Paul Simon’s perhaps final Seven Psalms?

I wasn’t expecting a 33 minute, single track Paul Simon album contemplating death, but Seven Psalms is definitely worth a listen.

It almost feels like a Sufjan Stevens album: spare, pretty, plaintive, faithful.

I was curious if his wife, Edie Brickell’s voice would appear at all, and, sure enough, in the final half, it does. I’m actually a fan of hers, and she’s continued to make music in the last decade, although none of it has really captured me. It’s nice to see her singing the writing of an ultimately stronger songwriter.

I’ve always had an appreciation for Paul Simon, who has had several eras of relevance: several Simon and Garfunkel albums with several monolithic hits, his fun solo hits from the 60’s and 70’s, the way Graceland was so widely loved and then kind of disdained in later eras for his use of African music, I still remember thinking “You Can Call Me Al” was hilarious when it came out.

People are of course comparing this to recent “final albums” like Bowie’s Blackstar and Cohen’s You Want it Darker. If he actually kicks the bucket in the next few months, the comparisons will be inevitable. In any case, it’s a mellow, humble thing, not a giant, crushing, ambitious work like Blackstar.

It’s definitely unlike any other Paul Simon album though. he says that its 33 minutes are designed to be listened to in one go (which I am currently doing) hence why he smashes every track together into one, and ends it with a gentle harmony with his wife of decades, “Amen”.

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: Paul Simon’s perhaps final Seven Psalms?
it's categorized as: Albums, Reviews
link to it, please: Saturday, May 20th, 2023

Leslie Feist is Multitudes

I’m finally getting a chance to listen to the new Leslie Feist record, Multitudes.

I’ve long loved Feist, and her first two albums Let It Die and The Reminder are all-time classics in my house. Her songs were always simple, funny, romantic, relatable, and tragic to me.

Her early song “Brandy Alexander”, comparing her FWB to a rich, sweet cocktail made me want to try that cocktail for years, and by the time I had an opportunity I didn’t want to flood my system with all the lactose.

I must admit with each passing Feist album since The Reminder, I have listened less and less thoroughly as they’ve seemed more meditative and their themes less easy to understand.

Feist’s incredible keening voice is like no other, but it was always her funny, relatable songwriting that brought me back. The Fleet Foxes songwriting over the years always kept me coming back, but I always felt like Feist was slipping away from my understanding. The words of her songs never added up to something I’d return to.

Listening to Multitudes I am definitely enjoying it. Its songs are standing out more to me than the songs of Metals and Pleasure, but I’m not quite hearing anything I’d put on the “driving playlist” yet.

It’s definitely worth watching the two great music videos she’s put out in support of the album, especially “Hiding Out in the Open”, where she does some extremely clever green-screen trickery that gets more funny and inventive as the song goes on.

It’s not QUITE as awesome, but the video for “Borrow Trouble” is pretty great as well and has some similar psychedelic trickery and seems recorded in the same studio. The dancing and movements remind a person that she’s steeped in physical performance and once went by “Baby Lap Lap” when she toured with shock electroclash rapper Peaches and performed onstage with hand puppets.

Her “Multitudes Mini-Concert” doesn’t have quite as considered production, but still has a few clever visual ideas and is clearly performed in the same place:

Enjoy!

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: Leslie Feist is Multitudes
it's categorized as: Albums, Reviews
link to it, please: Thursday, April 27th, 2023

A Return to Björk’s “Weird” Volta

Revisited Björk’s Volta for the first time since it came out today. I definitely appreciate it more today than when it came out.

By the time it came out I’d been hanging on Björk’s every word for years. I knew every word of every one of her albums. Even though Medulla was a little bit of a rough listen, I really appreciated what she was doing to innovate here.

When Volta came out it seemed like she was a little out of ideas, and just being weird for weirdness’ sake. It was less grounded in traditional music than most of her albums and just felt like a pastiche of some of the weirder and harsher moments in Post and Homogenic. Also, songwriting-wise it just didn’t seem like the ideas were there.

Listening to it now, I can hear the ways it was ahead of its time, and was influential. Now I’ve also listened to MUCH MUCH weirder music than I had in 2007 and it doesn’t sound quite as out there anymore.

Even this dazed article calls it her “weirdest album”, which, was it even in 2017? Even in 2005 she had made the MUCH weirder Drawing Restraint #9. https://dazeddigital.com/music/article/35751/1/bjork-volta-ten-year-retrospective…

I still don’t love it, but I was able to enjoy it this time, instead of completely dismissing it.

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: A Return to Björk’s “Weird” Volta
it's categorized as: Albums, Reviews
link to it, please: Thursday, April 27th, 2023

The 25 Sweetest, Snobbiest Album Covers of 2021

You may not even recognize the artists I picked for my top 25 album covers, since smaller artists sometimes put the most effort into making attention-getting album covers.

Sadly, musicians rarely credit the artist of their covers, but when I’m able to, I call out the artist name. In some rare cases it’s actually the artist themselves who made the cover, like in the case of #10’s Darth Sueder VI by AJ Sueder.

I had to rank the covers in some order but I think every single one of these covers is great. So with that, enjoy my favorite 25 albums. Enjoy, I say!

#25: Failure – Wild Type Droid

#24: Exbats – Now Where Were We

#23: Castello Branco – Niska: Uma Mensagem para Tempos de Emergência

#22: Ty Farris – No Cosign Just Cocaine 2

#21: Acid Mammoth – Caravan

#20 – Diablo Swing Orchestra – Swagger and Stroll Down the Rabbit Hole

#19: The Architects – For Those Who Wish To Exist

#18: Udondolo – Urban Village

#17: Ritual Divination – Here Lies Man

#16: Bodies of Water – Is This What It’s Like

#15: MECO – Transmute

#14 – POLYDANS – Roosevelt

#13: Ghett – Conflict of Interest

#12: Fotocrime – Heart of Crime

Hot and dorky in a very French way. Like the movie Le Samouraï:

Much like that vibe, Fotocrime’s cover is lurid and ugly-beautiful. I want to read the graphic novel I wish existed.

#11: Sad Night Dynamite- Sad Night Dynamite

Did human beings submerge an actual functioning Limo to get this picture? Was a picture altered? I can’t know, but it gets the feeling of the album across. “Icy Violence” is the (very Gorillaz inspired) song that really goes along with this cover.

#10: AJ Suede – Darth Sueder VI

AJ Suede does his own covers and he does an incredible job. The cover of Darth Sueder VI just gets everything right. The parental advisory sticker in Japanese Kanji is a particularly slick touch.

#9: Villagers – Fever Dreams

Such a crisp, beautiful image that asks more questions than it answers. All I know is that bear is super fucking magical.

#8: K-Drama – Both Sides of the Blessing

This is easily the best Christian rap album cover I have ever seen. I challenge you to find me a better one. Was it enough to get me to give this album a serious listen? Not yet. But this album cover is working on me.

#7: KEY- BAD LOVE

This ray gun wouldn’t kill Godzilla, but it would stun him.

#6: Logic1000 – In The Sweetness of You

This is like the uncanny valley of food. Sure, someone really made it, but my brain still isn’t convinced. Luminously lit, but I’m sure that cherry still has a pit.

Jell-O cake appearance: 10

Actual edibility: 6

#5: Odette -Herald

Odette is gorgeous, her music is gorgeous, and this cover is a gorgeous and grotesque painting of her.

#4: Mexican Institute of Sound – Distrito Federal

One of the best albums I listened to because of the cover. Fun, funky, Funkadelic-inspired, the music and the cover. The cover does a great job of letting you know the funky Mexican experience you’re about to have. Electric war babies definitely might get spanked. The slop might get cosmic. This cover has the most mystical, Mexican porn pop-up window.

#3: Baker Boy – Gela

This person is beautiful, the painting is beautiful. What do you call polka dot war paint? Fun paint?

#2: CARCASS – Torn Arteries

I just can’t believe someone did such a good job of making a human heart out of vegetables. That person is a true artist.

Speaking of, I try to find the artists who made these covers, I really do. It’s amazing, however, how uncommon it is to see album covers artists credited.

#1: Eidola – The Architect

This cover is good worldbuilding. I immediately can imagine an entire work of fiction where this Architect character exists, where this mask makes sense. Either someone actually fabricated this incredible mask, or very skillfully used CGI to overlay it on an actual photo. Either way, the effect is incredible.

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: The 25 Sweetest, Snobbiest Album Covers of 2021
it's categorized as: Album Covers, Reviews
link to it, please: Sunday, January 9th, 2022

2021 Album Cover BEST and WORST Honorable Mentions

These are the odds-and-ends that deserved their own categories.

BEST / Fashion

Lovely photo, but the outfit and hairstyle are what elevate this. This guy’s slightly oversized, rumpled dinner jacket over matching pants with bright red shirt and tangled gold accents are sublime. If I saw this dude in person, I’d walk right up to him and tell him how fresh his style is. I feel like you could pull this off in several decades of the past 100 years.

BEST / Attempt to Get All of the Members of a K-Pop Group on Cover

There were almost as many K-Pop albums released this year as heavy metal, which is a lot. K-Pop albums tend to go one of two different directions:

  1. Incredible graphic design
  2. Fit all the inevitably large number of band members on the cover

A surprising number of K-Pop bands choose #2 and their attempts can often be hilarious. What Red Velvet did here on their album “Queendom” is pretty darn next level, involving baloons, birds, wind, and earth moving equipment. It’s safe to say they “really nailed the shot”.

In the runner-up, they managed to get everyone’s heads even, and some pretty incredibly typography to boot. Once you see that R kicked in the stomach and doubled over you can’t unsee it, though.

WORST / Attempt to Get All of the Members of a K-Pop Group on the Cover

Boymen are pretty much the worst offender in this category. There’s a lot of gradations of bad before you get here, however. In full size for your eyeball bleeding pleasure:

BEST / Funniest

This album cover of a confused knife wielding clown demanding to know what, exactly, is so fucking funny, had me in stitches all day the day I posted it, and I still haven’t found a funnier album cover this year.

First runner up for funniest, these two guys holding an info card over themselves with important info like name and “type of voice” (super high tone!) plus drawn on bowties and hairstyles definitely tickled me.

Funniest runner up to the runner up. This guys cover for drugs depicts him both “together” and fully drugged out. I love that in the “fully together” version his tie is still loosened and he’s still smoking a cigarette. In the drug photo he looks properly deranged. Hope you’re having fun, Tyler Posey, recovery is not far behind.

WORST / Ringo Starr Release in 2021

Ringo. You are a goddamn former member of The Beatles and can presumably afford some real heavy-duty PR muscle, but the reality is, your version of cool ended in 1990, which is why when you saw this bargain-bin album cover, you said “YES! CHANGE THE WORLD! THIS IS MY ALBUM COVER!”

The truly hilarious thing here is, that there’s a runner-up in this category…

…yes, another scrubby photo of Ringo Starr, another laughably outdated sentiment and album cover that would have looked dated in 1990. And those… extra jacket zippers? My god.

BEST / Graphic Novel Style

I saw a lot of comic book cover-type art this year, but nothing nearly as striking as this comic look inside a lonely memory. Incredibly impactful graphic image. Crisp, clean, balanced, perfect depiction.

WORST, er, BEST? / ATBGE (Atrocious Taste But Great Execution)

These covers are very well executed, but still incredibly gross and/or cheesy.

WORST / Grossest Mouth

I can’t believe I have to report this had to be a category of its own, and that I actually REJECTED several other gross mouth photos. Stop trying to pass off gross photos of your mouth as an album cover, people.

The busted lip and broken tooth somehow make this, every so slightly grosser than…

…the also horrifying runner-up. There are many, many other examples this year I won’t pain you with.

Best Minimal Use of Type

WORST / Minimal Type Design

Everything about the Yung Head$hit title and cover make me feel dumber. Creativiting Us: From Darkness To All… the holy what? I assure you this dude’s raps are just as poorly written and executed. It’s legitimately embarrassing. But to top it off, the weird mix of alignment, type-sizes, and just horrible balance are really a headscratcher.

BEST / Most Mixtape-ey Mixtape Cover

Checking all the mixtape boxes is important in a Hip Hop mixtape cover, but this one checked all the boxes and then some. Sure other mixtape covers have a cup of lean, but does even their pitbull have a Rollie and a scale? Probably not. Lil’ Migo has corrected that.

BEST / Album Cover I’d Definitely Play if it was a Mobile Game

Well, you know exactly what kind of glossy math rock this is going to be as an album, but I couldn’t help wishing this was a mobile game! I want to play the old dude with the flamethrower and sword mowing down approaching biplanes with fire! Missed opportunity!

BEST Themed Series of Covers – Cue Dot Records

Some time last year, the experimental and electronic music label Cue Dot Records came up with a simple idea for their album covers: a 5X5 grid of colored circles creating an incredibly low resolution icon. Then, for well over a year, they’ve used this framework to express the concept of the individual artist and album releases they put out.

I couldn’t really pick the best, so I’m just posting most of their release covers for 2021. To see all the rest, just go to the Cue Dot Records bandcamp page.

I particularly love Manfred Hamil’s “Everything Fades” for the clearest illustration of an idea in so very few bits.

STAY TUNED for the best album covers of 2021

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: 2021 Album Cover BEST and WORST Honorable Mentions
it's categorized as: Album Covers, Reviews
link to it, please: Saturday, January 1st, 2022

Album Covers of 2021: HEAVY. METAL. EDITION.

If I had to guess, I’d say more heavy metal albums are released than any other single genre. Of course, I’m lumping together Drone Metal, Grindcore, Sludge Metal, Stoner Metal, Black Metal, Industrial Black Metal, Space Metal, Melodic Metal, Thrash Metal, Symphonic Black Metal, Funk Metal, Rap Metal, and a bunch of other metals I can’t even think of right now. If you think I made any of those up, you definitely don’t metal. But now you can get a taste, without even listening to any metal.

That is because heavy metal album covers have their own world. Their own aesthetic. Their own complicated iconography. Get a taste of it here, starting with…

The Worst:

Some metal album covers look like a skilled 7th grader did them, or they’re just so corny you can’t believe an adult thought they were cool.

The Gnarliest:

This is the core of the heavy metal aesthetic. Body horror. Apocalypse. Apocalyptic body horror. Gates opening to hell. Horrific monsters. Dystopian future war. Things growing into or out of people’s faces.

The Best

These are the best conventional heavy metal album covers. They’re overdone and gnarly, but in a really cool, balanced way!

The Unconventional:

You wouldn’t even guess these were heavy metal albums. I laud these albums for taking the Heavy Metal Album Cover in a new direction.

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: Album Covers of 2021: HEAVY. METAL. EDITION.
it's categorized as: Album Covers, Reviews
link to it, please: Thursday, December 30th, 2021

The 10 WORST Album Covers of 2021

I stopped doing Twitter reviews of bad albums at some point earlier this year. Why? Because no matter how funny my reviews are: no one “likes” bad album covers. Thus, no one sees the reviews. So I’m sure I missed many bad album covers, because I only included ones I posted at the time. Also, there are dozens of bad Hip Hop Mix Tapes released every week and I generally don’t cover them because…I feel like it would veer into actually racist territory. There’s a notable exception on the list.

For instance there are a million of these:

That said, I am absolutely certain that my #1 worst album of the year is actually, objectively the worst album released this year. It would take a very bad album cover indeed to beat it for the rest of the decade, in my opinion. It is horrible. Props to Exclaim’s excellent list. They caught many I missed, and although we disagree on a few, I am happy to say we both agree on the #1 worst album of the year.

Not included are bad heavy metal covers because heavy metal covers are their own genre, and I’m giving them their own list.

#10: Willie Jones – Right Now

Right No.

#9: Sun Kil Moon – Welcome to Sparks, NV

There are a lot of album covers like this, a cruddy, poorly exposed photo with some lens flare that the artist themselves took. They clearly deluded themselves into thinking was more meaningful than it is. This is just a photo of the sun shining through treetops with lens flare that washes out all the contrast and saturation of the photo. If this was on Instagram you would just scroll right past it, perhaps with a snort. Then he just slapped some white text and a horizontal line on it. Good job, Mark. That really makes me want to listen to more of your depressed warbling.

#8 – BennY RevivaL – GLAAD GAME

Months later, and I still can’t decide how intentionally bad this album cover is. I am all for sex positive gender expression and weirdness, absolutely, but this is an assault on the senses that I can’t let slide. I feel like they promised too many friends a spot on their cover and had like fifteen minutes to put the collage together and run to Kinkos. All the photos mashed together without any kind of border or layout. The font mixing. The white-on-rainbow-in-a-narrow-strip. It all seems designed to harm the eyes. And it’s successful.

#7: Lil Wayne & Rich the Kid – Trust Fund Babies

This is what multi-millionaire entertainer Lil Wayne chose to front his collab mix tape with Rich the Kid. I get that he’s projecting low expectations but damn is it bad.

#6: DoisPes & bedhop – C A F E

If I were going to teach a typography and graphic design class, I could use this album cover as a thesis level study on what not to do. It’s like a parody of bad typography. See if you can identify all the horrifying choices they made.

#5: DJ Blackpower – blp2021: “for ur own good”

It burns.

#4: “CHAIN GANG HALO WORLD” by BLACK KRAY AKA SICKBOYRARI is LIVE FROM GOTHGANISTAN

I will admit that this recording and album cover no longer really exists on the internet, but it did on August 20th, 2021. However, Goth Money Records still exists and this definitely matches their album cover profile. Allow yourself to just slowly absorb all the elements in this album cover. It’s magnificent. I almost regret putting it in the “Worst Albums” list and not the “Best Albums” list.

Almost.

#3: Margaret – Maggie Vision

There’s so much glow on Polish hip-hop artist Margaret’s album cover, it’s hard to find an element on it that’s not glowing. The logo is glowing. Maggie herself is glowing. The disco balls are glowing. The overlapping boxes haphazardly laid over each other are glowing. There are a few bonus glowing spheres in the background, just to make sure there’s enough glow.

I actually listened to this album, and it’s a relatively well-produced and enjoyable, if cookie-cutter, Polish pop album. I’m genuinely sad for her that she was saddled with this hack job of an album cover.

#2: Rigo – Pimpin On The Web

Every Friday of the year, there are at least five truly awful Hip Hop mixtape covers. I usually don’t bother to cover them, even though some are laughably bad. But still, I have some special hostility for casual misogyny and glorification of sex trafficking in 2021. The stereotypes here are so ugly, so lazy, so poorly executed, so lumpy and stupid, that I just had to highlight how bad this cover is. It’s sort of like a bad political comic, but even worse.

#1: Drake – Certified Lover Boy

You’ll notice I use the 80’s hip-hop terminology whack here to describe Drake and the fact that he thought this whole thing was a good idea. I use whack instead of some other word to say it sucks for a specific reason. Whack has the connotation in hip-hop terminology to mean not only is an artist is bad, but that they’re embarrassingly bad and they don’t even realize it. They think they’re really good, but their self delusion is part of what makes them and their art suck so badly. That’s why I use the term here liberally, and I’ve never used it more appropriately.

Drake’s incredible achievement of in-poor-taste peak whackness couldn’t have been done alone. Drake actually commissioned the “world famous official fine artist of pure whackness” Damien Hirst. Damien Hirst is the type of guy to:

So, it’s kind of a marriage of whackness made in heaven. I get what he’s going for here but this is multilevel whack on whack on whack. The implication here is that Drake’s “character” in this album, the titular “Certified Lover Boy” is so virile and prolific that he’s an equal opportunity simultaneous impregnator of women of all races and creeds that they can be reduced to an emoji to save time when representing them.

Can this possibly get worse? Yes. Let me provide some context:

Drake, notably, definitively lost 2018’s most insane rap battle when rapper Pusha T revealed that Drake:

A) Had appeared in “blacker-face” for a previous project he did… yes, this is a picture of young Drake:

B) Had a secret love child named Adonis who he was planning on announcing to the world with an Adidas shoe line and press tour.

Pusha T’s rap (which I very highly recommend listening to if you like brutality) basically tanked the Adidas deal (we guess the shoe line must have been called Adidon) and ended Drake’s high batting average of “winning” rap battles in the public eye definitively.

So, to some extent, this album cover can be read as him trying to rebrand himself as someone who’s proud of having fathered a bunch of secret love children. You see where I’m going with how truly whack this is?

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: The 10 WORST Album Covers of 2021
it's categorized as: Album Covers, Reviews
link to it, please: Wednesday, December 29th, 2021

Top 10 Album Covers of 2021 that look “Most Likely to Contain a Passage of Beguiling Flute™”

This album could have been the 2014 winner:

When I started looking through album covers late last year, there seemed to be an endless supply of Prog Rock and New Age looking album covers. I started joking with twitter user @ChristyW907 that an album cover could win an award for being “The Most Likely to Contain a Passage of Beguiling Flute™” and I picked a winner every week. Out of the whole year, there were some real standouts, that seemed truly likely to contain beguiling flute.

Elements that generally made an album seem likely were a fantastical landscape, preferably with multiple moons or planets in the background, dreamcatchers, or other wispy fantasy elements.

What is beguiling flute, specifically, you ask? It’s one of those things where when you hear it, you know. It’s a passage of flute that whimsically invites the listener to don a filmy skirt and peasant shirt and dance inexorably towards the unseen flautist.

A note: some of these albums I listened to and confirmed there was, in fact, a passage of beguiling flute, but most don’t really, and the ones that do are lost to time and memory. You’ll have to give every album a listen yourself to find out for sure.

10: Sungazer – Perihelion

An unconventional choice, chosen for looking like a New Agey Prog Rock “project” like The Alan Parson’s Project. There are no moons or planets per se, but I can definitely hear the flute.

#9: Strick – Strick Land

This album has the distinction of being the only album that is both likely to contain beguiling flute, and language that a parent would feel caution about exposing a small child to. While I can’t make out a lot of extra planets in the sky, we’ve got the flute-ception-like fantasy-landscape-within-a-fantasy-landscape, a waterfall, and some sexy beings trapped in crystals. All of these point to beguiling flute.

#8: The Sherlocks – World I Understand

It’s incredible how common a theme interlocking clocks are in prog rock albums. There were actually several that didn’t make the list but seemed even likelier to contain beguiling flute, but World I Understand makes it because I like the concept of their weird steampunk head-device.

#7: Kalidia – Lies’ Device

First of all let’s talk about the placement of the apostrophe in the album title, indicating that the titular “Device” actually belongs to lies themselves. Then we have over-adorned font curlicues in the band title, a symbolic wheel of lies, mysterious occult figures, eyes, and…some tentacles of lies? Either way, I am certain there is going to be beguiling flute inside.

#6: JPL – Sapiens chapitre 2 / 3 : Deus ex Machina

First of all we’ve got the off-brand “Yes”-look-alike logo of JPL. Next we’ve got what looks to be a planet and the planet’s own moon. We’ve got a generic spaceship coming in for a landing. We’ve got a lone figure contemplating the passage of time outside a glimmering city. We’ve got an extremely French multi-part title. All of this points to at least one passage of beguiling flute.

#5: Galaad – Paradis posthumes

Here we have a mandala of vague figures from various belief systems across the world, a hazy treatment, and a distressed fine-art frame. Add the not-quite-well-designed band’s typefaces, and you can be almost certain you’re in for some beguiling flute.

#4: DREAMCATCHER – Dystopia: Road to Utopia

The subtle psychedelic embossed rainbow dreamcatcher seems to almost ensure beguiling flute.

#3: Syrinx Call – Mirrorneuron

I cheated a little and bumped this album up probably further than the cover itself deserved when I found out that German recorder player Volker Kuinke is the main feature of Syrinx Call. Check out the incredible masthead of his website as he passionately recorders like some kind of recorder god:

#2: Emphasis: Spiral of Time

I decided that each moon or planet hanging peacefully in the sky adds to the likelihood of beguiling flute. I feel like the leader of Emphasis sat there next to the designer, asking for yet another moon, until finally he cried out in a Scottish accent, “There’s nae room for anymore moons!” Add a lonely figure. Pair that with the over-adorned “E” in the band’s name, and you’ve got some extreme likelihood.

#1: Joel Vandroogenbroeck – For View

An obvious slam dunk, since there is not only hippie imagery, but actual flute playing is depicted. This is the quintessential beguiling flute indicator. Is it a little on-the-nose? Absolutely. Still, however, the year’s winner of the award.

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: Top 10 Album Covers of 2021 that look “Most Likely to Contain a Passage of Beguiling Flute™”
it's categorized as: Album Covers, Reviews
link to it, please: Tuesday, December 28th, 2021

30 Awesome, Underrated, Sweet, Snobby Albums

I like having a place to send people for music recommendations they might not have heard. This post is the place.

This is a categorized list of 30 albums I really love, that you might not have heard of. If you’ve heard every single one, you can feel free to let me know and I will try and come up with even more obscure suggestions just for you.

I personally recommend every single one of these albums, and have included a mini-review to help you decide if it’s the type of thing you like.

Organized into categories for your listening pleasure:

~ 60’s-70’s ~

1. Stan Getz – Focus: Instead of coasting on the fame of his Bossa Nova megahit album Getz/Gilberto, he did all kinds of other great work. In Focus, Stan commissioned a whole string arrangement, and then improvised saxophone over it the first time he heard it. It’s honestly goddamn thrilling.

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2. The Youngbloods – Elephant Mountain: Youngbloods, the one-hit wonder who did “Come On” (people now, smile on your brother everybody get together try to love one another right now), also did this incredibly beautiful, pastoral rock album with a gorgeous vibe. Very slept on.

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3. Funkadelic – Maggotbrain: Everyone’s heard of this, right? This one’s a “just in case” because it’s so damn good. Starts off with a long “best ever” guitar solo (George Clinton reportedly told Eddie Hazel to play like his momma died), then three ROCK SOLID funk songs that are truly unfuckwithable, then an amazing symphony of noise and destruction. One of the best albums of all time.

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~ hip hop ~

4. P.O.S. – Never Better: Bush-era Minnesota rap, POS was literally never better. Truly dizzying raps and razor sharp wit over beats that slap your mom.

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5. Qwel & Maker – Owl: Totally slept on rock-solid bars on bars on bars 90’s style. Found this on a reddit thread of slept on albums and it’s been a favorite ever since.

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6. Why? – Alopecia: Weird nasally white dude rap but some really classic, quotable unforgettable lyrics and jams

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7. Tierra Whack – Whack World: 15 minutes, 15 incredible 1-minute rap songs. just watch the video:

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~ noise / electronic / ambient ~

8. Four Tet – There is Love in You: Just one of the most beautiful electronic music albums of all time.

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9. Ben Frost – By the Throat: Dark, horror-ambient. Guttural, sinister electronic sounds, but somehow with a sense of humor.

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10. Andy Stott – Luxury Problems: Crunchy ugly-beautiful beats that sound different than anything anyone has ever done.

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11. Untogether – Blue Hawaii: Super etherial beats and fragmented song structure. Gorgeous and haunting.

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12. Weval – Weval: Cool, almost danceable beats, usually with one well-placed vocal sample. I can put it on almost any time.

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~ dream-pop-y ~

13. Youth Lagoon – The Year of Hibernation: Tender yearning personified. One of my favorite bedroom recordings of all time. To me there aren’t even individual songs, just one beautiful mood.

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14. Sunny Day in Glasgow – Sea When Absent: Explosive quiet/loud dynamics and just in general an evolution from Loveless that I think is enjoyable.

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15. The Clientele – Suburban Light: The sunday album you put on when you don’t know what to put on after Blonde? A timeless, hazy gorgeous album that feels like looking out a rain-clouded window.

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16. Real Estate – Real Estate: Also one beautiful mood. I’m honestly misclassifying this as dream pop. It’s more like a kind of dreamy surf rock with singing. Production is a little lo-fi but that only adds to its charm.

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17. Cocteau Twins – Heaven or Las Vegas: Probably part of the early genesis of dream pop. A heedlessly beautiful album that sparkles with actual magic.

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~ country / americana / folky ~

18. Ohio – Over the Rhine: A crushingly beautiful double album. A husband and wife team makes a towering work very few people have heard of.

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19. Neko Case – Furnace Room Lullaby: To me this is the ultimate Neko Case album. An unparalleled vocal powerhouse at the height of her songwriting powers.

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20. M. Ward – Post-War: Songs I’d sing to my kids, if I had any. Timeless.

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~ weird ~

21. kissed her little sister – HIGHandLOW: I think this one is Bandcamp only. A truly weird and hilarious low-fi mix of turntablism and singer-songwriteriness. Truly among the most hidden of gems.

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22. Mr. Bungle – California: A singular album. A bizarre mish-mash of styles roughly based around a kind of demented surf rock. Mike Patton is a genius.

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~ rock / jam ~

23. Plants and Animals – Parc Avenue: A band that never made another masterwork quite like this again. A beautiful journey.

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24. Okkervil River – The Stage Names: Some seriously deep and funny and passionate rock and roll.

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25. The Dodos – Visiter: Gorgeous singing, hilariously touching songs, balls out messy percussion, heart, spirit.

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26. White Denim – Last Days of Summer: White Denim is a crazy experimental Austin rock band that has done a lot of interesting work. For pure pleasure, however, nothing they’ve done is as good as Last Days of Summer. It’s like caramel poured over fresh strawberries and still just enough musically experimental to be amazing.

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~ mellow / soul / chill ~

27. How to Dress Well – Love Remains: Some of the genesis of lo-fi “PBR&B”, but hardly ever done as well. Later this same dude started making very clear recordings, but it’s this early, distorted, hopeless music that made me love him.

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28. Mija – HOW TO MEASURE THE DISTANCE BETWEEN LOVERS: Criminally slept on EP of ethereal electronic / neo-soul.

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~ pop adjacent ~

29. Kelis – Tasty: Everyone knows the song “Milkshake”, but not everyone knows there’s an incredible album built around it, along with an awesome Andre 3000 feature.

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30. Sia – Healing is Difficult: Before Sia even bothered to hide her face, she made this brilliant album. No one has a voice like hers, and no one knows how to make dark, thorny, vulnerable songs like her. This album is a treasure.

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Well, there you go. 30 albums. Surely you haven’t heard every single one?

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: 30 Awesome, Underrated, Sweet, Snobby Albums
it's categorized as: Albums
link to it, please: Tuesday, January 26th, 2021

The Sweetest, Snobbiest Albums of 2017

10. Girlpool: Powerplant

If Cobain was alive today, he’d like Girlpool.  Somewhere West of the Vaselines.  Alternately cooing and shredding.  Song: Soup

9. Alex Cameron: Forced Witness:

Alex Cameron plays a character a little like Tom Waits, but less knowing, more confused, more innocent, more loungey, more uses of the word “pussy”.  Song: Chihuahua

8. Vince Staples – Big Fish Theory

I love Vince Staples.  He took some real chances here and made an actually experimental rap album.  Vince Staples is the king of making songs that aren’t what they seem to be about.  It’s fantastic.  Song: Rain Come Down

7. Lorde – Melodrama

Liability was an anthem for me.  A song where if I played it for friends they’d silently listen with me and then look at me and say, “Ow.”

6. Sheer Mag – Need to Feel Your Love

If this was coming out of my transistor radio while I jumped in the lake in cutoffs, I’d feel like life was good.  Song: Expect the Bayonet

5. Cigarettes After Sex – Cigarettes After Sex

Yeah, it’s what it sounds like.  Sade, Goldfrapp, Everything but the Girl.  That kind of stuff, and very well done.  Song: Each Time You Fall in Love

4. Sampha – Process

A vocalist like no other.  A mix of grief, paranoia, and hope, but with a little grime.  Song: Blood on Me [for beats] and Nobody Knows Me Like The Piano (In My Mother’s Home) [for the pure beauty]

3. Sophia Kennedy – Sophia Kennedy

Vivacious, beautiful, honest, original music.  Great percussion and production, great singing, unorthodox songwriting.  Song: Kimono Hill

2. King Kendrick (Pulitzer Recipient) – DAMN.

Kendrick really knows how to make himself a part of the national conversation, that’s for sure.  Three days after this album came out, I walked by a young girl singing, “They won’t take me out my ELEMENT.” and I thought, that’s right, girl.  Plus a U2 feature?!?!?!  He can write his own rules still.  Song: FEAR.

1. Amber Mark – 3:33

I listened to the 7 songs on this album, and their 4 remixes more than any other music this year.  I honestly can’t explain why it has the hold on me that it does, but there is not one wasted or imperfect second on this album.  I never want to skip anything.  It’s hard to think of what to play after it.  A hopeful album dealing with her mother’s death, handled with such ebullient and lovely energy.  It uplifts me every time.  Song: Monsoon

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: The Sweetest, Snobbiest Albums of 2017
it's categorized as: Albums, Best Albums of the Year, Reviews
link to it, please: Thursday, December 28th, 2017
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