New-ish stuff now: Best of 2021!

Now on to more recent stuff - including stuff even those of you closest to me might not have heard me rave about for ages already. Let's dive right in, to the best albums of 2021! After years of cultivating the (excruciatingly) slow buildup it feels weird to go straight to the best, but here they are, along with my select tracks from each album.

Little Simz left little doubt as to who's the boss with her last album.

1. Little Simz - Sometimes I might be introvert. I hope Little Simz needs little introduction at this point. After being one of the best rappers in the game for years, she's now also showing herself as one of the  most exciting, creative and boundary-pushing. Little Simz' fourth album is by far her biggest, boldest, most theatrical, most varied, and most over the top. With all its new avenues explored, and at over an hour's length, it's not without a few tangents I enjoy less than others, but all in all it's a hugely successful experiment. Closer in spirit to both Lemonade and To Pimp A Butterfly than to either of her own previous albums, it's the album that cements Simz' position among hiphop's greats. Oh and also, the music videos for this thing are amazing.

• Introvert
• Standing ovation
• Woman
• Speed

2. Left at London - t.i.a.p.f.y.h. There's something so exhilarating about discovering an artist with entirely their own, unique, uncompromising style. Left at London (l@l), or Seattle's Nat Puff, writes, records, produces and releases her own music, and her full-length debut t.i.a.p.f.y.h (an acronym for two different tracks on the album) is one of those delightful indie pop albums that sound at the same time familiar - full of catchy hooks and well-worn references - and completely new. There's no way it could have been made by anyone else than her. Grimes' Art Angels, Let's Eat Grandma's I'm All Ears and Susanne Sundfør's Ten Love Songs spring to mind, not as similar sounding, but of the same do-everything-yourself-and-do-it-better ethos. These 7 songs have great lyrics, production twists and fun surprises around every corner. It's an album that seems impossible to classify - parts hiphop, folk and experimental electronica, with traces of psych rock and hyperpop - but underneath it all is just the voice of an inspired, ultra creative singer-songwriter. 

• Pills & good advice
• It could be better
• THIS IS A PROTEST FOR YOUR HEART!!!

3. Low - HEY WHAT. I'm almost embarrassed I didn't know about Low before randomly putting on HEY WHAT one fateful day. and even more embarrassing: I still haven't dived deeper into their discography yet; HEY WHAT has held my attention whenever I crave this kind of music. Because this is a particular craving. It is dense, electronic soundscapes, draped over slow, heavy buildups, but with a lightness to the melodies and songwriting. Low use dynamics in a way I've rarely experienced before - so intense yet so dreamy. At times this album feels like a darker, heavier, sparser, more industrial, more experimental, parallel-universe Beach House. Apparently Low are Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk from Duluth, Minnesota. After all the emotional toll and bliss their compositions on HEY WHAT have put me through, I look forward to exploring the rest of their output!

• All night
• More
• I can wait

4. Sega Bodega - Romeo. Irish-Chilean Salvador Navarrete, with the love it or hate it stage name Sega Bodega, is doing to hyperpop what James Blake did to dubstep back in the day: When a new, much-loved genre turns into more and more of a pissing contest, where dudes try to out-glitch or out-bass each other, what's needed is someone to dial back, focus on emotion and beauty, and use the sounds that made the genre popular in the first place to create something gentle, vulnerable and different. Romeo does exactly that, just as James Blake's self titled debut did in 2011. The very modern and PC music-esque production may sound harsh and glitchy at times to the uninitiated listener, but it's never dwelt on for long - the hearts of these songs are tender and touching. The album is loosely themed around an imagined relationship with a being of light, features great guest performances by Arca and Charlotte Gainsbourg, and dwells long enough on ideas to properly explore them, rather than just hyperpopping through. The highlight "Um um" is a heartbreaking homage to the brilliant SOPHIE, visionary electronic music pioneer and close friend of Navarrete's, whose untimely death last year shook the whole world of anyone who knew of her. Its intertangled voices, heavily computerized but deeply human, chanting "I see you in everything, even though you're, even though you're not around", tug at heart strings and tear ducts like little else I've heard lately.

• Um um
• Romeo
• I need nothing from you

5. Odyn v Kanoe - Один в каное (sorry for the romanization). This album is gorgeous. An absolute treasure from Ukraine (one of so many I've had the joy of discovering lately, more on that later here), this album is tranquil, spacious and sparse, but immensely powerful and heart-wrenching, even without any thoughts about what's happening in Ukraine currently. With those thoughts on top though, listening to this music is almost too much to handle, but I believe it's a good act. Despite my limited knowledge (my exploration of Ukrainian music only started with go_A's "Shum" last year), this brooding, bold music feels like it captures something intimately tied to and of the land - not quite in the way that Jan Johansson's Jazz på Svenska does for Sweden, nor the way Sigur Rós' Agætis Byrjun does for Iceland, but perhaps somewhere in between the two. It paints a beautiful, mythical scene in vivid, epic detail - it sends me to a place I can only hope to one day experience for myself, and one whose people for whom I can only hope the present pain and suffering will end as soon as possible. At the heart of the album is the captivating voice of Ira Shvaidak, telling stories in a language I don't know, from a proud culture whose heart is currently being ripped out an torn apart. Let's all do our best to help its healing.

• Хуанхе 
• Y мене немає дому
• Про aвтора

6. Arooj Aftab - Vulture Prince. Another breathtakingly beautiful album, this gem from Pakistani artist Arooj Aftab didn't so much blow me away when I first heard it, as slowly lure me in. It's a gentle, subtle, quite minimal album, but awash with next-level-perfect sounds: harps, strings, light jazzy accompaniment and Aftab's incredible voice singing Indian songs and melodies. The mixing of western jazz with Indian scales and tonalities is so smooth you don't even stop to think about it.

• Mohabbat
• Baghon Main
• Inayaat

7. Lokoy - badminton. The debut solo album by Lasse Lokøy, the bassist of Stavanger's favorite pop punk band Sløtface, shows an exciting and playful musician stand solidly on his own as a singer, songwriter, producer and curator of joyful, summery pop. Full of great collaborations and eclectic Gorillaz-esque mixing of genres, the album is more like window shopping than listening to one artist expressing himself. The local ties feel almost odd, given that I wouldn't have been surprised to hear this music on a hip tastemaker radio station somewhere in California. The songs are mostly breezy and many even a little dumb, but when Lokoy does go for the emotional punch, he really hits - the title track here is one of those perfect little ditties I can play over and over again, where every word and every instrumental flourish just seems like it descended from the heavens.

• badminton
• both eyes
• morning sun

8. Marina - Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land. Indie pop provocateur Marina Diamandis (formerly known as Marina and the Diamonds) makes a grand statement on her newest album. The front half is packed full of anthems for the MeToo movement, tearing down the patriarchy, raising climate change awareness, dismantling capitalism and fighting for social justice. The catchiest of melodies pair with the catchiest of catchphrases, and this would all be awfully cheesy if it wasn't done so well. It's protest songs for the dancefloor, and it makes me wish there was more music this fun trying to say something important. The back half of the album is more ballad-heavy and, almost undermining the first half slightly, very focused on love. But it's still beautiful songwriting, showcasing Marina's powerful voice, and just makes me appreciate even more and artist who can do both.

• Man's world
• Venus fly trap
• Flowers

9. Lost Girls - Menneskekollektivet. Jenny Hval and Håvard Volden get together as "Lost Girls", for a collaboration pulling Hval's entrancing songs and poetry into dreamy electronic, almost ambient territory. These five tracks are long and sprawling, mixing LCD Soundsystem quality soundscapes with the structural lightness of a next-morning DJ set. Whether it's a stark spoken-word passage or an otherworldly melodic mantra, Hval's voice is high in the mix commanding attention, even over these rich and entrancing compositions. It's a beautiful and delightful album, hopefully the first of many from this duo.

• Love, lovers
• Menneskekollektivet
• Carried by invisible bodies

10. Maybeshewill - No Feeling is Final. UK quartet Maybeshewill reignited my love for proper post rock, but not before they'd officially quit after their 2015 album Fair Youth. So it was with great excitement I read the news of their return, and after a few absolutely lovely singles, including "Refuturing" featuring trumpetist Marcus Joseph, I was again ready to fall prey to the magical, hypnotic allure of epic instrumentals, bombastic buildups and cacophonous climaxes. Maybeshewill don't stray too fall from their winning formula here, but there's enough variation - borrowing orchestral strings, heavy metal guitars, comfortable electronics, Glass-y piano ostinatos, and the occasional environmental destruction message courtesy of dramatic newscasters - that the 50 minutes fly by and leave me wanting more.

• Zarah
• Refuturing
• The last hours

Left at London's t.i.a.p.f.y.h. gets the #2 slot from 2021. Give her a listen, you won't regret it.

And some honorable mentions, for twas a good year:

Iceage - Seek Shelter. The rowdy Copenhagen boys in Iceage are growing up, and the follow-up to 2018's excellent Beyondless is only slightly less captivating. Frontman Elias Bender Rønnenfeldt retains his charismatic sloppiness, and what this offering lacks in punk vigor it more than makes up for with world-weary nuggets of wisdom. 

• Vendetta
• Gold City

Sufjan Stevens & Angelo De Augustine - A Beginner's Mind. A beautiful collaboration by two angelic indie folk crooners, this album is chock full of jangly guitar, silky falsetto harmonies and atmospheric piano, and was to many Sufjan Stevens old-schoolers the follow-up album to Carrie and Lowell people have been waiting for.

• Reach out
• It's your own body and mind

dltzk - Frailty. Modern music making software has done fantastic things to the bedroom angst of 17-year old. dltzk (pronounced "delete zeke") goes from lo-fi guitar ditties to power emo rock to hyperpop's fully glitched-out electronic chaos multiple times across this album and within songs. Although the 57 minute album grows maybe slightly grating towards the end of its dozenth noisy car crash ("Kodak moment" kind of jumps the shark and renders everything after it a bit muddy), its boundless creativity and disregard for genre conventions results in one of those albums that just makes me happy that it exists and that people do art.

• search party
• your clothes
• movies for guys

black midi - Cavalcade. I did fall for the absolutely-never-heard-it-before jazzy weirdness of UK trio black midi's debut album Schlagenheim, perhaps especially the off-the-wall crazy performances of hit single "bmbmbm". Follow-up Cavalcade is definitely the better and more cohesive album of the two, showcasing a band in total control of their own creative whims. While frontman Geordie Greep's absurd lyrics and vocal performances are the first thing that jump out to most casual listeners, Morgan Simpson's drumming is quickly revealed as the ace up the band's sleeve. 

• John L
• Slow
• Dethroned

Squid - Bright Green Field. black midi's fellow breakouts from the vibrant scene around London's The Windmill, Squid, also released their amazing debut album last year. If you like your progressive-jazz-math-rock with a little less progressive-jazz-math and a bit more catchy indie rock in it, maybe opt for this one. Not that it isn't also some of the most leftfield and creative stuff out there. Finally, as a spoiler for an upcoming blog post, scenefellows Black Country, New Road also debuted in 2021 with For The First Time, although I haven't played that one nearly as much as their breathtaking new album Ants From Up There.

• Boy Racers
• Narrator

Hindsight is 2020

Yoo, as my punny title indicates, here are my top albums of 2020. Just to get this backlog out of the way, they'll be in the same rapid-fire format as 2019's list. Enjoy!

Bored Charli creating how i'm feeling now was honestly the best thing corona had to offer.

1. Charli XCX - how i'm feeling now. Charli invented the lockdown album. Chock full of melodies and toplines that would make Lady Gaga jealous, with lyrics written with fans over Instagram lives, and incredible production by hyperpop godfather A. G. Cook, how i'm feeling now perfectly captured what we were all feeling, and soundtracked basically every day of my 2020.
• detonate
• visions
• pink diamond
• forever
2. Black Dresses - Peaceful as Hell. This is the most aggressive peaceful album ever. Noise pop virtuosos Black Dresses cross industrial, bubblegum pop and metal with flick-of-the-wrist ease on this beautiful, touching testament to the power of friendship. It belongs to the story that the band called it quits shortly after the release of Peaceful as Hell due to anti-transgender online harassment following their newfound micro-fame. Luckily Devi and Rook are back at it releasing more amazing music, in a vein that no one else quite seems able to capture.
• CREEP U
• DAMAGE SUPPRESSOR
• BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP
3. Fiona Apple - Fetch the Bolt Cutters. The sound of a different sort of isolation. Keeping the world waiting for eight years, this is what it sounds like when musical genius Fiona Apple holes up in her house, decides she doesn't need to make anyone happy anymore, and records the album she wants to make with only the help of her dog, her sister, and the sounds of the walls of her house and her mind.
• Cosmonauts
• I want you to love me
• Shameika
4. Cezinando - Et Godt Stup i et Grunt Vann. I completely fell for the beautiful wordsmithing, great production and stark and emotionally vulnerable performances on this mini-album. Easily Norway's best at his game, pushing the boundaries for what a rap artist can be.
• Hore og Madonna
• Krokodilletårer
• Spiderman
5. Perfume Genius - Set my Heart on Fire Immediately. Mike Hadreas' least painful album yet, and possibly his most enjoyable. The quality of the singles is through the roof.
1. Nothing at all
2. Your body changes everything
3. Describe
4. On the floor
6. Sufjan Stevens - The Ascension. It wasn't a given that this album would exist. That Sufjan had another Magnum Opus in him. But he did. It's his most divisive yet, but the highlights reach the same stratospheric heights as before, and the flow state of especially the album's third quarter is heavenly.
• The Ascension
• Make me an offer I cannot refuse
• Sugar
7. Dorian Electra - My Agenda. An absolute power demonstration from the iconic destroyer of every societal norm. It's heavier, more frantic and more chaotic than Flamboyant, but with the same characteristic provocativeness, and one of the cleverest albums to follow 1000 gecs in spirit rather than in sound.
• Gentlemen / M'Lady [yes I'll count them as one]
• Sorry bro (I love you)
• Ram it down
8. The Strokes - The New Abnormal. After lead single "At the door" my door was wide open welcoming the return of the indie kings. For the first time in very very long, they did what they had to do, and they did it well.
• At the door
• Ode to the Mets
• The adults are talking
9. Adrianne Lenker - songs. A stops you in your tracks type acoustic singer-songwriter album. Reaches, no, consistently dwells, at emotional heights that few others can touch.
• anything
• forwards beckon rebound
• zombie girl
10. Yves Tumor - Heaven to a Tortured Mind. Continuing the seamless transition from their noise/industrial /ambient roots, Yves Tumor incorporates troubled songwriting and glam rock riffs into a vivid collage.
• Kerosene!
• Gospel for a new century

Black Dresses' Peaceful as Hell takes 2020's second slot. Thankfully it's back on Spotify now that the band can handle the limelight!

Honorable mentions

• Bob Dylan - Rough and Rowdy Ways. A masterclass from the 80 year old wielding his voice and his pen as the sharpest possible weapons. 
• Murder most foul
• Black rider
• I contain multitudes
• Moses Sumney - Græ. A fascinating artist whose only fault on this double album is wanting a bit too much. Can't wait for Moses' next step, and till I finally get to see him live (another March 2020 cancellation!).
• Me in 20 years
• Neither/nor
• Conveyor
• Run the Jewels - RTJ4. Killer Mike and El-P are simply incapable of missing. It's both fun and deadly serious.
• a few words for the firing squad (radiation)
• goonies vs. E.T.
• JU$T
• Hatari - Neyslutrans. Høh! Long-awaited debut album from Iceland's favorite anti-capitalist industrial BDSM techno metal performance project of 2019 Eurovision fame. They're slightly scraping the bottom of a not too deep barrel making this a full-length, but all the iconic essentials are here plus a decent handful of new bangers.
• Klámstrákur
• Klefi / Samed
• Hatrið mun sigra
• Fleet Foxes - Shore. Just Robin Pecknold quietly perfecting his craft. While lacking the universal appeal of Fleet Foxes' early days, or the grand ambition of Crack-Up, it's hard to deny the pure beauty and craftsmanship on display on Shore. I shore appreciate it more after hanging out with Robin on his School of song!
• Can I believe you
• Jara
• Sunblind
• Poppy - I Disagree. Following the fraught Grimes collab "Play destroy", 2019's terrifying Choke EP, and the glam rock tAtU cover "All the things she said", Poppy's fascinating transition from enigmatic bubblegum popper to disembodied satanist is complete. This record has no business being as good as it is.
• Concrete
• Anything like me
• Don't go outside

Please don't stop the music

Here we are again, three years, one pandemic, a handful of wars, hundreds of species extinctions, 8 ppm of atmospheric CO₂, and tons of great music later.

Why does the music matter? Well, even though I haven't kept up writing about it, I wouldn't have gotten through lockdowns and feelings of the world ending without it. I've danced alone in my bedroom for days on end, sung at the top of my lungs during foggy forest hikes, and played piano and guitar until my fingers bled. I've connected with strangers on the internet over release livestreams, streamed my favorite artists playing acoustically for their fans or fundraising from their living rooms, and discovered entire exciting new genres and spheres of music online. In intermittent gaps of 'normalcy', I've experienced how profoundly I've missed the existence of live music, what a powerful experience it is to have music wash over you in a crowd of people sharing brainwaves. Artists lost their livelihoods, clubs and venues shut down, and 'corona relief funds' made their way to the small, prominent tip of the iceberg of musicians, leaving every aspiring new face, every newly started exciting project, every leftfield idea to flounder before ever getting afloat. Lest we forget, I'm here to remind you that music and the unbridled creativity of musicians are more important than ever for maintaining and furthering our collective humanity.

OK, with that opening bla-bla manifesto out of the way, what's with the return of this blog? What will be happening on here? Well, I won't promise too much, but first I'll start by summing up the years in music that I've missed with some makeshift top-lists. I won't have time or willpower to write about all of them - maybe I will pop out a review every now and again if I'm particularly inspired - but they kind of need to exist for continuity's sake. Next, I intend to keep more of a continuous, low-effort style of updates on what's coming out, what I'm listening to, what I'm experiencing. This seems better than "saving" any writings until a busy year-end phase, lowers the bar for "how good" whatever I'm writing about has to be, and just overall seems more sustainable of a format.

So, without further ado, here are my top albums of 2019. Take note that I took the liberty to grant it the power of hindsight - I had a half-finished list kicking around from the end of the year, but it had some glaring omissions and some not technically necessary entries, so I've edited it somewhat. Some you may have heard so much about that they're old news already, some you may have liked but forgotten about already, and some you may have never caught on to in the first place. These are all for you!

Oh, and before I forget, the never-posted and long-anticipated top slot of 2018's list was Jenalle Monaé - Dirty Computer. I had this album on number one for so long that I didn't really know what to say about it any more. I could give it the first place spot just for the lyrics on "Django Jane", "Americans", "Pynk" and "I like that" alone. I could give it the first place spot just for the accompanying 48 minute Dirty Computer "emotion picture", an incredibly epic full-album music video. Rather than me trying to finish (and you reading) my review for this album, why don't you just watch that. It still holds up! And we're still waiting for more music from the inimitable Ms. Monaé.

So, here it is, 2019's list - with choice picks from each album:

1. (Sandy) Alex G - House of Sugar. Just an absolute gem of an album where Alex turns up the production quality but sacrifices none of the intimacy and poignancy of his lo-fi days. It's one I dance to, cry to, and keep coming back to to this day. Also his live show in February 2020 was my last one before, you know, the thing, so maybe I'm biased.
• Southern sky
• Cow
• Gretel
• In my arms
2. 100 Gecs - 1000 Gecs. The inimitable, genre-defining, boundary-crossing album that started it all. The hate has been piled on, but so has the love. With an Igorrr-level pace and density of new ideas, these 23 minutes are all you need... except I can't wait for 10000 gecs to drop any day now.
• xXXi_wud_nvrstøp_ÜXXx
• 745 sticky
• money machine
3. Caroline Polachek - Pang. This one really grew on me. Incredible vocal performances, great production, and amazing songwriting, spanning from tear-jerkers to absolute bangers. Alternative pop at its best.
• Door
• Look at me now
• So hot you're hurting my feelings
4. Brad Mehldau - Finding Gabriel. My favorite jazz album of the last few years. Mehldau's piano playing is second to none, but here he incorporates choirs and electronics that really elevate it to a spiritual level.
• St. Mark is howling in the city of night
• O Ephraim
• The Garden
5. James Blake - Assume Form. An underrated album in my opinion - easily my favorite of his. It's varied but focused, exciting but familiar, hitting the sweet spot every time.
• I'll come too
• Where's the catch?
• Into the red
6. Thom Yorke - Anima. Mesmerizing, powerful, it creates a whole world of its own in an entirely unique soundscape. More similar to Atoms for Peace's Amok than Thom's other solo work, he gave it his all here and it shows.
• Twist
• Impossible knots
• Dawn chorus
7. The Comet is Coming - Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery. I had tickets to see these guys live in Zurich literally the weekend that everything shut down in March 2020. I hope I get the chance again some day, because damn, they can play the roof off a room. Instead I've been crazy-dancing to their stuff at home for the last two years.
• Blood of the past 
• Summon the fire
• Super zodiac
8. Yann Tiersen - All. Epic, cinematic music from the famous film composer who here uses the tiny languages Breton and Faroese to create a sense of community, belonging and hope. Uplifting, beautiful and grand.
• Erc'h
• Pell
• Tempelhof
9. Little Simz - GREY Area. The record that catapulted my new favorite rapper into fame. She topped herself both before and after, but this one remains absolutely iconic.
• Venom
• Offence
• Flowers
10. Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell! Career highpoint for a defining voice in the last decade's pop scene. She's less pop here than ever. The long dreamy sequences are just otherworldly.
• Venice bitch
• hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have - but I have it
• The greatest

And some unranked honorable mentions:

• Weyes Blood - Titanic Rising.
• Movies
• Something to believe
• Dorian Electra - Flamboyant
• Flamboyant
• Career boy
• Vampire Weekend - Father of the Bride
• Harmony hall
• Married in a gold rush
• Tool - Fear Inoculum (yes the interludes are terrible, skip them)
• Pneuma
• 7empest
• Brittany Howard - Jaime
• 13th century metal
• Stay high
• Karpe - SAS Plus / SAS Pussy
• It's all one song! But if I'm choosing some, maybe the ones with Isah.

2. Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

How can pummelling drums, disorienting guitar blasts and a guy shrieking and howling like he's seen the devil himself give birth to a troll sound so breathtakingly beautiful? Contrast, it's all about the contrasts. Life is about contrasts, man. On Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, Deafheaven pair beautiful post-rocky, shoegazey, flowery indie guitar jams with balls to the wall black metal, to stunning effect.

Gut feeling says this is awful. Repeated trials say the same, although there are
some brief outliers saying it's kinda cool.

Deafheaven's third album is their quietest album yet - if you measure it in averages. The black metal parts aren't quieter than on Sunbather or New Bermuda, but there's more of the quiet parts. It's getting close to 50:50. Which some think is way too quiet, but Deafheaven have never been ones to bother with what other people think, especially not the metalheads with whom you might think they identify. No, Deafheaven have been completely denounced by quite a lot of the black metal scene, for their shameless flirting with indie rock or their pink floral album covers or whatnot. Instead they've amassed not only a considerable following of converts from those groups, but also reached out to a big new circle of fans: those who didn't think black metal was for them. I'm certainly in the latter group. I've definitely started venturing more in to black metal after playing New Bermuda quite a lot back in 2015, which is cool I guess, but it's not so much that it's opened my eyes to this new scene, it's more that I can't find anything I like anywhere near as much. Deafheaven do their own thing, and it's black metal done right. Black metal made beautiful.

Ordinary Corrupt Human Love breathes in and out. The loud and the quiet, the aggressive and the peaceful, they complement each other - after too much of one you yearn for some of the other. Yes, the quiet bits aren't amazing or groundbreaking in and of themselves. Taken in isolation, "Near" is a pretty darn boring song, but I've never once skipped it. It's that the relief is just that much bigger when the first full death metal attack hits two and a half minutes in to "Glint". I've been craving it so badly, it's like I've been holding my breath under water, finally surfacing ecstatically, like I actually would have died if I had to stay under any longer. Incredible. Similarly, "Honeycomb" and "Canary yellow" are intense, exhilarating, like amazing high-speed rollercoasters, with dizzying heights, terrifying loops and drops, jerks and yanks that threaten to through you off. I'm loving the ride, but I'm also intensely glad when it's over. "Honeycomb"'s beautiful outro arrives just at the right time.

Deafheaven have a pretty cool relationship with fans.

Besides the quiet indie rock stuff, what really puts metalheads off Deafheaven is that they mix the vocals ultra low. What, you mean the growling? Yup, sometimes you barely notice it. Wait, what?! Yup, that's right, those disgusting, super dark vocals that most black metal bands like to parade front and center to show off how tough and badass they are, Deafheaven just puts them as a layer of texture, completely secondary to the epic guitar riffage going down on top. On Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, they're lower than ever. It's like a middle finger to metal tropes. So there's that, for those of you who might think you're "into some metal, but not if it's growling", I totally urge you to give this a try. These are hardly vocals, it's basically instrumental music.

Deafheaven are also damn good live. I saw them at Pstereo a couple years ago, an it was amazing. I endured seeing maybe a quarter song by The Lumineers I think it was (some Mumford&Sons-y folk pop nightmare) which was where my friends were, but then I fucked that shit and went to the neighboring stage, where these guys were playing. And it was so delightful. The real deal. Brutally honest. Really, the blacker the black metal the better, as long as you've got ear plugs. Bring it on. Having that shit blast all over you is quite an experience. And singer George Clarke is actually pretty charismatic, I mean, for sounding like nails scraping on a wall (c.f. the devil's trollspawn thing). He, like, dances and gets people excited. But the best part was maybe afterwards. They all came down to the fence and shook fans' hands and hugged and signed and chatted for like ages. Goddamn.

Best tracks: "Honeycomb", "Worthless animal", "Glint", and "Canary yellow" too but I've played that one so damn much.

3. Amen Dunes - Freedom

What a thrill it is when music stops you in your tracks. When it just goes 'put down what you're doing and pay attention'. I can't remember how I first came across the music of Damon McMahon aka. Amen Dunes, where I was or what I was doing, but I do remember the reaction I had: A pleasant, gentle guitar-based intro slid into the background of whatever I was concentrating on, but when he started singing I became aware of how high my eyebrows were. They just stuck at that elevated position. When I caught myself it would kind of turn into a self-questioning frown, like 'what am I actually hearing?', but then he would sing another line and the frown would disappear and I would go back to that disbelieving surprised look. I still don't know which song this was I first heard, it could have been just about any one of them. Now I've been listening to Freedom for almost a year, and it's only grown on me.

That voice is amazing. He does that intense ultra-vibrato thing that I only know from a handful of other singers, such as Anohni, or my friend Jenny. And it's probably not coincidental that those two had this same effect on me. Please, if you know of any singers in this cross-section of voices that you get if you combine Amen Dunes, Anohni and Jenny Marlene Nettum, let me know.

Not much to say about this cover. The little stuff up on top is part of it.
The most important is the portrait, though. The long curls are gone

With Amen Dunes' Freedom, I came for the voice but I stayed for the songs. McMahon isn't just an incredible singer, he also writes hella good songs. What's more, Freedom sounds tremendously beautiful. It's guitar based, but with an endless variety of guitar tones, some tasteful piano and harmonica and, and plenty of atmospherics and loose song structures sending the thoughts in the direction of The War on Drugs. The production is perfect, it's timeless and lovely, and it captures all the sentiments that the songs do and amplifying them. It's both soothing and cathartic. (I'm not sure that those are opposites.) And I'm not sure what the songs are supposed to be about a lot of the time, but I have a pretty strong feeling that writing (and performing) them is both soothing and cathartic for Mr. McMahon. Going through the lyrics, the album reads as a life-reckoning. From his skipping school and growing up with a disapproving father, to dealing with Jewish heritage, and a mother who is diagnosed with cancer, McMahon does a lot of thinking, some figuring out, via more than a bit of pain, as he repeatedly sings.

OK, let's just go straight to the highlights. And they're all vocal performances. He gets so intense. He uses his voice to build up even the gentlest melody as if it was going through countless modulations, even the quietest song as if there was a symphony orchestra behind him. "Blue rose" is quite astounding all the way through, but like the phrase from 1:30 is pretty unique. How does he do those "now"s? "Skipping school"'s meandering second half sounds free-styled, but like at 3:25, when he goes from a deep croon on "yeah I've been goOoOoOoOod" to howling "See them go! Get out and go!", that's not random. Neither are the "I-I-I-I" stutters a few phrases later. It's all painstakingly, lovingly crafted. Another through and through stunner is "Miki Dora". About a famous surfer whose career and fame fell after he was convicted for financial fraud, McMahon's ruthless take on men's proud psyche is one of my favorites on the album. Again the melody starts deep, but when he reaches for those high notes from 1:50, singing "Sipping on my beer", I think that fragile vibrato is the least masculine way I've ever heard the word "beer" sung. And then there's "Believe", a six-minute piece of timeless classic rock where I think the instrumental is almost as impressive as the vocals.

 

There's been a lot of weird shit on this year's list. So if you've fallen off the wagon - I don't blame you. Hell, I would have fallen off this mess of a wagon. But if you did, jump back on it for this one, because I can basically guarantee that each and every one of you beautiful people are going to fall for this album. It's the In Rainbows of this list - so pretty, so solid, so good it's completely un-unlikable.

Best tracks: "Blue rose", "Believe", "Miki Dora", "Freedom"

4. Gåte - Svevn

Some people think folk music is uninteresting. In the one negative review I've read of folk-rockers Gåte's new album Svevn (for more on that, stay tuned), VG's journalist criticized the songwriting, claiming that the reliance on old folk tunes is "unimaginative", and that "Norwegian cultural heritage is not necessarily a good thing", that "while searching for their fairy tales, many of the stories Asbjørnsen & Moe came across were rude stories for men's magazines" and that "many of our songs are just melodies for drunken parties". It's a surprising read, but reflects the longstanding attitude helds towards folk music by the cultural "elites". But it's also a giant misstep, placing these songs in the past. They may not be what we consider high culture today, but on average, a song that has been passed down for hundreds of years will obviously have more staying power than whatever is popular at the moment. So criticizing Gåte for using boring source material is... well, I'm not surprised his voice is a lonely one.

When they started up in the early 2000's Gåte's hard-hitting combination of traditional Norwegian folk music and modern rock quickly won over fans of both genres and those that lieth betwixt. After releasing the now classic albums Jygri in 2002 and Iselilja in 2004, they went on a hiatus. Singer Gunnhild Sundli was only 14 when they started, and by age 19 she needed a break from leading a wildly popular rock band. I was a bit young to be on board the Gåte train the first time around, so I've always grown up just knowing about them, that they were popular and probably quite good. But they returned last year, first with the promising comeback EP Attersyn, and next with the album in question here, Svevn. It's a triumph, to say the least.

Not an amazing cover, but this is basically their aesthetic these days. She wears
that crown and a white dress at concerts. The logo has grown on me.

For longtime fans, the most pressing question is obviously whether the 'magic' is intact, 14 years later. As a first-time listener that's hard for me to judge, but maybe that's a good thing. What I can tell you is that this album is the absolute shit. They do what I suspected they've always been doing - combining Norwegian folk songs full of violin shredding and near-yodeled vocals, with the rock from branches such as prog, heavy, goth and emo. There's some Nightwish here, there's some Jesus Christ Superstar, and only some growling is missing before they touch on Enslaved. All of it sounds killer. Much of it is thanks to Gunnhild Sundli's stunning vocals. Listening to the old Gåte-albums, though, the first thing I realize is how much she's progressed as a vocalist. Her pipes have always been amazing, but now there's rock solid technique as well. She does the archaic language justice throughout - always taking care to pronounce every messy old-nynorsk consonant.

It's also fun to notice how 2018 Svevn actually sounds, despite its traditional folk tunes and its early 2000s roots. Where Jygri and Iselilja are strongly colored by the nu-metal wave of the turn of the millenium, Svevn only revives this is in a fun, mildly retro way, and a much broader pallette is heard instead, with both beats and electronic effects that sound subtly modern. The stripped-down ballad "Tonen" builds up with masterful production and strange industrial embellishments that highlight Gunnhild's beautiful vocals. "Tonen" leads straight in to the 8-minute epic "Åsmund Frægdegjæva", a medieval poem given the grandest of grand rock makeovers, complete with mirror-shattering modulations and prog breakdowns that have grown on me considerably since the first time around, where it was admittedly a bit exhausting. The other of the two longer songs on the album is the title track, an equally epic affair but in a much more subdued way, trading grandiosity for an ominous 7/8 ostinato and super cool drumming, making it a late-album highlight.

Gåte's Sveinung Sundli, Gunnhild Sundli and Magnus Børmark live in Oslo 2018.

Gåte are a great band with a great concept, but there was never any doubt that Gunnhild Sundli was their ace card - and now even more so than before. Seeing them live in November, guitarist Magnus Børmark jumped around wildly on stage despite doing his best to imitate Jonny Greenwood's guitar playing, and Sveinung Sundli provided plenty of exhilarating violin shredding, but Gunnhild completely stole the show even when she isn't singing. Highly pregnant and dressed in ice queen white, her sheer presence builds up the songs more than the entire rest of the band. The show on their home turf in Trondheim was a victory lap and a concert I will remember for a long time, combining the old and new in their catalogue seamlessly, chilling and thrilling with every song. Gåte returned just in time: When Gunnhild was ready.

Best tracks: "Kom no Disjka", "Tonen", "Svevn", "Bannlyst"

5. Jeremy Dutcher - Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa

Cultural extinction is pretty hard to deal with. Cultures evolve. They gather mutations as they are passed down over generations, some parts morph, become something new, good parts stay and become reinforced. Over centuries and millenia an endless diversity of human cultures have arisen and disappeared. But similarly to the ongoing mass-extinction of the globe's biological diversity, traditional cultures are also currently experiencing extinction at about a billion times the natural background rate (I haven't got the exact numbers). Modern culture spreads, tempts, engulfs the traditional ones quicker than the village elder can say "what's a TV?". People urbanize, centralize, depopulate. Some cultures actively oppress, forbid, censor other cultures. Inevitably, any or all these forces can eventually lead to the extinction of a culture. A language is never spoken again. Traditions are forgotten. And a body of music is lost forever.

I almost put The Lost Songs of St. Kilda on my 2016 list. It's a gentle, haunting album based on songs that were recorded on a £3 microphone at a Scottish old folk's home. Trevor Morrison sat at the piano and played some tunes he had learned as a kid from his aging piano teacher during the war. His piano teacher was one of the last people who lived on St. Kilda, a small archipelago in the Outer Hebrides, which was depopulated in 1930. So these centuries old songs hadn't been heard anywhere outside of Mr. Morrison's head for about 60 years, when they by a bonkers stroke of luck were committed to tape by a quick-thinking nursing home volunteer. The story really resonates with me. They say you can hear the mist, the isolation, the rugged cliffs in the tunes. I don't know if it's just that I have the narrative in my head, but I hear it anyway.

Well, if you think that's a tear-jerker, try Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa. This is an album of contemporary classical rearrangements of Wolastoqiyik indian traditional songs. Jeremy Dutcher is an operatic tenor, and for his debut album he chose to record a fading piece of his cultural heritage. A language with less than 100 remaining speakers, Wolastoqey has a rich body of songs that was dying out with the current generation. So when Jeremy, a young Wolastoq indian, went to the Canadian Museum of History and came across a collection of wax cylinder recordings of tribe members singing, playing and dancing to traditional tunes, he couldn't stand the thought of the recordings fading away in the museum cellar, and spent hours listening to and transcribing the songs. Despite many damaged recordings of songs now lost forever, Dutcher found a handful of still-audible recordings, and used his classical training (and some creative freedom) to create a collection of Wolastoqiyik songs for the twentieth century and beyond.

This is one amazing album cover. Probably the only album cover of this millenium to feature
wax cylinders. Check out Brightly Off-Colored Discophile's analysis, too. 

The fate of the wolastoqiyik echoes struggles faced by indigenous peoples all across America (and the rest of the world), and Dutcher provides a voice for all of them. For centuries following colonialization, practicing their culture and speaking their language was punishable by law. For Dutcher's mother growing up as well. Although the legal situation is less hideous today, it's a meager solace considering that so little of these cultures remains that they're perfectly capable of dying out on their own. Unless something extraordinary happens. Which is why it's pretty badass that Dutcher opens his album with "Mehcinut", which I've come to understand means "death chant". Wolastoqiyik culture has long been dying, but "Mehcinut"'s triumphant climax may be its rebirth.

I love how Dutcher incorporates the original recordings throughout the album, both at the beginning, middle and end of songs. Not only does it illustrate how tricky his creative journey has been - the songs sound rough, atonal, not at all fitting smoothly into a 4/4 time signature or the modern 12-tone scale of Dutcher's piano - but we also hear how scratchy and fragile they are, literally vanishing before our ears. There's even a segment where we hear damaged, inaudible recordings, and Dutcher or a museum technician saying "number 14, broken". When we in the next second hear "number 15", followed by the song that Dutcher turns into the majestic "Sakomawit", it illustrates just how enormous the difference between existence and non-existence is for this culture.

Besides the emotional punch, this album is really a unique musical journey as well. It's amazing to hear all the elements of classical music (ignoring the slightly off-putting modern drumkit) supporting vocals sung in such a different language. Italian, French and English opera all have different sounds to them, but they ain't got nothin on Wolastoqey. I'm not sure how well it works with the crazy diphthongs and phrases ending in awkward q's and k's, but if it weren't for this album I would never even have pondered the question. And Dutcher's vocal performance is, almost in spite, wonderfully confident and convincing. (For some insane language porn, check out how effortlessly he pronounces the album title - do it repeatedly, while reading the title. It's almost as satisfying as this gem.) His voice is spine-chillingly good, whether it's lifting songs like "Essuwonike" and "Sakomawit" to stunning climaxes, or capturing rhythmic chanting on "Nipuwoltin" and "Ultestakon". This album won the Polaris Music Prize - a big fucking deal - and it's for its contents, not its cover.

I think I've gone on westernsplaining this thing long enough. I don't even understand this shit, so why am I even talking about it? As Brightly Off-Colored Discophile puts it, this ain't my party. It's completely irrelevant to the Wolastoqiyik how I rank their songs on my albums of the year list, and this album is for them, not for me. But still, I'm loving it. If extinction is hard to deal with, witnessing a rebirth of such a scope warms my soul to the core. It's like watching those near-extinct Arctic foxes raise excited young pups in the Scandinavian mountains. Here's hoping for less extinction and more rebirths in the future

Best tracks: "Mehcinut", "Essuwonike" and "Sakomawit", because of those huge, Disney widescreen feels. If that's your jam, head that-a-way.

6. Iceage - Beyondless

I'm slightly back to the main(er)stream on this one after two very out there posts - but only slightly. Iceage are a gang of carefree Copenhagen rebels who played aggressive post-punk and gained quite a lot of attention in those circles for their first two albums New Brigade and You're Nothing. However, they shifted gear slightly on 2014's Plowing Into the Field of Love, where especially lead single "The Lord's Favorite" caught mine and a lot of other people's eye. It's a kinda pompous, country-tinged song where Iceage keep all of their unpolished jangliness but drench it in champagne, and the result is a really fun song that also sounds super different. To the pleasure of many, and the woe of others, this is the direction Iceage have pursued on their long-awaited new album, Beyondless.

Dope.

The pallette on Beyondless doesn't seem like much of a punk aesthetic. Horns, strings, chimes, basically every song is adorned with rococo embellishments, stealing more than a couple pages from Kaizers Orchestra's book. There's even what sounds like burlesque dance numbers several places. But Iceage don't abandon their post-punk roots, rather I really think they've evolved their sound in an interesting new way. For all its jangly guitars and saloon pianos Beyondless sounds surprisingly modern. It's so on point. Not overstuffed or annoying, just tastefully different. I love it.

Iceage singer and songwriter Elias Bender Rønnenfeldt is rapidly morphing in to the millenial version of Nick Cave, both his lyrics, persona and singing style channeling the prince of darkness more and more for each iteration. And it's not cheap imitation - Rønnenfeldt holds his own, especially as a lyricist, 'smart and hyper-literate'. Though slightly impenetrable due to their archaic vocabulary and meandering metaphors, reading the lyrics to the songs as poetry reveals some pretty cool insights into Rønnenfeldt's messed up mind. The most direct are opening track "Hurrah", a deeply sarcastic ode to war told from the first person view of a bloodthirsty soldier; and the equally in-your-face on "Showtime", a vaudevillian piece where a singer not entirely unlike Elias shoots himself on stage at the end of a sold out and critically lauded show. Otherwise Rønnenfeldt's meanings are harder to decipher, but there's an overarching feeling of violence, desolation and catharsis, at both personal and societal levels. He took the word "Beyondless" from Samuel Beckett's word-bending novella "Worstward Ho", and the album certainly speaks about something without a beyond, if that's a thing.

The rest of the guys hold their own as well. The drumming especially stands out - every song on the album is instantly recognizable from its drum patterns. Together with the guitars and bass the group has this tightness that only jamming together since childhood can produce, allowing for seamless transitions in tempo and dynamics. And the production is absolutely beautiful, all the additional instruments taking up their respective places in the sonical landscapes. Even on a busy song like "The day the music dies" you can easily choose if you want to focus your attention on the chugging rhythm guitar, the horns, the keys, the bass, the vocals, or the barrage of percussion. On a more abstract song like "Take it all", an amazing string section, sparse guitar riffs, lingering bass notes and an absolutely captivating vocal performance manage to build up to the best climax on the album, even though almost nothing happens. It's a stunning piece in its relative restraint, achieving devastating emotional impact from a simple unexpected chord change.

There's not a bad song on the album, but there are standouts. The aforementioned "Take it all" and "Showtime" ensure that the album ends on an even stronger note than it opens on. Besides this, the drunken stumble of "Catch it" is a winning blend of old and new Iceage, the awesome freak-out bridge morphing beautifully back into the song for a thrilling, screeching ending. And easily the poppiest song on the album, "Pain killer", featuring Sky Ferreira on guest vocals, is also a favorite of mine. It's simply a killer song with its brass section, fun chorus (alright alright alright) and great guitar riffs. Love it. And check out the lyrics - it's not your run of the mill love song.

Well done Iceage. Awesome album. I've played the hell out of this thing.

Best tracks: "Take it all", "Showtime", "Pain killer", "Catch it"

7. Igorrr - Savage Sinusoid

I don't envy anyone who has to review Savage Sinusoid. The album took four years to complete, and it would take four months to write about. I was weirdly hoping I wouldn't have to. But it's just too good, of course it's on this list.

I wouldn't have a chance at describing it, but it doesn't really matter, because it only takes like a minute of listening before you get what the deal is. Start with the first minute of "Houmous". It has most of the record's components in it: accordion, death metal, Aphex Twinnery, saxophone, insane howls, funky slap bass, and next-level drumming. How's that for a fucking smorgasbord. Another random minute of this song will bring you the chicken, the opera, the triangle, the flamenco, and an absurd 8-bit outro. And this by no means the most extreme song on the album. I'm not trying to make it sound intimidating or anything, I'm just trying to get this shitty stuck-upness that we all have out of the way. The sooner you can brush away that initial 'this is awful' knee-jerk reaction, the sooner you can start appreciating Igorrr's music. And you should, because Savage Sinusoid is so full of passion, creativity and magic that I can guarantee that you'll be won over before long.

Quite a fitting album cover. Looks evil at first but quickly feels more benevolent.
Like the music. Or maybe it's just me.

You see, this is an amazing album. In a mind-melting, reality-altering way. It's pure creativity, with no limits. Gautier Serre, the French musician behind the stage name Igorrr, loves classical music, all kinds of metal, balkan dance music, trip-hop and electronic music, and by combining them all at once he has created (needless to say) an entirely unique sound. Igorrr began around 2006 and was long a one-man show, the songs built around loops and samples. But for his third official album, Serre has expanded to a full band line-up, vying to make Savage Sinusoid entirely sample-free. That's part of the reason it took so long to complete, but it really adds to the result. It's quite stunning that this insanely intricate and hectic album is actually all performed by humans. There are some amazing making-of videos on YouTube, that are well worth watching. There's that inspiring, obsessive, Wintergatan-esque feeling to the sessions. You gain a lot of respect for the music after watching drummer Sylvain Bouvier gasp for air after laying down the climax for "Opus brain", watching Nils Cheville on acoustic guitar, Yann Le Glaz on saxophone, Laurent Lunoir and Laure Le Prunenec on vocals, Katerina Chrobokova on harpsichord, Antony Miranda on sitar, Erlend Caspersen on bass and Pierre Mussi on accordion completely shred on their respective instruments to nail the bonkers tempos on "Houmous", "Va te foutre" and "ieuD", all while Pierre the chicken (of "Chicken sonata" fame from the 2016 GoPro awards) waddles around.

"Spaghetti forever" amazingly sounds like Muse's entire discography compressed into four minutes, and it doesn't even sound forced. From the classical guitar to the "Hysteria"-esque fuzz bass to the angelic choirs, from the grandiosity of "Knights of Cydonia" to the longing violin of the Exogenesis symphony to the futuristic synths of The 2nd Law, it's all there, for better or for worse. The Montmartre-odyssey "Cheval" is stuffed with so much amazing accordion shredding and slap bass that you hardly notice it when the death metal shrieks and blast beats howl away at the bottom of the mix (that's right, death metal underneath with Parisian street ambiance on top). Picking it apart, it's absolutely stunning what Igorrr pulls off on this album. But that really doesn't do it any favors. The music works so incredibly well as a whole. It's entertaining to gawk and say "holy fuck we just got 10 seconds of this and then 10 seconds of that", but it really diminishes the overall impression. So I'm gonna shut the fuck up now and let you get on with it.

This aesthetic is amazing. It's like metal Monty Python.

Again, the whole thing is about the contrasts. So my favorite single tracks are the longer, multi-part ones like "Opus brain", "ieuD", "Au revoir" and "Houmous". But in the context of the album, the more one-sided tracks are just as important. The Chopin-inspired ballad "Problème d'émotion" has just enough electronic weirdness to it that it's unmistakably Igorrr, and I absolutely love it. (A quick glance back at his earlier demos reveal more of this genre - I'll definitely dig deeper!) Similarly, the non-stop intensity of "Apopathodiaphulatophobie" (fuck you too), "Viande" and "Va te foutre" are little more than a crossover-metal curiosity on their own, but it's how they mix with the rest of the album that makes the whole so stunning.

I still vividly remember the first time the stutter edit melted my mind. I was like 15, the artist was electronic music pioneer BT and the song was "The Antikythera Mechanism" (generally the entire This Binary Universe album) (but really, listen to that song, all the fucking way through). Since then this effect has become annoyingly ubiquitous on dance floors across the world, thanks to dubstep and EDM, but with discovering Igorrr this year I've finally relived that mind-melting awesomeness of my youth. Maybe Savage Sinusoid will give someone else this experience, just with Bach, Aphex Twin, or Satie, or French, Balkan, Spanish, Polish or Indian folk music. I wouldn't be surprised.

Best tracks: "Au revoir", "Houmous", "Problème d'émotion"

8. Ambrose Akinmusire - Origami Harvest

Oh the pleasures of discovering new shit. You don't know what you've been missing before you try it. And there's too much weird new shit out there to try all of it. Which is why I've fallen so completely for the world of that Albumaday blog. The Brightly Off-Coloured Discophile (as he fashions himself) presents some weird-ass record that I would never ever think of putting on myself, or whose existence my imagination simply would not have been able to conjure up. And then he sends the albums on a space rocket of profanity-laden praise, he verbally wallops you over the head with a sledgehammer until you simply have no choice than to go put on this shit, if only to prove him wrong. It's my new favorite form of prose, and for the sake of family-friendliness I'll try to keep it to a minimum on this blog, but I can't guarantee some of that beautiful filth isn't bleeding through.

Anyway, he's introduced me to a metric fuckton of amazing jazz this year. Some of the albums are like the jazz you think you know, just better. But some of them are unlike anything I've heard before, unlike anything my imagination could have conjured up - and better than both. One of these is jazz trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire's glorious clusterfuck Origami Harvest.

Now that, my friends, is what I call an album cover. It reminds me of both
(1) the best street-art I saw in San Fransisco, and (2) the cover of To Pimp A Butterfly.

Actually, calling this a clusterfuck is a completely undeserved insult. I was referring to the fact that bandmaster Akinmusire has, alongside your to-be-expected jazz line-up of piano, drums and saxophone, invited to the party not only a classical string quartet, but also rapper Kool A.D. So it's an unlikely meeting of worlds, but there's no trace of indecent behavior here. Rather, each player in this symbiosis makes space for the others, patiently, attentively listening, restraining, adding only where needed. For all its diversity in genre and sounds, the overall theme for me is minimalism. The result is wonderfully soothing, calming and beautiful. B, E, A, utiful. "Americana / the garden waits for you to match her wilderness", with its almost Steve Reich-y string and piano ostinati, its gentle spoken word balsam, its amazing theremin-or-whatever midsection, and its extremely tasteful drumming and trumpet flourishes, is one of my favorite pieces of music in like, god knows how long. Putting this shit on after a long day of work soothes me to the very core of my soul.

Not all of Origami Harvest is as gentle, though. This shit is never boring. Quite the contrary, some heavy duty boundaries are being pushed here. There are sections where the Mivos string quartet sound more like Jonny Greenwood and the London Contemporary Orchestra. And sections where Kool A.D.'s slightly over-woke spoken word fluff becomes actual ballsy rapping. And sections where the whole ensemble ditches the restraint thing and go way out in the leftfield. I'm not jamming with all of it, like the two-minute drum solo intro to "miracle and streetfight", and the loud avant-garde outro to album closer "the lingering velocity of the dead's ambitions" has me feel like OK I guess it's fine that the record is over now. But it's not that the album is an overdose or runs out of ideas - playing this thing from the start again is just as enjoyable, it just makes me realize that there's so much amazing music packed into this thing that it doesn't matter that some of it veers a little far in one way or the other. It makes for, as the record label (more precisely but less entertainingly than Mr. Brightly) puts it, "a surprisingly fluid study in contrast". (On Albumaday you can read that "this shit melts together better than cheese, toast, with a pickle on the side".)

At the heart of it, Origami Harvest is a heavy-ass protest record. And it's not specifically in the lyrics. As mentioned I'm not the hugest fan of Kool A.D.'s semi-improvised delivery of variations over words like "the mind / dimensions / consciousness / infinite", and he says "Americana / America nah" a couple more times than necessary. His additions sound more like another instrument rather than the lyrics to which the rest provide backdrop. No, the record gets its political weight just from its sheer blackness. The album cover, the mixing of whiter-than-white chamber music with the black genres of jazz, funk and hip hop, it's such a statement. Not a confrontation, because it's so fucking beautiful, just merely a statement of existence. It's black people having to be twice as good as white people in order to get half as much in return. In order to even be acknowledged as a person in America and not a criminal suspect, a black man has to be constantly on his toes and constantly perfect, and certainly never in the wrong place, it doesn't help if it's at the right or the wrong time. This album is just so damn good that we "despite its blackness" have to appreciate it. A thread through Akinmusire's career, "Free, white and 21" just whispers names off the ever-growing list of black lives ended by structural racism." This is when Origami Harvest becomes more than just music. But being told that the world sucks in a multitude of different ways doesn't make this a less solid listening experience. It's a wonderful album, which also, if you listen to it in a certain way, can open your mind in painful new ways.

Ambrose Akinmusire has quickly become something of a jazz superstar. For good reason.

So back to the music. It's all so well done. There's not a lazy beat on this thing. For all its experimentation, it sounds so perfectly precise. When opener "a blooming bloodfruit in a hoodie" transforms from spacious intro to solid groove after over two minutes of airiness, you hear that the groove has been there all along. Every seemingly abstract flourish on the 15-minute monster "miracle and streetfight" is just so on point. And To Kool A.D.'s credit, his timing is impeccable throughout. It takes a quality rapper to put proper rhythm even when the music turns slow and lilting. But the biggest praise is to Akinmusire himself. This rising jazz superstar has won some of the biggest prizes there are in jazz the last few years. Here he proves his worth with creating a challenging vision that he leads to fruition in a way where I suspect a lot of other people would have turned it in to a complete... clusterfuck. The best parts of the album is where he challenges us with contrasts, transitions, surprises. It's a compositional masterpiece and a thrill to listen to.

It's all the more frustrating how much bad and boring jazz there is out there, when you realize that it can also be this good. I'm just realizing, looking back, I've always loved it when jazz has trickled into my life, like out on the vibrant scene in St. Louis, on some of my favorite records like Radiohead's Amnesiac and Susanne Sundfør's Music For People In Trouble, amazing electronic amalgamations from people like Thundercat and Flying Lotus, and more mainstreamly like on Kendick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly, where Akinmusire himself features on trumpet. Getting on the jazz wagon this year has been a delightful ride. Shoot me a message if you're keen on more recommendations. But start with Origami Harvest.

Best tracks: "Americana / the garden waits for you to match her wilderness", "a blooming bloodfruit in a hoodie"

9. Car Seat Headrest - Twin Fantasy

What is it about teenage angst that works so well in music? Yes, it's relatable as hell when you're the same age, because everyone friggin gets it, and for a while later it will probably still hit you pretty hard in the feels, but shouldn't it start sounding childish and stupid sooner or later? I for one was certainly expecting that I one day would be able to look back at that time and laugh at all those silly feelings. Well, I'm now 28, and that day still hasn't come. And it's not just me - this theme is as huge in popular music as a good comic-of-age story is in literature and film. There's something about how overwhelming it is, how all-encompassing those emotions are. You just want it all to go away, and you just want it to last forever. Whether or not the listeners remember that themselves doesn't really matter, because it shines through in the music. And it's so damn real. Now a solid amount of years past my own adolescence, I still feel like nothing realer has happened, and probably never will. Some people my age freak out about that. I think I'm fine with it, but it sure is an amazing form of escapism to put on some Car Seat Headrest once in a while.

This album cover is absolutely wonderful. 10/10.

Car Seat Headrest started in 2010 as the solo project of then 17-year-old Will Toledo. He recorded and self-released about ten albums over the next three years. And during this time, he's angsty as fuck. He's growing up gay and different and lonely and sad. He gradually gained a bit of a cult following, as he gradually got better at both recording and songwriting, developing his signature style of what can best be described as low-fi prog punk. His songs are long and meandering, often over ten minutes long - quite an anomaly in the indie rock scene. And they're honest as hell. Like looking in a too-bright mirror when you're hungover. So he got a record deal in 2015, got together a proper band, released a compilation of his Bandcamp years, then in 2016 got his definite breakthrough with the album Teens of Denial. This is the point where I jumped on the wagon.

So now he's at this weird place where he's sitting on all this material literally recorded in the back of a car (hence the band name), which he's actually quite proud of, which most people have never heard. So rather than put out a brand new album, he goes back and re-records one of his old ones. It's a weird-ass move, but seeing where he's coming from, I kinda get it. He's got the budget, the equipment, the bandmates and the skill now that he didn't have back in 2011. He hasn't stopped making art and sold out; he's giving his art the format it deserves. Besides, Teens of Denial was probably his last teenage album. He's now 26, and any new music is going to be coming from a decidedly different place than whatever created those ten manic creations. So giving us Twin Fantasy again, commonly accepted as the best Car Seat Headrest album (I wouldn't know, I've barely dipped my toes into those old recording), makes a lot of sense. The result is such a definite statement of that time, it has a timeless quality that the self-made albums just couldn't have.
Thus, we're in the unique situation now that there exists two different versions of Twin Fantasy. They're subtitled (Mirror to Mirror) (the 2011 version) and (Face to Face) (the 2018 version). Fans are biting each other's necks off arguing over which is better, which tracks were ruined, which changes should never have happened, whether the whole thing should have happened, whether you're a true fan unless you like the old lo-fi stuff. I don't care about any of that shit. Twin Fantasy was an entirely new album for me, and only on a few occasions have I gone back and listened to the old versions. It's hard to rate one over the other. There are minor variations in many of the songs, so I kind of get the confused fans, but it's a pointless exercise. So I simply took (Face to Face) at, ehem, face value.

2 x Will Toledo in the "Nervous young inhumans" music video.
They're not huge on the visuals thing.

And it's an amazing dive into a messed up teenager's mind. It's a stressful place to be, and the album is almost 80 minutes long, so rarely do I do it all in one sitting. Specifically, track two is the 13-minute monster "Beach life in death", which kind of overshadows the entire midsection of all the album. But I urge you, at least stay for the first ten minutes. If you've gotten to "I! Don't! Want! To! Go! In! SAAANE!" and found out this isn' your cup of tea - fine. If you are into it - stay tuned for the equally thrilling "Bodys" and "Cute thing", and melt in pleasure every time a snippet from previously in the album is reused. That's such a hella good effect, and Toledo uses it in just the right amount, whether it's inverting "Stop smoking (We love you)" to "keep smoking, we love you", or reviving the outro from "Beach life in death" in one of the countless sections of the 16-minute penultimate track "Famous prophets (Stars)". Other memorable moments include the lyric in "Cute thing" about the stammering drunk trying to tell him how good that shit was, delivered hilariously deadpan; the looping three-against-four rhythm in the heartwarming outro of "Sober to death"; and the charming "Is it the chorus yet? No, it's just the building of the verse, so when the chorus comes it'll be more rewarding." during "Bodys". Speaking of the choruses, some of them do indeed sound a bit too much like an angsty teenager writing a generic chorus - but some of them are really good. There are enough of the really good ones here that you'll experience no lack of catchy hooks and singalong

The lyrics of the album revolve around a short-lived relationship, and many of them have been rewritten for this new version, reflecting Toledo's changed view on the whole deal. Quite a unique and weird situation to be in. I won't go into detail. But closing track "Twin fantasy (Those boys)" is left completely unchanged, and takes an odd third-person view that paints the relationship as a piece of sepia-perfect nostalgia. "They just want to be one / Walk off into the sun / Not kissing / Not fucking / They're just having fun fun fun fun fun" is probably the sentiment best captured on the album cover. The outro of "When I come back you'll still be here / When you come back I'll still be here" loops on and on, and I read that the vinyl version ends on a locked groove, with the last few seconds looping endlessly, allowing the fantasy to live on as long as you want.

Someone with too much time on their hands should dub SKAM season 3 using only Car Seat Headrest songs on the soundtrack. There's literally a mood on Twin Fantasy for every scene.

Best tracks: "Beach life in death", "Bodys", "Twin fantasy (those boys)", "My boy (Twin fantasy)"