Retro Bummys: Best Albums of 2008

Looking back over my picks for the best albums of 2008, I’m struck by the lack of wild-card picks. If you look back over my top tens after 2008, there’s usually one or two albums from artists that most people aren’t paying attention to (i.e. The Olive Tree in 2012 or Liz Vice in 2014). But in 2008, these albums line up pretty well with either the best-selling albums or the most critically acclaimed. I’m not sure what the root of that is- whether it’s because those albums are usually the ones that grow in stature over the years or if it’s just a coincidence or if I was brainwashed as a 19-year-old to like what everyone else liked. Who knows?

There are several high-profile albums that I didn’t make the list though. I’ve never enjoyed I Am…Sasha Fierce that much. There are a bunch of great singles on that album that don’t coalesce into much when collected together, a problem that Beyoncé has not had since. 808s & Heartbreak is a sleeper favorite for Kanye fans, but it’s always left me cold, save a few songs. And I’ve never really understood trip-hop, so Portishead’s Third has never made much of an impression on me.

Anyway, here are my contenders:

Top Ten

10. Coldplay, Viva la Vida: In 2008, I was becoming acutely aware of the areas in which my taste was lacking, due to not paying attention to music for almost all of my childhood. Coldplay was one of the first bands that I liked when I first downloaded Limewire and was pure of heart. Then I started to read more about music and saw that Coldplay was respected by critics, but only to a certain extent. So I was skeptical that year of Viva la Vida‘s quality, especially the lyrics, though I really enjoyed the album. I don’t care so much now; this album remains one of my favorite listens, respectability be damned.

9. The Gaslight Anthem, The ’59 Sound: If ever there were a band engineered to fit my tastes exactly, The Gaslight Anthem is it. They play nostalgia and that Springsteen shout-singing to a perfect pitch, with a little punk-rock flavor thrown in. Over the years, they’ve leaned more heavily on pop hooks and a studio-produced sound. But on this breakthrough album, they still sound like the Platonic ideal of a bar band struggling to make it. And while I’m glad they’re successful now and have made a ton of money, I’ll always go back to the simplicity of “Great Expectations,” or the older-than-their-years yearning of “The Backseat.”

8. Frightened Rabbit, The Midnight Organ Fight: It’s impossible to know what Frightened Rabbit’s legacy would be if front man Scott Hutchison hadn’t committed suicide this May. It’s barely important, of course, but this band meant a great deal to me in 2008. Back then, I was struggling with self-image a great deal, and the mangled vision of self on The Midnight Organ Fight was comforting. A line like “And vital parts fall from his system / And dissolve in the Scottish rain / But vitally, he doesn’t miss them / He’s too fucked up to care” told me it wasn’t just me that wasn’t okay. The legacy of an album could never match up to the value of a man’s life, but this album matters to me.

7. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III: I remember being repulsed by this album in 2008, and lines like “I’m a venereal disease like a menstrual bleed” or the ever-present misogyny confirm my 19-year-old instincts. But in the decade since, my threshold for repulsion has raised considerably. Whether that’s for good or ill (not sick), you’re free to judge, though I think it’s allowed me to recognize artistry even when my values aren’t in line with the content of the art. Regardless, this album is one sick piece of shit, with little care for anything but our basest desires- but it’s the most well-sculpted piece of shit of the last decade. Nothing has challenged my capacity to handle the ratio of artistry to baseness like Tha Carter III, but it’s on this list, so it clearly passed the test.

6. Drive-By Truckers, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark: I had already listened to much of DBT’s catalog by the time they released this magnum opus, and I was fully in love with them. Jason Isbell had already been kicked out of the band, and Shonna Tucker had yet to leave. The band would go on to miss Isbell’s songwriting, but Brighter didn’t show any signs of their songwriting declining just yet. Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley contributed some of their best work, and Tucker made her first songwriting contributions to any of the band’s albums, and the three of them, with visiting keyboardist Spooner Oldham, crafted their most stripped-down album to date. There’s a purity in the backwoods country on Brighter that DBT has yet to match, but at least we got 19 songs and 75 minutes of it.

5. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago: I’ve already extolled the virtues of “Skinny Love” on this blog, so I’ll try to rehash what I wrote about that song. Nothing else on For Emma really compares to the searing power of “Skinny Love,” but as a debut album, it’s incredible how fully formed Bon Iver’s sound was from the start. Justin Vernon’s recording story is almost more legendary than the album at this point. His band had just broken up, so he retreated to a cabin, and For Emma was the album that resulted. Of course, the next record sounded very little like this one, a habit that Vernon has continued indulging with each album since, but we’ll always have this perfect slice of melancholy.

4. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend: 2008 was a simpler time, and look no further than Vampire Weekend for your proof. If their debut had been released in 2018, cries of cultural appropriation and colonialism would have been far louder, and they may have drowned out the beautiful simplicity of this record. Please don’t hear me dismissing those cries as illegitimate- they are not, and Vampire Weekend should be held accountable for their often cavalier approach to naming and sharing their influences. But while their messaging has often been poor, their borrowing from Congolese soukous resulted in music both elegant and joyous. They leaned less on Afro-pop on their last two albums, but their celebration of the style on their debut remains one of the best preservations of its delights to make it big in America.

3. TV on the Radio, Dear Science: Now here is a band with a white producer (Dave Sitek) that used Afrobeat stylings to great effect without controversy, perhaps because a white-dominated music media didn’t know what to do with African-American front men named Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone. The members of TV on the Radio are still mysteries, having eschewed the spotlight for artistic independence, even as their star has faded since 2008. But few stars were brighter that year; Dear Science had TV on the Radio’s best hooks and most accessible themes, confronting hope and the possibilities of freedom head-on in less of a minor-key fashion than their previous albums. To date, it is their most critically acclaimed album, and at the time was their highest-charting album by far. This was TV on the Radio’s peak, and since they were the most forward-looking band of the 2000s, maybe it was our peak as well.

2. Taylor Swift, Fearless: There was a stretch of time in which I couldn’t listen to anything from this album. I associated it with a girlfriend, and when we broke up in 2010, it hurt too much to hear these songs. I remember getting depressed while friends were listening to it in a park in Italy while we were studying abroad for a few weeks that summer- I mean, you really shouldn’t get depressed in a park in Italy. (I understand this is pretty pathetic, but it’s also true, and I’m into sharing true things.) I tried listening to Speak Now and Red when they came out and just couldn’t do it. That break-up soured me on Taylor Swift for a long time, well after I had moved on and met my future wife.

I listen to songs from this album all the time now. I have a patient at my job who lights up when I pull up the “You Belong with Me” or “Fifteen” videos on an iPad, so I’m listening to pre-1989 T-Swift quite a bit. It’s impossible for me to see this patient smile or to think of how much these songs affected me eight years ago without deep appreciation and respect for Swift’s ability to evoke those feelings. This is why I can’t fully buy into any backlash against her: she articulates something so true about youthful dreams and desires and pain. I can understand other people being turned off by who she has become and the career she has made for herself, but I can’t shake how Fearless made me feel.

1. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes: When I first heard Fleet Foxes ten years ago, I was home for the summer following my first year at college. That’s obviously a formative time of any person’s life, so it’s only natural that the music I liked felt important to who I was becoming. But hearing Fleet Foxes’ debut album was a unique experience for me, like hearing a sound I had always wanted to hear without knowing what it was before. This has happened to me two other times: once, in high school, when I heard the Eagles’ “Take It Easy” for the first time, and most recently a few years ago when I heard Leon Bridges’s “Lisa Sawyer.”

The folk pop explosion that came after has reduced what Fleet Foxes was doing in 2008 to nothing more than part of a trend, even though none of the Americana or indie folk acts of the time sounded anything like them. Fleet Foxes used the tools of Americana, but not the twang, which is just a reminder that the idea of what defines “Americana” is tenuous. And indie folk bands that followed Fleet Foxes (or their contemporaries, like Band of Horses) lacked their earnest commitment to abstraction. A Fleet Foxes song doesn’t fit into a genre, nor does it make more logical sense the longer you listen to it, but it sure sticks with you.

So much of this album is tied up in my experience of 2008, which was a year in which I fell in love with a girl and found my footing at my university, but was also a year in which I felt like I was going to fall apart at any second. I hesitate to say that I was suffering from depression or anxiety, because I want to take those struggles seriously, but what do you call it when you’re constantly feeling like shit about yourself without reason?

Whatever was wrong with me, Fleet Foxes was both a comfort and a hope. Songs like “Oliver James” and “Blue Ridge Mountains” comforted me with familial love, and songs like “White Winter Hymnal” and “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” gave me hope in their darkness. The darkness was hopeful for me, because, in a twisted way, I was beginning to understand that darkness was okay. Fleet Foxes was an affirmation of my need for it to be okay that I wasn’t okay. It was among the first in a large collection of art that has helped me process this world, and it may have been the most crucial.

Another Fifteen (alphabetically)

Ben Rector, Songs That Duke Wrote: Rector seems like he’s getting big, so I can truly say I loved him with this album before he was popular.

 

Blitzen Trapper, Furr: Blitzen Trapper were an enigma to me in 2008, mixing genres from track to track on a captivating album.

 

Downhere, Ending Is Beginning: This Canadian four-piece took the best elements from CCM (Christian contemporary music, for the majority that didn’t grow up on the genre) to tackle the tension between doubt and conviction on album after album, and Ending Is Beginning may be their best.

 

Erykah Badu, New Amerykah, Pt. 1 (4th World War): I listened to this in 2008 and didn’t enjoy it much, but with new ears, it sounds like the present and the future meeting, and I’m about it now.

 

Girl Talk, Feed the Animals: Absolutely ridiculous mash-up album, and I love every second of it.

 

The Hold Steady, Stay Positive: Less epic than 2006’s Boys and Girls in America, but it has plenty of hooks and riffs to please your inner hoodrat.

 

Jamey Johnson, That Lonesome Song: Before Chris Stapleton, there was Jamey Johnson, except without the CMAs or Justin Timberlake and with a knack for story songs, especially on That Lonesome Song, which sounds more and more timeless as time goes on.

 

Jimmy Needham, Not Without Love: Needham was still finding his voice at this point, and he leaned more into extra production on this album than on his 2006 debut, Speak, but the level of the songwriting from front to back is still astounding.

 

John Mellencamp, Life Death Love and Freedom: The “Jack and Diane” guy still sounds good after all these years, mastering the truth-telling of folk music the same way he mastered hooks in his ’80s heyday.

 

Jon Foreman, Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer: Fronting Switchfoot for a decade could make one cynical, but this collection of EPs reveals a man who knows what’s important in life and only needs spare production to tell us about it.

 

Josh Garrels, Jacaranda: Not sure what I was expecting when I went back to listen to Jacaranda, having only listened to everything since his 2011 breakout, Love & War & the Sea In Between, but I definitely wasn’t expecting a sound so fully formed and confident, or an album even more beautiful than his breakout.

 

M83, Saturdays = Youth: This is what I wish every My Bloody Valentine album sounded like, with a firm grasp on hooks without sacrificing any of the dream-pop atmosphere.

 

MGMT, Oracular Spectacular: Technically, this album came out in 2007, but its singles give it its entire weight, and those didn’t explode till 2008, so I’m putting it here, sue me.

 

The Michael Gungor Band, Ancient Skies: Before Gungor was Gungor, they relied more heavily on worship songs, but they’re some of the best-written worship songs you’ll hear.

 

Raphael Saadiq, The Way I See It: Famous for being the lead singer in Tony! Toni! Toné! and for being a prolific R&B producer (D’Angelo, TLC, Mary J. Blige), The Way I See It was the album where he made us sit up and pay attention to his skill as a solo act.

Future Top Tens

2010

Titus Andronicus, The Monitor
Arcade Fire, The Suburbs
Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
The Black Keys, Brothers
Andrew Peterson, Counting Stars
Gungor, Beautiful Things
Surfer Blood, Astro Coast
Jamey Johnson, The Guitar Song
The National, High Violet
The Tallest Man on Earth, The Wild Hunt

2011

Gungor, Ghosts upon the Earth
Adele, 21
Over the Rhine, The Long Surrender
Bon Iver, Bon Iver
The War on Drugs, Slave Ambient
Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues
Drake, Take Care
Raphael Saadiq, Stone Rollin’
Beyoncé, 4
Matt Papa, This Changes Everything

2012

Andrew Peterson, Light for the Lost Boy
Lecrae, Gravity
Frank Ocean, channel ORANGE
Japandroids, Celebration Rock
David Crowder*Band, Give Us Rest or (A Requiem Mass in C [The Happiest of All Keys])
Bruce Springsteen, Wrecking Ball
Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do
The Olive Tree, Our Desert Ways
Benjamin Dunn & the Animal Orchestra, Fable
Kendrick Lamar, good kid, m.A.A.d. city

2013

Jason Isbell, Southeastern
Beyoncé, Beyoncé
Laura Marling, Once I Was an Eagle
Patty Griffin, American Kid
Sandra McCracken, Desire Like Dynamite
Justin Timberlake, The 20/20 Experience
Beautiful Eulogy, Instruments of Mercy
Kanye West, Yeezus
KaiL Baxley, Heatstroke / The Wind and the War

2014

John Mark McMillan, Borderland
Sharon Van Etten, Are We There
The War on Drugs, Lost in the Dream
Strand of Oaks, HEAL
Taylor Swift, 1989
Liz Vice, There’s a Light
Jackie Hill Perry, The Art of Joy
First Aid Kit, Stay Gold
Miranda Lambert, Platinum
Propaganda, Crimson Cord

Quick Listen: Painkillers by Brian Fallon

As frontman of the band The Gaslight Anthem, Brian Fallon has dealt mostly in nostalgia, both in his band’s style of music and in the stories he’s told in their lyrics. You’d be hard-pressed to identify any of the songs on his solo albums as Brian Fallon songs rather than Gaslight Anthem songs. Sure, I suppose there’s more attention paid to his voice in the mix, but whatever studio musicians he has backing him up here are aiming for the same style as his usual band: anthemic classic rock. Of course, the fact that Fallon draws comparisons to rock heroes like Springsteen, Dylan, and Petty in interviews does his music no favors. If I’m reminded of Tunnel of Love when I listen to your album, I’m pleased; if you remind me that you want your album to sound like Tunnel of Love before I’ve listened to it, I’m unimpressed.

It’s a funny thing, being a rock star in 2016, mostly because there aren’t rock stars in 2016. The Gaslight Anthem was a moderately popular band with a stellar reputation as a live act and depreciating value as an album band until they broke up last July. But after four GA albums, could Fallon compile a Greatest Hits album? Could they do a reunion tour (because it is inevitable that they reunite)? Will GA get played on classic rock stations in the future? Rock doesn’t have a wide audience anymore. We need new expectations for rock musicians, and Fallon is playing by the old rules.

Quicker listen: If I don’t think about it, I enjoy it.

Retro Bummys: Best Albums of 2010

The reason for this 2010 Bummys season is simple: I hadn’t done one yet. Every year since I started college I had done a Top 10 movies and albums, starting with Facebook notes and transitioning to WordPress in 2012. Yet, somehow, some way, I skipped 2010. Honestly, I felt bad. One of the best years for music in recent memory, and I totally ignored all of 2010’s texts, tweets, and Facebook messages. It probably had something to do with 2010 being a terrible year for movies. Oh well.

Anyway, I needed to make amends. The Best Albums Bummys were the hardest; I count so many albums from 2010 in my favorites. The fact that Big Boi, Broken Social Scene, Jars of Clay, Jimmy Needham, Local Natives, and Vampire Weekend were all left out of the Top Ten was a complete shock to me. But 2010 killed in the album department. Terrible year for movies. Wonderful year for music.

Links in the albums’ titles are to streaming services, mostly Spotify.

Top Ten

10. The Wild Hunt by The Tallest Man on Earth: Few albums elicit as much joy from me as The Wild Hunt. This Swedish folk troubadour has such a love for the effects of simple music. It showed on his break-through album in his unforgettable yelp and his first-rate finger-pickin’.

9. High Violet by The National: And so began the rock critics’ switching of allegiances from dad-rock to sad-rock, two terms that completely devalued what The National did on High Violet. It was easy to overlook the balance they struck between self-serious and self-deprecating, since the music sounded so serious. But High Violet is full of insightful commentary on middle-age life with its own brand of humor.

8. The Guitar Song by Jamey Johnson: If you don’t like county, you probably wouldn’t have liked The Guitar Song, because this was a lot of country. The Guitar Song was 2 discs and 25 tracks of hard-boiled, deep-fried country music. Jamey Johnson always made country music for his fans and not for the radio, so his songs were actually about real life- hence, songs with titles like “Can’t Cash My Checks”, “Heaven Bound”, and “California Riots”.

7. Astro Coast by Surfer Blood: It’s impossible to talk about Surfer Blood now without mention of their frontman’s accusations of domestic violence. The story was appalling and has colored all the music they’ve made since. But this album of perfectly calibrated pop rock can’t be sullied; I have too many fond memories of marveling over the riffs and clever lyrics.

6. Beautiful Things by Gungor: Gungor rose into prominence around the time that David Crowder Band was struggling for a new direction to take worship music after having cemented themselves in the genre’s firm foundation. DCB had a knack for melody unparalleled until Gungor, whose songwriting abilities were matched by their willingness to push the instrumentation into the outer limits of the genre’s reach. They pushed farther on their next record, but Beautiful Things was when it became clear they were providing new ways to worship God.

5. Counting Stars by Andrew Peterson: This was music at its simplest but most powerful. Peterson was content to remain within a certain stylistic framework, and he milked it for all its potential elegance. He didn’t reach as far as he would two years later on Light for the Lost Boy, but he hints at it on “The Reckoning” and “You Came So Close”, filling out maybe the most beautiful album of the year. He received a lot of attention for the album from Christian publications, but somehow he remains underrated. For me, Counting Stars made Andrew Peterson one of my top three favorite musicians.

4. Brothers by The Black Keys: The Black Keys have gotten so good at what they do, their last few records have almost sounded bored. That wasn’t a problem with Brothers. Brothers was the sound of master surfers riding the biggest wave of their lives without ever wiping out. Their professionalism was matched only by their populism, filling their best album with hook after brilliant hook. Even more impressive, they were able to equally modulate their prowess across speeds, from the slow “Everlasting Light” to the speedy singles “Tighten Up” and “Howlin’ for You”.

3. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West: Well, at least he was self-aware. And I use the term loosely, since VMA-gate seemed to belie a complete lack of self-awareness. At the very least, he’s self-aware enough to know that he’s dark and twisted and egotistical enough to assume that his fantasies are beautiful. But all three adjectives are appropriate- this is a dark and twisted album, full of confessionals that would make an NFL player blush. And it’s also beautiful, full of the kind of music even geniuses only get one chance in their lifetime to make.

2. The Suburbs by Arcade Fire: Arcade Fire are a huge band, both in numbers and in ambition. Even a throwaway song like “Empty Room” was wall-to-wall sound. Arcade Fire had already waged war on the suburbs before in both Funeral and Neon Bible, so naming their third album The Suburbs may have seemed redundant, but it actually functioned more as a purging. On The Suburbs, Butler and his band poured out all the pain of growing older and coming of age in emotionless environments. It’s no wonder Reflektor sounds looser and freer; they buried all their demons on The Suburbs.

1. The Monitor by Titus Andronicus: The pinnacle of emo and the peak of pop-punk, even though Titus Andronicus would probably deny those labels while pissing in your face. In 2010, when I was facing life after undergrad, these songs became my anthems- internal anthems, since I wouldn’t advise singing these out loud on the bus or anywhere else public. The profanity alone would get you thrown out of restaurants, not to mention the anxious existentialism that would depress everyone around you. A concept album that framed a young man’s migration from Jersey to Boston loosely within Civil War imagery, The Monitor managed to be both full of fun and totally angsty at the same time. With my graduation from OU pending, The Monitor provided me with a rock opera worth rolling my windows down and belting, as if I didn’t have to care about anything.

Another Fifteen (alphabetical by artist)

Into the Morning by Ben Rector: His style will never garner much critical attention, but to those of us who have submitted to his easy-going affect, Ben Rector means nothing less than bliss, and this was his most blissful album.

Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty by Big Boi: Big Boi showed off why he was every much Andre’s equal when it comes to his flow and that he was nearly as off-the-wall with his production choices.

Forgiveness Rock Record by Broken Social Scene: Criminally overlooked that year, Broken Social Scene were known for their status as a collective of indie rock minds, and the variety on Forgiveness Rock Record is a testament to that- it could have been messy, but the range comes off more generous than anything else.

Thank Me Later by Drake: I’d forgotten how many hit-worthy songs were on this album, but it makes sense, since Thank Me Later was far more commercially inclined than Drake’s next two releases, proving that he could do mainstream rap as well as or better than anyone.

American Slang by The Gaslight Anthem: Not as appealingly hangdog as their first album, The ’59 Sound, but its more polished sheen didn’t take away from the sense that the band was still telling real stories.

One Life Stand by Hot Chip: Electronic nerd-pop shouldn’t be my thing, but this record totally was.

The ArchAndroid by Janelle Monáe: R&B has become one of my favorite genres, which I think you can trace back to this album. It opened my eyes to the lack of limits within the style.

The Shelter by Jars of Clay: Albums based around high-profile collaborations are usually boring, low-risk affairs, but The Shelter was a joyous, highly-listenable affair. Jars of Clay kept up their streak of defying expectations.

Nightlights by Jimmy Needham: I prefer Needham’s earlier, more stripped-down records, but Nightlights is chock-full of songs that should have been hits on Christian radio, if we lived in a world without the Fall.

This Is Happening by LCD Soundsystem: More inscrutable than their universally-beloved Sound of Silver, This Is Happening was nevertheless a worthy final statement for the great electronic band.

Gorilla Manor by Local Natives: Before Gorilla Manor, indie rock was just a genre that sounded cool, but Local Natives’ debut included a lot of songs that touched a nerve in my 21-year-old self.

Body Talk by Robyn: Robyn’s brand of robo-pop has been severely missed since she rocked the known world with Body Talk.

The Age of Adz by Sufjan Stevens: Sufjan was never a normal dude, but he went all in on weirdo with Age of Adz, nevertheless making beautiful, meaningful songs with everything and the kitchen sink.

Contra by Vampire Weekend: So far, Vampire Weekend still hasn’t eclipsed the sunny blast of indie-pop from their self-titled debut, but Contra got real close.

Gemini by Wild Nothing: Wild Nothing’s Gemini had a blazed-out nostalgia to it that hooked me and continues to stir up wistful emotions even today.

Future Top Tens

2013

Jason Isbell: Southeastern
Beyoncé: Beyoncé
Laura Marling: Once I Was an Eagle
Patty Griffin: American Kid
Sandra McCracken: Desire Like Dynamite
Justin Timberlake: The 20/20 Experience
Beautiful Eulogy: Instruments of Mercy
Kanye West: Yeezus
KaiL Baxley: Heatstroke / The Wind and the War

2012

Andrew Peterson: Light for the Lost Boy
Lecrae: Gravity
Frank Ocean: channel ORANGE
Japandroids: Celebration Rock
David Crowder*Band: Give Us Rest or (A Requiem Mass in C [The Happiest of All Keys])
Bruce Springsteen: Wrecking Ball
Fiona Apple: The Idler Wheel Is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do
The Olive Tree: Our Desert Ways
Benjamin Dunn & the Animal Orchestra: Fable
Kendrick Lamar: good kid, m.A.A.d. city

2011

Gungor: Ghosts upon the Earth
Adele: 21
Over the Rhine: The Long Surrender
Bon Iver: Bon Iver
The War on Drugs: Slave Ambient
Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues
Drake: Take Care
Raphael Saadiq: Stone Rollin’
Beyoncé: 4
Matt Papa: This Changes Everything

August’s Notable Music

Hits

Ariana Grande, My Everything: Ariana Grande burst onto the scene last year with “The Way”. Or I should say she burst onto my particular scene; there’s a whole scene of tweens who knew her from Sam & Cat. Strangely, I had never heard of her. Listening to her whole first album, you got the sense that Grande wanted to reach back into the R&B heyday of the ‘90s and single-handedly bring it into the intense, weighty R&B haze of the ‘10s. Not every song was great, but enough of them were to make you pay attention. My Everything is more of a whole album; she’s let go of the ‘90s R&B idea, and it sounds like she’s between ideas. But it also sounds like she’s on her way to a good one.

Spoon, They Want My Soul: The “rock is dead” narrative was boring before it even started. But Spoon exists outside of such narratives- even the one the critics have hoisted upon them that revolves around their almost boring consistency. All frontman Britt Daniels cares about is making good music. They Want My Soul is the first Spoon album I’ve heard that sounds like it could unravel at any second. “Do You” is among the best songs they’ve ever made, and “New York Kiss” is indie-rock at its scuzzy finest.

Swoope, Sinema: There’s been a dearth of great Christian rap for a while. After Lecrae’s and Trip Lee’s one-two punch in 2012, no one’s reached as high. That same year saw the wonderful indie-rap tandem of Beautiful Eulogy and Propaganda, and Beautiful Eulogy released an even better record last year. But apart from that everything great in Christian rap has been on the fringes, like Shai Linne’s understated Lyrical Theology series or Sho Baraka’s subversive Talented 10^th. Swoope’s Sinema is the first album in a while to reach for something approaching mainstream rap heights. As the ringleader of the great Christian rap group W.L.A.K., Swoope has precedent for game-changing flow. But he’s trying for something bigger here, a headier statement. If it weren’t for Propaganda, he’d have the best Christian rap album of the year.

Misses

The Gaslight Anthem, Get Hurt: The Gaslight Anthem have never been about subtlety, but they’ve never been about hitting you in the head with a hammer quite as much as on Get Hurt. Frontman Brian Fallon has always had a Springsteen-lite vibe to him that he hasn’t been shy about. He never had the Boss’s lyrical acumen, but he wasn’t bad. On Get Hurt, he’s bad. If vagueness or bluster is your thing, then you’ll like Get Hurt. I guess vagueness or bluster is my thing, because I liked it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a bad album.

The New Pornographers, Brill Bruisers: I can enjoy something without liking it, but that’s not what this is. I can enjoy something without thinking it’s good, but that’s not what this is. I can enjoy something without feeling excited about it, but that’s not quite what this is either. I can enjoy something without remembering a single thing about it when it’s over. That’s what this is, and The New Pornographers didn’t use to make albums like that.

Willis Earl Beal, Experiments in Time: Willis Earl Beal is full of contradictions. And that’s okay; it forces you to accept him as a real person, rather than the mystical R&B troubadour mask he sometimes wears. It was those paradoxes that made Nobody Knows. one of the most exciting records of 2013. But since then, all the records Beal has made seems to be in reaction to the success of that one. Experiments in Time finds Beal dialing everything back, and that restraint robs Beal’s voice of the dynamism that was so key to the appeal of the record I actually liked.

Under the Radar

Foreknown, Ornithology: So up till this point, I’m pretty sure there hasn’t been a joke-rap Christian rap record. UNTIL NOW. I don’t know that the world was begging for it, but after listening to Ornithology, it’s hard to argue we didn’t need it.

 

Grace Askew, Scaredy Cat: Seeing as how The Voice is the most popular singing competition on television (take that, American Idol!), calling Grace Askew “Under the Radar” may seem hard to justify. But considering being the most popular singing competition on television isn’t exactly a high bar to rise above, I think it fits. Anyway, Askew’s brand of blues + country (=bluntry) isn’t original, but she’s got it down.

Twin Peaks, Wild Onion: You may expect a record with a song called “Sloop Jay D” on it to be a Beach Boys tribute. But the only thing Twin Peaks seems to have in common with the Wilsons & Co. is a propensity for classic hooks. “I Found a New Way” and “Good Lovin’” are just two examples of the kind of guitar rock that would be of a piece with Spoon’s older records.

Off the Grid

FKA twigs, LP1: Sometimes albums get really high Metacritic scores and I don’t understand why. Like, we all like alternative R&B now, but did it have to go this far? If I wanted brooding AND obtuse, I’d listen to metal. But everyone seems to love LP1 so much, I feel like I’ll have to give it another try at some point.

January’s Notable Music

Hits

Against Me!, Transgender Dysphoria Blues: Let me start off by saying that this blog is not the place I want to enumerate my beliefs on transsexualism. I would prefer that to be a face-to-face conversation. I will mention that I am a Christian, and I strive to let the Bible and the Holy Spirit inform all my beliefs about gender issues of all kind. But Transgender Dysphoria Blues isn’t about beliefs or politics or sociology. On the most basic level, this album is about learning empathy. Laura Jane Grace (fka Tom Gabel) puts forth remarkable effort and strain to take us inside her mind to see (and experience with her) her wants and desires and how much they are restricted. She and her bandmates have also made Against Me!’s best record, and one of the best rock records I’ve heard in a long while. [Disclaimer: This album contains profanity and deals with intense, sexual issues.]

Dum Dum Girls, Too True: These are the things I thought of when I listened to this record: Dancing with strangers. Stumbling over the threshold of the house, drunk. Letting the water run over your face in the shower for longer than is needed. Running for miles to burn off stress. Sitting on the couch across from a friend giving you the worst news possible. Letting out a whoop after hearing the best news possible, then realizing you have no one to share it with. Setting down your computer bag and backpack after your commute. Waking up, turning, only to realize your spouse is on a business trip. Realizing an old friend just avoided your eyes at the grocery store. Watching Say Anything… Opening a wedding invitation from an ex. Listening to a perfect pop record.

Hiss Golden Messenger, Bad Debt: The folk you hear on the radio isn’t real folk music, which is a statement that is just as pretentious as it is true. But true it is, and I can’t get over the fact that so many people will never experience the real folk music being made today, the kind of music that sounds as if it’s being radioed in from the past. M.C. Taylor may have once been in a hardcore-punk band, but his heart sounds at home in homemade folk. I use homemade literally, since Bad Debt was recorded in 2009 at Taylor’s house in North Carolina with his newborn asleep in the next room. It was never properly reduced after the copies of the CD were destroyed in a 2010 fire at his label. Released this year, it sounds no less immediate. These songs are quiet, but they manage to keep from being weak in their conviction that the questions of faith are difficult to answer.

Misses

Bruce Springsteen, High Hopes: I hate admitting this, since Bruce is my favorite musician ever, but his new album kind of sucks. It has a few songs that stand out (the opening title song and the closing “Dream Baby Dream”, a Suicide cover, come to mind), but overall, this compilation of B-sides and staples of the E Street Band’s live shows disappoints. Most of the tracks feel like they should have stayed on the discard pile where they originated. And if the complaint against Springsteen’s most recent albums is overproduction, he’s done nothing to help his case with this one.

Dave Barnes, Golden Days: Dave Barnes specializes in two kinds of music: buoyant frat-pop and lilting love songs. He’s been really, really good at both, but if you want a representative sample of what makes him great, his latest album isn’t a good place to start. Barnes fell into the trap so many of his peers have been falling into lately (Matt Wertz, Jimmy Needham, Ben Rector– though Rector’s most recent album is a return to form) of committing more resources to producing great production rather than producing great songs. Dave Barnes’s last album, Stories to Tell, is a much better introduction to his quality.

Switchfoot, Fading West: This was the biggest disappointment of the month. Switchfoot has been so consistent of late with turning out albums of rousing hard rock and contemplative power ballads that balance exciting instrumentation with thoughtful lyrics. Sure, Fading West isn’t exactly meant to be a proper album- it’s actually a soundtrack to a recent movie the band just made of the same name. But it’s been released as if it should be part of their canon, so I’m treating it that way. Fading West fits right alongside Relient K’s Collapsible Lung as an album that falls squarely on the pop side of pop-rock, and, in the process, both bands have lost something of their identity.

Under the Radar

Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, South: I could have easily put Doug Paisley’s soft country album Strong Feelings in this slot, but if I was going to spotlight one Americana album from January that didn’t receive enough attention, it was going to be South, partly because Paisley did get a little more love from the media, and partly because it’s a tad more exciting. Blackie and the Rodeo Kings is a roots rock supergroup of sorts from, of all places, Canada. South is full of songs that are unabashed country and western music with rock flavorings, boasting hummable melodies and blazing finger-pickin’. The song “I’d Have to Be a Stone” is a love song that would stand among the country greats.

Liz Vice, There’s a Light: There are certain artists that, when you hear them for the first time, make you feel as if you’ve finally found the sound you didn’t know you’d been wanting for years. Liz Vice was one of those artists for me last month. Her sound is full-on ‘60s R&B/soul, à la Aretha Franklin or The Staples Singers, and if those seem to be lofty comparisons, that’s exactly how I meant them. The twist for Liz Vice is that she returns soul to its roots by using the genre as a medium for worship. Each song on this album is full of the Gospel, without sacrificing the inventive spirit of the best old school R&B.

Kye Kye, Fantasize: Take the first two sentences of the previous paragraph and apply them here, replacing “Liz Vice” with “Kye Kye”. It’s rare that you find two Christian acts so devoted both to sharing Gospel truths and to creating exciting, unique music. Kye Kye’s brand of exciting music is synth-pop, and by synth-pop I don’t mean Owl City. Kye Kye is made entirely of siblings (well, two of them are married), born in Estonia, and fronted by the lone sister of the group, Olga. Their newest album isn’t as optimistic as their last one; Olga’s voice is farther back in the mix in the midst of the production, and she sings about a wider range of emotions this time, most of them closer to melancholy than happiness. It’s refreshing to listen to a band so in tune with the whole spectrum of the experience of being a Christian, rather than just delight. It comes across as more honest.

Off the Grid

The Gaslight Anthem, The B-Sides: I love The Gaslight Anthem. They fit just about all the things that I want in a rock band- they tell grand stories, they know how to get me singing along, and they take after Bruce Springsteen. But their new release, a collection of…well, B-sides, occasionally exposes their simple songwriting. And I’m not sure if the acoustic takes bring out the best in the band. I’ll have to give it another listen; for now, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.