Another Dying Artform

Best Albums of 2021: Tangents - Timeslips & Chimeras

Traversing along musical overlaps is where Australian group Tangents locate their singular sound. Born out of two recording sessions, Timeslips & Chimeras plays with structure as well as repetition to create and dispel each distinct aural atmosphere. They seamlessly merge jazz and classical, electronic and acoustic, syncopated and ethereal; each finished product is driven by musical invention.

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Best Albums of 2021: SAULT - Nine

The mystery behind Sault is as prevalent as the music they release, dropping their fifth full length since their sudden appearance in 2019. Nine splits in two halves, leaning at first on their Krautrock fundamentals for a stripped down reflection on London’s rougher edges. The second half is softer and soulful, yearning for something greater while grasping a hopeful current to ride until the next surprise album drop.

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Best Albums of 2021: Mdou Moctar - Afrique Victime

The best guitar album this year came from Niger, which says more about the current state of western rock than anything else. Signing to major/indie label Matador for Afrique Victime, Mdou Moctar went from a hidden secret in the Sahara where his recordings were shared on ancient technology to an absolute global force. Listen to the inspirational shredding on opener “Chismiten” and enjoy the ride.

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Best Albums of 2021: Makaya McCraven - Deciphering the Message

The tradition of uniting jazz and hip-hop is as old as the first breakbeat, and the Blue Note label has been ushering in that movement for over the past quarter of a century. Percussionist and “beat scientist” Makaya McCraven is the latest creative to tackle the task of melding classic recordings and authentic flows into fresh compositions that never feel forced or anachronistic.

Spotify | YouTube | Blue Note

Best Albums of 2021: Ben LaMar Gay - Open Arms to Open Us

This category-defying effort from Chicago musician Ben LaMar Gay utilizes all the instruments within his immediate reach for Open Arms to Open Us. He utilizes jazz, soul, and hip-hop genres like a visual artist wields pigment, situating rhythms and chords into demanding arrangements that challenge the listener to split from any preconceptions to make a new connection to his unique truths.

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Best Albums of 2021: Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg

With a venerable genre like post-punk, it is a tricky task to make it all sound contemporary while wielding a five-decade old musical style. As jagged guitars entangle knotty rhythms on New Long Leg, it is the laconic vocals from Florence Shaw that make the debut from Dry Cleaning pertinent for the 21st century. Lyrics like “Do everything, feel nothing” stand true like a t-shirt slogan, but in context reads as a laundry list for another lost year to lockdown anxiety.

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Best Albums of 2021: DARKSIDE - Spiral

The original cooperative of Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington on Psychic in 2013 had the exploratory energy of a one-time experiment, blending sparsely placed beats, sighs, and strums into a lusty stew. Spiral builds on that motif, filling the space with thicker grooves without drawing attention from the enigmatic details, giving us something new to discover with each fresh listen.

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Best Albums of 2021: Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - CARNAGE

After the veritable bloodletting of Ghosteen, it was a wonder that Nick Cave had anything left. With the need to move forward from his insular state, Cave taps his longtime collaborator for something immediate and visceral. CARNAGE has a pulse that traverses through the lyrical storyline, punctuating a tempestuous screenplay desperate to be filmed.

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Best Albums of 2021: Damon Locks/Black Monument Ensemble - NOW

Clocking in at just over 30 minutes, NOW feels fleeting on first listen, a limited effort influenced by COVID protocols. Give the music space and context and Damon Locks’ compositions strike deep with profound urgency. The juxtaposition of recorded live performance with the undercurrent of historical samples galvanize the entire album, making NOW a portent for the present through the voices from America’s turbulent past.

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Best Albums of 2021: BADBADNOTGOOD - Talk Memory

The jazz group moves on from founding member Matthew Tavares and their recent dabbling in hip-hop, choosing to explore their instrumental foundations. Reaching out to guest artists including string arrangements from Brazilian composer Arthur Verocai, Talk Memory hits on retro fusion and Latin flavors while keeping an improvisational, yet lively in-studio vibe.

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Best Albums of the 2010s: #3

Parquet Courts - Light Up Gold (2013)

Also released in the 2010s: Tally All the Things You Broke EP (2013), Sunbathing Animal (2014), Content Nausea EP (2014), Monastic Living (2015), Human Performance (2016), Wide Awake! (2018)

Originally released in a limited fashion in 2012, the first album from Parquet Courts was birthed from the fresh ashes of Austin-based weirdos Fergus & Geronimo. Light Up Gold was immediate in its impression not only by the distinction of its content, but from the continual strains from its musical references. Any listener well versed in the history of indie-alternative-garage-new wave-punk rock will seize onto something familiar, as this debut feels as practiced and pondered as revisionist history can. Some staid purists may criticize such conspicuous comparisons, but where the obvious resemblance to past rock bands ends grows fertile inspiration and invention. With that framework, Light Up Gold becomes an tended field full of blossoming homages without the stink of ponderous imitation.

To unravel this chronicle, a great place to start is the music’s assured, yet unassuming rhythm. Each song has a metronomic energy that propels Light Up Gold to intriguing and memorable places. The swift taps on opener “Master of My Craft” set the scene for this wild ride, as the loose fretwork labors to keep adequate pace. The words spill over like beat poetry that refuses to take itself seriously. “You should see the wall of ambivalence I’m building” is delivered among the random rants on blunt consumerism, unnoticed next to winning phrases like “Socrates died in the fuckin’ gutter!” The vocal rambling is fleeting yet articulate as this college paper treatise is given to showcase the overeducated and underwhelmed. It means everything and nothing as the song ends cold, but immediately moves on to the next without reflection.

With nearly half of the songs clocking under two minutes, Parquet Courts makes an imperative to devise little curios throughout Light Up Gold rather than litter the album with discount filler. The odd musings and observations on these shorties evolve into a compelling exercise in eccentric chords and creative riffs. “Donuts Only” takes a sideways look at the stark difference between Texas and Brooklyn, tying it neatly to the influence of a community’s predominant religion on culture. The themes on “Careers in Combat” connect to their middle America roots as well, as the dire sales pitch for military service rolls monotone over the repetitive riff. They still manage to wax esoteric on “Caster of Worthless Spells”, ruminating on war, philosophy, and hell as feedback curdles the entire song’s structure. Despite their brevity, these tracks add detail and interest on Gold, branding some witty poetry inside the unique punk vocabulary.

In their intentionally sloppy riffs, smart-ass delivery, and laconic production, Parquet Courts get saddled with the “slacker” label by critics without flinching. The endeavor given on each song for Gold is palpable, as it takes plenty of consideration and prep work to project the persona of halfhearted underachievers. Being so effortlessly performed and immediately enjoyable, the finer details of “Stoned and Starving” are easy to overlook. The band takes a tight beat and drawled chords for this album’s centerpiece and stretches it into an elastic exercise, complete with a wailing twin guitar coda. Through the five minutes, the song manages to reference Wire, The Strokes, The Feelies, Meat Puppets, and Pavement without directly sounding like any one of the above. Read up on the reviews Parquet Courts receive and all these infamous bands as well as Modern Lovers, Sonic Youth, Dead Kennedys, Silkworm, The Fall, The Minutemen and more, get tagged to them by their enthusiastic arbiters. Still, the true accomplishment on Light Up Gold is not simply tracing the lineage of rock & roll’s storied underground, but finding their singular voice out of that wilderness to strike their own identity in an auspicious and truly original beginning.

Read the 2012 ADA piece on Light Up Gold.

Spotify | YouTube | Buy Light Up Gold on Bandcamp via What’s Your Rupture?

Best Albums of the 2010s: #4

Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest (2010)

Also released in the 2010s: Monomania (2013), Fading Frontier (2015), Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? (2019)

Listening to Deerhunter's discography in chronological order is like watching the growth of a child with each album representing a milestone in maturity and development. Debut LP Turn It Up Faggot is a bloody, raging birth that has no other directive than demanding to be heard. Cryptograms plays like a raw toddler that in it's best moments can surprise with each word it properly articulates and each confident step it takes toward getting someplace meaningful. The 2008 output of Microcastle & Weird Era Cont. are the achievements of a strong willed child beginning to form its own ideas, thoughts, and emotions, gaining poise with each small achievement and vote of encouragement. In 2010, following an EP release of unofficial studio exercises (as well as LP Logos from Bradford Cox's solo project Atlas Sound), Deerhunter offered the public Halcyon Digest. How will this fit into the developmental timeline? Will it be a restless, temperamental juvenile full of exploratory "experimentation"? A lovelorn, pubescent teenager unleashing aching, penciled poetry from a spiral notebook? Those may have been possible results if this emboldened band had not been so heartened to "grow up" and attempt something of relative maturity and accomplishment.

This newly calculated approach on Halcyon Digest begins with the opening track. "Earthquake" sounds like anything but a Earth-shaking event; rather it is a removed observation of a planet-splitting event taking place in distant outer space. The track is intense and emotion-filled, building to a meaningful studio-modified crescendo while decidedly restrained, opting for beauty over dissonance. This commitment to loveliness is strung throughout the album connected by the best examples in the two early releases. From the mandolin plucks on "Revival" to the harpsichord plinks on "Helicopter", the painstaking attention to the instrumentation delivers these melodies in just the right manner that ties the whole album together. It is on "Helicopter" where Cox delivers his strongest vocal performance to date, a longing perspective on drugs and their eventual diminishment. His voice is moving, hitting each tender note as the warmth rolls through, giving an emotive lift to the listener while each member of Deerhunter is dialed in for the song's performance.

Another noteworthy contrast on Halcyon Digest is the interspersed quiet moments spread throughout the album. A song about loneliness, "Sailing" drifts along on scarce production featuring barely more than guitar and vocals over a subtle rhythm. The machine-like trickle of ambiance underneath is what makes the moment transcendent. Toward the end, when Cox bays for no one to hear, it is that sound of nothing that makes the track so powerful. "Basement Scene" is creepily inviting for a song about being stuck between the frivolity of youth and the perils of aging. Sounding like the darkest corner of an Everly Brothers classic, the track creaks along on a hazy hum and a ticking drumstick tap.

Deerhunter stretched influences are more apparent on Halcyon as they reach into welcomed, unexplored arenas. This is most notable on the Lockett Pundt-fronted tracks where the annals of alternative rock are in full regalia. One might have to check their Jesus and Mary Chain collection to make sure that "Fountain Stairs" is not a cover song. "Desire Lines" has the insistent energy of a shoegazer classic that stretches over six minutes, finishing like a Pixies song with an interlocked riff and rhythm so good that there is no other choice but to keep it going as long as possible. Finishing of the album is "He Would Have Laughed" with a quirky beat and sunny synths feeling like an early Caribou track. Beginning hopeful and resonant, an acoustic guitar moves to the front of the mix as the sonic environment goes sideways until the eerily abrupt ending.

If we are still accepting the developmental signpost theory, Halcyon Digest seems to have skipped over its awkward teenage years, revealing a full-fledged graduate with honors. Often when a band takes such a bold step forward into a more mature sound there is an eventual backlash and longing for more songs "like the old stuff". There are no regrets here, only the joy of watching a band crawl, walk, run and hit the air soaring. Halcyon Digest is simply their most assured album and a testament to Deerhunter's dogged pursuit of exploration, details, clarity and perfection in their music.

Read the original 2010 ADA piece on Halcyon Digest

Spotify | YouTube | Buy Halcyon Digest on 4AD Records

Best Albums of the 2010s: #5

Pile - A Hairshirt of Purpose (2017)

Also released in the 2010s: Magic Isn’t Real (2010), Dripping (2012), You’re Better Than This (2015), Odds and Ends (2018), Green and Gray (2019)

In cities with lively scenes, one band often ends up representing a specific subgenre to both insiders and outsiders. Pile has been the source of Boston’s indie rock pride for the past decade—not unlike the way Mudhoney was the beating heart of pre-Nevermind DIY Seattle. The quartet’s more crowd-pleasing songs, like “Don’t Touch Anything” and “Baby Boy,” have become occasions for joyous basement singalongs across the country, for crowds to recognize a shared love. No longer content with this endless cycle of writing and touring, Pile’s principal songwriter Rick Maguire left the comfortable cosmopolitan environs of the East Coast last year to spend time in rural Appalachia. The result of this creative respite and reflection is A Hairshirt of Purpose, an album weighted heavily by Maguire’s bucolic surroundings and his self-imposed solitude.

Historically, Pile’s LPs have never had much of a central theme. But on Hairshirt, the thirteen tracks are connected by a clear thread of consternation. “Leaning on a Wheel” displays a prickly restlessness in its flirtation with Americana and acrimony. “So play in traffic/ Have a kid/ And may every good deed be in self-interest” is a statement charged with resentment. Leading with cutthroat strings under percussionist Kris Kuss’s simmering drumroll, “Rope’s Length” evokes an unsettling disconnect. When we reach the chorus “But I want it at rope’s length/ If I’m not being used”, the song’s protagonist is already proverbially lost at sea. Pile have always been masters of askew chord progressions, and on Hairshirt, these riffs pair with lyrical brooding to add an extra layer of tension.

The sense of chagrin that’s woven into Hairshirt goes beyond bellowing and bombast. “Making Eyes,” with its reluctant piano and lumbering tempo, contributes to the song’s theme of cloistered paranoia. As expected, Pile still manage to get in some bruisers like “Texas” that take the reins off of the rhythm section and let dual guitars tangle for some raucous jousting. Bitter sentiment and churning cadence merge on “Dogs,” a pitter-patting of tender chords steadily swelling into an orchestral thunderstorm. Mustering all his spite, Maguire finally cuts loose: “Then I pretend to sleep alone/ I’d rather on the ground than in your bed/ I’ll sleep on the lawn or stay up instead.” For a band that has been so closely tied to its homebase, A Hairshirt of Purpose is a powerful album driven by anxiety and separation.

Read the 2017 ADA piece on A Hairshirt of Purpose

Spotify | YouTube | Buy A Hairshirt of Purpose on Bandcamp via Exploding in Sound

Best Albums of the 2010s: #6

Girl Band - Holding Hands with Jamie (2015)

Also released in the 2010s: France 98 EP (2012), The Early Years EP (2015), The Talkies (2019)

For the vast majority of it, music is primarily a conduit for emotion and deals it like an elicit drug. Joy, sadness, love, anger, disappointment and togetherness are pop’s leading narcotics. Whatever the feeling being expressed, the song gets covered by a protective coating of melody, structure and tempo, allowing it to be easily digested so it can coarse through your veins for its medicating effect. When all of pop music’s adornments and arrangements get stripped away, then that once palatable melody becomes cacophony and innocent emotions are now raw and exposed. The resulting pill is now bitter, but the effects are now heightened, varied, and pure. This description holds true for the first listen to the opening track on Holding Hands With Jaime.

The debut album from Ireland’s Girl Band begins with “Umbongo”, a harsh reality in contrast to the sugary fruit drink once popular in the United Kingdom. Two minutes of tempestuous clatter suddenly lurches to a halt as the stripped naked vocals of Dara Kiely take over the room. Croaking about pigeons, surgeons, and cannibalism, the winds whip again into a frenzy as any semblance of a traditional “song” are now rubble. Placing this noise-laden track first is a pointed statement to the naive patron of Jamie that coos “Take me on, I fucking dare you”. Only the most intrepid who passed this obvious test will soldier onto the next campaign.

Throughout the album’s entirety, the table is now set for some seriously insane rants. Kiely’s voice cracks and wavers with a blatant disregard for pitch as he spits out statements as if they burnt the roof of his mouth. “I don’t know what she wants” is pleaded on “Pears For Lunch”, ringing with the frustration of someone in crisis. The lyrics are his purge of that internal bile that builds up inside of his soul. It is the lack of filter on those words that make Girl Band even more reckless. “I can eat your pears for lunch.” Why? How? What? Overthinking this will surely be fruitless.

The discord that Girl Band trades in coupled with the maniacal lyrics is a conjugal match made in purgatory. The guitar work for the duration of the album is as galvanizing as it is tortuous. Nothing is ever easy for more than a few moments as the resonance of sandpaper and saw blades seem to be the overarching source of inspiration. As an example, the performance on “Fucking Butter” is like a whirring fan blade with no relief in sight, until the machinery gives way to a sudden dub bassline at the halfway point of the track. It is this kind of audacity that places Girl Band at that razor thin intersection of order and chaos.

If a gateway is what you seek, check out the album centerpiece in “Paul” as well as its tellingly disturbed video. The sparse bass and primitive beats rumble underneath what is best described as a distant bellow from the cellar. Then guitar rips and vocals tense, and the intensity rises and ready for an impact. If an immediate car crash were stretched over time, it would sound like the final unstable four minutes of “Paul”. The unadulterated emotions conveyed on Holding Hands With Jamie is something you cannot obtain from all of the typical external layers of production, technique, and harmony. It is an extraordinary event, needing to be experienced rather than enjoyed and ingested rather than heard.

Read the 2015 ADA piece on Holding Hands with Jamie

Spotify | YouTube | Buy Holding Hands with Jamie on Rough Trade

Best Albums of the 2010s: #7 (Tie)

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Push the Sky Away (2013), Skeleton Tree (2016), Ghosteen (2019)

Nick Cave lost his son to suicide in 2015, and from his emotional devastation grew personal introspection, explorative concepts in his live performances, and some of the most important music from his 40 year career. The three albums by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds from the 2010s play like an epic trilogy, a protracted biography where we now are premonitory observers knowing the inevitable. The first LP Push the Sky Away is free of judgement and emotional encumbrance, as Cave spins his classic yarns of depravity while creating some of his grandest compositions. The next work is Skeleton Tree where his son’s untimely death is predicted in the first lyric. Each track takes a measure of weight on Cave to sort through the psychological wreckage from an instantaneous loss. The final album is birthed from Cave’s trauma and his Red Hand Files, a website and solo tour dedicated to Cave answering questions from his fans. Ghosteen has scant production with no percussion, with only elegiac synths and heavy vocals that glow with a faintly pulsing luminance. It is hard to predict what direction he will go next, but the next decade of music from Nick Cave will surely be as inspired and candid as ever.

Read the ADA pieces on Push the Sky Away and Skeleton Tree

Spotify | YouTube | Buy Nick Cave albums

Best Albums of the 2010s: #8

Destroyer - Kaputt (2011)

Also released in the 2010s: Five Spanish Songs EP (2013), Poison Season (2015), ken (2017)

Dan Bejar began his Destroyer as a solo moniker in 1995, slowly building a band around his distinct vocal style and unconventional lyrics. Also notably working within other Canadian collaboratives such as Swan Lake and The New Pornographers, Destroyer caught a foothold in the early 2000s indie music scene with his 70s retro-embracing effects. It wasn’t until 2011 until all pieces locked perfectly for Bejar on Kaputt. Moving from his glam rock and high drama flourishes, he turns to New Romantic influences replete with soft rock beats and horns that yearn for the salty breeze off an luxury yacht. Where Destroyer’s music once had jutting corners, a glossy production has buffed those down to the smoothest groove. Bejar’s stories of excess hover over this opulent mix, his spun lyrics about women, drugs, and feckless observations by a Bonfire of the Vanities persona, detached and unbothered. Destroyer’s subsequent recordings, while deviating back into those Bowiesque influences, still sport that rounded sound and lush instrumentation first explored on Kaputt.

Spotify | YouTube | Buy Kaputt on Bandcamp via Merge Records

Best Albums of the 2010s: #9

My Bloody Valentine - m b v (2013)

It took 22 years for the oft-delayed, over-promised, eventual followup to Loveless, but Kevin Shields finally finished the damn deal. The album title (and accompanying artwork) seem like a hasty afterthought, but the music contained on m b v is a considerable listen, as if each layer of effect and instrument added a noticeable weight in your ears. The nine tracks are amorphous yet immediate, broken into a triad that exhibits the band’s notable strengths. The first three songs are most familiar to their fans, so reminiscent of their earlier work that they could be outtakes from early 90s recording sessions. The second third is a gauzy, mystical affair fronted by Bilinda Butcher’s hushed breaths, with “new you” filling the role as the candy-centered lead single. The final trio of tracks exposes My Bloody Valentine’s experimental facet, a relentless aural assault revealing the raw power the band can wield at any moment. At this tempo of output, My Bloody Valentine may not release another album after m b v. This thick, engulfing nebula of sound is still an intense and satisfying work no matter the outlook, leaving devotees pondering and anticipating the next what and when.