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Blogging & drinking coffee with a consolation sigh.Come for the Twister jokes, stay for the 30 item lists I started writing the year I turned ... you guessed it!, or the too-good-for P*********s.com pop culture writing, or occasional dispatches from the writing classroom. It'll be a laugh and a half, at least.
Note: this blog got merged from one tdp.1, and then again from tdp.2, so the "November" batch are posts from several years of writing.
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One of my favorite jokes with Rachel, like all the best laughs you can share with your best friend, is one that is at my expense. Apparently, one time I was articulating why I got such a kick out of going to the AMC around the corner from our apartment. It was a dingy, grimy, disgusting, expensive shithole. Probably blustered because giant bucket of wet popcorn didn't sell it to her, I emoted proclaiming: "I love movies!" Or maybe that was something I giggled to myself while eating whirly pop corn on the couch at home during one of the million nights of this stupid pandemic I spent eating butter (I mean popcorn) and disappearing into some other world for 2 or so hours. Noticing the constant?  March 2020 to pretty much still right now, its been a bad time for movie junkies, especially movie theater movie junkies. You rats are my people. Movies got delayed, airborne pathogens became frightening. Shit, my movie hall shut down forever.
I'm not getting into it, but seeing a movie at the theater is, to me, infinitely better than seeing a movie at home. My tv is shitty, my sound system is shitty, and the people and dog I live with aren't always in the mood for that Eddie Van Halen guitar solo at the end of Twister to give them tinnitus. But at a movie theater the movie is projected on a wall three times the size of my house and the sound is pounded into your body with no regard for your well being. If you're me, there's a bucket of popcorn with "butter flavored oil" spoiling your lap just as efficiently as its spoiling your insides. All part of the charm! I don't want to sell you on the theater though, you know how you feel and now you know how I feel. Because of the pandemic I didn't get to go to the theater anywhere near as much as I like to, but I did get to see some movies at the cinema and I also got to see some new movies from the comfort of my home. Lemme tell you what I liked this year! The Unholy - great Catholic horror, pretty original take on possession stories, but suffered from its PG-13 rating. Made way up for it in feating Cary Elwes as a villainous Bishop. Shin Godzilla (2016) - in my enthusiasm for Godzilla and Kong's showdown, I got caught up on some classic Toho Godzilla movies. The classic Godzilla Vs Kong sucked. The original Godzilla ruled! Several of the others, most memorably Son of Godzilla, were fun to watch. I didn't enjoy any as much as the bananas Shin Godzilla. Great monster design and also a satire of bureaucratic dipshittery that manages to not be a condescending and smug hammer over the head (looking at you Don't Look Up). Godzilla vs Kong Objectively speaking, this movie is pretty ass. Took the worst parts of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2018, I think) and turned the volume up to a thousand. The human dramas have no business getting more screentime than the monsters, and unlike KoTM, GvK doesn't have a battle royale of cinema's best beasts. The movie also exercised almost no restraint, unlike the excellent Godzilla (2014) which played like a horror flick. Still, this was (until The Matrix 4 was announced anyway) my popcorn flick of the year. There's an awesome sacrilegious joke to be made about Godzilla v Kong coming out on Easter, but I can't think of it. I'll come back to it in three days? nah... We happened to be on a family vacation for the holiday and while the HBO release wasn't my ideal first watch, it was fun for my brother (a Kong fan) to toll on me (a Godzilla fan) as the ape beat the everliving shit out of Godzilla. As a bonus, our small dogs play-fought during the entire picture, adding a little personal lore to the film. We left DC Monday morning. Monday evening I was at the theater for a screening. I rewatched it last night and, again, its a bad movie, but there's like 50 minutes of monkey fights lizard with goofy mystical weapons and a robot Godzilla that turns sentient and evil and lots of punches and explosions and radiation breath. I'm a simple man. My needs are not complex. Godzilla vs Kong understands this. Top Gun - is an old movie, but that didn't stop the Emagine Royal Oak from screening it this past July. Great movie. Even better on the big screen. Pig - if this movie had come out in like 2013 I would have been insufferable about it. I really liked it, despite ending up being a much more quiet movie than the trailer's promise of Taken but its Nick Cage's pig instead of his daughter. The contemplation on food and grief and Nick Cage's simmering thousand mile stare was a surprising and rewarding movie experience. For me, you get one of the most hateful, devastating revenge ever delivered in a movie, and I'm not going to spoil it but it involves a quail. In the Heights - really fun! Maybe better than Hamilton? I've never seen the stage production, but the movie does a great job adapting to the "big" screen. Infectiously charming, though safely viewed from home. No Time To Die Sometimes the movie is who you see it with more than the movie. With lots of time on my hands, I got to revisit the Daniel Craig repertoire of Bond films; they're not that awesome. He's too heavy, too wooden. I want Roger Moore (keep the racism though thanks!) smirking, I want Pierce Brosnan being sexy and smirking. I don't want three movies in a row beginning with our hero being cajoled out of retirement. I think the Mission Impossible franchise kind of replaced Bond for me because of this: they're soulful and heavy at times without losing track of what the movies should be: a dude that can't die jumping in, out of, on to, or anywhere in the vicinity of an airplane in flight. All the same, I was excited for No Time to Die in 2019, then again in 2020, then early in 2021 before assuming it would, like Craig's relationship with the role, lose interest and become a joyless obligation. Coincidently, we were in Columbus for the debut weekend, and I got to see No Time to Die with my college roommates and brothers from other mothers Matt & Brent (hadn't seen a Bond with Brent since the midnight release of Quantum of Solace). We met early for wings and beers and the mood was light going into the theater. Could have been the beers, or cracking jokes with my seat-mates, but NTTD seemed to have found the long-dormant sense of humor the franchise had abandoned. We laughed! We cheered at elaborate and occasionally (but only occasionally) brutal set-pieces! It was, for the most part - and certainly the first time in Craig's run - an espionage adventure! I loved it. As for the controversial ending: look, a lot has been said about Bond (including two paragraph ago when I said Tom Cruise does it better despite Carly Simon's assertions) and I, like Craig, think its time for a break. Without even touching the character's identity, I think its clear the franchise is out of ideas. If the Broccoli estate wants to drop a lavish billion dollar period piece so a Cold War Bond can strut his stuff, sigh me up. Craig's open-hate of the role made the surprise finale, to me, a fitting end both to his take on Bond and also, possibly, a perfectly fine way to walk away from 007 all together. I felt so sure of that. And then when JAMES BOND WILL RETURN scrolled across the bottom of the credits I cheered. So who knows what I think. tick tick BOOM! - is a movie that could have sucked but would still be praiseworthy for Andrew Garfield's incredible, magnetic performance. Luckily, the movie doesn't suck. Various Phantom of the Opera adaptations - speaking of musical theater, for whatever reason I went heavy into an old favorite. I hadn't seen any of the other adaptations of the story and really loved the grotesque Hammar version and also found Claude Reigns' take on the masked menace to be excellent. The Matrix: Resurrections The second Matrix movie came out when I was thirteen years old, which is the optimal age to enjoy the psuedo-psychology and 40 minute car/motorcycle/truck chase/kung-fu/gun fight sequence at the center of the movie. The Matrix trilogy was, appropriately, a sleepover favorite. Because of that, it is a series I've continued to be fond of, but never in my wildest dreams did I expect there to be another Matrix movie. It wasn't something I was craving, the closure in Revolutions made sense, and was satisfying enough no matter what people say about that movie. So when they announced Resurrections I was measured in my excitement. I also didn't really believe it. But then it came out. At 3:00 a.m. eastern time. Do I blame the infant for staying up that late? Maybe. Do I blame trying to chase the same adrenaline high of those earlier Matrices movies for staying up that late? Maybe so. Nostalgia, like caffeine, is a hell of a drug. For that first viewing I think emerging from that movie, with pauses, around 6:30, as not bad, is a best possible outcome. But in the (few) days that followed, I've continued to think about the ideas the movie introduced, the wrinkles in the storyline and functionality of the universe, the batshit performances by Jonathan Groff and Neil Patrick Harris (also: 8-Bit Christmas doesn't get its own entry on the list but deserves mention), Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is unbelievable in this movie, or, the wholesome reunion of Neo & Trinity during this ear of Keanuassance. I think its great. I can't wait to see it again, and I hope I get a chance on the big screen. The French Dispatch I revisited the Wes Anderson expanded universe this year and found myself not as fond of all of his movies as I'd used to be, but even more fond of a few. Grand Budapest Hotel I regard now as a favorite; Royal Tannenbaums remains an all-time classic; Moonrise Kingdom lost some of its charms, and so on. I entered the French Dispatch the way I enter most things I watch now - as something to do while feeding Ben a bottle or trying to rock him to sleep at 12:52 a.m. My expectations were low because, like many movies, The French Dispatch had been delayed far beyond its original announcement. Its the most Wes Anderson movie Wes Anderson has made. Each shot is an intricate diorama of twee detail, the scenes have as much life as the revolving door of Anderson's usual band of players. The movie itself gets inventive with the format, telling three vignettes which themselves are narrated - to other characters and the viewers as well while pausing to connect with the overarching narrative (the passing of the titular magazine's editor) and occasionally breaking the fourth wall. It winks at the viewers and giggles at its own cleverness, but not in a smug way. The stories The French Dispatch tells are fun, curious, and the visual language of the film is like candy for your eyes. A real pleasant surprise. Maybe my best surprise of the year.
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Chronological & then highly arbitrary list of ten albums that were my "favorite" this year12/22/2021 It was a cliché to talk about the 2020-ness of 2020, so I'm loath to mention that 2021 kept up with that same energy. But, as the previous trip around the sun was, this too was a strange year. Like all facets of life, my music listening habits were askew. Unlike 2020's hundreds of mileage spent listening to music on long, hot runs, my legs just didn't have it in me this year. Or when they did, I wanted to listen to podcasts like a big dork. The benefit to listening to tons of music pods is you can think about music a ton, but the downside is you spend less time listening to music. And the tastemakers on your pod end up impacting what you listen to. I guess that's not really a downside so much as an interesting observation. Last year I started listening to Steven Hyden & Ian Cohen's Indiecast pod, and Cohen's AOTY ended up also being mine. That was only a taste - my whole top ten (spoiler alert) is more or less Cohencore, which is a joke that like 12 people on the internet would get. Pods! Community!
Anyway, I want to run through some albums I enjoyed (and, in the case of Jan-August, vaguely remember enjoying) and talk about what was going on that month as to excuse how it seems like I only listened to fourteen new things this year. Ah, movies: a great way to pass time, some noise behind grading, more soothing than sleep music, popcorn's favorite friend. No matter how you cut it, a good movie can make an OK day great. Prior to the pandemic, you could probably catch me at my beloved local theater (which sadly is permanently shuttered) 4 times a month in the dark of the matinee: four dollar new releases too good to beat, although the twelve dollar bucket of popcorn maybe balanced out the deal at the ticket counter.
Movies are cool because you have a life-long relationship with movies. Movies you love as a kid, many of which make up the 30 on this very list, you bring with you into adulthood. Some movies remain special in their moment from your life. There are movies for adults (no, not like that), movies for friends, for families, and for almost any occasion. Tell me a holiday, I'll tell you what movie to watch. Pretty much anyone that knows me knows I have a, let's be charitable and say close relationship to one of my favorite movies. Let me tell you about 29 more, in no particular order: Note: this list excludes franchise films or selects a favorite from the franchise but does not stand as the whole franchise within the list (spoiler alert: A New Hope is on this list and only means A New Hope, as opposed to being one item on a 30 item list that actually means all 11 Star Wars films). 30 Favorite Movies Zoolander & Orange County Its funny that the randomizer I put this list into put Ben Stiller's 2001 oddball comedy at the top of this list; as a starting point, that's fitting because Zoolander & Orange County were the first two DVDs our family purchased for the brand new DVD player that graced our living room in winter 2002. As a family, I think we were prone to rewatching favorites (if it ain't broke...) so these movies in particular, and the DVD format, suited not only our penchant for the frequent viewing, but also the playback of specific scenes. To this day, a good family riff might bear the fruit of my all time favorite line reading Ben Stiller has ever given in a movie (even better than the prayer in Meet The Parents). Its such a stupid movie, with a stupid premise, but you get once-in-a-career performances out of Owen Wilson, the late Jerry Stiller, an-about-to-blow-up Will Ferral, and lest we forget, a classic musical number that forever changes the jitterbug, and regular service at any gas station. Orange County boasts Jack Black, hammy as ever, playing opposite to lil Colin Hanks' self-serious, writer-in-training with his lofty goals that, in middle school didn't occur to me was the punchline. Time (and that M.F.A. program) behind me, I've come to be more fond of the ensemble cast, Hanks' loving, but dysfunctional family: "you're not oppressed!" John Lithgow yells at his son, trying to figure out why in the world he would want to be a writer. To be fair, its a good question to ask a young mind. Jurassic Park I could go on, and on, about the incredible feats of special effects Spielberg's (imo) magnum opus has to boast, but instead, a brief tail (hah): not one, but two generations of cousins are enamored with this movie. When we were kids, we'd run around the yard playing a tag variant we called RAPTOR. Here was the rule: you ran around our grandma's big farm, screaming raptor at each other. Now, one of us has a little boy and you'll never guess what his favorite movie is ... hold on to your butts, we got a new generation of raptor enthusiasts! National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation I almost said to myself no holiday movies, but noticed Die Hard is on this list, so, had to be fair. This is one that's grown with me: as a kid, the crude jokes and profanity were the whole show, but as an adult (a nearly 30 year old adult, no less) I so deeply relate to poor Clark's self-destructive compulsion to just make everything so goddamn nice that it drives him, and his family, insane. Christmas Vacation is the rare example of a holiday movie that works in any season. Nobody captures exasperated sociopath quite like Chevy Chase in this one:
My Big Fat Greek Wedding & Moonstruck I've got a soft spot for romantic comedies that center around obtuse ethnic families, and in these two, we get a little Greek and a little Italian. These are both family favorites, in fact, one of the last times I was at my grandma's house without a mask and long enough to watch a movie, we watched Moonstruck. The lines, the jokes, the food, oh, the glorious food - its impossible not to love. Plus, how weird is Moonstruck? Let me recreate what that pitch meeting must have been like in 1986: "okay, we got Cher on board, how can we use her?" "she's a widow, ready to settle for love" "but she shouldn't" "of course she shouldn't, but she wants to, she's ready to give up" "she's Cher for goodness sake why should she settle" "so we have Danny Aiello playing an absolute simpleton, she settles for him" "yep, okay, then what?" "he's a total mama's boy, that's all the character development we're going to do for him - big, big putzy baby, and he uh [sorts huge line of hollywood coke] goes to Italy to care for his dying mother" "yes, yes!" "then Cher has to reconcile with his brother, they uh [more coke] are enemies becuase the brother blames Danny Aiello for uh [sniiiffffff] maiming him in uh bread machine" "yeah yeah okay" "and the brother is this damaged rouge, a real f**kin bad boy. Cher falls for him, passionate, not the settling kind" "yeah leather jacket, greasy hair" "Exactly the guy is tortured and is torturing himself to death. a bad ass though" "AND HE TAKES HER TO THE OPERA HOLY SHIT" "who can we get to play such a drake of a character?" [empties the bag, blows out both nostrils] "Nicholas f**king Cage" High Fidelity Record collectors get it. Show up as a college undergrad totally rooting for John Cusack, grow up and laugh at his melodramatic bullshit & idiot friends. Such a backhanded love letter to the lost man-children who find themselves in their favorite songs. Back to the Future Having recently re-watched this truly classic American film, all I can say is: Marty is the lamest cool-guy front-man to a movie, but out of fairness to Michael J Fox, the universe of this flick has Huey Lewis & The News as the coolest cool guy band, so, maybe that tracks. King Kong (1970) Significantly less bloated than the Peter Jackson 2007 reboot, and also boasting a much, much lower effects budget, King Kong nails the humanity of the character with some great hammy 70s acting, some stop motion special effects, and a (now) sentimental fixation of the World Trade Center, which Kong of course straddles in the film's climax. Casablanca A true classic. What else can you say about sad, old, bitter Bogey? (the soundtrack absolutely rips!) Inglorious Basterds A little more Nazi killing and boots-on-the-ground combat scenes than the previous WW2 flick, Tarentino's worst impulses, it turns out, are well suited for the most obvious good guy/bad guy match up in all of real and speculative history, ever. Come for Brad Pitt's amazing accent and pitiful mustache, stay for Christoph Waltz's untouchable entre into Hollywood. Remember, you just say "bingo" Rookie of the Year A family classic! A sports movie I loved before I loved baseball! Must be Thomas Ian Nicholas's charm as pitching prodigy Henry Rowengartner, or Daniel Stern's insane coaching, the touching story, a lovely portrayal of youth in Chicagoland, or the sentimental perspective on America's pastime. Or, an entire scene devoted to Gary Busey's Chet Steadman (is there a better fictional baseball name than Chet Steadman?) talking up airline Salisbury steak as, "the most delicious Salisbury steak" he'd ever had? The Matrix Reloaded This movie came out the summer I turned 13, and was made as if it was a special gift just for me: guns, car chases, motorcycles, explosions, slow-mo science fiction. Check, and mate. Die Hard Merry Christmas! The Social Network The movie opens with "Ball & Biscuit" by The White Stripes and only gets better from there. Some of Sorkin's best Sorkinisms coming out of the best mouths to utter them: even Justin Timberlake *almost* disappears into the character of Sean Parker. Just an amazingly thrilling retelling of a profoundly boring litigation. Mission Impossible: 2 I have such an utterly uncritical love of this movie. Similar to The Matrix Reloaded, I was the *perfect* age (10, lol) for Tom Cruise's sleek, John Woo-directed M.I. sequel. Unlike the dour original, 2 boasts exotic locales, colorful stunts, and an absolute metric shit ton of turn-of-the-century (that's 21st century) over-the-top kung fu choreography. Its magnificent, the plot is melodramatic and stupid, Tom Cruise does the most boring stunts of his career (biggest thrill - the antagonist almost gets Cruise's superspy Ethan Hunt in the eye with a real knife!) and somehow, this big dumb summer blockbuster got me into a seat in a cool theater for a few hours of stillness, before reenacting (almost) every move in the backyard. Kill Bill (vol. 2) If my own list, and my own list's rules which I am sole author and authority of makes me pick, I gotta say 2 is better than Volume One's thrill-a-minute, kinetic energy. But, instead of using Uma Thurman's katana to split hairs let's just agree QT's best work (sorry Pulp Fiction) is, as he designed, a single movie. Fun fact: Vol 1 was released on DVD before (1) most people had Netflix, back when they mailed you discs (you guys remember mail, right?) and (2) before I was allowed to see R rated movies so my dear friend Jim snuck it into my basement and we watched it, nearly muted, with subtitles. I can say that didn't spoil the 30+ might sword fight the film ends with. GoldenEye We had the video game, and an extensive knowledge of Bond lore thanks to the Poland Public Library, but when NBC aired GoldenEye on a Sunday night it was a damn event. We taped it onto a VHS that Stevie & I watched and rewound to death. This wasn't the cheeky Bond of those goofy library movies, this was a dark, sexy, violent Bond (funny to imagine Brosnan as that in light of Daniel Craig's incredible take on the character). Our creative response was to make a radio drama, recorded onto cassette tape, "loosely" based on GoldenEye: a tale of a betrayed Bond, a crisis of confidence in MI-6, enhanced with sound effects from a Yamaha keyboard and found footage from our video games, the lil' drama was probably 15 minutes long, and captured some of the best (only?) acting Stevie & I did. "Friend or Foe" even featured an original theme song, written and performed by yours truly: do I know you? friend, friend, foeeeee....... Neighbors R rated comedies are hit and miss, some take the license to be foul and go too far, soiling the comedy. Some PG-13 comedies just aren't crude enough for a nice foul laugh, I feel bad for comedies I watch because there's such a delicate line to tow between crude and rude. Neighbors gets it. And not only does Neighbors get it, I had the surreal experience of seeing the Seth Rogen/Zac Effron square off flick in the least appropriate venue to see two grown men fighting each other with sex toys while making Batman references: Oakland's magnificent Grand Lake Theater, red velvet curtains and all. Several of my Bay Area roommates went along, and Neighbors, upon home release, quickly jumped to the very front of our evening movie nights. Ferris Bueller's Day Off Scene, the night before a new school year, any grade between 1st and the most current year of my Ph.D. program. Other characters change, but always, center, in front of the tv watching John Hughes' absolute best work: me, eating some special desert (on best years, Mom's wacky cake), thinking of what the next day will bring. Probably my favorite coming of age movie, if for no reason other than its place in my own coming of age. Moonlight This movie floored me in such unexpected ways. This sequence is a breathlessly unforgettable scene, beautifully shot, perfectly soundtracked, and wonderfully performed. Might be my favorite single favorite movie scene of all time. Just watch it, then watch the film. Twice. Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade A father-son team up to fight Nazis from stealing history doesn't, on paper, sound that fun of an adventure picture. Did I mention the dad was James Bond and the son is Han Solo? Count me in. - me, seven years old, probably. My Neighbor Totoro Totoro, which I've come to learn is an enduring classic from master storyteller Hayao Miyzazki, but as a kid, this was just a movie at my grandma's house she thought we'd like. She was right: the whimsy, the adventure, the mysteries of the camphora tree's forest. If you ask nicely next time you see him, my brother might do his little dance to the opening credits theme song. School of Rock My parents got me this movie (maybe our 4th DVD) when I finished middle school. At the time of my eighth grade graduation I didn't know I wanted to be a teacher yet, but I did love rock and roll, and Jack Black's high energy physical comedy was right up my alley. An apt gift then, and one that keeps giving years later. No Reservations Aaron Eckhart's chin, and the rest of him, play a culinary genius of a chef; smarmy, witty, handsome. Everything I wanted to be in high school, minus the chef part (mostly - though who doesn't love cooking!?). The Departed There's a lot of actors in this movie, but they're all playing - essentially - the same character: the spirit of Marty Scorsese's Boston. The script is Sorkin, with a potty mouth, and if my college mates are together long enough, you'll hear this bit pop up as reliably as the sun rising the next morning. Armageddon Scene, Hollywood pitch room. Empty plastic baggies and cellophane coffee cups litter the floor, a half-eaten pizza sits in a corner near some comic books and an Etch-a-sketch. Two writers, awake, among a sea of sleeping interns, writers, and an executive. Writer 1: "how many times do we have to tell them, there's already an asteroid picture coming out this year, and months before ours?" Writer 2: "and its a drama, not the same tone, how can you release an action-comedy-disaster-thriller a few months after Tea Leone's asteroid picture - there's probably like opera music or some shit playing when the rock hits the planet" W1: "how much do you want to bet they don't even fixate on fifteen minutes of various world cities exploding after the deep impact [the last two words are said with extreme dismay and sarcasm, a mocking tone]?" W2: "those assholes." [a silence] W1: "wait, what's old man Bruckheimer's budget?" W2: [laughing] W1: "I bet we could get Bruce Willis" W2: "he's a hillbilly type, not an astronaut hero type" [a silence] W2: "holy SHIT what if that's the point? let those nerds over at Paramount have their little drama, we're going to put hillbillies in outer space, we've got Michael F**king Bay" W1: "yes! they're, uh, oil drillers, and uh, old Bruce has a smokeshow of a daughter. And that daughter has a crush on his youngest driller, how about, wait can we get Matt Damon?" W2: "no, Damon is out, but the other one, the dumb one?" W1: "BEN AFFLECK" W2: "she's crushing on Ben Affleck!" [a silence] W1: "wait this is a family drama, not a disaster picture. Connect the dots for me" W2: "they're deep sea drillers, but also cowboys, we can get Steve Buscemi in there too, some other dudes, and NASA will discover an asteroid, maybe uh, Bill Bob Thorton, he's got that southern accent, he can be like the dog whisperer for these redneck dumbasses, he'll cajole them into space" W1: "what do they do in space?" W2: "do some more of that blow if you can't keep up - the OBVIOUSLY are going to drill into the core of the asteroid and blow the MF out of the sky" W1: "holy shit." [one final silence] W1: "wait a second, didn't we get Areosmith for an original song?" W2: "yeah, they said they'd write like a ballad or a love theme or something - maybe that could be the song for Ben Affleck and whoever plays Bruce Willis's smokeshow daughter." W1: "are you thinking what I'm thinking?" [Writer 2 was. Steven Tyler, of Areosmith, wrote the love theme for Liv Tyler and Ben Affleck to make out to in Armageddon, a movie that features the line "what's he doing with a gun in outer space" and a sex scene in which animal crackers figures prominently] Please just watch this movie if you haven't seen it, it is perhaps the biggest, dumbest, most perfect summer blockbuster in the history of movies. No Country for Old Men Tell me a better film adaption of a book and I'll go for ten minutes in the ring one on one with Javier Bardem's horrifying villain. Independence Day / Top Gun Every Forth of July for at least the last 10 years I've done a double-feature of these two movies, which, together make up 29 & 30 on this list. While I know objectively both of these are different, unique stories, they're also both American-exceptionalism military porn featuring abstract foes: the Cold War era specter of the U.S.S.R. (I think, who knows its a dumb summer blockbuster) and ALIENS. Both feature a real maverick of a pilot (Will Smith: "I like to make an entrance") and a disregard for authority (Tom Cruise: "Permission for a fly by" tower: "nope" Tom Cruise: "whatever dawg here we come!") all wrapped up in the same tale: the humanity, specifically of Americans, can outwit, outfox, and outf**k our foes, our competition, and be kings of the sky, or in ID's case, all of space. They're loud, silly, humane, cornball action flicks that absolutely smack of cold beer, hot days, popcorn and hot dogs, and those my friends, are the kinds of feelings I want to be having every July. *** Look at that, I only cheated the list one time with my holiday double-feature. Brb, got some movies to go watch! Oh, my bad, I left one off: 1996 Cinema Masterpiece Twister I've spent a lot of words on the crowing achievement of American popular culture's triumphant film masterpiece Twister, so in lieu of replicating a million talking points anybody reading this blog has already heard at least a dozen times, I'll humbly share 30 of my favorite things about and/or from the movie, in a non-exhaustive, non-hierarchical list:
*part of why this list is so sparse is because I have one eye on the movie while I'm typing this. This was a weird year, that despite its many, many, many disappointments, ended up producing a lot of great music. Or maybe this weird year gave us more time to enjoy more music? Hard to say. Hard to say, too, how the halted concert and touring industry impacted blockbuster releases like Lady Gaga’s “Chromatica” or The Weeknd’s “After Hours” (which rips, by the way, that lead single was never not playing in my apartment the month it came out) and smaller acts (and venues, for goodness sakes) alike. I will say this: for circumstance or happenstance I found myself digging way more into acts of a smaller caliber than I typically would, and I think that made for a better year of music. I want to specifically shout out Bandcamp Friday as a great vehicle for helping artists make a lil extra cash, and for amplifying artists who might not have broken out as large without the intentional signal boost.
Another thing unique to this year, for me and music, was how seasonal all of these releases ended up being. When I went back through the calendar, I was shocked at how memory holed some albums that, back in March say, I would have taken a bullet for. The excellent and quiet “Local Honey,” Brian Fallon’s full turn to singer songwriter & third solo effort, was everything when frost still touched the tops of the grass in my very small world. I’d forgotten it came out this year until this morning. Jason Isbell’s excellent dad rock “Reunions” which, coincidently came out right before I became a (pet) parent this summer was probably the only thing I listened to in June. This is all to say, almost none of these albums made it through the whole year as constant listens. I don’t think this is an indictment on these albums, which are, in their own rights, some of the best pieces of music released in this goddamn awful year. One of the few perks of this goddamn year, though, was how easy it was to make time for music from years past that I’d missed (I got into Steely Dan this year, for example) or the money saved from only needing to drive my car approximately 9 times made more room in the budget for record collecting, and the obsessive listens that come with that (as of writing I’ve got every White Stripes vinyl release and variants that Third Man’s put out since opening doors in Nashville, 2009). This was a year where, as much as I explored new shit, was listening to bands, tediously consuming their discographies, really digging in. I obsessed as much as I explored, maybe more. As an aside, I also got heavy into audiobooks and podcasts as an easier-to-pace-with companion to training for the multiple half-marathons I ran this year. Since my listening habits changed along with everything else this year, I figure I’m allowed to change the format of my own year end album list, which, since time is a meaningless commodity, I’ll overstuff with #content. Unique to my list this year is the addition of three new categories: 5 Favorite Vinyl Buys, 5 Favorite Live &/or Reissues, 20 Unranked Favorite Albums, and of course, my Top 10 Albums of 2020. I’m going to Punctuate the 20 Unranked List with the top 5s to add narrative tension, if you just want to know where “Punisher” by Phoebe Bridgers ranks on my top ten, like every other credible indie-adjacent year end list, scroll down. 20 Favorite – but Unranked! – Albums of 2020 This first batch are all alumni of top ten lists in years pasts, go figure: Microphones in 2020 – The Microphones “Microphones in 2020” maintains the confessional, stream-of-consciousness Mount Eerie & Phil Elverum fans are used to, reaching back into the lo-fi roots of his previous recoding name, this song length album acts as a state of the union for music, the world, for Elverum, all set in the pastoral scenes his music paints so beautifully. Refreshingly light, considering his more recent works, “Microphones in 2020” is heavy by virtue of the gorgeous physical object the LP is: a double-gatefold, full of art, poetry, and essays Elverum found in his sock drawer is a great companion to the 40 minute song, stretched across 3 sides of vinyl. Dedicated Side B – Carly Rae Jepsen Carly Rae Jepsen’s B-Sides are better than most pop singers’ A-Sides, and while Side B’s songs were rightly left off of last year’s impossibly good “Dedicated”, these songs put Jepsen into more sonically interesting and genre-bending occasions that even casual fans will savor. “Window” is the killer track: https://youtu.be/z90WurQZMNo Letter to You – Bruce Springsteen Every review for “Letter to You” goes on and on about how it’s the most vital and exciting music from Springsteen in years, if not decades. I’ll admit, The Boss’s powers are much more clear when he’s playing front & center and as band leader. Recorded live in studio with The E Street Band, there’s such a tremendous unity to these songs, timeless, brawny rockers in a year when we couldn’t head into the stadiums to do rock-god-revery. No worries, “Letter to You”’s got anthems: 2 minutes shy of an hour of anthems. I don’t know, I might have just been on a Springsteen tear this year – one of the many, many audio books I took out with me on runs was his memoir – an expansive companion to the Netflix presentation of his Broadway stint as a storyteller and personal historian. I loved that book, loved Springsteen’s voice warbling through his own tale, loved the frantic searches on YouTube for shitty crowd shoot footage of gigs and songs he’d refer too off hand. But what I love more is not the man himself in the spotlight, but the Boss, and the people he is ostensibly the boss of: the E Street Band. Listen to that title track and tell me I’m wrong. Local Honey – Brian Fallon For Brian Fallon’s third solo album, he wanted to scale back: the stories are less anthemic, more autobiographical, and all written on a piano and performed, so sparingly, on Fallon’s acoustic guitar. If you show up to “Local Honey” wanting Gaslight Anthem, or even yearning for some of the more rootsy rock tunes of Fallon’s previous solo LPs, you’ll be disappointed. But as an all too brief showcase of songcraft, it is clear Fallon is becoming a tremendous talent. “21 Days” is the slow jam of the year: https://youtu.be/wVBJqt6elVM Bridge to Quiet – Animal Collective I’ve been a fan of Animal Collective for a little over ten years now, and in the fervent fan community there is much to do about something we call “demoitis” where fans are given more time with bootlegs of live renditions going through the road-tested workshop for future studio songs. The story goes, you spend a year with the prehistoric version of a jam like “Guys Eyes” and the studio version misses the colossal highs a summer tour’s worth of live improvisations on the track sets. I say this to say that late in 2019 Animal Collective debuted some of the most promising material they’ve ever played live, and then the pandemic interrupted their studio plans. “Bridge to Quiet” is NOT those road-tested. Embracing the constraints of recording safely this year, “Bridge to Quiet” is a small 5 song moment (one of which is a tedious instrumental) stretched across 30 minutes. Released exclusively to Bandcamp, the album is a low-stakes affair, and while “Piggy Knows” will surely become an all-time classic, “Bridge to Quiet” never extends itself beyond an offering to fans, while we wait for the proper studio sessions to capture the magic (or not!) of those songs from late 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuYKDaxaxyw&ab_channel=AnimalCollective 5 Favorite Live &/or Reissues of 2020 Speaking of those goofballs in Animal Collective, I gotta cheat a bit for this first one: 2019 Fall Tour Bootlegs from Meow Wolf, Big Sur, and Desert Daze Fest – Animal Collective It’s a good problem to have when the new songs you’re demoing at live shows are so good they make the studio album you put out a few months later forgettable. About 20 new songs, fit in great harmony with live AnCo staples, these bootlegs have been essential listening. Some of the greatest live music I didn’t get to see before the pandemic. “A Dream in the Dark: Two Decades of Okkervil River Live” – Okkervil River Embracing the many line-ups, sounds, and styles of Will Sheff’s long-running Okkervil River project, “A Dream in the Dark” complies the best of River’s year-long anthology of live releases. Cased in a beautiful book-spine triple gatefold, the six sides of vinyl pair nicely with Sheff’s liner notes, photos of the band over the years, and capture some of the best of his substantial catalogue of songs. “All That You Can’t Leave Behind (20th Anniversary Expanded Edition) – U2 Bono is an arduous dude, no doubt about it. “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” isn’t U2’s best album, nor their most ambitious, but damnit if it isn’t the most U2. Tagging on a disc of remixes, a disc of (mostly) awesome b sides, and a live album from U2’s huge tour, you get some of U2’s biggest songs in the biggest way possible. Does it make up for my being 10 years old, and unable to go see that arena tour? No, but can I close my eyes when “Beautiful Day” is blowing the roof off of the venue and pretend? You betcha. “Everything Will Change” – The Postal Service You wouldn’t think The Postal Service is a band that needs a live album treatment, and even if that were true, I’d still be about this release: I was at the Berkely, CA tour date, which makes this extra, extra special. I think though, even if I weren’t at the you-gotta-be-there reunion tour back in 2013, Ben Gibbard, Jimmy Tamborello, and Jenny Lewis bring great depth and texture to the computer bleeps and bloops of “Give Up”’s tracks. Toss in some covers, and Gibbard’s voice way higher in the live mix, and you got yourself a pretty spectacular live record. “De Stijl XX” – The White Stripes No surprise here: the meticulously crafted 20th anniversary celebration of The White Stripes’ tremendous second album culled from Ben Blackwell and Jack White’s respective vaults to present an essential collection of photographs, lyrics sheets, b-sides, alternative takes, and an entire double-live album documenting The White Stripes one inch away from their explosion into the mainstream with “White Blood Cells”. This is to say, the prime before their prime. Great, great, great shit. 20 Favorite – but Unranked! – Albums of 2020… continued! Want some gentle folk, stunning songcraft, and high-quality easy listening? “Gold Record” – Bill Callahan Killer track: “The Mackenzines” https://youtu.be/hMMEUgts6i0 “9 Songs About Love” – J.E. Sunde Part of that untouchable talent pool in Western Wisconsin. Something in the water in that part of the Midwest! “The Third Gleam” – The Avett Brothers Their best music and songwriting since “I & Love & You”. I can’t say killer track, for reasons that will make sense when you listen to: “I Should Have Spent the Day With My Family” https://youtu.be/z69P7RDim88 How about some rap music? “RTJ4” – Run the Jewels You know this is the only year-end list that doesn’t have this record in the top ten, and maybe if their opening slot (and the whole shebang) for Rage Against the Machine’s reunion tour didn’t get canceled and I got to experience these songs in a bigger context than my headphones, things would be different. At this point, we get Run the Jewels: their sound is big, their bars are foul, and they’re Dangerous with a capital D lyricist. Sometimes corny, sometimes poignant, all the time good for doing cardio exercise. “A Written Testimony” – Jay Electronica Long awaited and well received. In early March when Electronica’s album dropped it seemed like this was going to be a big year. Half right? Killer track: “Shiny Suit Theory” https://youtu.be/k-NkmUPfIw4 “Alfredo” – Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist Decidedly not as good as 2019’s “Bandana”, Gibbs and Alchemist team up for an extremely solid rap album. Gibbs’s acrobatic flows sound so at home on Alchemist’s warm production, a rewarding listen for sure. Killer track: “Baby $hit” https://youtu.be/KaFCp0huJ3w “Song Machine, Season One” – Gorillaz The first exciting collection of songs from this band in a decade fully embraces the band’s ethos as not-a-band and opts for a “season” of music, songs built around collaborations with a wide range of genre artists that makes for a mixed, playlist of songs that are bound by their non-cohesion in an exciting and refreshing way. Find a feature on a track you like and start there. “Pray for Paris” – Westside Gunn Shout out to Walt for putting me on to Westside Gunn, ran a lot of miles to this record. 5 Favorite Vinyl Buys of 2020 “The Age of Adz” – Sufjan Stevens “The Age of Adz” was in the same Amazon package my copy of Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” arrived at my college apartment in and frankly, got a bum wrap. The bars on “Monster” were far more appealing to my ear when I was 20 than the blips and bloops and the strange, unfamiliar humanity of Sufjan’s magnum opus. In the wave of press for “The Ascension”, comparisons between the new record and “Adz” were both frequent, and apt. “Ascension” revisited themes and sonic palettes similar to its ten-year-old precursor. After being floored by Sufjan’s new record, I had to give “Adz” a second shake, and in its sprawling, double-gatefold glory, the long sweeping set pieces and complex movements of music demands the album be consumed as a whole, taking only pause to flip from sides a to b and then c to do. “Adz” might have spent more time on my turntable than “Ascension” and, afforded more free time than usual, I more than made up for lost time with “Adz”’s 20 minute closing track “Impossible Soul.” You should too. The Triple Decker Record – The Dead Weather There are a lot of holy grails and great white buffalos in Jack White’s world of record collecting, but none are more sought after – at least not from the Nashville 2009 and onwards era of Third Man Records – than The Dead Weather’s impossibly stupid, frightfully cool, and profoundly limited release of their 12” single “Blue Blood Blues” which has nested inside in a 7” single featuring two unreleased songs. To hear the unreleased tracks (one of which I’ve heard is on their 2015 album “Dodge & Burn”) you have to cut into the 12” and break out the 7” single. I imagine I’ll spend much longer toiling over opening that up than I spent trying to find a copy at the right price. Update: days after writing this paragraph, I did crack it open, and I’m so, so, so glad I did. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ3c3WZ-3UU&ab_channel=OfficialTMR “The Most Lamentable Tragedy” – Titus Andronicus If there’s any band you can trust to cut a solid hour plus punk rock opera it’s the hard workers in Titus Andronicus. Since the album’s 2015 release I’ve wanted to experience the set piece in one sitting on LP, but the triple feature always felt a little too steep. I figured this would be a good record to buy on one of the first Bandcamp Fridays. Forget how good the songs are, and how good the whole concept album is, this has to be one of the coolest, most difficult-to-listen-to sets of LPs I’ve got. The sequence of the records is LP 1, side A, LP 3 side A, LP 1 side B, LP 2 A&B, and LP 3 side B. LP 3 spins at 45, the others at 33. Crazy shit. Thought my iTunes copy had been out of order the first time I listened straight through. Good times! “Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV: Volume 2: No World For Tomorrow” – Coheed & Cambria Coheed had big plans for this year: their own music festival cruise, the 4th chapter of the album spanning Neverender tours behind one of my favorite of their albums, and, the presumptive reissue of their most sought after vinyl record. Having scrapped the first two, this fall, the band elected to clear out the storage unit and release the “Gunslinger” Variant of their 2007 album out into the world – lucky for me, now when the tour does reschedule I won’t have to cradle it for dear life in a mosh pit, I guess – and boy is it beautiful. Three sides and an etching in a full-art double gatefold, adorned with the comic book style imagery from the science fiction story Coheed & Cambria’s concept albums, comics, and novels tell. The vinyl itself is a translucent gold with brown, orange, red, and black whisps of smoke. This thing looks as good as it sounds, I only wish I hadn’t sprung for the original pressing months earlier! “14:59” – Sugar Ray No shame in my game. This got me through the cold extended winter into April’s earliest true Spring days. You haven’t heard “Every Morning” until you’ve heard it with the warm crackle of a vinyl record. 20 Favorite – but Unranked! – Albums of 2020… continued! How about some vibes? “Apple” – A.G. Cook Imagine the weirder, more digital, riskier version of Sufjan Stevens (who I bet we hear from one more time on this list wink wink). That’s A.G. Cook. Killer track: “Superstar” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5alfOXbhHF0 “All Things Being Equal” – Sonic Boom This would have been an extremely good album for all the road trips that got canceled this year. Still, Spaceman 3 alumni and frequent Panda Bear collaborator Sonic Boom brings all of outer space right into your ear holes, one slick track at a time. Slick track: “Just Imagine” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFsppY8r1_4 “Magic Oneohtrix Point Never” – Oneohtrix Point Never A love letter to FM radio. Much more comfortable than Oneohtrix’s recent soundtrack work for “Uncut Gems”. The whole thing, front to back, is best listened in a chair out in a warm breeze, or, you guessed it, on a long drive, if you can manage one. “Imploding the Mirage” – The Killers The nice thing about The Killers’ 6th studio album manages to skyrocket over the colossally low expectations. Does it quite recapture the massive “Hot Fuss”? Of course not. But it gets closer than they have since “Sam’s Town”. Killer track: “Caution” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrpBgN_iUnA Punk? Emo? “Ground Aswim” – Sinai Vessel Tapping into the same vein the earliest Death Cab for Cutie does, Sinai Vessel manages to hit some current-sounding emo that’s dusted with nostalgia. The songwriting is great, the production is crisp, and the tunes are awesome. But don’t take it from me, Sinai Vessel’s creative mind hopped on twitter a few months ago to say that his own album was ‘slept on.’ Kinda funny, but also kinda true. Don’t sleep! “Ultra Mono” – IDLES The lads in IDLES are good sports, especially after spending the “Ultra Mono” release cycle getting dunked on by cynics and critics. Are they a little corny in their messaging? Sure, but is their messaging good & pure? Yes, and probably. And anyway, on riffs alone, “Ultra Mono” is all killer and no filler, regardless of how you feel about their politics, the tunes go hard. Killer track: “Grounds” https://youtu.be/mRkUt9VnaR0 “Melee” – Dogleg Quick facts: the album is loosely based on the video game Super Smash Bros Melee, which members of the band are supposedly whizs at; Dogleg is from Metro Detroit; they have an early EP about Star Wars. IF that’s not enticing to you, how about this: a harder-edged Weezer with riffs as classic and memorable as anything you’ve heard. Just a good ass loud and fast punk record. Killer track: “Kawasaki Backflip” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjjygwmqG9M&ab_channel=TripleCrownRecords Top 10 Albums of 2020 10. “Punisher” – Phoebe Bridgers It was a cold and damp day, the first time I listened to the second album from critically acclaimed and culturally beloved social media & indie music sensation Phoebe Bridgers. I’d first heard her music along with Bright Eyes (who, shit, that album they dropped this year was such a let down and I’m sorry to take space away from Phoebe to say that but goddamn…) in Better Oblivion Community Center and thought her voice was really interesting, and assumed the musical direction of that band was more Connor Oberst’s doing. So here I am, on a long run that would end way, way early, trying out this beloved album by this lauded artist genuinely eager to fall for the colossal hype. I was already in a bad mood, stressed, or nervous, or anxious about some laundry list of troubles, and it was cold, and damp. Like on all my runs, it takes about a song and a half to get into the huffin’ rhythm where I stop focusing on my labored breathing and get into the mystical headspace of whatever I’m listening to. Luckily, “Punisher”’s opening instrumental track chewed that up so I could be fully astonished by “Garden Song”’s churning and soft guitars, and Bridger’s audacious lyrics. “And when I grow up, I’m gonna look up / from my phone and see my life” and holy shit after a year of our lives happening on those screens hits different. Thank god for “Kyoto”;s arena-ready size, man, that would have been a great song at Bridgers’ canceled tour dates opening for The 1975. The album goes on, delicious lyrics, light hearted but still complex arrangements and tuneful songs. The hype around “Punisher” is well, well, placed. In fact, the album’s only weakness (and #10 spot) is that the first time I listened to it was last week. I imagine keeping warm with “Punisher” well into next year. It is wonderful and unique and sad. But, back to “Garden Song” where Bridgers sings “No, I’m not afraid of hard work / I get everything I want / I have everything I want” all I could do was stop running and start walking slowly back to my apartment. 9. “Reunions” – Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit If the year ended in July “Reunions” would have not only been my album of the year but I would have sworn Jason Isbell was the best working musician. I cannot overstate how much I loved, and listened to this record after it’s May release. Like Bridgers, though, the calendar conspires against “Reunion”’s cool balance of dad-rock and folk-country tunes. “Be Afraid” is the only country-rock song about politics that doesn’t suck ass, and “What’ve I Done to Help” is just a stone-cold guitar song in league with Sturgil Simpson’s “SOUND & FURY”. One of the real gems on the album is the astonishing “It Gets Easier” which gives a raw first-person perspective on Isbell’s sobriety. “It gets easier / but it never gets easier” might read a little cliché, but with the 400 Unit’s musical flourishes and Isbell’s delivery solidify the song as honest and memorable. Two of my favorite music critics both wrote about “Letting You Go” and “Dreamsicle”’s heartbreaking father-daughter storytelling, the latter a sad-sap sticky fiction, the former a gorgeous ode to parenting. I say with zero irony and total self-awareness how ridiculous it was that on the drive to Fort Wayne, Indiana, to pick up our eight-week old puppy Desi from the breeder, that I listened to “Letting You Go” fifty times in a row and wept the entire way back to Southfield. “Reunions” guided me home steadily, and while I was the slowest car on the interstate, I had The 400 Unit’s gentle urging that we’d be taking the dog home to a good home. And that’s a dog daughter, god willing the next few years are good to Rachel & I I’ll pull this one off the shelf and discover these songs in a whole new way. Speaking of dogs … 8. “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” – Fiona Apple Revisiting this album for this writing was such a joy. I’d wondered if maybe “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” massive moment might have burned too bright in April, after all, this was a year where a perfect 10 score on Pitchfork couldn’t hold too much media attention. Cynically, I wondered if the album – its early release narrative, Apple’s slow (read: perfect) work ethic, its topicality, the height of quarantine, round one – would hold eight months later. I knew “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” was destined for year end list ubiquity, but I wondered if it would be one of those albums that crushed lists and fell into obscurity. The egg fell on my face about thirty seconds into album opener “I Want You to Love Me”. Yes, “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is receiving hyperbolic, nearly fanatical praise. Yes, I was wrong. Yes, it deserves it. One thing I’d forgotten is how weird “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is. Distanced from its zeitgeist moment of flash-in-the-pan perfection you get to really enjoy how strange Apple’s orchestrations are: we know percussion includes kitchen appliances recorded at home, we know Apple’s dogs make a few crucial features that a lesser artist might have sanitized. Me and the dog were on a walk when I popped “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” on, and, for a moment the album wasn’t a product of its enormous moment, and instead just something really catchy and fun and smart that I was listening to, and readers, I hope for you to enjoy Fiona Apple’s tremendous album without the specter of its stakes. Those stakes are earned, but – at least for me – I forgot that beneath at all were 13 incredible songs. 7. “Live Forever” – Bartees Strange I read a lot about Bartees Strange this year, and on the one hand, that’s super annoying, because I don’t have anything new or interesting to say about “Live Forever”. It does play with a lot of different genres, there are big pop songs, big rock songs (talking about you “Stone Meadows” – that song could obliterate an arena venue), RnB, emo. Strange wears many hats, extremely well, and “Live Forever” is a rewarding listen each time through. On the other hand, Bartees Strange seems like an extremely genuine guy deserving of the praise being heaped upon him and his work. So, don’t listen to me, don’t listen to the experts. Go listen to Bartees Strange. 6. “Teenage Halloween” – Teenage Halloween I love, love, love, love, love Teenage Halloween’s self-titled. Its such a good record. The killer track is all of them, and you just have to go listen to it. Also peep the band’s twitter feed for a chance to buy their homemade salsa. I can’t say enough good about Teenage Halloween, their songs rip, they are a force of good in an otherwise evil world, and you gotta go listen to their album right now. 5. “Shamir” – Shamir Shamir’s self-titled album is 28 minutes long, but if it were seventeen hours, you’d still like it. Since 2015’s major label debut “Ratchet”, Shamir has been chasing his sound and his voice. Going indie after dropping the label over creative differences, Shamir moved away from the disco dance pop into guitar rock and lo-fi music, and while the many releases since 2015 have made following Shamir’s work worthwhile, this self-titled album finally captures the best of what Shamir’s unique voice and keen ear for pop music are capable of. Its clear in the songs how happy with these songs Shamir is, and that’s an infectious thing for a listener. In “Diet”, for example, boasts the great songwriting conceit that culminates with the chorus’s “maybe taste his blood / because I always want to try it / but I won’t let it become part of my diet” which is a great mid-career Death Cab for Cutie exhibition of gross body metaphors for a romance, but then also squeezes in kind of a banging guitar solo. That’s fun! Or how about “Running” which could be a Carly Rae Jepsen song with its big bass line and also gives a lyrical nod to R.E.M. Like Bartees Strange, Shamir is operating between different genres and showcasing different influences, and I can’t help but wonder if firm lines between genre and influence continue to become less important. Something something in the era of digital streaming and algorithm playlists…. In its brevity, “Shamir” is a quick listen, and the album opener “On My Own” really nicely foreshadows the different sonic palettes and themes Shamir explores, so if, like me, you listen to this album a few times each time you listen to it, “On My Own” acts like the legend to a map, a sort of safe, home base for the rest of the tracks. In years, this song will be recognized in the pantheon of all-time stone-cold classic break up songs that sound happy, and I think that’s a tremendous accolade in of itself. 4. “The Ascension” – Sufjan Stevens Like I wrote earlier, “The Ascension” is not really a continuation in the soundtrack work Sufjan Stevens has been doing recently, nor is it in the same vein as “Carrie & Lowell”. “Ascension” picks up where “The Age of Adz” left off ten years ago, expanding on the sprawling blips and bloops and the strange, unfamiliar tones of those songs. “Ascension” goes as far as to borrow the massive closing track, albeit a few minutes shorter than “Adz”’s unbelievable “Impossible Soul.” To wit: if you cut out side D of this record, “The Ascension” would only lose two of its 15 songs and would be under an hour. While the big finish, “America” doesn’t quite meet the same highs of “Impossible Soul”, its scope is impressive. The title track, though, does in five minutes what “America” can’t do in twelve: wrap up the themes and sounds of the rest of the record laid bare: “when I am dead and the light leaves my breast / nothing to be told nothing to confess / let the record show what I couldn’t quite confess / for by living for myself, I was living for unrest”. Even without the real-world context of Stevens’ publicly renouncing his Christian faith, it is clear in the lyrics the speaker is going through a tremendous change of spirit. Later, he sings “and to everything, there is no meaning / a season of pain of hopelessness”, which by the way is a hell of thing to say in a song in 2020, “I shouldn’t have looked for revelation / I should have resigned myself to this / I thought I could change the world around me” isolates the speaker in their own self-reliance, which, perhaps lonely, perhaps isolated, activates this whole new power within. After the song’s long and slow build culminates in a small, but emotionally potent, conclusion, Sufjan practically whispers, “what now?” Its almost too bad this beautiful confessional answers its own question by evoking the clumsiness of “America”’s neo-Whitman, “don’t do to me what you did to America” because it is the interiority of the album that makes “The Ascension” so grand to me: the largess of introspection. Maybe I rigged the record to play in favor, after all, the first time I listened to it in a single sitting was not while sitting at all and instead doing a 20 mile run on Detroit’s gorgeous Belle Isle on a cool morning. I had a lot of time to ponder myself during that run. I feel like I’m making the record sound too serious. It isn’t. “Video Games”, for example, it’s a straight up dance track (at least as close to a dance track Sufjan Stevens can make). “Landslide” is a sexy slow jam with some impressive guitar work, “Death Star” teases out some late-album energy, “Sugar” ends the album proper (I’m calling side d a sort of encore) as good as any album closer. But for me, “The Ascension”’s secret weapon, the song that kept me coming back, is “Die Happy.” “Die Happy” is almost six minutes long, it has one lyric – “I wanna die happy” – and the song repeats it twenty-one times to the point where the words have no meaning. If “to everything, there is no meaning / a season of pain and hopelessness” felt bleak when you read it earlier, the utter instance of “Die Happy” still echoing from earlier in the album when you encounter the title track in sequence sounds a lot different, and when Stevens asks “what now?” at the end of that very same song, we have our answer. 3. “Shore” – Fleet Foxes* The nice thing about being quarantined with my wife in a very small apartment is that I didn’t (literally) have enough room to pick up any bad habits this year save for one: I joined reddit. This was mostly to talk about Jack White records with the worst kind of people on the internet (other Jack White fans) and to talk about Star Wars with the worst kind of people on the internet (other Star Wars fans). With this in mind, I’ll talk about “Shore” as I remember it, as opposed to how it was: One day, I was sad (hah, this year!) and I thought, man, I wish Fleet Foxes would drop another LP, I wonder what they have going on. I jumped onto the Fleet Foxes reddit page and posted, “hey, what’s going on with new music and the Fleet Foxes”. The first ten comments called me Hitler for calling Robin Pecknold’s band “The Fleet Foxes” and the 11th encouraged me to check out new music Pecknold was debuting on his Instagram page. The demos and snippets were incredible and made my thirst for new Fleet Foxes grow. Then, on a Monday, Pecknold announced a new album, “Shore.” On Wednesday – the autumnal equinox of all days - Fleet Foxes released their fourth album, “Shore.” Having done this free write, I checked my history: On Sunday, September 20th, posters seemingly advertising the new album were spotted in Paris. On Monday, September 21th, the album was officially announced, and I was wrong, it was Tuesday the 22st that “Shore” dropped. Not quite the out-of-nowhere surprise of Beyonce’s “Beyonce”, “Shore” still astonished in its seemingly out-of-nowhere release. I was in the car and had to pull over to order the vinyl variant, which doesn’t ship until late February 2021, so maybe “Shore” will pop up on my year’s end list next year, god willing we all make it that long. It goes without saying it is a monument to Pecknold’s talent that he himself recorded many of the parts himself, and really challenges the notion of what a “band” is. Coming down from the arduousness of “Crack Up”’s dense orchestration, academic lyrics, and (at least for the band) massive world tour, the relative ease and accessibility of “Shore” is, and especially was this year, a welcomed casual affair. I promise that’s not a slight. Fleet Foxes sound best to me when Fleet Foxes are effortless and whimsical. Gone are the 10+ minute epics of “Crack Up” or “Helplessness Blues”. Instead, more grounded and tuneful moments like “Sunblind” or “Jara” paint their pastoral and hang it up; “Can I Believe You” hits that pre-encore set ender creschedo and bows out – not without an all-time classic Pecknold howl, the titular question drawn out to breaking point “caaaan I beeeeeEEEEELLLIIIIIIEEEEVVVEEEEE yooouuuUUUUU.” Hell yes we can. *Alternative review: listen to “Wading in Waist-High Water” and “Sunblind” and (1) try not to smile real huge and (2) convince yourself this isn’t some really special music. 2. “Dear Life” – Brendan Benson It’s been 14 years since The Raconteurs entered into the orbit around Jack White, the self-proclaimed Seventh Sun (get it?). “Steady, As She Goes” is as strong an argument that White’s voice isn’t the only worthy of a spotlight on a tune he’s playing guitar on. The ‘other’ voice, of course, is another sacred son of the garage rock scene in Detroit, and White’s elder. I point this out, not to draw comparisons between Benson & White’s rags-to-riches stories (although Benson got the major label accolades years before The White Stripes) nor to hitch myself to Benson’s wagon solely on the strength of his buddiness with White (although I’d be lyin’ if I said that didn’t get me to listen) and definitely not to compare them musically (Benson has been on a singer-songwriter trajectory way, way longer). No, I mention this to say that I’d known something for nearly a decade and a half that I only discovered, really, this spring: Brendan Benson fuckin’ rips. He’s a tremendous songwriter, his characters live through fictions that feel genuine, real, lived in the way the best parts of the Star Wars universe do. In “Dear Life” he tells parallel stories about a veteran struggling to return to civilian life and the prisoner a loveless marriage, and while these pastiches nod towards these characters as the punchline in their sad stories, instead, Benson explores their “hangin’ on to dear life” with empathy, admiration for their strength to go on. He loves the people he’s singing about. In “Baby’s Eyes”, another heartbreak song, instead of fixating on Baby’s troubles, he sings “I always see the shine in Baby’s eyes.” Benson doubles down, “here I am with no disguise / I see the best in me shine through / in Baby’s eyes.” His affection is infectious. And what’s more, Benson wrote, recorded, and performed all the parts himself – a skill further displayed during his frequent 4:20 solo performances live on Instagram that included some really cool loops and studio magic to make this one guy sound like a huge, whole band. Musically, “Dear Life” sounds like what you’d expect if you’re as half-assed a Brendan Benson fan as I’ve been: there’s some big Raconteurs-esque guitar songs, but shades of punk (“Freak Out”), R&B, maybe a little disco (“Good to Be Alive” – that might be the incredible music video projecting), bar rock (“I Can if You Want Me To”), shit, there’s even a riff on whatever genre you want to call Broken Bells – alternative/indie/techno? – in the great album closer “Who’s Gonna Love You?” I’d wanted to try to lock onto a killer track, or even an essential run of 3-4 tracks, but like I said, Benson fuckin’ rips. The album is so good I really can’t narrow it down – “Half a Boy (Half a Man)” which sadly isn’t a sequel to Britney Spears’s “Not a Girl (Not Yet a Woman)” is an arena-ready rocker, but it doesn’t top the Donovan riffing acoustic sing-a-long “I Quit” and it absolutely can’t touch the bubblegum pop dad-rock ode to Benson’s wife and children. He sings: “ever since your birth / its been heaven on earth / and you’re perfect in my eye / I’ve got two perfect beautiful babies / and one hell of a good lookin’ wife / got twice the love and half the money / and I feel like the richest man alive.” Especially after Benson’s candid recounting of his recent sobriety during The Raconteurs’ 2019 tour cycle, it is such a joy to hear this kind of a sweet clap-a-long rocker. Having only gotten this album on vinyl, it might skew the play count a bit, but I 100% listened to this bright pink LP more than any other record I got this year. This guy loves, and that’s impossible not to love; this guy’s rich, and in “Dear Life” Brendan Benson shares those riches with us. 1. “Lament” – Touché Amoré FROM PEAKS OF BLUE – COME HEROINE a guy shrieks, a guitar winds up for a fraction of a second, drums explode, quickly, a melodic rhythm takes shape, “Come heroine / with several suns you light the way / when each day begins …” … and so begins “Lament”, an album I knew nothing about, by Touché Amoré, a band I knew nothing about, other than that a music critic who wrote a review I hate about an album I dislike by a band I love, said these guys were the real deal. Why’d I take that recommendation seriously enough to give Touché Amoré a shot? This guy’s bread and butter were emo and hardcore bands, genres I barely listen to. Was it an issue of boredom? I’d say I’d ran out of shit to listen to, but like two thirds of the thirty albums on this list came out in the fall, so that wasn’t it. Maybe I was curious to get into [redacted critic’s] head? Maybe I wanted to think it sucked so I could dunk on him on Twitter? Maybe [redacted critic’s] intense passion for Touché Amoré sent an echo of kinship I was familiar with – they were, it seemed, this guy’s 1996 cinema masterpiece “Twister.” Its easy to love shit people love fanatically. On Friday, October 9th I went for a 31 minute and 41 second run. “Lament” is 36 minutes long, which means during mile two, which I ran a whole minute faster than mile one, I was listening to “Feign”, chugging it to the lyrics: “I say the wrong thing / at the perfect time” Touché Amoré shouted, asking me “do I die a little less often?” Or maybe it was the incredible “Reminders” with shades of accessible punk rock, its melodic chorus: “I need reminders of the love I had / I need reminders, good or bad.” I mean, shit, that’s about as good as I gets. A hard run is maybe not a good way to encounter new music, but “Lament” connected with me instantly. Prior to knowing Touché Amoré’s previous album (the also exceptional “Stage Four”) was a bitter, naked, honest recoking with lead singer Jeremy Bolm’s mother dying of cancer in 2014, the emotional veracity of Touché Amoré’s songwriting was clear: “So I lament / then I forget / So I lament / till I reset”. Man. In “Limelight” which features the silver voice of Manchester Orchestra’s Andy Hull, Bolm sings “I’m tired and I’m sore” and, that was probably towards the end of that speedy second mile, but you get the idea. I don’t want to reduce “Lament” to a time & place moment of kismet, because the record is just too good, but that run, the way the sun hung in the sky, that first listen was unlike any other experience I’ve ever had with an album. That night, haunted by the opening lines – “from peaks of blue – come heroine” – I ordered the album and waited for it arrive. Sitting down and listening to the record in one dose was as rewarding, if not a little more relaxing, than the precious first spin, and really, as I listen to it while typing this “Lament” continues to echo in ways no album has before, definitely not this year. I can’t stress this enough: I do not listen to melodic hardcore, I do not listen to post-hardcore, I do not listen to screamo, and yet, like on October 9th near the end of my run, I’m floored to a halt by the one-two punch of album closers “Deflector” (“I’m too delicate”, Bolm screams – been there man – “been a broken record / a continuous deflector”) and “A Forecast.” It’s that last track that really lets “Lament” shine: it begins with a piano, Bolm alone, speaking, not singing: “I’ve healed more than suffered.” You’re rewarded for knowing the contexts, but even without, the song’s narrative catches you up: “So here’s the record closer / still working out its intent / I’m not sure what I’m after / but it couldn’t go left unsaid” – the band comes in, big, Bolm, shouting to survive” “I’m still out in the rain / I could use a little shelter / now and then.” The song airs grievances, both personal and political (“I’ve lost more family members / not to cancer, but the GOP / What’s the difference? / I’m not for certain / they all end up dead to me” – shit!) but all given an intense earnestness that’s impossible to ignore. I ended that run pretty far from home and had to walk it off. Once “Lament” ended I thought about how good it was, pondering what was unique about this record that records like it didn’t have; I thought about how it reminded me of the first Gaslight Anthem record, “Sink or Swim,” which made me think of their last album, “Get Hurt” that was panned by [redacted critic] in 2014.. I’m not sure if this is a parable about criticism or taste or how sometimes people whose opinions on twitter you sometimes hate are sometimes extremely right or if its all just a funny coincide. I put on “Sink or Swim” and thought about how wrong [redacted critic] was about Gaslight Anthem, what an asshole [redacted critic] was but by the time I’d gotten home I’d taken his recommendation again. It was the first time I listened to “Lament” again, but it was far from the last. What was the first concert you ever saw? For me, there are three true answers. One, the musical RENT, at a touring production in Akron, Ohio. Two, Tool, with the duo Big Business, in Youngstown’s Covelli Center. That was the first time I smelled (SMELLED, not SMOKED) weed. Third, finally, are the number of basement shows I saw my friends’ bands play at, most notably FAKE BAND. At the time, I had no idea I was at “basement shows” or part of (or adjacent to) “a scene.” Pretty cool for Poland, Ohio.
Those are the true answers, and I probably wouldn’t trade them for anything, but RENT is more of a musical than a rock show (although the guitar solo in the title track still to this day rips), Tool profoundly sucks and what good is a rock show that you get back to your parents’ house before curfew anyway? My real answer to that question spawned an ongoing joke between my dad and I, who – despite being a concert guy when he was a young guy – kinda didn’t seem to understand what was clearly becoming more of a habit than an extravagance for me. The show was in Cleveland, Ohio, a cool hour from home, I believe on a school night. Dad waited up and asked how the show was, with just a pinch of bite in the ask. I said, dad, it was the best night of my life. We’d go back and forth on that q & a for the first dozen or so shows I went to, and then it sort of became an assumption. I’ve had a lot of best nights of my life since that first one. Here, lemme tell you about thirty of them:
Then The Wombats came out and played most of their debut CD, Tales of Boys, Girls, and Marsupials which was on heavy, heavy rotation at Chapters, where Eric & I worked together. I remember three things from the show: (1) it ripped so hard, (2) we had to pee so hard but couldn’t escape the crowd to go do so and (3) the guitarist from This is My Suitcase! came and moshed during “Let’s Dance to Joy Division”. Awesome night.
Still, even among the head scratching line up, there was something sublime about being with Pat, Jon, and Poop to sing along to one of my all-time favorite songs, “Lost Coastlines” with the band on stage.
What made the CWKy show so memorable though, was the phone call from one of Neil’s buddys, inviting us to go swim at the pool of the mansion he was house sitting. Only one catch, the dude said: its in Covington, Kentucky, you guys up for a road trip? We’ll be there after the show. And we were. And it was great.
While waiting for the band to set up, we ate crepes. We caught up. We watched the lead singer of the band try to get a girl’s phone number and strike out magnificently. He saw us see him. We said what’s up. He said nothing. Then he and his band played an amazing set – in front of the kitchen. Surreal trip.
No, it was definitely the Animal Collective set. I’d seen them a few times by then, and a few times sense, and never has the whole band been as dialed, in, breathing new life into old songs (“The Purple Bottle” performance jumped Feels lightyears ahead of any of their other albums as my favorite). Plus, at a festival, you get all the obligatory hits. Just a magnificent way to get wrapped up in fog and feels on a fall evening.
This was also my first visit out to see Rachel at University of Mississippi. Because I’m a bastard, I got her tickets to see a band I like for her birthday. Always the game sport, she had a great time and digs The xx. The Lyric is a great rock club with a generous balcony for short fans (shout out to Rachel!) and The xx, warming up for a studio session that would later become 2017’s I See You, played a great set of deep cuts and hits, including “Intro” which provoked a goofy “oh yay” in absolute earnest from yours truly. Then we went back to campus and saw Nelly play a show for the university students gathered in the grove. “Hot In Here”, “Country Grammar”, and friggin’ “Shake Ya Tailfeathers”. Good shit.
The drive to Chicago was soundtracked by Chance the Rapper’s fairly recent release Coloring Book (which I wrote a rapturous review of here), the sun was shining, the road was long, and the trip was sublime. You really get to know someone you love while driving their car to a place the two of you have never been. Once in the city, we walked around the Loop, ate at Al’s Italian Beef, and – finally – went to see Beyonce. Our seats were way up in the upper deck and a very sudden thunderstorm rolled in from over Lake Michigan. This, in an uncovered upper deck NFL stadium, was one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever experienced. It was like the sinking of the Titanic, I assume: people were screaming, everything was cold and wet, people were abandoning ship for drier places. Eventually the squall passed and the show could resume, and when The Queen came out, a different kind of storm shook the stadium.
On the Painting With tour the band, with assist from drummer Jeremy Hyman, was in top form, transforming cult-classic hits (“Alvin Row”, “Loch Raven”) into three-times-a-week mid-set staples and those shows had the same cool, chaotic energy of the album. But none of those shows topped the one-ff pavilion set with co-headliners Fleet Foxes. Sitting on the lawn with my buddies Neil & Hannah in the murky Maryland summer haze, ping-ponging between the frantic tunes of AnCo and the perfection-at-dusk vibes of Fleet Foxes, long returned from their early 2010s hiatus, this was an unlikely show that I’m unlikely to ever forget. Plus, got a great D.C. trip out of it!
I gotta give some props to Echo Beach – it’s a large outdoor venue that is not quite pavilion sized but bigger than your average city amphitheater, and the general admission area is, as the venue suggests, sand. Anakin Skywalker would hate it, but I gotta tell you, it was pretty rad. It was a little cool out, and it was on and off drizzling, but being on a little jutty off into Lake Erie, on a sand beach, watching Vampire Weekend’s summertime vibes and new jam band line up was a real treat, and a great way to kick off a honeymoon. Wait, no Jack White, no Coheed, no Gaslight? Come on, you guys know I had to make a special categories for those cats. Coheed & Cambria:
The trip down to Louisville, however, was much more reasonable, the venue, I’m pleased to say was unpleasantly full, as opposed to unbearably, and by the time Coheed came out on stage to rip through cuts from No World for Tomorrow and treat my virgin ears to live “The Final Cut” as an encore, I wasn’t an unseasoned and overwhelmed rookie, I was initiated, I was among the Children of the Fence.
The Gaslight Anthem:
So Matt drops me off at Cap and heads back to Otterbein. I call Trevor. Trevor does not answer. I spend probably an hour walking around Cap’s disgusting, awful, piece of shit campus trying to get a hold of him. Finally he gets at me, we meet, and we play Guitar Hero with some of his bunds. Another hour passes. I ask when we’re going to leave for the show, Trevor responds, “Oh yeah I’m not going to that, neither is my buddy, sorry.” So I’m stuck at Cap with no ride to this show and damnit, I’m going. So I start walking from Bexley to downtown Columbus, which isn’t a short walk, let alone in the mid-September heat. I hail a cab, not the last time I’ll do so tonight. I get to the venue on time because I’d left Otterbein for the show like 6 hours early and find my way down into the basement of Bernie’s Distillery. I make my way to the front. Cool, cool. I’ll admit freely I was more of a ’59 Sound Gaslight Anthem than a Sink or Swim Gaslight Anthem fan, so if I’d done my homework, Polar Bear Club’s opening set would have made much, much more sense to me, but as it didn’t, I was utterly unprepared for the chaos their brief (and in retrospect amazing) set brought, including a kick in the back of the head from a crowd surfer. At least when Gaslight Anthem came on I’d managed to keep my piece up by the front of the stage and held my own during their set. It was transformative. I don’t even know how to describe it, so I won’t try. If there’s a young band that you love and when touring happens again go see them in a bar basement, but watch for the back of your head.
The highlight of the show was Brian Fallon joining The Hold Steady for Stay Positive hit “You Can’t Make Him Love You” or maybe the highlight of the show was not dying after foolishly accepting a beer from a stranger in the crowd. Talk about midwestern hospitality! It was hot in there, I wasn’t thinking straight!
On the bill was Murder By Death (pretty good) and Conor Oberst’s revived Desaparecidos (extremely good). Once on stage though, Gaslight Anthem were in complete control, running a setlist cater made of Jon & my favorite songs. At one point Brian Fallon said something about being hungry and one song later a fan was passing a hot pretzel up to him. As if they knew, their final song was a cover of The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” and if I close my eyes really tightly I can remember what the lights flashing looked like, what the beads of sweat on my forehead felt like, and exactly how the band sounded the last time (I thought) I would see them live. A near-perfect moment. Jack White & Jack White Adjacent:
Uncle Bill & I got to see The Dead Weather once on each tour, once in Columbus, and this show in Detroit. This particular date was smack dab in the middle of a week long visit to Michigan, so I was already in an extremely good mood even prior to getting to see this show. And this show did not disappoint – although the guy near us who fired up a joint during the band’s walk-out song and then quickly ushered out before Jack White could so much as smash a cymbal might have been disappointed.
It is unforgettable, and even if it weren’t, this show crossed off a bucket list, record collector’s wildest vinyl dream: being at a show committed to wax.
We ate thai food, we wandered into the store, we took spots just outside the camera frame for the eventually released dvd of the performance! and we were treated to about 40 minutes of tunes, tales, laughs, and what felt like an intimate hangout between two buddies – set to strum on two beautiful acoustic guitars. 30 best summer activities, unranked:
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