Hey! What’s up? I hope you’re doing well. Thanks for hanging around. Sorry this is so late. Life happens, or whatever.
I’ll probably have something out next week-ish on my favorite albums of January. Hoping to bring this newsletter back! Maybe!
Now, to the matter at hand: music! I did an albums of the year thing heading into 2022, and I’ll give you a few of mine this time around, but I figured it might be fun to ask some of the people close to me to tell me about the stuff that they loved. Music is community, and community is important.
For the sake of brevity, I’m gonna do five of my own, with five other perspectives mixed in. We’ll count down from five to one, for ~suspense~.
We’re starting with a guest spot, because this is MY NEWSLETTER and MY NUMBER ONE ALBUM has to be LAST because this is about ME.
Guest Spot #1 - Keagan McKinney (<3)
Ivory - Omar Apollo
Ivory was released at the beginning of April 2022, and it was Omar Apollo’s first debut studio album. Apollo has other notable bodies of work, including EPs Stereo and Friends, as well as his 2020 mixtape Apolonio, but this piece was highly-anticipated.
Ivory’s release date was even delayed because of the fine-tuning and rewriting Apollo felt was necessary to perfect the album. In my opinion, the album (and its deluxe version) are well worth the wait.
Longtime Omar Apollo fans can testify to his unique range of skills, both vocally and musically, but Ivory showed listeners that he is capable of even more.
This album hits every single mark and does it brilliantly. Ivory has traditional mariachi-style love ballads transitioning into an irresistible trap beat amidst alternative, catchy, and heartbreaking pieces of writing. This album hooked me from my first listen, and I still haven’t been able to go more than a couple of weeks without listening to at least some parts of it.
Even if you have heard some of Apollo’s music before, I think you’ll be impressed by the vulnerability, insight, and creativity he offers listeners on this album. (P.S. the deluxe version elevates it even further, in my opinion)
5. NOT TiGHT - DOMi & JD BECK
Modern! Jazz!
Even if you haven’t heard NOT TiGHT, you may recognize the key players in this album from this video -
Man, what a great song, and what a great cover. DOMi & JD BECK have had their fair share of live gigs as a backing band, but NOT TiGHT is the culmination of all the things they’ve learned and friends they’ve made along the way. They’re 22 and 19 years old, respectively, which will never fail to blow my mind.
Okay, back to NOT TiGHT. One of the things I discovered about myself and my music taste this year is that virtuosity outranks basically everything else.
DOMi and JD BECK are virtuosic instrumentalists, and the features list is a collection of wonderful talents from across many eras (how the hell did they get Herbie Hancock on this album???)
Jazz legends aside, this album includes features from Thundercat, Mac Demarco, Anderson .Paak, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Busta Rhymes and Snoop Dogg? How? I don’t know, but I love it.
The features list is so impressive, but equally impressive is that these two literal children are not washed out by the people on said list. Despite the fame around them, they still carve out ample time to make their own impressions.
Some of my favorite parts of this album are JD BECK’s drum breaks, where he imitates a Drum N Bass style that’s normally done by a drum machine. DOMi’s jazz sensibilities on keys are so impressive, so instinctive, and so effortless.
My favorite song on this album, and the song of the year in my humble opinion, is Take a Chance. This one rips. Anderson .Paak is so excellent, and everyone gets a chance to shine. You even hear the kids sing! Very cool.
The album’s setbacks are that the lyrical content isn’t super strong, and while the sound is cohesive, it lacks a binding thread that I tend to enjoy when listening to an album front to back. If this was just a collection of singles, it’s a damn impressive collection.
DOMi & JD BECK have a long and successful career ahead. Keep an eye out.
Guest Spot #2 - Gannon Hanevold
MJ Lenderman’s “Boat Songs”
I first heard MJ Lenderman’s “Boat Songs” on a train ride from Boston to a small coastal town called Rockport in northern Massachusetts. Picturesque. It’s the same town they filmed Manchester by the Sea (or “The Proposal” with Sandra Bullock if that’s more your cup of tea).
And it couldn’t have been a better setting for listening to a record, especially one that truly sounds like rolling, angsty glimpses out of a window into the countryscape.
As the first song, “Hangover Game,” started in my headphones, I turned to my girlfriend (shoutout to the amazing Mia Andrea), who recommended the album to me.
I passed her a note that said, “This is literally just a song about Michael Jordan getting drunk before his flu game. Where’d you find this?”
I knew I stumbled onto something unlike anything else I’d ever heard before.
Lenderman is known by many as garage rock band Wednesday’s lead guitarist, and the guitar work on this album is remarkable. It’s got the precision of a classic country record and the driving solos to rival your favorite post-punk band.
It’s this genre-ambiguous approach that makes “Boat Songs” an album that sounds completely original, incomparable to its peers (very, very few records can do that with the exponentially deep indie music scene). Every song takes on its own life.
The lyrics are jam-packed with observational, one-liners that riff introspectively on American pop culture and echo in my head about ten times a week:
“Did you find my Disney World? Did it make you dizzy, girl?”
“Jackass is funny, like the Earth is round.”
“My daddy saw Dan Marino at a Harris Teeter in South Carolina.”
“I have never felt alone the way I did at Six Flags Over Texas.”
I just can’t stop revisiting this album. Every time I do, I find myself in that cloth seat, 20 minutes from Rockport. And ultimately, I find myself in the present moment, too. And I can’t argue with Lenderman, Jackass is funny.
4. The Forever Story - JID
You’re right, JID, I would play this for my mama, AND the hoes. Excellent work here. It’s really cool to see someone put it all together.
Listening to The Forever Story is like watching something click for a player you know has the potential to be great. 2020’s Spilligion was the breakout game, and The Forever Story was the legacy-starter.
Sorry for the corny sports metaphor, but I felt it was appropriate here. The Forever Story is rife with some really damn clever sports lines. I fucking love clever/corny sports lines, it’s just how I’m wired.
My personal favorite, from Dance Now -
“Lemme bear it all when I’m tellin' God
You know I'ma rant when I talk to Jah”
Come on, man. That’s crazy. Sports are all over this thing. He’s got James Harden, Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith, and even references to his own time in athletics as a college student.
This is another album with a miles-long feature list full of heavyweights. EARTHGANG, 21 Savage, Ravyn Lenae, Lils Durk and Wayne, and many more make appearances here, and all bring something to the table.
Dance Now was a particular standout, but I also very much loved Can’t Punk Me. I thought JID and EARTHGANG played really well off of each other here.
The Forever Story is a great introspection on the life of an already accomplished rapper with a lengthy career to go. Instrumentals are fantastic, flow is varied and incredibly smooth.
I just saw JID with Smino very recently, and JID’s live performance really amplified this album for me as well. He’s got such great stage presence, and his voice sounds just as good live as it does on the album.
This may be the best album to ever come out on Dreamville Records, but I’m not a J. Cole fan, so I don’t know how fair that is.
Preacher's Daughter - Ethel Cain
For context, I still have about a dozen albums I want to get through before I finalize my end-of-the-year list, and Orville Peck's 'Bronco' provided the closest competition for this piece. However, after revisiting both, a lot of my comments on 'Bronco' centered around how vibrant and exciting it was, but could be boiled down to "it's a kick-ass country album."
Contrast that against 'Preacher's Daughter,' an album that transcends any sense of expectations or conventions, taking elements from half a dozen genres (sometimes all at once) and filtering them through Ethel Cain's ethereal delivery and intricately sincere lyrics.
Much has been said about how the album isn't the easiest listen, with songs like "Ptolemaea" and "Strangers" embodying the darkest moments of the album's central concept. But there's also the moments that transcend any one emotion for me, from the guitar solo ending "A House in Nebraska" to the rapturous atmosphere of "Sun Bleached Flies" to take your pick of moments on the new Americana classic "Thoroughfare."
It all adds to 'Preacher's Daughter' never losing its intimacy, as the writing keeps the listener consistently on track and rewards repeat listens with details that can change a song's entire meaning. Ethel Cain made a modern tapestry that doesn't have easy answers if there even are any, but offers just enough glimpses of optimism to outshine the darkness.
3. Blue Rev - Alvvays
You may know Alvvays from Archie, Marry Me alvvays showing up in every single Spotify indie playlist. It’s a great song, and I have it in a couple of playlists of my own, but come on. It’s ceaseless.
Alvvays’ catalog is pretty small, so Blue Rev kind of came out of nowhere for me. It feels like the realization of the band’s artistic vision, but it isn’t a vision I heard much on either of their previous two albums. Songs like Archie and Dreams Tonight rightfully get a lot of indie cred, but their albums as a whole were kind of messy, and lacked that cohesion that I like to look for.
Enter Blue Rev, a standard-setting indie pop rock record.
Blue Rev’s strengths are very firmly rooted in its instrumentation. There’s a lot of dynamic shifting that gives the album a sense of ongoing excitement. The band keeps you engaged by staying clever within a well-established indie songwriting structure. It’s very clear that Alvvays appreciates indie trailblazers, because you could endlessly list the influences for an album like this.
I also have to give credit to Molly Rankin, whose lyrics are intentional and witty. While the sound is close to industry standard, the lyrics are anything but. A good songwriter can tell their story, but a great songwriter can tell a story that isn’t theirs. Molly Rankin does this incredibly well.
This is one I’ll be listening to over and over well into 2023 and beyond.
-DIRTIESTNASTIEST$UICIDE by $uicideboy$: I usually like their albums but this one is super fresh and their collab w Germ really gives variety to all the songs.
-Laurel Hell by Mitski: I really loved this album, I feel like she’s really matured and grown since the last one and you can tell in the songs. She captured a lot of the struggle we feel in our 20s with love and being tired of working and feeling down and it was great imo.
-Blue Rev by Alvvays (author’s note: great minds think alike): Per usual great delivery of feel good dreampop indie rock warm vibes! Still need to listen one or two more times but I enjoyed the first listen I had of this one.
2. Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers - Kendrick Lamar
I don’t have enough space to talk about why I love this album so damn much.
Kendrick’s previous albums, meditations on his life and his Blackness, are experiences that I will never have. Despite that, I love and constantly listen to his other work.
This album, while still including those reflections, is more widely about being socialized as a man, and the difficulties that come with that. That is something I’ve experienced myself.
Mr. Morale is also about the repercussions and self-hatred that come from selfish actions. It’s about Kendrick’s struggles with depression. It’s about the pandemic and its repercussions. It’s about internalized homophobia and wanting to overcome it.
This album hit me really hard.
All these themes come packaged in Kendrick’s perfect songwriting, and with well-fitting and catchy instrumentals.
This whole album is full of standout tracks, but Mother I Sober sets itself apart by being one of the truest and deepest reflections any rapper will ever dare to release.
Beth Gibbons is the perfect accompanying vocalist for the track, and the refrain of “I wish I was somebody, anybody but myself” is so intense and painful that I will never forget it.
I could go on and on, but I really just urge you to listen to it. You don’t need a white music nerd telling you why Kendrick is great. You know Kendrick is great.
Sidenote - I saw Kendrick this year. He was my #1 bucket list artist, and I saw him. He was incredible, as was Baby Keem. They did Family Ties, which may be the best song ever - results of our study are still pending.
I love you, Kendrick. Please never stop making music.
Guest Spot #5 - You!
Imagine your review of your favorite album from 2022 is on here. Wow, your thoughts on music are so nuanced and well-spoken. This is a really impressive review, I’m very proud of you. Great work.
1. Ants From Up There - Black Country, New Road
Black Country, New Road - 'Chaos Space Marine' (Official Audio) - YouTube
British indie post-rock had a really great year. Although it didn’t make the top five in my list, black midi’s Hellfire was also incredibly impressive in scale and sound.
Ants From Up There is one of post-rock’s pinnacles. I’m not hyperbolizing. It’s really that good. There are no low points, there are no dips, it’s just 10 songs of pure genius.
I love the lyrical content of this album. It’s so real, raw, and relatable. There’s a somewhat casual style with which the lyrics are constructed - it seems like rhyme schemes and songwriting conventions are suggestions, and the band seemed more intent on getting their messages out than following the musical routine. It probably helps that the group and I are in the same age range, because a lot of what they said really resonated.
Former frontman Isaac Wood’s vocal tone is pained and deep, and it’s a wonder that a 22-year-old can muster up so much emotion while singing “she’s got Billie Eilish style.”
vaughan on Twitter: "*black country, new road voice* she’s got oppa gangnam style" / Twitter
There’s just something so satisfying about listening to an album that makes you feel understood, and helps you feel the emotions you’ve been afraid to dig up. Ants From Up There is that album, and Black Country, New Road will continue to be one of the best bands around, even without Wood’s influence.
I’ll leave you, as the album does, with Basketball Shoes.
Anyway, that’s it, I guess. If you haven’t heard any of these albums, please go listen to them, I beg you.
Like I said, I should have something about January’s best albums coming up soon - I’ve listened to 27 albums and counting this month, so I’ll have some interesting stuff for you!
Oh, and here’s a playlist. See you soon.
Extremely pleased that JID's "The Forever Story" made your list. Without question, for me personally, this album takes home the gold for 2022!
Top 3 Songs...
Kody Blu 31
Sistem
Better Days