover for the listener. Whether I'm following along on Genius or not, the audacity to turn in an eighteen-track rock opera in 2018 is just fucking endearing. They are fucking going for it.
In 2018, there was a lot of great music, but there was no other album that went as hard and as strong as Dose Your Dreams does for 82 fucking minutes. There isn't a dull moment. There are plenty of layers to peel away, something new to discover on every listen. Plenty of bands went for it in 2018, but only Fucked Up got there.
These are the songs that defined my year. As always, we only feature one song per album (sorry, "Beach Life-in-Death"). Of course, the fact that a song is listed here is a stamp of approval for that song. But also, I want to stress that if a song is listed here, it is an endorsement for the album it can be found on as well. There are no great songs from shitty or even mediocre albums listed below. It's a lot of music, but then again, 2018 had a lot of great fucking music, so have at it.
(If you want to read the Best Albums list, you can find it HERE. If you want to read a few miscellaneous ponderings on music this year, you can find all that HERE.)
Customer Retention Advertising works for Philly-area emo bands, because I felt real good about my decision to finally try out the Wonder Years after having to stare at a billboard for Sister Cities for almost the entire year while driving down I-95. "It Must Get Lonely" is the sound of a band, I assume, bending more toward pop-rock tendencies to appeal to all those commuters and soothe their driving-related frustrations. The song sees singer Dan Campbell's voice absolutely soar with loud and powerful empathy. Sorry, high school friends, for making fun of your Wonder Years hoodies.
I say this every year, but Will Sheff should stick to what works. "The Dream and the Light" proves it. Will Sheff knows how to sing like he's standing on the edge of a cliff, but he uses this vocal ability sparingly. I don't understand why he doesn't beat this horse to death, because I'll watch the massacre every goddamn time. "The Dream and the Light" even throws some more of Joe's musical catnip into the mix with a fun, screeching sax solo at the climax. If every Okkervil River song from now until forever just sounds like a Silver Gymnasium outtake, I'll be content.
Fuck conflicts of interested. If someone who actually reads Puke on Your Birthday wants to create good music, then I'll mention 'em here (only because he probably won't mention himself there).
"Time in Common" is a meditation on how the concept of time is man-made and might not even matter. But this is not a meditation made at a languid pace. The tempo is frantic and the guitar hooks come along one after another. It must an Aussie trick, to never slow down, to never get sad or sappy or introspective, to keep the momentum moving, and yet feel so... laid back too? Maybe that's why "Time in Common" did the trick trying to calm down a crying baby this past summer. The dances we performed to this song were frenetic, but the baby always fell asleep.
Of all the hats that Caroline Rose wears on her third album, quirky underwater DJ is probably my favorite. My head doesn't stop bopping even as the synths ooze and melt, even when as we listen to yet more lyrics about how time keeps moving and soon we'll all be old and gray.
It will be really interesting to hear more and more of these types of songs as our generation grows up and creates music. Not only is the subject matter pretty much exclusive to millennials, but the music is a pastiche of all the shit we were listening to in the '90s, that insanely fun punk-pop in the same vein as Blink-182.
Superchunk's optimism is bracing during these grim times. Okay, so "optimism" might be pushing it; let's call it an ability to laugh at how terrible things are. This can be its own form of optimism, in the right context. "What a Time to Be Alive" is a furious punk song about 2018's (and 2017's, and 2016's) most notorious subject, and you would think that subject (unnamed here just as it is unnamed in the song, but y'all know who we're all talking about) would be tired by now. But we're still here, we're fighting the good fight, and I'm glad we have Superchunk's firebrand musical stylings in our corner.
Nothing goes down easier than some goofy-ass ska music. "Title Holder" is corny in all the best ways, complete with those tried and true ska maxims ("Never let 'em break you down!" et al), "woo-hoo-hoo!" backing vocals, even a fucking well-placed vibraslap or two. This shit will never get old to me, no matter how long its been since those high school skanking parties of yore.
It's kinda funny. the Green Day of 2018 is so far removed from the Green Day of 1994, that when Billie Joe Armstrong wants to write something that sounds like it could've been on Dookie, he needs a completely new band to lay down the track. "Taxi Driver" is everything that made old school Green Day so simple, snotty, and fun.
Shy Boys create such a small sound that it's a wonder how big you feel when you listen. "Take the Doggie" is a song comes and goes in less than 90 seconds, and the opening lines ("I dropped / some food on the ground") are practically mumbled. But somehow, still in those same 90 seconds, we also get a multi-part harmony about rescuing a dog from an evil neighbor. It's astonishing how hard this fluttering and fanciful band can pack that punch.
It's probably a weariness of recency bias that we find Mastersystem here at #40 on Top Songs (and missing Top Albums completely). I didn't even know that Scott Hutchinson had a side project from Frightened Rabbit until a few weeks ago. But after Hutchinson's suicide in May (probably the first death in music in my lifetime that truly gobsmacked me and cut me deep), everything he touched in his lifetime has taken on this melancholy and depressing and regretful aura. Like, okay, should the people that cared about Hutchinson have heard "Bird Is Bored of Flying" and seen that this is a man who needs help and support? He's the titular bird, right? It depresses me even further, that the signs were there, in this song, on this album, in all his lyrics for any band, and because it was all out there, maybe we could've done more. Folks, whether you decide to listen to this Frightened-Rabbit-as-Grunge music or not, do me a favor, just remind your loved ones that you are there for them, okay? That you care. That you want to listen. That you will hear what they will have to say.
"I was born to tear myself apart" awakebutstillinbed's frontwoman Shannon Taylor sings on "fathers," but based on the clinically insane sounds her voice makes, I don't think the lyrics are figurative. She sounds like she is literally trying to tear herself apart.
Like every other song on the damn album, "Bathed in Light" is bathed in heavy hard rock guitar rifts and shout-along choruses. This particular song is elevated above the rest because of its hilariously hard rock subject matter—it's one final shout out to the fans before the protagonist dies in a car crash. Don't worry, he gets to hang out with Jesus and Elvis and grandma in heaven!
Anna Burch stares into my soul from the album cover. She looks so serious, like she's about to drop some real platitudes or life lessons. The mysterious depths of Burch's eyes contrast with "Tea-Soaked Letter." There's not much serious about the music here. The sun-soaked guitars glide over a bouncy rhythm, almost like we're at a beach party. But I'm not seeing a beach. I'm seeing Anna Burch, who sees me right back.
Listening to the Sidekicks is like looking at an old photograph album from your youth. "Here's the time we sat in the backseat and sang along to the Band and Bruce Springsteen." "Yeah, those were happy songs, but I look so sad."
The Arctic Monkeys were so fucking weird this year (like, my sister saw them in concert multiple times because they were allegedly great, but can you even imagine them playing some of Tranquility live?). "Four Out of Five," to give you a sense of how bizarre this all is, is a song sung by the advertising department of a hotel on the moon, and the lyrics are pretty much a brochure for the aforementioned lunar hotel...? Still, no matter how strange, these guys can still write a song that is going to be in your head for days. Can't tell you how many times I read a movie review in a newspaper or magazine this year and in my head heard: "FOUR STARS OUT OF FIIIIIIIIVE."
I have to imagine that this song is slightly tongue-in-cheek (the laughing before the final chorus gives it away), but it also functions as a pretty nice takedown of our stupid fucking habit of looking at our damn phones all the time, while "real time is running out!" Thanks Jim James, for rocking out and making us take notice. (P.S. Is it just me, or are a lot of these songs about time growing short as we grow older? Am I more inclined to like these songs because I recently mourned the end of my 20s?)
I will never get enough of these big, bright, female-lead Australian indie rock bands, especially if they can keep delivering such instant highs as this song's constant refrains, "Whatever, yeah, whatever!!" It's like eating a big bowl of Vegemite. Wait, is Vegemite sugary? That's what I meant, sugar. Okay, I was wrong. I know nothing about Australia besides the fact that the Beths kick motherfucking ass.
After the pretentious slog that was Pure Comedy, we find Father John Misty regretting the whole ordeal on the next album, God's Favorite Customer. As he should! He was kind of an asshole on Pure Comedy! And I Love You, Honeybear too, for that matter! See, for example, "Mr. Tillman," in which he addresses himself by his real name, in which he ponders on the real consequences of his actions, in which he regrets bashing literally the only halfway decent station in Philly radio. Mr. Tillman, I forgive you.
With "Me and Michael," MGMT set out to write "a catchy song that gets you pumped up, but you have no idea what the message is." True, the '80s-high-school-dance style song is mostly nonsensical, but here's a message for you: MGMT is back, baby!
This Philly-based band knows their way around a fun and frantic ditty, but I remember the moment "You Can Have Alonetime When You're Dead" really hit home for me. Willow had just been born, and I escaped the house for like 20 minutes to go food shopping and to take a breather from the craziness at the house. And then this song comes on, and I heard the title sung like a threat, and it felt like it was directed right at me. And I started laughing, because it's true. Alonetime is over when you're a dad.
I feel like "Mistake" maybe out-Florence'd Florence + the Machine this year? A female frontwoman with vocals soaring over a mid-tempo rock ballad? Middle Kids scratched that itch way better than Welch ever did.
I would love to know what headspace songwriter Zac Little was in when he wrote "Ladder to the Sun." When you listen to the music, you might think it was during a good time in Little's life. The bright twinkling strings and joyful falsetto come together to create a song that's, well, pretty sunny. But if you listen to the lyrics, you might discover that this is a sad fucking song. It reads like there's a drunk and he's at the end of his rope, and he realizes that he won't get better. There's reason to be optimistic? Says who?
Turn away, ye who are searching for more Strokes. The Strokes didn't fuck with robot voices, synth grooves, or agogo bells. After listening to this song, you start to think... maybe they should have.
I fucking hate "Hey Jude." This is more likely due to the fact that it was shoved down my throat growing up than the fact that it is corny. I like corny. And you know what? I fucking love the archetype of "Hey Jude"'s singalong outro. I fucking hate "Hey Jude," but any song post-Jude that employs a group singalong of non-lyrics, I will inevitably fucking love, whether it's one of my favorite bands or First Aid Kit, a tepid Neutral Milk Hotel-core folk rock duo. I love it all. Except "Hey Jude." Fuck that song.
"Spirit FM" is the type of song I could play ten times in a row and not get tired of it. This is the magic of power chord pop punk. It's a magic sung about in the song ("music is better even than going to heaven"), it's a magic exhibited in the song itself. I will take infinite repeats.
It's probably no coincidence that "Mountain of the Sun" is the best song on Anthem of the Peaceful Army. It's really the only song on the album that does something that is decidedly un-Led-Zeppelin-like. John Kiszka's warbling and voice-cracking vocals during that fantastic chorus is not something that I ever heard Robert Plant do (not saying he couldn't, just saying he didn't). As discussed ad nauseam yesterday, I really don't take issue with the fact that this band apes Zeppelin at almost every turn, but still, when they appear to do something fresh and original, it really stands out. I wonder if this is a clue that Greta Van Fleet will start to head in their own direction a bit more in subsequent outings. Let's be real—probably not. And let's be real—I'll be on board either way.
As with any supergroup, we eventually succumb to ranking its members. My rankings here are: 3) Lucy Dacus, 2) Julien Baker, and 1) Phoebe Bridgers by a fucking mile (I totally under-ranked Stranger in the Alps last year). So it stands to reason that Bridgers' third of this brilliant six-song EP would rise above the rest. "Me & My Dog" is a feature for all three great artists' voices, but the songwriting is impeccable, and that's all Phoebe Bridgers.
This song is for everyone who's ever been told they weren't good enough to achieve their dreams. (And if your dream is to front a punk band by playing the ukulele, then boy, this song is really for you.)
Honestly, if you write a song about how ALIVE you feel when you drink cheap beer, the song is probably gonna be feature here on this list. ("Piss-warm 12-pack of Keystone Light / Or maybe it was Natty Light / Whatever made us famous for just one night." That's a fucking winner, folks.) A similarity of experiences is one thing, but another thing is sincerely wondering if you ever ran into the Steady Hands members in those wooded Philly keg parties.
Tomorrow, I'll yet again be writing all about how much I love Hop Along and their new album, but let's be straight, this particular song sits at #19 on this list because Frances Quinlan is amazing.
The best road trip songs are lackadaisical. They understand that a road trip isn't about the destination, it's about the journey. Spiritualized made one of the best road trip songs this year. He knows that all you need are a tank of gas, a radio, and a friend to share driving duties, and you can just hit the road to see where it takes you. Road trip songs will never die, because everyone harbors that secret desire, to just go, and not look back.
"Good music is undirected. It’s felt and received. It’s almost natural. Musicians who are on that tip, they make music because they like to connect to the fucking ether." This is how Amen Dunes described his music in a recent interview. Honestly, I think he failed in this respect, because sometimes Amen Dunes feels like he is directing all his energy directly toward me. I can't imagine that Amen Dunes would be a very good band to see live, because it would be like—why are all these other people here? Every time I listen to "Time" I feel it become some unknown entity crawling around the dark recesses of my brain. It's a steady pulse like a heart under the floorboard that drives me crazy. It took me quite a while to get to this point, to appreciate its secret beauty, but I'm here. Join me.
The new synth-y sheen totally worked for the Decemberists, don't get me wrong, but that whole narrative of "Decemberists are a synth-rock band now" was overblown. Besides the exercises in '80s-tinged lit rock (again, still an unmitigated success in my eyes), there was still plenty of classic Decemberists to be mined from I'll Be Your Girl. Here is "Sucker's Prayer," an album standout that finds Colin Meloy with simpler lyrics than usual, but the simplicity is met with an unusual snarl from the frontman, as if every time he says "sucker's" he's trying to harm someone. If you've ever liked the Decemberists, come back to your mid-'00s nerds, they're still great.
This is the song that finally made me "get" Ty Segall. The dude releases a lot of music (five albums this year alone), and I've always kind of shrugged my shoulders at it all. But when "Fanny Dog" kicks in with a snare hit, and that sharp-as-fuck horn riff blasts over everything, it just clicks, man.
I didn't think Fucked Up would ever be able to reach the heights they did throughout "Queen of Hearts," but they achieved the task multiple times in the towering Dose Your Dreams. "Raise Your Voice Joyce" seems to me like the most direct sequel to "Queen of Hearts," not only because it's the second song on the album and it again features our hero David coming to a life-changing realization. Mainly, because it again features that wonderful alchemy of Damian Abraham's booming, growling, intoxicating yawlps alongside a guest female vocalist, this time Jen Calleja, who sings a little flat/drone-y, but to great fucking effect in the chant-along chorus. Seriously, this shit is awesome. It brings up my blood pressure the same way "Queen of Hearts" did, and does. Okay, that's enough, see you tomorrow to fawn some more.
I noticed last year that, save for a Sheer Mag or two, there weren't many protest songs topping my Best Of lists. If that was true last year, it's doubly true this year, when everyone in this country just seems exhausted and numb to it all. Thankfully, a modicum of a difference was made at the polls, but in day-to-day life, there's less fire in our bellies than just a fucking dull weight that seems to be holding us down. No song this year (or ever, possibly) has captured this bitter malaise better than "USA." We're tired and we're bored indeed.
Women have a right to be angry—did you see those atrocious Kavanaugh hearings?!—and by the sounds of it, women in the indie rock industry absolutely have that right. "The Opener" features lead singer Georgia McDonald raising her fists to every man who claims that Camp Cope can't fill the room when booking shows. I can't imagine there's a room in America they can't fill after this song.
Fallon wades deeper into the soul music swimming pool with his post-Gaslight Anthem music. He practically channels Little Richard in "Forget Me Not," a fun bopper about a not-so-fun death (hand claps and mourning, I suppose, are a great combo).
For #18, I talked about a classic "road trip song." Though #9 "Suck the Blood from My Wound" involves two people hitting the road, a road trip song it is definitely not. This is more of a car chase song. It's probably the most cinematic song on my list (by design, per Furman). Though the specific story, about a man who is growing wings out of his back as he tries to escape the authorities, may not quite be universal, the overall sentiment is. Who hasn't felt like a "freak" at one point or another? We're all freaks, baby, but at least we have each other.
Yes, this is a cover of one of the greatest and most famous songs of all time, so in that way, maybe its inclusion on my list is a cheat. But Patrick Stickles has done the impossible, and dusted off this chestnut, and made it brand fucking new. All it took, it seems, was a change in pronouns. Now, instead of Dylan's classic dismissal of an unnamed foe, Stickles is directing the vitriol inward. It's classic Titus Andronicus, and it's fucking brilliant.
There's was video of Willow, one-month old, "dancing" to this song. I watched the home video for the first time recently, and just deleted it. It was creepy, and not just because Willow looked like a naked mole rat compared to her current seven-month-old cuteness; it was more to do with the fact that Willow was being treated like a toy more so than a human being (Pam, you were right!). I deleted the video, but despite all that, I still think of my daughter when I hear this song, it's funky bass progressions, and hear the lyrics "But I can't be without / The love that I have found," and hopefully one day we can dance around the living room to "Short Court Style" of her own volition.
The production of this song, along with the rest of the album, was upped considerably from its 2011 origins, but no matter how much of that classic layered Car Seat sound is slathered on, "Sober to Death" will always essentially be a campfire singalong.
"Is the rest of his music like this?" asked Pam a couple months ago. The answer is probably "No," but that's not a judgment either way on Phosphorescent's discography. It was just surprising, is all, that such a deep and mysterious folk singer could make such a bright bouncy jam. "New Birth in New England" sounds like something you'd hear on your Caribbean vacation, to be honest. Matthew Houck became a father twice over since his last album, so I don't really blame him for taking the Phosphorescent sound into a sunnier direction.
It's not a surprise that I still love the Go! Team after all these years, but it's definitely a surprise that they are still able to delight me in such unexpected ways. As always, they sound like a high school marching band on "Semicircle Song," with big brass tuba hits and soft xylophones following along with the melody. But that bridge kills me, and I don't know that I can really explain it besides just saying it's incredible charming. All it is is the (marching) band members introducing themselves one after another like, e.g., "What up, my name is Mackenzie, I'm a Sagittarius," and "hey, hey, hey, I'm Victoria, and I'm a Scorpio," and so on. I don't know why this section is in here, and I don't know why they are all giving their Zodiac signs, but all I know is that it is so damn cute and funny and weird and so goddamn Go! Team. Never change, please.
Okay, if you thought the Go! Team was weird, check this out: the Lemon Twigs' album Go to School is a rock opera is about a monkey named Shane who decides to attend the local high school. This is the type of conceit that tickles my fancy, for whatever reason, and so I probably talked about this album the most this year out of any 2018 album (even if the album as a whole doesn't quite have the legs to keep getting constant spins here in December). But there are parts of the rock opera that are utterly transcendent. Enter "The Fire." Here, we find Shane, our monkey protagonist, fed up with being bullied, and so he... burns down the school and kills all the students. This album is insane. But I wouldn't be talking about this song if there wasn't some great music backing up the narrative. I am happy to report that the extended outro of "The Fire," with all the showstopping "Sha-na-na"s, is more than sufficient in setting the tone for a scene where a monkey commit mass homicide by incineration.
"One Trick Ponies" is Vile's ode to all the friends he's ever had, and as I find myself growing older and reminiscing about the younger days, "One Trick Ponies" becomes my ode to my loved ones as well. "Some are weird as hell, but we love 'em." These are my friends, and I do love them so. I'd give my left-nevermind to keep the love within "One Trick Ponies" in my heart forever.
This song is so good that it's going to get me to talk about soccer.
"Total football" is a theory in soccer that any player can take over the role of any other player on the field; it's a fluid system that leans on the ability of players to adapt and to work together to achieve the common goal of defending and attacking. In "total football," your assigned role (midfielder, defensive back, whatever) doesn't really matter, because you could be called up to fill other roles as needed.
Parquet Courts, in all its herky-jerky, hard-hitting, post-punk glory, posits that "total football" should be applied to society at large in these troubled times. Not only rebels, but teachers, workers, authors, poets, we all need to come together to achieve a common goal. The goal is to dismantle an institution that promotes oppression.
It's kind of some heavy shit, but it's the heavy shit we need right now. We need our our punk bands to point to Caucasians with "hurt feelings" and say—grow up. We need our punk bands to point to those standing during the national anthem and say—it is a sin to drown the roar of oppression.
We need our punk bands to look at a sniveling jabroni like Tom Brady, a man who goes against the very definition of "total football" by pushing teammates to the side and trying to win games by his lonesome, a man who embodies the shitty archetype of the lone wolf white male, we need our punk band heroes to point to Tom Brady types and say—FUCK YOU.
"Total Football" hit me on multiple levels this year. It hit me with its headbanging tempo changes and hook-carrying bass and rollicking pace. It hit me with its final lyric, because I had literally just spent a cold February night walking down Broad Street yelling "Fuck Tom Brady" myself. Mostly, it hit me with its call for collectivism. It's a reminder that we all need to work together to dismantle the country's ruling class. Easier said than done, sure, but at least we have great punk songs on our side.
