2015 New Releases

[KDS]

I've only acquired three full length albums that have been released in CY 2015. 

Brian Wilson - NPP - Very very good

Ghost - Meliora - Great

Iron Maiden - The Book of Souls - Only listened twice.  Still getting a feel for it.  Lots of long songs, so there's a lot to take in. 

[alf wiedersehen]

An album list might be tough for me this year unless I had the strong understanding myself that "best of the year" doesn't mean "great." There are a few albums I've liked, but not all that many that is even call, start to finish, really good.

That's interesting. Personally, I think there have been a good amount albums from this year I would certainly call "really good."
But, since you say that, I would be interested to actually see what would make your list when the time comes.

[the captain]

It's funny (or is it?) that while I was going through tunes for my playlist, I was truly struggling to pick from a lot of albums--which would imply that there were a lot of really good albums, right? Yet when I look at them one at a time, I struggle to call any of them all that good. Maybe it's just the perennial problem of comparing the flawed reality of in-the-moment work coming in real time to the great albums of the past. There are probably only two real measures of greatness: perfect immediacy, and time. Nothing struck me, album-wise, in the former camp. So it's up to the latter.

These are some roughly ordered favorites, though.

Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit...
The Mountain Goats, Beat the Champ (a grower)
Asaf Avidan, Gold Shadow
Wilco, Star Wars
Kacey Musgraves, Pageant Material
Earl Sweatshirt, I Don't Like...
The Bird and the Bee, Recreational Love
Lady Lamb the Beekeeper, After (which really was a grower)
Your Old Droog, Kinison
Brian Wilson, NPP

I guess my pessimism was, in 10 years, will I be thinking that any of this fit among the best of the '10s? I guess anything's possible, but they haven't struck me that way yet. (There are also those newer or not-yet-released albums I'm not even bothering to try to assess.)

[the captain]

I bought and have been enjoying Be Small, from Here We Go Magic. Give it a try.

Also listened to the new Majical Cloudz, but only bought "Are You Alone?" Even that is only interesting, not necessarily something I think to be especially good. We'll see.

[the captain]

The new Joanna Newsom is out today. I've downloaded and will be listening today. Ice been anticipating this one for a while.

[undercover-m]

I'll probably end up making one as well, although it's more likely I'll just make an album list.

Anyway, I realize I'm the only fan around these parts, but this album is so great.

I love you, Protomartyr, and your new album, The Agent Intellect.

Well, "Dope Cloud" just came on KEXP, and I enjoyed it. I'll have to check out the rest of the album .

Also, this came out a while ago but I just heard about it/this band. I listened to it all the way through the other day and I really like it. Not in love with it yet, but it's been a while since an album has captured my attention this much on the first listen.

[the captain]

The new Joanna Newsom is out today. I've downloaded and will be listening today. Ice been anticipating this one for a while.

I have listened about half a dozen times, three of which while on a road trip with no distractions. Beautiful album, great arrangements. I look forward to continuing to listen, because there will be more to find within it.

[alf wiedersehen]

I, unfortunately, have not yet been able to listen to Deerhunter's or Joanna's new albums.
Just some monetary issues, but no one wants to hear about that.

Really looking forward to Divers, though.

[undercover-m]

More Real Estate side projects!
Being the lead singer, Martin Courtney alone doesn't sound all that different from the band. But that doesn't bother me, because I love Real Estate. This release is quite nice, being a few songs in.

I get some early-70s vocals vibes, which is another plus for me. This is more summery music despite being released in October. But I'm a fan so far.

[undercover-m]

So Car Seat Headrest is becoming a big deal. I've had the potential to see him twice this year and haven't made it to either of them. All for free, too! Maybe next time...

Not sure if I love his music yet, but I kind of like the lo-fi, chill vibe to it. And his lyrics are kind of weird and hilarious.

Here's a Pitchfork review for you all:
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21121-teens-of-style/

[undercover-m]

Has anyone else listened to this and if so, thoughts?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leu2STVH8Iw

I listened to about half of it. Honestly, I thought it was boring. I think people spend too much time trying to recreate the sounds of earlier eras ... but usually they're lacking the most important part, which is the material. That's how I felt here. I'd just lump it in with some High Llamas, some Beachwood Sparks, and dozens of other bands. You'll never be better than classic bands at being those bands: find something else to do. Not to say you can't pick and choose bits (as if you could avoid it).

Yeah, I'm not overwhelmed, either. I'm more or less of a casual fan of Ducktails. More of a fan of Real Estate. Although I do like the song "Heaven's Room." Overall it's a chill album I guess.
What era/classic bands do you think they were trying to sound like? Just wondering.

I sort of take this back. I'm listening to this again and I love how "Reprise" returns back to my favorite track on the album. The opening track and "Church" are quite good, too. At the moment, it's good background music for the assignment that I'm writing, so...

[the captain]

I've picked up a few things recently, which I'll list to keep myself from ranting in the "Paris" Sandbox thread.

Grimes, Art Angels. I'd never listened to her before but am just finishing up my first listen to this album. I had no idea: she's talented! A lot of dance, but with really strong pop elements and a lot of creativity in arrangements and production. This is an artist in a genre I don't spend a lot of time with.

Carla Morrison, Amor Supremo. It's in Spanish, so I have no real idea what's being sung, but her voice is great. Not sure about the production, which is a little melodramatic for me.

Laura Stevenson, Cocksure. I bought two songs after reading an interesting review somewhere or other. The best of it is good rock music, relatively raw but tuneful.

BORNS, Dopamine. Another "couple songs" purchase, a bright and shiny production. Good singer, nice high register. Some big-rawk combined with some R&B or disco.

One of these days I'm going to talk about Joanna Newsom's album, which is far and away what I've been listening to the most lately.

[alf wiedersehen]

Yay, new David Bowie.

David gets weird.

[Summertime Blooz]

And this is the single?!! Watching this video reminds me of another famous David. The Twin Peaks mastermind couldn't have done it any better. Not particularly interesting musically, kinda repetitious. Of course the same could be said of Station To Station, and many hold that up as a masterpiece. Still looking forward to January release.

[the captain]

I was just stopping by the site to make note of that song (and video). Wow. I'm not sure I love it, but I'm ... well, I'm kind of sure I love it. I think I disagree with krabklaw about how interesting the song is musically. It is repetitious, no question, but it also mutates several times despite the repetitious parts (which themselves both evoke religious fervor and tie together sections.) The drumming in the first section is just fantastic, jittery and uncomfortable. The middle, more vocal-solo heavy parts, were out of left field for me. Really cool. Probably a bit long for my taste, but not painfully so. Looking forward to listening again.

[the captain]

Joanna Newsom, Divers

Joanna Newsom, forgive me.

“I’m not in any way, shape, or form singing fairy tales or nursery rhymes,” she is quoted as saying in Steven Hyden’s October 21, 2015, Grantland feature. Hyden describes Newsom’s aversion to the adjectives so often ascribed to her, each typically some variant or synonym of elfin. Her image—which she seems, understandably enough, to disdain—is that of an almost otherworldly sprite, some oracle-minstrel spinning riddles on that pitched loom of hers.

The October 30, 2015, New York Times “Popcast” goes further, with Melissa Marturano of the “feminist fan project” blog “Blessing All the Birds” guesting with Ben Ratliff. Marturano rejects what seems like every adjective used to describe Newsom as sexist, as part of “[a] world where people want to suppress the weird in women, the unconventional in women.”

Newsom is, of course, not an elf. She is a working musician who writes songs. She plays harp and keyboard instruments. She sings. She produces and arranges. All of this is work. Craft. Maybe some small measure is inspiration, if you’re someone who believes in such a thing, but these albums—she’s on her fourth full-length with Divers—don’t come from rising smoke, from shaken bones, or read entrails.

But forgive me, Joanna Newsom. Whatever your intentions, I do hear nursery rhymes and fairy tales. If I didn’t, I probably wouldn’t bother listening anymore.

Belaboring compositions renders finely wrought, if over-thought, results. Anyone with musical intelligence, half a vocabulary, and sufficient patience (or self-indulgence) can deliver a work of complexity not half as dazzling as it is tedious. What has set Newsom’s work apart from that sort of exercise is that she has consistently tapped the magic of fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Of folk art.

Newsom’s work is unique in the modern (and past) pop world. It’s natural for writers to stretch for adjectives, and the less familiar the subject, the more desperate those attempts. But—Ms. Marturano—is “childlike” really the wrong word for Newsom’s voice? Is it sexist and belittling? At times, childlike is exactly the word I’d use, not to describe Newsom’s obviously mature lyrics, but literally her voice. When a voice sounds like something like a child’s voice, especially when delivered with innocent inflections (as is sometimes the case), that is childlike. Neither is this an adjective reserved for women: Brian Wilson has been described as childlike as frequently as Newsom, though for different reasons, and over a far longer span of time.

When Marturano, having worked through “emotionally and musically intelligent,” “talented,” and “brave” as descriptors of Newsom’s voice, lands on “the technical term ‘soprano.’” What I hear here are meaningless acrobatics intended to avoid the relatively accurate words in which unfortunately Marturano finds fault. Her voice sounds “talented?” This is nonsensical. “Intelligent” and “brave” do not exclude the unspoken “childlike.” And “soprano?” Soprano is a musical range. It’s a terrible description of a voice’s character, timbre, inflection. It’s a range of notes, period. Newsom does not sound like Montserrat Caballe.

But that’s more than sufficient time spent on criticizing the metacriticism. Newsom’s music, especially Divers, is itself, stands on its own, and deserves attention for what it is. Because some part of what an album is inevitably requires the listener’s experience, and so Marturano’s angle is, for her, fine. For me, it would be a limiting, even depressing one.

For me, the folk experience of Newsom includes some of what is feeling such pushback this time around. Good luck performing with a harp and not calling to mind a medieval world—itself magical to our modern fantasies, not just the sh*t of an impoverished people in feudal society, but a world of dragons and knights. Is that what she is? Is she medieval, a minstrel of magic? Obviously not, or at least not just. There’s harp, sure. (There’s also an internal photo spread of Newsom, parrot perched on her shoulder, beneath what appears to be an explosive night sky, light clothes draped over her. There are images of mist-drenched flowers and finger-branched trees. Pardon those of us who see a fantastic world implied.) But there’s Mini-Moog and Juno. Drum kits. Guitars and bass guitars.

In other words, it’s complicated. But let’s not be so reductive as to find fault based on our understandings of others’ implications and motivations.

Newsom straddles, or rather hops between, worlds in “Leaving the City.” It begins with sounds calling to mind some Renaissance music, the harp plucking melodies (and piano striking them beneath) not quite fugal but certainly contrapuntal. This is medieval. This is otherworldly. But what I’d insist were distorted guitars if the credits named no such instrument on the song pierce that peace before Newsom begins a jagged four-note descension, repeating through lyrics replete with the internal rhymes and soundplay that may be her greatest genius.

Elsewhere is a simpler pleasure. The opener, “Anecdotes,” begins the album with two verses of beautiful melody, sparsely accompanied. It builds through subsequent sections, unrushed, a composition and arrangement worth special mention. Newsom’s melodies demand particular attention, so often spread across measures, more complex and elongated than the predictably topped I-IV-V of pop. But demanding needn’t be unpleasant; two minutes into the song, the word “dew” is stretched across a restrained resolution of sorts, a shifting musical ground beneath.

“Waltz of the 101st Lightborne” is another example of Newsom’s ability to perform what seems like a familiar folk song, but full of the surprises of an intricate arrangement. In this, she calls to mind her one-time collaborator Van Dyke Parks. There have been reports of something like tension, or dissatisfaction, between them in their partnership, which seems possibly because each is superfluous to the other. Parks said to me in a 2008 email “I respect her unique qualities as a songwriter. I think she should do her own arranging, because her ideas are quite specific.”

Which is, of course, precisely what she has gone on to do. On Divers, Newsom arranged all of the harp, keyboards, and vocals, which is the bulk of the music. (She also produced the album.) Strings, percussion, and horns were generally arranged by others including such notables as composer Nico Muhly.

The result is a sound that is uniquely Newsom, outside of genre or time. Harpsichord or harp, piano or electric piano, marxophone or mellotron, strings or Moog. Disparate elements arrive and depart, occasionally jarring (such as the aforementioned, guitar-like scream in “Leaving the City”) but usually unnoticed upon the first few listens.

Numerous listens are essential, too, to absorb the lyrics. In fact, the booklet is essential to absorb the lyrics. I won’t discuss them because frankly I don’t know where to begin or, begun, where to stop. Each song deserves an article, as Newsom’s poetry is technically impressive throughout and aesthetically pleasing besides. She is one of the best lyricists of her time and does not need me to point out this or that phrase.

Divers seems like a majestic culmination of elements—melody, atmosphere, arranging, playing, writing, singing—a career pinnacle. Except, its creator young with an open future, it is instead just her latest album. May listeners hear and understand this rare example of quality for what it is, without undue distraction of the implications of what someone else may be thinking when he listens. The music is complicated. Listening to it needn’t be.

[the captain]

Two totally different 2015-related things.

1. Anyone listen to or have thoughts to share on the new Adele (other than that, for some, at least, the music industry still moves product)?

2. An FYI for the twee pop fans (Apples (in Stereo), the Bicycles, etc.), if you haven't heard Alpaca Sports, you might want to give them a try. Their 2015 short album / long EP, When You Need Me the Most, is awfully sugary sweet. It's well done stuff, very pretty and fun.

"Just Like Them:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRRaOP5rsv4&feature=iv&src_vid=ADMlqr8gBp4&annotation_id=annotation_3294235601

[Summertime Blooz]

I wanted to put in a good word or two for the quite fine new Joe Jackson album Fast Forward. This one really sneaked up on me, as I didn't hear about it until it came out a few weeks back. Being a long-time fan of Jackson from 'Look Sharp' onward, I am so happy to be able to easily recommend a listen to this album. Standing at 16 tracks tall, it's a robust ambitious project, but it doesn't sacrifice quantity for quality, as I think that all the tracks earn their place here. There's enough familiarity in the sound to be welcoming to old fans; there's some Pop, some Jazz, some Rock.  Thankfully though, Jackson gives us a few new twists and sounds that he hasn't tried before. 'The Blue Time' dips into Exotica, and 'So You Say' is a Bossa Nova track with very different production.  Horns and strings are brought into the picture when needed. Jackson is working with the broadest of pallets here, and the album is all the better for it; it's never boring or repetitive. Joe Jackson's voice has held up great and can be just as biting as ever when called upon to do so. Production is also top-notch; the sound and mix are as good as you would hope for with a Jackson release. My favorite track is King Of The City, which is like a  sleek slow-motion version of 'Steppin' Out' in it's romantic evocation of  the city at night. I also really love  the funky-but-not-too funky 'Junkie Diva'.  the Steely-Dan-ish 'Satellite', the uncharacteristically chipper 'A Little Smile', and the pounding 'Neon Rain'. This album can take it's place alongside Joe Jackson's best, and that's really saying something.

King Of The City     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gau0w4gauKk
Junkie Diva    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc4aW7oJG6k
Satellite    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qewQ6WuOgTw
A Little Smile   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0nqSm0FmhU
So You Say   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qwwwmqPbyY

[Wirestone]

Underwhelmed by the Adele. A lot of songwriting by committee (not always bad, of course, but it can be) and an almost desperate need to give the people what they want. I cannot stand the single -- which everyone else loves, I guess -- so maybe I'm not the target demo. Really liked 21, though.

[Summertime Blooz]

Two totally different 2015-related things.

1. Anyone listen to or have thoughts to share on the new Adele (other than that, for some, at least, the music industry still moves product)?

2. An FYI for the twee pop fans (Apples (in Stereo), the Bicycles, etc.), if you haven't heard Alpaca Sports, you might want to give them a try. Their 2015 short album / long EP, When You Need Me the Most, is awfully sugary sweet. It's well done stuff, very pretty and fun.

"Just Like Them:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRRaOP5rsv4&feature=iv&src_vid=ADMlqr8gBp4&annotation_id=annotation_3294235601

Have you listened to fellow Elefant Records artists Fitness Forever? They're terriffic! Melodies are just as cute, but way more sophisticated musically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeXGMa6xu7k

[alf wiedersehen]

The last thing I know of that I'm looking forward to this year is Sunn 0)))'s record.

[the captain]

Underwhelmed by the Adele. A lot of songwriting by committee (not always bad, of course, but it can be) and an almost desperate need to give the people what they want. I cannot stand the single -- which everyone else loves, I guess -- so maybe I'm not the target demo. Really liked 21, though.

I completely agree. Was wondering whether I was the only person (among people who aren't immediately averse to mainstream pop) who was almost entirely ambivalent. She's a really good singer and I have liked some of what she's done before, but wow, did I ever not care about this album. Each song, I couldn't wait for it to end, not because it was bad, exactly. Just entirely uninteresting.

[Dudd]

I was disappointed with the Tobias Jesso Jr co-write.

[Outtasight!]

Ok, Joanna Newsom, I'm intrigued, sell her to me. For some reason I'm reluctant to take the plunge. It often happens with artists I've not yet heard. Maybe it's an age thing, I tend to stay in my comfort zone these days until pushed.

[alf wiedersehen]

Ok, Joanna Newsom, I'm intrigued, sell her to me. For some reason I'm reluctant to take the plunge. It often happens with artists I've not yet heard. Maybe it's an age thing, I tend to stay in my comfort zone these days until pushed.

Do you like Kate Bush?