"It's time to celebrate the best music of 2019. We begin with our overall top 100 albums of the year..."
One of the early 21st century's most influential musicians and producers, Danger Mouse parlayed his skill at blending and juxtaposing elements of rock, hip-hop, dance, and pop into an unmistakable approach that he likened to being an auteur.
Danger Mouse / Karen O - Lux Prima from Lux Prima
...Together, the pair sets a dramatic, mysterious, and strangely luxurious mood that fits Lux Prima's musings on birth and rebirth. They begin the album with its most ambitious track: A nine-minute, four-part suite, "Lux Prima" swirls eerie synth passages, symphonic grandeur, and slinky R&B together with an unhurried mystique. It's an impressive, somewhat daunting prologue that hints at just how much ground Karen O and Danger Mouse cover on the album, and how well they complement each other...
Bibio - The Art of Living from Ribbons
On 2017's excellent Phantom Brickworks, Bibio's Stephen Wilkinson took a deep dive into his music's ambient side that was unexpected, yet made perfect sense within his body of work. This time, Wilkinson spotlights the acoustic elements that have added warmth to his sound since the beginning, and the freshness of Ribbons suggest that his break from song-based music reinvigorated him. In interviews, Wilkinson has mentioned he prefers the simplicity of writing on acoustic guitar, and that purity shines through on the album's numerous instrumentals...
Rhiannon Giddens - Gonna Write Me a Letter from There Is No Other
Often, the phrase "there is no other" carries an air of romanticism, but Rhiannon Giddens turns its conventional meaning on its head on her collaboration with Francesco Turrisi. The pair focus directly on "othering," the process of identifying different cultures as alien from a person's own experience -- a phenomenon that the pair refute not only with the title of their 2019 album but the very music it contains. Giddens claims classical music and old-timey folk as her musical heritage; Turrisi is a jazz musician who studied early music -- backgrounds that provide a considerable amount of common ground, something that is evident throughout the restless, haunting There Is No Other.
William Tyler - Alpine Star from Goes West
Although its title suggests a continuation of the pastoral Americana meditations from 2016's wondrous Modern Country, guitarist William Tyler's fourth solo outing is in fact a brighter, occasionally frolicsome set, rife with sublime melodies and executed with an understated confidence. Its title, Goes West, refers not to the dusty cross-country voyages that inspired its predecessor, but to Tyler's recent relocation from his native Nashville to sunny Los Angeles. As on Modern Country, the all-instrumental Goes West again employs a full band, though its leader sticks solely to acoustic guitar with Meg Duffy joining him on electric guitar, James Anthony Wallace on piano, Griffin Goldsmith on drums, and co-producer Bradley Cook covering bass, synths, and a smattering of other instruments...
Aldous Harding - Fixture Picture from Designer
The New Zealand singer/songwriter's third studio effort, and her second time working with producer and frequent PJ Harvey collaborator John Parish, Designer eschews the post-last call darkness of 2017's Party for something a bit sunnier, though no less peculiar. Aldous Harding remains an enigma; she's an elusive but captivating presence who can invoke both a nervous giggle and a slack-jawed tear via her careful pairing of abstract lyrics and subtle hooks...
Steve Gunn - New Moon from The Unseen In Between
Annabel Mehran's black-and-white cover photo for Steve Gunn's The Unseen In Between is a portrait of the guitarist and songwriter seemingly on the move. It evokes those found on early- to mid-'60s recordings by Bob Dylan, Koerner, Ray & Glover, Jackson C. Frank, Bert Jansch, and others. Gunn has shifted his focus considerably. Rather than simply showcase his dazzling guitar playing, he delivers carefully crafted, uncharacteristically tight and well-written songs with guitars, keyboards, strings, reeds -- and percussion -- translating them without artifice or instrumental disguise.... Opener "New Moon" commences with an acoustic guitar and bassline delivering a syncopated psych-folk vamp before a heavily reverbed electric guitar paints over them both...
Andrew Bird - Sisyphus from My Finest Work Yet
Given that he's as well known for his whistling as for his singing, not everyone picks up an Andrew Bird album expecting a cogent lyrical statement. The impressionistic verse that's dominated his work bears this out, but given the cultural tumult of life in America in 2019, it's not surprising that even Bird has something to say about the world at large. My Finest Work Yet (never let it be said Bird is afraid of making a bold statement) isn't the work of an artist mounting a soapbox, but most of the songs do follow a consistent theme that in a time of chaos and upheaval, apathy and cynicism are our worst enemies, and that when we have enemies rather than adversaries, we've given the opposition power rather than blunted it...
Cate Le Bon - Miami from Reward
Welsh artist Cate Le Bon's fifth album, Reward, was created in a vacuum of solitude. While Le Bon was in an intensive furniture-making course by day, she spent her nights alone at the piano writing the skeletons that would be fleshed out as songs here. Nonstop activity is part of Le Bon's brand, and while her collaborative band Drinks and production duties for Deerhunter's Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? took up space on her resumé not long before Reward, three years passed between its release and her last fully solo album, 2016's Crab Day...
Comet Gain - We're All Fucking Morons from Fireraisers Forever!
When a band has been around as long Comet Gain have -- over 25 years -- and keep making great records, it's easy to take them for granted. They have a foolproof plan for always getting the full attention of their listeners though: make the angry songs feel like the attack of a swarm of insane bees, make the pop songs pop like giant bubblegum bubbles, make the sad songs cry-a-bucket-of-tears sad. While their previous record Paperback Ghosts had an autumnal, almost pastoral, tinge on many of the tracks, the sound of Fireraisers Forever! is almost the opposite...
Altin Gün - Yolcu from Gece
Altin Gün were formed by former members of Jacco Gardner's band to pay tribute to the Turkish psychedelia of the early '70s that they discovered and fell in love with while on tour in Turkey. Bassist Jasper Verhulst fell under the spell of artists like Baris Manço, Selda Bağcan, and Erkin Koray, who blended traditional Turkish folk sounds with the wild sounds of their day, so Verhulst decided he wanted to do something similar in the 2010s, using modern production techniques and synthesizers along with psych guitars and Turkish instruments...
Gary Clark, Jr. - This Land from This Land
"F*ck you, I'm America's son/This is where I come from." Gary Clark, Jr. spits out that line with all the venom he can muster on the opening track of 2019's This Land, and while he's specifically challenging a racist neighbor who doesn't believe he can afford the Texas ranch he calls home, it also sounds like he's shouting down anyone who has dared to question his creative ambitions or tried to pigeonhole him as just another bluesman. Since making his major-label debut with 2012's Blak and Blu, Clark has steadily been widening his boundaries as a musician, and This Land is his toughest and most ambitious work to date, a bold and often ferocious set of songs that serves as a polyglot of African-American musical idioms and sharply articulate thoughts about American life in the midst of the Trump era...
Christone "Kingfish" Ingram - Outside Of This Town from Kingfish
At the ripe old age of 20, Clarksdale, Mississippi guitar slinger Christone "Kingfish" Ingram has been anointed "the next explosion of the blues," by no less than Buddy Guy. The proclamation is accurate. Ingram is young, but he's spent most of life pursuing the blues across the Delta and Chicago traditions, with nods at '70s hard rock and soul along the way...
Jimmy "Duck" Holmes - Cypress Grove from Cypress Grove
Jimmy "Duck" Holmes is one of the last practitioners of old-fashioned Mississippi blues, playing a variation that belongs to the Yazoo county town of Bentonia. Holmes kept that sound alive at his own juke joint and on a series of records in the 2000s, but the 2019 album Cypress Grove is designed as a vehicle to introduce the bluesman to a wider audience. Dan Auerbach, the lead singer of the Black Keys and head of the Easy Eye Sound studio and label, shepherded the project, bringing Holmes up to Nashville to record with a bunch of his cohorts, including guitarist Marcus King...
Kim Lenz - Bogeyman from Slowly Speeding
On her fifth album, Kim Lenz delivers her most stylistically broad production to date with twangy songs dusted with themes of pain, desire, and the supernatural. Lenz, who first emerged in the '90s with her trademark backing group the Jaguars, is largely known as a queen of traditional rockabilly, a torchbearer of the swaggering, wickedly sexy style of '50s female rock icons like Barbara Pittman, Wanda Jackson, and Janis Martin. With Slowly Speeding, she expands upon this approach, exploring ever more nuanced aspects of the Americana tradition...
The Cash Box Kings - Ain't No Fun (When the Rabbit Got the Gun) from Hail to the Kings!
It's hard not to see the title of Hail to the Kings! as the Cash Box Kings celebrating themselves, but this 2019 album -- the group's second for Alligator -- makes it plain that the quintet can occasionally plant their tongues firmly in cheek... It's funny and it's smart, revealing that all of the Cash Box Kings are not only in on the joke, but that their hearts belong to Chicago. Certainly, Hail to the Kings! is an enthusiastic celebration of Chicago blues in all of its electric forms...
Joan Shelley - Coming Down For You from Like the River Loves the Sea
Joan Shelley hails from Kentucky, and her best music reflects the placid, Sunday evening sound of life in the rural American South. So why did she travel to Reykjavik, Iceland to record her fifth solo album, 2019's Like The River Loves The Sea? That's anyone's guess, but the results show it was an experiment that worked, and worked well for her. The sweet, smokey sadness of Shelley's voice has rarely been better served than it is on these sessions, blending a folkie clarity and quaver with a natural soulfulness that gives her performances a strength that betrays the subtlety of the presentation...
Lana Del Rey - Mariners Apartment Complex from Norman Fucking Rockwell!
With the creation of her Lana Del Rey persona, singer/songwriter Lizzy Grant stitched together the iconography of a fading American dream with soaring but melancholic pop songwriting, becoming an icon unto herself in the process. Her distinctive approach blurred sadness and longing just as it did past and present, drawing on the influence of classic American pop while integrating modernized touches like trap beats and millennial cultural references. With sixth album Norman Fucking Rockwell!, Lana Del Rey expands her vision with the most daring and vulnerable work of her catalog...
Sharon Van Etten - No One's Easy to Love from Remind Me Tomorrow
...Van Etten maintains that sense of drama on Remind Me Tomorrow, her fifth full-length album, but she's radically shifted her presentation. Working with producer John Congleton, she's expanded her sonic palette, incorporating vintage synthesizers and drum loops while occasionally cranking up her amplifiers. Some of the sounds are conscious throwbacks, but they don't play like retro nostalgia, not in the context of Remind Me Tomorrow, which juxtaposes fearless aural adventure with keenly observed observations of easing into a satisfied life...
Ex Hex - Tough Enough from It's Real
On Rips, Ex Hex reimagined the instant gratification of rock & roll with thrilling results. On their second album, Mary Timony, Betsy Wright, and Laura Harris take a deeper dive into rock's transporting powers. At once tighter and more complex than Rips, It's Real reflects the two years Ex Hex spent touring in support of their debut, as well as the year it took to craft the album in the studio (one key piece of gear was the Rockman, an amp that Boston's Tom Scholz developed in 1982). In much the same way that some power pop and new wave bands expanded their music to arena-sized proportions as the '80s unfolded, It's Real is bigger and more deliberate than its predecessor...
Big Thief - Contact from U.F.O.F.
By the arrival of Big Thief's third album, U.F.O.F. ("UFO friend" per lyrics in the title track), songwriter Adrianne Lenker had established herself as a singular force in indie music, both through two acclaimed albums with her band and with more delicate solo material including 2018's Abysskiss. In the meantime, Big Thief had toured almost constantly between preparing their 2016 debut, Masterpiece, and recording U.F.O.F., all the while becoming more and more tight-knit as a group...
that dog. - Just The Way from Old LP
"I haven't felt like this since 1995," Anna Waronker snarls at one point on Old LP, the first album from that dog. in 22 years. During that time -- nearly half of Waronker, Rachel Haden, and Tony Maxwell's lives -- the band's spiky yet vulnerable mix of punk, chamber pop, and singer/songwriter confessions shaped later generations of indie rock and pop artists. It's all the sweeter, then, that Old LP is a near-flawless blend of experience and exuberance... The band's fiery side also sounds better than ever on "Just the Way You Like It" and "Down Without a Fight," both of which hone their deadpan punk-pop to an even sharper point...
Rocketship - Under Streetlights Shadows from Thanks to You
Cue the record scratch sound effect because 2019's Thanks to You is exactly that. Working mainly with vocalist Ellen Osborn, Reske concocted a record that nearly measures up to their debut in every way, and it's clear that while time has passed and there are new elements added to Rocketship's sound, Reske's gifts as a writer and producer haven't faded at all. Whether dipping back into the space-age shoegaze sound (complete with vintage organ chords) on the opening "Under Streetlights Shadows"...
Sacred Paws - The Conversation from Run Around the Sun
Sacred Paws' second album doesn't deviate from the winning formula the duo perfected on 2017's Strike a Match: twanging Afro-pop guitars, pulsing drums, giddy vocal interplay, and songs catchy enough to latch on like a deer tick and never let go. Rachel Aggs (vocals, guitar, bass) and Eilidh Rodgers (vocals, drums) apply the same high standards to Run Around the Sun, working with much the same team to create a joyous indie pop listening experience...
Billie Eilish - bad guy from WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?
On her big-league debut, Billie Eilish makes a bold entrance into the mainstream, leaving the fringes behind to embrace her role as an anti-pop star for the disaffected Gen Z masses. With a youthful, hybrid blend that incorporates elements of indie electronic, pop, and hip-hop (assisted by brother Finneas O'Connell), When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? captures the late-2010s zeitgeist by throwing conventional boundaries to the wind and fully committing to its genre-blurring self...
Little Simz - Offence from Grey Area
...On her third full-length album, Grey Area, Simz has reached a new peak, with an honest record that isn't afraid to take shots at the world at large. It's also incredibly concise -- an aspect that many of her peers often miss the mark on -- with no filler despite the broad variation the record boasts.
Simz comes out swinging on opening track "Offence," which acts as a declaration of intent for everything that follows, as she bellows "I said it with my chest and I don't care who I offend." It acts in part as a battle cry but also as a primer for truths, both personal and social, that she is capable of exploring...
Julia Jacklin - Body from Crushing
... Jacklin's lyrics and vulnerable yet jaded vocal delivery are the primary focus, however, on a set of breakup songs that is, importantly, as much about reclaiming one's sense of self as it is about loss.
Crushing is riveting right from the spare, noir-tinged opening track, "Body," which remembers the moment Jacklin decided to leave the relationship after her partner got them thrown off a flight. The humiliating scene is punctuated by her wondering if he might use a nude photograph he once took of her against her; she describes the aftermath as "heading to the city to get my body back."...
FKA twigs - thousand eyes from Magdalene
On her early EPs and LP1, FKA twigs' Tahliah Barnett expressed the intersections of love, pain, fragility and strength with remarkable eloquence. While making Magdalene, she embodied them. Not only did she endure the end of a long-term relationship, she had surgery to remove six large uterine fibroids (colorfully described by her as a "fruit bowl of pain"). These events became the heart of her second album, which uses the duality of Mary Magdalene as a lens for its wounded yet resilient feminine energy...
Solange - Down With the Clique from When I Get Home
Unfazed by having to follow a landmark album that crowned the Billboard 200, went gold, and yielded a hit that took a Grammy, Solange leisurely detours with When I Get Home. Made in spots as remote as Los Angeles and Jamaica, the follow-up to A Seat at the Table was also recorded in New Orleans and Solange's native Houston. Most pertinent is the last location, referenced repeatedly in expressions of nostalgia, pride, and tranquility, as well as in titular geographic markers..
Lizzo - Cuz I Love You from Cuz I Love You
Since her indie days, Lizzo has been a distinctive and multi-talented artist capable of blending rap, soul, pop, and her classical training with positive messages and a sharp sense of humor. On her major-label debut Cuz I Love You, she takes all of these strengths to the next level, and the results are her most consistent, and consistently joyous, set of songs yet. Working with a creative team that includes producer Ricky Reed -- with whom Lizzo connected shortly after releasing her second album, Big Grrrl Small World -- she continues to embrace her gospel roots and the full power of her voice...
Jamila Woods - ZORA from LEGACY! LEGACY!
Jamila Woods conceptualized her second solo album after an exercise she presented to her poetry class at Young Chicago Authors. The students were assigned to choose a poem and "cover" it, as Woods terms it, by putting their individual spin on it...
Rapsody - Nina from Eve
When L. Lamar Wilson interviewed Rapsody for Oxford American in 2018, the writer and filmmaker asked the rapper -- coming off two Grammy nominations, her profile still on the rise -- if she felt part of the same cultural lineage as Nina Simone and Roberta Flack. The exchange fired Rap's imagination to conceptualize the follow-up to the celebrated Laila's Wisdom.. For the album's title, Rapsody refers to the Book of Genesis, thereby uniting and honoring black womanhood, herself included...
Loraine James - Glitch Bitch from For You and I
Loraine James' first Hyperdub release is an homage to her London upbringing, as well as an exploration of her own identity, specifically as a queer black woman residing in the city. The cover art shows her standing in front of her childhood flat while holding up an old Polaroid photo of the same building. Reflecting the multiculturalism of the city, her music is influenced by numerous genres and styles, but it rarely feels like she's dipping into any of them for train spotters' sake. Her music is the sound of spontaneous expression beyond any perceived limitations. Opener "Glitch Bitch" is a motivational club track frayed with skips and stutters, nearly crashing into itself by the end...
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Spinning Song from Ghosteen
Plenty of artists have built careers out of writing about death, but only a tiny handful have shown the capacity to honestly and eloquently write about grief. Nick Cave knows more than a bit about grief, and he's been willing to stare into that particular abyss, doing so with a particularly keen focus on 2013's Push the Sky Away and 2016's Skeleton Tree, the latter partially informed by the death of his teenage son in 2015. Grief is hardly the only emotion that Cave and his ensemble the Bad Seeds explores on 2019's Ghosteen, but a sense of loss and a heavy heart permeates these songs like a thick fog, as well as the bonds of family and how they can bring us together and keep us apart...
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