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Top Albums Of The Year

Last year felt particularly cruel as we watched so many of our pop-culture icons get taken from us without warning. By December, we all yearned for a pause, an ending, a reset. However, none of the comforts that come with the hopeful act of flipping a calendar page lasted long into 2017. Instead, we’ve felt the pain more acutely and more personally than a year ago. Most of us have witnessed our core values challenged, felt our realities shaken, and endured daily reminders that who we are in our most basic integrity remains very much at stake. For that reason, it’s been a year in which we’ve turned to music out of necessity perhaps more than ever. The albums you find on this list aren’t just records we admired or caught ourselves dancing to. In many cases, they’re part of the reason we’re still here. They’ve consoled and empowered us, understood how we’ve felt, and in a time of such ugly, bitter divisiveness, reminded us that we’re never truly alone in mind, heart, or spirit.

소유, 봄에 돌아온 ‘음색 여신’…새 앨범 수록곡 티저 공개

 

These are the 50 albums we’ve leaned on most this year. Here’s hoping they don’t have to do such heavy lifting in 2018.

–Matt Melis
Editorial Director

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50. JOHNNY JEWEL – WINDSWEPT

Top Albums

Origin: Los Angeles, California

The Gist: After placing Chromatics’ Dear Tommy in the Red Room, Italians Do It Better producer and multi-instrumentalist Johnny Jewel issued this daring solo album mostly inspired by his work behind the scenes on Twin Peaks: The Return.

Why It Rules: With Windswept, Jewel sounds more assured as a producer than ever, conjuring up a moody amalgamation of his signature brooding synthpop and a style of free-form jazz akin to David Lynch go-to Angelo Badalamenti.

Essential Tracks: “Windswept”, “Slow Dreams”, and “Between Worlds”

–Michael Roffman

 

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49. ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER – GOOD TIME

Origin: Wayland, Massachusetts

 

The Gist: Two years after the interstellar, metallic Garden of Delete, esoteric electronic experimentalist Daniel Lopatin (AKA Oneohtrix Point Never) returned to score a crime drama starring Robert Pattinson. Retaining his own burning palette and pushing it through a Vangelis/Carpenter mesh, Lopatin continues to find new ways to inject anxiety and awe under the skin.

Why It Rules: A somber, piano-heavy collaboration with Iggy Pop in which the Stooge dreams about petting crocodiles is a good place to start, but Lopatin delivers the high-voltage thrills all on his own.

Essential Tracks: “Hospital Escape / Access-A-Ride”, “The Acid Hits”, and “The Pure and the Damned”

 

–Lior Phillips

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48. JAY SOM – EVERYBODY WORKS

Origin: Oakland, California

The Gist: Multiple-instrumentalist Melina Duterte (aka Jay Som) rode her production and recording acumen on debut LP, Turn Into, to a deal with indie major Polyvinyl for Everybody Works.

Why It Rules: In what can only be described as bedroom maximalism, Duterte dug her lyrics into the granular, banalities of existence and aimed her production at expansive soundscapes. On “The Bus Song”, Duterte sings, “I can be whoever I want to be,” and that’s exactly who she is on Everybody Works.

 

Essential Tracks: “The Bus Song”, “Everybody Works”, and “For Light”

–Geoff Nelson

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47. THE JUJU – EXCHANGE

Origin: Chicago, Illinois

The Gist: After rising to session-player fame by collaborating with Chance the Rapper, Kanye West, and Vic Mensa, 24-year-old trumpeter Segal (FKA Donnie Trumpet) wrangled three fellow Chicago musicians together to expand his interest in experimental jazz, ultimately showcasing how the backbeat of hip-hop’s new sound is worthy of its own spotlight.

Why It Rules: On their debut LP, The Juju Exchange follow in the footsteps of producers like Flying Lotus and Knxwledge — not in sound, but in audience awareness, drawing listeners out of their usual jazz associations and into a world of smooth, free-form, low-key musings that inspire with their use of ample space.

Essential Tracks: “The Circuit”, “We Good”, and “Morning Of”

–Nina Corcoran

‘싸이 그룹’ TNX, 데뷔 앨범 ‘WAY UP’ 포스터 공개

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The Best And Worst Musical Hosts

This weekend, Chance the Rapper will take the stage to host Saturday Night Live, leaving the musical guest duties to Eminem. Last weekend, Taylor Swift rejoined the late-night sketch institution for a couple of songs, but she also handled full hosting responsibilities back in 2009. Ever since Paul Simon emceed the second-ever episode back in 1975, SNL has granted adventurous musicians the opportunity to try their hand at sketch work.

Episodes hosted by non-professional actors are always dicey; there are few experiences more exquisitely painful than watching a good-natured quarterback stumble his way through a commercial parody. Musicians generally have a better go of things, channeling their natural stage presence into a more precise format. But when they tank, they tank hard. We’ve surveyed Saturday Night Live’s long history of turning the host’s mic over to music stars.

The Good
Debbie Harry

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On Valentine’s Day 1981, Debbie Harry’s acting career (she had memorable roles in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome and John Waters’ Hairspray) mostly lay ahead of her. America knew her as the lead singer of the new wave outfit Blondie and an emblem of post-punk glamour, but a winningly game performance heralded bright things to come. She bounds onstage for the monologue in her sporty tux and works the crowd like she’s bantering between sets, and beams like the proud kid she is when she shows off her parents in the crowd. For sheer surrealist magnificence, there’s no matching the Waxmans in SoHo sketch, in which Harry tentatively attempts to come out as a lesbian to her uncle Gilbert Gottfried.

Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton on SNL.
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Dolly Parton on SNL. Photograph: NBC
The country and western superstar’s entire schtick revolves around having a sense of humor about herself – about her manners, about her assorted surgical upkeep, about her trashy-made-flashy style. Accordingly, she was a good sport as the host of an April 1989 episode that took potshots at her spotty career on the silver screen (her film Rhinestone was still an instant punchline) and, more than anything, her breasts. The virtue of Parton’s performance was in transcending otherwise repugnant material, including a monologue revolving entirely around her boobs and another sketch titled Planet of the Enormous Hooters. All through it, Parton remains a consummate professional, grinning and rolling with the blows.

Justin Timberlake

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The live-wire stakes of Saturday Night Live are perfectly suited to the charismatic showman’s skill set. From his earliest days as a Mouseketeer through his stint with ’NSync, Timberlake has thrived on the nourishment of an adoring crowd, and the routinely glowing reception he gets at Studio 6H has powered him through five appearances as host. In his recurring Bring It on Down to ______ville sketches, Timberlake hits a positive feedback loop with the audience, going bigger and getting bigger laughs, which in turn amplify his energy even more. But his finest work has taken place outside NBC’s facilities, in his regular appearances on the Lonely Island’s digital shorts. The 90s-R&B lothario of Motherlover and Dick in a Box could sustain his solo career.

The Bad
MC Hammer

MC Hammer and David Spade
MC Hammer and David Spade. Photograph: NBC
In December 1991, MC Hammer was on top of the world. He had scored a chart-topping hit with U Can’t Touch This, and the song had made history earlier that year as the first rap track to crack the Record of the Year category at the Grammys. He had his own cartoon featuring a pair of talking shoes. What could go wrong? As it turns out, a wooden and uncomfortable style of acting, paired with some limp writing from a staff that clearly knew precious little about hip-hop. One sketch revolves around Hammer playing himself as he tries to get past a pushy receptionist to see Dick Clark, and even that seems like a tall order.

Justin Bieber

The swishy-haired Canadian singing sensation pulled double duty in a February 2013 episode, and while the cast member Bill Hader has already gone on record to confirm that the youngster was a backstage terror, he didn’t fare much better in front of the cameras. He couldn’t fit in on the regular sketches The Californians and The Miley Cyrus Show, and in the sketches that played on his heartthrob status, such as Valentine’s Dance and 50s Romance, he comes across first and foremost as … Justin Bieber. Perhaps it was impossible from the start for a boy already a parody of himself to lampoon his own persona – best to leave the Justin Bieber appearances to resident impersonator Kate McKinnon.

The Brooks
Garth Brooks

Tracey Morgan and Garth Brooks
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Tracey Morgan and Garth Brooks. Photograph: NBC
Brooks wasn’t the worst host SNL has ever seen, but his gig on 13 November 1999 was certainly one of the strangest. The country megastar turned SNL into another phase of his bizarre career pivot to “Chris Gaines”, a rock’n’roll alter ego Brooks had invented as part of a studio album that had debuted two months prior. Gaines, for whom Brooks created an entire fictional identity and planned an aborted film vehicle, performed as the musical guest and was credited independently. In one sketch from that evening, Tracy Morgan confronts Brooks and tells him to ditch the act, referring to the somewhat heavier-set character’s look as “Girth Brooks”. Brooks eventually came to his senses, but that episode remains a bizarre pop-cultural footnote.

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The Empire Film Podcast #3

Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) is held hostage by the evil Imperial forces in their effort to take over the Galactic Empire. Venturesome Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and dashing Captain Han Solo (Harrison Ford) team together with the lovable robotic duo, R2-D2 and C-3PO, to rescue the beautiful princess and restore justice in the Empire.

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Eminem Revival

Few texts in hip-hop are as bizarre as Eminem’s debut LP, Infinite. Released on a local Detroit label in 1996, it was either ignored or dismissed by those who rejected his whiteness and his borrowed aesthetic. Were it released in 2017, it might be celebrated for its scholarship of the form’s early classics, a la Joey Bada$$ or Roc Marciano. Instead, he was written off as a swagger jacker who sounded too much like Nas and AZ.

The criticism burned, and from that fire he formed his alter ego, Slim Shady. A manifestation of Marshall Mathers’ inner turmoil, the persona served as a vehicle for his darkest, most violent thoughts and helped him step out from the shadow of his forebears to channel the darkest parts of himself. On 1998’s The Slim Shady EP, he found his unique and disturbing voice. It caught the ear of Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, who spent the next five years molding him into one of the biggest pop stars in the world.

In those early years, for all the controversy his lyrics caused, Slim Shady helped Mathers focus his energy, a cathartic outlet that was both messy and intensely fascinating. But after more than two decades, he’s older, well-fed, and in possession of pretty much every accolade there is to acquire. The Slim Shady suit no longer fits; once the outsider, he’s now the establishment. If Slim Shady fed on hate, what does he do now that he’s beloved? What motivates a healthy, sober, 45-year-old father with enough money for several lifetimes?

And if the beats knocked, it would probably be tolerable, too. But legendary executive producers Dr. Dre and Rick Rubin managed to stuff a bloated tracklist with uninspired production and instantly forgettable pop hooks. Even Beyoncé couldn’t save “Walk on Water,” a stale piano ballad that undercuts Eminem’s attempt to explore the weight of his self-doubt. The Alicia-Keys-featuring “Like Home” is equally limp and toothless, defanging Eminem’s attempt to battle Donald Trump. He sees himself as a crusader against his influence, champion of the bullied, a notebook full of disses at the ready. It’s not his fault that all Trump has to do to beat him is ignore him, but it is his fault that the beat makes it so easy to do so. Rubin’s contributions are particularly embarrassing; his re-hash of hits from the Rush/Def Jam days (“Heat,” “Remind Me”) suggest he’s completely out of ideas.

But while the long tracklist and equally protracted verses make for an exhausting listen, there are rewards for those that endure. The eponymous interlude features a short verse from the late Alice and the Glass Lake that sounds like a sketch for something potentially great. And on an album full of poorly matched beats and verses, the delicately morose guitar melody and heavy fuzz of the Cranberries“Zombie” suits his flow on “In Your Head” perfectly—even if the hook was pretty much cut and pasted from the original.

Eminem’s consistent run of mediocrity over the last 15 years has not tempered his album sales, and it’s unlikely to start now—he remains one of the most bankable acts in pop. But sales and fame have never been his primary motivation. He’s always wanted to be the best, and ever since he conquered the music world in the early aughts, it’s as if he has no idea where to go. As he raps with precision on “Believe”:

Man, in my younger days
That dream was so much fun to chase
It’s like I run in place
While this shit dangled in front of my face
But how do you keep up the pace
And the hunger pangs once you’ve won the race?
When that fuel exhaust is coolin’ off
’Cause you don’t got nothin’ left to prove at all
’Cause you done already hit ’em with the coup de grâce

These fears are relatable—what artist hasn’t struggled to find motivation?—if not necessarily interesting. But Revival is ultimately plagued by the same pitfalls as Infinite, which found him shadowboxing against ghosts, unable to land any punches. This time he’s competing with a version of himself that no longer exists. And though it’s easy to empathize with his creeping self-doubt, it’s tougher to swallow in the context of an album that ultimately proves that those doubts are correct.

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A Beginner’s Guide To Garage-Rock

“My motto is: try everything, life is short,” says John Dwyer, the leader of San Francisco garage rockers Thee Oh Sees. “We are growing at every turn. Every day you get a little older, a little closer to the grave – you should taste it all.”

A master of contemporary garage rock, he came into prominence as part of the fruitful San Francisco scene of the early 2000s. Since then Thee Oh Sees have rattled out 21 LPs of bewilderingly consistent quality, under various iterations of their name, and Dwyer has written, recorded and released another 20 albums with other collaborators, encompassing everything from industrial electronics to improvised jazz and death metal.

In a recent interview with Marc Maron, Dwyer talked of his love of Scott Walker and, in particular, a scene in the Walker documentary 30th Century Man when a percussionist is recorded punching a side of beef; Dwyer has similarly tried to master new sounds, be it a flute on Thee Oh Sees’ Dog Poison or electronic bagpipes on his most recent Damaged Bug LP. His career is full of examples of how to explore genres on a shoestring, too – there are projects that are just drums and vocals (the Drums) or a hefty death metal record squeezed out of three people (Dig That Body Up, It’s Alive). We asked him where to begin in his vast back catalogue.

Coachwhips – Bangers vs Fuckers (Narnack, 2003)

Coachwhips rewrote the punk aesthetic for the 21st century. Raw, stripped back to the bones of guitar, drums and keys, their shows were chaotic and rambunctious. Bangers vs Fuckers epitomises that, squeezing 11 tracks into 18 minutes, and was notable for Dwyer’s use of a telephone transducer rather than a microphone. “It was very simplistic and was meant to be bombastic and primitive,” Dwyer says. “Doing it the most direct path was key. The music was so abrasive and forward that no one would have noticed any of our innovation. It was a sort of as-much-as-you-can-squeeze-from-nothing aesthetic.”

OCS – 34 Reasons Why Life Goes on Without You (Tumult, 2003)

“This goes hand-in-hand with the amount of marijuana I was smoking at the time,” is Dwyer’s take on this early OCS material, a stunningly delicate collection of untitled tracks that marks the only time an acoustic guitar has been given prominence in one of his records.

Zeigenbock Kopf ‎– IDM LP (KimoSciotic, 2002)

The first time Dwyer worked extensively with abrasive electronics was in his band Zeigenbock Kopf. The group aped German industrial to create an abrasive noise overlaid with homoerotic subject matter – the IDM of the title stands for “I dig men” and the cover featured Dwyer dressed as a leather daddy. “I got a lot of heat from this band,” he says. “We had a real mix of people who loved and hated it. I think it goes to show that not every idea is a good idea or needs to be a reality. I was much more into heavier drugs and beats and distorted electronics, so it felt perfect. I had this idea of doing a faux German band, and the leather daddy thing sort of fell into line with it.”

Sword & Sandals ‎– Good & Plenty (Empty Cellar, 2010)

This project with Randy Sutherland and Shaun O’Dell wraps duelling saxophones around blistering percussion. “I love jazz and improvisation,” he says. “That band was real fun. We played a lot of shows in the woods, on the street, in art galleries and bookstores. Even today we have massive segments of improvisation in Thee Oh Sees, so why not [do it]? It would be boring otherwise.”

Damaged Bug – Bunker Funk (Castle Face, 2017)

With Thee Oh Sees constantly touring and recording, it is astounding that Dwyer finds time to work on his own Damaged Bug solo project, full of instrumental experiments (like the aforementioned bagpipes). “It’s my meditation – I love doing it,” Dwyer says. “I love to be consumed in art, whether it be my own or somebody else’s. I love Philip K Dick, Truman Capote, Flannery O’Connor, Peter Watts, Ben Wheatley, Stanley Kubrick, Peter Weir … the list could go on for days. I’m always working.” With that approach, it would not be a surprise to see 40 more releases over the next two decades.

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Guardian Books Podcast #2

The Guardian Books podcast is our weekly look at the world of books, poetry and great writing presented by Claire Armitstead, Richard Lea, & Sian Cain. With in-depth interviews with leading authors and investigations into the thematic trends in contemporary writing, this is the perfect book worm’s companion

As a new report reveals the dire financial straits being faced by literary novelists, we investigate how these bleak conditions arose and what can be done to help the writers, regarded by some as thoroughbreds and by others as ghosts of Christmas past.

We also catch up with Edward St Aubyn, one of a series of top novelists hired to reimagine Shakespeare’s plays for the 21st century. Perhaps not surprisingly for a writer whose name-making Melrose novels centred on his own monstrous father, he chose King Lear as his subject. In a Guardian book club event chaired by John Mullan, he introduces Dunbar, the autocratic head of an international media corporation who has recently been ousted by his family.