As I’ve written here before, I love Bandcamp. Artists keep 80-85% of their sales on the platform, making Bandcamp the only digital music store that I feel as good about patronizing as I do about buying a band’s CD at their show.

And today, Friday, March 20, as the world is grinding to a pandemic halt and all concerts are off, they’re helping out those artists by letting them keep 100% of their sales today. I personally will be stocking the hell up.

Now, a lot of of the biggest names in music are on major label deals that aren’t sold by Bandcamp. But there are also a lot of really excellent bands, some of my favorites of all time. A non-comprehensive selection, in no particular order:

• Sleigh Bells
• Wussy
• Moving Panoramas
• Flock of Dimes
• The Decemberists
• boygenius
• She Keeps Bees
• Los Campesinos
• Hop Along
• Courtney Barnett
• Heartless Bastards
• The Besnard Lakes
• Juana Molina
• S / Jenn Champion (new old release!)
• Summer Cannibals
• Diet Cig (preorder!)
• Gina Chavez
• Automatic
• Screaming Females
• Chumped
• EMA
• Bleached
• Torres
• Waxahatchee (preorder!)
• case/lang/veirs
• Nervous Dater
• Speedy Ortiz
• Amanda Palmer
• Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings
• Charly Bliss
• Lucy Dacus

Now get over there and start shopping!

Some years ago I thought I’d start posting links to some favorite music in my music library. I called this #musicMonday, and some of it was on this site, some on Twitter, it went back and forth. I had fun doing it, but rarely got much “engagement” (pardon my language) on Twitter, and so felt like it was a failure or waste of time.

In my ongoing social network rehabilitation, I’m thinking just the first part of that previous sentence (“I had fun doing it”) is justification enough. And so I think I’ll try it again, see how it goes. In honor of the weekly unveiling of newly released music on WOXY (RIP), the coolest radio station in Cincinnati back when we lived there, I thought I’d rename it and shift it a day.

Despite the “new” in New Tunes Tuesday 🎵, my criteria is the same as before:

Not “new” as in recently released, necessarily, but more like “new to you”. Or possibly not either of those, maybe just a pointer to some good music that you’d forgotten about.

Time once again for my annual best-of music review! Each year, I pick my ten favorite new albums of the year, where “new” means new to me, not necessarily released this year. Any albums I bought in the calendar year are eligible for the list, regardless of when they were released.

Here are my 2018 selections, in alphabetical order by artist (I pick the top ten, but I don’t order them further than that). A playlist of all these albums is on Spotify.

Tell Me How You Really Feel, Courtney Barnett - An oddly weak opening track is followed by another solid album from this amazing singer-songwriter. Her collaboration with Kurt Vile wasn't my bag, so I was glad her solo material returned to the clever lyrics, rocking songs, and Australian accent that made her debut one of the best of 2015. And no surprise that she sounds as good live as she does on her records. (concert pic)

Hell-On, Neko Case - Another repeat artist on the list, Ms. Case gets the hat trick following her last two albums' appearances (Middle Cyclone in 2009 and The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You in 2013). I've only seen her live at ACL Fest, but will rectify that in February at Bass Concert Hall.

Historian, Lucy Dacus - The repeats continue with Lucy Dacus' second full-length album. More down-tempo than the one that was a best-of just last year, this one took a little while to grow on me. But the lyrics and her voice are as good as ever. I already have tickets to see her again (the day after Neko Case, as it happens).

Bark Your Head Off, Dog, Hop Along - Their sound and lyrics as distinctive as ever, this band is becoming a real favorite. They put on a great show, and this is every bit as good as their previous album (a 2017 best-of). I also picked up their 2012 release, Get Disowned, which I found to be more of a mixed bag (see "Best of the Rest", below). (concert pic)

Dirty Computer, Janelle Monáe - Finally, a debut artist on this year's list. I've liked her music since 2007's Metropolis, and really appreciated the concept albums she's put together. But they also all have some low spots, and I rarely find myself listening to them in their entirety. Her latest is less concept, and more consistent throughout, in my book. We saw her at ACL Fest, and her show was fantastic. (concert pic)

Art of Doubt, Metric - Following 2012's Synthetica (a best-of that year), 2015's Pagans in Vegas was good, but didn't crack the top ten. Despite a late-in-the-year release, I've really enjoyed this latest from the Canadian indie-rockers. Here's hoping they headline their own darn tour and stop opening for other, lesser bands (Smashing Pumpkins, pshaw).

One, Moving Panoramas - And here, at last, is a brand new (to me) band making it's top-ten debut. This is an Austin-area group that opened at a Wye Oak concert I saw late last year. The dreamy, chill synth-pop makes this album the kind where particular tracks don't really stand out, which in their case is not a criticism. They have new music coming out early in 2019 (One was released three years ago), and I can't wait to hear it. (concert pic)

Don't Be a Stranger, Nervous Dater - Another debut artist, this is just a fun, rollicking indie band. Perhaps their Bandcamp bio puts it best: "A Brooklyn band that is the music equivalent of finding out aliens are real but the documents are covered in T Bell fire sauce." Or perhaps not.

Maps, Soft Science - The last brand-new artist in this year's best ten, with a really lovely sound. Somewhat shoe-gazey, but with propulsive rhythms that keep you nodding along, rather than nodding off. I'm looking forward to what else this band gives us, and I'll be digging in to their back catalog while I wait.

Twerp Verse, Speedy Ortiz - Last, but hell no not least, here's another band making their third appearance in my annual best-ofs. First was Major Arcana on my 2014 list, then Foil Deer in 2017, and they just keep getting better. I also got to see their consistently great live show again this year. (concert pic)

That’s it for my ten favorite “new” albums of 2018.

And then there are all the rest of the albums. To complete my annual time capsule, I also make a playlist of favorite single tracks from all of the year’s albums that didn’t make the best-album cut, ordered not alphabetically, but in the best mixtape order I can manage. This “Best of the Rest” (minus the song from the 1992 Curve album) is also a playlist on Spotify.

1. A Beginning Song - The Decemberists, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World ^{† ‡}
2. Act My Age - Dream Wife, Dream Wife
3. Wish You Dead - Curve, Doppelgänger
4. Go Loving - The Joy Formidable, AAARTH
5. Never Giving In - Jenn Champion, Single Rider
6. Become the One - Goldfrapp, Silver Eye
7. Little Girl Blue and The Battle Envy - Skating Polly, The Make It All Show
8. It Probably Matters - Interpol, Marauder ^{† ‡}
9. Fire Drills - Dessa, Chime
10. Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino - Arctic Monkeys, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino ^†
11. Singer’s No Star - Waxahatchee, Great Thunder ^†
12. Cake - Wussy, What Heaven Is Like
13. You of All People - Wye Oak, The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs ^{† ‡}
14. Buenas Noches, Desolación - Julieta Venegas, Algo Sucede
15. Ben Franklin's Song - The Decemberists, Ben Franklin's Song ^†
16. Bummertown - Lola Tried, Lola Tried ^{† ‡}
17. Jeannie Becomes A Mom - Caroline Rose, LONER ^{† ‡}
18. Rusalka, Rusalka / Wild Rushes - The Decemberists, I'll Be Your Girl ^†
19. Patricia - Florence + The Machine, High As Hope
20. Night - Zola Jesus, Stridulum
21. Let It Go - The Black Ryder, Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride
22. Vulture - She Keeps Bees, Dig On
23. Kids On the Boardwalk - Hop Along, Get Disowned ^†
24. Tea-Soaked Letter - Anna Burch, Quit the Curse ^{† ‡}
25. Miracle - CHVRCHES, Love Is Dead
26. Medley (The Hermit/The Flame Still Burns/Gold and Green/Living in the Country) - Ace of Cups, Ace of Cups

^† - saw band live this year ^‡ - link to concert pic

Enjoy!

Past years' bests: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017

Time again for my annual best-of music review! Each year, I pick my ten favorite new albums of the year, where “new” means new to me, not necessarily released in 2017. Any albums I bought in the calendar year are eligible for the list, regardless of when they were released.

Here are my 2017 selections, in alphabetical order by artist (I pick the top 10, but I don’t order them further than that). A playlist of all these albums is on Spotify.

Guppy, Charly Bliss - I don't recall where I first heard of this fun, energetic little pop-punk band. The vocals and the songs themselves remind me a little of early Cardigans, which is a good thing. The AV Club agrees, calling this album "ebullient, addictive, and an instant classic".

No Burden, Lucy Dacus - What a voice, and a set of just excellent songs to showcase it. Troublemaker Doppelgänger is one of my favorites of the year, right up there with the very best songs in my library. I saw her and her band indoors at Stubb's, it was a great show. (concert pic)

Swear I'm Good at This, Diet Cig - I've been waiting for the first full-length from this dynamic duo since I put their EP and single on last year's list, and it didn't disappoint. Neither did their opening set in Nov. '16 or their SXSW show at Waterloo. Don't miss a chance to see Diet Cig live. (concert pic)

Exile in the Outer Ring, EMA - Another brand-new artist for me, and a powerful one. A look over the song titles will tell you this isn't light party music: "I Wanna Destroy", "Blood and Chalk", "Aryan Nation", the list goes on. It's good, hard, somewhat genre-defying music.

Painted Shut, Hop Along - Another new band, with a solid album of clever, well-crafted indie songs. It took a listen or two for the singer's voice to grow on me; now it's my favorite part of their sound.

Halo, Juana Molina - I've been a fan of hers for years (her last album was a best-of in 2013), and this is another good addition to her catalog. Experimental, melodic, and lighthearted, it's also good music to have on in the background while reading or coding.

Run the Jewels 3, Run the Jewels - The first RTJ album I've really gotten into (thanks to Sound Opinions, I think), and it's just fantastic. Their set at the ACL Music Festival was good, even though we didn't know all the songs from numbers 1 and 2.

Cool Choices, S - I discovered this year that a singer from the now-defunct Carissa's Wierd has been making solo music under the short (and difficult to search for) name "S". Quiet, poignant, lovely songs. She performed the entirety of this album live in her hometown of Seattle as a farewell to this project, but unfortunately our trip there missed it by like two weeks.

Foil Deer, Speedy Ortiz - Speedy Ortiz's clever, literate lyrics and inventive noise pop have been a favorite for a while (their last album was a best-of in 2014). I'd seen them on Waterloo's SXSW stage then, but was glad to have the chance to see a full show this year. (concert pic)

Out in the Storm, Waxahatchee - Their previous album, Ivy Tripp (see the track from that one below), was good, but their latest is a big step forward. A little uneven, but with a standout like "Silver", and a memorably great show at Mohawk, this was an easy choice for this year's best-of. (concert pic)

That’s it for my ten favorite “new” albums of 2017.

And then there are all the rest of the albums. To complete my annual time capsule, I also make a playlist of favorite single tracks from all of the year’s albums that didn’t make the best-album cut, ordered not alphabetically, but in the best mixtape order I can manage. This “Best of the Rest”, minus the Lola Tried song and the Grateful Dead live tracks (from bootlegs I dug up for shows that we saw live), is also a playlist on Spotify.

1. Wiseblood – Zola Jesus, Okovi
2. Not A Problem – S, im not as good at it as you
3. Never Start – Middle Kids, Middle Kids ^†
4. In My Feelings – Lana Del Rey, Lust for Life
5. Favorite Transgressions – Sleigh Bells, Kid Kruschev
6. The Space Program – A Tribe Called Quest, We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your service
7. Let Me Out – Gorillaz, Humanz ^†
8. Should I Stay Or Should I Go – The Clash, Combat Rock
9. Wide Awake – Deep Sea Diver, SECRETS
10. Dangerous Days – Zola Jesus, Taiga
11. Hello Sadness – Los Campesinos!, Hello Sadness
12. Stranger To My Happiness – Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, Give The People What They Want
13. Simulation – Tkay Maidza, Tkay ^†
14. San Marcos – Lola Tried, Popsicle Queen ^{† ‡}
15. Summer of Love – Waxahatchee, Ivy Tripp ^†
16. Rubin & Cherise – Grateful Dead, 1991-06-09 - Buckeye Lake Music Center ^‡
17. New Speedway Boogie – Grateful Dead, 1992-06-28 - Deer Creek Music Center
18. Althea – Grateful Dead, 1994-07-29 - Buckeye Lake Music Center

^† - saw band live this year ^‡ - link to concert pic

Enjoy!

Past years' bests: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

I happened to tweet (err, microblog!) about Bandcamp just the other night. Thanks to their giving ~80-85% of the revenue to their artists, Bandcamp is the only digital music store that I feel as good about patronizing as I do about buying a band’s CD at their show.

And this Friday (Feb. 3), it gets even better: they’re donating 100% of their share of your purchase to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in opposition to last week’s Executive Order barring immigrants and refugees from seven Middle Eastern countries from entering the United States:

Contrary to the assertions of the current administration, the order will not make us safer (an opinion shared by the State Department and many members of Congress including prominent Republicans). Christian religious leaders have denounced both the ban, as well as the exception prioritizing Christian immigrants, as inhumane. It is an unequivocal moral wrong, a cynical attempt to sow division among the American people, and is in direct opposition to the principles of a country where the tenet of religious freedom is written directly into the Constitution. This is not who we are, and it is not what we believe in. We at Bandcamp oppose the ban wholeheartedly, and extend our support to those whose lives have been upended.

So that’s great: digital music sales and they support the ACLU for a day. But: what to buy?! I love both of these ideas so much, I’ve taken a few minutes to compile a list of some suggestions to show the breadth of the Bandcamp catalog. All of these have either been #musicMonday recommendations in the past year, or were on my Best of 2016 lists (or both). Bandcamp has also had a whole bunch of artists and labels add some or all of their cut from Friday’s sales to the donation; some of these are from that list. In no particular order:

• Jessica Rabbit, by Sleigh Bells
• all the albums by Wussy, ever
• If You See Me Say Yes, by Flock of Dimes
• a whole bunch of (older) albums by The Decemberists
• Eight Houses, by She Keeps Bees
• the entire catalog of Los Campesinos
• Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, by Courtney Barnett
• Arrow, by Heartless Bastards
• The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night, by The Besnard Lakes
• Full of It, by Summer Cannibals
• Over Easy and Swear I'm Good at This (preorder), by Diet Cig
• Up.Rooted, by Gina Chavez
• the entire Kill Rock Stars catalog (Summer Cannibals, Corin Tucker Band, Gossip, Decemberists, even comedians Rhea Butcher and Cameron Esposito, to name a few)
• Rose Mountain and Ugly, by Screaming Females
• Teenage Retirement, by Chumped
• Welcome the Worms, by Bleached
• Torres, by Torres
• case/lang/veirs, by case/lang/veirs
• all the albums by Speedy Ortiz
• Who Killed Amanda Palmer and Theatre Is Evil, by Amanda Palmer
• all the albums by Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings

As you can see, there’s a lot of good stuff there. Check it out, treat yourself and put a little $$ in to #resist at the same time. Win-win, rock on.

Time again for my annual best-of music review! Each year, I pick my ten favorite "new" albums of the year, where "new" means new to me, but not necessarily released in 2016. Any albums I bought in the calendar year are eligible for the list, regardless of when they were released.

Here are my 2016 selections, in alphabetical order by artist (I pick the top 10, but I don't order them further than that). A playlist of all these albums (minus Beyoncé) is on Spotify.

Lemonade, Beyoncé - I've never been a big Beyoncé fan (don't tell The Beygency), but there was so much acclaim for this album that I had to check it out. If nothing else, I wanted to know what a "visual album" was. As you see from its inclusion here, I wasn't disappointed. The songs are really good, but mainly I'm a sucker for prog-rock type thematic story arc albums, so the powerful hour-long video that ties them together is what really made this for me.

Imani Vol. 1, Blackalicious – Blackalicious is another act that I haven't listened to much before. I think it was the Fantastic Mr. Fox video for the great song The Blowup that first turned me on to this album, but there aren't many low points to be found here. Good, driving beats add a welcome dose of hip-hop variation to my library.

Over Easy (plus), Diet Cig – For the second year in a row, an opening band at a Front Bottoms lands on my top ten. These two, the singer/guitar player especially, gave such an amazingly energetic performance that I went to another concert later in the year that they were opening for, just to see them. Their quirky, offbeat lyrics, which remind me of Los Campesinos and the Front Bottoms, are a big part of their appeal. A new album is coming soon, but they only have an EP and a couple of singles out now, so I include all of those here. If you ever have a chance to see Diet Cig live, take it. (concert pic)

If You See Me, Say Yes, Flock of Dimes – this is the solo project of Jenn Wasner, who is half of longtime favorite Wye Oak (tracks from their most recent two albums are on the Best of the Rest mix, below). This is a more electronic sound, which has grown on me. Her lyrics and voice are both among my favorites. (concert pic)

Up.Rooted, Gina Chavez – A popular, local, bilingual (English & Spanish) performer that had somehow escaped my notice until this year, Gina Chavez was one of the few (of the continually diminishing number of) bands I was looking forward to seeing at ACL Fest this year. She gave a great show, accompanied by a big party ensemble that included horns, bongos, keyboards, stringed instruments, you name it.

Ash & Ice, The Kills – This isn't the best Kills album ever, but it's a solid addition to their catalog. I finally saw them in a standalone concert in a dark concert hall late at night, where they belong (the previous time I'd seen them was on a very hot, very sunny mid-afternoon ACL Fest stage some years ago; both of them seemed about to melt the whole time). (concert pic)

In Loving Memory of When I Gave a Shit, LOLO – I'll admit it: I would never have listened to this if I hadn't noticed the funny and provocative title in Spotify one day. Even then, I didn't have much hope for it, but I figured, why not? What luck, because even though the music style isn't what I usually listen to, she has a real ability to turn a clever, evocative phrase in her lyrics, and her smoky voice is fantastic.

Adore Life, Savages – This is the second album by this powerful post-punk revivalist group, and their tour in support of it was my first chance to see them live; both great. They're as intense as ever, in all the best ways. (concert pic)

Rose Mountain, Screaming Females – I guess this band is an acquired taste – I'd given them a listen once or twice before, but hadn't gotten into them much until this year. This is their newest, released last year; a track from their previous album, Ugly, is on the Best of the Rest list, below. I didn't really appreciate what heavy-metal guitar virtuosos they are until I saw their amazing live show. (concert pic)

Full of It, Summer Cannibals – This band debuted on the top ten album list last year with Show Us Your Mind, and their new release holds up every bit as well. (Their debut album is good, too; there's a track from that in the Best of the Rest, below). They're not super well-known, if the tiny concert I saw is any indication, and that's a shame. They play great rock & roll; if you have a chance to see them, do yourself a favor. (concert pic)

That's it for my ten favorite "new" albums of 2016.

And then there are all the rest of the albums. To complete my annual time capsule, I also make a playlist of favorite single tracks from all of the year's albums that didn't make the best-album cut, ordered not alphabetically, but in the best mixtape order I can manage. This "Best of the Rest" is also a playlist on Spotify.

1. It's Started – The Joy Formidable, Hitch^{† ‡}
2. Call It Off – Shamir, Ratchet
3. New Song – Warpaint, Heads Up^{† ‡}
4. Logic of Color – Wye Oak, Shriek^{† ‡}
5. Astronaut – Amanda Palmer, Who Killed Amanda Palmer?
6. Undertow – Warpaint, The Fool^†
7. Dropping Houses – Wussy, Forever Sounds^{† ‡}
8. Long Division – Chumped, Teenage Retirement
9. Wear Me Out – Summer Cannibals, No Makeup^†
10. It All Means Nothing – Screaming Females, Ugly^†
11. Trying to Lose Myself Again – Bleached, Welcome the Worms
12. Crucible – Sleigh Bells, Jessica Rabbit
13. Welcome to the Renaissance – Michael James Scott & Rotten Ensemble, Something Rotten! Original Cast Recording^†
14. Rebirth – Nina Diaz, The Beat Is Dead^†
15. My Mama Said It – Anya Marina, Paper Plane
16. Truth Hits Everybody – The Police, Outlandos d'Amour
17. Radio of Lips (acoustic) – The Joy Formidable, Sleep Is Day^†
18. New Skin – TORRES, Sprinter^†
19. I'm So Confused – Goldensuns, Give It Up^†
20. Watching the Waiting – Wye Oak, Tween^†
21. Supermoon – case/lang/veirs, case/lang/veirs
22. The Black Death – Rotten Ensemble, Something Rotten! Original Cast Recording^†

^† - saw band live this year ^‡ - link to concert pic

Enjoy!

Past years' bests: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015

An article on The A.V. Club reports that for the first time ever, older albums outsold new ones last year. What’s interesting to me is the assumption that this is somehow a bad thing:

Just a decade ago, new releases were outselling old ones by 150 million albums a year. So what happened? Who or what is to blame for new music becoming an undesirable commodity? One culprit could be the so-called vinyl revival, which has heavily favored catalog titles like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon, a 43-year-old album that nevertheless sold 50,000 copies in 2015. According to the article, younger music listeners who get into collecting vinyl are opting for older albums. And then there’s the possibility that people are more likely to stream new albums than purchase them. Regardless of the cause, it looks like nostalgia has a stranglehold on the music industry.

Who is to blame? New music is an undesirable commodity? Nostalgia has a stranglehold on the music industry??

Maybe this is trouble for the music industry, or new artists, or something we should wring our hands over, but as a music lover I just can’t see it that way. How I see it is that the more time passes, the more great music exists in the world, and that’s nothing but good news. This is why my annual best-of lists include anything new to me, and why my #musicMonday tweets are everything from new releases to oldie throwbacks.

Don’t get me wrong; I like new music, too. I’m not only a person who looks forward to Friday because it’s the day that new albums come out now, I still feel a little sad every Tuesday – the day new albums used to come out – that they changed it. I’ve pre-ordered three albums so far this year; new music is not an “undesirable commodity” to me.

But some old music is great, too. Not all of it, of course. Some of it was never good, and some is silly or kitschy or embarrassing or just doesn’t stand the test of time. But there’s a lot of music from a lot of years that’s really, really good. And thanks to the magic of continually-advancing time, there’s more and more every day! (Give or take.)

My advice: be on the lookout for “new” music that you like from any time: whether it’s oldies, classics, last year’s, or new releases. Getting into Pink Floyd, or Bowie, or The Eagles, doesn’t keep you from getting into Adele, or Shamir, or Savages.

Time again for my annual best-of music review! Each year, I pick my ten favorite "new" albums of the year, where "new" means new to me, but not necessarily released in 2015. Any albums I bought in the calendar year are eligible for the list, regardless of when they were released.

One interesting development this year is that music that I'm getting via my kids (now 20 and 17) continues to get better. Most notably, two of the albums in my top ten would have never been there if it weren't for my daughter's influence: Twenty One Pilots and The Front Bottoms. Arguably that number should be three, as I wouldn't have bought Elvis Depressedly's CD if I hadn't gone to the Front Bottoms show where they were the opening band. That said, I've become more willing to delete albums from the kids that only have one or two decent songs on them (cough One Direction cough); those don't appear here at all.

Here are my 2015 selections, in alphabetical order by artist (I pick the top 10, but I don't order them further than that). The links are to Wikipedia, and a playlist of all these albums is on Spotify.

Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit, Courtney Bartnett - This rollicking debut album is one you'll also see on a good many critics' best-of lists for 2015, and deservedly so. She has a lot of clever, poignant songwriting, and the songs have a nice variation across the course of the album. Lastly, I won't deny it: that she sings with a pronounced Australian accent is an automatic plus-one, at least.

Dodge and Burn, The Dead Weather – Since 2007, when I started choosing top-ten albums, Jack White and Allison Mossheart's various bands (White Stripes, The Kills, Dead Weather, and solo Jack White) have landed on the list with nearly every album they put out. The trend continues this year with another solid entry as the Dead Weather super-group/side-project. The bad news is that they won't be touring behind this album; the good news is that it's because they're each working on new (separate) projects. Look for one or both them here again next year.

New Alhambra, Elvis Depressedly – As noted above, I only heard of Elvis Depressedly because they were one of the openers at the Front Bottoms show I went to with my daughter. They sounded great, and in true indie fashion they were selling their CD at a table in the back. At only $5, I was willing to take a shot, and I'm glad I did. It's short – just 21 minutes – and not something I want to listen to all day, every day. But it's good stuff, inventive and interesting (you can get it from their Bandcamp page for just $5, too).

How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, Florence + the Machine – A new Florence album is an automatic buy, and a good bet for automatic inclusion in this list. That she was one of the few Austin City Limits Festival acts I was excited for this year only boosted her stock. There are more 3-star tracks on this album (six) than any other on this list, but that still leaves ten great Florence songs. Also, what a video for the single What Kind of Man.

Back on Top, The Front Bottoms – This is a band that I'd heard before, but it was my daughter's intense love for them that made me really listen. That, and buying scalped tickets for her via Craigslist for their instantly-sold-out show at The Parish, and going to it with her. What started out as doing a favor for her turned out to be one of the best concerts I've been to in a while. This CD is their newest, and it edged out the others to land on the top ten; see tracks from their earlier work in the Best of the Rest mix, below. (Instagram.)

No Cities to Love, Sleater-Kinney – I could hardly have been more excited when Sleater-Kinney, one of my favorite bands of all time, announced that they'd reunited and had a new album already done. I bought it, and a ticket to see them at Stubb's, as soon as I possibly could, and was rewarded with all the great music I expected. I won't say it's my favorite S-K album – reaching that status would well-nigh miraculous – but it's a fantastic return to form and everything I could have asked for. (Instagram.)

Show Us Your Mind, Summer Cannibals – This is a band I heard of via the Sound Opinions podcast, and they're absolutely great. When it came time to start picking albums for this list, this was one of the first no-brainer choices I made. There isn't a ton of variation in song style: lots of defiant lyrics, sneering vocals, and solid rock backing it all. But since I love the one style they play, that's no problem at all.

Blurryface, Twenty One Pilots – The second entrant to this year's top ten that came via my daughter, with a big boost from their very solid ACL Fest sets (we watched the first weekend's webcast, the second weekend in person); their intensity and authenticity are hard to resist. Their genre is hard to classify, though I guess hip-hop would be the closest fit. As with The Front Bottoms, this is their newest; tracks from their older efforts can be found in the Best of the Rest mix, below.

Ghost Notes, Veruca Salt – The reunion of 90s alt-rockers Veruca Salt wasn't as widely anticipated as Sleater-Kinney's, but it was similarly unexpected, and another big one for me personally. When I heard that Nina Gordon and Louise Post had stopped hating each other and started working together with their former Veruca bandmates on a new album, it was about two milliseconds before I backed their PledgeMusic campaign. The result was a solid album that I like a lot. Still waiting to see some U.S. tour dates, though.

My Love Is Cool, Wolf Alice – As they say: last but certainly not least, is Wolf Alice. Another of the (alarmingly small number of) bands I looked forward to at ACL Fest this year, they had the decency to not disappoint. Good, driving, and dark-ish hard rock; I look forward to hearing where this young band goes. (Instagram.)

That's it for my ten favorite "new" albums of 2015.

And then there are all the rest of the albums. To complete my annual time capsule, I also make a playlist of favorite single tracks from all of the year's albums that didn't make the best-album cut, ordered not alphabetically, but in the best mixtape order I can manage with such a wide assortment. This "Best of the Rest" is also a playlist on Spotify, though this year I had more than the usual number of tracks not available there (four - I've linked up all but Taylor Swift's in the list below).

1. Flashlight – The Front Bottoms, The Front Bottoms^†
2. Car Radio – Twenty One Pilots, Vessel^†
3. Caja De Madera – Mala Rodríguez, Bruja^†
4. Win Again – Nicki Minaj, The Pinkprint
5. Keep You On My Side – CHVRCHES, Every Open Eye
6. Style – Taylor Swift, 1989
7. En El Dancefloor – María Del Pilar, Songs + Canciones I^†
8. Shadows – Au Revoir Simone, Still Night, Still Light
9. The Next Messiah – Jenny Lewis, Acid Tongue
10. Slow Ride – Foghat, Dazed and Confused
11. Instigators – Grace Potter, Midnight
12. Free Ride – The Edgar Winter Group, Even More Dazed and Confused
13. Psychedelic Quinceñera – Tacocat, NVM
14. Lone Star – The Front Bottoms, Talon of the Hawk^†
15. Poor Ellen Smith – Wussy, Public Domain, Volume I
16. Ven (Beautiful) [feat. Juieta Venegas] – Ceci Bastida, La Edad de la Violencia^†
17. Breakfast in Bed – Wussy, Live at Cake Shop
18. Ode to Sleep – Twenty One Pilots, Regional At Best^†
19. Wrong Club – The Ting Tings, Super Critical
20. KAGOME – Babbe feat. Sasi, Radiant Dancefloor
21. Celebrate – Metric, Pagans in Vegas
22. Au Revoir (Adios) – The Front Bottoms, Talon of the Hawk^†

^† - saw band live this year

Enjoy!

Past years' bests: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

We’re done with Apple Music. The whole experience has been a frustrating, bewildering fight against our own devices and music, for virtually no added benefit.

I’ve wasted hours wrestling with weird problems and various amounts of data loss. As I write this, I’m in the middle of another full phone restore, trying to get things back to square one, back to how they were before Apple Music gleefully stomped through and wrecked everything.

Here’s a summary of the most frustrating problems we ran into.

On vacation I spent more than a day trying to get newly bought MP3s to sync from my computer to my phone (you know: the absolutely most basic and simple task of any music player ever made). In this case, it was a prerelease copy that I bought directly from the artist, but it was also listed in Apple Music as a coming-soon release, and maybe that was part of the problem, but I was never quite sure. I’d say “make available offline”, the app would say, “sure thing boss!”, then I’d hop in the car to rock down the road and find: nope. Not there.

Trying to help my wife keep her Jazzercise-instructor playlists in sync with her computer was a constant uphill struggle. And if hers are screwed up, it’s a bigger deal than me being disappointed that I can’t listen to my new music. For her, it means her carefully planned and choreographed class is ruined. Sometimes playlists stayed in sync, sometimes they didn’t. Less than 100% confidence is a deal-breaker, so although I’m just now rage-quitting this aggravating debacle, she’s been off it for a while already.

Having lots of my carefully-tended album art get totally trashed during the Great Upload to the Cloud was really annoying. (This has been complained about by others, as have other iCloud/Match-related woes.)

Somewhere along the line, a bunch of my playlists disappeared. I didn’t even notice when this happened, as they’re static (not “smart”) playlists that I don’t use that often. But most of them are copies of old mixtapes (yes, actual real tapes). I think I’ve recovered the raw data that will let me restore these, thanks to Time Machine backups, but it will be a labor-intensive pain in the ass.

Those were all pretty maddening, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was when the Music app crashed yesterday morning. When it restarted, it was a completely blank white screen. Hmm, that’s not good. Quit the app and started again, then at least there were controls at the bottom, but when I tapped “My Music”, it was a white screen and a “Loading Library” message with a progress bar. It stayed that way during my entire commute to work (no music! See, there is still a case for CDs). I thought it was all right after that, but on my drive home that evening I got a warning about playing music away from wifi, even though I was trying to play my own music, not something streamed. With creeping dread I turned on the “only show music available offline” toggle, and sure enough, everything disappeared. Gone. All gone.

Checking out the disk usage, I found a huge amount of “Other” space. Clearly all that offline music was still taking up space, even though it was inaccessible:

A full reinstall and restore-from-backup later, and it’s fixed. Now all I have to do is re-load the music back on there (and re-enter passwords and Apple Pay credit card info and Touch ID and who knows what else), and then I’ll be back to square one!

Note that all this heartburn is despite the fact that we’re all-in on the Apple Way. We’re using iTunes on Macs, and lots of our purchased music came from the iTunes Store. That is, we’re not trying to do anything weird or bend the rules. And though I bumble around with this stuff sometimes, I am actually a professional computer guy. I shudder to think what kind of shape the music library and iPhone of a “regular person” would be in at this point.

So, we’re out. Maybe it’s for the best. I thought having a blurred-to-nonexistent line between what I own and what I stream would be great, but I never really warmed to it. I use streaming mostly to try out new music, and if I like it, I buy it. So they’re two separate tiers in how I mentally organize my music collection. Having a completely distinct service for that, like Spotify, works fine for me. It will be a little more expensive for our family, but any savings from Apple Music has already been spent a hundred times over in wasted time and frustration. There’s also the recommendations and curated lists and “radio” stations, but I’ve never been much into such services, and during this trial I never found a single new song of interest in those ways. (Which reminds me of a another failure: that “Tell us what you like” bubbles thing and the resulting “For You” recommendations were laughably wrong and completely useless for all of us.)

Update: 8/31 - Still Smoldering

After I thought I’d restored everything, I discovered this morning that my song ratings were all screwed up, too. I obsessively rate the songs in my library. Probably a little too obsessively, but I use those ratings a lot, especially in smart playlists. How the living hell this could have happened, I can’t begin to imagine, but somehow a whole bunch of tracks suddenly had ratings with light gray stars:

The best the Internets could tell me was these are “estimated” track ratings, whatever that means, but more to the point they were wrong. According to the size of my “unrated” smart playlist (told you: obsessive), there were suddenly 4,402 unrated tracks. I didn’t know the right number, but I knew that was way too high. (Once I got stuff restored, the actual number turned out to be 444.)

Thankfully there’s a special directory under the main iTunes directory called “Previous iTunes Libraries”, where Apple apparently backs up your library metadata file before major iTunes upgrades. It’s almost as if they don’t have very high confidence that everything’s going to work. But it turned out to be handy, as all I had to do was dredge up the copy from July 1, that black day I first stepped upon the dismal path of Apple Music, and voila! Except for all the music I’ve added and played and rated since then, I’m back to square one! Again!

Time again for my annual best-of music review! The process, as in years past, is to pick my ten favorite “new” albums of the year. “New” is in scare-quotes because I go by new-to-me, not by release date. If there are old albums that I get in the calendar year – as happened this year in spades with Wussy – then they’re eligible for the list, regardless of their oldness.

Here are my 2014 selections, in alphabetical order by artist (I pick the top 10, but I don’t order them further than that). The links are to Wikipedia, and a playlist of all these albums is on Spotify.

Event II, Deltron 3030 - "not a big rap fan, but: a sci-fi concept album + humor = yes please thank you" – me, when I first heard of this album. And that pretty well sums it up. The little interstitial skits are okay, though they can get a little old and they're terrible when shuffling. But overall, this wide-ranging album has a lot of good songs.

Stay Gold, First Aid Kit – With this followup to 2012's The Lion's Roar, these Swedish sisters bring their beautiful voices to another set of beautiful songs. The folksy, simple lyrics aren't afraid to have a little more edge than you might expect.

The Voyager, Jenny Lewis – This one's not unlike the First Aid Kit album in some ways: sunny, warm, 70s-reminiscent pop music, also with an occasional pleasantly surprising lyrical barb. I'd listened to her some in the past, in Rilo Kiley and her album with the Watson Twins, but was never really impressed until this album, which is fantastic. I also saw her perform at ACL Festival in October, and it was the best show of the weekend for me.

Eight Houses, She Keeps Bees – I wish I remembered how I heard of this band. Also mellow, but darker and more electronic than the previous two, this collection of psychedelic songs is great stuff.

Major Arcana, Speedy Ortiz – A little uneven, but overall a nice little indie-rocker album. I saw them at a free Waterloo SXSW show, and they were superb. I even got my CD signed that day.

Warpaint, Warpaint – "Atmospheric, haunting, but with some edge & some texture to keep it from going down too easy" - me, when I recommended this excellent album earlier in the year. Clever, interesting music; I look forward to seeing what else they'll do.

Deep Fantasy, White Lung – This makes two years running for this kick-ass punk band to get an album in my top 10. As with last year's Sorry, it's short (23 minutes), sharp, and to the point.

Attica!, Funeral Dress, and Strawberry, Wussy – So, there's all those bands and albums above, and then there's the band that overwhelmingly dominated my 2014 music: Wussy.

I’d never heard of them before the June 27 episode of Sound Opinions, which named their new album one of the “best of 2014… so far”. I checked it out, and was instantly hooked. I went on to buy all seven of their previous albums from their Bandcamp page, and didn’t find a bad one in the bunch.

I love this band. It’s partly the Ohio-ness of them and their lyrics (Pizza King, Little Miami, the corn-maze in Teenage Wasteland), it’s partly that critics adore them (Robert Christgau said they’re “the best band in America since they released the first of their five superb albums in 2005”), but in the end the main thing is, of course, the music. It’s not flashy or amazing or mind-blowing, it’s just thoroughly and solidly good. Really, really good.

I decided to pick three of their albums for this top 10, enough to show their influence but few enough to allow some other bands onto the list. The rest of Wussy’s fine albums had to settle for song selections on the “best of the rest” playlist, below.

So those are my ten favorite “new” albums of 2014.

And then there are all the rest of the albums. To complete my annual time capsule, I also make a playlist of favorite single tracks from all of the year’s albums that didn’t make the best-album cut, ordered not alphabetically, but in the best mixtape order I can manage with an assortment like this. This “Best of the Rest” is also a playlist on Spotify (minus the 50 Foot Wave tracks).

1. Maglite (Remix) – Wussy, ...Popular Favorites
2. The Grand Destruction Game – Nina Persson, Animal Heart
3. Too True To Be Good – Dum Dum Girls, Too True
4. Antipatriarca – Ana Tijoux, Vengo ^†
5. La La La (Brazil 2014) – Shakira, 2014 Fifa World Cup: One Love, One Rhythm
6. Don't Sit Down 'Cause I've Moved Your Chair – Arctic Monkeys, Suck It And See
7. Night Mail – Public Service Broadcasting, Inform - Educate - Entertain
8. Black Out Days – Phantogram, Voices ^†
9. Renaissance Girls – Oh Land, Wishbone
10. Hard Out Here – Lily Allen, Sheezus ^†
11. Selling Rope (Swan Dive To Estuary) – Los Campesinos!, No Blues
12. West Coast – Lana Del Rey, Ultraviolence ^†
13. Jonah – Wussy, Left for Dead
14. Fool's Complaint – Suzanne Vega, Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles
15. Muscle Cars – Wussy, Wussy
16. Radiant Addict – 50 Foot Wave, With Love From The Men's Room
17. Fancy – Iggy Azalea, The New Classic ^†
18. R U Mine? – Arctic Monkeys, AM
19. Clara Bow (live) – 50 Foot Wave, You're Soaking In It
20. Rigor Mortis (Live) – Wussy, Rigor Mortis EP
21. Team – Lorde, Pure Heroine ^†
22. Young And Beautiful – Lana Del Rey, Music From The Great Gatsby ^†
23. Soak It Up – Wussy, Funeral Dress II - Acoustically

^† - saw band live this year

As in past years, there are some tracks here more for “time-capsule” value than because they’re really favorite songs: a World Cup theme song and I-G-G-Y, to name a couple.

Enjoy!

Past years' bests: 2011, 2012, 2013

Your recommendation this week: the 2004 self-titled EP from 50 Foot Wave (listen on Rdio or Spotify). This hard-rocking band includes a couple former members of Throwing Muses: Kristin Hersh and Bernard Georges.

Pitchfork says: “Truck-collision guitars and flayed screams scrape over a pounding rhythm section, and the lyrics that make it to the surface either sound pissed off or grotesque (sample truism: “Bones were made to be broken.")”

It’s great power-trio stuff, and you can preview it on Rdio or Spotify, as usual. Or, you can just download all their music for free from their website, http://50footwave.cashmusic.org/ (get the self-titled EP I’m recommending, plus several others, in one big zipfile from this page.) It’s not only all free, it’s actually Creative Commons licensed (by-nc-sa): “Share This Music. Please repost, podcast, burn it for friends, burn it for your enemies, USE it. Thank you in advance for your time, energy and enthusiasm.”

Standout track on 50 Foot Wave: “Clara Bow”. Rock on.

This week’s recommendation: the 1987 debut album from Sinéad O’Connor, The Lion and The Cobra (listen on Rdio or Spotify).

Before the dramatic stare-and-cry-into-the-camera video, before ripping up papal pictures on SNL, before becoming an ordained priest of the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church, before all that nonsense, this amazing young singer shaved her head and made an album of powerful, beautiful music that’s hard to file into a particular genre. There’s not a bad song on here, and as much as I love “Troy”, the standout track for me is the very first, the haunting “Jackie”.

This week’s recommendation: the first full-length album from the Welsh indie-pop band Los Campesinos!, 2008’s Hold On Now, Youngster… (listen on Rdio or Spotify). Lots of good songs (and great titles), but the standout track I’ll point to is “We Are All Accelerated Readers”.

This band’s clever, literate lyrics are delivered by his & hers counterpoint vocals, on top of snappy – almost manic – musical arrangements. And okay, I can see where they might be a little overly twee ("adjective, Brit., chiefly derogatory; excessively or affectedly quaint, pretty, or sentimental"), but if you don’t hate them, you’ll love them.

A runner-up for standout would be “…And We Exhale And Roll Our Eyes In Unison”, and the ending lines, their build-up, the delivery, it’s just perfect indie pop.

And woe is me And woe is you And woe is us Together

The World Cup starts this week in Brazil (finally!), and there’s lots of music to go with it. But this week’s Music Monday recommendation won’t include any official (or unofficial) songs by Shakira, Pitbull, or J.Lo. Instead, I’ll point you to the 2007 self-titled debut by Brazilian singer/songwriter Céu (listen on Rdio or Spotify). Standout track: “Roda”:

If you watch much World Cup action, especially any games featuring the Brazil national team, you’ll probably see fans in stereotypical Brazilian get-ups (women in bikinis and big Carnival headdresses, etc.). This beautiful, down-tempo, tropical music is a good counterbalance to that one-dimensional view of the fifth largest country in the world. Yes, the lyrics are in Portuguese; no, you don’t have to understand a scrap of it to enjoy this trip to the Southern Hemisphere. So while you’re waiting for the next match to start, mute ESPN, make yourself a cold caipirinha, and put on Céu. Saude!

P.S. Okay, okay, if you still want some Shakira in your 2014 World Cup, and who can blame you, there’s always La La La.

This week: the 2006 debut from Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not (listen on Rdio or Spotify). Though “Mardy Bum” and “Dancing Shoes” are a couple of my favorites, the standout track has to be their breakthrough single, “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”:

Featuring crisp, rollicking rock with high-speed vocals that are heavily British in both accent and wry humor, the album has come to be considered (per Wikipedia) one of the best rock albums of the decade (an NME poll from 2013 even puts it at number 19 of all time). Their subsequent albums haven’t been bad, and the 50s throwback look they’ve adopted make them a favorite on the Tumblr blogs of my daughter and her friends, but it’s this uncompromising debut that put the stake in the ground for a band so good that they could overcome a dumb name like “Arctic Monkeys”.

This week’s recommendation, an album I just bought last week: the latest from Warpaint, the self-titled Warpaint (listen on Rdio or Spotify). Standout track: “Biggy”.

Atmospheric, haunting, but with some edge & some texture to keep it from going down too easy. Wikipedia says, “Warpaint have been compared to Cocteau Twins, Joni Mitchell, and Siouxsie and the Banshees”, and quote NME describing their style as “Intermittently emerging from plaintive moods into harder rocking . . . expansive, lushly-harmonic psych-rock songs”.

This week’s recommendation: the Grateful Dead live album, Reckoning (listen on Rdio or Spotify). Standout track: “Jack-A-Roe”, their version of a 19th-century tale of cross-dressing and women in the military. Now, if you don’t really know the Dead, chances are you think of them as one of two things: the band behind the “drivin' that train, high on cocaine” song (aka “Truckin'"), or a jam band famous for half-hour psychedelic instrumentals in the middle of their concerts. And, okay, they were both of those things. But one overplayed radio hit and concert improv stamina do not a thirty-plus year career make. They also recorded lots (and I do mean lots) of other music, much of it just good, folk-inspired, almost-country-but-in-a-good-way, rock songs.

My recommendation here is the 1981 live album Reckoning. It doesn’t include either of their (in)famous jam tracks, though there is a 9-minute song, “To Lay Me Down” (a lovely snoozer that you are hereby permitted to skip). The rest is solid folk-rock, great for road trips and backyard barbecues.

A few weeks ago, I thought I’d take a stab at a quick music recommendation each Monday, hashtagged #musicmonday. Not “new” as in recently released, necessarily, but more like “new to you”. Or possibly not either of those, but maybe even just a pointer to some good music that you’d forgotten about.

The first five:

• 1st #musicmonday: Deltron 3030 http://open.spotify.com/album/2DjihrD64h6Yw5byJD6d6f not a big rap fan, but: a sci-fi concept album + humor = yes please thank you
  
  
• #musicmonday rec: The Cardigans' "Gran Turismo" http://open.spotify.com/album/4gNjfAA5axfUEBbHJoAKBO one standout track: "Erase/Rewind" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mkv_2fQ-OLU
  
  
• #musicmonday rec: Veruca Salt, "American Thighs" http://rd.io/x/QVkeQCJc8dM/ standout track has to be their hit "Seether" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC9AUR-iTo0
  
  
• #musicmonday rec: U2's first, "Boy" http://rd.io/x/QVkeQCJcKbE/ a bit 80s, but solid songs. standout: An Cat Dubh > Into the Heart > Out of Control
  
  
• #musicmonday rec: Massive Attack's "Mezzanine" http://rd.io/x/QVkeQCJcZgo/ standout track (and video): "Angel" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbe3CQamF8k
  
  

I’ve been enjoying it, but the 140-character limit has kept me from adding more about why I like each recommendation, or what I like about it. Meanwhile, here’s this blog, with nothing much going on most of the time. . . so here we go (see next post for this week’s pick).

Time again for my annual best-of music review! As in the past, here’s the introductory explanation from my 2011 post, copied & pasted for your convenience:

A couple years ago, I started doing my own personal "best of the year" selections in iTunes. It's easy to make an iTunes smart playlist that includes all the tracks added during the calendar year. Just set "Date Added", "is in the range", and pick the dates (I also add rules to exclude some tracks, like audiobooks, podcasts, etc.).

I use “date added” rather than “year”, so my selections are based on music that I bought during the year, regardless of when it was originally released. If I discover an old artist or pick up an old album years later, then so be it. Also, I buy full albums only; I never buy just single tracks. And so that’s what I pick 10 favorites of: albums.

Here are my 2013 selections, in alphabetical order by artist. I’ll pick the top 10, but I won’t order them down to a number one, sorry. The links are to Wikipedia, and a playlist of these albums (minus Giant Drag) is on Spotify.

The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You, Neko Case - Neko Case’s latest holds up every bit as well as 2009’s Middle Cyclone. It has a few less-great tracks, but is mostly solid, with some real standouts (“Man” and the seriously intense “Nearly Midnight, Honolulu”). Her performance at the 2013 Austin City Limits Music Festival was great, even if Atoms For Peace were drowning out the quieter moments from across the park. If you have a chance to see her live, take it.

Waking Up Is Hard To Do, Giant Drag – The last album by this band, made up mostly (entirely?) of the very odd and very funny Annie Hardy, was 2005’s Hearts and Unicorns. This new release is more eclectic and less rockin', but there’s hardly a bad song on it. Unfortunately, as of this writing, her indie label doesn’t seem to have a deal with Spotify or Rdio, so you won’t find it there.

There’s Always Another Girl, Juliana Hatfield – I’ve never been a big fan of Juliana Hatfield’s solo work, though I loved Blake Babies and Some Girls. I don’t remember how I came across this, but it’s similar to Some Girls' music, and I really liked it. It even prompted me to back her followup this year on PledgeMusic. The result, Wild Animals, was unfortunately not nearly as good.

Wolf’s Law, The Joy Formidable – Man, do I love Joy Formidable. Their last CD, 2011’s The Big Roar, was on my top-10 list last year, and this new one is every bit as good. I had the good fortune to see them live three times in 2013: a free mini SXSW show at Waterloo Records, a headlining show at Emo’s (with IO Echo; see Best of the Rest, below), and a great festival set at ACLFest. They’re just fantastic live, and live up to both words in their name; I can’t recommend them highly enough.

Wed 21, Juana Molina – A late entry, which I didn’t pick up until the end of the year, but an easy choice for a favorite from this year. Unique, beautiful, haunting music, as her previous albums have all been, but with fewer slightly-too-weird-to-be-listenable tracks. Yes, the lyrics are mostly in Spanish, but it’s so ethereal you’ll hardly notice. The video for “Eras” is more toward the creepy end of the spectrum than most of these songs, but has a visual style that matches the eccentricity of the music really well.

Silence Yourself, Savages – The post-punk sound of this band manages to keep the power that sound had when it was new, without being diluted by seeming too throwback. It’s serious, darkly intense music, but I can still listen to the whole thing over and over again. I was able to see them at ACLFest, too. They’re not a band you’d expect to see on a hot, sunny stage at midday, but they more than held their own, black clothes from head to toe be damned.

Apocryphon, The Sword – I’d never heard of this Austin-area heavy metal band before I happened to buy a six-pack of Iron Swan Ale, their Real Ale tribute beer. I thought the prog-rock design and imagery were a hoot, and only later discovered there was an actual band that unapologetically and unironically rocks that same imagery in their music. I don’t have much metal in my library, but something about songs like “Eyes of the Stormwitch”, “The Chronomancer”, and “The Veils of Isis” works for me.

The Name of This Band is Talking Heads, Talking Heads – I’ve had just about every Talking Heads album for years, including the great live album Stop Making Sense, but somehow had never known about the existence of this one. It’s a double album, and it’s long (a little over 2.5 hours), so I admit that I don’t often listen to it from beginning to end. But nearly every one of these (33!) songs are really good versions; even titles I don’t care much for in their studio form are good here.

Sorry, White Lung – I think I heard about White Lung from the Sound Opinions podcast, but whoever tipped me off to them: thank you. Where Savages might be post-punk, White Lung is just plain punk-punk. A fast, angry, energetic ride, the album length stands in stark contrast to that huge Talking Heads entry above: 10 songs, 20 minutes, done. Great stuff; I’m looking forward to future releases.

Versions, Zola Jesus – When I first heard about this album, made up of previous songs arranged for string accompaniment, I was skeptical. I’m not usually a big fan of remixes and the like. But the source of most of these songs, 2011’s Conatus, was good enough to earn a spot on my top-10 last year, so I gave it a try. It’s fantastic. The orchestral sound transforms the songs entirely, in some cases possibly even making them (gasp!) better.

So those are my ten favorite “new” albums of 2013.

And then there are all the rest of the albums. Some are so good they were almost in the top ten (Janelle Monáe, Sleigh Bells), some are honestly barely worth saving from the delete key (Boss Hog, the aforementioned Wild Animals). But to complete my annual time capsule, I also make a playlist, ordered in painstaking mixtape order (not best-to-worst), of favorite single tracks from all of the year’s albums that didn’t make the best-album cut. This “Best of the Rest” is also a playlist on Spotify (minus the Juliana Hatfield track).

1. The Bomb — Bitter:Sweet (Drama)
2. Man Like That — Gin Wigmore (Man Like That EP)
3. Born For This — Paramore (Riot!)
4. Happy Now? — No Doubt (Tragic Kingdom)
5. Satellite Mind — Metric (Fantasies)
6. Nobody Asked Me (If I Was Okay) — Sky Ferreira (Night Time, My Time)
7. Another Girl — Wild Belle (Isles)
8. Lights — Ellie Goulding (Lights)
9. Tiananmen Square — IO Echo (Ministry of Love)
10. Los Adolescentes — Denver (Música, Gramática, Gimnasia)
11. Parted Ways — Heartless Bastards (Arrow)
12. Young Man In America — Anaïs Mitchell (Young Man In America)
13. Tracks — Juliana Hatfield (Wild Animals)
14. Vuelve — Julieta Venegas (Los Momentos)
15. Coco — Astro (Nacional Records Amazon Sampler 2013)
16. Aura — Lady Gaga (Artpop)
17. Standing There — The Creatures (Boomerang)
18. Q.U.E.E.N. [feat. Erykah Badu] — Janelle Monáe (The Electric Lady)
19. Blackout — Anna Calvi (Anna Calvi)
20. Get It While You Wait — Boss Hog (Whiteout)
21. Price Tag — Jessie J (Who You Are)
22. Happily — One Direction (Midnight Memories)
23. What You Wanted — Seapony (Falling)
24. Walk Or Ride — The Ditty Bops (The Ditty Bops)
25. Wet Blanket — Metric (Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?)
26. Proof — Paramore (Paramore)
27. Mr. Freakshow — Gin Wigmore (Holy Smoke)
28. Bitter Rivals — Sleigh Bells (Bitter Rivals)

As last year, there are some tracks on here that come to my iTunes library via my teenage daughter. I don’t have everything she bought (yes, bought; trying to raise decent, law-abiding citizens here), but I may as well try to keep up with kids these days. She and I did go to a Metric/Paramore concert together, and while Metric being the opener and not the headliner still seems crazy to me, it was great. In any case, let the record show that I would not have bought One Direction, for example, but that I can play them in the car with certain passengers and not be sick. So in the spirit of an annual time capsule, and of trying to not be too cool to have a guilty pleasure or two, those tracks are here, too.

Enjoy!

Time again for my annual best-of music review! Okay, past time; sue me. Here’s the introductory explanation from last year’s post, copied & pasted for your convenience:

A couple years ago, I started doing my own personal "best of the year" selections in iTunes. It's easy to make an iTunes smart playlist that includes all the tracks added during the calendar year. Just set "Date Added", "is in the range", and pick the dates (I also add rules to exclude some tracks, like audiobooks, podcasts, etc.).

I use “date added” rather than “year”, so my selections are based on music that I bought during the year, regardless of when it was originally released. If I discover an old artist or pick up an old album years later, then so be it. Also, I buy full albums only; I never buy just single tracks. And so that’s what I pick 10 favorites of: albums.

Here are my 2012 selections, in alphabetical order by artist. The links are to Wikipedia, and a playlist of these albums is here on Spotify.

• Born To Die, Lana Del Rey – Leaving aside the controversy between whether this is Art or lowbrow misogynist trash, and just going along for the ride with her surreal and honestly kind of dorky persona, this album has a dark, smoothly consistent feel that I just found myself listening to over & over.
  
  
• Hospitality, Hospitality – I saw this band do a free SXSW set at Waterloo Records (and got an autographed CD), and they were solid. So indie that there's not even a Wikipedia page for their album, and a little twee, but I listened to this album a lot this year. Good stuff.
  
  
• The Big Roar, The Joy Formidable – This album is just a solid rocker from start to finish, another with hardly a bad song on it. Volume dials don't really go high enough for music like this. (No, not even Spinal Tap's volume dials.)
  
  
• Synthetica, Metric – Another band that's been around for a long time that I hadn't been into very much. This album, especially the track "Youth Without Youth" (with its fantastic video), plus a great set at ACLFest, converted me.
  
  
• Bring It On Home, Joan Osborne – The singer who you think of as a 90s one-hit wonder has been putting out good albums ever since then. What a voice. This compilation of cover songs doesn't have a bad track on it.
  
  
• Theatre Is Evil, Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra – I'd heard a little Amanda Palmer here & there, and I'd seen her gigantic Kickstarter campaign to record this album, but never really been hooked. But between a couple of seriously intense videos (The Killing Type & Do It With a Rockstar, both more or less NSFW), and the ability to download this album for free (I've since paid for the "deluxe" version), I'm hooked now. It's a little uneven, but overall pretty amazing.
  
  
• Reign of Terror, Sleigh Bells – Sleigh Bells' debut album made my best-of-year list in 2010, and they're back, kicking as much ass as ever. If iTunes let me, I'd rate the track "Demons" six stars.
  
  
• Close-Up, Vol. 3 - States of Being, Suzanne Vega – Is it bizarre to have an album of acoustic reissues by 53-year-old poet & guitar strummer Suzanne Vega on the list right after raving about noise-pop band Sleigh Bells? I'm a mystery wrapped in an enigma, and I love her voice as much as I did in 1985. Vega made four of these reissue albums, rerecording her own stripped-down (and copyrighted in her name) versions, and they're all good, but this one is my favorite. Really good versions of really good songs.
  
  
• Blunderbuss, Jack White – This album, like his set at ACLFest, and his hour on Austin City Limits are Jack White at his Jack-Whitest. There are a few tracks that aren't my favorites, and I really wish he hadn't said "noivous" on "I'm Shakin'" (that cost that song a star, Jack), but a rocker nonetheless.
  
  
• Conatus, Zola Jesus – Laid back in more of a heavy shoe-gaze way, this is one of those that doesn't have especially stand-out singles, but isn't at all too monotonous to listen to all the way through. Over and over and over. Another ACLFest act; she performed early in the day, so I only caught the last couple songs of her set, but at least I got close enough to get a decent picture.

So those are my ten favorite “new” albums of 2012.

There are good albums among the rest of what I picked up in 2012, and good tracks even on the not-so-good albums. To keep them from getting lost in the iTunes library, I also made a playlist (ordered in mixtape order, not best-to-worst) of favorite single tracks from all of the year’s albums that didn’t make the best-album cut. This “Best of the Rest” is also a playlist on Spotify (minus the Giant Drag track).

1. GO! — Santigold (Master of My Make-Believe)
2. Gold On The Ceiling — The Black Keys (El Camino)
3. Wanderluster — Band of Skulls (Sweet Sour)
4. Lafaye — School of Seven Bells (Ghostory)
5. Nothing To Remember — Neko Case (The Hunger Games: Songs From District 12 & Beyond)
6. Mouthful of Diamonds — Phantogram (Eyelid Movies)
7. Who's That Boy — Demi Lovato (Unbroken)
8. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together — Taylor Swift (Red)
9. Want U Back — Cher Lloyd (Sticks & Stones)
10. Major — The Asteroids Galaxy Tour (Out of Frequency)
11. Guggenheim — The Ting Tings (Sounds From Nowheresville)
12. I Am Not A Robot — Marina & The Diamonds (The Family Jewels)
13. Suicide Pact — JJAMZ (Suicide Pact)
14. Widow's Walk — Suzanne Vega (Close-Up, Vol. 4 - Songs of Family)
15. I Got Nothing — Dum Dum Girls (End of Daze)
16. Call Me the Breeze — Beth Orton (Sugaring Season)
17. Bird Song — Florence + The Machine (Lungs: The B-Sides)
18. I Hate Love — Garbage (Not Your Kind Of People)
19. Firestorm — Giant Drag (single)
20. Teen Idle — Marina & the Diamonds (Electra Heart)
21. Call Me Maybe — Carly Rae Jepsen (Kiss)
22. What Makes You Beautiful — One Direction (Up All Night)
23. Malo — Bebe (Pafuera Telarañas)
24. My Country — Tune-Yards (W H O K I L L)
25. Neskowin — The Corin Tucker Band (Kill My Blues)
26. Babelonia — School Of Seven Bells (Disconnect From Desire)
27. Rhapsody — Siouxsie & The Banshees (Peepshow)
28. Ride — Lana Del Rey (Paradise)
29. Emmylou — First Aid Kit (The Lion's Roar)
30. Tighten Up — The Black Keys (Brothers)
31. Can You Believe It? — Martha Wainwright (Come Home to Mama)

A note about the teeny-bopper tracks on the list above: they’re in my iTunes library because my teenage daughter bought those albums on our iTunes Store account. And I listened to them. They’re mostly… not that good, in my opinion, and I haven’t listened to most of them more than once. But – there are singles that are good, and super catchy (as they were engineered to be), and sometimes even funny. Also, part of my purpose in making these lists is to have a time capsule of each year’s music. And whether the cool kids like it or not, Carly Rae Jepsen, One Direction, and Taylor Swift were all part of this year’s music. But I’m not apologizing. If I didn’t like these songs I wouldn’t have put them in the list. Haters gonna hate; I’ll be over here letting myself enjoy these occasional pop confections.

Anyway - enjoy!