2015 Year-End Round Up

The Year in Music Books Read

• The Rick Johnson Reader, Bill Knight, ed.
• The Trouble With Music, Mat Callahan
• 1989: Bob Dylan Didn’t Have This To Sing About, Joshua Clover
• The Accidental Evolution of Rock & Roll, Chuck Eddy
• The Dark Stuff, Nick Kent
• Spin: Greatest Hits: 5 Years of Heretics, Heroes, and the New Rock 'n' Roll, Doug Brod, ed.
• Love Goes To Buildings on Fire, Will Hermes
• Unsung Heroes of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Nick Tosches
• Bring the Noise: 20 Years of Writing About Hip Rock and Hip Hop, Simon Reynolds
• Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY, and the Lost Story of 1970, David Browne
• Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock & Roll, Peter Bebergal
• This Ain’t The Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk, Steve Waksman
• The Noise, Robert Duncan
• I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon, Crystal Zevon
• Don’t Thank Me All At Once: The Lost Pop Genius of Scott Miller, Brett Milano

 Honorable Mention... #21-11:

21 Black Messiah, D’Angelo & the Vanguard (RCA) (The “Damn You Late-December 2014 Release Date” Award)

20 This is the Sonics, The Sonics (Revox)

19 Policy, Will Butler (Merge)
18 Momentary Masters, Albert Hammond, Jr. (Vagrant)
17 American Man, The Yawpers (Bloodshot)
16 The Deslondes, The Deslondes (New West)
15 Painted Shut, Hop Along (Saddle Creek)
14 Roots Rock ‘n’ Roll, 6-String Drag (Royal Potato Family)
13 Currents, Tame Impala (Interscope)
12 Rose Mountain, Screaming Females (Don Giovanni)
11 Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats (Stax)

10 Perpetual Motion People, Ezra Furman (Bella Union): “My personality’s cut up into pieces,” Ezra Furman notes on “Lousy Connection,” and the baker’s dozen of songs presented here on his third record bear that out, as Furman runs the gamut from chintzy ‘80s pop on the opening “Restless Year”, to twitchy funk (“Wobbly”) mutant doo wop on “Lousy Connection” and “Pot Holes”, fuzzed-out indie stompers (“Tip of a Match”)  and McCartney-esque pop (“Watch You Go By” and “Can I Sleep In Your Brain?”). Yes, it’s a tad whiplash inducing, but Furman and his band are clearly having a blast, and the omnivorous approach fits Furman’s fractured, young-man’s take on life in these frantic United States.

09 Something More Than Free, Jason Isbell (Southeastern): “Listen to this album if you like songs,” helpfully notes a reviewer at RateYourMusic in his write-up of Isbell’s fifth solo record. There’s more than a grain of truth in that tautology, of course, as Isbell continues to solidify his reputation as one of the go-to choices for Americana fans who care about the craft of songwriting. Opening one-two punch “If It Takes A Lifetime” and “24 Frames” are instant additions to the Isbell canon, and elsewhere, he’s in fine form doing what he does best: capturing the hardscratch pride of people just trying to get by (“Speed Trap Town”; the title track; “Palmetto Rose”). Sonically, it’s a little sparer than previous outings (new wife Amanda Shires’ fiddle gets pride of place on this record), but Isbell’s eye remains keen and his heart open.

08 Beat the Champ, Mountain Goats (Merge): Where lead Goat John Darnielle takes us down a lesser-trod avenue in Old, Weird America: mid-century regional wrestling scenes, where sweaty, beefy men (both in the crowd and in the ring, I suppose) filled smoke-obscured VFW halls and pummeled each other for a few intense moments, heroes and heels vying for equal, miniscule measures of glory and paydays, both of which would hopefully be enough to get them to the next town on the circuit to do it all over again. You get the idea. Darnielle, as only he can, gives a quiet dignity to these forgotten warriors – Chavo Guerrero, Al Madril, Red Shoes Dugan, King Kong Bruiser Brody – while also making time for the sui generis world of professional wrestling: the bloody threats of “Foreign Object” (a wrestler’s bloody, underhanded threat to stab an opponent in the eye with the titular device); the cage match setting for “Unmasked!” An unlikely triumph.

07 The Waterfall, My Morning Jacket (ATO): Has it really been a decade since MMJ’s Z? (Checks calendar: it has.) Anyways, after some recent stylistic detours (e.g., the Thai-pop-nicking “Holdin’ On To Black Metal” on 2011’s Circuital) America’s biggest-hearted rock band found the plot again, a little older and a little wiser. The Waterfall plays like a not-quite-concept record, with frontman Jim James, on the heels of a back injury and the end of a relationship, exploring faith, rebirth and renewal on “Believe (Nobody Knows)”, “Big Decisions” and the soulful closer, “Only Memories Remain”. James is setting himself up as this generation’s Neil Young: a true seeker, looking for answers in this crazy, cruel, beautiful world.

06 Slurrup, Liam Hayes (Fat Possum): Completely ignorant of Hayes’ nearly 20 year career with Plush and his more-recent solo work (oh great, more music to investigate), I picked up this album on a lark and was drawn in by its – to my ears, at least – comparisons to Scott McCaughey (seriously, McCaughey’s lawyers may want to talk to Hayes about getting their client a writing credit on “Nothing Wrong” and “Get It Right”) and Mitch Easter. Slurrup is the sound of a studio rat embracing his rock – or at least, power pop -- god, with tape manipulations and samples  (the warped surf rock of the opening title track; the plinky, trippy interlude “Theme from ‘Mindball’”; the audio collage “Channel 44”) rubbing shoulders with uptempo rockers like “One Way Out”, “Fokus”, “Outhouse”, the jangly “Keys to Heaven”. A few quieter moments – “Greenfield”, the string-laden “August Fourteen” – leaven the silliness, but on the balance Slurrup is a goofy, charming run through the mind of an oddball pop auteur.

05 FFS, FFS (Domino): This fun pairing between long-running art-rock Los Angeleno brother duo Sparks and [insert string of adjectives here] Franz Ferdinand struck gold more than a few times on FFS, with each band doing what it does best: the slinky, funky “Call Girl” could easily have fit on any of Franz Ferdinand’s albums; the smart-ass “Police Encounters” and “Piss Off” are worthy late-period Sparks.  What takes this album from good to great is the nearly-seven minute long operatic suite “Collaborations Don’t Work,” a cheeky examination of team-ups (“You start off deferential / And strangely reverential / You both feel it's essential” which then devolves into accusations of “I don't get your way of phrasing / I don't think you're really trying”) that both hits at some deep artistic truism and manages to be the exception that proves the rule. 

04 b’lieve I’m goin down…, Kurt Vile (Matador): Vile, like his former War on Drugs bandmate Adam Granduciel, relies on classic rock for his framework, but where Granduciel starts with Springsteen before taking off on his band’s headtrips, Vile’s more a Tom Petty guy: sly, nasal, shaggy-dog stoned. B’lieve finds Vile expanding on that template, cutting down on the reverb-heavy guitar and incorporating more folk (“All In A Daze Work”) and pop (the piano lope “Lost My Head There”) into his ever-expanding sonic arsenal.  Vile’s ability to make a meticulously crafted album seem like a tossed-off jam session continues to serve him well: he looks and sounds like a guy barely capable of delivering a pizza, and yet, between b’lieve and 2013’s Wakin on a Pretty Daze, he’s delivered two masterpieces in a row.

03 Goon, Tobias Jesso, Jr., (True Panther Sounds): From the “When life gives you lemons” department: Los Angeles-area bassist moves back to Vancouver to deal with a messy breakup, finds out his mom has cancer, learns piano at 27 and uses the setbacks as fuel for some sadsack ‘70s singer/songwriter piano pop tunes (think Randy Newman, Carole King), connects with Girls’ bassist JR White and the Black Keys’ Patrick Carney, both of whom co-produce some of the songs that would wind up on Jesso’s debut, Goon – including one track, “How Could You Babe,” that Adele (!) tweets about, which exposure gets him a gig on Jimmy Fallon’s show before said album is even released. No surprises or cleverness here; just sturdy, open-hearted, broken-hearted piano songs.

02 Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, Courtney Barnett (Milk!/Mom + Pop): On her first full length, the lo-key, lo-fi Australian singer/songwriter cements her reputation as Mistress of the Quotidian, chronicling the everyday moments that constitute life in the 21^st century: job stress (the remarkable opener “Elevator Operator”); loneliness (the aptly-titled “An Illustration of Loneliness”); househunting/ruminating on mortality (“Depreston”); trying to impress a cute boy/girl (“Aqua Profunda!”); and, uh, the environmental and economic costs of trucking in Australia (“Dead Fox”). And while all of that sounds like a total drag on paper, Barnett and her band channel the best of ‘90s slacker guitar rock throughout – seriously, this thing could be Brighten the Corners’s hip Antipodean niece. Endlessly, effortlessly charming. 

01 No Cities to Love, Sleater-Kinney (Sub Pop): This was the first new record I spun this year, and the moment it ended (a mere 32 minutes after it began) I knew I had just listened to the best record of 2015. Sure enough, Sleater-Kinney’s all-killer-no-filler No Cities to Love stayed in heavy rotation all year, its wonders (and delights!) never ceasing. NCtL packs a lot of ideas into its brief runtime, but in these fractious times, I keep coming back to the album’s focus on the power of friendship and community: close your eyes and you can practically see Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker and Janet Weiss pulling a “Wonder Twins, Activate!” ring-bump on “Surface Envy”’s “Only together do we break the rules… only together do we make the rules!” And correct me if I’m mistaken, but I believe the title track’s assertion that “it’s not the weather, it’s the people we love!” is the actual definition of “community” that appears in Webster’s. How many bands can claim their eighth album is their best… recorded after a decade-long hiatus, no less? The mind, she boggles. One of America’s best rock bands turned in the year’s best album.