Take off your pants and jacket. It’s S.N.O.T. time.
I wanted to put a SNOT together about this for a while, but there was Sunday Night football on Saturday Night, NFL playoff games, and weekends when I didn’t get back in time. So here it is. My ten favorite CDs from last year along with some things I consumed that I loved.
10.) Jeff Tweedy: WARM
Suffering is the same for everyone/He was right but I was wrong to agree
Social media shares, likes, and RTs, have taught me the white male doesn’t have anything interesting to say. His stories are all already out there. There is nothing new for them to say. This is as white male as it gets. An old folk man and his guitar. It’s really pretty, and made me think. I should have been a baseball writer.
9.) Freddie Gibbs: Freddie
(no lyrics, this is a family website)
There’s always one-two lines of like five songs that make every Freddie album perfect. This one does it again. The aesthetics of it are also perfect.
8) Earl Sweatshirt: Some Rap Songs
Told him/It’s a feelin’ Blast off, buckshot into my ceilin’/Why ain’t nobody tell me I was bleedin’?
I just like the way it sounds. Fuzzy and full of samples. The rap songs are produced in grime and are slimy, contorted, and buzzy.
7.) Drug Church: Cheer
First time in dress shoes, and you slip/New guy puts his thumb in the petri dish
The end of the year lists took me to this place. That second whirring guitar. I’m never showering again.
6.) Daughters: You Won’t Get What You Want
I have no idea how they make the sounds they make for this album, but they did it. They somehow find melodies in clashing trash cans and cats pouncing into dumpsters. This album is assurance that it’s way out there, it’s there, whenever I want to leave this.
I don’t know what to say when people come undone/The road is dark, the road is long
5.) Joyce Manor: Million Dollars To Kill Me
Don’t you ever feel lonely/baby I’ve been lonely my whole life
Ahhh adulthood. Joyce Manor has gone from writing short loud and fast songs to writing short pretty and nice songs. And I love it. These dudes are in their 30s now. Damn it would be so lame if they kept writing about heated swimming pools at house parties and leather jackets. This is adult punk. I love it.
4.) Jeff Rosenstock: POST
Dumbfounded, downtrodden and dejected/Crestfallen, grief-stricken and exhausted/ Trapped in my room while the house was burnin’
Regardless of how you felt about the 2016 election (no politics), this album is a perfect encapsulation of how a lot of people felt. No matter how you felt, it’s how a lot of people felt. It’s loud and fast, angry and bitter, beautiful and soothing. And it came out of nowhere on January 1st, 2018. Surprise!
3.) Turnstile: Time & Space
I got something in the way/I’m losing hold on reality/And it all falls into place/But I’ll die slow if I can’t escape
This album added 15 pounds to my max. Instant gains. It’s audible Creatine. They also put on the best LIVE show I’ve ever seen. The sleeves on my shirts still haven’t grown back. They’re going on tour with Turnover this spring. Go see it.
2.) Foxing: Nearer My God
“So we’ve only just begun to live”/I’m wasting my life on you
This is the best album I listened to last year. The drops on some of these songs. The apocalyptic undertone. A combination of EDM, R&B, and 1990s alternative, it just slaps bro. And I love how it ends with a song The National wished they could write.
1.) The Sidekicks: Happiness Hours
No thanks, no, it’s not late, I’m not straight edge/Just already have a headache
I didn’t realize how I angry I was last year until I thought about the music I loved. Loud and fast and brutal. I haven’t been this angsty since like 2014. I needed this album. I needed something pretty and songs about summer and silly adult children hanging by a screen door youth. I needed something I could really run to and fill me up and show me that, yeah, life is really pretty and interesting again.
Other things I liked: Canada’s National Park System (too many roads but overall very pretty and very friendly), Ken Burns’s The Vietnam War (I cried like twenty times last summer watching it), Desert Oracle (listen to the pod, buy the quarterly), stair climber, pine nuts, books by Gerald Murnane, the Sonoran Desert, concerts where they play an entire album, and The Sopranos (it’s the funniest show of all time).
Anyways, that’s all I got. The rest of the floor is yours to talk about whatever, Texans related or not. Just remember the standard commenting rules apply.
from Battle Red Blog - All Posts http://bit.ly/2sOcPSM
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