Ryan’s Music Picks 🌲 8 December 2016

Quick update for the rest of the year: after this, sometime in the next week or so-ish, I’ll do a roundup of Christmas music. It might be an extra long one, because I have feelings about Christmas music. If you’re curious to see, you can click here for 3 pages to links to Christmas music from my old blog. (Sorry, some of the links will be dead. The internet is in a constant state of decay.)

After the Christmas roundup, I’m thinking about doing a year-end list of my favorite albums. (I gave up making a list of the “best” albums years ago, because I can’t be trusted to be objective about art.) After that, who knows what’s going to happen in 2017?

Scholastics – Live From the Library, Volume VII (Soundcloud, Podcast/Download)My good friend Ezekiel makes mixes that give me feelings. This one is emotional on both ends of the spectrum: on one end acknowledging how a lot of us have felt in the wake of the election and its aftermath, and on the other end reminding the listener that there is joy still inherent in life that shouldn’t be neglected.

Damien Jurado & Richard Swift – Other People’s Songs, Volume 1 (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)In case you haven’t been following singer-songwriter Damien Jurado’s career over the last 5 years, he has brought forth a series of albums with a cultish, we’ll-form-a-commune-and-live-off-the-land appeal, aided by weirdo church basement assistance from Richard Swift. This album of covers predates all of these albums, and was originally released in 2010, when they began to draft their plan for the albums that they’ve since released. I said in 2011 that it contains “the best damn cover of a Kraftwerk song I’ve ever heard” and that’s still true.

Coins – Daft Science (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)This album is a mashup album of 9 Beastie Boys tracks with beats constructed from Daft Punk samples. It feels obvious and groundbreaking at the same time, and is a hell of a calling card for sample-master Coins. This music taps into that pure party joy that both the Beasties and the Robots can deliver like no other. I could do with more sample diversity (fewer Around the World samples would be nice) but overall this is killer. It’s not available for download anymore because of obvious rights issues, but, uh, well, maybe click this link if you can’t resist.

Air Credits – Broadcasted (Bandcamp, aircredits.org)Air Credits is Chicago rapper SHOWYOUSUCK with production from legendary internet mashup kings The Hood Internet. The beats on this album bang; they’re a nice mix of sample-based, synthy, and experimental, with a neck-snapping amount of head nodding. But more surprising to me is MC ShowYouSuck’s brainy and complex verses which trade heavily in deep pop culture references that pay off more than just some hashtag rap. I mean, the first track mentions both The Craft and Daft Punk right off the bat. All I Need Pt 2 is a full-on jam, and it’s not even close to the only one on this excellent album.

Brother, Sister – Brother, Sister (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)It must be tough to operate in a genre (ornate chamber pop, in this case) so heavily dominated by a few pretty popular bands. It’s almost impossible to talk about Brother, Sister without referencing Grizzly Bear or Fleet Foxes, for instance. I mean, if you like those bands, dive into this by all means, you’ll love it. But those comparisons miss the baroque country elements of this music, or the choral arrangements that are not at all like the harmonies in those other bands. This is pastoral music to be enjoyed out of doors or at least with a scarf (ironically, this band is from Southern California). It’s beautiful and intricate and dense and rewarding on multiple listens.

Sleigh Bells – Jessica Rabbit (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)Sleigh Bells are the most metal pop music, or the most pop metal band in existance. I love them to an unreasonable degree, even in the face of this, their most experimental album yet. Refusing to rest on their tried-and-true formula of killer guitar riffs + huge beats + pop vocal hooks, some of these tracks don’t even have guitars! Beats are still here, and some songs (It’s Just Us Now is a standout) still bring the crunch I love from them, but there’s a lot of pop experimentation that push this album more towards noise pop and experimental pop music than I had ever expected. Once I got over the sadness over their lack of killer riffs, a lot of these songs have grown on me significantly. I can’t wait to see how this trickles down into mainstream pop music.

Childish Gambino – “Awaken My Love” (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)Donald Glover channels Sly and the Family Stone and brings the funk noise forward to the post-rap era. Believe the hype, this is great.

Tiny EP Corner

It’s been a while since I did one of these.

Avalon Emerson – Narcissus in Retrograde (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)I found out about Avalon Emerson when a friend tweeted a link to this Resident Advisor article and I was not disappointed when I finally looked up and jumped into her most recent EP of house tracks. It’s nicely bleepy with an honest heart at their core. These songs are working with you–they want to make your day better and help you get things done. Give in to them.

Ducky – Don’t Give Up Yet (Soundcloud, Apple Music, Spotify)This and the next two tiny EPs are from Secret Sounds, home to Ryan Hemsworth’s friends tracks that he likes. Ducky’s EP is careful and alive, remniscent of the glory days of lap-pop before the Postal Service blew the genre apart. There’s a club sensibility to these in a theoretical way–they’d be bangers live but I bet you’d somehow have more fun with this album in your headphones by yourself on a bus or in a library.

Happy Doghouse – Above The Stars (Soundcloud, Apple Music, Spotify)These are still electronic pop tracks, but they’re guitar-heavy in basically the opposite way that Sleigh Bells is. The guitar is a friend, a companion used to carry the tracks, not rip them open and set them on fire. This feels personal, like I’ve eavesdropped on an album recorded between friends.

Celadon City – Summeryoung (Soundcloud, Apple Music, Spotify)I’ve written before of my love for video game soundtracks as well as the work of popular commercial and podcast soundtrack band Lullatone. This hits right in that sweet spot. It feels adorably plucked from the garden and like the product of a console’s particular chipset at the same time. If a handheld video game system made an album in an xylophone tree, it might sound just like this.