bevedog

End of the year wrap up time! Please feel free to share your favorite music of the year in the comments.

Jazz

When I read reviews of Makaya McCraven’s In These Times I thought it sounded like something I would like and bought it immediately. I was right—it’s exactly the kind of contemporary jazz that I enjoy. I lack the musical vocabulary to really describe it, but I feel like McCraven builds tracks that have some elements of modern dance music or more ambient/experimental music, and then allows his fellow musicians to shine with melodies and solos. His drumming is also really fantastic, without the sense that everything else has to stop in order for him to take a “drum solo.”

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Within a week or two of buying In These Times on Bandcamp, listening to it a few times, thinking “this album could be a classic,” I picked up the local free weekly and found that McCraven would be playing a live show in Manitou Springs, about 20 minutes from my house. Whenever a musician or a band I care about comes to Colorado Springs it feels like a minor miracle, and this felt even more like one since it came so immediately after me “discovering” him. The show was great, in a little venue with cabaret seating and maybe 100 people in attendance. I told the people I was with, “Makaya McCraven sometimes records with a guitarist named Jeff Parker who I also like a lot,” and then it turned out that Parker was in the touring band. I felt like I’d won the lottery. Bassist Junius Paul and multi-instrumentalist De’Sean Jones were also wonderful, and you can see the same lineup play live on KEXP.

Earlier in the year I listened to a lot of the music that has been coming out of the London jazz scene for the past decade or so. This Tiny Desk concert from Nubya Garcia in 2020 is a very nice introduction to that music.

Electronic/Ambient

I quite like ambient music, but one problem with it is that by it’s very nature it doesn’t tend to be that memorable. Croatian Amor’s Remember Rainbow Bridge is an album that for me seamlessly moves from background to foreground and back again, and rewards repeated listening with its melodies and textures.

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Metal

I have mentioned before that vocals are my problem with metal. I listen to a lot of tracks on Bandcamp for about thirty seconds until the vocals kick in and then I just can’t. So I tend to prefer instrumentals or, like 2020’s May Our Chambers Be Full by Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou, bands with female vocalists.

This year’s entry in that category is Close by Messa. The band sounds great, the singer sounds great, it’s heavy, they use some unusual instrumentation but still shred when it’s time to shred. Great record.

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Popular music (stuff I sing along to)

I didn’t listen to all that much new pop/rock/folk/country, and two of the albums that I listened to the most had singles on my 2021 list. Hurray For the Riff Raff’s Life on Earth is probably my favorite rock record of the year, with “Pierced Arrows” and, especially, “Saga” being songs that I listened to over and over. I love Alynda Segarra’s vocals.

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Big Thief’s Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You is a fantastic record, which only suffers from the problem that goes with all double albums: how often do I really listen to tracks 11-20? As with Life on Earth, the big draw is the vocalist and songwriter, in this case Adrianne Lenker, though the band sounds great throughout.

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I enjoyed Mitski’s Laurel Hell, especially the single “The Only Heartbreaker” which sounds like it could have been on the Footloose or Flashdance soundtrack.

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Speaking of the 1980s, the Linda Lindas are the best New Wave band in 35 years.

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As usual, I listened to the Mountain Goats a lot this year but the new album didn’t do much for me. The single “Training Montage” is a good rave-up though.

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Lastly in pop/rock, none of these songs are new, but I listened to this playlist of songs from a mixtape tracklist in the comic Space Trash from artist and author Jenn Woodall.

That’s it for music! Next up is probably books! Please let me know what you have been listening to, and if you haven’t subscribed, now is the time!