The best house-and-breaks album I’ve heard in years. Historians will have fun IDing where each sound on the retro tracks is borrowed from; the rest of us will assume they would’ve gone over just as well in illegally appropriated early-’90s warehouses as they do now. Maya Bouldry-Morrison pushes things further, like with the tempo changes on “Spin Girl, Let’s Activate!”, often enough that there’s no hint of staleness or gathering moss. Knowing where to place a sample to subtly shift the mood is a fading art in this age of EDM (let alone rap), and she shows the knack, as with the post-verbal vocal on “Deep Connection” that may or may not be saying “now” adding urgency to ambient chords. “Ecstatic Beat” is the masterpiece, more than holding up against Goldie and Alex Reese classics: four and a half minutes of rock-hard sounds that nevertheless don’t hurry and maintain form, so that even people who don’t use performance-enhancing chemicals can dance along.
Grade: A (“Ecstatic Beat”, “Move Your Body”, “Spin Girl, Let’s Activate!”)
Billie Eilish: When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
In May I was put off by the title as much as anything (that ungainly “all”), but now that I’ve resigned myself to having to take the goth kids seriously again, I find lots to love. Goth kids have long been responsible for a big chunk of formal innovation in pop — who knows whether the structure of “Bad Guy” can be reduced to a formula, though there’ll be a lot of attempts, most of them bad. Eilish creates a club-and-chill record while managing to avoid the tedium of actually having to go to the club by getting famous young and without really being inwardly chill about anything. Some lyrics are dumb and some are very funny, especially “Xanny.” Kids, you don’t need drugs to get all fuzzy if your brother has the right vocal filters!
Grade: A (“Bad Guy”, “Bury a Friend”, “Xanny”)
Yo-Yo Ma/Esa-Pekka Salonen/LA Philharmonic: Salonen: Cello Concerto
If you’re the sort of listener who picks a token classical album every couple of years, here’s the one. Three distinctive movements, nothing completely unprecedented, but the loops offer some 21st century flavor to accompany the high-modernist callbacks. Having spent almost his entire life crossing over to the likes of JFK and Elmo, it’s easy to forget that Ma has crazy chops, and here he displays the temperament to apply them to contemporary work. He’s lyrical even when Salonen has him sound like a seagull, and his alto flute and bongo dance partners are up to the task. The last movement climaxes with an insane high note amidst echoes of earlier squawks, as if Salonen’s admitting that a blood-soaked Ma has won this one.
Grade: A (“III”, “II”)
Steve Lehman Trio & Craig Taborn: The People I Love
A valiant last ditch effort by Lehman to grab jazz artist of the decade, though William Parker probably still takes it on quantity. Lehman takes a wide range of harmonic material (including, really, Autechre) and dices it, his fast runs neatly slicing through the tunes in ways that still allow you to observe the original structures, like he’s an infomercial knife salesman. The rhythm section revs along sweetly, with drummer Damion Reid relishing the chance to full-contact spar with Lehman on “A Shifting Design.” The short improvised interludes, in which Taborn gently suggests he can express a lot with twelve tones no matter how many Lehman uses, whet the appetite for more. That this might not be one of my top couple of 2019 jazz albums means it’s been a good year.
Grade: A (“qPlay”, “Beyond All Limits”, “Interlude”)
Retaining their guitar squalls and big beat, they’re increasingly willing to take their time — at 24 minutes, this is half as long again as Romantic. With Epitaph’s money to play with, reluctant culture hero Marisa Dabice’s vocals are front and center. And whether it’s because of this or because of her thirties, she’s putting more of herself into the songs, with two songs called “Drunk” that risk the pathetic: how refreshing to once again have a culture hero who can deliver an “I still love you, you stupid fuck” with no loss of ferocity. Maybe rage is what she best knows how to express, and by using it to push against her limits, she can get beyond them; maybe she’s just too hard on herself. In the latter case, her bravest move might be the happy ending.
Grade: A MINUS (“Drunk II”, “In Love Again”, “Who You Are”)
Twice: Feel Special EP
A nine-piece formed through Sixteen, a reality show designed to emotionally abuse teenage girls, they’re now in their twenties and K-pop’s most successful girl group. Title track is a classic, with hyperchipmunking and a moment after the second chorus where it threatened to lurch into a dubstep bridge before saying just kidding, it’s 2019. The percussion is great throughout, even on the token slow one. All that’s lacking is the vocal differentiation often absent from these mega-groups — reality show loser Somi’s “Birthday” is a super-classic in part because she has the ability and opportunity to put her individuality on record. But they’re richer than her, so do they care?
Grade: A MINUS (“Feel Special”, “Trick It”, “Get Loud”)
Miranda Lambert: Wildcard
Pace The Weight of These Wings diehards, the consensus that this is her third-best after Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Platinum seems right. If there’s a big, subtly deep one in the middle, I’m missing it. But there’s near-constant rock & pop & roll fun, with the shallow likes of “Locomotive” barbed with sneaky good lines about totaling her hubby’s truck and the less shallow lead single packed with Morissettian ironic scenarios with the help of Lindsey/McKenna/Rose (oh hey, another supergroup.) The more introspective material doesn’t drag too much: even “How Dare You Love”, which could use a little longer in the dryer, eschews self-pity and doesn’t miss the point of The Wizard of Oz.
Grade: A MINUS (“It All Comes Out in the Wash”, “Pretty Bitchin’”, “Locomotive”)
This is the major step up vocally I wanted after hearing Guppy, with Eva Hendricks expanding her expressive range without losing the girlysound that made her distinctive in the first place. Travails range from the relatively minor inconvenience of a stolen credit card to a life-derailing abusive relationship. Since this is power pop, the latter is hidden in a bouncy song ostensibly about a chat room and the former anchors a song that’s wistful about what the thief might’ve done with their 556 bucks. In the middle, the anthems for a sub-generation that’s been continually shit on by the material world since before they could vote may be of more communitarian value than us pre-millennial rock critics might initially appreciate.
Grade: A MINUS (“Young Enough”, “Camera”, “Bleach”)
Tanya Tagaq: Toothsayer EP
The Polar Worlds exhibit in London this was commissioned by, in addition to considering the probability of ecological catastrophe, celebrates the courage of Scott and Shackleton, which is fine if one also appreciates Tagaq’s alternative model of heroism. She gives us the year’s most remarkable vocal performance — and I say that as someone who previously preferred her one song at a time — but it’s one deeply rooted in Inuit culture and communities that have survived at 69° north. She brings brimstone and Gaia’s revenge, natch, but also beautiful squeaks and cryptozoological mating calls. The Ash Koosha and Jean Martin-assisted production foregrounds glacial synths, chiseled away at by mammoth-tusk drums, or maybe more like the giant wolf’s boner that Jaime Hernandez drew on her audiobook cover. Endlessly rocking.
Grade: A MINUS (“Snowblind”, “Icebreaker”, “Toothsayer”)
Raphael Saadiq: Jimmy Lee
Compressing 50 years of Saadiq family history into 40 minutes necessitates an incomplete portrait, and if on the whole he accentuates the negative, have you looked outside lately? The musicianship, mostly his, is outstanding throughout, always melodic if not always catchy per se. The sound designs show he’s paid attention to the constructions younger producers have built on his foundations, and that he can match them at their game while singing better. And if Kendrick asks questions only Kendrick can answer (and doesn’t try to), Daniel J. Watts follows his bleak “black is the same, same black” with a call to action — even if it’s a Hamilton quote.
Grade: A MINUS (“This World Is Drunk”, “So Ready”, “Rikers Island Redux”)
Rico Nasty & Kenny Beats: Anger Management
Punk! Twenty minutes of badassery and fjuck-the-haters: even when she’s merely petty, there’s a ferocity to her pettiness. Second-generation rapper Rico doesn’t hesitate to be shrill — shrill has its uses — and maintains clarity in all moods. You might take “I got bitches on my dick and I ain’t even got a dick” as your Inspirational Verse; I’ll take “you ain’t ever got to listen to him, girl.” Friend-of-Baauer Kenny Beats has ideas too, none better than lifting “Dirt Off Your Shoulder.” When Rico sings on the closing track that she did it all by herself, Kenny’s synth tinkles and muffled thumps seem to be saying ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Grade: A MINUS (“Hatin”, “Sell Out”, “Again”)
Chance the Rapper: The Big Day
Seems music critics hate going to weddings, and I can’t entirely blame them: “oh shit Ben Gibbard’s coming this way I hope he hasn’t read anything I’ve written about him these last ten years OH HI BEN.” But couples seem to enjoy having them, and we play along because we like the couples and if they’re from immigrant families then maybe also for the food. So liking this depends on liking Chance’s persona, and why wouldn’t you? He’s confident enough in his extraordinariness that he’s willing to enlist the innocuous likes of Francis and the Lights to help himself be soft, because he knows softness is something he’ll need as a husband and a father. His conceptualization of family life is limited not because it’s totalizing, but because if it’s going to totalize he really needs his wife’s perspective on there. Instead he gets recently and happily partnered Nicki Minaj to close the album, and her having no interest in being soft does open up futures not accounted for in Chance’s five year plan. Congratulations, Nicki; I expect your ceremony will have better catering.
Grade: A MINUS (“We Go High”, “5 Year Plan”, “Sun Come Down”)
