Nathan's Favorite Records, 2015

1. Tame Impala, Currents

Great psychedelia is intoxicating and messy. It should lead your imagination toward one place and then zig when you expect it to zag. Which is to say this album is a rabbit hole of “holy goddamn, how did they think of that?” songwriting.  

2. Kamasi Washington, The Epic

A muscular, form-defying three-hour jazz odyssey from the saxophonist in Flying Lotus’ cutting-edge stable. From Coltrane to Sun Ra to funky fusion, Washington channels every permutation you can think of and add a few more.

3. DāM-Funk, Invite the Light
In a time where retro is king, the man means to carry his namesake forward. Layers of synths grind and sputter into something grand. It takes a few listens to fully access the many levels of this record.

4. Dr. Dre, Compton: A Soundtrack
The retirement album of a master, who to everyone’s surprise had something new to say. Yes, Compton is as self-serving a cartoon as the movie that inspired it. I could knock the hustle, but the beatsmithing and guest verses are up to normal exquisite standards, and there’s something else too, new to Dre: a sense of playfulness.

5. Destroyer, Poison Season

Kaputt from 2011 could never be imitated, and luckily, Dan Bejar does not try. Heavy on orchestration but light on groove, quality still shines through these lonely symphonies.

6. Blur, The Magic Whip
Damon Albarn’s track record continues almost unblemished, and here he returns to the band that made him famous. An older band less interested in showing off, and better for it.

7. Dawn Richard, Blackheart
Taking a page from Janelle Monae’s multi-album conceptual journeys, Richard composes a sequel to Goldenheart that is, as she would say, “on that new shit.” She defies pop rules as cannily as she invents new R&B sounds.

8. Deerhunter, Fading Frontier

This is the first Deerhunter album I felt was seriously extraordinary. A mixture of pleasing classic rock and noise, it's quite the collection of weird anthems.

9. Erykah Badu, But You Caint Use My Phone
Slight? Maybe slightly. This was an unexpected pleasure Badu dropped out of nowhere, with a satirical edge I never expected. Beyond the takes on Drake and the Isleys and the Andre 3000 verse, even at 36 minutes, it still feels smooth and complete.

10. Jay Rock, 90059

West-coast rap was too rich to believe in 2015. Yet somehow this brisk, uncompromising entry in the nu-rap canon was regarded as a disappointment. I defy anyone to listen to “Money Trees Deuce” or “Gumbo” and tell me Jay-Rock is somehow lesser than Kendrick.

Favorite Songs*
A$AP Rocky Feat. UGK and Juicy J, “Wavybone”
Boogie, “Oh My”
Cashmere Cat Feat. Ariana Grande, “Adore”
Drake, “Hotline Bling”**
Freddie Gibbs, “Fuckin’ Up the Count”
Ilovemakonnen Feat. Migos, “Whip It (Remix)”
Mutemath, “Used to”
Nick Cave & Warren Ellis, “All the Gold in California”
Young Thug, “Best Friend”

*No reason to limit myself to just singles or radio hits

**The heart wants what it wants, and the ear likes what it likes

Aaron's Favorites, 2015: Music In The Year Commas Got Fucked Up

1. Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp A Butterfly
You can live at the mall, or you can groove to Kendrick Lamar Duckworth’s funk odyssey of limitless ambition and acumen. K Dot is our Gil Scott.

2. Destroyer, Poison Season
Bejar reaches a little further back to find his melancholic haze this time, but continues to make the only thing he’s capable of: a Destroyer record.

3. Jessica Pratt, On Your Own Love Again
A moonlit blur, our generation’s I Often Dream of Trains.

4. Low, Ones And Sixes
A freezing blast of Duluth intensity, from a band writing some of its best songs in decade number three.

5. Erykah Badu, But You Caint Use My Phone
Badu tries on the styles of the moment, sounds ten times more comfortable in them than actual young people. The technology she could do without.

6. A$AP Rocky, At.Long.Last.A$AP
Didn’t expect 2015’s trippiest album to come from Pretty Flacko, but here it is. He had good taste, but he’s turning that into vision.

7. Blur, The Magic Whip
A reunion album that finds the band where they are, not where they were. Basically Albarn’s world-weariness in widescreen, with brilliant details from Coxon and crew throughout.

8. iLoveMakonnen, Drink More Water 5
He teaches you how to whip it, warbles about heartbreak, lies to his Mom about selling drugs and dispenses solid advice about staying hydrated. What’s not to love?

9. Vince Staples, Summertime '06
A claustrophobic rumination on one summer in the rapper’s teens. No I.D’s no-frills productions are about as far away from West Coast as it’s possible to get, but it all feels true to Vince.

10. Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment, Surf
Chance—even while ceding the spotlight to his friends, rapper and jazz trumpeter alike—radiates a shamanic positivity. Just drink the kool aid.

Nathan's Favorite Music, 2011 Edition

1. Destroyer, Kaputt

The smoothest, most immersive listening experience of 2011, by a considerable margin. Singer/songwriter Dan Bejar takes a few compositional cues from AOR and soft rock but this nine-song set is the opposite of anodyne--it constantly teems with fresh ideas, from the silvery disco pulse beneath to the proudly anachronistic flute and sax solos on top. If there's a theme to this list, it's that the best music of 2011 didn't care what year it was.

2. Raphael Saadiq, Stone Rollin'

Saadiq is a veteran showman, producer and arranger, but his bounteous command of classic soul productions usually lags behind his skills as a songwriter. Not so with Stone Rollin', an album of immaculately-orchestrated tributes to different eras of soul, entirely devoid of retro-gazing. In 2011, no album made more mellifluous use of the Mellotron, an instrument not traditionally associated with soul and R&B, modern or otherwise.

3. DJ Quik, The Book of David

He may call himself a "crucial if not lesser-known artist from the West" but the pristine beats of The Book of David demonstrate that Quik, if not before, definitely now deserves a place in the top tier of West Coast hip-hop. Few late-career rap albums are as restlessly committed to an unstoppable groove--in Quik's eyes, funk and hip-hop are always mutually reinforced properties, etymologically unrelated to the overprocessed goo-goo synths of much modern hip-hop.

4. Big K.R.I.T., Return of 4Eva

Though Big K.R.I.T. has garnered a reputation as a Southern rap virtuoso, his 2011 mixtape Return of 4Eva is more than just a collection of a creatively-expressed drawly Southernisms spat over crunkified click tracks. K.R.I.T. is also rapper of great depth and range, and his evocations of life in rural Meridian, Mississippi give this album a country flavor that puts most rap from the city, Southern or otherwise, to shame.

5. Fucked Up, David Comes To Life

Just when you thought Fucked Up's massive three-guitar sound couldn't get bigger, they embark on the most epic undertaking of their career--a three-part, eighteen-song concept album about a dude in a lightbulb factory. The overall "concept" might be a bit lost among the fuzz and stentorian talk-vox, but the twin totems of beauty and aggression endemic in Fucked Up's best work are still there, to a transcendent, almost tiring degree.

6. Blouse, Blouse

Call them a dream-pop trio from Portland, but that really fails to do the sounds of Blouse justice. Coasting on the familiar 80s combination of gothic synths and ethereal lady vocals, Blouse makes novel use of common instrumental techniques. Their self-titled debut album is alarmingly dense, averaging an impressive two or three massive hooks per track. Consistency of this sort is harder than it looks.

7. Boris, New Album

In a characteristic move, the beloved Japanese metal band Boris set out to confuse fans as much as possible by releasing three albums in 2011. Attention Please was the more electronic-oriented release, while Heavy Rocks concentrated more on the band's aggressive punk-metal roots--but it was New Album, occupying a nebulous middle between those two extremes, that I found the most compelling. From careening Timbaland percussion stabs to string-laden metal monsters to the occasional dalliance with J-Pop, the diversity of tunes contained was unmatched in metal, or anywhere else.

8. A$AP Rocky, LiveLoveA$AP

As my colleague has previously noted, 2011 was a big year for insurgent rap from the likes of Odd Future, Lil B, Danny Brown, etc, but I bet that in 2012 I won't be spinning anything from that 2011 repertoire as often as LiveLoveA$AP, Harlem rapper A$AP Rocky's breakthrough mixtape. Augmented by spacey, codeine-inflected beats from the likes of Clams Casino and Spaceghostpurrp, 24-year old A$AP spits like a emcee repping an extra decade's worth of self-assurance. The result is a rare mixtape with almost too many classic tracks to name offhand.

9. Mutemath, Odd Soul

Bands like New Orleans' Mutemath--solid, dependable and exciting purveyors of mainstream blues rock--are an undervalued commodity in America. Mining everything from classic NO jazz to Peter Green-style blues guitar freakouts, Odd Soul is first and foremost an album filled with remarkable performances, from musicians who have clearly spent years learning to play together aggressively and effectively. There's a soulful side to these heavy riffs that give this a more playful and funky edge than recent material from, say, the Black Keys or other blues rock revivalists.

10. Yuck, Yuck

Speaking of bands not made for these times--the London-based Yuck might have garnered more comparisons to Dinosaur Jr. and Pavement than any other artist in 2011, but that doesn't take any value away from the explosive energy of this debut. In my opinion, Yuck isn't a perfect album (it does lose some energy towards the end), but as far as debuts go I cannot imagine a more youthful-sounding rejoinder to the pre-end times rhetoric of so much "2011 in music" think pieces.

Honorable Mention: Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie XX, We're New Here

A year ago, I gave Gil Scott-Heron's I'm New Here the highest accolades on my list of 2010's best albums. Back then, it was his big comeback album, but now it has become his swan song--Scott-Heron died in May, ostensibly during the planning stages for a followup to I'm New Here. A few months before, however, XL Recordings put out a remixed version of the album, with new productions from Jamie Smith (the bassist/singer from the xx). Though Gil Scott-Heron's vocal contributions are the same as before, We're New Here is at least 60% its own beast, and at the very least, a more rattly, electronic type of experience than the original I'm New Here. It isn't exactly a different album, but I would be remiss if I did not mention it in some fashion--it, as well as its dead creator, one of the greatest poets and musicians of the last 50 years. RIP once more Gil--and Poly, Gary Moore, Teena Marie, etc. etc.

Refrain From Being Lame: Aaron's Favorites, 2011

1. Destroyer, Kaputt

An icy melange--flutes, saxophones, synthesyzers, Sibel Thrasher--that travels from diaphanous to propulsive, from merely wry to really and truly devastating.

2. Fucked Up, David Comes To Life
A band with a talent for outdoing itself, even when that no longer seems possible. Fucked Up's trio of guitars again concoct a sound as large as their vocalist, with melodies arriving from every angle. David has few roots in punk, but courses with the life-saving power that made punk special in the first place.

3. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Belong

Pains have emerged from the library stacks, with their bookish songcraft intact. Ecstasy may have been a catalyst, by the sounds of it, but their idea of the perfect rock LP suffers not a bit from being twenty years old.

4. PJ Harvey, Let England Shake
Harvey's dense folk passes by in a violent rush, unsparing in its studies of war, death, and ideology. The most restless songwriter since Neil Young, PJ hasn't repeated herself once, here brandishing her autoharp as a weapon.

5. St. Vincent, Strange Mercy
Annie Clark's guitar work is so texturally weird I often forget she's actually playing a guitar. Strange Mercy's buoyant art-rock is shot through with strange undercurrents--songs like "Cruel," "Suregon," and "Year Of The Tiger" dash in new directions each time I play them.

6. Shabazz Palaces, Black Up
The sound of a man driven mad by the noise of the city, filtered through beats constructed on a glowing monitor in total darkness. Or so I imagine: what I know for sure is that Shabazz Palaces' debut marks the most stunning reinvention since Daniel Dumile first donned a mask.

7. Wye Oak, Civilian
On their third, Wassner and Stack cut back on the blasts of surging guitar, following a tenser, more post-punk path. Wye Oak are still the most mournful rock band on the planet.

8. Big K.R.I.T., Return of 4Eva

Big K.R.I.T. references OutKast on two of his album's first three songs, but he's not just recreating the funk and bounce of vintage Kast. K.R.I.T., who mans the boards as well as the mic, pays tribute to the South by crafting a new addition to its canon.

9. Low, C'mon
Low make American Music in the way Neil Young does: brilliantly, toying with convention according to their idiosyncrasies. The Sparhawks' vision is, of course, a terrifying one.

10. Van Hunt, What Were You Hoping For?

A record that seems to have exploded out of Paisley Park--Van Hunt's cacophony is soulful, punkish and dripping in day glo. He's the rare songwriter making music about the Great Recession that sounds and feels like our times. Maybe that's the mechanism...


I wrote about most of these artists during 2011: Destroyer, Fucked Up, TPOBP@H, PJ Harvey, St. Vincent, Wye Oak, Low

The Concertgoer: Destroyer & The War On Drugs

There was an accidental logic in seeing The War On Drugs a week and a half after former WoD member Kurt Vile came to town. Granted, I didn't see much of The War On Drugs--what sort of rock concerts begins at 7:30?--just enough to tease out the similarities. Vile's old band also have an underwhelming frontman, and similarly draw on classic rock without being wholly derivative. In the case of War On Drugs, their music takes the shape of something Wilco might've made between A Ghost Is Born and Sky Blue Sky. There's even some cool, Nels Cline-style guitar. The group's liability is frontman Adam Granduciel, whose vocals ape the stretched-out vowels of Blonde On Blonde. It's less an homage than a grating imitative gesture, and the band sounds better when his mouth is closed.

Destroyer have frontman issues as well. It's not that Dan Bejar is or isn't a good frontman, it's that he neglects the role entirely. Live, the roguish Bejar wanders around, distractedly. Bejar kept his mic stand at about knee-length, and returned his mic there when he wasn't singing; he crouched for many of the show's opening numbers, sipping beer when his vocals weren't required; he entered in a jean jacket; and he referred to lyric sheets for two of his own compositions. While he didn't seem pleased to be performing, Bejar did deliver his enjambed lines and trilled coos as on record. Even when he's just standing there, his vocals still sound like a man wildly gesticulating. He did not play guitar at all.

Destroyer's success rested less on Bejar's performance than the seven musicians he's playing with. These included a saxophonist/flautist and trumpeter in addition to the guitars, keyboard, bass, and drums. With the horns and a female vocalist, the band was well equipped to play material form this year's Kaputt.* They were never introduced, but whoever they are, their mélange--sultry horns, keyboard washes, and low-end kick--is brilliant. I hope someone recorded the extended jam at the end of "Song For America"--the band reached a dense, commanding crescendo, and then set down their instruments and left.

The Kaputt Players dipped into a few back catalog numbers. These were only lightly reworked, but the band added horns to some Rubies favorites, and conjured a sublime "My Favorite Year." I can personally attest that this performance was much better than the one Destroyer gave in Minneapolis three years ago, when they played that same song. The difference comes down to the music--the airy density of the Kaputt material allows Bejar to inhabit a space from which his disinterested verbiage becomes another evocative element. The 2008 show had him fronting a rock band, and onstage this does not come naturally to him.

So it's been disappointing to read that Bejar may give up music. For years, Bejar alone kept singer-songerwriterdom fresh. It seems like strange timing, now that he's pivoted from vagabond to sophisticate, and assembled a pretty tight band. But eccentrics don't follow career paths--Kaputt seems to have accidentally captured some zeitgeist--and if this is actually it (which I doubt), than Bejar went out with a good live show. For once.

*The band did not include Sibel Thrasher, whose backing vocals make such a lovely counterpoint on many of the new songs

Critical Beatdown: Round Eleven

Ghostface Killah, "Together Baby"

NS: The soul sample that accounts for the title of this song shows up haphazardly, sometimes mid-verse, and is otherwise unrelated to the Supreme Clientele-hearkening free-associative carnage contained within. Ghost has seemed less slapdash than this before, but not in the past few years. 4/5

AM: The jarring transition from the soulful chorus to the sub-RZA minor key verses--produced by someone called Yakub--is terrible, and Ghost, who just a few years ago attacked his beats so hard he sounded breathless, just seems bored. 2.5/5

PJ Harvey, "Written On The Forehead"

NS: Overlaying Church harmonies and vast, Enya-esque synthmospheres with reggae beats isn't something I'd normally associate with Ms. Harvey--particularly not as the first single to an album ostensibly called Let England Shake. The song works, of course, as I think all PJ Harvey songs basically do, but there's still a lot of concentrated weirdness to unpack. 4/5

AM: The most ethereal thing Harvey's ever recorded, and by some margin, "Written On The Forehead" sounds less like a song than a collection of noises drifting in from outside. In less than four minutes the song achieves a quiet rapture, and the effect is the sort of thing many artists spend a career chasing. 4.5/5



David Lynch, "Good Day Today"
NS: Speaking of weirdness..."Good Day Today" bears the stamp of Lynch's previous collaborations with Angelo Badalamenti, but this is obviously far housier than anything you'd ever hear on Twin Peaks. Lynch's lyrics are deceptively simple and childish, as we'd expect, spicing up the otherwise generic but still-rousing technobeat. 3.5/5

AM: For his first single, the director has transposed his oddities to the world of music. Over a throbbing synthesyzers and a drum machine, Lynch wrestles with the themes that appear in his work ("So tired of fire"), his vocals heavily processed. His delivery is arrhythmic--a proper R&B singer could have a hit with this--but the chorus is arresting in its simplicity. 4/5

Daft Punk, "End Of The Line"
NS: I have understandable expectations for Tron: Legacy (Jeff Bridges is in it, which is cool, and the dialogue couldn't be nearly as bad as the 1982 original, right?), but I have been really excited to see how Daft Punk's score underscores the onscreen video game action. "End Of Line" is about exactly what I imagined, but that doesn't make it any less exciting. Compared to the rest of the movie, anyway. 3.5/5

AM: Is a song that builds to something considerably less exciting than what it promises a success? Not in the case of "End Of The Line," which has the Detroit techno nods but not the radiant pop-funk workouts that color the group's best work. 1.5/5

Destroyer, "Chinatown"
NS: Not sure this sounds like any Chinatown I've ever been to--I can't remember the last time a Destroyer song has gone down this smoothly (and my lord, those saxophones shouldn't be as effective as they are). If I had to compare this to anything, it would be the melodic yet dance-y spaciness of The The's Soul Mining. In other words, I have to give this a perfect grade. There's literally nothing wrong with it. 5/5

AM: Huddling amidst the gauzy atmospherics, Bejar has rarely sounded more desperate as a singer. But as a songwriter he's flexing muscles I didn't even know he had--the female vocals and back-alley saxophone are both new to the insular world of Destroyer. This is Bejar at his best: inscrutable, yes, but also genuinely mysterious. 5/5

Bernard Sumner, Hot Chip and Hot City, "Didn't Know What Love Was"

NS: I'm going to keep singling out these group collab tracks written for Converse commercials, not because Sumner and co. are particularly deserving of my ire, but because "What Love Was" provides a solid demonstration of what a song written for commercials sounds like. It's not as good; it's also a mish-mash of New Order's worst early 90's tendencies. 1/5

AM: I have not idea how this was composed, but it resembles a Hot Chip track--and this one, like the others I've heard, sounds like a sleepy version of New Order--with Bernard Sumner singing over it. It's alright, slightly too busy, but mostly it just makes me want to put on "The Perfect Kiss" or "Age Of Consent" or "Bizarre Love Triangle" or... 2.5/5

Critical Beatdown Round 3: 2009 Wrap-up

Destroyer, "Bay Of Pigs"
AM: Hard to say what this is, or why Dan Bejar might have undertaken it, though the first line provides a clue. So vastly different from the wooze-pop of his last two albums...and so much worse. The vocals are great, but the song has no kick before the guitar comes in around seven minutes. 2.5/5

NS: Like a lot of 13-minute songs, this one has a lot of chaff, and it takes the beginning in particular a while to get going. Still, there are plenty of good musical ideas which pop up occasionally, and I especially like the apocalyptic imagery, which is evocative and playful in a manner similar to Talking Heads' "Life During Wartime." 3.5/5

DJ Quik & Kurupt, "Nine Times Out Of Ten"
AM: Doomed to be compared to "Grindin," but like that song, damn good. Barely more than Kurupt's tense, terse rhymes and a drum machine, the latter of which practically ruptures space-time. 5/5

NS: This beat is a grower. Augmented by a Neptunes-ish drum pattern and a female vocal sample, Kurupt proves his lyrical worth even as his flow lags somewhat behind. Tests the limits of what I find refreshingly minimal in rap, but still an enjoyable listen. 3/5

Grizzly Bear, "Two Weeks"
AM: I really tried to resist the prim, wussy sounds of Grizzly Bear--hated Yellow House, saw them open a generally boring show. And yet..."Two Weeks." It sounds like a lost Wings single, played at 25 rpm. That's a compliment. 4.5/5

NS: Man, those pianos sound punchy, don't they? Yet another example of Grizzly Bear's inimitable instrumental touch, which finds no equal in any other band. The high vocals kill me every time, and as usual Grizzly Bear's drummer proves his mettle with a gentle instrumental flair unmatched in the business. 4.5/5

Flo Rida, "Right Round"
AM: I'm not sure if there's a rapper out there with less cred than Flo Rida. He leaves no imprint on this song whatsoever. Thankfully Dr. Luke has enough sense to dress up his graft in cool noises. 3/5

NS: Would I have at least enjoyed the sample this song is based on more had I never listened to the original Dead Or Alive song? Would I have liked the Watchmen movie if I hadn't read the original comic? Probably. Doesn't change the fact that awareness of this lazy piece of musical thievery does indeed color my critical judgment. Sorry. 1/5

Drake (Feat. Kanye West, Lil Wayne, and Eminem), "Forever"
AM: I resent Drake--he came from the world of Canadian teen soaps, never really proved himself before superstardom, and seems to be hedging his bets between singing and rapping. Remarkably little gets accomplished in this song's six minutes, unless you count lazy guest verses or faux-epic beats. 2.5/5

NS: The highest compliment I can give this song is that it is indeed a perfectly calibrated companion to the Lebron James documentary it features on. The force and punch of the beat on this song is beyond what popular radio is accustomed to, and I can imagine it becoming a perfect stadium jam. Of the rappers, Kanye is oddly the weakest. 4/5

Wale, "Pretty Girls"
AM: The only song I've heard off Attention Deficit with the horn-assisted smoothness of last year's killer Mixtape About Nothing--it brings back aptly-titled production team Best Kept Secret. Alas, not as lyrically intelligent as MAN's "The Manipulation," but this is a beat made for riding. 4/5

NS: I love this song despite its cruel intentions (essentially, to mock ugly girls at the expense of prettier ones). Horn samples pop up all the time in rap songs these days, but I've never heard a horn sample that sounds like this. Everything about the song, from aforementioned horns to Wale's delivery, is sheer quality. 5/5

Vampire Weekend, "Horchata"
AM: Much better than that other single, though not quite Ezra's guest spot on The Very Best's "Warm Heart Of Africa." Progresses from one nice bit to the next, the jumpy orchestral section being the best. 3/5

NS: I'm not a Vampire Weekend hater by any means, but I have to say that, despite some really good songs, they often indulge in certain musical practices that I find extremely lame. Unfortunately, this song has several of them, chiefly a sensibility that can be described as "overly chipper." 2/5

Fucked Up, "Do They Know It's Christmas?"
AM: If nothing else, proof that FU understand internet-era humor. The cacophony is toned down, but it's pretty fun. My favorite guest is Bob Mould. 3.5/5

NS: Weirdly righteous. I congratulate Fucked Up in finding the hidden awesome core of a song I simply assumed was irredeemable. Fucked Up is a band of many talents. David Cross' line, aping Bono, got a big laugh out of me. Merry Christmas. 4/5


Stay tuned for 2009's final Critical Beatdown, our Single Of The Year nominations.