#jamesbrubaker

Now, without further ado, here we go. If 2016’s new music is half as good as 2015’s was, we’re in for a treat.

 P.S. Happy holidays from all of us at The Hairsplitter! See you in the future.

 Andrew Arnold

1.      Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly

Such a needed album at the right time. Maximizing what the form can accomplish.

 2.     Father John Misty, I Love You, Honeybear

My wife hates him. My friends question the man. But there’s no doubt his lyrics are funny and thoughtful.

 3.     Sleater-Kinney, No Cities to Love

Solid album. A strong return after some time off. Even better live.

 4.     Leon Bridges, Going Home

Don’t care if he’s retro- or neo-soul; he’s doing his own thing. One of the albums I still sing in the shower.

 5.     Vijay Iyer Trio, Break Stuff

Hard to rank this above Washington’s, but I listen to this album and hear all the jazz I love.

 6.     Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell

Not an easy listen, but my favorite Sufjan Stevens album since Illinois.  

 7.     Kamasi Washington, The Epic

Aggressive and wonderful.

 8.     Alabama Shakes, Sound & Color

Someone once told me Alabama Shakes were bullshit. Everyone has an opinion, but this album shows growth and exploration while staying themselves.

 9.     The Internet, Ego Death

Found this one late in the year. A great mix of influences into an album better listened to as whole than separate tracks.

 10.  Songhoy Blues, Music in Exile

Sure, I don’t know the words. But a great blues album speaks its own language.

  Matt Austin

1.     Oneohtrix Point Never, Garden of Delete

The sound of a thousand browser tabs opening simultaneously.

 2.     Battles, La Di Da Di

Their first truly instrumental record, Battles show their roots in Storm & Stress and Don Caballero by fusing their fractured melodies with the hesitant riffage of their previous groups. 

 3.     Beauty Pill, Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are

Triumphant return for this long-running ensemble, wrapping samples and rock instruments around solid songwriting.

 4.     Napalm Death, Apex Predator - Easy Meat

More than three decades in the game, and with this lineup for two, the grindcore vets prove they're still capable of making vital music. 

 5.     Holly Herndon, Platform

Finally, an art record that is presented like one, utilizing technology as a channel for disconnection, alienation, and the calming dose of human touch. 

 6.     Matthew Aker, Whitest Hunters, Blackest Hearts

A collection of analog synthesizers soundtrack a lost Cannon film. 

 7.     Prefuse 73, Rivington Não Rio / Forsyth Gardens EP

Warp’s loss is the world's gain as Guillermo Scott Herren returns from the wilderness with more pointillist instrumental hip hop.  

 8.     David Gilmour, Rattle That Lock

Lyricism was never Gilmour's strong suit, so while Polly Sampson provides the words, Gilmour delivers the most affecting collection of songs in his spotty solo career. 

 9.     Freddie Gibbs, Shadow of a Doubt

Drugs, dames, and death are still the order of the day, but Gibbs has never been afraid to branch out, either with adventurous producers or utilizing his low-key but effective singing voice. 

 10.  Enya, Dark Sky Island

For the Irish trio this is truly stripped-down: only 50 vocal tracks, barren piano, and their trademark plucked string section takes a couple songs to make an appearance. 

  Jeff Boyle

(in no particular order)

 ·      Midori Hirano, And I Am Here

·      Beauty Pill, Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are

·      Nils Frahm, Solo

·      Umfang, Umfang

·      United Bible Studies, The Ale’s What Cures Ye

·      Jlin, Dark Energy

·      Claire Potter and Bridget Hayden, Mother to No Swimming Laughing Child

·      Dr. Yen Lo, Days with Dr. Yen Lo

·      Hilde Marie Holsen, Ask

·      AGF/Various Artists, A Deep and Mysterious Tone

   James Brubaker

1.     Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell

One of the most beautiful and difficult albums released in my lifetime. I’ve listened to Carrie & Lowell less than any other album on this list, but that’s only because of its power. This is emotionally devastating stuff.

 2.     Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly

At long last, Kendrick Lamar dropped To Pimp a Butterfly and it was worth the wait. I kept forgetting to put this album on early drafts of my list because it already feels bigger than 2015 in a timeless sort of way. Lamar’s fusion of funk and hip hop sounds like a future hip hop is going to embrace in a major way.

 3.     Grimes, Art Angels

This isn’t what I was expecting from Grimes … but then, what does anyone ever expect from Grimes? I love this album for many of the same reasons I loved Grimes’s last album—it plays with pop tropes while turning the genre inside out. But the thing about Art Angels is that, while Visions kept its pop impulses at arm’s length, deconstructing the form until we were left with echoes and snippets, here, Grimes embraces pop signifiers while balancing them with enough leftfield weird shit that the end result is as wild and art damaged as any of us possibly could have hoped for.

 4.     Carly Rae Jepsen, Emotion

None of us should be surprised that Carly Rae Jepsen gave us one of the best, purest pop albums in recent memory. The hooks are huge, the songs are hopeful and full of the kind of raw passion that only pop can really communicate. The only real surprise here is that this album hasn’t blown up the charts the way it deserves.

 5.     Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit

I’ve listened to this album probably more than any other album on this list. Barnett’s songwriting is fun and whip-smart. And I guess she’s up for a Grammy now? So that’s cool.

 6.     Fred Thomas, All Are Saved

I’ve been following Fred Thomas’s career for over a decade, now, and without a doubt, All Are Saved is his best work to date. Here, all of Thomas’s most exciting songwriting, arranging, and producing impulses converge, resulting in a daring album of emotionally charged songs about love, loss, and coming to grips with the hard shit.

 7.     Joanna Newsom, Divers

Part of me wants to rank this album higher, because it’s a flat-out masterpiece. Maybe the only reason it’s not higher on this list is because it’s Joanna Newsom, and we expect this level of craft from her? Like, we know she’s doing something extraordinary in her writing, performance, and arrangement, but we’re so used to it that it doesn’t really phase us? That’s where I’m at. But wow, what an album.

 8.     Kamasi Washington, The Epic

A huge, sprawling jazz masterwork drawing on decades of influences. This is one of the most exciting jazz albums I’ve heard in years. I’m pretty sure this is the first jazz album I’ve ever put on a year-end list. The arrangements and performances are impressive, but what makes this album so remarkable is its sheer scope and audacity.

 9.     Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment, Surf

On the strength of “Sunday Candy” alone, this album deserves a spot on my list. But here’s the thing—even without that song, Surf is such a fun, chill album. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed just vibing on an album the way I enjoy vibing on this one. The arrangements are impeccable, and Chance the Rapper, while not at his most impressive, shows off a happy-go-lucky delivery that’s pretty hard to resist. Now if only we can get a vinyl release of this thing…

 Tie: 10. Tobias Jesso Jr., Goon         10. Vince Staples, Summertime 06         10. Jamie XX, In Colour

Sorry to cheat, here, but I honestly couldn’t decide between these three albums. Jesso’s songwriting is some of the best I’ve heard in a while; Staples’s LP is a fantastic tour of hip hop past and present, with an impressive and undeniable urgency; and Jamie XX’s album might feature the strongest, fattest production of the year. What’s even more exciting/disheartening, as I had to leave even more amazing albums off of this list because, let’s just face it, 2015 was one of the best years in music in a while. I’m almost hoping 2016 slows down a bit so it’s a little bit easier to keep up.  

  Susannah Clark

1.     Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly 

2.     Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell

3.     Father John Misty, I Love You, Honeybear

4.     Carly Rae Jepson, Emotion

5.     Courtney Barnett, Sometime I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

6.     Beach House, Depression Cherry

7.     Joanna Newsom, Divers

8.     The Mountain Goats, Beat the Champ

9.     Tame Impala, Currents

10.  The Tallest Man on Earth, Dark Bird is Home

  Brad Efford

1.     Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

2.     Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell

3.     Carly Rae Jepsen, Emotion

4.     Joanna Newsom, Divers

5.     Sleater-Kinney, No Cities to Love

6.     Natalie Prass, Natalie Prass

7.     Dave Rawlings Machine, Nashville Obsolete

8.     The Tallest Man on Earth, Dark Bird is Home

   Brian Flota

1.     Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly

2.     Matana Roberts, Coin Coin Chapter Three: River Run Thee

3.     Lightning Bolt, Fantasy Empire

4.     Aziz Ansari, Buried Alive!

5.     Sleater-Kinney, No Cities to Love

6.     Sunn O))), Kannon

7.     Charles Gayle Trio, Christ Everlasting

8.     Downtown Boys, Full Communism

9.     Arca, Mutant

10.  Bjork, Vulnicura

11.  Slayer, Repentless

12.  Chelsea Wolfe, Abyss

  Dillon Hawkins

1.     Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly

2.     Sufjan Stevens, Carrie & Lowell

3.     Sleater-Kinney, No Cities to Love

4.     Beach House, Depression Cherry

5.     Father John Misty, I Love You, Honeybear

6.     Wilco, Star Wars

7.     Punch Brothers, The Phosphorescent Blues

8.     Godspeed You! Black Emperor, ‘Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress’

9.     Oneohtrix Point Never, Garden of Delete

10.  Sun Kill Moon, Universal Themes

  Garrett Karrberg

Pile, You’re Better Than This

For Pile to beat out a new Local H album is nothing short of a miracle. I can’t figure out what makes this record so infectious, but I haven’t stopped listening since March. The formula is simple – heavy and catchy – but it reveals something new with each listen. Another home run for Exploding in Sound Records.

 Local H, Hey, Killer

Local H released the radio hit “Bound For the Floor” almost twenty years ago, but they’ve put out one great album after another since then and the duo is far and away the best live band I’ve ever seen. Hey, Killer is the first to feature new drummer Ryan Harding, but his chemistry with guitarist/singer/sort-of bassist Scott Lucas is immediately apparent. If you like rock music at all, check this record out, dig into Local H’s back catalog, grab some earplugs, and go see them live.

 Broken Water, Wrought

A mix between their hometown Olympia, WA sound and the punkier elements of Sonic Youth. Wrought is unabashedly political throughout, but closes with the gorgeous twelve-minute “Beach,” featuring legendary Lori Goldston on cello. Also, Shawn Reed from Night-People Records helped design the stunning album art.

 Chastity Belt, Time to Go Home

The dual guitar lines and melodies on this album are something else. The lyrics are funny, feminist, and delivered with an emotional weight not always found on indie rock records this catchy.

 Royal Headache, High

The second standout album from this Australian garage punk band. Hook follows hook for a too-brief twenty-eight minutes while lead singer Shogun’s soul-tinged vocals alternate between a forceful snarl and measured croon at just the right moments.

 Jim O’Rourke, Simple Songs

This album was a revelation for me. I was only peripherally aware of Jim O’Rourke before this year, mostly through his work with Sonic Youth. This album sounds so fantastic that it sent me down the rabbit hole that is Jim O’Rourke’s solo and collaborative back catalog.

 Jessica Pratt, On Your Own Love Again

On the surface, Jessica Pratt is a singer-songwriter of the 60s folk variety, but such a description sells her woefully short. Pratt distinguishes herself through her hauntingly beautiful vocals, some psychedelic influences, and melodies that reveal themselves more profoundly with each listen. This is significantly better than her 2012 debut album, which was very, very good.

 Radkey, Dark Black Makeup

Debut full-length from this hardworking band of three homeschooled brothers from Missouri. Heavy, sing-along rock songs with cool guitar riffs and Danzig-inspired vocals. Wouldn’t be surprised if Radkey was soon selling out arenas.

 Mount Eerie, Sauna

Phil Elverum built a magical world of organ, distortion, crashing cymbals, gentle strumming, some black metal, and the background vocals of Ashley Eriksson, Allyson Foster, Geneviève Castrée, and Paul Benson around his lyrics. Ranging from short and poppy to the ten-minute-plus drone of “Sauna” and “Spring,” this album feels like a culmination of Elverum’s music since making the shift from The Microphones to Mount Eerie.

 METZ, II

I might be swayed a little too much on this one because of how incredible METZ is live. Not sure if II will stand the test of time, but I keep coming back to recall the rush of seeing these loud, noisy rock songs performed in person.

   Brian McBrearty

1.     Daniel Bachman, River

2.     Deafheaven, New Bermuda

3.     Elder, Lore

4.     James Elkington & Nathan Salsburg, Ambsace

5.     Kadavar, Berlin

6.     Jim O’Rourke, Simple Songs

7.     Natalie Prass, Natalie Prass

8.     Kurt Vile, B’lieve I’m Going Down

9.     Ryley Walker, Primrose Green

10.  Wilco, Star Wars

  Kevin O’Rourke

1.     Godspeed You! Black Emperor, ‘Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress’

2.     Oneohtrix Point Never, Garden of Delete

3.     Battles, La Di Da Di

4.     Jamie XX, In Colour

5.     Deafheaven, New Bermuda

6.     Bjork, Vulnicura

7.     Beach House, Depression Cherry / Thank Your Lucky Stars

8.     Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld, Never were the way she was

9.     Tame Impala, Currents

10.  The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, Harmlessness

  Jeff Simpson

1.     Panopticon, Autumn Eternal

2.     Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly

3.     Chelsea Wolfe, Abyss

4.     Kamasi Washington, The Epic

5.     Sun Kil Moon, Universal Themes

6.     Deafheaven, New Bermuda

7.     Joanna Newsome, Diver

8.     Prurient, Frozen Niagara Falls

9.     Blanck Mass, Dumb Flesh

10.  John Moreland, High on Tulsa Heat

And, while there aren’t representative songs from all of Thomas’s projects on Ridiculous Rain—there aren’t any Chore songs, for instance, nor Flashpapr songs, nor Lovesick songs—there are songs Thomas recorded on his own both before and concurrent with those projects’. So generous a collection of songs is Ridiculous Rain that Thomas himself has been somewhat self-deprecating about its overwhelming size, categorizing, in a comment somewhere or other online, the collections songs as such: “only like 15% unlistenable, 20% boring, 45% good, and the other 10% ??????.” While the release of such an audacious set on cassette is odd and impressive in its boldness, it points to a running trend through Thomas’s prolific career, which has been loaded with limited, local, and CD-R only releases: the artist’s desire to get his songs out to interested parties in any form possible.

 Putting aside the fact that for anyone’s bedroom tapes, private demos and alt takes, a 15/20/45/10 ratio is pretty stellar, what Thomas doesn’t account for in that ratio is the handicap that benefits even the weirdest, difficult-to-listen-to songs on the collection—that is, whether one chooses to listen to Ridiculous Rain as arranged, which is, roughly, in reverse chronological order, or backwards, chronologically, the narrative of Thomas’s development as a songwriter is extraordinary. In tracing some of Thomas’s early bedroom recordings to alternate takes of songs from All Are Saved, Thomas’s most recent triumph, and the album I’m really here to write about, we don’t see linear ideas of “improvement” but instead a sort of restless, probing growth.

 Having first encountered Fred’s music as a nineteen-year-old college student (My first Fred show: I went to Ann Arbor to see Aloha play; Fred, working at Encore records at the time, gave me directions to the show without mentioning that one of his own bands, Lovesick, was on the bill as well) and following his career somewhat closely for the following sixteen years, it’s impressive to see both how organic Thomas’s growth has been, and how “of a piece” his body of work feels, even as it has shifted among approaches, projects, and collaborators. After my first encounter with the early Thomas band Lovesick, I attended dozens of their shows across Michigan and Ohio, drove to Columbus, Cleveland, up to Lansing and Grand Rapids to bask in Lovesick’s ragged punk energy and hear Thomas talk, for minutes at a time (often longer than the songs he was introducing) about people and ideas that were important to him, before screaming his throat raw.

 When I figured out Thomas was also one of the driving forces of another band whose name I’d seen on flyers and websites, Flashpapr, I started attending their shows, too, at out of the way Ann Arbor jazz clubs, in backyards, at a virtually abandoned auditorium at Antioch University in Yellow Springs, Ohio (they played that one with Wolf Eyes). When, several months into my new love affair with the music of Fred Thomas, a mutual friend turned me on to Fred’s sixties-inspired Saturday Looks Good to Me project, I was blown away. Let’s consider this the first major leap I observed in Thomas’s craft, the first he went from being a great local artist to being an impressive and visionary talent.  

 Somehow, Thomas had dug deep into the cultural memory and exhumed the unruly echoes of the pop music with which music so many of us Children-of-Boomers grew up, but somehow made it new. Saturday Looks Good to Me wasn’t just a sixties throwback project, though—it was sixties pop but art-fucked, raw, immediate, it was Phil Spector and Brian Wilson the way those producers’ songs probably sounded inside their own drug-warped, paranoid heads, not the way they sounded to the rest of the world. I was at one of Saturday’s first live shows, at the Pirate House in Ann Arbor. My friends and I felt like we were witnessing something truly special as, somehow, though the loops, distortion, and other studio effects from the album didn’t translate live—wisely, Thomas didn’t even try—Saturday’s live show was exuberant, ecstatic, full of the same earnest energy that had defined all of Thomas’s music up that point, and that was, in and of itself, was remarkable.

I don’t remember if it was shortly before or shortly after Saturday Looks Good to Me was born as a live act that Thomas started playing solo gigs around Michigan. The first one I went to was at the Detroit Contemporary, a little gallery that became infamous after being raided by Detroit police in 2008, an event which eventually made it into one of John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight segments. And perhaps this is the second time in Thomas’s career that feels like something of a rupture—gone were the bandmates and co-conspirators working out arrangements and twiddling knobs; all of the sudden, Fred Thomas was performing in a context that emphasized the one thing that all of his other projects seemed to de-emphasize—his songwriting. Still, through all of this, one thing remained consistent in Thomas’s work, that it, it was characterized by an undeniable, irrepressible urgency.

 Even as Thomas started playing out between and around gigs with his other projects, it took a while before he provided fans with any sort of definitive, capital-A Album for fans to listen to, relying instead on ragged, hungry little CD-R’s, the kind that working musicians rip, quick, to help pay for gas and bean burritos between gigs—first, there was an eight song, self-titled thing, then a slightly longer CD-R called Everything is Pretty Much Totally Fucked Up, which felt kind of like an album, but repeated at least one song from the previous disc, giving the whole thing the sense of being an iteration, rather than its own text. Not long after, Thomas would release what feels like his first great solo album, I Heard the Angels Sing, again as a CD-R. Keeping in mind this was before the era where buying digital files online was commonplace and obscure albums released locally as CD-R’s could be streamed on Spotify or Apple Music, even an album as beautifully written and recorded as I Heard the Angels Sing flew weirdly beneath the radar.

 With songs as heartbreaking as “The Sky Turned into a Drum Machine But the Air Hung Just as Cold and Still as Before,” gut-punching as “Half the Stores are Closed,” and as sweet and disarming as the title track, I Heard the Angels was Thomas’s first solo mission statement, the first album released under his own name that, while maintaining the restless energy of all that came before, began to clarify everything Fred Thomas was doing as a solo artist.

 Thomas would repeat this feat a few years later with the stunning Sink Like a Symphony, one of Thomas’s finest albums. For the first time, one of Thomas’s solo releases was released as a vinyl LP and pressed compact disc, with production and mastering to match. Across songs as buoyant as “Susceptible to Ghosts,” raucous as “Wet as a Cloud,” and elegant as “Apples on the Floor,” Thomas had made an album that couldn’t be ignored. And it wasn’t. It got some good reviews, and found a bit of an audience, but still seemed, somehow, criminally overlooked.

 In the following years, Thomas dumped most of his energy into City Center and a Saturday Looks Good to me revival, releasing solo albums and one-offs every now and then (if you’re a fan of Thomas’s work and haven’t checked out his and Betty Marie Barnes’s project, Mighty Clouds, you are doing yourself a great disservice). Here, Thomas’s solo releases always felt more like collections of songs than proper albums; albums like Flood and Kuma gave us plenty of exceptional moments, but they also existed in the shadows of all the other music Thomas was making at the moment.

 And that almost brings us, finally, to Fred Thomas’s latest release, All Are Saved, an album that, more than any album Thomas has ever released, feels like a culmination of everything Thomas has recorded before it, as the closest thing Thomas could, or would ever want to issue that might be considered a definitive statement of artistic purpose, while also very possibly being the finest album of Thomas’s twenty-plus year career.

 Album opener “Every Song Sung to a Dog” begins with horns, a cough, steel drums and guitar strums that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Saturday Looks Good to Me album, yet, here, those elements feel singular and fresh, not a throwback to a previous Thomas project, but an exciting and chaotic bit of production that serves as the perfect soundtrack—hopeful but sad—for a song about the confronting death after the loss of a beloved dog (“Don’t talk about the future/In the fur patch shaved and sutured/In the tangle of tubes where I lose you/Everything is changed). Likewise, the looping electronics that make up the bulk of instrumental track “July” recall City Center, but the horns and acoustic guitar with which Thomas cuts those electronics pull the song past Thomas’s previous project and root the song firmly in the present.

But what is that present? Despite being delightfully difficult to cleanly characterize, Fred Thomas’s present is a tightly arranged mosaic with styles butting up against one another, chaffing, rubbing each other raw in exciting ways. “Bad Blood” finds searching keyboards melting down over skittery drums as Thomas delivers some of his all-time rawest lyrics in a rambling sing-speak. When Thomas delivers an ugly line like, “We pass on the street and say ‘hi’ cause we have to/Even though both of us are clearly just like ‘I FUCKING HATE YOU’/So stilted and silent, not awkward just angry,” we feel uncomfortable, not because we’re embarrassed by the lyrics, but because we recognize their honesty, have felt the same things. And that honesty and ugliness runs through the whole song, escalating all the while, until the arrangement builds, the drums stutter, and Thomas’s vocals go under, succumb to the weight of all those keyboards and fucked up drums.

 Then, on “Unfading Flower,” the very next song, Thomas pushes a similar approach in the opposite direction, once again sing-speaking, but this time over a dreamy rhythmic track, complete with a delicate burst of bells accompanying a lyric about the arrival of spring. Unlike on “Bad Blood,” all bile and angst, “Unfading Flower” is a pep talk. Thomas sings, “These complication days, don’t let them stress you out/Because everything is exactly the same/Just going under a different name now,” before reminding his interlocutor of something uncertain in the song’s final moments, “And the repeating sound/So familiar by now/But I say it again because I want you to hear.” The song never reveals what the repeated message is, but it’s hard not to imagine it as being something as simple as “I love you,” or “be well,” and just as Thomas’s voice dissolves into the arrangement on “Bad Blood,” here, after the final lyric, the song, itself, abruptly ends.

 When All Are Saved winds itself down with the lovely “Doggie,” opening all humid guitar and wistful, plucked strings, it’s hard not to hear this album as a crossroads of sorts, a moment when a consistently excellent musician dug deep and somehow found a little more to give. Perhaps this will come as something of a surprise, or perhaps it’s exactly what we might expect, but that “little more” reminds of nothing more than those old rough edges that never quite defined, but characterized so much of Thomas’s early music. That is, with All Are Saved, we hear the exquisitely refined production that Thomas has frequently displayed, in recent years, be it on his own, with City Center, or with Saturday Looks Good to Me, and while a lack of urgency has never been a problem for Thomas, somehow, All Are Saved feels like his most urgent record, the record he’d been aching to make to say all the shit he’s been trying to say since he was the vaguely awkward drummer giving sermons about friendship and community between songs at Lovesick shows.

 Perhaps the most surprising thing of all is that, as the album winds down, as “Doggie” gives way to a murky squall of feedback (which then gives way to gentle, fuzzy keyboards that play the album out) this somehow all feels like Fred Thomas is just getting started. I’m not sure if he’d be entering the second or third act of his career at this point, but whatever it is, judging on the strength of All Are Saved, it’s going to be pretty fucking special.

 …

 James Brubaker teaches Creative Writing in Missouri. He is the author of two books, Liner Notes and Pilot Season. His short stories have appeared in venues including Zoetrope: All Story, Hobart, The Normal School, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Collagist, Beloit Fiction Journal, and Booth, among others. He edits the culture section at The Collapsar.

Perhaps the break-up album that Vulnicura most resembles, though, in terms of sheer, visceral emotion, if not (at all) style or sound, is Richard and Linda Thompson’s harrowing Shoot out the Lights. As far as classic breakup albums go, the Thompsons’ is the best and most emotionally difficult—the album’s songs were written and recorded as the duo struggled between record deals, as Linda Thompson was pregnant, and as Richard and Linda’s marriage fell apart. Unlike many classic breakup albums, the Thompsons’ isn’t the work of an artist looking back on lost love and telling us how it all went wrong and how bad it hurt (I’m looking at you, For Emma, Forever Ago), but instead is a living, breathing document straight from the gut of a failing marriage.

 While Vulnicura falls into the category of being an album about an artist looking back, each of the album’s songs bristles with a raw emotional urgency (especially by Björk’s sometimes convoluted standards) that seems to exist inside brutal moments of romantic and familial rupture. This is what makes Vulnicura such an affecting record—these aren’t breakup songs the way Taylor Swift or even Justin Vernon writes breakup songs, indignant and doe-eyed, but songs that plumb the mature depths of losing and mourning a relationship to create a cathartic requiem.

 Nowhere is this more evident than on the stunning and short “History of Touches,” which, is subtitled in the album’s liner notes as “3 months before.” Though we don’t know “3 months before” what, exactly (divorce? marital discontent? infidelity?), the tag is enough to root us squarely in a time before the break-up in question. With either intuition of the impending failure, or the benefit of hindsight, Björk sings, over nervous synth tones, “I wake you up / In the night feeling / This is our last time together,” before collapsing this one, shared sexual encounter between husband and wife into a non-linear, untethered-from-time celebration of all of their physical encounters:

 Every single fuck we had together is in a wondrous time lapse with us here at this moment

 Here in this moment, we are privy not to the rancor and disappointment that defines so many breakups, but to a clear sense of what has been lost, of the intimacy that at one time bound together the song’s speaker and her lover, and which was, in the song’s context, being experienced for the last time.

 Of course, the beauty of the above moment is somewhat offset by the heartache leading up to it. In the album’s opener “Stonemilker,” subtitled in the lyric booklet “9 months before,” the speaker declares, “I have emotional needs,” before asking, “If one feels closed / how does one stay open?” Meanwhile, on the album’s second track, “Lionsong,” subtitled “5 months before,” we get the sense that the speaker is already resigned to the loss of her love, stating, “Maybe he will come out of this loving me,” before offering, “Maybe he won’t / Somehow I’m not bothered either way.”

 Still, despite the tumultuous snapshots of the album’s central relationship as explored in the opening three tracks of Vulnicura, it is telling that “History of Touches” is the moment when the album shifts from before the point of rupture in the relationship to the period of time after it. The song becomes the album’s quiet heart, the declaration of stakes that propels the following anger, concern, and resolution that defines the album’s next trio of songs. On “Black Lake,” which has been famously described as a “ten minute diss track,” over nervous beats and jagged strings, Björk sings first of her anger (“Family was always our sacred, mutual mission / which you abandoned”) before arriving at an almost mournful declaration of rebirth and newfound self-actualization:

  I am a glowing shiny rocket returning home As I enter the atmosphere I burn off layer by layer

   Within the angry imagery of rockets and burning layers, there is already a glimmer of hope for healing that emerges as the speaker describes the discarding of layers and a return home from a relationship that has become foreign, and full of “eternal pain and horrors.” On “Family,” the middle song in this particular movement, the speaker provides a funeral, of sorts, for the end of her family unit. Over an irregular, thunderous drum beat and unnerving electronics and strings (this track easily marks The Haxan Cloak’s most obvious contribution to the album’s production), she sings, “Is there a place / where I can pay respects / for the death of my family?” This all eventually gives way to a euphoric and ethereal passage where Björk, over a gorgeous bed of strings and electronic chimes, repeats “God save my daughter.”

 Meanwhile, the last song in this trio, “Notget,” points toward the existential necessity of loving and being loved, and the fear of losing love. Over an arrangement that shifts from sounding like a marching band’s pit to a heavily Arca-produced bed of sorrow-fucked beats and strings, Björk sings, “For in love we are immortal / Eternal and safe from death,” and pleading, “Don’t remove my pain / It is my chance to heal.” And this, ultimately, is what Vulnicura is about—closure, catharsis, and healing. That the arrangement underpinning Björk’s stunning vocal performance counts amount her most demanding and aggressive only heightens the song’s overt sense of dread.

   As almost every review of the album has pointed out, the word “vulnicura” means “cure for wounds,” and that is precisely what the album means to provide, both for the artist who made it, and those who might take comfort in commiserating with this deeply personal work. And that, perhaps, is the biggest surprise of Vulnicura—not just how personal it is, but how moving and accessible it is, especially for an album full of long songs that resist traditional pop structures. The album has been hailed by many as a return to form for Björk, and once we begin to absorb the rich emotional themes the album offers, that shouldn’t come as a surprise. After more than a decade in which Björk’s music struggled to find depth beneath all of the aesthetic and conceptual experiments, it is only fitting that Vulnicura, an album about the end of her marriage, functions as a virtual sequel to her last great album, Vespertine, which, released early in her marriage, was very much an album about the rich promise of spiritual and physical fulfillment through lasting love.

 It’s a bit odd that the weakest period of Björk’s creative career has been bookended by two of her strongest outings, both of which resonate with the kind of personal songwriting and raw emotion that very few associate with Björk. When Vulnicura settles into its final third, a trio of songs that are no longer explicitly about a breakup, but about rediscovering the self, we can’t help but think of the layer-shedding rocket from the closing lines of “Black Lake.” “Atom Dance” is a call for the broken-hearted to embrace love (“When you feel the flow as primal love/Enter the pain and dance with me”); “Mouth Mantra,” inspired by a surgery that prevented Björk from singing or speaking for an extended period of time is about that silence, but also about finding one’s voice through that silence, and ends with the ecstatic declaration, “I sing along”; and finally, “Quicksand,” finds its speaker embracing her own brokenness (“When we’re broken we are whole”) and worrying about maternal continuity (“Every time you give up / You take away our future / And my continuity and my daughter’s”).

 Though this final trio of songs is still heavy with concern and a quiet sense of alienation, it is rooted in a powerful hopefulness and sense of rebirth. It is no mistake that this trio was selected to close out Vulnicura—after the pain and catharsis of the album’s first two movements, these last three songs find Björk moving past her pain, finding a new, redeemed self in the aftermath of so much loss and mourning. If we treat Vulnicura as a sequel, of sorts, to Vespertine, as the masterful right-side book-end after a frustrating mid-career lull, I can’t imagine a more fitting way for the album to end.

 …

 James Brubaker lives in Missouri. He is the author of two works of fiction, Pilot Season (Sunnyoutside) and Liner Notes (Subito Press). James’s short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in venues including Zoetrope: All Story, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Collagist, Beloit Fiction Journal, The Normal School, and Hobart, among others. James was the music editor for The Fiddleback during that journal’s entire run. He currently helps out with editorial duties at The Collapsar.

JAMES BRUBAKER 1. Sun Kil Moon, Benji

Mark Kozelek: suck my cock. Stupid, trollish click-baiting aside, Sun Kil Moon’s Benji is the masterful, confessional folk album music fans didn’t realize they were waiting for. Every second of Kozelek’s autobiographical opus is dripping with pathos and a surprising (especially for Koz) empathy for his fellow humans. This is the rare album that feels bigger than music—this is art, undeniable, raw, and full of life.

2. Grouper, Ruins

Liz Harris is on quite a run as Grouper. Still, as much as I adore her previous output, there’s something extra haunting, and especially gorgeous about the stripped-down, ambient-ish piano jams that make up Ruins.

3. How To Dress Well, “What Is This Heart?”

Here, Tom Krell moves his How To Dress Well project closer to pop music’s naked simplicity while interrogating the basic tropes on which the genre is built. These are gloriously uncomfortable and exposed blasts of pop emotion that dig beneath the genre’s usual surface-level sheen to get at the emotions always lurking beneath.

4. Ariel Pink, Pom Pom

What the fuck, right? Since Before Today, his masterful break into mainstream indie, Ariel Pink has been on a mission to combine that album’s hazy, AM-Gold vibe with his earlier ultra-outsider home recordings. As irritating as Pink’s media shtick has become, the infectious weirdness and maniacal glee of Pom Pom is hard to deny.

5. Todd Terje, It’s Album Time

One of the quieter gems of the year, Terje’s slick, electronic dance music is designed to get stuck in our rhythm bones and make us bounce along in cars.

6. The War on Drugs, Lost in the Dream

War on Drugs: don’t suck a cock, unless you want to, and then, you know, do whatever you want to do that makes you happy. Lost in the Dream could be labeled Dad-Rock, but if that’s what it is, it’s doing it in a way that makes Wilco’s last few album’s sound like Lame-Great-Uncle Rock. These songs are hypnotic and lovely, easy to get lost in and hard to shake. This is, hands down, one of the best guitar rock albums in years.

7. Run the Jewels, Run the Jewels 2

Even better than Run the Jewels’s first album, this collaboration between El-P and Killer Mike is an exceptional blending of old and new, resulting in a confrontational, at times difficult album. But don’t let that scare you away, because as hard as this album feels, these hooks and beats get under the skin and don’t let go.

8. FKA Twigs, LP1

Fuck to this album, please. I haven’t, and don’t know that I ever will. Just, please: put this record on, sit down with your partner and have yourselves a nice old time. If anyone releases a sexier album this decade, it’ll probably be illegal.

9. Perfect Pussy, Say Yes to Love

Say Yes To Love is a perfect blast of riotous punk energy. Meredith Graves’s vocals scrap and scrape to be heard over the band’s volatile blend of crunchy guitar riffs and phat punk beats. This album reminds me a lot of what it felt like to go to basement shows back in the late nineties, but it never feels like a throwback. These are passionate kids making bigger-than-fuck punk anthems.

10. Flying Lotus, You’re Dead

The ten spot was a tough fight on this list. There were a ton of great albums this year, and I had to ultimately give the nod to FlyLo, if for no other reason that You’re Dead is his most dizzying and ambitious album yet. It might also represent FlyLo’s biggest success in terms of blending wild jazz with trippy electro-inflected hip hop beats to dazzling effect. 

  MATTHEW AUSTIN (in no particular order)

  His Name is Alive, Tecuciztecatl

Warn Defever has dabbled in folk, pop, goth, chamber music, noise, jazz, and countless other genres, but this latest full length is a homage to the wah-drenched psychedelic rock operas of the '60s. There's a storyline that connects this song cycle, but the star is Defever's uncharacteristically unhinged guitar playing. 

Horse Lords, Hidden Cities

Bass, drums, guitar, and saxophone grind against each other in intricate, sprawling compositions that occasionally lock together in ferocious ways. 

Mogwai, Rave Tapes

The Scottish band's been a well oiled machine for years, and at this point they're like a painter entering their mature period: they've mastered the tools and techniques, now they're seeing all the different combinations they can create. 

DMX Krew, 100 Tears

Catchy without being sacchrine, Ed Upton has been perfecting his synth & drum machine melange for years, with his latest offering nods to 80s pop, the queasy tones of vaporwave, and videogame music, all in easily digestible 3-4 minute songs. 

Winged Victory for the Sullen, Atomos

Despite its origin as a modern dance score, Atomos works great on its own as a haunting ambient record that manages to sound fast paced. 

Aphex Twin, Syro

It's not surprising that an artist obsessed with recording gear made a record that sounds like his studio made the songs by itself. Not a knock on the result, but it underlines how Richard D. James imbues his equipment with an organic touch that few can replicate. 

Blonde Redhead, Barragan

While the trio haven't exactly been pushing boundaries in the last ten years like they did in the first half of their career, each new album is a return to comfortable mix of gauzy vocals, tasteful harmonies, and just enough rhythmic push to keep it out of easy listening territory. 

Tobacco, Ultima II Massage

Though definitely front-loaded, the latest gooey neon assault from Tobacco dives further into his homemade sound, coming off like a mad scientist with no clear influence. 

Wye Oak, Shriek

While St Vincent collected accolades on her 2014 record, it shares DNA with the similar, but superior, new album of electronic textures and passionate vocals by the duo previously known for powerful guitar rock. Abandoning guitars is a bold move that proves their skills in songwriting remain intact while using different tools. 

Terence Hannum, Via Negativa

As part of Locrian, Hannum helps create walls of brutal noise that takes cues from black metal and power electronics; his 2014 solo album is a collection of drones that, while sometimes barely being present, evoke a dire, doom filled world. 

  JEFF BOYLE (in no particular order)

  Untold, Black Light Spiral

Hobbesian techno. Nasty. Brutish.

Neneh Cherry, Blank Project

Pop music of a sort. Meandering, thoughtful, mature, intriguing.

Kim Hiorthøy, Dogs

A factoring of his previous work down to its constituent parts: mostly piano and drum machine. Liminal, almost forgettable.

Andy Stott, Faith in Strangers

Sludgy, muddy. Dance music for swamp monsters.

Actress, Ghettoville

Sad beats from far away fighting thru a bowl of oatmeal.

Kelly Hogan, I Like to Keep Myself in Pain

One of my favorite voices singing songs written just for her. Lovely.

Jenny Hval & Susanna, Meshes of Voice

Probably the record that knocked me on my ass hardest this year. Angels in a screaming match.

Selvhenter, Motions of Large Bodies

Stompy, noisy, rock-ish improv by Danish women.

Richard Dawson, Nothing Important

Like Daniel Higgs without the overwrought mysticism. Like getting punched in the chest while crying.

Laura Cannell, Quick Sparrows Over the Black Earth

Overbowed violin re-imagining ancient ballads! Improvised recorder self-duets—Roland Kirk style!

Zamilska, Untune

Urgent, violent techno with an ear toward tribalism. Exciting.

UNTUNE by Zamilska

  BRIAN MCBREARTY (in no particular order)

  The War on Drugs, Lost in the Dream

I know I said I was not ordering my picks, but this album is my personal favorite release of 2014.  No more ranking, I promise.   I listened to this album twice a day for the first two months following its release in March.  I still listen to it at least once a week.  Outstanding.

Eno/Hyde, High Life

Dense, textured and layered jams along with some of Eno’s finest vocal work in years.  The climax of the song “Lilac” is one of the best musical moments of this year. 

Strand of Oaks, Heal

This album starts out with a guest guitar solo by J. Mascis and only improves from there.

Kadavar, Live in Antwerp

I consider myself a connoisseur of hard rock live albums and this set from the German power trio, Kadavar, does not disappoint.

Chris Forsyth & The Solar Motel Band, Intensity Ghost

Television without all of those annoying vocals. Haha. Just kidding, guys. I dig Tom Verlane. This album rips.

Steve Gunn, Way Out Weather

This album is a master class in simplicity. Straightforward recording techniques applied to clean, uncrowded song arrangements yield amazing results on this slab. Vibe for daaays!

Meatbodies, Meatbodies

Riff-drenched, fuzzed-out (and drugged-out) bliss. This album is relentless in the best possible way.

Sharon Van Etten, Are We There

The vocal melodies on this album are so good.

William Tyler, Lost Colony

It’s an EP, not an album. Deal with it! I could listen to the thirteen minute opener, “Whole New Dude,” on repeat for the rest of time.

Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell, Check ‘Em Before You Wreck ‘Em

I hate it when hard rock bands feel the need to demonstrate their range. I don’t care. Show me that you can rock, and then do it again, and again. The Shove get it right and deliver rocker after rocker on this album. Just watch this video and try to contain yourself.

Rog & Pip, Our Revolution

A reissue/unearthing of material recorded by two members of The Sorrows. Rocking and sometimes heavy, but still accessible (even, poppy at times). You will like this.   

  BRIAN FLOTA 1. Grouper, Ruins

This group of desolate, haunting, spare piano-based songs make this Grouper’s best effort to date, and one of the most nakedly emotional and understated albums I’ve ever heard.

2. Ariel Pink, Pom Pom

Love him or hate him, Ariel Pink has created a warped AM radio-friendly masterpiece with this album. The stretch of the album from “Nude Beach a Go-Go” to “Jell-o” might be one of the strangest stretches of pop music ever included on an album.

3. Todd Terje, It’s Album Time

Todd Terje’s witty, sophisticated nu-disco album is loaded with infectious hooks."

4. Morgan Murphy, Irish Goodbye

Deadpan comic Morgan Murphy’s slightly warped blend of observational humor, subtle feminism, and one-liners will have you laughing over and over. Sample joke: “Abortions are not for everybody. They’re like children that way.”

5. St. Vincent, St. Vincent

St. Vincent’s self-titled album presents her music at its most sleek and state-of-the-art.

6. Mastodon, Once More 'Round the Sun

Though far from the heights of Leviathan and Blood Mountain, Mastodon's latest lacks a dull cut and synthesizes their earlier, more challenging style with their more recent stabs at the mainstream.

7. Scott Walker + Sunn O))), Soused

This unlikely pairing stretches both acts beyond their comfort zone, resulting in some of the darkest, most theatrical music of the year.

8. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib, Piñata

Gibbs, a gangsta rapper and mixtape legend, is paired with underground producer Madlib, maximizing the talents of both collaborators in the process.

9. Perfect Pussy, Say Yes to Love

Good old fashioned punk rock with a heavy dose of riot grrrl thrown in for good measure. One of the most confrontational recordings of the year.

10. Arca, Xen

Solid ambient music for pitch-black gothic dance clubs.

  KEVIN O’ROURKE

(in no particular order)

  Death From Above 1979, The Physical World

A few months ago I had a Twitter conversation with a friend who noted that DFA 1979’s 2004 album You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine “holds way, way up.” I suspect this one will too. At a tight 35 minutes, this album is pure speed rock.

Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light on Everything

Over the years, Efrim Menuck’s whine of a voice has grown more tolerable, and Thee Silver’s songwriting tighter. You know how every Godspeed! You Black Emperor song has its best loudest part, after they’ve gotten the quiet dithering over with this? That’s basically this album, plus affecting Canadian commune-rock vocals and a wall of sound that’s so big it seems to possess a life of its own.

Run the Jewels, Run the Jewels 2

In addition to having an entertaining Twitter presence, El-P continues to prove that he is one of the most important producers/rappers working right now. He and Killer Mike’s DIY Run the Jewels project—which has relied on (initially) free releases and social media word of mouth—may be the most vibrant thing El-P has done since Company Flow. Killer Mike’s lyrics absolutely seethe, and this album’s beats are, to paraphrase Phife Dawg, harder than two-day-old shit. An essential record.

Real Estate, Atlas

Atlas is a little sadder and more morose than Real Estate’s previous outing, 2011’s Days, but that’s not a knock against this record. Atlas is a tremendous piece of guitar pop. See James Brubaker’s review for more.

Sun Kil Moon, Benji

2014 was a mixed bag for Mark Kozelek. His release of Benji—which gets my vote for the best record put out this year, and which is a stunning example of radically honest, open confession folk rock—was overshadowed by that whole “the War on Drugs can suck my cock” imbroglio.

Ignoring Kozelek’s egocentric insanity for a moment, Benji remains a highlight in his already packed discography of highlights. For more, see below for Sun Kil Moon’s live performance of “Richard Ramirez Died Today of Natural Causes.” It’s fitting to close this post on a song that uses the death of the serial killer Richard Ramirez as the launching point for a musing on mortality. To wit:

Flying Lotus’s bold approach to death on You’re Dead plays out, in miniature, on the albums opening track, simply titled, “Intro.” The track begins with a big, ominous drone, loaded with dread and whatever other feelings might be lurking inside a massive death-drone, before exploding into a quick burst of fusion-inflected jazz that fades into a lone saxophone noodling as drums and heavenly chords interrupt the sax’s quiet reverie. Right from the beginning it’s clear that Flying Lotus isn’t fucking around with death and, even though according to an interview with Noisey, the album grew out of a joke about dying from listening to crazy riffs in a George Duke song, once the album was in progress, it became, more about Stephen Ellison trying “to get in that headspace,” to think about death “which involved getting into [his] feelings about death, and dedication to friends who’ve passed away”—in other words, this is an album that’s going to confront death, head on.

  Of course, the prospect of an album that is, by and large, an instrumental album confronting death might be a bit difficult to grasp. Sure, we have the album’s title, artwork—which features a slew of dead bodies on their way to the afterlife—song titles (“Cold Dead,” “FKN Dead,” and “Dead Man’s Tetris,” to name a few), and the occasional lyric, like Kendrick Lamar’s, “Life and death is no mystery and I want to taste it,” from “Never Catch Me,” but by and large, You’re Dead tackles death abstractly. For many, death is an intellectual idea, best explored through image and narrative. And, despite some odd and wild guest spots from the likes of Lamar, Snoop Dogg, and Captain Murphy (the other alter ego of Flying Lotus’s Steven Ellison), among others, Flying Lotus’s primary method with which he confronts death are his impeccable beats and jazz arrangements, many of which are rooted in seventies fusion.

“Cold Dead” invokes the ghost of John McLaughlin (hopped up on pills perhaps) with its distorted opening guitar riffs, before devolving into another ethereally-backed saxophone feature from Kamasi Washington. “Turkey Dog Coma” pushes even further into fusion territory, thanks to the nervy bass guitar feature, but also employs enough of Ellison’s deft, arranger’s touch that it never feels too much like it was yanked out of the seventies. “Moment of Hesitation” revisits the more traditional jazz saxophone, but is constantly butting heads with a vamp from another restless combo (including Herbie Hancock on keyboards) who sound like they’re trying to play straight out of their skin. By mixing eras and styles from jazz history and presenting them in his unsettled electronic framework, Flying Lotus manages to evoke death by blurring the lines between past, present, and future, and by dabbling in the nostalgic textures of long-forgotten music, he has produced an album that might be the most progressive jazz album in years, as well as a daring electronic album.

  But it isn’t just through his individual arrangements that Ellison confronts death on You’re Dead. The album’s very structure lends itself to probing the depths of death and dying. As with Flying Lotus’s previous efforts, You’re Dead is built out of many short songs. This time, though, by packing in nineteen songs under forty minutes, You’re Dead feels like a series of fleeting bursts of sound, as tenuous and unstable as life itself. As soon as the listener begins to settle into a song, Ellison moves us onto something new. As the album progresses into its second half, familiar jazz and hip hop textures give way to weirder soundscapes that are more interested in atmosphere than melodic development. One need look no further than the terrifying “The Boys Who Died in Their Sleep,” with its haunted Captain Murphy vocals, and sinister tone, to get a feel for just how weird You’re Dead gets.

  But that’s why the album works so well. It begins as a confident burst of defiance in the face of death, and rapidly descends into uncomfortable, and bizarre territory, right up through its lovely, and hopeful closing track, “The Protest,” with its elegant refrain of “We will live on/forever, and ever.” By the time that song fades, we’re not entirely sure what You’re Dead is ultimately trying to say about death, but that’s because it’s saying nothing, by saying everything. That is, this isn’t so much an album about death, as it is an album intent on exploring death. From the heroically defiant Kendrick Lamar collaboration, “Never Catch Me,” complete with one of the most stunning videos I’ve seen in years, to the Thundercat-assisted “Descent into Madness,” You’re Dead doesn’t want to tell us how to live or die, only to remind us how good it is to be alive, and how fucked it is that we’re all going to die. Thanks to Flying Lotus’s impressive touch as a composer, curator, and arranger, the album’s euphoric emotional swings and thoughtfulness make that knowledge far more thrilling than it probably should be.

  In a recent Pitchfork piece on Flying Lotus, Herbie Hancock was quoted as saying, “if Miles was around today, he'd be hanging out with you guys.” And while this isn’t a huge surprise, what with Ellison being the nephew of Alice Coltraine, based on Flying Lotus’s willingness to root the compositions on You’re Dead in classic jazz while pushing the form into electronic music’s avant-garde with a ferocious, unflinching conceptual vision, it’s hard not to imagine Davis in the mix one way or another. And if that’s not high praise, I don’t know what is. 

…

The opening moments of LP1 sound like they were recorded in a vacant, sci-fi church, as the holiness of the choral vocals is overshadowed by the creeping angst in the production. Through the elegant and creepy “Preface,” FKA twigs’s multi-tracked vocals bubble up out of a surprising, not-quite-gothic mist before jagged beats and a vaguely robotic male voice contribute to the atmosphere. As far as scene-setting goes, “Preface” recalls the early days of Warn DeFever’s eclectic His Name is Alive project more than the electro-hip-hop-inflected-R’n’B that characterizes most of LP1. Once we get past the cognitive dissonance caused by the ethereal vocals of “Preface” rolling into the slow, sad, trip-hop referencing future funk of the rest of the album, that opening cut begins to make perfect sense: despite LP1’s many aesthetic nods to mainstream pop music, it is an aggressively weird and uncomfortable album that seamlessly blends sex and sadness with heaping doses of carnal need.

  This mix of sounds and ideas isn’t completely unprecedented, as FKA twigs’s grimy/sexy songs and dark production certainly recall, and perhaps even top, The Weeknd’s early work, most notably House of Balloons. Of course, a comparison like that is a bit reductive. After all, The Weeknd seemed more invested in transgressing the uncomfortable boundaries of R’n’B’s sexuality into the genre’s underlying hedonistic and hyper-realist id, whereas FKA Twigs seems more interested in surreal, abstract, and devastating depictions of desire that could keep armchair psychologists busy for weeks.

  On “Two Weeks,” in which FKA twigs addresses her object of desire as a “motherfucker,” she implores him to “Pull out the incisor,” then later sings, “Feel your body closing, I can rip it open.” These visceral and surreal metaphors for desire dabble in dream language and the gothic, and emphasize the body in a way that points towards attempts to translate that central desire into physical manifestations. As unsettling or weird as those manifestations might be, the central intimacy running through each song on this album is astonishing. By shifting the emphasis away from R’n’B’s usual commercial sexuality towards something more real and visceral, LP1 manages to become one of the sexiest albums in recent memory. That is to say, the album might actually be too steamy for the conventional make-out session, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have to take a cold shower after writing the first draft of this review.

  It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that the throbbing synths and muted beats (that I’d swear sound like Clams Casino, though it appears he didn’t produce the track) that make up “Two Weeks” are both dreamy and dreary, hanging like the space between sleep and waking in a dark bedroom on an overcast day. Of course, it is the album’s production that really makes LP1 feel like something special. Be it the sexy, jittery R’n’B of “Lights On,” (the title of which stems from a bold, intimate chorus of “When I trust you we can do it with the lights on”), the trippy, sub-gothic trip-hop of “Closer,” or the vaguely electro-dub of album closer “Kicks,” LP1 is always pushing at the boundaries of contemporary pop with out-of-time textures to produce something downright haunted and erotic. And that combination might be where FKA twigs’s true innovation lies—not just in making unsettled R’n’B slow jams, but by filling those stuttering slow jams with desperate and true pleas for sexual communion that make most of R’n’B’s pillow talk play as plastic and superficial as 90’s late night Cinemax softcore porn.

...

  So I ask again: Where is Michael Jackson? Or, perhaps: Who is Michael Jackson? Or maybe: What is Michael Jackson?

  None of these questions have easy answers. More than most pop musicians from the last fifty years, Jackson resists authenticity. Is the real Jackson the boy from the Jackson 5? The teenage Jackson who sang “Ben” and “Got to Be There?” The Jackson who blew up dance music and pop with Off the Wall, Thriller and, to a lesser extent Bad? The increasingly bizarre, confrontational Jackson of Dangerous and HIStory? The post-plastic surgery Jackson? Is it the butt of Norm McDonald jokes and alleged child molester Jackson? Is it the who-gives-a-shit Jackson who made Invincible? Is it the Jackson of Neverland Ranch/Bubbles the Monkey/Buying the Elephant Man/Hanging with Macaulay Caulkin? Is it dangling his baby over the balcony Jackson?

  The point I’m getting at is this: there is no authentic Michael Jackson. 

  In Simulation and Simulacra, Jean Baudrillard famously wrote, “The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.” I can’t think of a public figure toward whom Baudrillard’s words might be applied more than Michael Jackson. Jackson’s life and career came to be so defined by the various signifiers and representations surrounding him that, by the time he died, whatever or whoever Michael Jackson really was, was long gone, at least to the public.

This brings us, finally, to Xscape—the cash-in, the fucking bullshit, the whatever, whatever, whatever. Xscape isn’t a great album. It isn’t even a particularly good album. But if we’re calling out Xscape for being all about the money, we might as well be calling out Thriller, too. If we’re calling it out for being “fucking bullshit,” well, we might as well be calling out Invincible, too. The point is, Xscape isn’t all that different from the rest of Jackson’s work, at least in terms of what it is, and how it represents whatever it is we think about when we think about Michael Jackson. In fact, in some ways, Xscape is, thanks to its being cobbled together from unfinished recordings spanning much of Jackson’s career, more interesting as a historical document than some of Jackson’s later work. And, perhaps, due to the same phenomena, Xscape could be viewed as the most authentic of Jackson’s albums in that it is just as cobbled together and de-centered as the artist himself.

  But none of this makes Xscape a good album, so much as it makes it a curious album. Some of the songs here are horrible. The “Horse With No Name”-aping “Place With No Name” might be the worst song I’ve heard this year, and “Blue Gangsta,” despite a strong vocal performance from Jack-o, and passable production from Timbaland, is bafflingly nonsensical and weird. Even some of the better songs include questionable moments: forget, for a moment, the unfortunate title and lyrics of “Do You Know Where Your Children Are?” and we can hear that the song builds a nice groove that carries to the end until being murdered by a horrid, dated guitar solo; “Xscape,” likewise, features some solid production work—the horns are a nice touch, and the all-too-brief bridge is stunning—but Jackson’s persecution complex gets in the way of the lyrics and the whole affair ends up feeling a bit uncomfortable (not as uncomfortable, mind you, as HIStory’s “They Don’t Really Care About Us,” which could have been fantastic were it not for its anti-semitism, but uncomfortable, none-the-less).

  All that said, Xscape isn’t an entirely awful album. “Love Never Felt So Good,” which dates all the way back to 1983, and was co-written by Paul Anka (and originally recorded in 1984 by Johnny Mathis!) is a soaring mix of adult contemporary pop and R&B that wouldn’t have sounded too out of place on Off the Wall; on its own, this song pretty much justifies the existence of Xscape. “Chicago,” despite its weirdly dated production (think early Timbaland) and clunky lyrics, is more interesting than most of Jackson’s songs recorded around the same time, many of which ended up on Invincible.

  Likewise, while “Loving You”—which was recorded for but not used on Bad—feels a bit slight, its light effervescence stands up better than most of the turgid, non-singles that make Bad a bit of a slog. “Slave to the Rhythm” is in about the same boat—recorded for both Bad and Dangerous but never used, Jackson’s vocal performance and the song’s slick production make the track feel more vital than much of the filler on either of the albums on which it could have been released

  So there you have it—Xscape isn’t a good album, but it is interesting, and it adds some nice songs to Jackson’s canon (and, honestly, on the strength of “Love Never Felt So Good,” it’s leaps and bounds better than 2010’s Michael). Critics of the album who decry its lack of authenticity, or claim that it somehow besmirches Jackson’s creative reputation seem to be suffering from aggressively selective memory. Xscape isn’t any more or less Michael Jackson-ish than anything released after Thriller: it’s messy, artificial, uncomfortable, and mediocre at best. Sure, nothing here reaches the heights of Off the Wall, Thriller, or Bad’s singles, but Xscape’s highlights easily eclipse that last album’s filler. And lest we forget, starting with Dangerous Jackson’s memorable music moments owed more to controversy than strong songwriting. Think the crotch grabbing of the “Black and White” video, the aforementioned anti-semitism of “They Don’t Really Care About Us,” and his numerous attacks against the media and legal system that started after Jackson’s first run trip to court for allegedly sexually abusing kids.

  If anyone has been guilty of besmirching Jackson’s creative reputation and muddling the authenticity of his music, it was the artist himself during most of the final act of his career. As such, Xscape is a perfect Michael Jackson record precisely because it isn’t very good and because it is, in effect, a simulacrum of a Michael Jackson record; Xscape doesn’t conceal that there is no such true thing as a Michael Jackson record, but is, itself, a true Michael Jackson record. So let’s stop pretending that Xscape is some sort of affront to pop music or Michael Jackson and call it what it is: a not very good but serviceable and representative collection of songs that happens to provide an interesting look at the scope of Jackson’s career from the margins, and that, if nothing else, should be worth at least worth a few listens on Spotify.

...

  So let’s talk a little bit about that foundation. A great deal of Bald New World’s charm is teased out of its tragicomic, satirical vision of humanity’s hairless future. Most clearly related to the mass hair loss, we learn that wig manufacturing has become one of the dominant industries on the planet and is, of course, fraught with the perils and paranoia of most big industries. But Tieryas Liu’s vision of the future extends beyond the effects of baldness. This is not to say that the baldness isn’t important to the novel—it is—but that, in addition to exploring the effects of mass baldness on a vain human race in a way that deeply impacts the plot, the world in which Bald New World takes place is rich and varied. 

  Throughout the novel, we learn about the culture’s popular television shows (Jesus the General, which is advertised via billboards featuring “Jesus in military fatigues” holding “a laser gun, a logo above him asking, ‘Do you believe?’”), its reverence for retro video games (one of the novel’s opening scenes finds Nicholas, his friend Larry, and two mysterious women spending time at a video game themed party with revelers dressed as Mario, Zelda, and Mega Man, among others), its interest in cricket fighting (think human’ controlling crickets a la Pacific Rim, but with crickets, maybe? Anyway, it’s awesome), and America’s problems with guns (in this future, everybody has one) and weight (“I wasn’t talking a little overweight, but people who couldn’t even walk because they were so big. I’d always wondered where all the collective dumps they took went”).

  If none of these details seems particularly surprising, that is their strength—Liu’s vision of the future, while at times comically absurd, feels not just possible, but probable, and that adds a frightening edge to what is largely playful and fun world building. Of course, good books need to do more than just build worlds and, as strong as Tierya Liu’s world building is, where Bald New World really shines is the strengths of its central character, and the trials he has to endure.

  The novel’s protagonist, Nicholas Guan, is a fascinating character whose every action in Bald New World is dripping with a raw, sincere pathos. Shattered by the end of a his marriage to a woman named Linda, a marriage doomed from the start by his difficulties with ideas of class and family, Nick Guan is emotionally adrift at the beginning of Bald New World. The only family he seems to have is his friend Larry, a filmmaker of questionable talents coasting by on his family’s wig factory money. Nick works as Larry’s cinematographer, which makes perfect sense because of course Nick, a self-proclaimed follower, would be drawn to the charismatic Larry, and so when something happens to Larry, we shouldn’t be surprised that Nick finds himself in something of a crisis. Which brings us, finally, to the novel’s story.

  But before we talk about the story, let’s take a moment longer to appreciate the foundation Tiryas Liu laid on which he could built that story. From his world building and characterizations, of Nick, in particular, we get the sense that writing this book was a shitload of fun, and that sense of fun radiates off the page is flat-out infectious. Now, that being said, once Tieryas Liu has established the boundaries of his dystopian world and firmly established the character of Nick, Bald New World goes from being a fun and enjoyable read, to being a compelling, harrowing, and tightly plotted sci-fi noir story—that is to say, there comes a moment in Bald New World where Nick Guan believes that his best friend, Larry, has been murdered (and maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t, I won’t say) and from that point on, shit gets real.

  And this is, perhaps, what makes Bald New World so thoroughly compelling and immersive—following the apparent murder of Larry, Tieryas Liu’s brilliantly rendered world and emotionally complex protagonist engage in full-on combat for the rest of the novel. But this (mostly) metaphorical combat isn’t just combat for combat’s sake. In his attempts to escape the scene of Larry’s murder, and then avenge the same, Guan is tortured, forced to endure bizarre feats of emotional and physical strength, and humiliated more than once all while trying to unravel the mystery of Larry’s maybe-death. Guan’s journey through the weird—from a cult-like religious group to the cricket fighting scene to the seedy underbelly of the wig manufacturing world—unfolds with the deft exuberance of (with apologies to Tieryas Liu and every other reviewer who has made the same comparisons) a Philip K. Dick plot and the existential complexity of a Haruki Murakami novel. Along the way, Guan is tested and forced to grow as a character, which leads to an emotionally devastating conclusion that I don’t want to spoil, here, but which is a satisfying ending that grows organically out of the novel’s ongoing conversation between culture and character.

  Though I’ve never before reviewed a science fiction novel, this review was easy to write, because it was fun to write, and the only person who really deserves credit for that is Peter Tieryas Liu for making Bald New World not just a fun book to read, but a fun book to talk about, think about, and write about. But I hope my use of the word fun doesn’t make the novel feel like a trifle, because the book has its share of philosophical depth and dark moments, but that depth and darkness are intertwined with the novel’s setting, characterization, and plot that they rarely draw attention to themselves, working as parts of a remarkable whole, rather than drawing attention to themselves in a way that feels self-serious or disingenuous. Bald New World is a fun book, sure, but it’s a fun book with the kind of heart and depth that sci-fi enthusiasts have come to expect from only the very best books in the genre.

  …

  Author’s note: I met Peter Tieryas Liu at AWP this year. When we described our books to each other, we were intrigued by the other’s work and decided to swap PDFs. If we end up reviewing each other’s books, please know that this wasn't planned, and that it just means that we were each excited about what we read.