from top to bottom: Sharon Van Etten,
Nick Cave & three Seeds, Willis Earl Beal
My best of 2013 rundowns begin with a medium I almost never write about but that kind of means more to me than all the others. Kinda. No offence, cinema and literature. More to come over the next three days...
Dream River,
Bill Callahan (Drag City)
Mortal joy, love as
aviation, names painted on boats, Donald Sutherland making amends on a truck
radio: accented by flute, fiddle and feedback, Callahan, his voice ever-deepening,
produces poignant, idiosyncratic songs about rivers, trains, animals and beer, complicated
connections, and that feeling of traveling forever.
Fade, Yo
La Tengo (Matador)
The Hoboken trio’s best
record in over a decade balances transcendental guitar sprawl with breezy pop
compression; not a fresh start exactly but preparation for new excursions. Building
to fanfare of strings and brass, ‘Before We Run’ takes us out on a wave of awe.
The Invisible Way, Low (Sub-pop)
Produced by Jeff Tweedy,
these sparely arranged, often hushed songs of faith, regeneration and panic
seem designed to get you through a nervous breakdown—the insistent, desperate,
sticky ‘Just Make It Stop’ most especially.
Kenya Special: Selected East African Recordings From
the 1970s & ’80s, V/A (Soundway)
The master preservationists
at Soundway give Kenya the Special
treatment previously bestowed upon Nigeria and Ghana, offering a rhythmically
intoxicating compilation infused with elements of rhumba, benga and r&b.
Muchacho,
Phosphorescent (Dead Oceans)
Pitched somewhere between
soaring spirituals and wasted declarations of wounded ardour, most of Matthew
Houck’s songs sound like they started before we came in and continue long after
the fade-out. This part-swirling/part-stomping record is about heartbroken
perseverance, buoyed by alcohol, women and some lost Mexican weekend(s).
Nobody,
Willis Earl Beal (XL)
I saw Beal upstage Cat Power
last year with lingerie-clad mannequins, a reel-to-reel and some insanely
hypnotic hybrid of Tom Waits and hip-hop. His sophomore release is more
polished but no less inventive, spellbinding and insular than his lo-fi debut.
Push the Sky Away, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds (ANTI-)
Live From KCRW, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds (ANTI-)
Largely eschewing narrative
in favour of ribbons of fecund imagery, Cave & the Seeds’ latest studio
work is a quiet revelation of ticking, rumbles and pulses, nearly pushing the
band away as a collective force so as to draw out beautifully accented
atmospheres—some songs are so skeletal they consist of only a single chord. The
strikingly intimate Live at KCRW takes
a similar tack to tracks from all over the catalogue, audaciously opening with Push’s eerie, smoke-like show-stopper
‘Higgs Boson Blues.’
The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You, Neko Case (ANTI-)
Mothers, daughters, men,
listen up: Case nearly matches Middle
Cyclone—that’s saying a lot—careening between Honolulu and “Nowhere,”
between dizzy, busy, clever pop fury and stark, unnervingly naked a cappella.
Plus: Neko covers Nico! But: the cover's kind of ugly, no? Thus my opting for the above pic.
Townes Van Zandt
Untitled mix CD from a friend
Some of us still do this in 2013, take the time to make an object:
something to carry, listen to, look at, remember someone by, cherish. My friend
filled my ears with Hoagy Carmichael, Townes Van Zandt, Stars, Laura Nyro, Peggy
Lee, CocoRosie and Penny & the Quarters. She also turned me onto Sharon Van
Etten, who kind of haunts me now in the best way. Thanks. xo
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