Even more than Mag Bay...?!
(Though maybe they are pop with a lower case p?)
But in all seriousness, yeah, the new Kali Uchis is really good. Is it me though, or does it feel more like a mixtape than an album album?
Ah, all is as it should be then.
Though you probably should have waited a little longer, until the sticker includes its ranking in the Sgum commentariat AOTY list.
Oh damn, kinda forgot about the A Dog Called Money premiere, and I was thinking it was this evening anyways.
Looks like it's available online now though in the US and Canada from this NY Film Forum thing: https://filmforum.org/film/pj-harvey-a-dog-called-money
Oh shit, forgot about Holy Fuck, though "Free Gloss" was the one for me. It gives me total I Love You, It's Cool-era Bear in Heaven vibes, which I am 110% down for.
That Arca album is one of those albums that's excellent throughout, but really hard (for me at least) to just single out one song. But I think "Watch" might be my favorite from it as well.
1. Tame Impala - It Might Be Time
2. Jessie Ware - What's Your Pleasure / Step Into My Life (tie, with runner up: Remember Where You Are)
3. Charli XCX - anthems
4. Chromatics - Famous Monsters
5. Fiona Apple - I Want You To Love Me (runner up: Cosmonaut)
6. Silverbacks - Muted Gold
7. Moses Sumney - Polly
8. Róisín Murphy - Simulation
9. Allie X - Fresh Laundry
10. Run the Jewels - JU$T
Honorable mentions:
Dirty Projectors (Lose Your Love), Empress Of (Give Me Another Chance), Ela Minus (they told us it was hard, but they were wrong), and Fleet Foxes (Can I Believe You).
Yes, I fully acknowledge how ridiculous #2 is.
Also, Sorry's "Starstruck" would likely be in my top 10 had it not originally come out 2 years ago, and I've been jamming to it the whole time, though the full extent of how great it is really hit me this year.
https://i.gifer.com/FCb.gif
It looks like the people behind Everynoise.com are the same people from Echo Nest, which was a start up that dealt with music identification, classification, and recommendation (or something along those lines), so that's cool. I remember coming across them when researching/looking around at what the software companies were in the Boston area at one point... and that Spotify acquired them a few years back.
(This all also reminds me of the time where I stumbled across our music genre taxonomy list at my job a couple years ago, when I used to work at a voice recognition software company. That was pretty fun to scroll through... I was impressed that the list had things like vaporwave in there--albeit sadly no witch house--and at the time thought funeral doom was the most entertaining genre name I came across in there. Though these days, funeral doom sounds like something you could see a hearty discussion of in these here commenting parts, so I guess it's less surprising to me now.)
Ok Dan, according to that genre taxonomy site ISurvivedPop linked to, it's a ton of super queer stuff (Zebra Katz, SOPHIE, Le1f, Mykki Blanco, Azealia Banks, Yves Tumor) and electronic indie stuff (Amnesia Scanner, Oneohtrix Point Never, Flying Lotus, ABRA, Andy Stott) and things like JPEGMAFIA, Death Grips, etc. Yeah, I still don't really understand this as a genre or the name, but yep, totally up my lane.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1BwLE6QTlmYAtosuvJcgY7?si=Nijb2GeKRKWUV87AV3jsrQ
Ahhh, that checks out! Charli XCX is apparently my #3 most-listened to artist this year. I could also see this applying to 100 gecs, who I don't think I listened to a lot this year, though I feel like I did listen to and check out a fair amount of Dylan Brady-produced and hyperpop-type stuff.
So PJ Harvey announced the vinyl reissue and the demos for Is This Desire? yesterday, and I am excited! (Well, for the demos part, I don't really do the vinyl thing. Though PJ's whole reissue series is tempting me.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x2kdpwrhcM
I'm also loving some of these behind the scenes peeks and unreleased tidbits she's giving us, like this collage. (It reminds me a little bit of all the art I made in college influenced by this album too.)
https://twitter.com/PJHarveyUK/status/1334558582113783813
Wait, I guess I'm not always on the social medias a lot, but why do people hate on Spotify Wrapped? It's so fun, even if some of the personal stats can be a little questionable.
Also, mine was apparently Chromatics, and I was in the top 0.5%, which was a bit surprising, but I can see it.
...I mean, normally I'm all for wang, so part of me wouldn't have minded, except given his mental state, yeah, that would have been even more cringe inducing.
I was gonna ask how the tweet that gave us lil X-Æ A-12 could not be the #1 tweet of the year, but the actual #1 is pretty legit.
Also, as much as Kanye's tweet reflects my feelings about the Grammys, still not sure I needed to be reminded that that video exists on the internet. :(
Album: Jessie Ware - What's Your Pleasure
Song: Charli XCX - anthems
Tame Impala and Jessie Ware are actually in my #1 and #2 spots for song of the year, but while I'm totally fine putting "It Might Be Time" on my personal 2020 list even though it came out at the end of last year*, I figure that doesn't hold muster for the Gummies.
*(To me, something coming out at the end of October still seems qualifying enough, considering it was a sleeper for me, and especially since it was attached to an album that came out in 2020. Also, from how much it dominated SiriusXMU all year, it's easy to think of it as a 2020 song.)
Yeah, but then that wouldn't have involved The Other Site being quite so ridiculous.
...granted, they still have a decimal point in their ratings, and only giving 7 or so perfect 10s in about 10 years would possibly still be a little ludicrous, so maybe they still would have been fine there.
Also pretty much commenting by this point to get my votes in for Dan's and Chazpod's commentariat tally, and I guess for anyone still reading who just really. loves. lists.
Here's my top 6, which was going to be my top 5, except I really felt like throwing Free I.H. in there:
1. Jessie Ware - What's Your Pleasure?
2. Charli XCX - how i'm feeling now
3. Fiona Apple - Fetch the Bolt Cutters
4. Sorry - 925
5. Arca - KiCk i
6. illuminati hotties - FREE I.H.
Honorable mentions go to:
Allie X - Cape God
Moses Sumney - grae
Austra - HiRUDiN
Drab City - Good Songs for Bad People
Recent releases from Shygirl, Kali Uchis, and Magdalena Bay fall into the category of Need More Time to Digest, but Possibly Listable/Honorably Mentionable.
Ha, yeah, "sleeper" is one of the first things that comes to mind when I think of this album. The songs from Altogether Unaccompanied were much more immediate, but I can see myself really getting into this one down the line.
That being said, her acoustic performance of "Something New" from the Stereogum virtual party still has me shook.
I'm glad to see Austra get a mention too. I could not get into Future Politics for the life of me, but I've been enjoying HiRUDiN.
Also, Feel It Break totally bangs, but give Olympia a listen if you haven't already. It's really good!
Yeah, Sin Miedo kind of felt like it came out of nowhere, but that is a shame it hasn't gotten its fair share of discussion. I kind of hate the thing where artists who are multilingual/not native English speakers feel like they have to release something in English for it to get any traction in the US, UK, et al, so that's cool that Kali is just doing her thing.
I've only given the album two or so listens, and like it so far--I was a bit surprised too at how diverse it is in its sound since I wasn't necessarily expecting that from what I could recall of the singles. But yeah, unfortunately for me I haven't had enough of a chance to digest it yet to tell if I would put it on my year end list.
Yeah, I love how Fiona has been delving into progressively more daring territory with her releases, and there's a good spate of genuinely electrifying moments on Bolt Cutters, but now that I've had more time to sit with it, I'm not convinced it's a better album than Idler Wheel, which I think is her pinnacle.
As for how it would have been received had this year not been full of pandemic, she's so clearly brilliant and singular--and albums from her are so few and far between--that I think it would have still topped the year end lists. Not sure if it would have received a 10.0 from The Other Site? But I think just about everything else would still apply.
So, not going to lie, on one hand, there is part of me that is excited to have finally landed in SUD.
On the other hand... well. Guess I'll save my celebratory FJM gifs for next time.
Thanks for the head's up, and--do they always put it up this early? Granted, I think I totally missed it last year...
Also, those are pretty legit picks (Jessie is my AOTY too). Coming up with my (other) top albums this year seems a bit tricky, since I feel like lately I've been pretty quick to move on from albums I was excited about when they dropped. Though I guess not having that minimum 2 hours of driving time per day on my commute, 4-5 days a week, has had an impact on that...
Thanks! And true, he is one talented dude. I'm not much of a jazz person, or a ballad person, but a lot of those crossover hits of his are a lot of fun.
At the end of a move a few months ago, I found a box of her CDs that was tucked away in a corner in a closet, and it so depressing, because I had no idea that box was there, and had I known that two years ago I would have raided it for stuff to play for her... and by the time I found it we were really past the point where that was much of an option. (I did at least have a few CDs that I found a while before that I played for her a few times... I live George album, and I think Pure Moods? I don't think the latter was particularly conducive to keeping me awake while driving though.)
I did keep a George Benson anthology CD out of that (...which I still need to put on...), and a Maxwell one. (Though unfortunately I forgot at first that it wasn't the album with "Ascension" on it.)
Thank you! Yeah, me too. Honestly, the last few years have been fucking. rough.* It felt like a wrecking ball just swept on through, and really, music and this site seemed like the only things in my life that didn't get turned upside down.
So amen for music and the Sgum.
*(::crosses fingers and hopes html tags still work::)
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