Top 50 songs of 2020

Posted on December 17, 2020 by olneyce

For me, the last few years have often felt like a process of constant motion. Travel has taken me all around the US, all around the world. I’ve spent countless hours on airplanes, on trains, in cars, on subways. So much of that time was spent listening to music. The songs that defined those periods therefore have an intense association with place and time.

This year has obviously been different. When I hear these songs, I process them together, as the soundtrack to a tightly-wound experience of place and time. As I listen, the seasons slowly change, while I sit motionless. Waiting. Simply waiting.

There’s something lost in that process. And I do wonder how I will process these songs in coming years. Will they have etched themselves as deeply? Will I feel them with the same burning force? I hope so. Because these are wonderful tracks, from one to fifty. They’ve done a lot to brighten my year, when it has been sorely needed. I hope that sharing them will bring you some joy as well.

As always, these are just my favorites, not a claim about what was objectively the best. One song per artist.

I’ve created a Spotify list, but Spotify pays artists effectively nothing so please if you like the music, go buy it. Almost every artist here is available on Bandcamp–including a few who aren’t on Spotify at all.

50. There Is a Space in Between – Lucy Gooch
There’s something powerful about liminal spaces–between memory and forgetting, between the sacred and profane, between heaven and earth, between self and other. What do we make of them? What do they make of us?

49. Angel School Anthem – STAR
An early 90s throwback in terms of style–with the atmospherics of a lost My Bloody Valentine or Ride cut–but the sentiment is pretty 2020: “When they say everything’s okay, it’s time to panic.”

48. Partir dans la nuit – Carla Bruni
The title translates to ‘go into the night,’ and it speaks to the joy of quiet spaces, of setting yourself free and waking up fresh in a bright new world.

47. The Lure Follows The Line – Eerie Gaits
The slow wash of sounds is deeply soothing, like a warm summer breeze bringing you the smell of the ocean in the distance.

46. Living Life – Steady Holiday
One of the things I’ve desperately missed this year is the tiny interactions that come when you’re out in the world. Those moments that make you feel just a little bit closer our shared experience of humanity. Where we look at each other and share a little knowing smile, and then return to our own worlds.

45. Note To Self (ft. Empress Of) – Jim-E Stack
A simple vehicle of bits and bops, perfectly designed to lift up Lorely Rodriguez’s voice and let it shine.

44. Rain On Me (feat. Ariana Grande) – Lady Gaga
“I’d rather be dry, but at least I’m alive” seems like a pretty workable rallying cry for those of us who made it to the end of 2020.

43. GREYHOUND – Petite League
A grungy little song about love in dark times, or possibly about dark times in love. Reminds me a lot of Sebadoh, particularly in the guitar breakdown that comes about halfway through.

42. not a lot just forever – adrianne lenker
The delicate guitar picking, the wrenching vocals, the quiet desperation. An emotional hurricane.

41. The Beauty of the Universe (ft. Mimi Page) – Yuta Itani & ミミ ページ
A collaboration between Japanese ambient artist Yuta Itani and American composer and singer Mimi Page. It’s languid, soft, soothing. A moment of tranquility in a turbulent world.

40. The Ascension – Sufjan Stevens
An unrelentingly bleak song, rendered with such grace and awareness that it still feels holy. I can’t quite tell if that’s an example of Stevens’ genius overwhelming the intent, or whether it’s a perfectly intentional expression of the contradiction inherent in belief. Either way, it’s a majestic experience.

39. Skeleton Couch – Seablite
60s girl group vibes filtered through some 80s post-punk fuzz. What’s not to love?

38. When the Smoke Clears – Jasper Lotti
Self-described as dystopian pop, which is perfectly apt. When she sings “tell me the time and the place” it sounds equal parts tender and threatening.

37. Other Side of the Wheel – Nadia Reid
I love Nadia Reid for the sparseness of her songwriting, the way she takes empty spaces and makes them sing. So it’s a little surprising that my favorite song from this record was one of the most traditional. There are still touches of strangeness, but it’s really just a lovely little folk-inspired pop song. Which, fair enough.

36. Cursed – Kllo
Quiet, introspective electro-pop, with glitchy beats designed to unsettle you. Silky-smooth vocals to bring everything back home.

35. Sunlight – Radical Face
The chorus begins “Could you share a little piece of your sunlight?” and that feels like an appropriate mission statement for a song that begins in the dark night, with crickets chirping and the daylight far away and concludes in the warm light of dawn.

34. Scene Suspended – Jon Hopkins
Nothing but a piano and light touches from a violin. It’s the sound of a morning sunrise after a long night, and the promise of warmth that it brings.

33. Gap Tooth (On My Mind) – Best Ex
A sugary sweet synthpop song that’s actually almost too sugary in its construction. But the bitterness of the lyric sharpens the edge, and makes the eventual turn toward self-care all the more fulfilling.

32. Dammit – Jenny Owen Youngs and Charlatan
It’s been almost fifteen years since a Jenny Owen Youngs song has made an appearance on the blog. Not because she hasn’t produced anything of note in that time; I’ve just never quite felt the need to write something up. I never would have guessed that the song to break the streak would be Blink-182 cover. But here we are. It’s actually from an entire album of Dammit covers (28 of them!), which…I don’t really know where to go with that.

31. No Clue – The Northern Belle
I remember the first time I heard Americana by way of Scandinavia, and I found the concept to be hilarious and fun. Many years on, and it no longer feels hilarious. Some of the finest Nashville tunes of recent years have come from the far north. The Northern Belle are a 7-piece band from Norway, and they continue the tradition in fine form. “I only want what’s best for you” she sings over the weeping pedal steel, and everything feels alright with the world.

30. Rtanj (Original Mix) – Goran Geto
If you could discover an equation capable of expressing the intersections of life and the physical world–everything from photosynthesis to the transfer of carbon dioxide and oxygen to struggle between hunter and prey–and then translated it into music, I think it would sound like this.

29. Generation Loss – Spanish Love Songs
The punk rock melodrama grows a little heavy when taken together in a whole album, but in small doses–like this song–it’s pure catharsis.

28. Lonely After – Yumi Zouma
A perfect indie pop song. The synths are light, the harmonies rich, and the songcraft is deft. If it risks feeling just a touch evanescent, that warm bass line grabs hold and pulls you back in for more.

27. Mother – Eve Owen
A song that builds and builds toward an epic crescendo. But it’s wonderful genius is that each step up the track comes as a surprise. Even after dozens and dozens of listens, I’m continually blindsided.

26. Silence – I Break Horses
When I was in Paris last year, I visited the Centre Pompidou where I saw an exhibit on light and movement. Semi-circular objects twisting and twirling to follow a designated path. If you didn’t look closely, they looked like the normal hypnotic circles you’ve seen many times before. But if you stayed with them, you discovered peculiarities–light echoes falling in strange directions. Your mind wanted to impose order, but if you looked just the right way you could open yourself to the uncertainty and experience the regularity as another type of chaos.

25. Local Radio – BAD MOVES
You work in a restaurant for less than minimum wage waiting tables for influence-peddlers and then play a show in the evening for 20-somethings still trying to convince themselves that they can live out their ideals. Everyone thinks that things should be better. No one seems to be able to actually do anything to make it happen.

24. Walking In The Snow – Run The Jewels
Released a month or so before the murder of George Floyd, but eerily prescient of what was to come. Every year is a good year for a Run the Jewels album but 2020 needed one in an existential way. The key thing they bring–which comes through on this song–is a balance of righteous outrage and genuine joyfulness. Both are necessary. There is no sustenance in rehashing the pain and suffering alone. You also need to find reasons to laugh, reasons to love, reasons to believe.

23. Siberian Butterfly – Bob Mould
Bob Mould is making some of the best music of his career these days, and this song is probably my favorite from him in decades. It’s a two minute burst of energy which begins as a critique of those who feel the need to capture natural things, to build collections, then transitions to a larger critique of our attitude toward the natural world as a whole, and concludes as an exultation of freedom and self-love (“Every Sunday the local men gather up at the barn and when the sun goes down the sky is filled with rainbow butterflies”). All in two minutes!

22. Out of Sight – The Beths
Delicate notes that bob and weave over you. But as it develops, the spine grows stronger. What began as a shimmery little pop song becomes an emphatic shoegaze explosion. You feel them reaching out over the distance, trying to bridge the gap.

21. Ms. California – Beach Bunny
A breezy California love song, but sung from the perspective of someone on the outside, filled with bitterness at losing out. The whininess hits precisely the right note–enough to feel genuine, but not so much to suggest genuine trauma. This is a song of adolescent frustrations–the perverse feeling of pleasure you get from dwelling on the pain. The way the object of your affection is understood primarily through your experience of loss.

20. Can’t Go Back – PRIZM
The New Wave is now four decades old, but it still sparkles and shines like a brand new jewel here.

19. Love Again – Dua Lipa
Most of the songs on this record failed to truly thrill me. They’re all good and I enjoyed listening to it plenty. But this is the only one that burrowed its way deep into me. That’s partly because of the wonderful sample–to my ears is inextricably linked to White Town’s late-90s classic Your Woman, but I was surprised to discover it’s actually itself a sample from a song called My Woman by Al Bowlly. Which makes this a third iteration on the theme, and all the more thrilling for that fact.

18. Mirrorball – Taylor Swift
Her genius has never been about carving out new pathways; it’s been about figuring out precisely what she wants to evoke and then evoking the absolute bejeezus out of it. This time she wanted to evoke Sarah McLachlan, and holy hell did it work.

17. Notice that, – Benoît Pioulard
A diaphanous bubble drifting over the hillside. You look back, aching for that which has been left behind. You take a deep breath, savor the feeling of new possibility to come.

16. when i look at you. – Rosie Carney
A breakup song, but one that’s far more about the trauma that comes from within. The way you relied on someone else to keep you afloat, and the abject terror when that anchor begins to drift away. It’s a terrifying song, but also an achingly beautiful one.

15. For Those We Knew (feat. Mimi Page) – Jody Wisternoff
I almost always have a song from Mimi Page on these lists, since I love her own music and she also has excellent taste in collaboration projects. This track is her second appearance for 2020. Where the Yuta Itani collaboration above was all atmospherics and textures, this one is a gentle but insistent deep house track. Page’s vocals are bright-eyed and piercingly clear, providing the perfect counterpoint to the ebbing and flowing violin.

14. Don’t Tell Me – glimmers
Sometimes a band’s name so perfectly encapsulates their sound that there’s almost nothing left to say. That’s definitely the case with glimmers. This song hits me like a ton of bricks today. I think it would have literally broken me if I’d heard it twenty years ago.

13. Georgia – Katie Pruitt
A song written to her home state that she felt would never accept her. And to the family that she worried wouldn’t either. It sounds like her family was able to come around. And of course Georgia has been in the news a lot this year for turning ever-so-slightly blue. Which is certainly not to say the troubles are over. But it feels like a moment of possibility and hope. That the next generation of kids growing up queer in the state might find more acceptance, more love, more room to be themselves.

12. PTA – The Lawrence Arms
A scorching bit of punk rock from some of the best in the business. The final line kills me: “Remember? We used to hold hands / Now, I just go out alone when I need to dance.”

11. Helpless (Feat. Old Crow Medicine Show) – Molly Tuttle
One of my favorite Neil Young songs, and one that I’ve always felt could only be captured in his voice. But Molly Tuttle managed to make it very much her own. The etherealness is replaced with warmth, turning this beautiful song into a wondrous campfire sing-a-long.

10. Sounds Are Fine – Sophie Moon
A balm on my soul. In the longest days of the spring lockdown, when I had spent several months wholly removed from the world, this beautiful song found its way into the world. It was written by Mike Park (one of the few truly Good Guys in the music world) and sung as a duet between between Dan Adriano of Alkaline Trio and his daughter. It is good and right and never fails to make me smile.

9. I See You – Phoebe Bridgers
It’s a strange thing when an artist that you’ve closely followed for years has a huge breakout year. It’s even stranger when it’s for an album that mostly left you cold. Try as I might, I just couldn’t find a way into Punisher. With one exception: this song. It wrecks me in the way that the whole album seems to wreck everyone else.

8. Alnitak – Six Organs Of Admittance
Given its 20 minute running time, this is probably the song I’ve spent the most actual minutes listening to this year. It hangs over your shoulders like a warm scarf, asking nothing of you except the opportunity to keep you warm and safe.

7. You’ll miss me when I’m not around – Grimes
It’s a killer track on its own, with one of the purest melodies she’s ever constructed. But it’s also one of those tracks that gains strength in context. To my ears, this track and Delete Forever are the tentpoles that hold up the rest of Miss Anthropocene–and therefore create the potential for all the darkness that lurks within.

6. Animal – Katie Malco
A strong competitor for chorus of the year, and it’s not even the best part of the song. The best part of the song is the instrumental breakdown that serves as the bridge between moments of catharsis.

5. Waves – Hum
A missive launched into the cold dark night sky. It leaves behind a blistering trail of heat and light and thundering echoes of what might have been.

4. Horses – sea oleena
A single exhalation stretched out to twelve minutes. Heart-wrenching, pure as a mountain stream, effortlessly soft, impossibly beautiful.

3. Walk In The Woods – snarls
Shimmering guitars, a warm bass line, soaring vocals. It’s already perfect, and then they somehow rocket things up another level in the final chorus and I burst into a million pieces. Technically released in 2019, but I missed it, and the album is from 2020, so I’m absolutely counting it.

2. Extraordinary Life – Gordi
Most of the great love songs are really songs about infatuation, the early blush of love, the excitement and anticipation. This is something better. John Lennon called the final verse of The End a ‘cosmic line.’ I think fits here as well. It seems to me that there is no higher expression of love than: “I want to give you an extraordinary life.”

1. Tenderfoot – The Day
It was originally by Smudge, but I always knew Tenderfoot as a Lemonheads track–with that classic Evan Dando crackle being its defining characteristic. And while I like that version just fine, I would never in a million years have guessed that a new cover would end up as my favorite song of 2020. But to borrow from Vin Scully: in a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened. What began as a scuzzy drunker brawler of a song has been utterly transformed. This reimagination massively expands the sonic palette, significantly softening the edges in the process. The result is absolutely glorious. A song I could listen to on repeat for days and never get tired of hearing. It just makes me smile so much. And in 2020, that’s the greatest gift I could ask for.

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I was planting flowers in the spring

Posted on May 30, 2020 by olneyce

These last few months have been difficult to say the least. The whole world came face to face with a crisis beyond our capacity to ignore. And, somewhat amazingly, billions of people accepted the responsibility and radically changed their behavior. It doesn’t present as a political act – because we’re trained to think of politics as connected to voting and policy – but this mass act of collective solidarity is genuinely one of the most impressive moments in the political history of our species. To help save one another, we all withdrew into cocoons. Even our governments, for all their many catastrophic flaws, took unprecedented action to sustain those who could no longer work.

Of course, the evil continues to trudge along with the good, and our society has plenty of evil to go around. That’s true everywhere on earth, but it’s been especially stark here in America, where we are taking on one of the great crises of the last half-century with an incoherent ball of white ressentiment occupying the White House. And with a society still so beholden to the siren call of white nationalism that simply saying ‘black lives matter’ is somehow a radical political act.

It’s exhausting. The weight of all this bears down on me every day, to the point when it can sometimes feel like a literal physical presence on my chest.

And I have been incredibly lucky. My job remains intact. And while the transition to online teaching wasn’t seamless, it wasn’t terribly hard. I’ve spent this time in isolation with my partner–who would otherwise have been thousands of miles away in California for much of the spring. We got a dog – and he’s a good dog, Brent.

And yet it all still bears down on me. I can only imagine how much harder it’s been for those who have lost loved ones, who have feared for their paychecks, who have feared for their lives as their states opened too soon, who have been stuck in isolation with abusers, who have seen the racial inequalities multiplying and recognized this pandemic as one more example of the ways that racism infiltrates every facet of our world.

It’s exhausting.

And like many others, I have been searching for things to provide some form of comfort. Fortunately, there’s always music. It can’t erase everything else, but it can at least shift your perspective. For the most part, I’ve been seeking out songs that bring me joy, the emotional salves in a dark time. There’s also something to be said for those that dive straight into the madness, the fear, the sense of being trapped. But for the most part, this playlist reflects the former impulse. Sometimes you do need something that helps you to truly dwell with the madness in this moment, but for me this is a time that calls more for connection and comfort.

There’s no song that better exemplifies that ideal than “Sounds are Fine” by Sophie Moon. It’s a duet between Dan Adriano of Alkaline Trio and his daughter, written by Mike Park of Asian Man Records–one of my favorite labels going all the way back to my ska-obsessed youth. Here’s Park’s description of the song:

Earlier this year my friend Dan Andriano sent me a recording that he had done with his 12 year old daughter Sophie Moon and I was taken aback by how good it was.

FF and we’re in the middle of this pandemic and both my daughter and Dan’s daughter are dealing with a whole new world of home school/video school and being away from their friends.

I started writing a song about my experience through the eyes of my daughter and then I thought how much I would like to hear this song sung by Dan’s daughter. So I sent over a track to Dan of me playing a lo fi version on guitar asking if Sophie would be interested in singing this.

And then the next day Dan sent me a wav file and said what do you think? Wow, it gave it me chills to be honest. And most importantly it brought a smile to my face and emphasized to me the power that music has on human emotion.

MUSIC RULES!!

It really does.

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50 songs for 50 states: Virginia

Posted on May 24, 2020 by olneyce

For sheer emotional weight, my heart lies with Rosanne Cash, whose “When the Master Calls the Roll” might just be the best song ever written about the Civil War. But I feel like Virginia demands something broader. Beautiful as that song is, it remains the expression of a particular moment. A profoundly important moment, to be sure, but still just a moment.

Hamilton, though, reaches far beyond the immediate terrain of the battle. Yorktown was the final major conflict of the American Revolution, but it’s so much more than that. As told by Miranda, it’s the turning point in the life of his story’s troubled hero, and the foundation stone for an entire new realm of possibility. As the song goes: it is when the world turned upside down.It’s also the origin of the line – “immigrants we get the job done” – which has in some ways become the critical cultural resonance of Hamilton.

And this all feels right. Virginia has meant so much in so many ways over the course of American history. But more than almost any other state, it feels deeply and essentially political. From Jamestown in 1607 to Alexandria in 2020. The home of George Washington, of Jefferson, of Madison. In fact, it’s the home state of eight American presidents, more than any other state.

Virginia is the borderland between North and South, where identities jostle and push each other. Where white supremacists march through Charlottesville, where Liberty University resides in the city of Lynchburg (!), where DoD employees come in every day to work at the Pentagon, where old soldiers lay in their rest at Arlington.

It was also a central reference point of the Constitutional Convention, with Madison’s Virginia Plan creating the skeleton for our entire constitutional system. It effectively enfolds the nation’s capital, and it also contained the capital of the treasonous Confederacy. Its shifts from Democratic to Republican to Democratic to Republican have defined major themes in demographic and ideological change.

Every state is a microcosm of the nation in its own way. But I’m not sure that any state more fully embodies the entire scope of American political history.

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50 songs for 50 states: Vermont

Posted on March 23, 2020 by olneyce


It’s the unofficial state song, and has been covered by Frank Sinatra and Linda Ronstadt, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke, and Willie Nelson. There was never any way I could have picked anything else. Even if it’s actually not a song I particularly enjoy that much personally. It’s fine – and the conceit of each verse being a haiku is fun – but not one that I’d go out of my way to listen to.

Really, my favorite part is the instrumental break. It’s where Louis gets to play his trumpet, where Willie pulls out his harmonica, where Ray strolls up and down his piano keys, where Frank gets…some overly enthusiastic strings. Well, not all of them can be winners, I guess.

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50 songs for 50 states: Utah

Posted on March 20, 2020 by olneyce


It only references Utah once, in the opening line (“On a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert”), but the song was based on an actual road trip taken by Springsteen, Stevie Van Zandt, and photographer Eric Meola in 1977. Most of that trip actually covered the deserts of Nevada, but they started out in the Bonneville salt flats west of Salt Lake City.

Springsteen had vaulted into rock and roll stardom two years prior, and was looking for something to reset his artistic equilibrium. The desolate flats seemed ideal. And so they headed out. Bizarrely, the day before the trip began, they got word that Elvis Presley had just died, putting an even stranger capstone on the experience. For an artist whose whole career has been built around engines and movement—the freedom of the road, but also the way that the dream of freedom could become its own trap—I can hardly think of a more perfect vision: Bruce and Stevie, in a 1965 Ford Galaxy, setting off into the desert, telling stories about the de facto godfather of their entire musical world. They slept in the car, weathered thunder storms, and the whole time Springsteen was putting together this song.

It’s a song about the limitless potential of the human spirit, but also about being so beaten down you can’t quite picture what it would mean to fulfill them. You create dreams for yourself, and you follow them to the end of the line, only to discover that somehow there’s nothing left there for you. And yet, somewhere beyond, you still can picture the promised land. What is it, exactly? And where can it be? He’s not actually sure. But that’s not the important thing. No, the important thing is: he believes in it.

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50 songs for 50 states: Texas

Posted on March 19, 2020 by olneyce


On a few occasions over the course of this project, I’ve gone with a somewhat idiosyncratic choice. But I’ve generally striven to produce something that would be a fitting objective choice, not just a personal preference. I don’t think I’ve ever felt the tension between those two things as fully as I did with Texas. In fact, close observers will note that it’s been the better part of a year since I last checked in on this list with a post. Dissatisfaction with my options here is part of the explanation.

Of course, the problem here is not a lack of choices. Precisely the opposite. With the possible exceptions of New York and California, Texas has the richest and fullest (and most fully realized) collection of songs in the country. There’s just so much to choose from.

You can go with Leadbelly to The Midnight Special. You could go to Luckenbach, Texas with Waylon and Willie, or Galveston with Glen Campbell. Take a trip to Corpus Christi Bay with Robert Earl Keen. El Paso with Marty Robbins. You’ve got Steve Earle and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Townes Van Zandt and Shooter Jennings. Rodney Crowell and Guy Clark. And when it’s all over, there’s Tanya Tucker’s insistence on going to Texas When I Die.

Want something classic? You’ve got New San Antonio Rose. Or Deep in the Heart of Texas, which is a jaunty tune in its own right, and gets a massive boost from being sung countless times by sports fans of virtually every major college and professional team in the state.

From the alt-country generation, you’ve got the Old 97’s and Son Volt. And, I’m going to be honest, I was sorely tempted to go completely off the board and take The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton.

But at the end of the day, I kept coming back to George Strait. I gave serious thought to All My Ex’s Live in Texas, which is such a fun, silly song. But I ultimately settled on Amarillo by Morning, which is just about as pretty as a song could be, and captures all the pathos and pain of the Texas experience in the claim “I ain’t rich, but Lord I’m free.” Originally written and recorded by Terry Stafford, it got its definitive treatment a decade later by the young Strait. It sounds like pure Texas, and with it I finally feel happy with my choice.

As a bonus, Amarillo by Morning also lets me sneakily slide in a supplemental pick: Caroline Spence’s gorgeous song Hotel Amarillo. It provides a wonderful counterpoint to Amarillo by Morning, in part because it’s literally about rolling into Amarillo late at night. But it also thematically balances the claim to freedom in wandering by emphasizing the lonesomeness of time on the road. The yearning for simple comfort. The crushing weight of time and distance. The sense that your life is being wasted just trying desperately to get somewhere else.

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Top 50 songs of 2019

Posted on December 18, 2019 by olneyce

I spent 2019 on the road. From the US/Mexico border to London and Paris. From Los Angeles to the Arctic Circle. I spent several months in Geneva, traveled to Stockholm and Uppsala, to Barcelona and Lyon. I visited family in Seattle and Stockton and South Carolina. I took in the waters in the French Alps, celebrated at a wedding with friends in the shadow of the Golden Gate, and covered a World Cup. And through all that, I spent a lot of time on trains and buses and planes, earbuds in place, sharing my journey with all these wonderful songs. In many cases, a given song immediately evoke a specific place. For me, Young Enough is the soundtrack of the French metro. Hymn means sitting on a tram in Geneva on a snowy night going past the Cornavin station. Fleur is a crisp spring morning in Washington running amongst the falling cottonwood fluff. Venice Bitch, wonderfully, takes me back to Venice itself when we ducked into a store on Abbot Kinney and heard it playing.

The connection between sound and memory is powerful, and a big part of what makes music such an important force in our lives. I’ve been incredibly lucky to have a chance to travel so widely and to see so much. And I’m grateful to have these songs to accompany those memories, to refine them, to lock them into place. Music is truly a blessing.

As always, these are just my favorites. I make no claim that they were objectively the best. One song per artist.

50. Warranty – Meat Puppets
The last Meat Puppets record I bought was a Meat Puppets II, which I found in the used bin in…probably around 1996. So it was a pretty big surprise to find the original lineup back together, and putting out a pretty damn good record!

49. Dylan Thomas – Better Oblivion Community Center
I was beyond excited about the collaboration between Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst, but ended up pretty disappointed in the album overall. This song, however, absolutely lived up to my hopes.

48. Sweet but Psycho – Ava Max
I still haven’t settled whether I think this song is problematic, reappropriation, or a problematic reappropriation. It’s a pure banger, though, and I think it’s well-intentioned so I’m inclined to be generous.

47. There Is Peace Beyond – Nox Vahn feat. Mimi Page
Mimi Page has made my year-end list just about every year of this decade, and 2019 is no exception. This song is a collaboration with Nox Vahn who brings a chill dance beat which adds an intriguing new layer to her typically gorgeous atmospherics.

46. Going To Brighton – Fresh
Pop punk doesn’t have a lot of range, but when it’s good it’s so good. This song is so good.

45. Special Times & Places – AKSK
All I know about this song is that it was on a compilation called Chill Pill. Which…yeah, you definitely get what it says on the tin. This is music for laying back and blissing out.

44. Something Blue – Ellis
It feels like it’s being played on a stereo behind a closed door. A tempest of emotions barely disguised by distance, but slightly washed out in the process. It’s perfectly fitting for a song about teenage self discovery and pain.

43. Motivation – Normani
Ariana Grande and Max Martin were co-writers on this track, and you can definitely hear those elements. But the song ultimately leans most heavily on Normani’s vocal performance, which is more than up to the task. And on those insouciant horns.

42. Cleo – Rapsody
A vicious assault on the sexism and racism of the music industry–which is all the worse because it’s often not ‘intentional.’ There are few more effective laundering techniques for exclusionary violence than to put the decision in the hands of an imagined consumer. Building the track around a Phil Collins sample is a subtle act of genius that turns a good song into a great one.

41. Gold ^ Pink – Lip Talk
The whole song is great, but it’s only in the final minute when the wave crashes that you realize how much tension she had managed to build up without you noticing.

40. Surrender – Chris Farren
A little gem of power pop, with great harmonies between Farren and Steph Knipe from Adult Mom. It’s about friendships that drift apart. In this specific case, it was apparently because of a breakup that fractured the friend group. But it’s really a universal feeling: the sadness of losing someone for reasons beyond both of your control, knowing that you’ll both get on with your lives just fine, but with some tiny little splinter of possibility removed.

39. I Know I’m Not the Only One – Tegan and Sara
The most interesting feature of Tegan and Sara’s album of interpellations of their own teenage demos is the way that it tracks their development from angsty, rebellious kids on the margins of popular music into mature arena-filling pop stars. These were always only two sides of the same coin, but we rarely get a chance to see the elements held in such perfect balance.

38. Good Luck Come Back – Caithlin De Marrais
This song strikes a very different vibe from her previous work. It’s certainly far removed from Rainer Maria but also pretty distinct from her previous solo work. A slinky little bass line centers the song, with a light electro touch providing texture. But it’s really all about her voice–gentle, introspective, resilient.

37. Killer – Palehound
“I wanna be the one who kills the man who hurt you, darling,” she whispers, and it already feels like a fait accompli. This is not a rage-filled song about retribution. It’s a cold-blooded statement of fact. Punishment will come and it will come soon.

36. Just Thought You Should Know – Betty Who
An achingly simple songs that could easily just come off as an early 90s retread, but is built with such care and precision that it shines like a beacon in the night. Imagine Amy Grant but less…you know…Christian.

35. Harmony Hall – Vampire Weekend
The more Ezra Koenig leans into the Paul Simon thing, the more I like him.

34. Seventeen – Sharon Van Etten
It feels like seventeen is the most commonly referenced age in the history of popular music. And for good reason. It’s the moment of peak transition. Not yet an adult, but hurtling toward what you will someday become. As hard as it is to be seventeen, it’s almost harder to reflect back on that age and to see it as continuous with your present self. If you could speak to that past version of yourself, what would you say? Would you try to warn them? Or would you just be crushed by the overwhelming sense of empathy for someone who has not yet lived and suffered and grown…and lost?

33. Best For You – Blood Cultures
A bizarre, twirling track with tinges of of psychedelia and dark pop. I have to admit I don’t fully understand why I like this song so much. It just sings to me.

32. Blame It On Your Love (feat. Lizzo) – Charli XCX
Lizzo just missed out on the list in her own right, but I’m happy to find a place for her on this wonderful collaboration with Charli XCX. The song is actually several years old, but this iteration is massively more fun than its previous ‘Track 10’ incarnation. What was once a weird atmospheric meditation has turned into a pure blissful bop.

31. Flowerhead – UV Rays
“You’re the only one who knows how weird I get when I’m alone” – the true test of intimacy.

30. Hard of Hearing – Radical Face
A fuller sound than we’re used to from Radical Face, and a warmer tone. It retains all of the organic beauty that generally characterizes his work, but blends in some digital elements. It details the process of finding your way through therapy–the weariness, the self-flagellation, the tiny steps toward getting better. “I’m not well, but I’m alright.”

29. Human – Molly Sarlé
The task of any great breakup song is to take something incredibly specific and personal and make it feel universal. Few have ever managed the task so well. I’ve seen this song on a really diverse range of year-end ‘best of’ lists, and you can really see why. It’s one of those songs that feels like an instant classic.

28. Drunk II – Mannequin Pussy
A sloppy, beautiful, heartbreaking song. The guitars erupt like lightning and the drums follow with a cascading wave of thunder.

27. The Best You Had – Nina Nesbitt
Pop songs about breakups are a dime a dozen, but very few manage to capture the complicated sense of shame that comes from being replaced. It’s a sort of humiliation that’s far worse than just being heartbroken.

26. prom dress – mxmtoon
Every great teen movie you’ve ever seen, all wrapped up in one three minute song.

25. Aute Cuture – Rosalía
She goes through about six different movements and seven or eight genres in the space of two and a half minutes. It’s flamenco-reggaeton-pop-house with a diva undertone, and it’s a pure banger.

24. Bimbo – The Coathangers
The verses are light and jaunty, with a deep undercurrent of sadness. The choruses are crunchy and loud, with a firm defiance. It’s a time-tested combination, but damn if it doesn’t work.

23. Paper Rings – Taylor Swift
I’m not sure I would have called a crunchy little jangle-rock song as the best song on the new Taylor Swift album, but it absolutely ended up that way.

22. Era Necesario – Natti Natasha
A top-class vocal performance. She spits out the lines with fire, but with such precision that you never worry about getting burned. Propped up by that thumping bass line, she is free to work her magic.

21. Four Leaf Clover – Dakota
An energetic burst of post-punk goodness, which slides into the groove and then barrels forward. The touch is light, but it hits so hard.

20. Near – Teen Daze
The eagle glides on the wind, rising slowly, until eventually it clears the mountaintop, takes in the wide expanse below. And then it dives.

19. La Vie En Rose – Lucy Dacus
Modernized covers of classics can so easily go wrong. They take something solid and make it ephemeral. This one emphatically does not fall into that trap. Rather than feeling light, it feels joyously weightless.

18. I Don’t Have One Anymore – The Sonder Bombs
The song itself is a lovely blend of brightness and snarl, but my favorite bit is the opening couple seconds which give the song its name: “My threshold for like, bullshit with men is…I don’t have one anymore.”

17. Venice Bitch – Lana Del Rey
The extend five-minute outro will divide opinions, but the heart of the song is revealed in the first 45 seconds, with a chorus that feels like the encapsulation of an entire decade.

16. Swear – Fanclub
‘New wave sensibilities through a dream pop filter’ is probably the only vibe capable of challenging ‘sad songs with ringing guitars backed by a soaring violin’ for the central place in my heart. This is a shining example of the former, so it’s no surprise that I love it.

15. Pretty – Girlpool
A perfect late 90s gauzy rock song. Beautiful, bright, dreamy.

14. Basking in the Glow – Oso Oso
In the grand tradition of The Get Up Kids, a song that delivers a jolt of emo punk powerful enough to wake even the most hardened of hearts.

13. Cedars – Desperate Journalist
A big warm song to make you feel happy and sad in perfectly proportional amounts. Her voice when she sings “another fraying jumper…” is one of my top five moments of the year in music. It just slays me.

12. Settling Down – Miranda Lambert
Another gem from Miranda Lambert, who is a legitimate national treasure. If The Weight of These Wings was about finding herself again, this song is about coming to accept that we’ll never find perfect answers. The human condition is to always be “one heart going both directions.” That’s both a doom and a blessing.

11. Whiskey Fight – Moving Panoramas
Some jangly guitars and an absolutely killer set of harmonies. This song just glides.

10. Hymn – Joy on Fire
Punk jazz with a heart of gold. “Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.”

9. Bringing It Up – Jetty Bones
One of my big takeaways from 2019 is that emo is back and it is so much better this time around, now that women seem to be leading the charge.

8. We Killed Our Hearts – The Day
It’s been a long time since I’ve heard a song that’s filled me with the same sort of unmediated joy as this one.

7. Look Around – Blankenberge
It arrives big and then just keeps growing and growing. By the end, you feel like you’re enmeshed in the Book of Revelations.

6. All Some Kind of Dream – Josh Ritter
The first time I heard this song, I literally broke down in tears. At its core, the song is a lament for the terrible condition of our politics–the way it makes us doubt our own humanity, given everything that’s done in our name. It succeeds as a call to our better angels, but succeeds even more in the final verse as a serious investigation of whether our better angels really are any better. Ultimately, it us to seriously consider whether we should be trying to redeem the American dream, or whether children in cages are in fact the encapsulation of that dream. It’s a hopeful song, but it’s an extremely skeptical sort of hope. And it couldn’t really be any other way.

5. Fleur – Emily Reo
I can’t help but wonder if Fleur Delacour was an inspiration for the name, because it would 1000% work as her theme song. It’s magical, otherworldly, soul-enriching.

4. Sit Here and Love Me – Caroline Spence
One of the most devastatingly beautiful songs you will ever hear. “I don’t need you to solve any problem at all, I just need you to sit here and love me.”

3. Pancho and Lefty – Townes Van Zandt
This song was recorded 46 years ago, and the world has already heard several versions from Van Zandt himself, not to mention hundreds of covers. So it’s hard to describe it as a ‘song of 2019.’ But damn if this unearthed demo doesn’t turn out to be the definitive version of the song. Stripping it down to the bare minimum allows the heart and soul to be laid bare, and somehow elevates what was already an all-time classic. RIP Townes.

2. Cotton Skies – WESTKUST
Roll down the windows and let this one blast out at full volume. Ride the storm until it lifts you straight up into heaven. This song rips. There’s really no other way to put it.

1. Young Enough – Charly Bliss
Threaded tightly around a single chord guitar line, it builds and builds, until it feels like there is nothing left in the world except this song. One purpose of music is to communicate something fundamental about the human experience. On that count, I’m not sure it’s possible to succeed more completely than Charly Bliss did here.

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Top 20 albums of 2019

Posted on December 17, 2019 by olneyce

For me, the best albums of 2019 were defined by two big musical themes. On the one hand, a set of records that are big and boisterous–grounded in the energy and passion of youth. That’s counterbalanced by a set of records that are very much the opposite: filled with introspection, reflection, and a series of long slow breaths. It makes for a nice combination: immediacy tempered by distance, joy balanced with regret.

As always, this is a list of my favorites. I make no claim that these are objectively the best. They’re just the ones I liked the most.

20. Great Grandpa – Four of Arrows

Four of Arrows is a disconcertingly beautiful record, full of awkward time signatures, glistening choruses, and unworldly key changes. It fits vaguely into the folk-rock genre, in the same way that an octopus fits vaguely into the ‘sentient species’ genre. The statement is true, but it misses so much that it almost obscures more than it communicates. This is the grunge-folk record that Mark Lanegan wishes he could have written. It’s a dreamy pop record pierced with dread. It’s the sense of alienation that comes from returning home and feeling like everything is just so slightly different. It’s the sun coming up over the horizon after a long, cold night.

Highlights: Digger, Treat Jar, Mono no Aware, Split Up the Kids, Bloom

19. Alex Lahey – The Best of Luck Club

Another great record from Alex Lahey. It definitely feels like a sophomore record, a bit more mature than her debut, but also a little bit less rambunctious. For the most part, that’s a positive. I Need to Move On and Black RMs are both lovely ruminations on absence, longing, and seeing yourself reflected in someone else—in both positive and negative terms. Am I Doing It Right? feels more muscular, more centered than any of her previous songs. It reveals an artist no longer capable of getting by on pure adrenaline, now having to actually commit to the process. Isabella is a sly-but-not-that-sly ode to a vibrator with an absolutely gorgeous spiraling chorus. Still, despite all the great songs here, I can’t help but feel a little bit of sadness that there’s nothing that knocks my socks off like some of the best tracks on her debut. This is an extremely pleasing album, but I wouldn’t object to just a bit more fire.

Highlights: Black RMs, I Need to Move On, Isabella, Am I Doing It Right?

18. Caroline Spence – Mint Condition

Another damn fine record from Caroline Spence. For the most part, it ‘merely’ provides extremely competent, heartfelt country music. But in a few locations, she delivers an absolute wallop—something so good that it doesn’t just elevate itself, but actually reframes your experience of the whole album. Sit Here and Love Me is the best example. Sitting right in the middle of the album, it rips you apart so completely that the whole rest of the record ends up being about finding a way to put yourself back together. Long Haul is another highlight, offering a jangly ride through a long dark night. And the album-closing title track is another so-simple-that-there’s-nowhere-to-hide emotional rollercoaster.

Highlights: Sit Here and Love Me, Mint Condition, Long Haul, Angels or Los Angeles

17. Emily Reo – Only You Can See It

One of those wonderful albums that seems to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Reo is an artist bursting with ideas, who seems committed to covering a huge amount of space—in terms of both sonic and emotional range. The result is a mélange of songs that defy easy explanation. There’s a round of cheerleader chanting about toxic masculinity (Strawberry), a 70s-inspired torch song for her cat (Charlie), songs grounded in vocoder effects right next to songs that feel sparse and intimate. On the albums best song (Fleur), she mentions butterflies and it feels particularly apposite. Listening to this album is like wandering through a forest surrounded by an endless parade of butterflies. You want to capture the moment, but know full well that the beauty depends on its wildness. And so all you can do is stand back and let it all wash over you.

Highlights: Fleur, Balloon, Phosphenes, Strawberry

16. Rapsody – Eve

I’m not sure this is my favorite Rapsody album (that might still be 2013’s She Got Game), but it’s certainly her best. The scope of the ambition here is breathtaking—both in terms of content and in terms of style. The number of different genres blended here is truly impressive, and it’s all leveraged toward a powerful investigation of black femininity. The closest reference point for Rapsody remains Lauryn Hill—but where in the past that’s felt a bit more like mimesis than inspiration, this is the first time that she feels like a true colleague of Hill. Another way of saying that: her previous work sometimes seemed like it would have been more at home in the 90s than the present moment, while Eve is 100% a record of this moment. I don’t love every song. In fact, some of the wilder moves strike me as dissonant. But that only heightens my respect. This album pulls no punches, and is not concerned about how it will be received. It says what needs to be said, and damn if that isn’t necessary.

Highlights: Cleo, Maya, Reyna’s Interlude, Hatshepsut, Whoopi, Nina

15. bvdub – Explosions in Slow Motion

An extremely well-named album. It sounds exactly like what is promised on the box. Across four gorgeous seventeen minute tracks and a few interludes, Brock Van Wey mixes synths, pianos and strings, occasional bass notes, and light electronic touches to produce achingly sad sounds. It’s the aural equivalent of the images that NASA puts out of distant stars going supernova. It’s one of my most-listened records this year—perfect for reading, writing, or simply relaxing with the sounds of the universe washing through you.

Highlights: Us Again in Amber, Explosions in Slow Motion

14. Louise Burns – Portraits

A record that feels like it could have been released in 1998, when Natalie Imbruglia and the Cardigans and Sixpence None the Richer were filling the airwaves with songs in this register. But it also feels very much like a batch of songs that could have ended up on the soundtrack to a John Hughes music. And, unsurprisingly, all that means that Portraits equally feels indebted to the wave of electro-pop from the early 2010s. All of which is to say: this sort of music is actually pretty timeless, because there’s never really a bad time for a bright an beautiful pop record.

Highlights: Like a Dream, Everything You Got, Cry, Dream of Life

13. Heather Woods Broderick – Invitation

It lacks the defining song or explosive moment that characterize many of the records that ended up a little higher on the list. But for all that, it still ended up as one of my most-listened albums of the year. That’s largely down to the incredible atmospheric work. She builds an entire world over the course of 45 minutes. It’s a dark, quiet expanse filled with gorgeous strings, delicately plucked guitars, strange time signatures, and silky vocals. Broderick played with Efterklang for a few years back in the late 2000s, and that feels entirely appropriate. This reminds me a lot of their Parades album (one of my favorite records of 2007).

Highlights: Slow Dazzle, A Stilling Wind, Nightcrawler

12. Tegan and Sara – Hey, I’m Just Like You

It’s a wonderful conceit. Take a batch of songs they wrote two decades ago and re-record them now. It’s hard to think of a better way to build a retrospective on a career. But this isn’t just about reflecting on the past. There’s something deeply moving about these songs—their earnestness, their posture, their awkwardness—but they would be mere curiosities for a box set if that’s all that was to it. Fortunately, the relationship between past and present brings more than mere reflection. Rather than searching for a sort of Goldilocks balance between passion and maturity, they let the two sides fight each other a bit. The resulting creative tension produces something more than just a sum of the parts. It’s hardly the best Tegan and Sara album, but it is genuinely engaging, and one of their most interesting works yet.

Highlights: I Know I’m Not the Only One, Hold My Breath Until I Die, Keep Them Close ‘Cause They Will Fuck You Too, Hey, I’m Just Like You

11. Natti Natasha – IllumiNATTI

Every time I encounter a record like this, it reminds me just how little I actually know about music. Because while this is clearly drawing on all kinds of threads that I’m vaguely aware of, it also feels wonderfully alien to my pretty basic white indie guy tastes. Which means I completely lack the tools to actually explain what’s going on. It draws heavily on the reggaeton tradition—blending together a wide range of Caribbean sounds, including pure reggae (No Voy a Llorar) and that characteristic big bass thump (Era Necesario, Toca Toca), along with strong contemporary pop elements (Oh Daddy) and plenty of hip-hop and trap vibes as well (Independiente). Some tracks feel closest to traditional Spanish ballads (La Mejor Version de Mi). Digging in also introduced me to bachata music (Soy Mia, Quien Sabe), which I’m now completely fascinated with.

Ultimately, I have no idea where IllumiNATTI fits within the larger trends of these genres. All I really know is that it absolutely slays.

Highlights: Era Necesario, Toca Toca, La Mejor Version de Mi, Soy Mia, Te Lo Dije, Quien Sabe

10. Fanclub – All the Same

Six perfect new wave songs, all lined up in a row and ready for you to snack on them. This EP is sweet and pure, warm as a summer day, cool as a mountain stream. And as with all the best dream pop, there’s enough darkness hiding underneath the shiny exterior to keep you honest, but not so much that it will overwhelm you. It’s a record full of songs that feel like they must have been written decades ago, they feel so immediately familiar. I mean, how is it possible that no one has ever sung “I want to be yours every time” before?

Highlights: Leaves, Swear, Stranger, Reflection

9. Blankenberge – More

This would easily be the best shoegaze album in an average year. It’s only held off from that spot by an even better record that will show up a few spots higher. The general structure is a burbling bass line, matched up with propulsive percussion, and soaring dreamy vocals rising far up over the clouds. The best example is Look Around, which is one of the finest rock songs of the decade, but songs like Right Now, Fest, and Islands are also great examples. The album is bridged by two songs—Waves and Until the Sun Shines—which provide a moment for the languorous atmospherics to swell and the engines to reboot. It’s a lovely breather in the midst of the storm.

Highlights: Look Around, Right Now, Waves, Fest

8. Moving Panoramas – In Two

A wonderful follow-up to 2015’s One, and a record which took a pretty devastating personal journey to finally get made. It’s not a big change from their previous sound—indie pop songcraft that takes you back to the heyday of music blogs, fuzzy guitars that take you back to the 90s, and crisp production that feels timeless. There’s a bit of jangle here, a bit of surf rock there, and a dreamy weightlessness that ties everything together. If there’s a flaw, it’s in the lengths of the songs. Virtually every track is about four and a half minutes long, but it’s not clear they all needed all of that runtime. On the other side, it also feels like a missed opportunity to not let one or two songs off the leash to breathe a bit longer. It’s hard to point to any song that is specifically harmed by the consistency of run-times, but such a dreamy album deserves a bit more space for contemplative reflection.

Highlights: Whisky Fight, Dance Floor, On Hold, ADD Heart

7. Lana Del Rey – Norman Fucking Rockwell

An album that inspired some intense thinkpieces, and then some even more intense thinkpieces about the responses to the first thinkpieces. My recommendation: skip all the psychoanalyzing and just listen to the music. Because the music is good! It’s still very obviously a Lana Del Ray record, so you can probably determine whether you’ll like it based solely on that. But it’s also very obviously her best record yet—more mature both sonically and stylistically, without losing any of the deftness of her older work. Her voice remains smoky as hell, and her lyrics retain an intense level of self-referentiality. But instead of being clunky or offputting, that combination blends together perfectly here to generate a powerful sense of reflexiveness. It’s genuinely affecting, in a way that I would never have guessed she’d be able to sustain for a full album. Which, to that point, things do run a little bit too long, with a decided lull in the middle. But the opening trio of songs are genuinely epic, and the final run that begins with California is almost equally as good.

Highlights: Venice Bitch, California, Mariners Apartment Complex, The Greatest, The Next Best American Record

6. Harmony Woods – Make Yourself At Home

A huge step forward for Sofia Verbilla, whose last record was one of my favorite albums of 2017. That one was pleasant, and more than a bit poignant. But this one is so much more—still resonant with her DIY origins, but bigger, bolder, richer, darker. More than anything, it’s absolutely full of life, and the beautiful, harrowing pain that comes along with it. Over the course of the album, she tracks a relationship from its messy beginnings to its codependent nadir, ending with an ambivalent moment of self-realization. There’s no triumph here, and barely a promise of recovery. As she says at the start of the album and again in the final track: “Seasons change, people stay the same.” And so the best you can hope is that processing the trauma is enough to make you stronger, without constructing so much emotional armor that you can never find a way to feel vulnerable again.

Highlights: The City’s Our Song, Best Laid Plans, Best Laid Plans II, Misled, That’s Okay

5. The Day – Midnight Parade

The debut record from The Day is almost the textbook example of perfect dream pop—shimmering, tender, infused with a deep sense of empathy and care. In it I hear everything I’ve ever loved about the mid-90s Sarah Records, joining forces with all the wonderful textures of the great Labrador Records bands of the mid 2000s. The result is a joyous symphony, which feels intimate and deeply personal, while also conveying a sense of universality. Like any good shoegaze record, it lends itself this sort of abstraction. At the same time, like any good jangle pop record, it’s a perfect accompaniment to an afternoon drive when all you want is a wash of joyous sound. But it’s also the sort of record that lends itself to cozying up by a fire with some good headphones. Because as you dig into every nook and cranny, you discover just how precisely all the details have been rendered. Every note, every drum fill, every slight pause…they’re all laid down with intention and care.

In the end the unifying theme of Midnight Parade is pretty simple: it offers a sense of deep melancholy tempered by a powerful and unrelenting faith in the potential for human beings to reach across barriers and find reasons to love. And, to be honest, it’s hard to think of a message that’s more important in 2019.

Highlights: We Killed Our Hearts, The Years, Berlin, Grow, Illuminate

4. Jetty Bones – –

I’ve spent a decade or more hoping we’d get a masterpiece from Hayley Williams. It’s never quite happened, but this EP from Jetty Bones more than makes up for it. These songs offer a consistent, devastating blend of pop fireworks and a deep sense of pain that is terribly specific to youth. The central theme: the moment when the deep cruelty of the world pierces your ironic detachment and makes you realize just how goddamn much a person can hurt. It’s a time-honored topic, but one that is terribly hard to avoid striking without descending into self-parody. There are few better examples of perfectly striking the balance than this record. One critical thing that helps the process: the decision to pack a full LP’s worth of hooks into just six songs. It won’t be for everyone, but if you’re in a place in your life where getting sucked into a maelstrom of emotions sounds like a good time, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better way to spend 18 minutes.

Highlights: All six songs, but especially Bringing It Up and The Rest of the Them

3. Teen Daze – Bioluminescence

An electronic album that feels entirely organic.  Each song is a jewel, gaining more texture and meaning with each listen. Throughout, there is a feeling of restraint–perhaps distance–but it’s a distance that calls for resolution. Each track evokes a specific sense of time and place. A cool autumn night on the moors. A bright summer morning as the breeze rustles a set of wind chimes. A dark winter night, with wolves howling in the distance. This is a dance record, but also a record for quiet contemplation, and also a record to roll the windows down and blast on a summer day. The one constant is a sense of wonder.

Who knows but that on the lower frequencies, it speaks for us.

Highlights: Near, Endless Light, Ocean Floor, Longing

2. Westkust– Westkust

This album is big, messy, glorious, raucous. It’s everything you ever wanted from a shoegaze record and everything you ever wanted from a punk record combined together into something that exceeds all of its parts. Rampaging guitars, thumping drums, a rising wave of sound that peaks and then cascades down like a river pouring over the edge of a cliff. As you hang suspended within this waterfall, singer Julia Bjernelind’s voice bursts forth like the midday sun, casting a rainbow all around you.

Highlights: Cotton Skies, Drive, On the Inside, Adore, Daylight

1. Charly Bliss– Young Enough

This record is a bildungsroman for the ages. It’s about the little spaces that reside in between moments of transition. The feeling of no longer being young but still not being an adult. The sense of vertigo that you feel in between the decision to end a bad relationship and actually working up the willpower to do it. The indescribable pain of having been hurt but lacking the vocabulary to define how it was done. And it’s all wrapped up in a glorious bow of new wave synths and fuzzy guitar lines.

Guppy was a very nice record, but one that didn’t necessarily stick with me. Young Enough delivers on every promise from their first effort, and then some. These songs are glimmer like fireflies as they dance and weave around you. From the stately march of Blown to Bits to the pedal-to-the-metal acceleration of Under You to the bubblegum trauma of Chatroom to the beautifully pure finale The Truth. But at the center of it all is the title track, one of the most cathartic songs ever produced.

Highlights: Young Enough, Under You, Blown to Bits, Chatroom, The Truth, Hard to Believe

Honorable Mentions:

William Tyler – Goes West
I Am Snow Angel – Mothership
Charli XCX – Charli
Infinity Crush – Virtual Crush
Josh Ritter – Fever Breaks
Andreas Söderström & Rickard Jäverling – Adelsö
Barker – Utility
Dakota – Here’s The 101 On How To Disappear
Astronoid – Astronoid
Lily & Madeleine – Canterbury Girls

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The Worst Christmas Songs

Posted on November 21, 2019 by olneyce

I ran a poll this week. It started with one simple question: “If you could ban one single Christmas song – it could never be played, covered, or heard in any form ever again – what would you choose?”

I then asked for for voters to explain what makes the song so bad. This is obviously nothing like a scientific poll, but it produced some interesting results. Read on, and be careful about getting some terrible songs stuck in your head.

Christmas Shoes – 11 votes

This song is obviously terrible, with voters mentioned its “extremely manipulative and unimaginative lyrics” and calling it “mawkish,” “depressing,” and a song that “makes you feel miserable.” None of the voters mentioned the way it sounds, but the production is also dreadful and cloying. Given all that, it’s not hard to understand how it ended up topping the list. I do have to say, though, that I never hear this song out in the wild. I’ve only ever encountered it through lists of ‘worst Christmas songs’ or that Patton Oswalt bit. So while I can’t disagree with anyone who picked it, I do have to wonder if this would really be the most strategic song to ban. Consider some of the ones to follow, and then think about how often you’re subjected to them…

Wonderful Christmastime – 9 votes

Voters were pretty clear about what they didn’t like about this song. Some sample comments: “It’s just monotonous,” “Horrible repetition,” “Infinite ear worm,” and “It is unmelodic and repetitive and banal and GETS STUCK IN YOUR HEAD ANYWAY.” I can’t really disagree with any of those comments, though I have to admit I have a small soft spot in my heart for this one. Yes, it’s repetitive and obnoxious, but you have to respect the craft that went into to producing such concentrated dosages. Turns out Paul McCartney has a pretty good ear for pop melodies, even when he’s choosing to use his powers for evil.

Santa Baby – 7 votes

As one voter put it: “Who TF wants to hear a song about sexy Santa?” Another put it even more directly: “I do not want to fuck santa.” Others objected to the “cutesy vocals,” which…yeah.

Do They Know It’s Christmas – 6 votes

Come for the terrible production, stay for the mind-boggling levels of paternalism. Put it together and you’ve got a strong contender for worst song of all-time, never mind the Christmas limitation. It’s really that bad. As one voter said, it’s “problematic in so many ways.” Another voter noted several fundamental issues–from the grouping together of all Africa to the assumption that ‘they’ don’t know it’s Christmas (there are lots of Christians in Africa!) to “there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time.” Which as the voter notes, will be surprising news to anyone living around Kilimanjaro.

Baby It’s Cold Outside – 6 votes

As one person commented: “Where to start?” Several others knew exactly where to start: “It’s a rape song.” As one voter noted, it’s not even really a Christmas Song, but it’s so offensive that it’s probably worth banning just to be safe.

Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer – 6 votes

It’s a novelty song, and I guess it’s supposed to be funny, but it’s really not. Pretty much across the board, voters for this song focused on the pretty reasonable position that “Christmas songs shouldn’t be mean!”

Last Christmas – 6 votes

Despite getting six votes, this one generated no particularly exciting comments. One person simply said “It’s just a bit shit,” another only complained that it’s not really a Christmas song, and several others left no comment at all. So despite being among the finalists, it didn’t seem to generate the kind of visceral hatred that I saw for some of the other heavy hitters. From my perspective, this is an example of a nice song that isn’t done many favors by its most popular incarnation. The Wham original is pretty awful, actually, but the underlying song is perfectly decent. Check out this Robyn cover, for example, or this one from Jimmy Eat World. They’re nice!

Little Drummer Boy – 6 votes

This one generated a strong competitor for my favorite comment: “What the fuck kind of lyric is pa rum pum pum pum and why does it happen so often? Kill it with fire.” I find it extremely hard to argue with that premise.

Other votes

It wasn’t all doom and gloom. One voter voted for “None, they’re all beautiful!” which was lovely. Which contrasts with three respondents who offered some variation of “all Christmas music.” In one case the explanation was pretty simple: “I’m Jewish.” The others seemed mostly frustrated by the inescapability and repetition.

One person voted for “Any song that isn’t Carol of the Bells” and provided a pretty straightforward explanation: “Because Carol of the Bells is the only good Christmas song.” They probably will not want to hang out with the two voters who picked Carol of the Bells as the worst Christmas song.

Novelty songs received a fair number of votes, with the top contender being The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late). Some sample comments: “It’s by the chipmunks,” “the chipmunk voices,” “the chipmunks,” and “it’s obvious.”

Three voters picked Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, with one commenting that the “notes are in the wrong order.” I’m not sure what that means, but it seems plausible. In the same vein, Santa Claus is Coming to Town also got three votes, with the primary objection being the “threatening lyrics.”

My personal choice – Jingle Bell Rock – only picked up three votes. But I deeply empathize with whoever wrote “Why do Jingle Bells need to rock? That twangy guitar in the beginning gives me PTSD flashbacks.” On a similar note, one voter picked Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, simply saying “It’s anything but ‘Rockin.'”

Finally, a few misguided souls picked legitimately great songs. Top of the list was All I Want for Christmas Is You. I would have picked this as one of the most universally beloved songs of the modern era, but it received four votes! One person didn’t object to the song, but rather wanted to ban the Justin Bieber version. I respect that as a tactical vote. But the others…I don’t have a good explanation. Especially the person whose explanation consisted entirely of the claim “Mariah Carey can’t sing.” That has to just be trolling, right?

And then there was the voter who picked Christmas Wrapping, objecting to “The monotone singing, the shitty lyrics, all of it.” Which…well, it’s a poll and everyone is entitled to their opinion. Speaking of which, another voter went for Fairytale of New York. You can guess how I feel about that.

Larger themes

One interesting theme from the data: the virtual absence of any of the classic Christmas music. There were a few votes for O Little Town of Bethlehem, Jingle Bells, and Carol of the Bells. But there were zero votes for Silent Night, none for God Rest You Merry Gentlemen, none for Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, none for O Holy Night. The pop songs of the 20th century did far worse.

Another common feature among many of the top selections is a brutal combination of catchiness and repetitiveness. That’s obviously the central complaint about Wonderful Christmastime, and a big part of why it ended up near the top. But it also applies to Feliz Navidad (4 votes), which one voter suggested “sticks in your head to the point you want to gouge out your ears with an icepick.” One voter emphasized repetitiveness in their critique of Little Town of Bethlehem. Another said the same thing about Jingle Bells. And actually, I’m surprised that it didn’t end up with more than just two votes. It’s a terrible earworm, not to mention an ubiquitous one. Seems like a prime candidate for a targeted assassination. Same thing is true for The 12 Days of Christmas, which also only got two votes, but is awful.

Several voters mentioned having to work in retail. Once again, Wonderful Christmastime is a prime target here. One voter said “All cheerful Christmas songs are torture when you work holiday retail but this is THE WORST ONE.” Another voter talked about their experience in retail driving their hatred of I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday, which can easily sear their way into the brains of the poor souls subjected to it.

And that’s ultimately the issue. There are plenty of obnoxious, aggressively catchy, horrifyingly trite Christmas songs, just like there are plenty of terrible songs in every genre. But everywhere else the selection pool of songs is much broader and more diverse. Walk into a grocery store for ten months of the year and you might hear the Rolling Stones or Madonna or Rihanna. Walk in during November or December and you’ll hear the same 150 songs over and over and over. Even if you like a lot of these songs – as I do – they quickly become aggravating when they change from optional to inescapable.

And that’s just for holiday civilians, who merely move through retail spaces. I have trouble even wrapping my mind around what it would be like to work in those environments. Especially when the Christmas season seemingly gets longer and longer each year. So if you found a few songs to loathe on this list, spare a thought for those living under the weight of their constant presence.

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Carissa’s Wierd reunion show: A new holiday

Posted on November 18, 2019 by olneyce

On bended knee
Will you marry me
And on November 16
Everything was buried down

Carissa’s Wierd are my favorite band that doesn’t include both Lennon and McCartney. Obviously, the largest part of that love is simply about the music itself. They wrote desperately sad, quiet, beautiful songs about heartbreak and hope and then offered them to the world like a series of secret gems glittering in the night.

But it’s not just the music. There’s also something specific about the band you discover when you’re nineteen years old, whose songs catch you wholly unguarded and etch themselves so deeply that they become part of you. For me, that was Carissa’s Wierd.

I saw them three times in Seattle while I was in college and they were deeply emotional experiences. This quiet little band that I adored with all my heart was standing there in front of me, awkwardly shuffling in between songs, obviously a little bit uncomfortable with the adulation pouring over them from the crowd. They whispered into their microphones, strummed their guitars, picked out ringing notes, and soared on a violin wave.

But all good things must come to an end, and so it was with this band. They recorded a few songs for the fourth album but never finished it. And so I was left scrounging for b-sides and live tracks, proudly wearing a shirt with their name on it, wishing there could have been just a little bit more.

I’ve been able to see several of the individuals from the band play in the years since—including a show where Jenn opened for Mat’s band. But the last time I heard them play these songs was that famous-for-those-who-love-them Valentine’s Day show back in 2003. When the band briefly reunited for a couple shows about ten years ago, I was distraught about not being able to go.

So this time, when they announced a brief three-city tour to play the old songs, I started making plans. It’s 2000 miles from Texas out to Seattle, but I still have family out here and this was as good a time as any to make the trip. And that’s how I ended up at the Fremont Abbey on Saturday night (November 16th, perfectly enough).

It was a strange experience to be in a room with a couple hundred other people who shared my love for this obscure indie band. And even stranger to see two people approaching middle age—with relatively stable, happy lives—playing these songs that are so specifically about being young and lost. But ultimately that’s what the show was actually about—a sort of reminiscence and shared appreciation of how much these songs meant to all of us then, and important they still remain even though we’ve all grown and moved on.

It hit me pretty hard. The performances weren’t flawless—as you might expect for a thrown-together three-city tour from two old friends who hadn’t played together in years. But I was pretty overwhelmed by energy in the room when those quiet chords rang out. Within the first three songs they had played two of my favorite songs in the entire world, and my eyes were moist. A few songs later I was legitimately crying as the guitars chimed and their voices soared. “My heart is gone” indeed.

They ended up playing back-to-back shows because the first one sold out so quickly. So naturally I got tickets for both. It was a unique experience seeing everything repeated, especially given how emotional the first show had been. The second time I had a little more distance and was just able to focus on my joy at hearing these songs I love so much, and appreciating the feeling of sharing a space with other fans of this quiet little band.

I know this band isn’t ‘the one’ for all that many people out there. But I hope that everyone has a chance for something like this kind of experience—to come back to something you love and miss and see it live again for one special night.

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