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2019 - Six months in. These records don't suck.


In the first six months of 2019, these sixty-six recordings impressed me favorably. Some of them I'll rarely listen to again. Some will become old friends. The ten in bold stand out a bit from the rest of the pack.

I haven't been of a mind to write record reviews for some time now. However, if you want my spontaneous two cent's worth on any of these titles, I'll be happy to give you a quick take to affirm, bolster my support.

In no particular order:

21 Savage – I am > I was

Kel Assouf – Black Tenere

Deerhunter – Why Hasn’t Everything Disappeared

Divine Comedy – Office Politics

Stella Donnelly – Beware of the Dogs

Dream Syndicate – These Times

Du Blonde – Lung Bread for Daddy

Willie Farmer – The Man from the Hill

Felice Brothers – Undress

Flesheaters – I Used to be Pretty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vppn_T5b_Lo



Fontaines D.C. – Dogrel

Fleshtones – Budget Buster

Robert Forster – Inferno

Better Oblivion Community Center – s/t

Bellows – the Rose Gardener

Pinky Pinky – Turkey Dinner

Rhiannon Giddens – There is no Other

Patty Griffin – s/t

Guided by Voices – Zeppelin Over China

Guided by Voices – Warp and Woof

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruM6t_3q1p0



Aldous Harding – Designer

Durand Jones and the Indications – American Love Call

Jim Jones and the Righteous Mind – CollecticV

Alex Lahey – The Best of Luck Club

Mattiel – Satis Factory

Mdou Moctar – Ilana (The Creator)

Mekons – Deserted

Mystery lights – Too Much Tension

NOX Boys – out of Touch

Nots – 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdBZ-kFyEgI



Offset – Father of 4

J.S. Ondara – Tales of America

Peter Perrett – Humanworld

Jessica Pratt – Quiet Signs

Lucy Rose – No Words Left

Sebadoh – Act Surprised

Emerson Snowe – That’s Rock n Roll

Bruce Springsteen – Western Stars

Mavis Staples – We Get By

Tacocat – This Mess is a Place

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6JC91j2lUc



Tough Shits – Burning in Paradise

Sharon Van Etten – Remind Me Tomorrow

Vandoliers – Forever

Andrew Wasylyk – Paralian

Yawpers – Human Question

Nicole Yun – Paper Suit

Raconteurs – Help Us Stranger

75 Dollar Bill – I Was Real

Kate Tempest – The Book of Traps and Lessons

Mega Bog – Dolphine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM6ddp3BMEM




Mike – Tears of Joy

Thea Gilmore – Small World Turning

Summer Cannibals – Can’t Tell Me No

Titus Andronicus – An Obelisk

Westside Gunn – Flygod is an Awesome God

Catenary Wires – To the Morning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkeWhRw0Xig



Comments

The people have spoken.

Cancer Rising, Goodnight Grant, So Long Jessi

A few weeks back my urologist cut something out of my bladder. A papillary carcinoma, I think it is called. One more box to tick off on my Medical History, one more reason I’ll never buy life insurance: Cancer. Oh, I’m alright. Doc’s pretty sure they “got it.” Of course, having a cam and a cutter crammed up my prick may be a little more frequent feature of my life. But, so it goes. It goes, that is, until you’re gone. Grant Hart is gone. 56, cancer. Jessi Zazu is gone. 28, cancer. I scroll through my Facebook friends – Jesus, lots of gone ones. Most gone to cancer. Devin, Greg – hell, so many. Shit’s in my family, too. My in-laws and my sister-in-law have had their battles with the stuff. My mom was lost to cancer, at 73. She’d be 100 in October. My dad followed her three years later; he was 87. He would have been 109 yesterday if he was from the Caucasus Mountains and ate lots of yogurt. Cancer? Nope. Heartbreak. It happens. Saul Bellow understood. Oh,

The Dream Syndicate make a pretty awesome new album. Let us now praise not all that famous men (and a woman) ...

  Let’s talk about the Dream Syndicate. They have a new album on Anti-Epitaph. You know, what gradually became viewed as Steve Wynn’s band. Until it was, well, Steve Wynn’s band and he had a solo career. Sigh. The guy has never made a shitty record. Some are better than others, but so are your mornings. Anyway, let’s talk about the Velvet Underground. You know you want to. Everybody does. They were great. Yup. They made a mindfuck of a debut album that set the template for everything left of center since. But damn it, in 2017 people get to have a variety of opinion about which of their four ( VU being almost a fifth, the others being live records) being the best Velvets album.  Among the tiny brain trust of alternative media, no such discussion is allowed when it comes to the Dream Syndicate. Nope, they made a revelatory debut (and their debut is most like the VU’s debut - not insignificant, since the Velvets were an acknowledged inspiration to the DS) - then it all went do

The Necks are from Australia. They are improvisors.

The new release by the Necks was reviewed recently in Pitchfork. 755 bloody words and other than some vague references to genre, mention of label mates, there’s one reference of a musical nature - to the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.  Sorta. The rest of it is a lot of bubble and squeak about cascades or echoes or some such shit.   Pitchfork gives me gas. It’s a handy reference because they do review a lot of releases, but whatever critical paradigm they have is dominated and subverted by a lot of psycho-babble and allusion to extraneous nonsense.   So, down to brass tacks. Whatever else the Necks may be, they are a jazz ensemble, a trio. Drummer Tony Buck, bassist Lloyd Swanton and keyboardist Chris Abrahams are Aussies who’ve performed together since the Eighties. I don’t pretend to know their entire history, but their last two recordings have been compelling sets of group improvisation. Recordings I discovered in part thanks to the British online journal Quietus,