best of pop, 2015!
When I determine my best-of music lists every year, I meditate on what I put on heavy rotation. Here are the albums I played the most.
Roy Orbison: One of the Lonely Ones
In the sixties Roy had it rough; he watched his wife die in a motorcycle accident, and shortly thereafter his first two sons were killed in a house fire. Perhaps to help him mourn---details are scant---Roy went into the studio in 1969 and recorded this remarkable album. It was recently discovered by his surviving sons and released the first week of December. Roy's music is characterized as melancholic, but this one earns the adjective in the key of overkill. Opening with the best rendering of the Pacemakers' "You'll Never Walk Alone" and closing with a heart-wrenching love song clearly sung to his late wife, the sincerity of Roy's emotion never wavers. The title track is the darkest of his catalog ("I'm sick and tired, uninspired, I rather be dead and done/ Than to be what I've become/ One of the lonely ones"), and there is a very strange track, sung from the perspective of a Vietnam solider wondering if the government will leave his body or bring it "home" to be buried. There's also an attempt to craft a counterpart to "Pretty Woman" titled "Child-Woman," which is a bit creepy (and probably about his second spouse Barbara, whom he had recently met on tour in Europe). Regardless of this odd-ball rocker, the album is cohesive and one of my favorite of Roy's catalog. In retrospect it's very easy to see why MGM shelved this---it's too gothic and dour for 1969 (the year of Altamont and the year that optimistic pop music sorta died). It's a must have.
Shenandoah and the Night: 100 Wants
Shenandoah Ableman's lovely, quivering voice---something like a less secure Margo Timmins---is buoyed by soft, ambling, late-night indie pop, veering into folk territory. Self-described as "noir" in tone, it's a somber affair with periodic melodies of joy. The self-titled single is a breathtaking love song ("I want to be good to you, I want to be good for you") that is like a morning caress; the first time I heard it I got weepy.
New Order: Music Complete
The album's title is brilliant, because the latest by the newly reformed dance/indie-rock outfit of the 80s is basically the J.J. Abram's Star Wars of popular music: nothing quite adventuresome or new, but everything classically New Order.
Cemeteries: Barrow
My only complaint about this brilliant exploration of melancholic joyfulness is that it is too short. Kyle Reigle's largely solo Cemeteries create haunting and seductive late evening music, something akin to a Mellotron playing underwater, driven with sparse percussion and piano riffs. The album ambles along, at times reaching angelic-like, heavily treated choruses. Fans of the obscure but awesome ambient outfit from New Orleans, Belong, will find a familiar soul in Reigle's creations.
Holy Holy: When the Storms Would Come
The opening track teaches that darkness is the absence of light, warning the listener not to mistake Monday's sentiment as an essence. In this way this duo leads the listener into an expansive folk, indie rock landscape (the whole album is scenic in tone, expansive, the guitar work gliding along over a series of lullaby valleys and rock-out mountains here and there). The vocal harmonies are in the tenor range, bringing to mind the work of Turin Brakes. These songs are sweet, at times melancholy. The beautifully doomed love song, "Wanderer," is my favorite track ("In the sunshine of your heart/ You found me wandering"). There's not a video of that track, I regret, but the opening one is good:
Drab Majesty: Careless
We "crusty old goths" often complain about the demise of the genre---few artists seem dedicated to the bass-line heavy crooning about death and drugs anymore (even worse, most of those who do make terrible music, such as the Merciful Nuns). Two notable exceptions are a Turkish band, She Past Away, and the trans-glam-goth Drab Majesty, Deb DeMure's paean to mid-fi 80s new wave goth. Drum machine, electronic woobles, and melodic electric guitar all support DeMure's soft voice, which delivers comparably to Ronny Moorings' style---but not in a copied way. Drab Majesty is a new version of an old style, but delightfully done in a manner that is both danceable and meditative. If you ever liked drum-machine goth (yes, I mean the Sisters), this album is a must. Notably, she's also dedicated some thought and time to reviving the music video; this one for the opening track is spectacularly fun:
Slow Meadow: Slow Meadow
Every year I like to recommend an ambient album; I know this kind of music is not everyone's cup of bourbon, but I listen to ambient music more than any other genre---when I'm working, and when I go to bed. Slow Meadow is the debut band name and album by Houston composer Matthew Kid, in the tradition of Stars of the Lid, but certainly different. Part drone, part strings, part piano, Kid's work the soundtrack to a melodrama film, sad and joyful at the same time. This album has taken me into sleep countless time this year, but it is just as rewarding to listen to on an airplane to take the teeth out of turbulence. Lovely music.
Devotional: Wild Blue
An Aussie Cowboy Junkies, with less country-western sensibility and more Mazzy Star and strings; folksy, but with harmonica. Madelaine Lucas' voice is sweet, understated, and wavers out of tune at times in just the right way. This is another sleepy album for slowing the day down (and a second nod to Timmins . . . ). They don't have any vids or clips from this year's album, but here's a track from the previous one that is sorta "updated" on the new one in a tune titled, "My Baby Revisited":
Cheathas: Mythologies
Jangly, British shoegaze by boys singing harmonious choruses; slabs of fuzz alternate with dreamy ballady sequences; electronic bloops and weird noises aboud; filtersweeps you in the face; and psychedelically stitched together. Delicious.
Hobbess: Caved Out (EP)
On a recent visit to Atlanta the station formerly known as Album 88 (now an NPR station) started playing Calvin Erdal's new EP and I was taken into its quasi-dub-step ambient doodles and vocal samples. This kind of ambient music is often erroneously labeled as "dub-step" because of the percussive effects, but really, Hobbess is its own unique meld of breaks and bloops; I don't quite know how to describe it, but I hope there's a whole album of it to come! Here's the stand out track:
Novella: Land
Lush fans lookout: this is about the dreamiest new shoegaze band to emerge since 4AD abandoned pedalboard bands: lovely, harmonizingly punk female vocals float in and out of walls of fuzz and tremolo, with hard hitting drums. They don't rely exclusively on pedals for the sound: there is some real creative fretwork and ideas that are not simply a rehash.
Shamir: Ratchet
Infectiously queer dance music. A little goes a long way---don’t apply liberally or you’ll get sick of it really quick. But, you know, it is a brilliant album that will be copied to death.
Ok, the next three are albums from 2014 that I never got around to recommending, but I’m still listening to them so here you go:
Mysteries: New Age Music is Here: Debuting their music last year the Mysteries threesome deliberately hid their identities and origins in the hope folks would engage their percussion-heavy, electronic dream-pop on its own terms, which really did help spread their sound across the music blogosphere. The whole album is funny and enchanting, which croony-vocals and creative synth sounds sure to please fans of TV on the Radio and Gary Numan. It's alternately dance-y and meditative, and just a marvelous sound from start to finish:
Sir Sly: You Haunt Me: This Los Angeles trio makes some pretty catchy pop music just (only) a shy bit left of the dial---that one of their songs is already featured in a car commercial may have paved the road to Maroon 5---but I found myself listening to it a lot for the upbeat groove, even with songs on unpleasant topics. The innovative, synthesized back-up vocals on the track "Leave You" is evidence enough of their pop genius.
Sleep of Monsters: Produces Reason: Death rock didn't really survive the 90s here in the states when the goth kids stopped wearing thick eyeliner to work, but with the likes of HIM the tradition was kept alive in Scandinavia, and the shinest example is Finland's Sleep of Monsters, which combines a goth sensibility with, uh, cheesy cock-rock riffs and soulful, back up singers. Upon my first listen I didn't know what to make of the pretense to anthems---again, I thought it was a bit cheesy, but then so is most goth and death rock---but I kept coming back to it and fell in love with it. It's not easy to peg as "death rock" because it's too mainstream, but it's not likely to end up on the radio either with the occult aesthetics. The stand out track is the lead: