Broken Drums

“That’s Us/Wild Combination” is a love song. It’s a lovingly framed snapshot of something intangible, something that appears at first to be a specific experience, but dissolves layer by layer. First a specific time and place, then a yearning, then an idea. 

(If any of my followers are still alive)

This blog’s been collecting cobwebs for over two months now, and to be perfectly honest I don’t know what to do with it. I’ll never delete it. Honestly, whenever Tumblr goes dormant, when we’re all old and grey-haired with grandkids, they’ll have to pry this thing from my cold dead hands. I’ll never stop writing, but I’m at a loss as to what format I’ll continue writing in. 

Kendrick Lamar- untitled unmastered. 

If you’re a fan of music, or even if you simply need something to make you smile, you should watch the album reactions of YouTube user BIGQUINT INDEED. My personal favorite of his is his reaction to both his and my favorite album of 2015, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. When I first heard To Pimp a Butterfly, my reaction was far more muted, both because my relative lack of familiarity with hip-hop prevented me from seeing what an earthshaking masterpiece it was, and because of how intimidating it was. It took the better part of 2015 for it to fully sink in, but as the year went on, it became clear to me almost immediately why To Pimp a Butterfly had no parallel for me. Night after night this past fall semester, I’d lay in my bed in my shabby dorm, listening to it into the early hours, trying in vain to wrap my head around its innumerable, immaculately structured layers. Next time, I would always think to myself during these private late-night listening sessions. Next time Kendrick puts something out, I’ll be as excited as Big Quint, running and jumping around my room in ecstasy while a new set of vignettes from Lamar flowed for the first time around me. 

When I woke up to the news a few days ago that, overnight, Lamar had dropped his fourth album, a sort of compilation of the unreleased, untitled tracks he had been performing on various late-night shows for over a year now, I realized that next time had come far sooner than I had hoped, or imagined. But my first listen to untitled unmastered. didn’t have me bouncing off the walls. Why isn’t this altering my life as I listen to it??? I kept wondering to myself while digesting its fits, starts and quirks. I had forgotten, of course, the slow-to-develop nature of Kendrick Lamar’s work. Like its three predecessors, untitled unmastered. was slow to seep its way into my head. But it was on the couple of days this week where I didn’t get the chance to listen to it that I felt myself thinking about it the most. It was a little bass line, or a specific observation, depending on the time of day. But linger it did, and by my fifth and sixth listens, I found myself checking to see if my ground floor blinds were in fact shut, so no one could observe me making an idiot out of myself to “untitled 05.”

You don’t have to hear Lamar spit “I made To Pimp a Butterfly for you” on the fierce “untitled 01″ to know that untitled unmastered. is that record’s companion piece. But where Butterfly may have stretched out, untitled contracts. Where Lamar spends much of the former looking for answers, he seems content, for the moment, on the latter. But the main ingredients are still there: the way Lamar can glaze effortlessly - in any cadence or voice - over any rhythm that gets tossed his way, the anarchic funk/jazz/fire-and-brimstone gospel stew of musical influences and Lamar’s ever-changing, always-passionate inflection. His presence alone is a force of nature, morphing “untitled 06,″ a brisk, bright demo made by CeeLo Green, Adrian Younge and A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad, into a surreal, perfectly lyrical near-love song. He waits more than two minutes to appear in the jazzy meltdown of “untitled 05,” taking what was a blissful groove and shifting it into the pounding heartbeat of a man consumed by paranoia and confusion. 

Lucy Dacus- “Map on a Wall”

If I may confess to something, it’s that, when listening to music for pleasure (not to write about it,) I skip between songs constantly. Though I know most of my music-loving friends do this, it’s at a point with me where I rarely find myself listening to songs in their entirety before feeling the need to dive into something else. This has led to plenty of awkward situations where one of my friends will be talking to me about a song we both love, and they'll describe a prominent section or lyric which I’d have entirely forgotten about, simply because I never get to it on my own before my attention wavers. Similarly, unless I make a concerted effort to sit down and listen to an album in its entirety, I sometimes give new artists a pitiful amount of time (think, ya know, half a song) before deciding whether or not I should pursue them further.

Animal Collective- Painting With 

I’ve been so out of it lately that until the day before it came out, I completely forgot that Animal Collective had a new record. It’s interesting to note what they’ve both regained and lost in the three and a half years since Centipede Hz, a record that still sounds as confrontational and reactionary to me today as it did the day I first heard it. Even though I felt that the endless, impenetrable layers that defined Centipede Hz intentionally shied away from the group’s greatest strength - their ability to morph basic pop songs into kaleidoscopic, unrecognizable vehicles of intense self-discovery - it was a work that could only be seen, and analyzed from their own, unique lens. Yes, it wasn’t nearly as good as anything from their unbelievable 2003-2009 run, but it still existed - like everything in their discography - on a plane without recognizable boundaries. 

Painting With is the first Animal Collective record that feels...normal. Its 12 brief, sunny songs are an expectedly zippy bunch, with the group thankfully letting some of their pop instincts emerge from hibernation. But the re-emergent hooks and idealism of songs like “FloriDada” (”I found myself there a collagin’/With all of the human race”) disguise how compressed this record feels. Avey Tare and Panda Bear’s vocals ping pong against one another constantly, almost as if they’re colliding in their efforts to escape the box they’ve been placed in. Though nearly identical effects peppered “Boys Latin,” a radiant single from Panda Bear’s brilliant 2015 solo offering, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, on that track those effects served to give us a clear insight into Noah Lennox’s indecisiveness immediately before he declares “dark clouds descended again.” 

The doors to the kind of blissful, jaw-dropping sonic explorations that used to dot Animal Collective’s records are constantly cracked open, only to be slammed shut just when you start to get a glimpse of what’s on the other side. “Spilling Guts,” the album’s most immediate, catchy and instantly lovable song, cuts itself off after less than two minutes. The jittery, over-excitable rhythms, guitars and synths of “Bagels in Kiev” don’t do justice to Avey Tare’s powerful memories of listening to his grandfather’s stories of growing up in the Ukraine. “Golden Gal,” the Golden Girls-sampling spiritual successor to “My Girls,” is filled with warm, heartfelt messages of love, gratitude and admiration of the women in the band member’s lives, but feels cozy and domesticated next to the breathtaking intimacy of “My Girls.”

(for the love of God, someone make me write. Please.)

1: Top 10 favorite songs of all time

2: Top 10 favorite songs at the moment

3: Top 5 albums of all time

4: Top 5 albums at the moment

5: Top 10 favorite bands of all time

6: Top 10 favorite bands at the moment

7: Top 5 favorite male vocalists

8: Top 5 favorite female vocalists

9: Top 3 genres

10: 3 songs that make you happy

11: 3 songs that make you sad

12: 3 songs that make you nostalgic

13: 3 songs that make you energetic

14: 3 songs that make you calm

15: 1st song you remember falling in love with

16: 2 songs that hold meaning for you

17: 1st band you remember being a fan of

18: 1st vocalist (M or F) you remember being a fan of

19: A song you hate

20: A band/artist you used to love and are now embarrassed about

21: Oldest record you own

22: Newest record you own

23: How often do you buy music (irl)?

24: Least favored genre of music

25: Name one American band/artist you like

26: Name one English band/artist you like

27: Name one band/artist you like of which nationality is neither American or English

28: Favorite soundtrack

29: A song that reminds you of a loved one

30: A song that best describes you

31: A song you'd like to marry on

32: A song you'd prefer for your funeral

33: Most unknown song you like

34: Most unknown band/artist you like

35: Favorite vocalist

36: Favorite guitarist

37: Favorite bassist

38: Favorite drummer

39: The toughest band/artist you like

40: The softest band/artist you like

41: Top 5 songs of which lyrics you like

42: Top 3 instrumental songs

43: Ever kissed on a song? If yes, which one?

44: Ever had sex on a song? If yes, which one?

45: Ever cried on a song? If yes, which one?

46: A song you can't take seriously

47: Which bands/artist were mostly played during your childhood (by your parents?)?

48: How important is music to you?

49: Would you like to be a part of the music industry?

50: Something you like and something you despise in music these days

51: Do you listen to old music? If so, 5 favorite bands/artist

52: Do you own any band merchandise? If so, what and of which bands?

53: Do you have tattoos related to bands/artists?

54: Which bands/artists have you seen LIVE?

55: Best performance you've ever been to?

56: Tell me something, anything, personal about you and a song/band/album

57: Is your music taste famliar to your best friend's? If no, what do they listen to?

58: Do you judge people based on their music preferences?

59: Bands/artists you still wish to see LIVE?

I don’t think, in the past five years, I’ve gone this long without writing about music in some way and putting it on here. But over the past three weeks or so, I’ve struggled to find anything to substantiative to say about what little new music I’ve actually listened to. I actually started to write a grand dissertation a week or so ago about how I’m going to change Broken Drums into a blog that operates more like that of a couple of my Music Writers Collective comrades, but couldn’t find the nerve to actually pull the trigger on the piece, and trashed it entirely. 

Julia Brown- An Abundance of Strawberries   8.2

My relationship with Julia Brown and their first EP, To Be Close To You, was indicative of an incredibly specific time and space in my life. It came out when I was 17, and was available only through Bandcamp. Listening to it and glancing at its cover, even at that age, brought forth a wave of nostalgia. Its ultra lo-fi sound - complete with ample tape hiss and audible conversations - hand-drawn artwork, and coy liner notes (which only contain the words “recorded at various peoples houses over a long period of time”) reminded me of my first DIY punk shows, where I’d pick up similarly humble and vague hand-constructed EPs from bands that I loved. 

The EP itself, for the brief time it had me it under its spell, dazzled me. Clocking in at well under 20 minutes, its gorgeously distant harmonies and themes of suburban romance and fantasy represented the best of a world that I had yet to escape. On top of it all, when I wrote about the EP on this very blog, the band themselves reblogged it and praised my words, the first band to have ever done so. But as the high school window of my life began to close, so did the window through which I enjoyed To Be Close To You. With college, and the maturity and adulthood that I assumed would just show up with my arrival there, the EP, and the youthful, rose-colored glasses through which I felt like it saw the world, quickly faded from my mind. 

Ironically, my rediscovery of To Be Close To You came only a couple of weeks ago, and was the result of what was essentially a cleaning-out-the-closet scenario. In an attempt to transfer my entire iTunes library from one laptop to the other, I came across the EP for the first time in years. Stuck at home for a couple of weeks while I prepared (or, more honestly, procrastinated in preparing for) my upcoming semester in Scotland, To Be Close To You suddenly seemed warm and inviting again. Lost within a giant haze of anxiety surrounding the imminent trip, I found solace in the blurry beauty of songs like “How I Spent My Summer.” When Sam Ray, with all of those grainy but note-perfect harmonies around him, sang “taking valium/the first snow of the year,” as I wandered around my post-apocalyptically deserted hometown on the evening of New Year’s Day, I finally was able to see that Ray actually didn’t have any rose-colored glasses on. The anxieties of love, and the anxieties of every day life - the ones I was too immature to see at 17 - bubble beneath the idyllic, family-video like sounds of To Be Close To You, making me appreciate the craft of Sam Ray’s songs far more than I did originally. 

More than anything though, I wondered what on Earth may have happened to Julia Brown. Like so many of my DIY indie/punk teenage favorites, they seemed to simply evaporate into thin air, leaving only years-old Bandcamp pages as evidence that their magic ever existed. And yet, just a week after this rediscovery, I got wind of the re-release of a full-length Julia Brown album that I hadn’t even been aware of in the first place. An Abundance of Strawberries was meant to be Julia Brown’s first big release, but the band dissolved before the album could be made. Rather than starting anew, Ray decided to scrape together whoever he could find to make An Abundance of Strawberries, Julia Brown’s first and, sadly, only full-length. Ray released the album for free via e-mail and Dropbox in the summer of 2014, but now it is finally getting a proper release via Joy Void Recordings. 

An Abundance of Strawberries is a wondrous thing really, an album that will immediately be warm and familiar to those who embraced To Be Close To You, but a unique animal for those who’ve never heard Ray’s music before. For one thing, it’s ambition and scope is far greater than that of the EP that proceeded it. Though organic percussion maintains a healthy presence, scattershot drum machines dominate “Snow Day” and “You Can Always Hear Birds.” “The Body Descends” is an epic piano ballad conducted on an Arcade Fire/Radiohead size scale. The opening, title track begins as a straightforward acoustic strummer, but picks up into a full-band, ramshackle jam by its conclusion. 

But none of this distracts too much from Ray’s obvious songwriting gifts. “Possession (full)” aches with drama, stringing it out evenly over its devastating melody. The tune of “Closing (On a Roof)” works perfectly with the delicate strings that shyly operate behind Ray’s evocative vocals. The production provides more clarity than what was given to To Be Close To You, but retains the fantastical air that enveloped that EP. To use the cleaning-out-the-attic metaphor again, An Abundance of Strawberries often feels like opening up an old photo album. What you’ll find might surprise or amaze you, or make you cringe or ache a little. But the feeling of experiencing it will undoubtedly stick with you in some way. Though it’s a shame that this album almost certainly marks the end of Julia Brown as an entity, I can’t help but feel like Sam Ray can create music this evocative and special under more than one guise. 

Pusha T- King Push - Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude   7.8

I’ve always felt that some of the more legendary guest verses on Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, namely Nicki Minaj’s “Monster” verse and Rick Ross’ surreal, sagely takeover of “Devil In A New Dress,” have served to obscure one of the album’s climactic moments. This moment in question is Pusha T’s brief appearance on the album’s centerpiece, the still-unimpeachable “Runaway.” “Runaway” is Twisted Fantasy‘s emotional canyon, an impossibly grandiose, surreal opera of self-hatred and remorse. But in the midst of this all-encompassing hurricane, one that West operates like a ventriloquist, Pusha T appears as the eye of the storm. As always, his presence is a terse one; sneering, focused and menacing, whereas West is busy theatrically cleaning up messes of his own making. While West tears himself down in one final plea (”why can’t we just run away,?”) Pusha is unapologetic (”Now pick your next move, you could leave or live with it.”) 

And, in a word, “unapologetic” describes Pusha T’s presence as a lyricist. He’s proud of his wealth and the respect he has gained with age (Kanye recently named him President of his G.O.O.D. Music label,) but his boasts are less about what he has than how he got it, and, more importantly, how he’s maintained it. On “Untouchable,” the lead single from King Push - Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude, he separates himself (“I’m aiming for the moguls”) from the pack, while chiding those who merely “aim for the locals.” He crows of his lofty ambitions (”I drops every Blue Moon/to separate myself from you kings of the YouTube/I am more U2, I am like Bono with the Edge,”) but does so in the most brutally efficient way possible. In a manner that perfectly reflects his new position as the president of an incredibly successful label, Pusha cuts out any and all fat from his verses, making his point in the most linear way. He even outsources “Untouchable”’s hook to his hero, Biggie himself. But despite all of these efficiency measures, Pusha always manages to leave room for delectably fierce wordplay (”In Mexico, fuck Donald and his pledge.”) 

Elsewhere, Darkest Before Dawn shines the most when it’s wound the tightest. “Crutches, Crosses, Caskets” clocks in at less than two and a half minutes, and has nothing resembling a chorus or hook, but features three of the album’s most smooth verses. Thumbing his nose at what he sees as the selfishness in some younger rappers, Pusha demands “is there shame when a platinum rapper’s mother lives in squalor?”, contrasting the scenario with his own mother, who he says is “In the Bahamas for the month/she’s probably sitting in her pajamas having lunch.” 

Pusha’s compact, almost minimalist style has always been the perfect stepping stone for any variety of beats, and on Darkest Before Dawn, the choices, and the results, are plentiful and wide-ranging. “Got Em Covered” is an oddity, with (what sounds like) a creeping guitar loop that’s surrounded by any number of off-kilter contributions from various bits of seemingly homemade percussion. Meanwhile, West makes his only appearance on the album to construct its centerpiece, “M.P.A.” And, while the Pusha/Kanye tandem has produced remarkable results for both artists in the past, “M.P.A.” is decidedly underwhelming in that regard. Though West’s taste for samples is, as always, impeccable, the backdrop he provides for “M.P.A.” is unusually stale. The single piano loop, three-note guitar riff and basic percussion grow stale fairly quickly, and dig a hole that Pusha struggles to dig himself out of. 

But, Pusha T is nothing if not a fighter, and he largely waits until the final act of Darkest Before Dawn to deliver his strongest material. Timbaland gives Pusha a formidable, constantly mutating beast of a beat on the hard-hitting “Retribution,” while Q-Tip provides a distorted, bare-bones breakbeat for the wonderfully eccentric penultimate track, “F.I.F.A.” But Darkest Before Dawn is, above everything, meant to be a prelude to the eagerly anticipated King Push, which is tentatively scheduled to drop in April. And, as a prelude should, Darkest Before Dawn leaves us on a bit of a cliffhanger. “Sunshine,” which features soulful incantations from Jill Scott, is both the album’s finest moment, and its most drastic shift in direction and tone. After spending the previous nine tracks smugly looking down, Pusha dramatically changes gears to address police violence and institutional oppression in America. He opens the song with the line “America, you need a miracle,” his voice having lost all of its previous confidence and snarl. Sounding unusually defeated, he says “these ain’t new problems, they just old ways,” ending the first verse with “Still a target, but the badge is the new noose/Yeah, we all see it, but cellphones ain’t enough proof/So we still lose.” 

The beat around Pusha and Jill Scott is apocalyptic, and simmers with unexplored tension and anger. As to what prompted this change in topic, Pusha simply says “I can’t turn the other cheek.” It’s a sobering, bleak conclusion for an album that could never be, in anyone’s right mind, be mistaken for pop-rap. But the song has a tenor of unfinished business, an intro to something bigger. And if “Sunshine,” or any of the back three tracks of Darkest Before Dawn, serves as any indicator of what we’re in for this spring with King Push, there’s a reason to expect very big things. 

David Bowie- Blackstar 

What follows is the incomplete review of Blackstar that I had been writing in the days before David Bowie’s death late Sunday night. I’ve omitted the score out of respect, and because I’m starting to get sick of giving stuff numerical ratings, though that’s a conversation for another day. There is a post-script at the end, because trying to finish this piece by pretending to be unaware of his shocking death would be an entirely pointless exercise. Originally, I wanted to abandon these words, in light of how devastated I was by the passing of one of my greatest heroes and influences, but for some reason, I really feel the need to put my original feelings on Blackstar out there, rather than stowing them away. Enjoy!

The majority of the world first came to know David Bowie as the “Starman.” In 1972, he was a doe-eyed, flamboyantly dressed pop star who sang of the cosmos and characters doomed by their desire to fly too close to the sun. But, over the next four decades he would evolve into, among other things, the cocaine-addled, genre-blurring Thin White Duke, a master in exile in Berlin and, most improbably, a bona-fide, blockbuster pop star in the mid-1980′s. While he didn’t strike gold with each sea change in image and sound, he consistently traversed more ground between each album than many artists do over their entire careers.

His legacy and extraordinary discography sealed forever, there was no need for Bowie to re-emerge from the decade-long artistic hiatus that had begun in 2003. And yet, seemingly out of nowhere, he gifted us with The Next Day in 2013. While far from flawless, Bowie’s first album in a decade was a sharp, clear re-awakening. About as straightforward a “rock” record as he had made in some years, its muscly production was countered with an equally prominent sense of minimalism. Bowie’s world-weary lyrics, and beautifully weathered vocals were shrouded in little but punchy riffs, power-pop drums and grooves that often veered towards the legions of early-oughts dance-punk bands that Bowie himself so inspired. Though even its cover went so far as to poke fun at the famous artwork for Heroes, The Next Day wasn’t self-referential to the point of exhaustion. It seemingly existed for the sole purpose of re-establishing Bowie as a creative force that hadn’t lost his edge with age, something that it executed fairly easily.

Having proved himself as a vital artist in his mid-60′s, there was, again, nothing left for Bowie to prove to the world, which is exactly what makes his 27th studio album, Blackstar, so astonishing. First, there were the rumors about what the album sounded like, with a “Bowie insider” claiming the record contained Gregorian chants, a soul section and backing from a jazz group. Considering Bowie’s cultural status as a punchline for all things crazy, it was easy to chuckle and think “of course that’s what’s in the new Bowie record.” But those chuckles faded as soon as Bowie revealed the album’s opening, 10-minute title track in November. A three-part, avant-garde monstrosity of skittering beats, gothic strings and free-jazz saxophones, complete with one of the most terrifying music videos ever made, “Blackstar” may very well be the most confrontational work in Bowie’s half-century long career. But, like the rest of the album it opens, once you get over the shock value (and it takes a long time,) and begin to at least try to figure out where the elegantly bizarre arrangements are going, the quiet mastery within is undeniable.

Buried far underneath the unsettling saxophone squeals, Bowie’s chilling lyrics, the horror-movie strings  and the dread that clouds the entire piece is an honest-to-god pop song. Though the lyrics are straight out of a European Dark Ages tragedy (”In the villa of Ormen/stands a solitary candle,” ”On the day of execution/only women kneel and smile,”) Bowie injects them with an operatic, almost religious sense of occasion. He offers very few clues as to what exactly is happening in this scenario, but, just from the song’s ever-creeping march into the unknown, you can probably ascertain that it is quite disturbing. But Bowie, ever the actor, is completely in character, doing his best to make this apparent execution seem like a joyous, entirely necessary affair. He croons the song’s opaque lyrics with the delicacy of a nighttime lullaby, losing none of his disturbing charisma while doing so. In the song’s bizarro lounge-jazz middle section, Bowie boldly declares his most radical artistic reinvention, singing “I’m not a popstar/I’m a blackstar.” By the time the piece finally slithers back into whatever terrifying abyss it was created in, it’s easy to feel equally stunned and clueless. For Bowie, “Blackstar” marks the beginning of yet another, wholesale transformation. For the listener, it offers few ideas of what to expect from the following half an hour of music.

Blackstar’s (the album’s official name is actually the black star that adorns its cover, but it’s a nightmare to copy and paste effectively) sense of dark theatricality by no means evaporates with the title track. “’Tis a Pity She Was Whore” takes its name from an early 17th century John Ford tragedy of the same name that has historically met with incredible amounts of controversy due to its subject matter (an incestuous relationship between siblings). Bowie effortlessly rides the song’s up-tempo groove, wrangling pop hooks out of a song dominated by atonal saxophone bleating and a relentless bass line. “Lazarus” is a pure slice of neo-noir imagery, with distorted, slow-motion James Bond guitars and mournful, regretful saxophones that etch the song’s melody permanently into your head.

Considering just how strange Blackstar is, it’s a testament to how firm Bowie’s vision is that the album doesn’t feel remotely in the weeds until its fourth track. “Sue (Or In a Season of Crime),” a maniacal piece of industrial/krautrock/free-jazz fusion, feels far less fleshed out than the tracks it shares space with, while “Girl Loves Me” feels overlong at five minutes (though I could listen to Bowie sneer “where the fuck did Monday go?” all day.) Things pick up again quickly though, with the superb ballad “Dollar Days.” Possibly the least nostalgic look back in rock history, the song finds Bowie looking deep into past, and, rather than longing for those days, concluding that he simply gives no fucks anymore. “If I never see the English evergreens I’m running to/It’s nothing to me/It’s nothing to see,” he sings, brushing aside the temptation to write the “yay the 60′s!” song typical of many artists of his age and stature.

Even I didn’t know how much Bowie’s music meant to me until I realized his otherworldly presence had departed this world in favor of another. In the minutes after reading the news of his death, I turned on “Drive-In Saturday,” a criminally underrated masterpiece of his that remained sturdy through even the most tumultuous periods of my life, and completely lost it. Why him? I wondered. Why the artist who, even in his final days, could see so far ahead of the rest of us? But it was then that I saw the true beauty of Blackstar. Only Bowie would hide a terminal diagnosis from the world, while crafting one final, inexplicable masterpiece. Blackstar, as the album’s producer Tony Visconti put it, is “his parting gift.” I’m sad that I didn’t appreciate Bowie’s vision, a true wormhole into god knows what universe or future, more while he visited Earth, but am continually amazed by this record, his extraordinary swan song. If only we could all check out in such a graceful, perfect and dignified way. 

I’ve spent the last three days listening to, and writing a review of David Bowie’s Blackstar. I was going to post it today actually. I was ready to expound upon what a masterpiece it was, and how it marked yet another brilliant, astonishing re-invention for one of music’s greats. Finishing it was going to be the first thing I did when I woke up this morning. And instead, the first thing I saw when I woke up this morning was the news that David Bowie had passed away peacefully after an 18-month battle with cancer. 

I don’t think I could ever write a set of paragraphs that could fully explain Bowie’s impact on culture and music, something that could explain just how ahead of his time the man always was. Like Lou Reed before him, he was one of my heroes, someone who remained artistically defiant towards the end, and whose music was always as much of an enigma as the person who created it. 

For someone who so consistently transformed, so consistently shed all his skin only to put on another amazing act, it’s impossible to think of one song that would define him. But the first song I thought of was Blackstar’s “Dollar Days.” I was just writing about it last night, talking about how un-nostalgic a look back it is. One of the great ballads of his career, the song finds him singing “If I never see the English evergreens I’m running to/It’s nothing to me/It’s nothing to see.” When I was writing about it last night, I found delight in the fact that Bowie, at his age and status, was resisting the urge to shed a falsely positive light on his origins. I thought that those lyrics were a summary of how Bowie, at this stage in the game, simply gave no fucks. 

Now I see that I was actually right. Bowie didn’t want to tell the world he had terminal cancer because he wanted us to remember him as he was in life: unapologetic, and always looking forward. Blackstar is a record that pushed musical boundaries I didn’t know existed, one that finds Bowie, in his final days, exploring uncharted musical waters. It’s a staggering final act, but a fitting one. Blackstar serves to remind me, and should remind all of us, of the full magnitude of today’s loss. He was pop’s ultimate chameleon: the man who could release one of the most experimental albums of his career, and do a Christmas duet with Bing Crosby within months of each other. There has never been a figure in pop music and pop culture quite like him, nor will there ever be anyone like him again. 

In a few days, I’m heading to Glasgow, Scotland, where I’m spending the next five months as an exchange student at the University of Glasgow. Through all of the frenzied preparation and hastily arranged gatherings with my friends, I’ve found neither the motivation nor inspiration to say anything new about my 15 favorite albums of the year. I’m disappointed in myself, but I won’t throw a bunch of paragraphs on here simply for the sake of doing so. So here are my 15 favorite albums of the year, with links to my original reviews of each album. My thoughts on almost every single one of them have changed drastically since, and I cringe at words that seem short-sighted to me now. But I’ve always found that my original takes on something contain astute, in-the-moment observations that I can’t duplicate later. 

But, this list isn’t entirely free of new writing. There are a couple of records I did want to discuss. One of them is And The Kids’ Turn To Each Other, which I never actually reviewed, and the other is Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly. I felt the need to discuss why I placed the record where I did, and to explain why my doing so isn't an act of bandwagon-jumping. Enjoy, thanks for reading everything I wrote in 2015, and happy 2016!

15. Jessica Pratt- On Your Own Love Again

14. Beach House- Thank Your Lucky Stars

13. Quarterbacks- Quarterbacks

12. The World is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die- Harmlessness

11. D’Angelo & the Vanguard- Black Messiah

10. Deerhunter- Fading Frontier

9. Carly Rae Jepsen- E.MO.TION

8. Panda Bear- Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper

7. And The Kids- Turn To Each Other

When I first saw And The Kids live, at a tiny Unitarian church in downtown Amherst, MA, I had one of those ridiculous “I’ve seen the future of rock ‘n’ roll and his name is Bruce Springsteen” moments. Though Turn To Each Other doesn’t entirely replicate the cathartic explosiveness that is an And The Kids show, it comes pretty damn close. A powerful, volatile, yet deeply accessible and melodic punk record, Turn To Each Other really does sound like the blinding future of rock music when you listen to it. Speedy Ortiz has already paved the way from the Pioneer Valley to national recognition, and with Turn To Each Other, I can’t imagine And The Kids not following the same path, if not going much farther. 

 6. Sufjan Stevens- Carrie & Lowell

5. Courtney Barnett- Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit

4. Blur- The Magic Whip

3. Beach House- Depression Cherry

2. Jamie xx- In Colour

1. Kendrick Lamar- To Pimp a Butterfly 

I know that To Pimp a Butterfly is the most un-original choice for album of the year in 2015. Many have sneered at its dominance of lists like these, saying that everyone who has it at number 1 is just a bandwagon-jumper, or feels that it has to top their list. For me, To Pimp a Butterfly was an album that constantly evolved. I would lay in bed in the early hours of the morning night after night, trying to take in every beat, every astonishing verse, every nuance of this flawed, but deeply human behemoth. And it blew me away every fucking time. 

Over the past few days, every time I’ve sat down to write out the rest of my “Top Albums” list, I’ve come up empty. I’ve written so many reviews and blurbs about my favorite albums and songs of the year that trying to come up with something new and profound, some new light to shed on them that I haven’t already talked about, has felt like pulling teeth. I’ve always said to myself that when this blog begins to feel like a chore, I’d stop myself before I came to resent it. So over the past few days I’ve sort of resigned myself to the fact that I may leave this year hanging, and open-ended. 

But then Radiohead, my sleeping giant, my giant cliché, of an all-time favorite band, chose today of all days to break their four-year silence. Though their discography is practically embedded into my soul at this point, I’ve felt a growing distance from their music lately. Recently, when I made an hour-plus mixtape for a friend featuring little but all-time favorites, I completely forgot about the Oxford quintet. The band’s last album, The King of Limbs, Atoms for Peace’s 2013 record, Amok and Thom Yorke’s 2014 solo album, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes made me feel for the first time like Yorke was beginning to repeat himself, nestling into a comfort zone where he could stay strong, without necessarily exciting our ears anymore. The skittering percussion, woozy synths and Afro-beat influences all began to grow a bit old, and for the first time, slightly predictable. 

“Spectre,” a rejected theme song for the James Bond film of the same name, grabs you from its first note. Yorke’s ominous piano chords crack like thunder, while Greenwood’s stunning orchestral arrangements bring the requisite Bond drama and elegance, with Radiohead’s otherworldly heft. Phillip Selway is at his jazzy best behind the drums, while Colin Greenwood remains forever the quiet, but integral pulse. One of my favorite sensations in music is hearing something and thinking “man I forgot how much I loved this.” This past week or so, I’ve completely lacked the sort of spark I need to create something presentable, not only to you guys, but to myself. But when I threw my headphones on (while still in bed) this morning to hear “Spectre,” and felt my jaw drop during the first piano chords, I felt that rush. This is the band that inspired me to start this blog, to give as much of a shit as I do about music writing. Maybe I just needed something dramatic, something that could really jar my head back into action. A three-minute reminder of what drove me initially to pursue this hobby as relentlessly as I do certainly doesn’t hurt. 

Merry Christmas! And happy holidays to you all. 

As I predicted, exams and life got in the way of doing all of my lists in one week. So, (I know all of you were waiting on baited breath!) I’m doing my albums lists today and (hopefully) tomorrow. Thanks for reading! 

30. Natalia LaFourcade- Hasta la Raíz

Natalia LaFourcade is all over the place, musically and emotionally, on Hasta la Raíz. There’s the title track, an impassioned pop masterpiece where the lyrics cascade down like a waterfall. There’s “Antes de Huir,” an immaculate bit of solemn neo-soul that actually manages to capture the original genre’s timeless, universal heartache. Or there’s the bottomless piano ballad in “Estoy Lista.” In that way Hasta la Raíz is an elusive thing; dancing through phases and giant shifts in mood with an ease that never fails to leave me spellbound.

25. Modest Mouse- “Wicked Campaign”

Modest Mouse suffered terribly from the departure of Eric Judy. The title of Strangers to Ourselves, the band’s first album in eight years, unfortunately reflected its content. Though the band’s sound was still unmistakably there, the band’s spark, and essence, was often lost. But, “Wicked Campaign” showed that Isaac Brock is still capable of penning a touching piece. Though its production is glossy, its chorus bulldozes through with authority. It’s a song that befits the band’s new status as theater, possibly even arena, filling indie vets; a barnburner that proves the band’s muscle, and that Brock still hasn’t quite lost all of his wistfulness.