It’s been four years since this little blog got an update. Reading that last entry from early 2018 feels surreal. We were completely different people back then. It was Jason who started this end of the year music blog. He loved doing it for a while. All year he prepared, making sure he devoted time to each album with potential, editing and re-editing the final list, and I could see the joy in his eyes when he hit publish. But joy has been hard to come by the last few years. Jason has continued to struggle with chronic pain and depression and we both spent the last twenty-two months as mental health professionals during a worldwide pandemic. Shit’s been hard. Jason continues to make end-of-the-year Spotify playlists, but the blog just kind of faded in his rear-view mirror.

Like you, we’ve been stuck inside the house a lot recently. Hobbies that happened in the outside world have been replaced by solo endeavors and quietude. Performance was replaced with writing, concerts replaced with living room jamming. We bought Jason an electric guitar for his birthday- a left-handed Fender Jaguar, in sunburst orange, modeled after Kurt Cobain’s. As hobbies tend to do, one guitar led to another and now he has a mic, and a pedal collection, and multiple amps, and an annoying insistence that 11pm is the best time to start practice. So much for quietude. As for me, a hobby I have quietly fantasized about since childhood became a reality when Jason bought me a drum kit for my birthday. She’s an ombre red Gretch Catalina maple shell five-piece that I named Melody Valentine, after the drummer from Josie and the Pussycats. I love her. Jason and I are working on our first song together- Heart Shaped Box by Nirvana.

All this is to say, I’ve decided- If Jason isn’t going to write his year-end blog, I’m going to do it. So, here’s what got my ear this year.

10) Kanye West- Donda

This is Kanye’s tenth solo album, named after his late mother Donda West. The first track on this album is a serious banger named “Jail.” “Jail” starts with this crunchy bass and right away starts mounting the tension. The energy builds like he is about to drop the sickest beat in history and you’re thinking OH SHIT, IS KANYE BACK?? then the drumbeat explodes at the end of the song, and you are like YEEEEEEEEEEEES!!

But then he doesn’t really deliver.

Kanye isn’t doing anything here that he hasn’t done before and better last time. Both lyrically and sonically, he spends much of the album hyping himself up, but never goes off. The album grows trying, as he leans on this theme of repeating the same word over and over, as though that counts as a hook. Plus, I still haven’t gotten more than halfway through it because it’s two fucking hours long. Kanye needs an editor. But there are several songs that are really fucking good; Jail, Hurricane, Jonah, and Believe What I Say are standouts.

This album won’t stand the test of time, and I probably only gave it so many listens because I knew I was writing this blog. But I think Kanye brings up interesting ethical dilemmas for us. Shouldn’t we stop rubber necking on a human with obvious mental health issues? What is to be done about obscenely rich artists with erratic behavior? Britney Spears has been under conservatorship for the past 13 years, not allowed to make any decisions for herself, her career, or her estate, all because of a nervous breakdown in her twenties. Where is the line between that and Kanye, allowed to act on every whim, taking to talk shows to refer to slavery as “a choice” black people made. How do we look at this through a disability justice lens? And when will we be ready to talk about the ways in which fame is abusive? We crave a train wreck to watch, so celebrities are pedestalized and isolated, confined to a world of paparazzi surveillance and judgement. And the consequences are worst for the most marginalized. Kanye’s mental health issues are certainly influenced by the weight of racism and public scrutiny, but what do we do now? Stop giving him attention and money?

I don’t know the answers, but I know this. I miss the old Kanye. Listen to this album… mostly just to say you did.

9) Olivia Rodrigo- Sour

I love to watch a good girl go bad and Olivia Rodrigo is headed in the right direction, the Disney Channel Princess who turns 18 and reinvents herself with a middle finger. The album starts with “Brutal”, a perfect pop-punk anthem about how much high school sucks. After a gentle opening string melody, Rodrigo kicks on the distortion pedal and vents her frustration at every adult in her life. “If someone tells me one more time ‘enjoy your youth’ I’m gonna cry,” Rodrigo snarls before pouting, “God, its brutal out here.” Rodrigo is a unique blend of pop, punk, and piano songstress. She hasn’t completely gotten rid of her bubble gum upbringing, but she’s moving towards the Lana Del Ray/Fiona Apple, angry-femme artistic lineage.

Rodrigo began taking vocal lessons in kindergarten and it shows. She has range and control that make a lot of her songs obsessively listenable. Much of this album is laser focused on what seems to be her first real heartbreak. Which is a classic for a reason, but I mean laser focused. To the point where it gets cringey. She’s particularly obsessed with the fact that her ex found a new girl in just two weeks.

We all remember the emotional roller coaster of being 17, but Rodrigo re-tells the story for the Instagram generation. In a song that could be the theme music for every news story on the Facebook whistleblower, “Jealousy, Jealousy” shows us the damage social media is doing to the hearts of our young women. “All I see is what I should be: happier, prettier, jealousy, jealousy.” As Bo Burnum said (and we’ll get to him later), “Maybe allowing giant digital media corporations to exploit the neurochemical drama of our children for profit was a bad call by us.”

This album is high quality junk food- you probably don’t want to eat it every day, but its great in small bites. Listen while crying about your high school boyfriend whose wife won’t let him speak to you anymore.

8) Silk Sonic- An Evening with Silk Sonic

This album wins the award for biggest surprise of the year.

Silk Sonic is a neo-soul duo consisting of rapper Anderson Paak and pop star Bruno Mars. The two report the album starting as a joke, two exhausted and probably stoned musicians entertaining each other in the back of a tour bus. Upon hearing the first demos, Bootsy Collins, who makes several appearances on the album, dubbed the band Silk Sonic. I’ve enjoyed some quality Paak content in the past, even seeing him in concert in the Before Times, but Mars has generally been too Top 40 to grab my attention. The promotional material for the release suggested a tongue in cheek throwback album. Paak and Mars donned wide lapel polyester suits, threw sepia tone on their music video, and finger guns-ed their way across the stage. I expected a lot of gimmick but music that was nothing new.

Surprisingly, they managed to take a nostalgia project and breathe new life into it. There are classic Marvin Gaye style ballads, heavily disco inspired dance tunes, and a song made explicitly for the roller rink. The songs feel familiar but new at the same time, a fusion of funk, soul, disco, and 21^st century pop. The lyrics have just enough humor to keep you smiling without tipping over into a parody album. Both singers have buttery smooth voices, and the album is already wracking up awards from BET, MTV, and Soul Train. A Grammy can’t be far behind. Check out this quite sexist but undeniably funky single.

While my first impression was a cynical eye roll about shiny, overproduced pop music, I underestimated how badly I needed fun; a musical opportunity to play. This album isn’t an exploration of isolation or political turmoil, it’s a reminder to leave your problems on the dance floor. It’s an invitation to gratitude and pleasure, both of which become political acts in the face of grind culture. This album makes me feel sexy and carefree, whether I’m cleaning the kitchen or getting ready for date night.

Sing this as you sneak a mask-less kiss with your girl at the skating rink.

7) Dry Cleaning- New Long Leg

Every year there is one addition to my Best Of list that sneaks in at the last minute. Though it was released in April, I didn’t find my way to New Long Leg until December. I had wandered into the kitchen where Jason was blasting it and I said “… what is this??” then proceeded to spend the afternoon listening to it on repeat.

New Long Leg is the debut album by British post-punk band Dry Cleaning. The music is unconventional and bizarre, marrying the dark dance grooves of Joy Division, the chaotic energy of Wire and the wtf art rock of Laurie Anderson. Their front woman, Florence Shaw, isn’t a singer as much as a spoken word artist, writing lyrics in a stream of consciousness ramble. “I’ve been thinking about eating that hotdog for hours.” “Are there llama plushies here in this shop?” “The last thing I looked at in this hand mirror was a human asshole.” It was no surprise to learn that the singer and guitarist met in art school. The simple melodies and up-tempo grooves provide a cheery counterpoint to Shaw’s dry wit and monotone delivery. The music makes you bop, and I keep picturing Joy Division’s Ian Curtis doing his goofy little dance moves along to the beat. Ultimately, these art weirdos took unlikely ingredients and created a magnetic album that you’ll want to stare at like a train wreck.

I’m a sucker for intimidating women. Florence Shaw seems like the cool girl who walks into a party, all acerbic wit and cigarettes, talented, hot, and hilarious. She comes off as mean but really she’s just shy, and all you want to do is follow her home and let her boss you around.

Listen to this from across the room as you try to gather the courage to talk to her.

6) Floating Points, Pharaoh Sanders, and the London Symphony Orchestra- Promises

I had never heard of Pharoah Sanders or the genre of “spiritual jazz” before last year. In 2020, the record label Impulse! released a compilation album called Spiritual Jazz 12 that featured a cover photo of a young Civil Rights era black woman scratching the eyes out of a cop. I was intrigued. There was one track on the album I could not tear myself away from, a Pharoah Sanders track titled “Hum Allah Hum Allah Hum Allah,” where the performer does what I can only describe as jazz yodeling. Its beautiful and strange and wrings my heart out. Though the song was released in 1969, I couldn’t pass up a chance to share this find with the world.

Pharoah Sanders, tenor sax legend, has made albums with John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, Sun Ra and numerous other jazz greats. Some consider him the pinnacle of spiritual jazz, a genre that aims for divine transcendence, but the last album he released was close to twenty years ago. Now 81, Pharoah reached out to British electronic producer Sam Shephard of Floating Points, 45 years his junior, and together they created Promises, a late career masterpiece that mixes psychedelic jazz, classical orchestral music, and space electronica.

Promises is a single musical composition comprised of several movements that expand on a central theme. Pharoah’s sax and deep rumbling vocalizations weave in and out, mixing with otherworldly bleep bloops and swelling string sections, creating music that is dissonant and full of unresolved melodies. The mood is melancholy but not morose, full of tension and uncertainty, yet deeply comforting. The movements begin dreamy and bittersweet, then build in tension and urgency, culminating in a desperate flurry of strings before ending on a completely unresolved note.

I think this album is a good barometer of the healing that’s happened in our household this year. 2020 was so traumatic that we mostly listened to calm ambient albums and Phoebe Bridgers. Anything loud or difficult was turned off immediately. This album is beautiful and complex, a push/pull of pressure and release, challenging and well worth the work.

Listen while sitting in the window seat of your Chicago apartment, overlooking the snowy street, contemplating a lifetime of loss and gratitude.

5) IDLES- CRAWLER

It was May of 2019. Our world was about to change in nine months but that night we had no clue. We were deep in the middle of a mosh pit with no edges- if you were on the floor, you were moshing. IDLES singer Joe Talbot started the show with one demand- “Be kind or get the fuck out!” Fitting for an album called Joy as an Act of Resistance. Bruises were throbbing on my forearms from blocking errant elbows, steadying neighbors who were about to fall, catching stage divers. The sweat from the crowd had condensed on the ventilation system and was raining back down on us. I caught eyes with strangers as we shouted lyrics together. We moshed from first note to last, grins wide with sweaty communal bliss.

IDLES are known for their ferocious driving rhythm, uplifting lyrics that combat toxic masculinity, and Joe’s gravelly, Welsh-accented scream. IDLES seems most closely related to a punk band, but they insist “for the last time, we’re not a fucking punk band.” They defy categorization, but they make music that possesses you to throw your body around in crowds of greasy haired, tattooed punks. So… whatever you want to call that genre. CRAWLER is their fourth studio album. The first three are upbeat hardcore albums that give you room to purge your frustration in the bass drum and come away hopeful. But with their 2020 release, Ultra Mono, I thought maybe I had heard enough IDLES. It wasn’t a bad record, but it was mostly more of the same, and one only needs so much feel-good not-punk in their life.

Thankfully, CRAWLER sees the band evolving in a significant way. Where their previous work could verge on saccharine in its positive attitude, this album sees the band exploring the darker spaces, both lyrically and tonally. On the album’s opening track, “MTT 420 RR,” droning, minor-key synths create an ominous, melancholy landscape across which Joe shouts, “Are you ready for the storm?” The album feels deeper, sadder, slower, exploring a broader spectrum of emotions. I’m sure IDLES have had just as bad a pandemic as the rest of us and this album examines sorrow, rage, and grief in a way that feels more personal and vulnerable than their past work. Still, the album never succumbs to despair and is full of their infectious, unbridled joy as an act of resistance. The album ends with Joe reminding us, “In spite of it all, life is beautiful.”

Of all the things I’m grieving from COVID, live performance breaks me most. There is a specific magic that happens when a hundred people worship at the same sonic temple. An artist pours their energy into the crowd and the crowd sends it right back in a spiritual exchange. We had tickets to see IDLES touring CRAWLER last month. When the date arrived, we chose not to go. Two years into a pandemic, I have a very different reaction the idea of being covered in other people’s body fluids. And yet, I still regret my decision.

Listen to this album when you’re tired of pretending everything is ok.

4) Jon Hopkins- Music for Psychedelic Therapy

Psychedelic therapy saved Jason’s life this year.

Jason’s been diagnosed with “treatment resistant depression.” That means he’s tried at least five different traditional psych meds (though the number is higher) and none of them have fixed the problem. The concept of “fixing the problem” gets messy when you are living through a global pandemic and a climate crisis and a political uprising and late-stage capitalism. By December of 2020, things were the worst they had ever been. A series of disappointments led to Jason breaking apart in my arms, howling “I want to die!” The possibility of losing him felt startlingly close.

Ketamine therapy is one of the few alternative treatments recommended for people who aren’t benefiting from medication. Initially promoted as a general anesthetic, ketamine reduced depression in 70% of cases studied and put an end to suicidal ideation almost instantly. The drug is categorized as a dissociative, and treatment consists of hour-long infusions which results in a psychedelic experience similar to LSD. After watching one of my clients make a staggering turn around with the help of K, we started exploring it as an option for Jason. With the help of his partner, Free, and his close friend Laura, we were able to get him into treatment at the Northwest Ketamine Clinic. He’s been going twice a month for most of this year, and the improvement has been substantial. While he is still a person who struggles with depression, the suicidal thoughts have gone from constant to occasional. My fear of losing him is now a whisper and not an ear-piercing scream.

Jon Hopkins wrote this album with the intention of it fitting an hour-long ketamine infusion session. Hopkins is a British musician and producer who has collaborated with the likes of Coldplay, Four Tet, and experimental music royalty Brian Eno. The album is an immersive ambient experience that wraps you up like a warm hug. Track one opens with repeating synth tones that start low and travel up, up, up in pitch, recreating the feeling all psychonauts will recognize as the come-up; that excitement and anxiety filled click-click-click of the roller coaster climbing into the air. From there, Hopkins fills each song with simple beauty; deep tones that coax you into long exhales, water and birds recorded in the Amazon rainforest, bells that ring out with peaceful clarity. The music is undemanding, a nature grounded focal point that serves as the safe space from which to launch, explore, and return. It doesn’t get in your way or direct your experience, but instead gently exists in the background, the musical equivalent of a cedar wood sauna and a Xanax.

Psychedelic therapy began in the ‘40s, shortly after Albert Hoffman’s discovery of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide. Throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s, research on the psychological benefits of hallucinogens was widespread, but in the early ‘70s, government backlash to the hippie movement led to the Controlled Substances Act and eventually the War on Drugs. It’s only been in the last 15 years that this kind of research is happening again. Johns Hopkins University now has The Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, studying how psychedelics could benefit those with PTSD, or those who are dying of cancer. They are exploring everything from micro-dosing psilocybin as a daily treatment to full on tripping balls with a therapist by your side. The field is exciting and promising, a new frontier that changes every day.

This weekend, I did LSD with a small group of close friends and ended my night with this album in my headphones, watching undulating cartoon characters, all in rainbow pastels, bubble up and melt away on the inside of my eyelids. It’s hard to describe the impact a psychedelic trip can produce. It can be simultaneously subtle and drastic, showing you secrets to the universe that seem both obvious and profound. My trip had shown me things I struggle to remember; that I am safe in my own body, that I am the only one who can give me back my crown, that we are all alone but always together. I drifted off to sleep listening to the final track of the album, the only one with vocals, the soothing voice of spiritual teacher Ram Dass.

Everything in you that you don’t need, you can let go of.
You don’t need loneliness, for you couldn’t possibly be alone.
You don’t need greed because you already have it all.
You don’t need doubt because you already know.

Listen to this in a cedar wood sauna on Xanax.

3) Bo Burnam- Inside

Look, it brings me no joy to say that the best art I saw about the first year of quarantine was made by a straight, white, man, but here we are. Let’s get this out of the way: Bo Burnam is problematic. So problematic that he wrote a song about it called “Problematic.” And I don’t believe that publicly recognizing your own privilege absolves you of your responsibility around that privilege. But I do believe that human beings are complex and generally doing the best they can, and Bo reads to me as a guy born with every scale tilted in his favor who is mostly trying to understand how to be a better human about it. And he still reeks of the resentful rage of a straight, white, male. So.

Bo Burnam is a “comedy musician.” This album is the soundtrack to a Netflix special that reads as a hybrid stand-up, one man show, musical amalgam. The premise is that Burnam, who was just about to return to the stage after a five-year hiatus caused by performance induced panic attacks, got sidelined by COVID-19 and ended up isolated in his home for a year with nothing but his recording equipment. The special is written, edited, shot, directed, and performed by Burnam alone. It was released in May, 2021, my first month fully vaccinated, when pandemic PTSD hit me like a wrecking ball, complete with 5 am panic attacks, screaming rage, and very rational calculations about the right dose of opiates to make me sleep forever. Seems like Bo was in a similar place.

Burnam is a great song writer. The music glides from R&B sex ballads to Taylor Swift Folklore simulacra to an Avenue Q style puppet duet. The songs are catchy, his lyrics are witty, and his voice is getting better with age. But really, this special is a dark musical about the end of the world, and how we cope with being stuck in it. With humor as honey for the bitter medicine, Burnam dives into the depression, isolation, and existential dread of quarantine, saying, “I hope this special can do for you what it’s done for me these past few months- distract me from wanting to put a bullet into my head with a gun.” I’m not sure he achieved that goal, but I think he achieved something I needed more. To see reflected back to me my own grief and impotent rage at the reality the pandemic exposed: that humans are too selfish and short sighted to care for one another, even when our own survival is at stake. It’s been a bitter pill to swallow.

As the show unfolds, you watch his hair grow long and greasy, see him stripped down to his boxers, and witness scenes recorded under the covers in his bed. He ponders, “Can one be funny while stuck in a room?” You play the role of witness as he hyperanalyzes his whole career, turning the show into a long form essay on self-awareness as a gateway to madness. The human brain tends to turn on itself when confined to isolation and the denouement shows Burnam hitting rock bottom. With circles under his eyes, he says a sentence I remember saying often in quarantine. “I am… not well.” He sobs as the camera pans in. Several friends told me they found this moment disingenuous, put on for the camera. All I saw was a mirror. For all the weeks when I didn’t see another human being, when the depersonalization became so intense that my self-image warped like a fun-house reflection, when the sorrow became so constant that I worried I had permanently damaged my brain, I was not alone in my utter and complete devastation.

The crowning jewel of brilliance in the special is a two-part synthesizer jam called Bezos (I and II). The keyboard solo in part one has no business being as good as it is and the sarcasm is delicious in part two as he sings with a crazed grin, “Jeffery Bezos! You did it!! Congratulations!!!”

Listen to this album as you board your million-dollar space craft to Mars after the Earth becomes uninhabitable.

2) Lil Nas X- MONTERO

God damn it, the kids are alright. This album is so beautiful it brings a tear to my queer-elder eye. Let’s start at the beginning.

Lil Nas X got his break in 2018 with an independently produced single called “Old Town Road.” The song, one of the few in the niche genre of “country rap”, first gained popularity on TikTok. (God, the future is weird.) As the song went viral, Lil Nas X made a remix featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, with an over-the-top video celebrating black cowboys in the ‘hood. White country folk were confused. Was this supposed to be a joke? The song reached #19 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs before Billboard showed their blatant racism and pulled it, saying it “didn’t count as country music.” Fuck you, Billboard. But Lil Nas X got the last laugh when the single became the longest running #1 in Billboard Chart history. And all of this was before he ever put out his first album.

This year, not content to break just one barrier, Lil Nas X decides to come out of the closet. He’s been teasing the upcoming release of his first full length album, which promises more rap and less country, and drops the bomb of his first single, “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)”. In the most unapologetically gay video I’ve ever seen, Nas, dressed in viny thigh-high heels, pole dances down to hell, gives Satan a lap dance, and then kills him for his crown. With the single, he releases a limited edition run of Satan Shoes, Nike lookalikes that feature a pentagram holding a single drop of blood. Now the entire world is losing their minds. Conservative pundits rage about the defiling of our youth, the rap community insists a line must be drawn somewhere, Nike sues for trademark infringement, and Lil Nas X gleefully skips off saying “mischief managed.”

Reminder, this kid has still not released an album.

Fast forward to September, 2021. After much anticipation, Lil Nas X releases MONTERO. The twittersphere is abuzz with the question- can this album really deliver on all its promise? With an impressive list of guest stars, (Miley Cyrus, Elton John, Megan Thee Stallion), and pre-release promo pics of the artist pregnant with his first album/baby, the world is hopeful. And I have to tell you, he delivers.

This album is full of hit singles- upbeat tracks with driving hooks that are catchy enough to get your ass shaking but not so saccharine that they become torturous ear worms. But the surprising part of this album are his slower, confessional tracks; beautiful, sorrowful explorations of the trauma of growing up a young, queer man of color, in a family rife with addiction and abuse. In “Sun Goes Down,” he sends a message to the other lonely baby gays and sings “I know that you want to cry, but there’s much more to life than dying over your past mistakes and people who threw dirt on your name.” With wisdom and sincerity, the album lets you watch the journey of a hero set up to fail who never stopped believing in himself.

My favorite track, produced by none other than Kanye West, is #3- “Industry Baby.” In response to the lawsuit and controversy, Lil Nas released another unapologetically gay video that includes a dance sequence of naked black men in a prison shower and one of the best misheard lyrics in rap history. I doubt its an accident that the line “I ain’t lost since I began” sounds so much like “I ain’t lost since I been gay.”

            Lil Nas X was born in 1999. He is the generation of queer kids born not only post-Stonewall, but post-AIDS crisis, coming of age during the era of PrEP and social media. As awful as the internet is, and as rampant as homophobia still is, young queers have the ability to find and support each other in the private spaces of message boards and Queer TikTok. It’s inspiring to see this generation of youth, burdened with less shame, protected by the power of strangers on the internet. They’re all queer, gender fuck, polyamorous, and don’t give a shit what anyone thinks about it. It’s beautiful. I want to pinch their cheeks and give them a standing ovation.

            Listen to this album when you need to hype yourself up for a big, brave, scary jump.

1) Low- Hey What

What does the apocalypse sound like? Drums bounce off the shores of a misty lake. Machinery grinds to a halt in a screech of metal. Voices scream through a boggy marsh. The album that made #1 on my list this year is a stunning sonic landscape, echoing and distorted and crumbling. The music hits you like a brick wall of sound, all overdrive and fuzz pedals, reverberated and modulated until the sound is breaking apart. It refuses to let you go, driving forward with unrelenting momentum, towards what you know in your gut is the end. If your speakers don’t sound like they are disintegrating into the universal void, you’re not playing it loud enough.

I’m not sure any other band this year truly understood the assignment of writing towards the end of the world. Low is a two-person band; Mimi and Alan, a married couple who began writing music together in 1993. Though they had some success in the alternative scene starting in the 90s, Low started making the best music of their career in the last five years. Hey What is their 13^th full-length album and a shining example of how a long term art partnership can work.

Low is a band that defies categorization. Some call them dream pop, others say indie drone. With haunting vocal harmonies and minimalist arrangements, the band creates concept albums in an era of Spotify singles. Some of the most impressive textures and landscapes on Hey What are created in the spaces in-between songs. Instead of clean endings, each track flows seamlessly into the next. The opening track, “White Horses”, ends with a computer glitch, the track skipping, stuck in a loop. The harsh noise sustains, long enough to be curious, and then longer, mounting into dread before releasing you into the gorgeous opening of “I Can Wait”. As “All Night” moves in to “Disappearing,” Mimi’s final note rings out, then is slowly contorted and looped until her voice begins to sound like a bomb siren. Though Low did release this album on vinyl, you have to give it a first listen in digital format, as the record shortens all of the transitions and ends up removing some of the best moments of the album.

This summer, I was listening to a dharma talk by Martin Aylward called Leaning Into Collapse. I’d been finding myself unable to stop thinking about the climate disaster, the deterioration of the social fabric, the question of how much longer life would be worth living. I wasn’t sure how to make peace with all I was witnessing. In the talk, Aylward said something that stuck with me. He noted how fortunate we would be, how beautiful it would be, to witness the final day on earth, to see the final scene in the big play and watch the curtain drop. Hey What is that day. You are standing on the edge of a cliff watching your city crumble in the distance. The bombs have gone off, the meteor has hit the earth, the tsunami is at your shore. It’s beautiful and terrifying and there is relief and joy and grief and awe all at the same time, and there’s nothing you can do but watch.

Listen on the shores of a lake at midnight with really good headphones.

Well, we’ve made it through another long year. 2021 started off really very bad but I have felt her boot let off my neck a bit with every passing month. While we still haven’t experienced the cathartic release of live music, there are gatherings with friends again and less fear that I’ll accidentally kill my loved ones. Covid again taught me how important art and music are for my wellbeing. You can learn a lot about my mental health by my end of the year playlist and I think this one is telling. Bo Burnam’s bitter pessimism is all swirled together with Silk Sonic’s joyful relief, creating a playlist, and a year, with a roller coaster of emotions.

I don’t know what’s going to happen with this blog. I still have hopes that Jason will return to writing it one day. Or maybe I’ll become a rampant blogger and post more than just once a year. Time will tell.

Thanks for listening, friend. And as Jason would say- here, I made you a mixtape.

Sorry this is so late, y’all. I had a headache. No, like really. I had a headache. It was a thing. Like 4+ months of please just bash my goddamn brains in with a hammer I don’t want to do this anymore fuck fuck fucking misery. Before the headache, when I thought about writing up this blog, I was excited. I was looking forward to being like, hey everyone, I’m doing okay! I no longer devote a lot of time to thinking how maybe not being alive anymore might be a good idea. Sometime early in the spring, that 18 months of crippling chronic depression finally started to calm the fuck down and instead of that dog in the burning house I posted in last year’s blog, I started feeling more like this fucking bunny.

Just look at that fucking bunny. Motherfucker is happy as shit. Amazing. I mean, let’s be perfectly clear; I’m still a depressed person.  The severity comes and goes but the melancholy never really goes away.  And yet when it escalates, I’m becoming increasingly confident that I’m not going to fall into the abyss. In this, our first year of the era of Trump and in light of the rapidly accumulating evidence that maybe all men, myself included, really are garbage, it would not be entirely unreasonable if any one of us just wanted to kill ourselves. And yet here I am feeling better than I have in the past two years. When I fall down, I don’t fall so far anymore and I pick myself back up pretty quickly. But this fucking headache.

But there’s good news. After months of treating it like a migraine (cuz it felt like a migraine) and getting nowhere, I started seeing an osteopath,  doing a lot of body work, and taking some new magic pills.  Now, I’m functional enough to attend to my relationships, listen to music (other than just Stars of the Lid’s And the Refinement of Their Decline) again, and by extension try to knock out this overdue little blog thing.

Jesus, it’s nearly March and this stupid missive has been almost ready to go for a while now.  Just a few more paragraphs just to say I finished the thing. Who even cares about 2017? Who even cares about these words? I’m not sure I even do anymore.  But I do feel good about my list so I’m finally posting this damn thing.  Anyways, here goes:

Vince Staples – Big Fish Theory

I’m not sure what I was expecting after the hopeless, almost nihilistic beauty of Summertime ’06, but it wasn’t this. While Kendrick Lamar is undeniably the greatest rapper in the world –and we’ll deal with King Kendrick soon enough- Vincent Staples is no slouch. His music sounds like the future hip-hop doesn’t even know it’s heading towards. Vincent’s trademark existential dread shows up a bit differently this time around with a lot of bass and a dance beat that sounds like goddamn Detroit techno. On Big Fish Theory, the verses are tighter, the lyrics more directly to the point and tumbling along at near-breakneck speed in an effort to keep up with the beat that just won’t stop.

It’s not quite what I was expected or what I thought I wanted from the follow-up to Summertime ’06 but still, the album is an exciting new direction in what hip hop can be. And really, Bagbak is easily the hip hop song of the year. This song is unfuckingstoppable.  With zero fucks or filter, Vincent drops the protest song of 2017.

Angel Olsen – Phases

Technically it’s not a proper album but instead a collection of b-sides and demos but I really loved this one. On the heels of her most polished rock record, MY WOMAN, Phases is more subdued  Lo-Fi affair of sorts. While we’ve seen her channeling Leonard Cohen, some songs on this album reveal her inner-Roy Orbison.  Anyways, same as her last album, nothing here is gonna pass the Bechdel Test but she can write as many songs about heartbreak and longing as she pleases and I’ll be here to listen.

The National – Sleep Well Beast

None of the songs on this album will go down as my most favorite songs by The National and yet this has maybe become my favorite The National album. The bulk of their greatest work can be found on The Boxer and High Violet but those albums also have numerous songs I give zero fucks about. Sleep Well Beast has held my attention for the entire duration of the album on many occasions this year.  A more playful wordsmith than myself asked “Has Matt Berninger been getting drunk on whiskey [no ice] while listening to Nick Cave? It feels like a hiccupping Rube Goldberg machine built of threadbare patchwork quilts and watching the ocean for a ship that’s never coming back.”  That sounds about right.

SZA – CTRL

Featuring guest critic: Megan White

Whatup, y’all. Wife here. SZA was number 2 on my top ten list this year. I listened to this album on repeat for several months. I think this album is what they call a slow burn. On first listen, it sounds very much like a lot of female fronted R&B acts that have been exploding in the last few years like Jhene Aiko and The Internet. Both of which have also gotten a lot of play in my year. (It’s been a very R&B heavy year for me.) But this album distinguishes itself with its vulnerable confessional lyrics and its unique melodies. With each listen, you hear more of the subtleties. SZA doesn’t rely on the usual recipe for a Chart Topping Pop Song. Her voice creates intricate dreamy soundscapes. Ok, this is going to sound weird to anyone who isn’t a singer, but the albums that tend to inspire obsessive long-term devotion in me are the ones that light my brain up the most when I sing along. I swear, if I had actually studied music composition, I would be able to put words to this shit, but I didn’t so you just have to be ok with my layman’s explanation. When you sing, your brain releases dopamine. Dopamine is the chemical that creates your brain’s reward system and is a major component of all drug addiction. It feels real good. (See, I didn’t study music composition but I did study psychology so..) Anywho. When you sing, your brain gets you high. And the songs that get me highest include unexpected key changes, minor chords, and really great runs that use my whole range. SZA has an incredible range and, instead of staying in one key, her songs travel all over the place, soaring highs and sultry depths. Plus, she sings a lot about how much she likes sex and I fully support that topic. As Kendrick says in his guest verse on Doves in the Wind, “How many times she gotta tell you that dick is disposable… and good pussy is rather dangerous?”

JT here again. She’s really fucking good at this. Maybe next year, I’ll just pay her to do it for me. I did offer her $10 to finish the last few paragraphs for me so that I could finally post it before fucking March. She declined. Because she was busy writing her own awesome shit.

LCD Soundsystem – American Dream

In April of 2011, James Murphy announced he was breaking up his band and then scheduled a final blowout 4 hour concert at Madison Square Garden. We tried to get tickets but got shut out.  But then they did a free live webcast and my friends and I tuned in, ingested a heroic amount of drugs, and it was fucking awesome. And that was the end of LCD Soundsystem for nearly 5 years. Over that time, I’ve grown older. So has Murphy. And now the band, having decided that they missed playing songs with each other, is back together. In typical Murphy form, he announced the comeback by penning what essentially is a longwinded heartfelt apology letter.  LCD Soundsystem isn’t the force in my life that it once was but damn, it sure is lovely to hear this band again. LCD was laid to rest with great intention and now they have returned with equal intention.  Idk, life is short and people change their minds and well, if you change yr mind, you can change yr mind.

King Krule – the OOZ

This is some weird fucking shit, man.

Priests – Nothing Feels Natural

This was my first album love of the year. Holy shit, Katie Alice Greer and company dropped their first proper LP like a fucking bomb. This record defies what punk music can sound like when it stops giving a fuck about being punk on a level that I just wasn’t expecting to hear so soon after Savages’ Silence Yourself (2013). This shit fucking slays. And you can dance to it.

Slowdive – Slowdive

This is a perfect shoegaze rock record. 20 years after the previous record, this album is everything the just-as-many-years-in-the-waiting My Bloody Valentine album was supposed to be but ultimately wasn’t. It’s all here: massive wall of sound; stupid-gorgeous lush vocals ; crashing waves of guitar; all the texture in the world; and all of it feels like a the hazy memory of a beautiful dream.

Fever Ray – Plunge

The Knife is dead and will never return but Karin Dreijer has bestowed us with a new album under her solo moniker of Fever Ray. And holy fuck this album is fierce and of course really weird. While the Fever Ray project was never intended to be as uncompromisingly progressive as The Knife, this album is still a lot of fun.  And while this Fever Ray album is not as immersive as its self-titled predecessor, it’s far more urgent. This is haunting and ethereal manic dance music. It’s queer as fuck. It’s unsexy and yet made of sex and anarchy and love. Or something.

Kelly Lee Owens – Kelly Lee Owens

This one was by far my favorite electronica album of the year. It exists in a realm somewhere between dream pop and minimalist techno. I don’t really have many words to share here.

Other recommended electronica records from 2017: Octo Octa – Where Are We Going? and Four Tet – New Energy

St. Vincent – Masseduction

Anne Clark continues to demonstrate the cool detachment of David Byrne and a penchant for the perpetually evolving personas of David Bowie while being entirely herself every step of the way. With Masseduction, Annie Clark breaks away from some of that detachment and delivers probably her most vulnerable record, as is evidenced by the cover art featuring what is (presumably) Annie bent over with the most private area of the body facing the viewer. Annie reveals more of herself in this record than ever before but with precision and restraint. That said, there isn’t much else in the way of restraint here. A bulk of this pop-leaning record exists in a frenzied state. High speed dance beats are pervasive.  It’s a lot to deal with.

As for this perpetually evolving persona, this latest reinvention of St. Vincent presents Annie as the high femme queer rock and roll goddess the world needs, sporting thigh-high vinyl stripper boots, matching vinyl fetish-wear, and an arsenal of custom, designed by Annie herself, Ernie Ball guitars.  She’s come a long way since the days of Marry Me and Actor.

And yet one of my favorite things about St. Vincent is that, buried underneath all this pretentious futuristic art-pop-rock wankery, is essentially a blues guitarist. A friend described the main lick from Los Ageless as more blues than The Black Keys’ entire output. After seeing her in concert and the things she can do to her guitar, I’m inclined to agree.  All hail Queen Annie.

“I hold you like a weapon.”

Kendrick Lamar – DAMN.

If you know me at all and if you’ve been following K Dot, you already knew.

DAMN. arrived amidst quite a big week. Days before its release, I lost one of my mountain people, a best friend to one of my best friends, to an avalanche on Red Mountain. Fuck. As a backcountry adventurer, I think about avalanches a lot. Most of the time, it’s all very analytical data stuff that I can apply to mountain travel decisions in order to Not Be Dead. But sometimes I dream about them.  I’ve had more than one dream about being buried in the cold dark isolation of the snow, wishing more than anything to be in my warm house on the couch with my loves as I slowly run out of air. And suddenly here I was, getting the phone call before his body had even been recovered by Search and Rescue, that my friend was dead and I’m hoping hoping hoping please just fucking tell me that he died quickly, that he wasn’t buried alive and all alone (He wasn’t. The slab avalanche sent him into the trees below where he likely died instantly from trauma).

Until this year, any local avalanche fatalities have always been someone I didn’t know, in some cases a friend of a friend of a friend but certainly none of *my* people. And Morgan was most certainly my people. He was right there with my friend Kirt when I first started exploring these Cascade Mountains. When I experienced my first earned powder turns. I remember the moment when we learned that we had a shared love for Jerry Garcia’s guitar playing and subsequently shared that joy together in the ski area parking lot with a beer and a bowl on numerous occasions. I always respected him but he was also on his own trip. He sought solitude in these hills but he always welcomed a friend. I wish I’d skied with him more. I was often too self-conscious about the disparity in our skill sets and always feared that I’d hold him back. That he’d reject me. So I rarely asked. In the immediate aftermath of his passing and even now, I have thought about this often and with great sadness. There’s a lesson in here that I’m still being stubborn about learning but I’ll get there.

So here I was in the midst of my own terrible moment in the shared human experience of the loss of a loved one. But suddenly, the new Kendrick Lamar album had arrived and, grief be damned, I was going to listen to it obsessively. I can’t say that I leaned into the album for comfort. This isn’t that kind of story. Relatability in any immediate sense isn’t to be found here. Listening to this music and the world it conjures is very different from most of what I experience in my life. Kendrick’s world is not my own and with each album, it feels like an honor to have access to his experience of life.

The album is of course perfection.

Kendrick is standing at the top of the mountain. With each release he has been uncompromising in creating his vision.  With DAMN., his vision remains pure. Every note is exactly as he would have it. That fucking venomous bridge on DNA. The hazy stoney vibe of YAH. “Buuuuuuuuuuuuzzing. Just Buuuuuuuuuzing. Yah yah. Yah yah.”  And PRIDE., with that slinky Mac Demarco-sounding guitar, and he sings “maybe I wasn’t there” with the chorus of bird calls swirling in the background, fuuuuuuuck.  With LOVE., K dot wrote a fucking love song and it’s goddamn beautiful. And with GOD., Kendrick says fuck being HUMBLE. “This what GOD feel like.” And then he says “work it JT” and I like to think K dot is winking at me and I’m like “I’m working it, Kenny. Really I am.” I’m doing the best I can and when I think about what Kendrick is sharing, these stories of his inner-conflict, from weakness and wickedness to pride and humility, I think fuck, for all the differences between our worlds, there will always be this shared experience of trying to make sense of being a human being on the planet Earth.

Here’s a mixtape I made for you.

For M.M.

 -Not Fade Away-

2016 was a hard. Like really hard. Again. Shit happened. First of all, people died. I don’t usually get overly sentimental about deaths of celebrities and public figures. When nearly everyone in my social media feed all make the same damn post about the same famous person dying, I tend to roll my eyes at how weird people are on the internet and then maybe feel sad for a moment. People get old and then they die. Even famous people. Sometimes they die when they’re not old.  This will never stop happening.  But then David Bowie died. David Bowie. The Starman. That really shifted my perspective.  This time around, I wasn’t annoyed by countless posts on Facebook.  I was amazed at the realization of just how many people were just as affected by his art and really, his existence, as I was. Then of course, Prince died. And Phife Dawg. And Leonard Cohen. Sharon Jones too. Meanwhile in the world of the living, black lives continued to not matter in America and yet a white man served 6 months in jail for raping an unconscious woman. A fascist who jokes about sexual assault was elected to the goddamn presidency. Everything is going to shit and I’m left here with all my privilege and a broken brain just trying to take care of myself.  While others fought the good fight for social justice, I just tried to stay afloat. My depression and anxiety reached new heights. It got really bad. Fortunately, I reached out, built up my support team, and found new coping skills.

There was a Sunday morning early in the summer of my nervous breakdown, I woke up and realized I maybe didn’t want to be alive anymore. That’s a horrifying moment.  Wanting to be dead and still knowing that I probably was not going to hurt myself.  I can’t honestly state that knowing I wasn’t going to kill myself was even remotely comforting at the time. Maybe more disappointing than anything. Somehow, I crawled out of bed and immediately made a playlist. I titled it You Are Not Going to Walk into Traffic. Mostly songs that conveyed a message of shit may be hard and horrible but you can and maybe should keep trying.  At least keep breathing. Right now. In this moment. I listened to this hastily pieced together playlist on repeat for much of the day while breathing through the anxiety and just trying to not be completely swallowed by the depression.

Speaking of anxiety, you may recall last year that my primary musical coping skill was none other than Taylor Swift’s brilliant work of art/stupid pop album 1989.  Yeah, I still don’t know how that happened but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least just a little excited to see what T. Swift does next. But I digress. This year, the Jason’s Best Musical Coping Skill award goes to my Calm the Fuck Down, Jason – Spotify playlist, an excellently curated body of ambient, drone, noise, and piano music. If you suffer from anxiety or if you just want cool background music on while you do yoga or masturbate or get high or whatever, follow my playlist. It’s fucking awesome.  No really, this playlist helped me through the absolute worst, most prolonged anxiety attacks of my entire life. When I couldn’t handle listening to much of anything, this playlist delivered.

Through all of this, I’ve also gone through a fucking arsenal of drugs trying to hold it together: hydroxyzine; buspar (lol, was that one actually supposed to do a thing); Celexa; Bupropion (150 mg, 300 mg, and back to 150 mg); then motherfucking Zoloft which maybe helped me through crisis but also wouldn’t let me orgasm for nearly 3 months. I couldn’t feel much of anything, really. I smoked a lot of cannabis during that time; at my absolute most desperate moments, I pilfered from my wife’s Xanax bottle; Then there was Mirtazapine; Vyvance (Holy shit, who would give stimulant drugs to a person in my condition?!); and most recently a mood stabilizer, Lamotrigine because my ARNP didn’t have the heart to prescribe me another SSRI.  I’m not sure if any of these drugs helped. Well, maybe 150mg of Bupropion is helping. Or it’s exacerbating my anxiety. I don’t fucking know.  I think maybe the mood stabilizer is starting to work. Therapy helped. Shit, maybe I should dedicate this year’s list to my therapist who I started seeing near the end of last year. She’s not reading this. That would be weird. But you should know that she’s great and I don’t know what I would have done without her.

Aside from a barrage of prescription drugs, my other coping skills were the mountains. I spent as much time in the woods as possible. And music. That’s why we’re here, right? Why I write these words that a few friends enjoy reading.  I continued obsessively seeking it out. Looking for sounds that made my ears, brain, and body buzz with the excitement of discovering something new that’s really good. Something to help me feel something. Anything.  For all my efforts, I figured I should make a list again. Some of you seem to really enjoy it. Here we go…

Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein – Stranger Things, Vol. 1 (An Original Score from the Netflix Series)

In 2016, we all watched Stranger Things on Netflix and most of us loved it.  The soundtrack also ended up being surprisingly enjoyable as a standalone body of ambient music. Probably the best original score for a television series since Angelo Badalamenti’s stunning score for Twin Peaks.

Solange – A Seat at the Table

I’m just now really getting around to giving this one some intentional listening time.  This is Queen Bey’s little sister, mind you.  I gave it a listen back in October and I found it to be a bit dull but not uninteresting.  But I recently came back to it and follow-up listens are revealing this one to be a neo-soul album with a great deal of depth.  The album is a far more subtle and nuanced affair than anything you’ll ever hear from Beyonce.  But it’s a cohesive, focused, and just goddamn gorgeous statement on black womanhood.  Listen to it. Then listen two more times. By then, you should hear it.

Angel Olsen – MY WOMAN

Angel Olsen’s songs will never pass The Bechdel Test.  But that voice. Good god. Anyways, I snubbed her 2014 release, Burn Your Fire For No Witness. I did not make that mistake this time around. With both of these albums, this folk singer is increasingly becoming a rock goddess.

Radiohead – A Moon Shaped Pool

Well, this is awkward. Radiohead released a new record and to date, I have not fallen in love with it. Don’t get me wrong; it’s the new Radiohead album so I do keep coming back to it. Over and over. It’s fucking gorgeous. But I haven’t obsessed over any of it, which is well, not how I tend to interact with a new Radiohead album. I can’t think of a single song on here that I absolutely must listen to the next time (if ever) I take acid. That said, it’s still Radiohead. So it’s really fucking good. For this album, I think the star of the show really is longtime producer Nigel Godrich. The production here is flawless and really captures an essence that gives the album a unified cohesive vibe, much more so than 2011’s The King of Limbs. The songs are beautifully orchestrated but also just a little…bland. I don’t know. Radiohead have an arsenal of masterpieces under their belt. Even a lesser effort is still better than just about anything anybody else out there can create. One nice surprise was that True Love Waits, a song that had previously existed only as a rare treat in live performances, finally found its way onto an album but with a completely different arrangement that the days when Thom would perform it solo on acoustic guitar. And yet I’m still not experiencing about Really Big Feelings about it. I don’t know. Radiohead are getting older. So am I. Like Abby texted me earlier this week, “It’s possible that it’s us, not him.”

Day of the Dead

Well, it finally happened. It’s become cool to like The Grateful Dead. Members of The National curated this beast of a compilation of Grateful Dead covers and the indie crowd is eating it up.  Clocking in at 5.5 hours, there is a vast body of covers and re-imagined versions of Grateful Dead songs.  Many of them are absolutely fantastic. Others are okay. Some just plain suck.  My personal favorites include performances from The National, Courtney Barnett, Bonnie Prince Billy, Angel Olsen, The War on Drugs, and Tim Hecker.

Sturgill Simpson – A Sailor’s Guide to Earth

Sturgill has done it again. The modern outlaw country music artist continues to give the finger to the Nashville music establishment by making really good country music.  This time around, he draws from his years in the Navy and the birth of his first child, to create A Sailor’s Guide to Earth.  In a departure from his previous album, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, Sturgill eschews penning songs about encountering reptile aliens made of light healing his soul while in the depths of a DMT trip and instead gives life instructions to his infant son to “Stay in school/Stay off the drugs/And keep between the lines.”  This album has a rather insular feel of a songwriter who is suddenly spending a lot of time at home caring for an infant.  But it also gets a big soul music injection courtesy of the horns of The Dap Tones. Sturgill continues to impress.

Bon Iver – 22, A  Million

People keep calling this Bon Iver’s “experimental” album. I don’t understand why. It’s not fucking experimental. Justin Vernon doesn’t come out of hiding to make an experimental album; he makes the next Bon Iver album. Sure, it sounds a little different, given its preference for bleeps and bloops and auto-tuning instead of Vernon’s usual lush acoustic guitar stuff and haunting untreated vocals.  With this album, the severity with which his personal work has been affected by his collaborations with Kanye West is undeniable. Combine that with his penchant for progression and building upon his previous work anyways, this album really does make perfect sense. Just don’t call it experimental.

 Nicolas Jaar – Sirens

I’ve loved nearly everything Jaar has released to date, from his first proper album, Space Is Only Noise to the Psychic album from his Darkside project, and a slew of singles and other assorted oddities. Jaar has been releasing by far the most interesting electronic music I’ve heard in recent memory.  I’m beginning to hold him in the same regard as Four Tet, Flying Lotus, and The Knife. Jaar’s music is dark, at times a little sinister, and always unhurried. And masterful. On Space Is Only Noise, Jaar’s music meanders through some strange ethereal, ambient, and sometimes psychedelic places until late in the album when the build finally peaks with Variations, the only real dance track on this electronica album.  It’s not that the track is necessarily worth the wait. It’s all about the journey. And the fruit of that track is all the more sweet when taking the full ride.  The same is true with Jaar’s latest offering, Sirens. The album is only 6 tracks in duration. But what a ride it is.

Anderson Paak – Malibu

Malibu was the album I needed earlier in the year while I waited patiently for new albums from Kanye, Chance the Rapper, and maybe just goddamn maybe, Frank Ocean.  And in that task, it was a success. But even after all those people released their albums, I still ended up coming back to it time and time again all year long.

A Tribe Called Quest – We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your service

One of my favorite hip hop bands of the 90s got back together and recorded an album. During those recordings, key member Phife Dawg passed away.  I was surprised by its release. I actually had no idea these recording sessions were even happening.  Well, here it is. This could have been one big boring nostalgia trip. Instead, it’s pure A Tribe Called Quest. In many ways, it sounds familiar, just like the Tribe you remember.  But it’s also fresh and new.  The beats and production are more complex than ever before.  The members more conscious. The message more political. And for this album to arrive right now? At the exact moment when that vile piece of shit won the election?  There’s something to be learned here. Phife knew he was sick during these recordings. He probably even knew he was near the end of his life and yet this album is full of joy. A gratitude for getting to be alive even during the darkest of times. Let’s try to hang onto that as we move forward in these dark days ahead.

David Bowie – Blackstar

Only Bowie could orchestrate turning his own death into art of this magnitude.  The entire album is surprisingly strong but the title track and Lazarus really are the stars of the show. I still haven’t been able to bring myself to watch the music video for Lazarus. Maybe someday. I want to say more but nearly a year after his passing, I still really just don’t know what to say. Fortunately, I have a small arsenal of David Bowie records to lose myself in again and again.

Kanye West – The Life of Pablo

The most polarizing and easily the most hated person in contemporary pop music released his messiest, most unfocused album to date and you know what? It’s fucking brilliant. A big messy beautiful patchwork of glorious music. Yes, it’s a little disjointed at times. One musical idea crashes into another (listen to the last 90 seconds of Pt. 2.) and in the hands of another, it wouldn’t work. But this is Kanye West. No producer in music comes even close to Yeezy’s wizardry in the studio.  Goddamn, when he samples Bam Bam at the end of Famous and then tosses Nina Simone on top of it, fuck the haters. Kanye West is one of The Greatest of All Time.

But then there’s the rapping.  Kanye has never been the best emcee but here, as with most of his records, the verses are mostly competent, at times brilliant, and other times stupifyingly cringe-worthy. Like “what the actual fuck were you thinking, Yeezy?” kind of bad.  The Life of Pablo is no exception. There are some truly awful lyrical moments. And yet there was something perversely satisfying about seeing Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1 as the opening song at his Seattle performance and instead of Yeezy singing the opening verse, he allowed 16,000 rabid fans to take the lead on vocals and sing in unison “If I fuck this model/and she just bleached her asshole/and I get bleach on my t-shirt/Imma feel like an asshole.” Transcendent, really.

There are definitely some duds on the album. There is also some of Kanye’s best work. Opening track Ultralight Beams is quite possibly the greatest song of 2016 and one of Yeezy’s finest efforts to date. Just an incredibly powerful performance featuring an excellently curated sequence of guest artists.  Most notably Chance the Rapper’s verse which is just pure heat.

Other noteworthy tracks include: Waves, FML, and Real Friends. For me, the album really ends at Wolves. The additional tracks feel like a welcome collection of bonus tracks. No More Parties in L.A.,featuring Kanye holding his own against superior emcee Kendrick Lamar quite nicely, is a real hip hop treat.

Over the years, many artists have played with new and interesting methods of releasing an album. In 2001, when the new CEO of their label refused to release their masterpiece Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco released the album for free online. Nobody had really ever done that yet. In 2007, Radiohead, as a sort of social experiment, introduced  a pay-what-you-want approach to the release of In Rainbows.  And in 2016, Yeezy released an album and then he kept on working on it and releasing it several more times. The album was already released several days late because he was still making changes. Once it was finally released, the streaming version of the album went through several iterations over the ensuing weeks.  While there is certainly an obsessive-compulsive quality to this method (and Kanye does clearly suffer from some significant mental health struggles), it is still an innovative and previously unheard of approach to releasing music.

Chance the Rapper – Coloring Book

In his verse on Kanye’s Ultralight Beams, Chance promised he’d “do a good ass job on Chance 3” and the kid has indeed done a good ass job. Coloring Book is easily the hip hop album of the year.  Here, Chancellor is at the top of his game and he is just so goddamn grateful for the opportunity.

Car Seat Headrest – Teens of Denial

Music has always been one of my greatest coping skills. But two musical events this year provided significant care for my fragile mental health.  For all of my crippling breathe through it for hours on end anxiety, I had my Calm the Fuck Down, Jason playlist. And for the coping with the most brutal depths of depression of my entire adult life but also needing to hear some rocking guitars, there was Teens of Denial.   Here was a young man exclaiming “I’ve got a right to be depressed” because “I’ve given every inch I have to fight it.”  And that’s what I needed to hear in the summer of 2016.  I’ve tried as hard as I can to be okay and it’s not working so fuck you, I’m just going to be depressed.

I spent months not being able to feel anything anymore.  So to experience something resembling catharsis in screaming along to lyrics such as “They’ve got a portrait by Van Gogh on the Wikipedia page for clinical depression/ Well it helps to describe it yeah it helps to describe it yeah it helps to describe it.” Not bad for someone who was struggling to feel…anything.  Throughout the year, I tried a vast array of prescription drugs in failed attempts to find some sort of relief.  Half emptied bottles of drugs have accumulated in a cabinet in my kitchen.  Toledo captures that experience perfectly; “In the back of the medicine cabinet/You can find your life story/And your future in the side effects.”  Will fucking Toledo, man. This kid can write about depression.

One interesting aspect of getting older for me is being moved so deeply by artists who are now significantly younger than me. Listening this collection of songs, there was a part of me, maybe a parental or big brother kind of thing, where I wanted to reach out to Will and let him know it’s going to be okay (to which, if Cosmic Hero is any indicator, he’d probably just reply with a hearty fuck you). Then I remember that even at 36 years old, I’ve devoted a lot of time to feeling very much not okay and then remembering that imparting that kind of reassurance to another human struggling with depression is disingenuous and patronizing. At best.

Fuck depression. Yay, Car Seat Headrest.

Beyonce – Lemonade

A few years ago, Beyonce released her self-titled video album.  I didn’t love it but it certainly got my attention.  This year, she dropped easily the most important album of the year. Not my favorite.  But goddamn, what an album.  I don’t feel qualified to write about this one. Therefore, as is becoming a tradition, I’ll pass this one along to the wife….

Frank Ocean – Blond

Approximately one year ago, a beautiful and terrifying shift happened in my life. I fell in love with someone. Someone who is not my wife. So many things were so difficult at that time but this just sent me over the edge. Wife freaked out. I freaked out. I had no idea what the fuck to do. It was eating me alive. We tried and tried to figure out a solution. I figured, why not just start collecting therapists, and my wife and I immediately started couples counseling to try to make some sense of all of this. This was a smart decision.  Time went on and we did the best we could. We learned more about ourselves as individuals and as a couple. We began to forgive each other and ourselves. Over time, a lot of time, a paradigm shift began to unfold. We had some big realizations and we started to come up with some creative solutions.  We were finally on the same page again so we learned some new skills and decided to make some radical changes in our relationship. At the beginning of August, after some significant time apart, we reconnected with this other person and made some decisions about how to move forward.  After months of struggle, there was finally hope that just maybe everything was going to be okay.  That just maybe we could do this and make it work. And then Frank Ocean showed up. Right on time.

On August 20, Frank Ocean released the new album. Many didn’t think he’d do it. My own wife was certain that he was going to pull a D’Angelo. I wasn’t so sure, but I was definitely starting to have my doubts. Maybe this really isn’t going to happen, I thought.  And then it arrived. I’m finally feeling a glimmer of hope about my life, my loves, and my mental health and one of my favorite musicians releases the album I’ve been waiting for.  It actually happened. One evening immediately after the release, we came home from an intense conversation between me, my wife, and this other person. The wife and I sat in our living room, listening to this album that is so beautifully bittersweet, and grinned at each other. Everything in life is painful, but maybe, just maybe, everything is going to be okay.

Frank Ocean is not comfortable with fame.  I don’t think he wants to be famous at all. But Frank Ocean needs to be heard. 4 years after Channel Orange, it’s here. It’s glorious. It’s unlike anything anyone else is doing.  It’s unlike anything he has done before. Frank Ocean gets pinned down as an R&B artist but this is goddamn psychedelic pop music from the future. Many of the songs are wrapped up in this trippy, cannabis-infused haze. There’s hardly a drumbeat to be found.  Instead, it’s slinky guitars, synthesizers, and an occasional organ. And yet this music is built of layers upon layers. There are so many sounds to dissect with repeat listens. Meanwhile, lyrics flow in a stream-of-conscious fashion. The album begins with entire verses subjected to an absurd amount of auto-tuning.  It’s nearly 3 minutes into the opening track Nikes before we actually hear Frank’s unfiltered voice. We waited 4 years to hear it again. I guess he figured we can wait an additional 3 minutes.

I find myself at a loss for words about this album. I’m crying right now just thinking about this beautiful thing that was created by a human being on the planet Earth.

Well, thanks for reading, everyone. For all the talk about depression, I want you to know that I’m mostly okay these days. So don’t worry too much, okay? Meanwhile, take care of yourselves and each other, especially during these dark days ahead. Life is hard. But I am alive and my heart is full of love.

Here’s a mixtape I made for you.

2015. Shit was hard. Music made it easier. Here are some observations.

So a lot of you, dear readers, know about the Taylor Swift thing. So let’s just go ahead and talk about it right now because it did happen. Released in 2014, 1989 became the album I needed in 2015.  I don’t entirely understand it. I also don’t apologize for it. Appreciation for contemporary mainstream pop is still relatively new to me. I struggle with it and rarely find any singles I can stomach, much less a full album, but in the last few years (it started with Katy Perry. I won’t explain here.) I’ve sort of grown to understand its value and sometimes I can connect with it.
So 2015 was a shit storm of pain, sadness, and depression over here. Taylor Swift, she was there for me through all of it. It might be safe to say that 1989 was my primary coping skill of 2015. I’ve listened to this stupid record so many fucking times. I honestly don’t know how many times I shook it off. I hashtag’d #cantstopwontstop on countless social media posts. I learned to own it. I even briefly considered trying to score a cheap ticket to her concert at the local football stadium but I was really high at the time and that seemed like maybe not the smartest undertaking.

So yeah, it took some time but I learned how to stop worrying and love T Swizzle.

What else? Oh right, Frank Ocean told everybody he would drop his new album in July. Then he didn’t. My wife thinks he is not pleased with his recent taste of fame and is going to pull a D’Angelo and disappear entirely for a very long time. I’m still holding onto hope that he will deliver but regardless, for yet another year, Frank Ocean has not released his follow-up to Channel Orange.
Enough about albums that weren’t released in 2015; a bunch of music was released and, due to some pathological need to consume as much of it as possible, I listened to a lot of it. Then in the early winter, I kind of freaked out and thought I wasn’t going to write this blog. I’m sorry. I was a mess. But now it’s January and the readers (okay, maybe 10 of you) have been demanding it. So here we go. This will be quick and dirty. Cuz I can’t really deal. This year it’s 15 albums.

15. Thee Oh Sees – The Mutilator Defeated at Last

California garage rocker John Dwyer’s new album rocks really hard. As with any Thee Oh Sees record, Play it loud. If you’ve ever followed my advice about Ty Segall and you were pleased with the results, here’s another fantastic SF garage psych revival band with an extensive catalog to dig into.

14. Deerhunter – Fading Frontier

Deerhunter is my favorite band in the world that I largely don’t talk about anymore. Here’s why. Imagine you discovered Radiohead before any of your friends, let’s say circa The Bends, and you share it with them and none of them like it. The band keeps releasing more albums, mindblowing stuff, fuckin’ OK Computer, and still your friends don’t give a shit and eventually, Kid A, and now you want them to die because what the fuck. Yeah, that’s kinda how Deerhunter is for me. So I’m not going to talk about them so that we can still be friends, but they always make the list. It’s also possible I’m overstating all of this.

Bradford Cox nearly died after getting hit by a fucking car this year. As if the guy doesn’t have it bad enough having been blessed with goddamn Marfan Syndrome. Then he recorded pretty much the mellowest of all Deerhunter albums. The first few tracks are solid. The middle kinda sucks. And then Snakeskin starts and for the final three songs, the record just kills.

13. Vince Staples – Summertime ’06

My friend Daniel said that Summertime ‘ 06 was better than Illmatic. He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about but I understand why he said it. It flows much like the timeless Nas album in the way the artist creates a sonic environment that really captures his world and then just spits pure hip hop over it. One of my favorite producers in hip hop today, Clams Casino, is all over this record too.  It’s definitely worthy of a listen.

12. Dan Deacon – Glass Siffer

If you ever go to a Dan Deacon concert, he’ll likely split the crowd in half and choose you, no really he’s pointing at you, to engage in a dance battle with another person he has chosen from the opposing side of the audience and you have to dance in the style of “Avatar if it had actually been a good movie.” No seriously, that happened at the last Dan Deacon concert I attended.
Anyways, Dan creates insanely silly but surprisingly danceable electronic music that is great fun.

11. Kurt Vile – B’lieve I’m goin’ Down

Not as great as his epic Wakin’ On a Pretty Daze from a few years ago, this one is still really fucking solid. Really great stoner jams from a guy who can barely make the effort to even sing the words but still drops these words of wonder alongside the most deadpan observations.

10. Courtney Barnett – Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit

First time I ever heard this band, I was driving to work listening to KEXP. She was doing a live set and holy shit, she had my attention almost immediately. Seriously, Courtney rocks so fucking hard. You might say it’s pedestrian at best, really…

09. Bjork – Vulnicura

Lots of really depressing releases this year. Bjork released her newest album that basically chronicles her devastating divorce from artist Matthew Barney. It’s heartbreaking…and musically, it’s a little dull. From a sonic perspective, a very important perspective when discussing Bjork, she already covered this ground years ago with Homogenic. That said, it’s the new Bjork album so it’s fucking gorgeous. And Black Lake, oh man, it’s an incredible 10 minute odyssey through what is essentially Bjork’s entire reality crumbling in front of her. Listen to it.

08. Grimes – Art Angels

This shit is unlike anything on her previous album, Visions. Grimes went pop. Like pop pop.  Well, kinda. Like last summer she released a song that she wrote for Rihanna that Rihanna politely declined.  That’s what happens when a squeaky weirdo art school kid tries to write a song for freakin’ Rihanna.  A few months after that, she reportedly scrapped all the material she’d recorded for the new album and started from scratch.  Well, the  resulting material must have been more to her liking because here it is and it’s pretty great.  The first two-thirds of the record is particularly fantastic.  I do tend to lose interest after that though and rarely make it all the way through the album.

07. Kamasi Washington – The Epic

Kamasi Washington hangs out with Brainfeeder collective guys like Thundercat and his holiness, the great Steven Ellison, a.k.a. Flying Lotus. He played sax on much of Kendrick Lamar’s latest album. He also released a 3 hour long bombastic jazz album. Apparently, jazz *can* be good again.

06. Father John Misty – I Love You, Honeybear

Narcissistic probably misogynist douche writes gorgeous collection of songs dripping in a style of sarcasm that intrigues me but also makes me uncomfortable…and also leaves me laughing and at times genuinely moved. FJM’s Josh Tillman wins extra bonus points for taking the piss out of Ryan Adams’ 1989 cover album. Because the world really needed Ryan Adams to mansplain Taylor Swift for us. Anyways, the day after Adams’ appropriation was released, Tillman released to the internet two hastily recorded T Swift covers of his own…in the style of Lou Reed. And well, it really fucking sounds like The Velvet Underground performing Taylor Swift songs.

05. Sufjan Stevens – Carrie and Lowell

Surprising to no one, Sufjan released another batch of songs about death. Like really, on one song, the chorus is “We’re all gonna die/We’re all gonna die/We’re all gonna die/We’re all gonna die/We’re all gonna die.” Fuck. If you like Sufjan, then you’ll probably find this to be not necessarily your favorite Sufjan album but it’s easily his most focused. Thematically, Sufjan is on point with every one of his records but his execution is often sprawling and one can lose interest along the way. But this album is tight…and beautiful…and really depressing. My four favorite tracks all end with these slightly extended and terribly heartbreaking atmospheric soundscape that were absolutely breathtaking to hear performed live.

04. Sleater-Kinney – No Cities to Love

Sleater-Kinney got back together after 10+ years apart. Big surprise, lots of bands get back together. But S-K got back together and then recorded what might be their best and best produced record yet. Again, turn it up loud.

03. Four Tet – Morning/Evening

In the grand scheme of Four Tet records, this will probably be considered a minor album. But I kept coming back to it over and over. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard from him while also the culmination of his explorations to date. This LP consists of only two tracks, Morning and Evening, each spanning the near-20 minute mark. It all begins and ends with a grounding simple house beat. In the space between, there’s some extended sampling of this gorgeous female Hindi vocalist. From there we travel into some extended spacey ambient territory last visited by Brian Eno and now made new again by Four Tet. And then slowly we begin to return to this astral plane in the form of a modest four on the floor house beat. What a ride. This is the #1 record of the year I’d recommend for anyone considering a soundtrack to their own psychedelic adventure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x3lIW4M7ik
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH7ljQiNPEE

02. Jamie xx – In Colour

I’ve never really been a huge fan of The xx but goddamn, Jamie xx’s first solo record plays like the greatest mixtape that I will never be able to make for you. It’s a perfect dance record. Even with that cheesy “You’re in ecstacy” lyric at the apex of Loud Places, it’s still that fucking good. With tracks like Gosh, (There’s Gonna Be) Good Times, and The Rest is Noise, I’ll forgive this misstep again and again.

01. Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly

All hail King Kendrick. I’ve been talking about this record all year so I’m gonna let the wife take over for this one. Our favorite record of 2015.

The wife:

This album is near perfect. To Pimp a Butterfly takes a few listens to really grok. I will admit, KDot makes some questionable artistic choices at times. Namely, his overwrought weepy vocals on u and his decision to end the album with a meandering manufactured conversation with Tupac. The vocals on u end up feeling a little heavy handed and the convo with Tupac… well, it just gets boring after the first listen. But taken as a whole, To Pimp a Butterfly is an ambitious album with incredible sociopolitical implications.

With To Pimp a Butterfly, Kendrick marries his hip hop to jazz, funk, beat and slam poetry.  For Free? showcases his quick tongue and unique writing with one of my favorite verses on the album. When a woman berates Kendrick for failing to buy her a nice car and fancy extensions, Kendrick delivers a slam verse that ends with “Oh America,you bad bitch/I picked cotton that made you rich/Now my dick ain’t free.” Kendrick wrestles not only with systemic racism but also the impact of internalized racism, the desire to smoke weed in the White House, steal Rolodexes from the rich celebrities at the BET awards and the ways in which his fame has made him rich but failed to “take the hood out tha homie.” There is a lot of pain on this album as Kendrick wrestles with self hatred and hopelessness but one of the jewel’s in this album’s crown is Alright. As bitter as it is redeeming, Kendrick performed the song on top of a police car at the 2015 BET awards, exclaiming “We hate po-po/wanna kill us dead in the street fo’ sho’… I’m fucked up homey, you fucked up but if God got us then we gonna be alright.” Its definitely been one of the anthems of my shit-ass year. And a review of the album can’t be complete without a mention of King Kunta. As Jason would say, “I can’t describe it . Just go listen to it loud.”

This album is a snapshot of African American struggles in 2015 and a cry for change and revolution. Several schools across the country have started teaching this album alongside classics like Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. I always give an imperfect piece of art more credit when I can see it inspire its audience to dream of a better life, and To Pimp a Butterfly definitely does that. This album is gorgeous and Kendrick is one of the best writers in the music industry today. Listen to it.

https://vimeo.com/120397867

http://cache.vevo.com/assets/html/embed.html?video=USUV71501692&autoplay=0

Oh shit, you made it this far.  Thanks so much for reading.  Here’s a Spotify mixtape I made just for you.  And if you don’t have Spotify, there’s another version for those who have been following me since the days of the email version of this blog.  Anyone else who is interested, just ask.

This list is dedicated to The Thin White Duke.

Hi everybody! Welcome to my Best Albums of 2014 list! Before we get started, I’d like to dedicate this years list to an artist whose band didn’t make the list, Ms. Laura Jane Grace.  Laura Jane Grace is the leader of the long established pop-punk band, Against Me!  I’ve never really been a fan of her band but goddamn, did she inspire me this year.   A few years ago, the lead singer/songwriter for Against Me! came out to her band and audience as transgender.  She informed us that henceforth, she would be living her life as Laura Jane Grace. This year, she released Against Me!’s best album in years, Transgender Dysphoria Blues.  It is a brave and fierce record by a brave and fierce artist and even though pop-punk sucks, this artist and her new record totally deserve respect and admiration.  It doesn’t hurt that the title track totally fucking rocks as well.  Here’s to you, Laura Jane Grace.  Thanks for reading, everybody.  I hope you enjoy my list.

20. How to Dress Well – What Is This Heart?

I’m pretty much over it now but during the summer, this indie R&B album was my jam.  The album’s centerpiece, Words I Don’t Remember, is quite stunning. Having followed this guy’s development, it’s quite nice to witness him transition from sounding unsure of himself and hiding behind a wall of LoFi noise to becoming a fully realized confident and cleanly produced experimental R&B artist.

19. Amen Dunes – Love

Speaking of LoFi, this ramshackle folk album was my sleeper hit of 2014.  This record evokes artists such as Will Oldham, Wooden Wand, Lay Lady Lay-era Bob Dylan, Syd Barrett, even a little Devendra Banhart and Fleet Foxes while also sounding entirely new and unique.  Particularly noteworthy tracks include Lilac in Hand, and I Know Myself but my favorite is by far Lonely Richard, a simple but driving ditty about having yourself a good time that feels like it’s propelling you to the top of a mountain.

18. Todd Terje – It’s Album Time

This is easily the disco-y dance album of the year.  And yet, with the exception of Daft Punk,  I don’t really like disco-y dance music. But I loved this album.  Oh boy, it gets pretty weird too. This album is the Mr. Bungle’s California of dance music.  Also, Bryan Ferry randomly pops up mid-album for an incredibly unexpected and deeply moving intermission track.

17. The Knife – Shaken Up Versions

The Knife’s follow-up to their 2007 masterpiece Silent Shout, the ambitious and ultimately alienating album Shaking the Habitual was featured in my top ten last year. This year, The Knife embarked on their final tour before calling it quits as a band. I was fortunate enough to witness their Oakland concert on a very limited US tour.  This release – a studio treatment of many of their songs as they were performed live on this tour- gives just a glimpse into the live experience of Shaking the Habitual. A delightful treat for the fans, it also might attract some new fans with its infectious beats and ethereal rhythms.  I’ll miss The Knife and will mourn their demise but I respect their reasoning.  Karin Derijer Andersson and her brother Olof made it very clear that The Knife would exist only as long as it served a purpose.  With Shaking the Habitual, they have fulfilled what they aimed to accomplish. The Knife is dead.  Long live The Knife.

16. Sturgill Simpson – Meta-Modern Sounds in Country Music

LSD munching, Waylon Jennings in the 70s sounding, Kentucky native makes good ingesting various psychedelic drugs and creating a trippy country music record about consciousness expansion and finding love in the far corners of the universe?  Yes, please.

15. Shabazz Palaces – Lese Majesty

Seattle’s very own Shabazz Palaces have created perhaps one of the most deeply psychedelic hip hop records of all time.  Lese Majesty is a strange mythical journey through time and space disguised as a hip hop album. Clearly, rap music is not only thriving in Seattle, it’s reinventing the genre.  But Macklemore still sucks.

14. Perfume Genius – Too Bright

On the single, Queen, a fancy, awkward gay boy sings “No family is safe/when I sashay” with the command, confidence, and swagger of a fucking god and I believe him.  Though my favorite track on this new album from Seattle artist Mike Hadreas is easily Grids.  Upon first hearing it, it immediately reminded me of the throbbing Suicide track, Ghost Rider, which of course, was later sampled by M.I.A on the only standout track from her album Maya, the amazing Born Free.

13. Ty Segall – Manipulator

I’m still trying to make amends for some dumb shit I said about Ty Segall a few years ago when he dropped 3 albums in a single year. As stated on last year’s list, I have since seen the light. Well, true to form, Ty Segall released multiple records with multiple bands this year but Manipulator is without a doubt the jewel in this year’s Ty Segall crown.  On this double album, Ty’s blend of psych, garage, and glam reaches its culmination in terms of refinement and production. Ty also plays every single instrument on this beast of a recording.  If you listen to this record, there is one important caveat; play it fucking loud!

12. Caribou – Our Love

In many ways, the new Caribou record delivers exactly what one would expect from a new Caribou record; incredibly solid execution from beginning to end and an ever evolving sound. This latest offering has all the cerebral aspects of past work but shifts focus to create a much more groove-oriented album than past Caribou efforts.  This is a delightfully textural headphone album that could also inspire a dance party at any moment.

11. Brian Eno & Karl Hyde – High Life

This is without a doubt the least boring thing Brian Eno has done in years. This album, one of two that Eno recorded this year with Underworld’s Karl Hyde, is driven by steady, repetitive, sometimes syncopated beats and rhythms.  The opening track, Return, evokes Eno-produced U2 albums in the form of an extended drone. Meanwhile, Lilac sounds like Eno-produced Talking Heads albums in the form of a krautrock-informed melody.   The track DBF, with its glitchy afrobeat rhythms, sounds like Aphex Twin taught Fela Kuti how to make electronic music. And all of this is has Hyde’s unmistakable Underworld sound to it as well. I’m really amazed by how well this record works. In my opinion, Brian Eno is a god. This record is a fine reminder of that belief.

10. Lana Del Rey – Ultraviolence

 With Ultraviolence, the Lana Del Rey Character has become fully realized.  This record comes out swinging with a barrage of incredibly beautiful songs. Shades of Cool is still my favorite track but there is greatness to be found in many others including the title track, Brooklyn Baby, and West Coast.  On Brooklyn Baby, Lana bests Karen O’s classic line from Fever to Tell closer, Modern Romance,”Well I know I’m just a fool/But I know you’re just as cool/and cool kids/they belong together.”  Lana’s take on things is a little different; “Yeah, my boyfriend’s pretty cool…but he’s not as cool as me.” Mid-album, things start to get dreadfully dull , languishing in some themes that ultimately just become redundant, particularly the Sad Girl/Pretty When I Cry combo.  From there, the album struggles to recover with Fucked My Way Up to the Top and others.  Overall, this record is pretty fucking amazing, particularly the first half. It’s light years ahead of the often terrible Born to Die album. That said, if LDR is going to continue to develop as an artist, I hope she can squeeze more depth out of this character she has created for herself. Otherwise, this record might be the peak of her artistic output.

9. Parquet Courts – Sunbathing Animal

 This record is punk rock meets Pavement.  These guys did pretty well with their debut record a few years ago but here, they have stepped up their game tremendously.  I don’t feel like saying any more. It’s freaking awesome from beginning to end. It’s also about a kitty. Listen to it. Here’s the title track:

8. Flying Lotus – You’re Dead!

With each release, Steven Ellison takes us on a thematic journey.  1983 explored new beginnings.  Los Angeles took us on a journey through the artist’s city.  Cosmogramma, oh sweet Cosmogramma, is an epic interstellar journey (and my favorite FlyLo album). Until the Quiet Comes was a subtle meditation on dreams.  With You’re Dead!, well, I trust that you can imagine where FlyLo will be taking you.  And if this album is any indicator, death is freaking awesome! Rest assured, the exclamation point in the title is quite deliberate. This record is at once his most esoteric and experimental album and also maybe his most accessible.  Who knew that exploring death would involve a whirlwind of speedy free-form jazz motifs? As always, the hip-hop influence is deeply present; FlyLo’s alter-alter-ego, rapper Captain Murphy even shows up to the party. The record also hits some incredibly soulful peaks. Flying Lotus delivers the goods once again. Enjoy.

7. Mac DeMarco – Salad Days

featuring guest writer Megan

Hi folks! It’s the wife! I’m so excited to be asked to play along. For much of the year, this album has been vying for my #1 spot, toe to toe with War on Drugs. Here’s my review of this great laid back rock album.

Salad Days is a quirky, playful, low-fi record. Not a single note on this album is approached head on. Every melody is slid around, bent under, fallen towards as though staying in tune just took too much effort. The effect is inebriating. Mac’s vocals provide a wonderful juxtaposition to the intoxication- steady, warm and comfortable, though not so perfect as to be disingenuous. Jason has been listening to a lot of bands lately that make me feel like I’m 19, drunk on new found freedom, driving around the corn fields (see Kurt Vile, The War on Drugs.) This album makes me feel similarly bittersweet, like a long night of partying is coming to an end and I’m passing out in my boyfriend’s well-worn flannel.

Don’t let that romantic description fool you. Mac DeMarco is a fucking weirdo. The one moment when Mac’s guitar stands still is on Let My Baby Stay, a simple love song reminiscent of Tonight You Belong To me, that’s either written about a loved one or some smack.  Hard to say. Then there’s Passing Out Pieces, a dreamy track that sounds like Sgt. Peppers on acid. Or… Sgt. Peppers on more acid. Or maybe that’s just my impression after watching this WTF of a music video. Gotta love a musician who gains mainstream attention and still can’t be bothered to buy a new t-shirt or comb his hair.

After all is said and done, if you aren’t in love with this quirky stoner, his charming as fuck ending to the album will make you fall. “Hi guys, this is Mac. Thank you for joining me. See you again soon. Bye bye.” Aww.

6. St. Vincent – St. Vincent

I often find myself complaining about that lack of rock goddesses in a post-90s musical landscape.  Looking back, it seems like we had so many to choose from.  These days, they’re fewer and farther between. But this is the year that St. Vincent’s Annie Clark joined the lineage of rock goddesses; evident by an album cover featuring Annie perched on her throne, looking like something straight out of the introduction to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s film The Holy Mountain.

This self-titled record, St. Vincent’s fourth, is Annie Clark at her most confident…and her most weird. One of my favorite things about Annie is her distinct and innovative style as a guitarist. She prefers are harmonic approach rather than big sprawling solos.  Her jazz-informed guitar licks come in short and concise bursts of psychedelia. Here’s those chops at work in a live performance of Birth in Reverse.

5. Swans – To Be Kind

Michael Gira’s Swans project began a few short years after I was born. For over 15 years, they pioneered the proto-industrial drone/noise rock scene. In the late 90s, Gira disbanded the project to pursue some other musical ideas.  Around 5 years ago, he decided to reunite Swans but made it very clear that this wasn’t some cash grab from a nostalgia act. Gira asserts he wanted to achieve new goals as an artist that could only be accomplished with the resurrection of Swans. True to his statements, the new Swans is anything but a nostalgia act. Gira is making the most masterfully executed music of his career. As with 2010’s The Seer, To Be Kind is a gigantic record, clocking in at over 1.5 hours. This music is loud, abrasive, and frankly, disconcerting. It isn’t easy music to listen to. I recommend diving into it in 30 minute bursts, allowing yourself time to wade through the horror to find its cathartic industrial crescendos, metallic drones, acidic vocals, and ultimately to moments of majestic beauty.

4. Aphex Twin – Syro

Syro is the first proper release under the Aphex Twin moniker in 13 years. The landscape of electronic music has changed quite dramatically since the days when Richard James was the trendsetter for an entire genre.  And while Syro may not be a revolutionary release determining the new directions in music, it still possesses such masterful execution that it makes all other artists just look silly. Here’s the thing: it’s the new Aphex Twin album. It’s beautiful.  Shut up and listen to it.

3. Run the Jewels – Run the Jewels 2

On the night of the grand jury announcement that Ferguson, MO police officer Darren Wilson would not face charges for killing an unarmed black man named Michael Brown, El-P and Killer Mike were performing as Run the Jewels across the way in St. Louis. What a concert that must have been. Killer Mike spoke to the audience during the performance and had some powerful things to say. Check it out here.

RTJ2 is easily the hardest hitting –I’m talking Public Enemy level shit- and easily the most important hip-hop record of 2014.  While El-P and Killer Mike’s longstanding careers as independent performing artists are respectable, their efforts combined as the Run the Jewels project are something else entirely.  Juggernaut is the word that comes to mind. I mean, seriously, with  lyrics such as “Top of the morning/My fist to your face is fucking Folgers” and a song called Close Your Eyes (and Count to Fuck), how can one even argue?  Yeah, they rap about having sex and smoking weed A LOT but this record is also an indictment on the racist power structures and the injustices faced by people of color in America.  This is one of those records that dropped at precisely the right moment in history. This is music for a revolution.

2. The War on Drugs – Lost in the Dream

For most of the year, one of my favorite hobbies has been naming bands that the new The War on Drugs record sounds like.  To name just a few, I came up with the following:  Dire Straits, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan in the 80s, Mellencamp (God, I fucking hate Mellencamp), Wilco, Paul Simon, Don Henley, Tom Petty, that Rod Stewart song Young Turks, and some Bryan Adams. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for album of the year, eh? Combine that sound with a slew of ambient post-rock bands that aren’t nearly as fun to list and you end up with something completely original because most of all, The War on Drugs sound like The War on Drugs.  Goddamn, this record is beautiful.  My first day listening to it, I strongly considered calling in sick just so I could stay home and lose myself in it over and over.  The album is terribly cohesive and the production is flawless.  Adam Granduciel suffered something bordering on a nervous breakdown mixing this record and for his efforts, we remain grateful. Some of my favorite moments are when Granduciel goes Full Dylan, like when he sings “But it won’t be eeeeeeeeeasy” on Eyes to the Wind or when he knows exactly where to place an appropriate “Woo!” like on An Ocean in Between the Waves or Red Eyes, which is easily one of the very best songs released by anybody this year.  But I think the sandwich of ambient track The Haunting Idle segueing into the epic Burning really showcases what The War on Drugs can do.

This record has been slated for #1 status from the moment I first heard it. It’s so damn good.  Yet, to be honest, I’ve spent quite a few months wishing someone would come along and usurp its position. Unfortunately, neither Kanye nor Frank Ocean finished their new records in time for that 2014 release I was hoping for. It was really starting to look like it wasn’t going to happen.  But hey, life can get a lot worse than a record like Lost in the Dream being your album of the year.  And yet life can still drop a big fat surprise when you least expect it…

1. D’Angelo and the Vanguard – Black Messiah

You gotta be kidding me.  Two weeks before the end of the year proper, this happens? I’m just sitting at home trying to bang out this list. I have nearly all of my choices finalized.  I’ve written at least half of my content. I’m comfortable with my choice for Album of the Year. I feel really good about it. And yet I still can’t help but long for something more.  Even this late in the game, anything could happen, right? Shit, Beyonce dropped her video album this time last year.  There’s still time for Frank Ocean or maybe even Kanye to drop another bombshell. Then out of nowhere, it happens. The long-anticipated third album from D’Angelo is announced only hours before it hits the internet and it’s called Black Messiah. I instantly knew something extraordinary was about to happen, possibly the album event of the year.

Fourteen years in the making, it’s finally here, and the story of its long delay is wrapped in the usual sad stories of self-destruction and redemption, a fascinating story better suited for another time. My friend Zak joked, “This is the Chinese Democracy that America deserves”, a joke sure to be played out in essays all over the internet. I laughed.

Q-Tip and Kendra Foster (of Parliament/Funkadelic fame) were involved in a lot of the lyricism of this album. The guitars sound, at times, like pure Hendrix and other times like Funkadelic’s Eddie Hazel. Rumor has it that most of the guitar work is actually D’Angelo. Apparently, D has been honing his guitar chops in the 14 years since Voodoo.  Pino Palladino is once again D’Angelo’s bassist and his riffs are tight and in the pocket but also get taken for a walk in exciting ways.

The opening track, Ain’t That Easy, feels like Sly and the Family Stone with a little Jimi Hendrix and features this really trippy slight lag on the syncopation of the vocals with the music that just tickles the senses. 1000 Deaths is driven by this aggressive ugly pulsating rhythm.  I couldn’t help but associate it with some of that freight train-like sound permeating parts of Yeezus combined with the title track from Kid A with its deeply distorted vocals laid over peculiar rhythms. Then on the next track, The Charade, you think you’re hearing songs culled from Prince’s peak years.  The Charade is fucking gorgeous and the political punch of “All we wanted was a chance to talk/ Instead we only got outlined in chalk” is heartbreakingly beautiful in a way that reminds me of Stevie Wonder’s Black Man.

Suggah Daddy has a final lyric that would have made Prince blush, even at his dirtiest.  Back to the Future (Part I) is driven by a simple beat married with ragtime and a muted guitar picking that sounds like a banjo. It’s utterly infectious. Meanwhile, Prayer conjures up pure Sam Cooke soul with this infectious hip-hop beat that culminates in a guitar solo reminiscent of Eddie Hazel’s famous guitar solo on the Funkadelic track, Maggot Brain. All of this is held together, much like on Voodoo, with a hip-hop element that reveals deep reverence for the late great producer J-Dilla.

The production is flawless.  There are layers upon layers of textures on this record. You know, when I got turned on to Frank Ocean’s 2012 album, Channel Orange, I spent a lot of time thinking about D’Angelo’s last record, Voodoo, and marveling at how a music form as seemingly done to death as contemporary R&B (or rock and roll for that matter) can still occasionally birth another game-changing giant.  This is another such occasion.

It’s clear that this record is both deeply personal and urgently political. Pitchfork is reporting that this record wasn’t slated to be released until next year but in light of recent protests about the police killing black men in America, D’Angelo insisted that the album be completed before the end of the year and ensured that all involved participated in many an all-nighter in the last month to make it happen.  14 years in the making and in the end, it still required a frantic rush to completion. Outstanding.

After watching video footage of Eric Garner repeating “I can’t breathe” over and over before dying at the hand of the police, and for what, not even a fucking indictment,  not even a hint of justice, nothing, I honestly don’t know that we deserve this record. But D’Angelo certainly seems to think we need it and we are grateful for it.