2016 was a great year for new music and I got to listen to a lot of it. I missed even more, but I enjoyed what I heard. Below is my Top 10. It isn’t in order—that would be too hard to figure out—but it does represent a diverse selection of the music I liked.
For the most part, the music on this list is music I wrote about—or pitched if I didn’t—and kept on listening to even after my assignments were completed or pitches rejected. It is diverse, but I wish it was more diverse. In 2017, in addition to the styles represented here, I hope to get exposed to new musics and genres I didn’t get to explore this year.
I love the Rolling Stones. Who doesn’t? And it surprises me how few new bands cite them as influences. But that seems to be changing. Down In Heaven, the third release from Twin Peaks—a young Chicago band whose members were born when the Stones were already old—owes an obvious debt to the crusty masters. Big time. True, at times Down In Heaven languishes in that mid-70s period from Goats Head Soup until the early days of Ron Wood. But that’s cool. It’s still a great sound. Plus, Twin Peaks continue to draw from a host of other influences and haven’t lost sight of their Chicago-area DIY punk roots—the album offers plenty of that as well.
Twin Peaks are a great band. They are anything but one-dimensional. They have depth, creative songwriting, cool unexpected quirks, interesting chord choices, subtle textures, and enough humor to keep their music interesting, catchy, and begging for another listen.
Down In Heaven opens with “Walk To The One You Love.” It oozes a Stones-y vibe, although it’s less aggressive and the rhythm guitar part is borrowed from T. Rex’s “Get It On.” It grooves, has interesting lead lines, creative horn parts, and enough variation to keep you listening and boogying. It sets a great tone for the album as well and it’s spirit is revived on songs like “Butterfly” and “Keep It Together.”
But Down In Heaven is not a party album. If anything, the only real downer—if you can call it that—is that it has an abundance of slow and mid-tempo songs that veer into that dark Goats Head Soup vibe of songs like “Winter” and “Can You Hear the Music.” That isn’t bad, but it is low-energy and I wonder how many of those songs they’ll play live. And despite that criticism, the songs are strong and have enough meat to keep you engaged and listening. You don’t space out. Check out “Cold Lips,” “Holding Roses,” and “Wanted You” and dig the quirks—like slick ‘70s-style falsetto, oddball guitar modulation, and cool keyboard sounds—that grab your attention.
Twin Peaks added a keyboardist, Colin Croom, and Down In Heaven is his first album with them. Keys add another dimension and the cool piano plonking, B-3 sounds, and occasional weirdness flesh our their sound and enhance the vibe. Cool horns are another plus, especially the 60’s-era-TV-sounding arrangements and the Beatle-esque psychedelics on songs like “Lolisa.” The bluesy acoustics on a few songs are great as well.
Those sonic variations and colors are a huge plus, mainly because the guitar sounds are so unvaried. I am being super-anal here and this is something I only noticed after multiple listens with headphones, but for the most part, song after song is built around the same basic clean guitar sound without much tonal variation. That could get annoying if you fixate on the guitar parts, but the album has a lot more going on, which keeps your attention.
But I can’t help wondering how much better Down In Heaven would be if they paid more attention to that. For example, the second Black Crowes’ album, the Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, draws from the same period Twin Peaks draws from here. Listening to that album, it is obvious the Black Crowes spent hours sculpting tones and sweating the details. That obsessive attention pays off and makes for an amazing experience. The Black Crowes and Twin Peaks are very different bands, but with Down In Heaven, that could be the reason why it is a really good album but not a really great one. The songs are solid and the vibe is there, but at times I found myself hoping for a bigger kick in the ass that never seemed to materialize.
But I am not bitching. Songs like “Keep It Together” are amazing and the final song, “Have You Ever?” is a tour de force—it’s awash in reverb and psychedelic touches that send the album off on a strong note.
Down In Heaven is a really good album. It has a great vibe and solid songs. It isn’t perfect, but those imperfections don’t detract from its strong points. I liked it. I downloaded onto my phone for long car rides. I will rock out to it at loud volumes and annoy my kids.
I didn’t know what to expect when Denver, the new album from Neil Michael Hagerty and the Howling Hex, arrived in my inbox. I didn’t know about Hagerty’s stint in the ‘80s as noise terrorist with underground icons Pussy Galore. I didn’t know about his reign as a ‘90s alternative icon in Royal Trux either. I didn’t even know about his 15-years-and-counting string of solo and Howling Hex releases. Where have I been? Good question. But I was able to approach Denver with fresh ears.
And—hot dog—that was fortuitous.
Denver is a whacked-out, gonzo, gobsmacked tour de force. It’s weird enough to alienate your square friends, yet somehow assessable, enjoyable, and goofy. The album isn’t an experimental art piece you’ll listen to once, appreciate, and then discuss over an expensive cup of coffee. It’s an angular mashup of waltzes, polkas, oompah grooves, garage noise, punk, grunge, and ‘90s-era guitar fun. It’s weird, but in a good way, and is strangely addictive in spite of itself.
Denver opens with “City Song,” a raunchy waltz that feels like a demented merry-go-round. It’s as if the evil clowns took over—they’re all smiles, but something is horribly wrong. That’s followed by “Colfax West,” which has a quasi-polka, oompah feel (and lyrics about coconut latte). Those two songs set the rhythmic tone for the album—an alternating assortment of waltzes and oompahs. Some will complain about the relentless repetition, but I think it’s great. It’s like a theme and variations for the seriously deranged. Sometimes it’s a waltz. Sometimes it’s punk polka gone wrong. And that’s ok.
The album moves at a quick pace—most of the songs are only about two or three minutes long—until you reach “Lookout.” “Lookout” clocks in at six minutes and harkens back to those glorious modulated guitar sounds reminiscent of Hagerty’s ‘90s Royal Trux work (I explored his earlier work once I realized his awesomeness—how could I not?). The dissonant guitar leads skirt the edge of weird and the song builds in layers and intensity. It grows in a way that doesn’t sacrifice the mood or crush the vibe. “Lookout” at first seems incongruous amidst the otherwise manic energy of Denver, yet it’s the song’s imperfect tambourine hits—an odd element to focus on, I know—that best define it. While ostensibly on the backbeat, the tambourine’s vibe is somewhat uncertain. It wasn’t quantized or cleaned up in the studio and retains it’s imperfections. And that is true for the rest of the record as well. In a world of perfect releases, Pro Tools edits, studio plugins, autotune, and endless tweaks, Denver lets the cards fall where they may. It’s quirky, offbeat, and messy, but it’s also real. And that’s why—in spite of it’s faults—it’s so strangely inviting. There’s something seductive about it, especially since it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Denver has other quirks, too. There is the nod to Black Sabbath—with xylophone accompaniment as an added bonus—on “300 Days of Sunshine.” There are the ‘50s-style doo-wop chord progressions on songs like “Guided Missiles” and the opener, “City Song.” There’s even an oddball a cappella introduction on “Mountain.” And in spite of the quirks, the musicianship is top notch and the guitar playing is superb, especially on songs like “Colfax West” and “Mountain.”
Add those elements up and Denver is an addictive feast of weird. It isn’t bizarro, outlandish weird. It’s an assessable weird. A weird a Eugene Chadbourne-influenced alchemist—sans Shockabilly and the electric rake—might have produced. It’s virtuosic slop. It’s mundane with a twist. And it’s a lot of fun. Your pretentious friends will hate it. Your mainstream friends won’t understand it. The critics will ignore it.
And that’s ok. Denver is a litmus test—use it to weed out the nerds and ward off the dorks.
Parquet Courts have racked up a lot of critical acclaim since forming in 2010. Their albums—like 2014’s Sunbathing Animal and 2012’s Light Up Gold—received glowing reviews and Sunbathing Animal even sold well, peaking at Number 55 on the Billboard 200. They toured the world, played many of the major festivals, and performed on a number of big talk shows. Now they are back with their latest, Human Performance, and the insular indie world is breathless with anticipation.
And—I’ll be honest—I don’t get it.
In a way, Parquet Courts represent everything wrong with indie rock. They have attitude. They have swagger. They write clever lyrics. But attitude, swagger, and clever lyrics don’t compensate for lousy musicianship, inferior vocal performances, and shoddy songwriting. Music—like all art—requires skills. At some point, you have to hunker down and master your craft, something Parquet Courts seem unwilling to do.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying you need to be a virtuoso. The music world is filled with incredible, unschooled, self-taught non-virtuosos. But Parquet Courts are not in that league. Too often on Human Performance, they try to obfuscate their limitations with cool—but cool doesn’t make for great music.
For example, on “Dust,” the album’s opener, and for about a third of the album’s material, they sit on a one chord vamp and mouth intelligent poetry in an emotionless monotone. Sticking to a monotone does mask their inability to sing, but the effect gets old fast. They try interesting tricks, like on “Dust” and “I Was Just Here” the monotone is doubled with a second voice an octave lower. It sounds great, but only goes so far—cool effects aren’t a substitute for mediocrity.
Andrew Savage and Austin Brown split the vocal duties on Human Performance and Brown is the weaker of the two. Savage can at least get worked up and sound like a real punk rocker when the song’s energy is intense enough. He sounds good on the 60’s-ish title track, on the song “Outside,” and pulls off a solid performance on “Berlin Got Blurry” as well. But Brown—at least I think it’s Brown—on songs like “Keep It Even” and “It’s Gonna Happen,” is downright painful. His voice is weak, uncommitted, and out of tune—and it’s that way because he doesn’t know how to sing.
The guitar playing isn’t much better. To be fair, there are moments of brilliance: the dual interlocking parts on “I Was Just Here” imitate the off-kilter genius of Captain Beefheart and sound fantastic. The Spaghetti Western lead on “Berlin Got Blurry” is effective and catchy. But those flashes of what-could-be are mostly obscured by an embarrassing lack of skill, the most glaring example being the Indian-inflected extended jam that ends “One Man, No City.” It’s difficult to listen to—it’s that horrible—and at best sounds like an excited 15-year-old first discovering his instrument (I’m being charitable). The rinky-dink noodling on “Berlin Got Blurry” isn’t much better, which is unfortunate because it’s an otherwise solid song.
Look. I understand. The DIY punk aesthetic is a rejection of bombastic, self-indulgent wank. It eschews formal study, which inhibits creativity and self-expression. That’s the theory. I disagree, but I understand why some refuse to nosedive down the rabbit hole of music nerditude. But there is a huge difference between nerding out on obscure modes and complex chord substitutions versus acquiring the basic dexterity necessary to play your instrument. Parquet Courts need to focus on basics: things like holding a guitar pick, singing in tune, fingering single notes, and vibrato. Those aren’t difficult skills, but they take practice and discipline.
And for my money, that is the tragedy of Human Performance. It isn’t a terrible album. It has some good songs on it. Parquet Courts have their hearts in the right place and an intuitive sense of what should be great music.
But Parquet Courts are severely limited, they get stuck too easily and I doubt they are able to execute the music they hear in their heads. And that’s because they can’t really sing or play their instruments. The album sounds good—they hired pros to do the engineering, mixing, and mastering. The layout and artwork looks good—that wasn’t left to a beginner either. But the music—what the album is supposed to be about—never fulfills its potential and at points is unlistenable. In my opinion, that’s because the musicians never made the effort to do just that—become musicians.
Black Mountain IV—the fourth album (obviously) from Northwestern stoners, Black Mountain—proves that the whole is greater than the parts. Black Mountain grabs your attention with fantastic songwriting, arranging, and orchestration and those qualities overshadow—in a good way—what are often stellar individual performances. IV leans heavy on contrasts, dynamics, and textures to create an overall mood that permeates the entire album. It’s a mood that adds cohesion throughout a varied—but not too varied—selection of songs.
Critics love to talk about Black Mountain’s obvious influences, but they’re missing the point. Black Mountain is not a ‘70s tribute band. Despite vintage gear and analog tones, they manage to carve out a sound that is fresh, modern, and uniquely theirs.
Not that those influences aren’t important. It might be lazy to compare Black Mountain to Black Sabbath (sorry, heavy riffs don’t mean you sound like Sabbath—heavy riffs are rock n roll), but other influences are more apparent. On IV, the big one is ‘70s Pink Floyd, which is thick in some places. Songs like “(Over and Over) The Chain” and “Space to Bakersfield” would be at home on Animals or Wish You Were Here. “Defector’s” chorus sounds a lot like “Young Lust” from The Wall. But comparisons to Floyd are only skin deep. While Floyd can get boring or whinny, Black Mountain have a brooding and depth that gets under your skin and makes their long jams strangely addictive.
But Black Mountain doesn’t jam per se—they aren’t the Dead. Black Mountain’s jams are compositional—they brood, build, and draw you in. IV’s few solos are compositional as well, they add additional layers and contribute to the oeuvre. And for the most part it works. The eight minute epics on the album—and there are a few of them—are wonderful hypnotic jams. They are great driving songs—great for staring out the window at the dotted lines passing by on the highway. Shorter songs break up those long pieces and give a nod to—of all things—‘80s alternative pop. Examples include the anthemic unison vocals and early punk guitar chords on “Florian Saucer Attack” and the Thomas Dolby-style synth stabs over the very ‘80s guitar ostinato on “Constellations.” But again, talking about influences obscures what is really Black Mountain’s secret sauce: careful arrangements and powerful orchestration.
The members of Black Mountain know when not to play. That’s a big deal. Guitarists and keyboardists often noodle for the sake of doing something. In Black Mountain, they sit out until needed—an extremely musical approach to arranging that makes each instrument’s impact more effective. The few guitar solos are a case in point. There aren’t many, but when they hit—like on “Mothers of the Sun”—they allow a brooding groove to climax and for the song’s tensions to resolve. It is a minimalist approach and shows unusual restraint for the sake of the song.
IV’s weakest link are its lyrics. “Ain’t no foolin’, we’re back in school. Ain’t no foolin’, when you’ve been fooled.” I mean, that’s some trite shit—but I am not sure if it matters. You don’t listen to Black Mountain for deep or clever lyrics. Black Mountain is a vibe. It’s a dark mood. You stare at the highway and forget about time. The vocals are another color and the words are something for the singer to do. (Although the lyrics in “Cemetery Breeding” are pretty funny.)
Sonically, IV is a tour de force. The guitar tones—from the opening riff on “Mothers of the Sun” to the end of the album—are meaty and ballsy. The synths and funky oscillations are awesome. The acoustics on “Line Them All Up” give Amber Webber a platform for a standout vocal performance. But ultimately, it’s the composition as a whole—the whole package—that makes IV stand out. It’s an album that sounds great on first listen, but even better as it grows on you. Has Black Mountain evolved since their 2005 eponymous release? I am not sure.
A Mineral Love is the new album from Bibio, the moniker of producer, musician, and songwriter Stephen Wilkinson. Wilkinson—similar to Ruban Nielson (Unknown Mortal Orchestra) and Kevin Parker (Tame Impala)—is a lone wolf and works from home. He has the funding and time to hone sounds, refine arrangements, and fiddle with production until he’s crafted a near-perfect pop masterpiece. But unlike Nielson and Parker, Wilkinson doesn’t have a band or hit the road—he never leaves home—and being a homebody affords him the luxury to be prolific. A Mineral Love is his eighth full length release, in addition to three EPs and a small pile of remixes.
Wilkinson has a fascination with danceable pop from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. His music exudes the feel and melodic sensibilities of artists like Prince, Hall and Oats, and Michael Jackson. Sly Stone’s influence is strong as well and on A Mineral Love is most apparent on the track, “Feeling” (the opening guitar jabs, sax line, and bass groove ooze Sly with abandon).
But Wilkinson’s real calling card is the gritty, crackling world of lo-fi. It’s an aesthetic he pushes to an extreme. He loves warbles—microtonal fluctuations that sound like a malfunctioning tape machine or dying turntable—they are a hallmark of his sound and are in abundance on A Mineral Love. “Petals,” the album’s opener, starts with a warbled guitar and is enhanced by a reversed melody line—also played on guitar. The effect is stunning. It sets a mellow yet slightly off-kilter tone that permeates throughout the album. From start to finish, A Mineral Love is awash in swoony oscillations, trippy textures, and crackling lo-fi noise, which compliment the clean guitar tones, synths, and timbre of his vocals.
The guitar playing is excellent on A Mineral Love as well. Wilkinson’s lines, although somewhat predictable, are song-appropriate—he isn’t a shredder—and his timbral choices are impeccable. The lone exception is the overdriven guitar sound on “Town & Country.” It over-emphasizes the diatonic nature of the guitar line and adds an unnecessary layer of cheese, which is unfortunate. But it’s a solitary glitch sampled from an otherwise rich and tasteful tonal pallet.
A Mineral Love has a subtle, low-key vibe, which deemphasizes some of the album’s extreme rhythmic play. “C’est La Vie,” for example, sits over a super-exaggerated swung eighth feel and gives the groove a stringy-stretchy bounce—a refreshing break from the metronome tight programed drum patches so common in mainstream pop. The drum and bass interaction on “Feeling” is another example. Their jerky interaction—particularly in relation to the faux snare backbeat—creates a push/pull that makes it difficult to find your footing. It’s subtle, but those surprises make A Mineral Love enjoyable. A few songs are without drums and again, that’s cool. The loopy guitar lines and backwards leads on “Petals” are driving and dynamic. The tight rhythmic interplay on “Saint Thomas” is almost edgy—proof you don’t need an obvious snare hit to create tension and propel a song forward.
But it isn’t all crunchy lo-fi and jerky rhythms, some songs are downright slick. “Why So Serious,” featuring Olivier Daysoul, with it’s period-correct ‘80s-style synth bass, could be an ode to the glory days of MTV. The guitars have that cool active Strat sound and bring to mind Adam Hann from the 1975. “Gasoline & Mirrors,” with Wax Stag, also boasts superior production—clean tones, a propelling groove, and handclaps as the song’s sole percussion.
A few songs, like “Raxeira,” (my favorite hook on the album) and “The Way You Talk,” have abrupt endings that sound incongruous in relation to the rest of the song. It’s a cool effect—the Beatles did it at the end of “Glass Onion” for example—but it’s overdone. Wilkinson uses it to change gears. Maybe he feels stuck—he doesn’t want to come up with a bridge or stick in a guitar solo—but a better arrangement would serve the song better.
But that’s a minor complaint—and I don’t know if it’s much of a complaint. A Mineral Love is a fantastic experience. It drops you in a trippy mellow world, challenges you in subtle ways, and rewards you if you make the effort to listen carefully.
