Not the list

Hey all, and happy December 1^st! The musical advent calendar is making its return this year as well. To kick it all off I figured I would discuss some notable absences from this year’s list. While this might remove some of the suspense from the final countdown (pun not intended), I decided to do it because there were so many relatively high-profile releases I was looking forward to this year that turned out to be a bit disappointing. Many of them had some excellent tracks on them, however, so instead of ignoring them altogether I’ll mention some of these choice cuts here, alongside a brief comment on why I felt their respective albums fell short.

Arcade Fire - Everything Now

I don't quite get the album version. It's oddly empty, which contrasts
with the contents of the music. There's also a night-time version.

The title track and first single from Everything Now, and of course my prior knowledge (i.e. love) of the band, had me extremely excited for this album. The music is dance-y and poppy, in the style they began exploring on Reflektor, and the lyrics are blunt and angry, but that has never stopped me from enjoying Arcade Fire songs before. Thomas Bangalter (of Daft Punk) has helped with production on this and other songs, and he adds a fun, bouncy touch. I was totally sold on the irresistible piano hook, awesome panflute solos, and felt the themes they were addressing were important and could make for a great critical concept album.

Unfortunately, the album only very rarely manages to fulfill these expectations. It suffers strongly from what feels like lazy songwriting, both melodically lyrically, as well as some terrible conceptual elements. Yes, it may be a comment on clickbaiters providing the zoned-out online public with instant satisfaction, but playing the same (awful) song “Infinite content” twice in succession, first as a stupid punk rock mishmash, and next as a pointless cruise ship swayalong, just makes me jam the skip button. Other songs (“Chemistry”, “Peter Pan”) sound like Arcade Fire literally writing and recording the worst music they could imagine. I’m still a huge fan, eager to hear what they do next, and super keen on seeing them live, as Everything now adds a good handful of awesome songs to their already stunning back-catalogue, but due to the handful of garbage ones, this album sadly and strangely dropped off my list this year.

Hear: "Everything now", "Put your money on me", "Creature comfort".

London Grammar - Truth Is A Beautiful Thing

The cover is pretty representative of the album, with its clean-looking and probably expensively
designed logo - and the beautiful girl shining in the middle with the other guys hiding in the background. 

Hannah Reid has one of the most spellbinding voices I've ever heard. Her range is extraordinary, and I can't decide whether I'm more captivated by her arresting low register, her soaring falsetto, or her full chest voice. She's an amazing vocalist with an incredible vibrato, and seeing her perform a song like "Rooting for you" live, even on video, I simply feel like I'm in the presence of an angel. (Look how dead quiet the crowd is - until the points where they just can't keep their pure gratitude in any longer).

Truth Is A Beautiful Thing is London Grammar's second studio album. It sounds very much like their first album, If You Wait, which scored in my top 10 of 2013. Some songs explore slightly new territory, but very marginally so. The trio's two other members, guitarist Dan Rothman and keyboardist/beatmaker Dominic Major, understandably consider their role to be to stay tastefully in the background, bringing out the best in Hannah Reid's voice and not get in the way of it. But when they stay with their syrupy style of combining string overdoses with xx-copying sparse piano chords and light electronic percussion, it doesn't take much for the sound to grow stale very quickly. Truth Is A Beautiful Thing makes some admirable efforts at breaking away from this mold with some sharper percussion, some large instrumental climaxes where Hannah leaves the stage for a moment, but ultimately the album suffers from too little variation and is much less than the sum of its parts. The songwriting often leaves a lot to be desired, and a few too many unmemorable mid-tempo cuts and downright cringey lyrics ruin the overall enjoyment. It's not that Reid is amazing and her band is holding her back, they're good as a group and they all make great contributions. It's rather that as a group they too often choose to make things too easy and pretty rather than experiment a little. The quite popular singles "Oh woman oh man" and "Big picture" are just too normal to really do much for me. I still think they have the potential to make a truly excellent album, if they just take the risk and shake things up a little.

Hear: "Hell to the liars", "Rooting for you", "Bones of ribbon"

Kendrick Lamar - DAMN.

Fitting. It conveys Kendrick's struggle and the album's darkness,
but it's certainly a less interesting cover than that of To Pimp A Butterfly.

Kendrick Lamar changed the game for hiphop with 2015's To Pimp A Butterfly, my favorite album of that year. I loved how the jazz influence, lush instrumentation and organic percussion provided such a serene and different backdrop for Kendrick's jaw-dropping rapping and powerful lyrics about something bigger than himself. It really stood out from the regular hiphop sound of self-obsessed boasting accompanied by clickety-clack beats we hear so much these days (can you tell I don't usually listen to much hiphop?). Anyway, I was super stoked for DAMN., and although first single "Humble" was pretty much exactly what I was hoping Kendrick wouldn't do this time around, I have to admit it's pretty badass, the video is amazing, and it only strengthens Kendrick's reign as king of rap these days.

DAMN. is a very dark album, and the lyrics are more self-pitying than self-aggrandizing. There are some very powerful lines and Kendrick does to some extent manage to get me engaged in what he's saying, especially in the beginning of the album with the unsettling opening story on "BLOOD." and the very angry, inspired and impressive "DNA.". However, musically DAMN. quickly falls in to all the hiphop tropes and cliches I dislike. While the rapping is still great and there are some truly awesome tracks, the overall sound just rubs me completely the wrong way. It sounds like it's being blasted out of a stupid spray-painted car. The lyrics also don't address larger issues like TPAB did, they're just about Kendrick feeling sorry for himself and there's way too much God (there's even a song just called "GOD."). Especially midway there are some songs that sound pretty lazy and uninspried, and on Rihanna collab "LOYALTY." Rihanna sounds like a better rapper than Kendrick. I'm still full of awe for Kendrick, but unfortunately TPAB's shadow weighs to heavily while I listen to DAMN. I miss the biting political commentary (which is much less present here), the storytelling from other characters' points of view, the thematic cohesiveness, narrative and flow of the album, and the beautiful backing tracks (which were more than backing tracks). I'll be back for the next one, Kendrick, but even after loads of listens to DAMN. it feels like a step back.

Hear: "HUMBLE." (if you haven't already), "LOVE. FEAT. ZACARI", "DNA."