Music by Month: 10 Worthy Albums from January 2018
Because I live in the future and can listen to whatever I want to, whenever I want, I listened to at least a couple dozen brand new albums this month. Here are the 10 that were most worth my while and have inspired the most repeat listenings:
The Tune-Yards, i can feel you creep into my private life:
Here’s my earliest contender for Album of the Year, both in terms of musical dexterity and social relevance. After nearly a decade of infusing her music with African rhythms, Merrill Garbus has devoted an album to checking her own privelege and examining any traces of cultural appropriation in her own work. It’s conscious, courageous and self-confrontational. It’s also musically irresistable, eminently danceable and full of delciously intricate rhythms. Highlights: “ABC 123,” “Hammer,” “Private Life”
Xylouris White, Mother:
Cretan lutist Georgio Xyouris and Australian drummer Jim White’s collaboration is world music fusion that finds just the right balance between the etherial tones of Xylouris’s luoto and the earthiness of his vocals. The album rocks, groooves, swirls, deliberately abandons its center and gracefully returns to it at will. Highlights: “Only Love,” “Motorcycle Kondolies”
Ty Segall, Freedom’s Goblin
The year’s first great subgenre-transcendent rock album of the year. I’m still new to Segall but I get the sense he’s proven himself to be an eclectic and prolific artist who can do just about anything; and now he’s chosen to do anything and everything all on one epic, 19-track album. Freedom’s Goblin is a tribute to rock and roll itself and it’s unquestionably a worthy one. Highlights: “My Lady’s On Fire, “The Main Pretender”
Calexico, The Thread That Keeps Us
The Southern California duo took a trip to NorCal and found plenty of new toys to play with. Socially conscious and ambitious while still maintaining a sense of easy-going fun, it’s a sprawling record with dozens of detours that somehow never feels scattered. Highlights: “The Town & Miss Lorraine,” “Eyes Wide Awake”
Inara George, Dearest Everybody
One half of The Bird & The Bee flies solo for the first time in almost a decade, and most of these songs deal with growing and the passage of time in one way or another. Vocals and piano rule the day and the production lets them shine. Shades of Rufus Wainwright and Regina Spektor. The album’s towering highlights are “Somewhere New,” “All For All” and “Tusker 4.”
They Might Be Giants, I Like Fun
The new TMBG is a return to a more focused musical craftsmanship after a few years of unbridled proliferation. It winds up being their most adult to date, as well as their most macabre. Even a “dark” TMBG album is still incredbly fun and playful, and the Johns’ wry sense of humor carries the lister all the way through. Instant additions to the best of TMBG: “Push Back the Hands,” “When the Lights Come On”
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Gumboot Soup
It’s technically the 5th of 5 albums the band released last year, but no one really had time to get to know this album in 2017, I’m counting it as a January album. Here King Gizzard pull it all together, mixing sounds and concepts that guided each of their previous 4 releases, while reining in their psych-rock just a bit to give life to a pop-oriented song construction than they’ve explored before. Highlights: “Barefoot Desert,” “Down the Sink”
Dream Wife, Dream Wife
Powerful, noisy power pop from three Icelandic-English women with an expressly feminist mission and a wonderfully raw sound. These are simple but often excellent songs that seethe with energy and passion. Highlights: “Let’s Make Out,” “Hey Heartbreaker”
First Aid Kit, Ruins
The album’s dominant theme is heartbreak and its aftermath, but the Swedish sisters succeed most with the livelier, musically adventurous tunes, and falter a bit when they lean too hard into forlorn country tropes. When they do hit their mark, the music soars. Highlights: “It’s A Shame,” “My Wild Sweet Love”
Django Django, Marble Skies
The band’s third album takes a step back from the expansions, progressions and ever-present harmonies of 2015’s Born Under Saturn. It’s a step down, truth be told, but they‘ve still ’succeeded in their mission to put out a sweet set of elector-pop tunes. Highlights: “Marble Skies,” “In Your Beat”