I think this is a really good Coachella-in-2020 lineup. I just don't really love it personally, but that's me being a crank, I think. They definitely needed to have Travis Scott & LDL. Rage is an appropriate "new-classic-rock reunion" choice.Frank Ocean gets people hella excited. It's a strong meeting of blog tastes and mainstream stuff (I think, lol).
Friday seems solid, maybe my favorite for higher lines - RATM, RtJ, King Gizz...BIGBANG, Megan, Brockhampton, Calvis Harris could all be fun, I suppose.
Saturday does the least for me at the top, but The Comet is Coming, MadGibbs, BADBADNOTGOOD, and DJ Koze help it out. I've found myself liking the occasional Swae Lee moment more than I ever thought I would, but...could he possibly be good live?
Sunday is pretty bare for me. I like JID, , Denzel, , Noname, Frank Ocean, and even Ari Lennox to an extent, but none of them gets me hyped as live acts. But again, I know I'm just being a little contrary bitch on this one - most people in the blog/critical world would be thrilled to get Frank Ocean, FKA Twigs, and LDL in one night.
Why am I seeing scores of -11 and -12 on every pro-Angles comment? That seems peculiar, it's not universally LOATHED anywhere near enough to warrant such determined downvotes.
I was just thinking this. Mainstream rock radio super hits were every bit as bad in the previous decade, they were just more "start lots of fights and rape women in back-alleys Republican" bad as opposed to the current "gurgling, identity-less muzak that in no way resembles rock on account of it's made by computers in a back room somewhere" bad.
Great song, I'm glad it got 10/10. And it was a great write-up, too; I especially enjoyed the paragraph about Mick's intuitively, singularly brilliant vocal performance here.
The narrative of Some Girls being at once the Stones' response to disco and punk and their success at addressing both and in doing so making their last great album (again, Tattoo You is really good, but it's not special the way this is) has always been one of my favorites.
Yeah, I realized just this past year that I spent most of my life being too harsh on that album because of my teenage contrarian knee-jerk rejection of "Start Me Up". It's not Some Girls-level great, but it's really good. But it's also odds and sods they had lying around, rather than a fresh new piece of work like this. For whatever that is or isn't worth in the conversation.
I enjoy the side material, sure. The first two Jim James ones in particular were strong, though well sub-Jacket. There were some jams on Uniform Distortion, and I had a blast on the Eternally Even & Uniform shows I saw.
There were a few winners on the last Broemel solo, and I'm with you on Eraserland having been a major highlight of this year.
BUT I still want more MMJ, especially since there's been an album of material supposedly in the tank for four years that James said they had put finishing touches on earlier this year. AND an official live album they've been promising. All I want are scraps!!!
The finale was never going to get to be the best episode - too much to get to for them to really do anything bold structurally or in terms of cinematography. And even with the fairly straight-ahead storytelling, they shorted Laurie & Looking Glass. I enjoyed their handling of the two geniuses, Doc Manhattan, and Angela, though. And it was enjoyable seeing the Calvary get wiped out.
But I was happy with the ending and hope there's no Season 2. The book left things open ended after the main conflict wrapped, and I'd like to see the show makers have the self control to do the same.
2019 album list - I'm happy to see i,i and All Mirrors. Will pass on the rest.
2019 songs - Harmony Hall & Lark are cool with me. I guess the XCX/Queens track, too.
Decade albums - #s 10 - 7 are all cool, as is TPAB. Blonde definitely > Channel Orange, but not in my Top 10.
Decade songs - easily my favorite of these 4.
Yeah, I came into the year liking the first half of Ultraviolence and random songs since (basic bitch choices like "High by the Beach" but not thinking I really needed full albums of Lana's shtick.
I listened to the album and kinda liked it, thought there was a chance it might be her best.
Got sick of it really quick, which was expedited by everyone going gaga over it, and ultimately settled on it being a maudlin, draining, overly-long slog of a listen....as more and more people hailed it as a generation-defining masterpiece.
Count me out.
I prefer Lonerism to Currents (but love Currents, too), but I'm totally okay with "Let it Happen" being the consensus pick for their best track. I certainly like it better than the two others that get that talk, both from Lonerism actually - "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards" never stood out to me as a real Lonerism highlight and "Elephant" rocks, but those fucking lyrics...
"Let it Happen" is a serious SotD contender.
No, it's my favorite as well. The first 4 songs are nuclear in how good they are and the majority of the rest (especially through "Tearjerker") are not too far behind. Navarro-peppers ripped.
This week in general - 2/3 through (on the T.I. track), the Free Nationals album is another threatening to lodge a late entry onto my list. Both are cool, groovy guest-heavy successes.
I was curious how you'd back it up, too. I dislike trap, warbly sing-rapping, mumbling, etc, but I still think the genre has had a solid decade...just like most genres will, given ten years to work with.
Maybe it mutated in some weird, not-always-welcome ways, but I don't really see how this past decade was noticeably worse than the previous one. Regardless of trends, both decades were responsible for a ton of great, forward (and backward)-thinking albums and that's all you can really hope for. As a bonus, we got a rare mainstream-critic consensus figure who won a Pulitzer.
I don't like Travis Scott, but I was under the impression that he's regarded as an album artist, at least as far as contemporary mainstream hip-hop goes. And to be fair, I thought his last one had really good production and felt "album-y", I just thought his lack of rapping skill held it down.
Roses dropped like 2 or 3 songs a couple years ago and did a few reunion tours (I know there was one that had them doing dates in SE Asia in like...2012 because I just missed getting see them play Jakarta when I was there). Calling them active the whole time feels like a push.
I knew Kaytranada was finally gearing up for a release, but didn't know we'd get it this weekend! That and the Free Nationals album are set to make this the best new music week for me in at least a few cycles.
I should break down and finally check out the slowthai album.
RIP Chance & Schoolboy's 2019s. I mean Q's album wasn't the utter disaster that Chance's was, but both were huge letdowns. One was just a shrug and the other was a bomb.
It was a bit of a weird year for hip-hop, yeah. And I think a lot of that is like Tom said - the big guns were largely on the sidelines and there was a lot of niche stuff going on. I have a friend who loves Westside Gunn, Conway the Machine, and Benny the Butcher, so he was happy as a pig in shit by the end of the year. And there were, even outside of that bunch, a lot of acts releasing multiple lower-key albums EPs. I feel like it was easy to have a few albums you really liked this year, less so to love the year on a whole.
Me:
1. Danny Brown - uknowhatimsayin¿ (my #7 overall, for context)
2. Madgibbs - Bandana
3. Skyzoo & Pete Rock - Retropolitan
4. Little Simz - Grey Area
5. Rapsody - Eve (we're not just outside of my overall Top 20 - this was my #21)
6. Benny the Butcher - The Plugs I Met
7. Gang Starr - One of the Best
8. Yugen Blakrok - Anima Mysterium
9. Pivot Gang - You Can't Sit With Us
10. um....Revenge of the Dreamers III? Ginger? Lamb Over Rice?
It's a killer album and I've always loved "Daffodils".
My expectations for the new Tame album are a bit diminished by the past year, but I'm still going to be all over it when it drops.
I wish there was a little more guitar in the new stuff - it adds a special kind of dynamism and its own great textures to contrast the synths - but it irks the hell out of me when old fans rag on Currents for bring some alleged betrayal of the Tame sound.
Because you're right, willful ignorance is the only way you could claim it's been this truly seismic shift in terms of actual sound.
The live release they put out from that tour had cool alternate versions of a lot of stuff, unreleased instrumentals, etc. But of course that doesn't have to mean it was representative of the whole tour.
I liked Tulsi more when I knew less about her. Like most Bernie supporters, I was thrilled that she took a hard stand for him in 2016. And I can definitely believe that she evolved past her youthful homophobia.
But the rest, plus the thoroughly uninspired, zombie-robot way she's come across every time I see her on this campaign, turns me off. Mostly the seeming comfort level with dictators and other illiberal figures and the way she seems to say and believe stuff that seems a little too close to Trump-voter territory leave me very unsure I trust her political instincts or goals.
In any case, Bernie and Warren are both great, and Tulsi if nothing else is an also-ran.
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