Here it is. The final post in my 2019 Year in Music Series. I don't blog a lot (which is obvious if you scroll down), so this has been a real bear of a project. Those first two posts each took a couple hours and I need to practice for some gigs tonight so I'm going to be concise with my post about my favorite albums of 2019. Before I get into it I'll say that I only really learned the value of an album sometime in 2018. I had always heard individual songs, and thought that's just the way things are. But then I discovered some majestic works of album-craft, with songs sliding directly into one another, hidden tracks, stories being told in segments throughout the work. Cool, crazy, beautiful S. So 2019 is the first year that I could really do a "favorite albums list" anyway. Without further ado - here they are:
10 - Wave by Patrick Watson (2019). Patrick Watson is a band named after a dude in the band and he/they also deserver a lot of credit for Wooden Arms (2009), which made me a big fan, but I didn't discover it in 2019 so it didn't get the headline here. When I listen to Patrick Watson, I hear a bunch of music school kids saying "hey let's make pop-style songs with real instruments, and include some weird sounds like brake drums." Not as many of those weird sounds show up in Wave, but the sentiment remains ten years later, and it's a great listen. Patrick Watson also has a great voice. I'm going to try to buy it off him one day when I'm rich. One of my favorite songs on this is Melody Noir. Not only is it a great song, but there's a shocking twist at the end when the lyrics switch to Spanish - "Canta canta me luna me luna llena." I take this as a 100% guarantee that he's been listening to Natalia Lafourcade's cover of Tonada de Luna Llena (see my top singles post # 2), which reinforces my belief in my own great taste.
9 - Thank You Very Much by The Happy Alright (2019). C'mon Mad Dawg - you didn't really think I would get through these lists without including you did you? I had the privilege of going to college with THA and of becoming a bandwagon fan before it was cool. Thanks to their latest album, it's pretty damn cool. Their first couple of EPs (2016, 2018) were classic developing pop-punk and were very good. Thank You Very Much is Great. They worked with some BA producers down in Austin and came out sounding like they've been doing this stuff for years. Oh wait ... they have. Each song on the album has its own fun, punchy character. "Lucky 2 Kno U" is a fantastic homage to the never-cliche "sentimental, acoustic song amidst the heavy punk-ness." They did an awesome job and if you know these guys and haven't listened, this album deserves to be heard. It will always be special in my heart because I love the guys that made this music and because there are two songs on here where I helped make some of the background sounds in my garage - so in a tiny, tiny way, this is how I finally got on iTunes. Thanks Mad Dawg and S(orry I don't have a nickname for you) for letting me be a small part of your masterpiece.
8 - Big Bill Broonzy Sings Folk Songs (1956). Hey - American popular music all starts with the Blues, baby, and Big Bill Broonzy could kick it. Apparently. This Smithsonian Folkways recording features the big guy commenting on racism, mental health (the Blues), faith, folk heroes, and more. It's a celebration of life and a commemoration of the era when "recordings were made of performances" were nearing their end and "performances made into recordings" were preparing to take over. It's humble, but full of feeling. It wasn't just a few times that I joyously belted "Goin' down this road and I'm feeling bad, baby..." along with Big Bill while scooting down Ross Avenue with my windows down on my way home from work. The Blues will never die.
7 - La Pasion segun San Marcos, a recording of Osvaldo Golijov's masterwork as performed by Maria Guinand, Members of the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, and Orquesta La Pasion (2010). I heard the big aria from this (link below) on the Norton Anthology of Classical Music, which I do have on my phone, and decided I wanted to hear the rest. It was a great idea. This is a hell of a passion, composed as part of a project commemorating Bach's (the big Bach) 250th birthday. Golijov and three other composers were asked to write their own version of Bach's St. Matthew Passion. Golijov, an Argentinian composer, stews African, Latin-American, and European Classical music together along with aspects of his own Jewish heritage and the result is stunning. Compare "No. 28 - Silencio" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCKP7XhNPoM) with "No. 26 - Lua descolorida (Aria de las lagrimas de Pedro)" ["Colorless Moon - Aria of the Tears of Peter] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_5oQ5JIiKU). There. Now you're stunned.
6 - Terapia by Cimafunk (2017). THIS S HITS HARD. A Cuban artist from Pinar del Rio, Cimafunk "mixes Latin music with Funk" according to the pundits - but he really does a lot more. He mixes in rap, he gets a little operatic, he uses some spicy effects (like the rain-shower in "Alabao" that just goes straight back into the, yes, VERY funky groove, before fading to the end). Cimafunk punches you to get your attention so that he can then rip your heart open with a song that just gives you all the feels, while still being hype. He's just really good. What makes him even more special is that he stopped by my friends at El Almacen in Matanzas (Cuba) to make a video for their Musica Cotidiana series, and it's really frickin good. The sad part is that the song from the video isn't on the album. A piece of my heart is in Cuba and that piece starts bumpin when I listen to Terapia (which translates to "Therapy", but probably in a cool way).
5 - E Malama - To Take Care of Something Precious by Alexandra Duzikova (2012). This one is whack. I can't figure out who this lady is (because her website is in Austrian) and it looks like she has only put out one album. Well, with my eyebrows raised up and to the side in a sort of facial surrender-cobra I have to say it's a great album. From the first track, "E Malama", which I believe to be her cover or adaptation of a traditional Hawai'ian folk song anthem about taking care of the Earth, to the final track "E Malama" - another equally sick adaptation of the same song, with marimba this time, Alexandra Duzikova's music is pure magic. I will submit this complaint - I don't like her accent/timbre when she does Spanish. But hey man, she sings in English, Hawai'ian, Scots Gaelic (thanks Google), and Turkish, and replicates pretty legitimately the musical styles of the places where the songs come from. She even brings in instruments to add to that effect, with a Celtic harp on the Scots Gaelic song and what sounds like a Baglama for the Turkish tune. Oh, I forgot to mention, she also sings Shona and performs on an mbira with SHELL BUZZERS. You already know that the mbira is the most beautiful sounding thing in the world. Shell buzzers take the angelic sound to an entirely more pure dimension, making angels look like porn-star meth-addicts. Listen to this album the next time you're on an international flight. Or just do it now.
4 - Ancient Voices by Chiwoniso (1998). She's back on the list and you know she deserves it. This album Up-Lifts just as hard as Cimafunk's Hits. Chiwoniso throws in some traditional Shona music in her halfway-between-pure-Shona-Folk-and-Chimurenga style along with several originals to create 56 minutes of bliss (sorry to The Caesars for stealing their line, but bliss is the exact perfect word here). Like I already talked about on Chiwoniso's cover of "Zvichapera", the mbiras sound great throughout. She also has a great jangling guitar sound, some hot horn sections, classic '80s-'90s drums, and incredible flow with the lyrics. She can get bluesy, rick & rolly, new-agey. The album is just so much fun to listen to and some of the melodies can just stick in your head like melted laffy taffy. Chiwoniso put out another great album in 2008 called Rebel Woman. Check out both if you know what's good for your soul.
3 - Elwan by Tinariwen (2017). One of the incredible things about music is the stories that come along with it. That's why writing these posts has been a lot of fun for me, remembering how and when I first heard a song or learned about a band. Tinariwen is all about stories for me. I was listening to NPR, right at the intersection of Ross and Greenville on my way home in July, and heard a story about a Tuareg band from Mali that was doing a US tour. They had a show coming up in North Carolina and the venue had made a facebook event page for them, where some dummies had been making generalist comments about the band's Islamic faith, maybe some petty half-hearted threats too. The rebel in me said - I wanna be an anti-dummy and go to a show. As luck would have it, they were playing Deep Ellum only a month later. They looked pretty much just like this (photo from 2010):
10 - Wave by Patrick Watson (2019). Patrick Watson is a band named after a dude in the band and he/they also deserver a lot of credit for Wooden Arms (2009), which made me a big fan, but I didn't discover it in 2019 so it didn't get the headline here. When I listen to Patrick Watson, I hear a bunch of music school kids saying "hey let's make pop-style songs with real instruments, and include some weird sounds like brake drums." Not as many of those weird sounds show up in Wave, but the sentiment remains ten years later, and it's a great listen. Patrick Watson also has a great voice. I'm going to try to buy it off him one day when I'm rich. One of my favorite songs on this is Melody Noir. Not only is it a great song, but there's a shocking twist at the end when the lyrics switch to Spanish - "Canta canta me luna me luna llena." I take this as a 100% guarantee that he's been listening to Natalia Lafourcade's cover of Tonada de Luna Llena (see my top singles post # 2), which reinforces my belief in my own great taste.
9 - Thank You Very Much by The Happy Alright (2019). C'mon Mad Dawg - you didn't really think I would get through these lists without including you did you? I had the privilege of going to college with THA and of becoming a bandwagon fan before it was cool. Thanks to their latest album, it's pretty damn cool. Their first couple of EPs (2016, 2018) were classic developing pop-punk and were very good. Thank You Very Much is Great. They worked with some BA producers down in Austin and came out sounding like they've been doing this stuff for years. Oh wait ... they have. Each song on the album has its own fun, punchy character. "Lucky 2 Kno U" is a fantastic homage to the never-cliche "sentimental, acoustic song amidst the heavy punk-ness." They did an awesome job and if you know these guys and haven't listened, this album deserves to be heard. It will always be special in my heart because I love the guys that made this music and because there are two songs on here where I helped make some of the background sounds in my garage - so in a tiny, tiny way, this is how I finally got on iTunes. Thanks Mad Dawg and S(orry I don't have a nickname for you) for letting me be a small part of your masterpiece.
8 - Big Bill Broonzy Sings Folk Songs (1956). Hey - American popular music all starts with the Blues, baby, and Big Bill Broonzy could kick it. Apparently. This Smithsonian Folkways recording features the big guy commenting on racism, mental health (the Blues), faith, folk heroes, and more. It's a celebration of life and a commemoration of the era when "recordings were made of performances" were nearing their end and "performances made into recordings" were preparing to take over. It's humble, but full of feeling. It wasn't just a few times that I joyously belted "Goin' down this road and I'm feeling bad, baby..." along with Big Bill while scooting down Ross Avenue with my windows down on my way home from work. The Blues will never die.
7 - La Pasion segun San Marcos, a recording of Osvaldo Golijov's masterwork as performed by Maria Guinand, Members of the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, and Orquesta La Pasion (2010). I heard the big aria from this (link below) on the Norton Anthology of Classical Music, which I do have on my phone, and decided I wanted to hear the rest. It was a great idea. This is a hell of a passion, composed as part of a project commemorating Bach's (the big Bach) 250th birthday. Golijov and three other composers were asked to write their own version of Bach's St. Matthew Passion. Golijov, an Argentinian composer, stews African, Latin-American, and European Classical music together along with aspects of his own Jewish heritage and the result is stunning. Compare "No. 28 - Silencio" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCKP7XhNPoM) with "No. 26 - Lua descolorida (Aria de las lagrimas de Pedro)" ["Colorless Moon - Aria of the Tears of Peter] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_5oQ5JIiKU). There. Now you're stunned.
6 - Terapia by Cimafunk (2017). THIS S HITS HARD. A Cuban artist from Pinar del Rio, Cimafunk "mixes Latin music with Funk" according to the pundits - but he really does a lot more. He mixes in rap, he gets a little operatic, he uses some spicy effects (like the rain-shower in "Alabao" that just goes straight back into the, yes, VERY funky groove, before fading to the end). Cimafunk punches you to get your attention so that he can then rip your heart open with a song that just gives you all the feels, while still being hype. He's just really good. What makes him even more special is that he stopped by my friends at El Almacen in Matanzas (Cuba) to make a video for their Musica Cotidiana series, and it's really frickin good. The sad part is that the song from the video isn't on the album. A piece of my heart is in Cuba and that piece starts bumpin when I listen to Terapia (which translates to "Therapy", but probably in a cool way).
5 - E Malama - To Take Care of Something Precious by Alexandra Duzikova (2012). This one is whack. I can't figure out who this lady is (because her website is in Austrian) and it looks like she has only put out one album. Well, with my eyebrows raised up and to the side in a sort of facial surrender-cobra I have to say it's a great album. From the first track, "E Malama", which I believe to be her cover or adaptation of a traditional Hawai'ian folk song anthem about taking care of the Earth, to the final track "E Malama" - another equally sick adaptation of the same song, with marimba this time, Alexandra Duzikova's music is pure magic. I will submit this complaint - I don't like her accent/timbre when she does Spanish. But hey man, she sings in English, Hawai'ian, Scots Gaelic (thanks Google), and Turkish, and replicates pretty legitimately the musical styles of the places where the songs come from. She even brings in instruments to add to that effect, with a Celtic harp on the Scots Gaelic song and what sounds like a Baglama for the Turkish tune. Oh, I forgot to mention, she also sings Shona and performs on an mbira with SHELL BUZZERS. You already know that the mbira is the most beautiful sounding thing in the world. Shell buzzers take the angelic sound to an entirely more pure dimension, making angels look like porn-star meth-addicts. Listen to this album the next time you're on an international flight. Or just do it now.
4 - Ancient Voices by Chiwoniso (1998). She's back on the list and you know she deserves it. This album Up-Lifts just as hard as Cimafunk's Hits. Chiwoniso throws in some traditional Shona music in her halfway-between-pure-Shona-Folk-and-Chimurenga style along with several originals to create 56 minutes of bliss (sorry to The Caesars for stealing their line, but bliss is the exact perfect word here). Like I already talked about on Chiwoniso's cover of "Zvichapera", the mbiras sound great throughout. She also has a great jangling guitar sound, some hot horn sections, classic '80s-'90s drums, and incredible flow with the lyrics. She can get bluesy, rick & rolly, new-agey. The album is just so much fun to listen to and some of the melodies can just stick in your head like melted laffy taffy. Chiwoniso put out another great album in 2008 called Rebel Woman. Check out both if you know what's good for your soul.
3 - Elwan by Tinariwen (2017). One of the incredible things about music is the stories that come along with it. That's why writing these posts has been a lot of fun for me, remembering how and when I first heard a song or learned about a band. Tinariwen is all about stories for me. I was listening to NPR, right at the intersection of Ross and Greenville on my way home in July, and heard a story about a Tuareg band from Mali that was doing a US tour. They had a show coming up in North Carolina and the venue had made a facebook event page for them, where some dummies had been making generalist comments about the band's Islamic faith, maybe some petty half-hearted threats too. The rebel in me said - I wanna be an anti-dummy and go to a show. As luck would have it, they were playing Deep Ellum only a month later. They looked pretty much just like this (photo from 2010):
They played like guitar gods, just like they said on NPR. A very succinct ethnomusicological explanation of their music as a phenomenon could go like this: the traditional music of Mali belongs to a larger family of West-African musics that were brought to North America by people taken as slaves and formed the foundation of the blues, upon which Rock & Roll was built. The electric guitar became the icon that it is because of its prominence in both those genres. Now, Tinariwen is taking the electric guitar back to its roots and using it to play the music that founded the genres that carried the instrument to its celebrity status. And they're playing the hell out of it. Also, a lot of the members of the band literally fought in the numerous civil wars that have left Mali unstable for the past few decades, even while the group has remained active since 1979. Just read their whole Wikipedia page. Elwan is their most popular album, but everything I found on Apple Music is fantastic. Picture yourself wandering the Sahara Desert while you do it. Your imagination's not that great? Here - they had some star of an animator picture it for you.
2 - This spot will be taken by two albums that are indistinguishable and essentially monolithic in their unique presentation, content, and sound: Kudya Zvekukwata and Chamakanda Tells Stories by Steve Spitalny (2011 & 2012, respectively). From Steve's website: "I am an early childhood consultant and writer and I offer lectures, workshops and mentoring around the world. Teachers and parents alike rave about their experiences and want me back for more!" This is me, raving. These two albums contain recordings of Spitalny telling various folk tales from around the world, accompanied by mbira music (performed in the first album by Musekiwa Chingodza and in the second by Mbira DzeMuninga). This may seem weird, but it is utterly incredible for a number of reasons. First: because it sounds awesome. Second: because it is very enjoyable and easy to listen to. Third: because Spitalny is essentially replicating (in English) a completely legitimate style of traditional Shona mbira music. Storytelling accompanied by music is actually a legitimate form of art in cultures all around the world. Poetry is talking to a beat. Where does that beat come from? Nowadays, it's not really felt. But way back when poetry was starting out, you bet your bongos that there was actually music playing along with it. You remember how Homer's epics are both originally entirely in verse (they're HYUGE poems)? Is Steve Spitalny telling folk tales for children in the same way that the greatest stories in Western Culture were traditionally performed? Yes I think so. I've been an advocate for bringing back the traditional styles of performance like this for a long time. I don't know if Spitalny did it on purpose, but he did something really special here. By the way, I can tell some of these stories while accompanying myself on mbira. It's as fun to see as it sounds.
1 - My album of the year for 2019 came out in 2002 when I was seven years old. I never heard it (thank God b/c it has some foul language) until I was twenty-four. The crazy thing about recorded music (one of many "the crazy things" I've mentioned so far I'm sure) is that it sounds just as youthful and energetic seventeen years later as it does the day it hits shelves. And I think this album really did hit shelves, because it was only a year after iTunes first came out and I bet CDs were still hot. I loved this album in 2019 (and still do) because it threads together several stories. One of them is like Spitalny's stories - literally a story. It's about the lead singer's experience moving up to Alaska with her father when she was young, leaving behind everything she knew and going up "where the population grows" (among other epithets she uses). This story is told both through lyrical references in the listed tracks and in a side-song, broken up into pieces scattered throughout the album as tags to the other tracks. I haven't heard anyone else do something like that, maybe because it makes the tagged singles harder to sell. As far as album-craft goes, though, it's genius. The sound of this album is best described as icey-country-punk-pop-rock. What does that mean? Go listen, once I tell you what it's called. I was introduced to this album by my friend G when she sent me the sixth track because she felt like the song would understand me like it understood her, and she was totally right. That particular song opens with a childlike sonic vibe of innocence (though the lyrics describe a druggy, alcoholic mother) and then suddenly wakes up and drops a fat F-bomb in the most tasteful way. It's a battle cry for the beaten down. Then I decided I had to hear the rest of the album. A distinct curiosity to note is how the lyrics are often delivered almost in the form of prose - moving in the direction of Spitalny's storytelling, but a lot more punk. The whole thing is a musical bildungsroman and that's an artistic genre that I still strongly identify with, as I try to walk the line between hanging on to childish fantasies and giving up on hope. The music has pep to balance the bitterness of the words, and I think that's a pretty good description of my own personality when I'm around people who I allow myself to be completely open with. A couple of my favorite lines from the album: "Let's talk about all our friends who lost the war / and the novels that are yet to be written about them" and "I never understood while you felt so good in the strangest of places / like in waiting rooms or long lines that made you late or mall parking lots on holidays". Every time I'm in an airport I listen to that last one and I smile. I love airports for all the wrong reasons. The music grinds, the lyrics bite, and there's a weird sense of "hope in spite of everything" throughout this album that I probably listened to all the way through about twenty times in 2019: The Execution of All Things by Rilo Kiley. I've already listened to it again in 2020.
I've discovered that music can be like a tattoo. (I think that) When people get a deliberate tattoo, they pick out an image that defines part of themselves and projects that out into the world, so that other people can know part of what makes them unique by checking out their ink. In 2019, I found a lot of music that represents me and who I want to become. This music is stuck with me, not on my skin, but in my head. And rather than projecting my personality outward to others, the music helps me define myself internally. In sharing these lists I'm putting a musical tattoo here on my website (it's like a butt tattoo, because very few people will ever see it). The music on these lists should tell you a thing or two about me, but it should also just bring ecstasy to your ears because it is all really good music. If you want to hear more about some of these artists, get some recommendations about rabbit-holes you can fall into, or just talk about the songs that are imprinted on your soul, HMU.
Have a great 2020, everybody -
Lawson
7 Januar7 2020
Lower Greenville, Dallas
2 - This spot will be taken by two albums that are indistinguishable and essentially monolithic in their unique presentation, content, and sound: Kudya Zvekukwata and Chamakanda Tells Stories by Steve Spitalny (2011 & 2012, respectively). From Steve's website: "I am an early childhood consultant and writer and I offer lectures, workshops and mentoring around the world. Teachers and parents alike rave about their experiences and want me back for more!" This is me, raving. These two albums contain recordings of Spitalny telling various folk tales from around the world, accompanied by mbira music (performed in the first album by Musekiwa Chingodza and in the second by Mbira DzeMuninga). This may seem weird, but it is utterly incredible for a number of reasons. First: because it sounds awesome. Second: because it is very enjoyable and easy to listen to. Third: because Spitalny is essentially replicating (in English) a completely legitimate style of traditional Shona mbira music. Storytelling accompanied by music is actually a legitimate form of art in cultures all around the world. Poetry is talking to a beat. Where does that beat come from? Nowadays, it's not really felt. But way back when poetry was starting out, you bet your bongos that there was actually music playing along with it. You remember how Homer's epics are both originally entirely in verse (they're HYUGE poems)? Is Steve Spitalny telling folk tales for children in the same way that the greatest stories in Western Culture were traditionally performed? Yes I think so. I've been an advocate for bringing back the traditional styles of performance like this for a long time. I don't know if Spitalny did it on purpose, but he did something really special here. By the way, I can tell some of these stories while accompanying myself on mbira. It's as fun to see as it sounds.
1 - My album of the year for 2019 came out in 2002 when I was seven years old. I never heard it (thank God b/c it has some foul language) until I was twenty-four. The crazy thing about recorded music (one of many "the crazy things" I've mentioned so far I'm sure) is that it sounds just as youthful and energetic seventeen years later as it does the day it hits shelves. And I think this album really did hit shelves, because it was only a year after iTunes first came out and I bet CDs were still hot. I loved this album in 2019 (and still do) because it threads together several stories. One of them is like Spitalny's stories - literally a story. It's about the lead singer's experience moving up to Alaska with her father when she was young, leaving behind everything she knew and going up "where the population grows" (among other epithets she uses). This story is told both through lyrical references in the listed tracks and in a side-song, broken up into pieces scattered throughout the album as tags to the other tracks. I haven't heard anyone else do something like that, maybe because it makes the tagged singles harder to sell. As far as album-craft goes, though, it's genius. The sound of this album is best described as icey-country-punk-pop-rock. What does that mean? Go listen, once I tell you what it's called. I was introduced to this album by my friend G when she sent me the sixth track because she felt like the song would understand me like it understood her, and she was totally right. That particular song opens with a childlike sonic vibe of innocence (though the lyrics describe a druggy, alcoholic mother) and then suddenly wakes up and drops a fat F-bomb in the most tasteful way. It's a battle cry for the beaten down. Then I decided I had to hear the rest of the album. A distinct curiosity to note is how the lyrics are often delivered almost in the form of prose - moving in the direction of Spitalny's storytelling, but a lot more punk. The whole thing is a musical bildungsroman and that's an artistic genre that I still strongly identify with, as I try to walk the line between hanging on to childish fantasies and giving up on hope. The music has pep to balance the bitterness of the words, and I think that's a pretty good description of my own personality when I'm around people who I allow myself to be completely open with. A couple of my favorite lines from the album: "Let's talk about all our friends who lost the war / and the novels that are yet to be written about them" and "I never understood while you felt so good in the strangest of places / like in waiting rooms or long lines that made you late or mall parking lots on holidays". Every time I'm in an airport I listen to that last one and I smile. I love airports for all the wrong reasons. The music grinds, the lyrics bite, and there's a weird sense of "hope in spite of everything" throughout this album that I probably listened to all the way through about twenty times in 2019: The Execution of All Things by Rilo Kiley. I've already listened to it again in 2020.
I've discovered that music can be like a tattoo. (I think that) When people get a deliberate tattoo, they pick out an image that defines part of themselves and projects that out into the world, so that other people can know part of what makes them unique by checking out their ink. In 2019, I found a lot of music that represents me and who I want to become. This music is stuck with me, not on my skin, but in my head. And rather than projecting my personality outward to others, the music helps me define myself internally. In sharing these lists I'm putting a musical tattoo here on my website (it's like a butt tattoo, because very few people will ever see it). The music on these lists should tell you a thing or two about me, but it should also just bring ecstasy to your ears because it is all really good music. If you want to hear more about some of these artists, get some recommendations about rabbit-holes you can fall into, or just talk about the songs that are imprinted on your soul, HMU.
Have a great 2020, everybody -
Lawson
7 Januar7 2020
Lower Greenville, Dallas
