Uncategorized — Page 54

→ January 5, 2021
→ By keith

Soul.

Soul just doesn’t have one.

I’ve avoided joining the chorus bemoaning the decline in the heart and spirit of Pixar’s scripts since their original batch of ideas, which more or less ended with WALL-E; since then, only Inside Out has met their earlier standard of greatness, although I might concede the point on Toy Story 4, a good movie that didn’t really need to exist (other than to give me a reason to say “traaaash?” to the kids). But it’s true: They’ve gone downhill since they exhausted the first set of concepts, and there doesn’t seem to be any sign that they’re getting back on track. Onward was dismal all around, enough that I have forgotten numerous times that I actually saw that movie in 2020. Some of the sequels have been entertaining, but they’re not very novel, and none has matched its predecessor for ingenuity or insight.

Soul was somewhat more promising, not least because it was the first Pixar movie to star a Black protagonist and feature a largely Black voice cast. That’s praiseworthy, as is the work that went into avoiding the stereotyped depictions of Black Americans in animation throughout history. The score is also great, between the original jazz compositions by Jon Batiste and the ambient background music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (both of Nine Inch Nails). And of course the movie looks fantastic; Pixar’s ability to create realistic-looking landscapes and city scenes has long surpassed my mind’s ability to comprehend it. I know what I’m watching isn’t real, and yet I hesitate.

That makes it all the more disappointing that Soul‘s story is just so flat. It’s Inside Out in the afterworld. It’s Brave without the cool accents. It’s It’s a Wonderful Life with less schmaltz. There’s just nothing new here at all. It doesn’t even offer us something on its main subject – death, and the meaning it ascribes to life.

The quest takes Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx), a music teacher and jazz pianist who falls down a manhole and ends up on the verge of death – with his soul departing his body in a sort of celestial error and heading into the Great Beyond – on the very day he finally gets what he believes will be the big break in his career. Once there, he runs into 22 (Tina Fey), a wayward soul who has no interest in going to earth and inhabiting a meatsuit as a human being. Joe gets the idea that he can use 22 to earn his way back to his own body, which, of course, goes awry, so the two have to learn some Great Lesson and realize that what they originally wanted was, in fact, not the thing most likely to make them happy.

There’s a lot of humor in Soul, but too much of it comes from side characters. Rachel House is great as Terry, an accountant of souls in the Great Beyond, but she’s just re-creating her policewoman character from The Hunt for the Wilderpeople (which is fantastic, by the way – both the movie and her role in it). Graham Norton has some good lines as Moonwind, a sign twirler on Earth who is a sort of pirate soul in the Great Beyond. Daveed Diggs is mostly wasted in a minor role as a friend of Joe’s, and Richard Ayoade and Alice Braga are underutilized as two of the many counselors in the Great Beyond who are all, for some reason, named Jerry. Fey gets some big laughs when her character first appears, but the script doesn’t keep 22’s manic energy going for very long, and Joe is just a straight man here.

I could live with all of that if the script had anything to say on its main theme, but it doesn’t. This is pop philosophy at best, some pablum about appreciating the life you have, and living it to its fullest, rather than striving for, say, what culture or society tell you are the marks of success or of a happy life. The elegy to life as one worth living is a good message, but hardly one we haven’t seen hundreds of times. It’s the main point of It’s a Wonderful Life, and that movie is 75 years old.

I don’t mean to disparage the importance of Soul‘s representation, which will probably be its most lasting legacy, and perhaps continue to create opportunities for filmmakers, in and beyond animation, who are themselves people of color or wish to build stories around people of color. Soul is superficially entertaining, easy on the eyes, and well-paced. It’s better than Onward, or Monsters University, or Finding Dory, but not as good as Coco, which had something to say and spotlighted an entire culture, or Inside Out, which sits in the top echelon of Pixar’s films for its pairing of real insight on the human brain and the powerful emotional resonance of its story. Soul, for all its jazz, just didn’t move the needle.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2020 best animated feature nominees, 2020 movies, animation, movies

→ January 2, 2021
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 1/2/21.

I had three pieces this week for subscribers to the Athletic: breaking down the Yu Darvish trade, breaking down the Blake Snell trade, and one piece on both the Josh Bell trade and Kohei Arihara signing. I revealed my Hall of Fame ballot in another post that included several other Athletic writers’ ballots, with each of us explaining one particular vote for a player. I also held a video chat via Periscope on Thursday.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the wonderful game for younger kids Dragomino, a reimagining of the Spiel-winning game Kingdomino, and ranked the five best games I’ve played for kids in the 3-6 range.

At Ars Technica, I ranked the best new board game apps of 2020. I didn’t include Spirit Island, which is a gorgeous app, but the tutorial is so inscrutable that I just couldn’t figure out how to play the game at a reasonable level.

A new edition of my free email newsletter is on my to-do list for the weekend. My thanks to all of you who bought – or asked for – either of my books this holiday season. You can still buy The Inside Game and Smart Baseball anywhere you buy books.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Is the new mutation of SARS-CoV-2 a ticking time bomb, or merely worrying but not terrifying? It’s more infectious, and that’s going to mean it spreads faster, so our botched vaccine rollout – just 18 more days until the adults take over again – is even more problematic than it already was.
Bookshop.org has positioned itself as the alternative to Amazon for independent booksellers, giving those shops an easy way to set up an online storefront, and consumers a place to buy books that supports local shops, but the calculus is quite different for individual shops, as they earn far less from a sale through bookshop.org than in their own physical stores. I use bookshop.org for affiliate links on the dish, and buy books there now because we have few options here in Wilmington beyond big-box stores.
Cartoon Saloon, whose Wolfwalkers is a likely nominee for this year’s Academy Award for Best Animated Feature (and is only on apple TV+), offers a different approach to children’s animation from big studios using CGI. Even Studio Ghibli has gone to computer animation for its newest film. I haven’t seen Wolfwalkers, but enjoyed two of their previous films, The Breadwinner and The Secret of Kells.
Grub Street looks at the great bucatini shortage of 2020, and the very weird, surprising cause of it.
The Daily Beast looks at the plan by neo-Nazi groups to stoke anti-vaccine sentiment, especially among white Americans, to create conflict with authorities that these racists can then exploit.
Just as they did in the 2017 GOP tax bill, the top 1% came out the big winners in December’s COVID-19 relief bill too.
The Sackler family, owners of Oxycontin producer Purdue Pharmaceuticals, refused to apologize for their role in creating and spreading America’s opioid crisis.
The BBC has a good primer on the Ethiopian conflict in Tigray and how Eritrea, a repressive dictatorship that fought a border war with Ethiopia in the late 1990s, has become an unexpected ally of its former nemesis.
Also on the BBC: the district attorney in San Francisco has an unusual background, as his parents were members of the terrorist group Weather Underground and went to jail when he was still just a year old.
And one more from the BBC – Spain is going to keep a registry of people who refuse the COVID-19 vaccine. At that point, just make the vaccine mandatory. A registry just feeds into the fears of the cranks and conspiracy theorists.
The Washington Post spoke to Steve McQueen about his five Small Axe films, and how his own experiences helped inform them.
A Chesterfield County (Missouri) Councilman was banned from a local Best Buy for refusing to wear a mask. In December, nine months after the pandemic began, this jackass is still fighting mask mandates, and it sounds like the local police aren’t helping enforce anything.
An interesting opinion column submitted by one of you – we have to let teenagers make mistakes, rather than ruining their lives forever for a bad moment caught on video when they were still children. There’s a limit to this, in my opinion; Madison Cawthorn’s mistakes should have followed him, but the former high school freshman named Mimi whom this writer mentions deserves a chance to move beyond her error.
The KLF is going to rock you again, as their biggest hits are finally available on streaming sites.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: africa, bookstores, coronavirus, links, longreads, pasta, stick to baseball

→ December 29, 2020
→ By keith

The Prom.

The thing with musicals is that, even if the plot is good, shouldn’t you remember at least one of the songs after you’ve watched it?

I actually liked The Prom, which has received some scathing reviews and mixed marks overall, even with some obvious flaws, from a hackneyed plot to the choice to cast a straight actor as a gay character at the center of the film, but the biggest problem with the movie is that the music just isn’t any good. I couldn’t sing or hum a single tune from the movie within a few hours after we turned it off. No musical can work like that, even when the feel-good story feels good, the lead actress is a star in the making, and some great actors are quite game for a script that doesn’t always serve them well.

The premise of The Prom, which was a Broadway musical before coming to Netflix and may have seemed fresher or more current when it debuted, is familiar: A high school in Indiana cancels its prom rather than let a student bring their same-sex partner as a date to the event. The student, Emma (Jo Ellen Pellman), is out, but her girlfriend isn’t. Her principal (Keegan Michael-Key) is supportive, and sees this as a civil rights issue, but the head of the PTA (Kerry Washington) heads the opposition, spouting some typical bromides about family values, life choices, and ‘won’t somebody please think of the children.’ (I found it interesting that they cast a Black actor in that role, perhaps to avoid bringing race into a story about defending LGBTQ rights.) Four Broadway actors, two of whom have just learned their brand new show has received such savage reviews that it’s likely to close after just one night, get wind of this story and decide to head to Indiana to rally behind Emma – and give their own careers a boost of good publicity. Needless to say, this isn’t how things go once they arrive.

The four actors are played by Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, and Andrew Rannells, all of whom throw themselves completely into their rather absurd characters. Streep plays the diva, Corden her flamboyantly gay co-star, and both profess to be rather unaware of how the hoi polloi might live (although we later learn that’s a put-on). Kidman is a permanent understudy who never got her big break, and Rannells is “between gigs” and happens to be tending bar at the afterparty for Streep and Corden’s show. Kidman is, unsurprisingly if you’ve seen much of her work (like To Die For), the film’s secret weapon, sporting a convincing New York accent and giving her slim character her all, especially in her one big song, “Zazz,” a gentle satire of Chicago’s “All That Jazz” that unfortunately lacks the dancing part that would seal the homage. Rannells has even less to do, but does it well, especially in the song that sends up the show that made him a star, The Book of Mormon, where he responds to the argument that the Bible forbids homosexuality with a song that points out that it also forbids tattoos and the wearing of hats.

The story doesn’t really work if you squint at it, although that’s true of a lot of musicals, and many of the classics have plots that are little more than afterthoughts in service of the music. The resolution relies on a rather substantial plot contrivance, something the viewer knows for most of the movie, that is just too convenient. Some of the subplots actually work better – Key’s principal being a huge fan both of Streep and of Broadway in general, James Corden’s estrangement from his parents – but the script strains too hard to make the main storyline, which itself feels a few years out of date, work.

It succeeds in spite of itself, in large part because of Pellman, who makes her film debut in The Prom and looks every bit a star in the making. With her girlfriend still closeted, Emma carries most of the weight of the kids’ part of the storyline – her girlfriend is the only other teenaged character with any depth here – and Pellman is more than able to carry her share even in scenes with Streep and Kidman, two great actors who can be dominant on-screen, and when she finally gets a scene of her own, singing “Unruly Heart” as her character starts a Youtube channel and takes charge of her own side of the publicity battle.

Corden has come in for a fair amount of criticism for the fact that he’s a straight man playing a gay character, and for doing so with some effeminate flourishes that lean a little bit into stereotype. I can’t argue the point, but from a straight performance perspective, Corden was fine. He’ll never not be Smithy to me, but he was more than adequate here, and was enough of a presence to counterbalance Streep, who is the good kind of hammy for most of the film, even though the script really lets her down in several ways.

But all of this comes with the basic problem I had with The Prom: There isn’t a single song in it that I could still recall a few hours after we finished the film. I enjoyed the experience of watching it, but a musical without good music is a rather empty shell, with barely enough plot to fill a short film. The Happiest Season, a holiday film on Hulu starring Kristen Stewart, had a rather similar plot at the core of its story, and handled it more deftly and with bigger laughs, even though it relies on some hackneyed tropes in its story. So while I liked The Prom just enough, there’s no staying power to it, and, unlike with most musicals, I have no real interest in watching it again.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2020 movies, adaptations, disappointments, movies, musicals, netflix

→ December 28, 2020
→ By keith

Imbibe!

David Wondrich’s Imbibe! had been on my wishlist for several years, as it was recommended by several folks I follow on Twitter (including, I think, the great follow @creativedrunk), and he later appeared on the podcast Hugh Acheson Stirs the Pot. I finally picked it up a month or two ago when it was on sale for the Kindle, and while it’s a different book than I expected, it’s a great read if you’re a fan of cocktails, especially vintage ones, and how they took over the American drinking scene at least twice in history.

The inspiration for Imbibe! is “Professor” Jerry Thomas, a very successful if peripatetic bartender in the mid-1800s who mixed drinks at swanky bars and dives on both coasts and wrote what is believed to be the first book on drinks ever published in the United States, Bar-Tender’s Guide. He claimed that he invented the Tom and Jerry, an eggnog-like cocktail, and certainly did a lot to popularize the Tom Collins in the United States. He’s a towering figure in cocktail history … but he’s not really enough to support a whole book.

The real meat of the book is the drinks, and the way Wondrich presents the stories around each drink. Many of the classic cocktails we associate with the Roaring Twenties and the period before Prohibition have their origins in the late 19^th century, as far back as the 1850s in some cases, a time of great experimentation with alcoholic spirits, which may simply have been a reaction to the inconsistent or low quality of the spirits available at the time. Thomas spent time tending bar in northern California during the Gold Rush, when he was mixing what I presume was god-knows-what sold as whiskey or brandy or whatever, and thus encouraged the introduction of various mixers and flavorings, notably sugar and other sweetening syrups, as well as peculiar combinations of liquors that would have produced cocktails so strong that you didn’t notice the taste.

I’m using the term cocktails loosely here to describe any sort of mixed drink, but Wondrich adheres to the strict historical definitions of cocktail, punch, sling, and more. A punch has four or five main ingredients – sour, sweet, strong (the booze), weak, and perhaps spice. A cocktail is a punch with the addition of some sort of bitters, potable or nonpotable. A sling is a punch without the sour element, and usually has nutmeg as its sprice. There are also sours (with lemon juice and sugar), collinses (a long sour, meaning it adds soda), juleps (with mint), smashes (with chunks of fruit), flips (with egg), and more. Wondrich walks through these categories and more with historical notes, pinpointing drink origins where possible and debunking the occasional myth.

Many of these drinks are best lost to history, with bizarre combinations of ingredients that result in drinks that sound like they’d have served no other purpose beyond getting the drinker as drunk as possible as quickly as possible. There are champagne cocktails that you’d never make with actual champagne, given the wine’s cost and how most people at least appreciate its flavor. Many drinks in the 1800s were topped with port, a fortified, often sweet wine that would have added color and alcohol but would have run through the flavor of the cocktail beneath like a rhinoceros on amphetamines. And all the eggs … there are some exceptions, to be sure, like a proper egg nog at the holidays, but I cannot see the appeal of mixed drinks with whole eggs in them, warm or cold.

Imbibe! is definitely not a book for every tippler, as it is, pun intended, rather dry in parts. Many of these drinks are antiquated, often lost to history, or only recently seeing a resurgence in interest because of the spread of artisan cocktail bars (which are, unfortunately, likely among the businesses most hurt by our government’s failed response to the pandemic). Some of the ingredients Wondrich identifies in original recipes are no longer available, or extremely difficult to find, and he has to recommend modern substitutes, which is fine but also would raise the question of whether we’re simply better off consuming cocktails and punches designed with those modern ingredients in mind. I’ve read enough about distilled spirits, especially rum, that I approached this book with more history of reading about this sort of thing – and perhaps a bit more specific interest in the makeup of some of the drinks. If you enjoy a good collins or sling, or are interested in the way flavors may or may not combine to create something novel in a glass, Imbibe! is as impeccably researched as you’ll find.

Next up: I’m playing catchup here on reviews but right now I’m reading the short story collection Addis Ababa Noir, edited by Booker Prize nominee Maaza Mengiste.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alcohol, cocktails, cookbooks, drinks, non-fiction

→ December 26, 2020
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 12/26/20.

I had one post this week for subscribers to the Athletic, looking at six of the players who impressed me or beat my expectations for them in the truncated 2020 season.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Tekhenu and Tawantinsuyu, two heavy, complex games from the publishers Board & Dice. Tekhenu made my top ten games of the year. I also have a post up at Vulture on the best board games of 2020 in various categories.

If you missed it here on the dish, I posted my annual rankings of my top 100 songs and favorite 15 albums of the year.

This link roundup is a bit skewed – I was fully possessed by the Christmas spirit this week and offline a good bit more than usual – but here are the links…

Longreads first: Actor Leonard Roberts detailed explicit and implicit racism from his time on the NBC series Heroes.
Ed Yong’s superb writing on the pandemic continued for the Atlantic with his latest column on how science defeated the virus, going from zero scientists studying the virus 13 months ago to multiple effective vaccines already delivered to first responders.
ProPublica detailed the misdeeds of a family court judge in Ohio who brought his own denialism of COVID-19 into the courtroom, including threatening to jail a mother for contempt of court if she got one her sons tested for the virus. He’s also collecting a salary and a pension by exploiting a loophole in Ohio laws, claiming he intended to retire but also running for re-election (which he won, running unopposed).
A new study out by two LSE economists shows that cutting taxes on the rich does not, in fact, create jobs for anyone. This had been a long-argued point by classical economists; I was taught it in college and business school. The evidence says otherwise.
A CNN/Bellingcat investigation identified the specific Russian agents who poisoned opposition politician Alexey Navalny.
The New York Times had a wonderful history of Chartreuse liqueur and how the spirit is surviving when most bars are closed.
Monopoly accounts for about 30% of mass-market board game sales – which excludes the hobby channel – and it got there in large part due to monopolistic behavior by Hasbro. Competition from new publishers, including the acquisitive, PE-owned Asmodee, might dent that stranglehold on the niche.
Denver’s Tattered Cover is now the country’s largest Black-owned bookstore.
Philly’s independent, listener-supported radio station WXPN counted down the top 2020 songs of all time, and the ranking reflected the eclectic nature of their audience. (If you just want the list, it’s here.)
NME ranked every Arctic Monkeys song ever.I’m not nearly as high on their #1 choice, and would put “R U Mine” in that spot, with “I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor,” “Arabella,” “Flourescent Adolescent,” “Do I Wanna Know,” and “From the Ritz to the Rubble” also in the top ten.
Two of the surviving members of the Waitresses told the Guardian about the making of their song “Christmas Wrapping.”
Megachurch leader and entrepreneur Joel Osteen received a $4.4 million PPP payment, from funds primarily intended for small businesses. Neither Osteen nor his wife, who also works for the church, received any of the payout.
New research shows that COVID-19 is much deadlier for younger people than previously believed.
Delaware’s New Castle County bought a local hotel and is turning it into a shelter for unstably housed persons.
The BBC has a video on the growing hole in the earth in Siberia, the result of the interaction between permafrost and the environment.
The new diplomatic agreement between Israel and Sudan, one of several trumpeted by the Trump Administration as a foreign-policy victory, threatens the status of Sudanese migrants in Israel.
Sen. Mitch McConnell bragged about being the “grim reaper” of Congress; the pandemic has made that nickname a reality.
One of the local leaders of the protests in Louisville in response to the police murder of Breonna Taylor was himself shot and killed on Friday.
From my colleagues at the Athletic ($), Omar Vizquel’s wife has accused him of domestic violence.
There’s just four days left in this Kickstarter for the Vindication board game’s new edition and its Chronicles expansion.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board game news, bookstores, coronavirus, delaware, links, liquor, stick to baseball

→ December 24, 2020
→ By keith

Top 100 songs of 2020.

It turned out to be a good year for music despite the pandemic and various responses by incompetent governments; perhaps there was a lot of good music already recorded and ready, but at least some of the songs on this ranking were recorded during lockdowns. I had more songs on my first cut at the top 100 than I have in years, and I’m sure I omitted something I liked, although I have proofed this list a few times now. You can also check out this year’s top albums ranking, and previous years’ top 100 lists are all here: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012.

If you can’t see the Spotify widget below, you can listen to the playlist here.

100. Creeper – Cyanide. Creeper’s sophomore album, Sex, Death, and the Infinite Void, was my #2 LP of 2019, with multiple, hook-filled tracks that draw on multiple genres. The best tracks recalled early Suede and other glammy Britpop darlings, including this one, the first of two on my top 100.

99. The Weather Station – Robber. I didn’t care for this folk-jazz-rock hybrid track when I first heard it in the spring, probably because it’s so subtle and has a slow build, but it has grown on me, especially in the last few weeks as I was reviewing songs for this ranking.

98. Disclosure ft. Eko Roosevelt – Tondo. Disclosure’s ENERGY was an honorable mention for my best albums list, but “Tondo,” which features the prominent Cameroonian musician Eko Roosevelt, is only on the deluxe edition. The most interesting tracks on the album are those with African musicians contributing, like “Douha (Mali Mali),” with Malian singer/actress Fatoumata Diawara; and “Ce n’est pas,” with Cameroonian singer Blick Bassy. If they’d made the whole record out of this, it would have been in my top 5.

97. Purity Ring – Stardew. I finda little of Megan James’ vocals goes a long way for me, but it only works in certain musical contexts, rather than across an entire album or body of work.

96. Christine and the Queens – People, I’ve been sad. This tenebrous, soulful track made numerous top ten lists for 2020, including Pitchfork (#2), NPR (#2), Paste (#1), and the Guardian (#3), and I agree it’s a great song … but it wasn’t my favorite song from Héloïse Letissier this year.

95. Fontaines D.C. – A Hero’s Death. For some reason, repeating the line”Life ain’t always empty” makes it seem far more convincing that life is, in fact, quite often empty. This Dublin group might be the most authentic punk band in the world right now, and while they don’t always hit with their formula, when they do it’s up there with classics of the genre.

94. Dirty Streets – Can’t Go Back. Unapologetic blues-rock throwback songs will always go over well with me. If you think there’s something clever or interesting about Greta Van Fleet, go listen to Dirty Streets instead.

93. Moon Destroys, Paul Masvidal – Stormbringer. This might have been the heaviest song I’ve ever included on a top 100 – I’ve had an Opeth track, but modern Opeth is more prog-rock than metal anyway – except for an even heavier track in my top 25 this year. Masvidal, who adds vocals on this song, is the only remaining original member of technical heavy metal icons Cynic, two members of which died this year (Sean Reinert at age 48 in January, Sean Malone at age 50 just two weeks ago).

92. MID CITY – Forget It. Australian indie rock that reminds me a bit of the Killers’ first album. MID CITY just released their first EP, Wishing for the Best, three weeks ago, including this banger.

91. LA Priest – Beginning. When I first heard this song, I thought it was Hayden Thorpe, former lead singer and guitarist/keyboard player of Wild Beasts, but Thorpe’s solo stuff since Wild Beasts broke up isn’t actually this upbeat or interesting. My second guess was Neon Indian, but the voice wasn’t right. LA Priest is neither of those artists, but a singer and electronica musician (formerly of a band called Late of the Pier) who released his second LP, Gene, this June, five years after his solo debut.

90. The Go-Go’s – Club Zero. I don’t quite know how this song fell so far under the radar; maybe because the documentary with which it was released was only on Showtime. It’s vintage Go-Go’s, which is amazing since we’re 39 years past Beauty and the Beat.

89. Zeal & Ardor – Vigil. Zeal & Ardor dialed down the death-metal aspects of their gospel/metal blend, and it’s for the better, especially on this track, where the lyrics are quotes uttered by black people murdered by the police (“I can’t breathe/It’s a cellphone, please/don’t shoot”).

88. Sunflower Bean – Moment In The Sun. I know Sunflower Bean haven’t remained critical darlings since their debut, but their sunny indie-pop sound is just right for me even if they never evolve away from it.

87. Texas & the Wu-Tang Clan – Hi. This improbable pairing has a long history, as they collaborated on a live rendition of Texas’s best song, “Say What You Want,” with new vocals from Method Man and RZA, after they were both playing the same event in 1998 and Texas singer Sharleen Spiteri heard that the promoters had segregated the rappers to keep them away from other (white) artists. The groups have stayed in touch over the ensuing two decades, and collaborated again on this brand-new track, which works better this time because the song is specifically built around the rappers’ contributions.

86. The Amazons – Howlin. A compilation album called Introducing … The Amazons appeared in the U.S. this past January, featuring tracks from their first two proper LPs as well as several bonus tracks, including this one, which has the kind of big, muscular guitar riff that has made me a fan since their debut.

85. Public Enemy featuring Nas, Rapsody, Black Thought, Jahi, YG, and ?uestlove – Fight The Power: Remix 2020. This song was the opener on the 2020 BET Awards and later appeared on PE’s comeback album What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down? Artists revisiting and re-recording their classics nearly always goes wrong, sometimes to cringey effect, but this song, with these new lyrics, appearing this summer was spot-on. The video, built around images from this past summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, is also worth watching.

84. HAERTS – It’s Too Late. Here’s hoping 2021 brings us a new album from this indie/soft-pop duo, whose sound also hasn’t changed much since their Hemiplegia EP appeared seven years ago.

83. Working Men’s Club – White Rooms and People. If you just heard this without any context, assuming you’re old enough to make this connection, wouldn’t you think this was some English post-punk track from 1981? The guitar and synth lines could have appeared on any number of albums back then, and the off-kilter vocals will always evoke that particular time in music, even though it’s become more common (at least in European pop/rock) in the interim.

82. Pale Waves – Change. This Mancunian band got quite a bit of airplay back in 2017 for “There’s a Honey” and “Television Romance,” but I’d rate this as their best single to date, a timeless pop track with a clear nod to the heyday of late 1990s alternative music.

81. Radkey – Seize. Why haven’t Radkey broken through yet?They write hooky songs that blend punk and power-pop, they’re a good story, and as an all-Black rock band, they’re still a bit of a rarity in the music world (although I hope that’s becoming less notable over time). Their fourth album, Green Room, just dropped a month ago and I still need to dive into it, but this lead single rocks.

80. Tame Impala – Lost In Yesterday. Tame Impala’s The Slow Rush was one of my favorite albums of the year, taking Kevin Parker’s project from psychedelic rock into everything from acid house to ’70s soft rock, with at least four songs I considered for the top 100.

79. SAULT ft. Michael Kiwanuka – Bow. Get usedto seeing SAULT on this list, since they released two full-length albums in 2020, one of which, Untitled (Rise), was my #1 LP of 2020. This sparsely arranged track, driven by a potent bass line and wah-wah guitar riff, features the artist who scored my #1 LP of 2019, the amazing, Mercury Prize-winning singer/guitarist Michael Kiwanuka.

78. Yard Act – Fixer Upper. The most British song on this list, bar none, with spoken-word lyrics like a short story where the presence of music is almost a happy coincidence.

77. The Mysterines – Love’s Not Enough. Add The Mysterines to the list of bands I think should be a lot bigger than they are, although the fact that they haven’t released a proper LP yet might be holding them back. Singer/guitarist Lia Metcalfe is a force on vocals and with the axe, and the group just keeps churning out songs with powerful riffs and incisive lyrics.

76. Ten Fé – Nothing Breaks Like A Heart. This track was the only release this year from the soft-rock quintet Ten Fé, and it’s a cover of the Mark Ronson/Miley Cyrus song, performed in a bare-bones vocals/acoustic guitar rendition by bandmember Leo Duncan.

75. Space Above, So Below – Golden. Space Above is the new project from former Naked & Famous keyboardist and producer Aaron Short, releasing their second album this August at the same time that TNAF’s Recover dropped. It’s more atmospheric and slightly more experimental, but on this, the album’s best track, you can hear the same pop influences you do in his former band.

74. Arlo Parks – Black Dog. I root for the success of many artists, and sometimes express surprise when certain artists aren’t more successful, but I am cautious not to predict success very often because so many variables go into it beyond just talent or musical quality. But my God, if Arlo Parks isn’t the next big thing in 2021, there’s no justice whatsoever in the world of music.

73. Black Honey – Run For Cover. One of twonew singles from this Brighton indie-rock group who have a real knack for great pop hooks.

72. Middle Kids – R U 4 Me? An exuberant pop/rock track from the band behind 2016’s alternative radio hit “Edge of Town.”

71. Wild Nothing – The World is a Hungry Place. I go back and forth on Wild Nothing; I prefer him to be a little less experimental, generally like his sense of melody, but have also found him being extremely derivative (never more so than on “To Know You,” which borrows very liberally from Talk Talk’s “It’s My Life”). There is something about his sound that keeps bringing me back, and it’s here on the one standout from his EP of songs cut from his previous record, Indigo.

70. Pure Reason Revolution – Silent Genesis (Edit). Go with the six-minute edit, not the 10:20 version on their album Eupnea. PRR’s music is a peculiar mix of electronic music and ambient metal, and while it doesn’t always work, the ceiling, which they approach here, is pretty high.

69. Jake Bugg – Saviours of the City. Bugg hasn’t built on his first two albums, released in 2012 and 2013, after turning in a slower, more folk/country direction, which led to his original label dropping him after his deal expired. He released three singles in 2020, with this folk-tune more in line with his first album, the more rock-oriented “Rabbit Hole,” and the overly poppy “All I Need.”

68. Ministry – Alert Level (Quarantined Mix). A bunch of 1990s artists had bigand unexpected comebacks this year, including Hum (whose Inlet was their first album in 22 years), the GoGo’s, Rob Zombie (further up the list), Arab Strap (ditto), and industrial metal pioneers Ministry, whose grim outlook on modern, post-capitalist life could not feel more apposite to 2020.

67. Talk Show – Stress. British press call them a punk band, but they’re definitely more post-punk, less abrasive than straight punk and more melodic, although the same indignant attitude is present here on the lead track from their four-song EP These People.

66. Waxahatchee – Can’t Do Much. If this was Katie Crutchfield’s best song of 2020, that would be a strong cap to a year that saw her produce one of its best albums in Saint Cloud. It’s the second-best song on the record, though, which is more evidence of why she’s so great.

65. SAULT – I Just Want to Dance. How can you resist a title and line like that? SAULT sucks you in with the groove, and then the anonymous singer explains that she can’t just dance because Black people are being murdered by cops and nobody cares.

64. Artificial Pleasure – The Movement of Sound. Artificial Pleasure might be the direct descendants of Heaven 17 and the Human League, with just a brief nod to modernity in some of the drum and bass elements, like the pounding backdrop to this very danceable track.

63. Hot Chip, Jarvis Cocker – Straight To The Morning. Hot Chip are good for one banger an album, and this is at least the equal of “Huarache Lights,” but I couldn’t even tell Cocker was on this track.

62. L.A. WITCH – True Believers. The best track on this all-female hard-rock trio’s new album Play with Fire.

61. PAINT – Strange World. This is the best Badly Drawn Boy track in 20 years (that is not actually by BDB).

60. Sprints – The Cheek. The first single from this new Irish band, whose music is a half-step less outraged than Fontaines D.C.’s but still shows a close kinship with vintage pink.

59. Ghost of Vroom – Rona Pollona. The new project from former Soul Coughing lead singer Mike Doughty and bassist Andrew Livingston is more like Soul Coughing than any of Doughty’s solo work, between his free-flowing, half-spoken lyrics and emphasis on the drum-and-bass elements over other instruments.

58. Lauren Ruth Ward – Water Sign. The best track of Ward’s album Volume II pairs her evocative, smoky voice with a heavy bottom of bass and pounding drums.

57. Deep Sea Diver – Hurricane. The intro to this song might mislead you into expecting some sort of big, over-the-top horn section, but it’s subtler and more folk-tinged than that, with a strong hook to support it.

56. Jade Bird – Headstart. The 23-year-old Bird is about to release her second album, led off by this bouncy single that still lets her release her inner Janis Joplin on the chorus.

55. Jackie Venson – Make Me Feel. I missed Venson’s album release in late October, but loved this lead single from the spring, which showcases her guitarwork – even though she’s only played since 2011, according to Wikipedia – and distinctive vocal style.

54. Black Orchid Empire – Natural Selection. If I hadn’t included “Stormbringer,” this would be the heaviest track on the top 100, although I think BOE’s music is a lot more accessible, just produced in a way that emphasizes the heavy drum work in the chorus – which is the best part of the song.

53. James BKS feat. The New Breed Gang – No Unga Bunga. I didn’t know James BKS was the son of Manu Dibango, a famous and popular Cameroonian musician, until the latter’s death this spring from COVID-19. This song, released just last month, is meant as a tribute to Dibango, and brings in more of the Afropop elements that BKS showed on his debut track “Kwele.”

52. Tori Handsley, Ruth Goller, Moses Boyd – What’s in a Tune. The only instrumental track on this ranking probably would never have crossed my radar if it weren’t for the presence of jazz drummer Moses Boyd, whose name you’ll see again on this list. Handsley is a jazz/rock harpist who gets sounds from the instrument like I’ve never heard before. The riff here – and, guitar or no, that’s a damn riff – is good enough to support the whole track without vocals.

51. Django Django – Spirals. As lead singles go, this is promising – better than anything off their last album, I think, and on par with “Shake and Tremble” from the previous LP. They still haven’t matched “Default” or “Hail Bop,” but I suppose that’s a lot to ask of any group.

50. BLOXX – Coming Up Short. This West London quartet’s sound reminds me more of California indie pop/rock, for reasons I can’t quite pin down, but their debut album Lie Out Loud was solid, highlighted by this song and the title track.

49. Are We Static – Wildfire. This is how you build a crescendo in a rock song – the song sets your mind running and pays it off with a hook in the chorus that brings the vocals and the lead guitar together.

48. TRAAMS – Intercontinental Radio Waves. It’sarather lo-fi affair – is that guy playing drums, or just some overturned buckets? – and the vocals sound just as unpolished, but the layering that takes us into the chorus of this alt-rock track is brilliant.

47. The Wants – The Motor. I talk a lot about punk, post-punk, and new wave, since my formative years as a music fan came during the heyday of the latter two and were influenced heavily by the main bands of the first one, so artists that remind me of those periods score well with me. I’m not sure I’ve heard anything as reminiscent of the first generation of post-punk bands, like Gang of Four or Magazine, as this song, from the Brooklyn trio’s debut album Container.

46. Glass Animals – Your Love (Déjà Vu). If it’s not quite up to their peak of “Life Itself,” “Your Love” is still a great Glass Animals track – memorable, danceable, driven by unusual percussion sounds, without too much tweeness in the vocals.

45. Grimes – 4ÆM. Grimes’ album Miss Anthropocene was my #5 LP of the year, placing two songs on this year’s list and one on last year’s (“Violence,” #53). “4ÆM” shows Grimes’ strength on the electronic side, while the track I ranked even higher shows off her straight musicianship.

44. Khruangbin – Pelota. Khruangbin added vocals for their third album, Mordechai, and got worse reviews for it – but for my money, it’s their best album to date, as the added vocal melodies make their incredible technical skills far more accessible.

43. Disclosure – ENERGY. Disclosurewent back to the well that produced their first big hit, “When a Fire Starts to Burn,” once again sampling minister and motivational speaker Eric Thomas over a strong beat for one of their best tracks to date.

42. Fake Names – Brick. If you like the Descendents’ style of tight punk with just a slight nod to the demands of melody, you’ll probably enjoy this new punk supergroup, with former members of Minor Threat, the Refused, and Girls Against Boys.

41. Sad13 – Sooo Bad. The reviews for the second solo album from Sadie Dupuis (Speedy Ortiz), Haunted Painting, were stronger than I expected; I think I come down more on the side of her noise-pop sounds with Speedy Ortiz, but this was my top song off the solo album.

40. Mourn – Stay There. The bestsongoff my #15 album of the year is one of the more interesting tracks musically thanks to an off-beat drum line that gives the whole song a sense that it’s about to fall apart.

39. Goodie Mob, Organized Noize – Frontline. This is just right in my wheelhouse, at least in terms of the style of rap, but that’s probably because these guys are all right about my age.

38. Everything Everything – Arch Enemy. I give E2 a lot of rope when it comes to experimentation, but I definitely favor their songs with a strong beat, even if you wouldn’t call them dance songs. This one, my favorite track off RE-ANIMATOR, is definitely good for hitting the floor.

37. Allie X – Sarah Come Home. I wasn’t wild about Cape God, which was as inconsistent with hooks and melodies as her previous releases, but this song is a real standout and deserved a lot more airplay than it got.

36. Cut Copy – Like Breaking Glass. Cut Copy might not reach the heights of their 2011 album Zonoscope again, but with “Black Rainbows” off their last album and this track off Freeze, Melt, they’re at least good for one great pop single per LP.

35. The Beths – Dying to Believe. I liked Jump Rope Gazers, but I had kind of expected to love it; this New Zealand quartet have a great knack for pairing sweet vocal harmonies with crunchy guitar riffs, best showcased here in the bridge and chorus.

34. Lupin – May. Lupinis Jake Luppen, lead singer of Hippo Campus, who released his first solo material this year, including this surprisingly funky synth-heavy track.

33. Arab Strap – The Turning of Our Bones. Arab Strap’s first new music in 14 years also gave us a new sound, gothic, haunting, with unabashedly erotic lyrics.

32. San Cisco – Reasons. This Australian pop trio leaned hard into the vocal and visual presence of drummer Scarlett Stevens, although the music suffers when she takes the lead at the mic, as she doesn’t have the vocal range of singer Jordi Davieson. They’re at their best on tracks like this one, where there’s some back-and-forth between the two, not to mention another great hook. Some other highlights from their newest album Between You and Me: “On the Line,” “When I Dream,” and “Flaws.”

31. The Districts – Cheap Regrets. Definitely the best thing I’ve heard from the Districts. The opening builds so much drama, and it pays off as soon as the vocals and drums enter around the one-minute mark.

30. Little Simz – might bang, might not. The only flaw in this furious burst of hip-hop energy is that it’s barely two minutes long.

29. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit – Be Afraid. Peak Isbell for me. Or, the peak of a certain type of rock/country hybrid that has to be near its ceiling to get my attention.

28. Lucius – Man in My Radio. Thistrack actually dates back to 2013, from the sessions for their debut album Wildewoman, which makes no sense because it’s better than anything on that album.

27. clipping. – Say the Name. Daveed Diggs as MC with a pair of his friends as producers. The album Visions of Bodies Being Burned had a lot of experimental noise that made it a tougher listen than it should have been given Diggs’ technical skill as a rapper and facility with wordplay.

26. Jorja Smith, Popcaan – Come Over (feat. Popcaan). Still waiting on Smith’s sophomore album, although she keeps teasing listeners with one-off singles like this one and her appearance on a song from the Eddy, “Kiss Me in the Morning.”

25. The Killers – Dying Breed. My favorite track from my #9 album of the year, although I also really liked “Caution.”

24. Pallbearer – The Quicksand of Existing. The title track from the doom-metal stalwarts’ fourth album is almost certainly the heaviest song I’ve ever included on a top 100, but the way the band managed to increase the tempo and reincorporate the feel of rock into a subgenre that is often so distant from it made it the best track they’ve ever recorded.

23. SAULT – Wildfires. The best track off Untitled (Black Is) follows the same template as most of that album, marrying lyrics of stark protest against police violence against Black Americans with a sparse but uptempo funk backdrop. The vocals here, possibly by American rapper/singer Kid Sister, are just gorgeous.

22. Fontaines D.C. – I Was Not Born. “I was not born/into this world/to do another man’s bidding” puts the band’s ethos front and center, and it sits atop a driving guitar and drum pattern that refuses to give you a chance to catch your breath.

21. Catholic Action – Another Name for Loneliness. The intro to this track will never not remind me of New Order’s “Love Vigilantes,” but in the right way, and the hook in the chorus is perfectly melancholy. This album appeared on a number of best-of-2020 lists too.

20. Rob Zombie – The Triumph of King Freak (A Crypt of Preservation and Superstition). This track was Zombie’s first new music in over four years, and it’s a glorious throwback to his halcyon days with White Zombie and his earliest solo work, if maybe a half-step heavier and more abrasive than “Dragula” or “More Human than Human.”

19. Anderson .Paak – Lockdown. The best song written about the lockdowns of 2020 wasn’t actually about lockdowns, but about the Black Lives Matter protest movement that swept the country in the wake of the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

18. Doves – Carousels. Doves’ first new music since 2009 was extremely promising, something that sounded right out of the sessions for The Last Broadcast, but the album failed to live up to this lead single’s potential.

17. All Them Witches – Lights Out. A number of critics loved this album, but some of it is just too noodly and navel-gazing for me; three minutes of ATW’s dark, gothic-blues riffing is perfect, but nine minutes is a bridge too far, I suppose.

16. The Mysterines – I Win Every Time. Another killer single from the Mysterines, powered by Metcalfe’s charismatic and vaguely threatening vocals.

15. Porridge Radio – 7 Seconds. Every Bad wasone of the most acclaimed albums of 2020, but I wanted more memorable hooks or melodies than the album could provide. This track had the best earworm of anything on the record, an alternative rock track that seems like it could come from any decade.

14. Bananagun – The Master. This Australian band’s debut album The True Story of Bananagun borrows heavily from late 1960s psychedelic rock, but with some elements from funk and terrific musicianship. The way the vocals are mixed on this, the album’s best track, definitely evokes something from just before I was born, but the music is more daring and experimental.

13. Bartees Strange – Mustang. Strange’s debutalbum met with rave reviews, although his love of the National, and critics’ love of the same, show through in both the music and critical responses. This rocks a good bit more than the National’s music does, more like a good Hold Steady track, and the droning guitars work well with Strange’s voice.

12. Shamir – On My Own. If you rememberShamir at all, it might be from his debut single “On the Regular,” where he rapped rather than sang, but he has a beautiful singing voice that shines here over a swirling, jangly guitar lick.

11. Grimes – Delete Forever. The softer side of Grimes is every bit as interesting as her jagged, rougher side, so while it’s not as daring or experimental as some of the tracks on Miss Anthropocene, but it’s the one I come back to most often.

10. Christine and the Queens – I disappear in your arms. This is the Christine and the Queens song that has been stuck in my head all year; it’s incredible that this and the widely acclaimed “People, I’ve been sad” both came off a six-song, 22-minute EP (La vita nuova) that seemed like a brief filler between albums. With this song, “Tilted,” and “5 dollars,” she should be globally acclaimed by now for her pop songcraft.

9. Creeper – Annabelle. The most Suede-like song on Sex, Death, and the Infinite Void is my favorite, of course.

8. The Naked And Famous – Monument. Alisa Xayalith’s vocals elevate this song above the rest of the tracks on TNAF’s outstanding fourth album, Recover, with some help from a cracking call-and-response moment in the chorus.

7. Tame Impala – Borderline. Kevin Parker’s ability to take a synth riff that sounds like he recorded it in a bathroom on an old Casio home keyboard and build a billowing cloud of melody and intrigue around it is unparalleled.

6. Arlo Parks – Green Eyes. Parks’ debut record, Collapsed in Sunbeams, is due out January 29^th, and I don’t think I’m looking forward to any album more. “Green Eyes” showcases her voice, her lyric writing, and her sense of melody as well as anything she’s released so far.

5. Khruangbin – Time (You and I). The best song off Mordechai is its funkiest track, right down to the vocals, all of which owes a huge debt to ’70s funk and disco. The interplay between the guitar and the walking bass lines is utter genius – taken on their own, they sound like they’d work at cross purposes, but they marry perfectly once combined.

4. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Automation. A heavy dose of psychedelia beneath my favorite guitar riff of the year produced a song that’s been in my rotation for months. King Gizzard flows so easily between styles of rock, blues, and metal, but this right here is his sweet spot.

3. Waxahatchee – Lilacs. My earliest contender for song of the year has just the right balance of country elements in Crutchfield’s formula of indie or roots rock, and her voice shines here on the chorus and every time she sings “And the lilacs drink the water.”

2. SAULT – Free. I dare you to sit stillwhen this song – and its infectious bass line – come on the speakers. The song shifts gears into the chorus, but doesn’t lose any of the momentum from that bass or the drum beat as it moves.

1. Moses Boyd ft. Poppy Ajudha – Shades of You. Boyd, a jazz drummer who’d recorded previously as half of Binker and Moses, was everywhere this year, including his incredible solo debut Dark Matter, his collaborations with jazz/rock harpist Tori Handsley, and work with Village of the Sun (which also includes Binker Golding). This song has elements from jazz, trip-hop, trap, and more, while jazz singer Ajudha sears her way across the intricate instrumentation with one of the year’s best vocal hooks in the chorus. This song floored me when it came out in March and it still floors me now. It’s a great single, but even more, it’s a brilliant piece of genre-bending songwriting.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2020 in music, Music, rankings

→ December 22, 2020
→ By keith

Top 15 albums of 2020.

I tried to do a longer list, but in the end couldn’t really get behind any more albums than these – which isn’t to say there were no other good albums, but there were the fifteen about which I felt the strongest. Disclosure, Working Men’s Club, King Gizzard, Bartees Strange, Freddie Gibbs, and San Cisco all put out interesting albums that just didn’t quite make the cut.

Previous years’ album rankings: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013.

15. Mourn – Self Worth. Mourn appeared on the scene around the same time as another all-woman rock band, the critical darlings Hinds, who barely knew how to play their guitars but succeeded with sheer enthusiasm and a few infectious hooks. Mourn, on the other hand, was more polished out of the gate, and on this album they’ve refined their sound and produced their best, most complete record yet. Running just 34 minutes, this collection of a dozen songs finds the trio contemplating the worthlessness of men and the heartbreaks of loving them anyway, along with more nuanced guitar riffs that seem harder-edged, even to the borderline of old-school metal. Highlights include “Stay There,” “Men,” “Call You Back,” and “I’m in Trouble.”

14. LA Witch – Play With Fire. Barely long enough to call it an album, Play With Fire runs a scant 29 minutes, but packs a punch in these nine songs, recalling some of the earliest female-fronted punk bands, where that scene was more open to women who wanted to be serious rock musicians than the typical avenues of pop radio and commercial labels. L.A. Witch’s sound is probably more gothic rock than punk, though, and has more in common with Killing Joke or Siouxsie and the Banshees than, say, Blondie or even the Slits. Standout tracks include “Fire Starter,” “True Believers,” and “I Wanna Lose.”

13. Pallbearer – Forgotten Days. The best metal album of the year, without any close competition, was the fourth LP from these American doom stalwarts, quite likely the best doom metal band still active today. (While it’s not a metal album per se, Inlet, the comeback album from 1990s alt-rock band Hum, has a lot of doom elements to it.) Forgotten Days has a little something for everyone, from the practically exuberant title track to the crunching “Rite of Passage” to the twelve-minute opus “Silver Wings.” The album distills everything Pallbearer did well on their first three albums into a single 50-minute record, and pushes them from much-admired heirs to the Black Sabbath/Cathedral throne to undisputed kings of modern doom.

12. Everything Everything – RE-ANIMATOR. More consistent start to finish than their previous albums, RE-ANIMATOR works better as a cohesive whole than anything they’ve released to date, which makes up for the lack of a huge single like “Cough Cough” or “I Believe It Now.” The frenetic arrangements, falsetto vocals, rapid tempo shifts, and idiosyncratic vocals are all still here, but now they’re just a bit more under control. Standout tracks include “Planets,” “Violent Sun,” “In Birdsong,” and “Arch Enemy.”

11. The Naked & Famous – Recover. This New Zealand duo’s fourth album, and first since 2016, is their best yet – although, as with RE-ANIMATOR, it doesn’t have a single to match their all-time best (I’d argue “Young Blood,” my partner would say “Punching in a Dream,” and is either of us really wrong?). There’s a new lyrical sophistication here, and they maintain their melodic strength over the entire album, where on the last two records in particular it seemed to lag as the albums went on. Highlights include the title track, “Sunseeker,” “Death,” “Everybody Knows,” and “Monument.”

10. Bananagun – The True Story of Bananagun. I only heard about this Melbourne psychedelic rock/funk group a few weeks ago, but I’m all about this album and their strange mélange of late ’60s flower-child rock and funk guitar work from the decade afterwards. Standout tracks include “The Master,” “Freak Machine,” and “Bang Go the Bongos.”

9. The Killers – Imploding the Mirage. I was never a huge Killers fan beyond a couple of their singles, especially when they turned towards a more over-the-top, affected sound on their second album, Sam’s Town. On their sixth album, they seem to have rediscovered a lot of what made their first album successful without regressing to an earlier, less musically sophisticated style. There’s still a lot going on across Imploding the Mirage, from vibraphones to E-bows to a makeshift string section, but this time that all feels like it’s in service of the music, not the other way around. Standout tracks include “Dying Breed,” “Caution,” and “Blowback.”

8. Tame Impala – The Slow Rush. I’ve always been a few degrees short of the critical acclaim for Kevin Parker’s music; I’ve liked many of his tracks but he often needs an editor to rein him in, and his albums haven’t come together as well as they should. The Slow Rush still has too many tracks that go on too long – half of the twelve songs here run five minutes or more, up to 7:13 for the closer – but it’s the most coherent record he’s released to date. Standout singles include “Borderline,” “Lost in Yesterday,” and “Breathe Deeper.”

7. SAULT – Untitled (Black Is). SAULT released one of the best albums of 2019 but did so after my 2019 rankings came out – in fact, they released two albums (7 and 5) last year, and both were great, but I didn’t hear either until May of this year. Despite working to cloak their identities for over a year, they’ve gained some critical attention nonetheless for their soul/funk/spoken word sound, and with Untitled (Black Is) they’ve become overtly political with a series of anthems supporting Black Lives Matter and other causes of equality and justice. Standout tracks include “Bow,” featuring Michael Kiwanuka; “Wildfires;” “Monsters;” “Why We Cry Why We Die;” and “Black.”

6. Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud. Folk-rocker Katie Crutchfield bares her soul, recounting her struggles with alcoholism and decision to get sober after her previous album, the uneven Out in the Storm (which still gave us “Never Been Wrong”), and the result is her best and most complete album to date. Standout tracks include “Lilacs,” “Can’t Do Much,” and “Hell.”

5. Grimes – Miss Anthropocene. A good example of when to separate the art from the artist. Grimes’ last album, Art Angels, was my #1 album of 2015; this record is more experimental and expansive, but still has several tracks that stand well on their own thanks to strong melodies, including “Violence,” “4ÆM,” and “Delete Forever.”

4. Khruangbin – Mordechai. I was late to the Khruangbin party, only hearing their last album, Con Todo El Mundo, a year after it came out, helped by The RFK Tapes’ podcast’s use of “Maria También” as its theme song. I think I got here just in time, though, as Mordechai is going to be their big breakout, as it has the same kind of Thai jazz/funk/rock hybrid sound as their last album, but now with extensive vocals from all three members. Standout tracks include “Pelota,” “Time (You and I),” the funky “So We Won’t Forget,” and “Connaissais de Face.”

3. Moses Boyd – Dark Matter. I don’t have any comparison for this album by percussionist Moses Boyd, one half of Binker and Moses. It’s a dark, swirling journey of modern jazz and house that has the energy of improvisational music but the tighter focus and melodic sensibility of more mainstream genres. Standout tracks include the stellar “Shades of You” (feat. Poppy Ajudha), shimmering opener “Stranger than Fiction,” and the guitar-laden “Y.O.Y.O.”

2. Creeper – Sex, Death, and the Infinite Void. Soapparently Creeper was a punk band just a few years ago on their debut album, but completely changed their sound for this sophomore release, a bombastic, showy, riveting album that recalls the earliest days of post-punk/New Wave with a very heavy dose of early Suede, especially in Will Gould’s swaggering vocals. It’s a concept album about an angel who has fallen from the heavens into a small town in California, and experiences love and heartbreak for the first time. Highlights include “Cyanide,” “Annabelle,” “Born Cold,” the country-tinged “Poisoned Heart,” and the Roxy Music-esque “Paradise.”

1. SAULT – Untitled (Rise). SAULT’s second album of 2020 and their fourth in about 14 months was their best yet, tighter than Untitled (Black Is) and more focused without losing any of their previous three albums’ strength, sense of rhythm, or lyrical indignation. “Free” is one of the best songs of the year, a timeless funk/dance song powered by an epic earworm of a bass line, while “I Just Want to Dance” deceives you with its title and rhythm when it’s actually another protest song about police killings of black men. Untitled (Black Is) earned more praise this year, topping NPR’s best albums of 2020 list and coming in at #5 on the Guardian‘s, but my argument here is that Untitled (Rise) is better start to finish, whereas its predecessor loses some steam towards the finish. They’re both tremendous albums, and any publication – looking at you, Pitchfork and Rolling Stone – that omits them from their year-end lists should at least explain their absence. Other highlight tracks include “Strong,” “Fearless,” “Little Boy,” and the spoken-word track “You Know It Ain’t.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2020 in music, Music, rankings

→ December 18, 2020
→ By keith

Klawchat 12/18/20.

Starting at 2 pm ET. My best-of-2020 board games posts are now up at Vulture, where I ranked the best by category; and Paste, where I ranked the top 15 overall. My top 100 songs of 2020 and top albums of the year will go up Monday and Tuesday.

Keith Law: It’s no place for the old. Klawchat.

KS: Assuming you’re able to attend games in 2021, what prospects are you most looking forward to seeing (both those you have previously seen and that you have not yet seen)?
Keith Law: I always skew towards players I haven’t seen, or whom I haven’t seen in a long time. But there are also guys like Mackenzie Gore, who should have debuted this past season but didn’t, or Jarren Duran, who’s made some substantial swing changes that I’d like to see in person (to see how they play against real pitching), in addition to, say, the major draft guys from 2020 I’d never seen (Max Meyer, Robert Hassell) and any international free agents who hadn’t debuted here yet.

Danielectomy: Which of the top free agents would likely best serve the Blue Jays?
Keith Law: Would any of them *not* serve the Blue Jays well? They would be better off with just about anyone from the top of my FA rankings who’s not a pure 1b/dh type.

Logan: Is the hype and the SSS of Bohm enough to label him a potential star opposite Harper?
Keith Law: Hype never made anyone a better player. I don’t think he can stay at 3b but I think the hit tool will be more than enough to make him a longtime above-average regular.

Frank: Honest opinion. Did teams really lose money last season?? Or just not make as much as they projected??
Keith Law: I would believe that some teams actually did lose money in 2020, maybe all teams, but far less than they claim (or that gullible fink sportswriters claim on their behalf).
Keith Law: They did lose more than 1/2 a season of broadcast revenues and corporate sponsorship money, and a full season of attendance, concessions, and ancillary revenues (like parking). Their costs were also reduced, but not by as much. I’m not crying for the owners, who will still get the capital appreciation that made them buy sports teams in the first place, but it is plausible that most teams were cash negative in 2020.

Gerry: Hey KLaw!!! The Phillies/Wheeler fiasco a couple weeks ago aside, what would the Phils realistically get from a Nola trade, instead of Wheeler? I would think they’d get a huge haul for a top of young, top of rotation starter, on a great contract. Shouldn’t Dombrowski at least consider it?
Keith Law: No, he shouldn’t.
Keith Law: That might be the worst possible move for the team right now, given where they are.

Frank: With so many sports games being cancelled on all levels, professional thru HS, what is the expectation for scouting for the upcoming draft? And will MLB require all players in minors and majors to get vaccine?
Keith Law: Sounds like we’ll have some sort of spring to scout, which is good since there was so little over the summer. I don’t think MLB can flat-out require that without the union’s consent – and the vaccine has to be available, not waiting for a petulant lame-duck administration to release it.

Buckner86: Why did Chris Paddock have such a rough 2020? Is it fixable?
Keith Law: I’m going to go on a limb and say it was the 14 homers allowed in 59 innings that did it. And it was almost all on his four-seamer. He still doesn’t have an average breaking ball, and even lefties, who should have been more vulnerable with his plus-plus changeup, got to his fastball way too often.

Dan M.: Do you find that take out from fine dining establishments is justified? I am debating getting Bardea for a birthday celebration this weekend.
Keith Law: Yes, we’ve gotten takeout from Bardea (which I think is the best restaurant in Wilmington right now) several times, and eaten once in their outdoor tent, although I’m not entirely sure that tent is “outdoor” enough. But the food is great and they do a fantastic job prepping and packaging it for takeout.

Drew: Can Tyler O’Neill get over his strikeout issues?
Keith Law: I am not a big believer in his bat. He’s always been such a dead-pull, ambush a fastball sort of hitter.

section 34: When does MLB free agency start?

Or, please remove “When” and answer the question without it, if you prefer.
Keith Law: The Mets have signed a few, including the first four-year deal of the winter. It’s been slow the last few winters even without a pandemic.

MK26: Hi Keith
Do you think It Can’t Happen Here because America is exceptional or that it just didn’t happen here this time because we are exceptionally lucky? We just learned that ~70 million citizens and a large chunk of elected officials are fine living in a dictatorship so long as their guy gets to do the dictating. Isn’t it just chance that our despot is a particularly epic level of imbecile and that his Elite Strike Force assigned to steal power ended up being a 3-person Ocean’s Eleven that ran through the casino floor shouting ‘we’re robbing the casino’ then knocked themselves unconscious in a smear of black hair dye as they smacked headfirst into the locked vault doors? I just worry what happens next time now that we know it’s actually not a very hard vault to break into.
Keith Law: I share that fear – that this particular wannabe tyrant showed more competent wannabe tyrants how it can be done.

Guest: White Sox fandom is all of a sudden down on Michael Kopech. Do you have reservations about him being a quality starter in 2021?
Keith Law: No. Who cares if the fans are down on a guy?

addoeh: Given how you’ve said you watch their games now. has your partner taught you the words to “Fly, Eagles Fly” yet?
Keith Law: Yes, and I’ve discovered you can pretty much sing them to the tune of “O Canada.”

Josh C: I think I remember you being a big fan of John Le Carre. Have you read any of the books by his son Nick Harkaway? I highly recommend both Angelmaker and Tigerman
Keith Law: I really enjoyed Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, but found some of his later work, like The Tailor of Panama, disappointing. Have not read any of his son’s books.

ffballmaster: Do you think Gerrit Crochet has top of the rotation potential or ends up as a high end bullpen arm? Impressive debut but not sure how you’d rank him among some of the other draftees like Meyer and Lacy.
Keith Law: Bullpen guy. Basically a one-pitch guy in college, with control issues and trouble staying healthy. That’s a lot to fix to make him a starter.

Lorne Volat: Do you have any recommendations for games (board, etc.) for a 5 1/2 yo?
Keith Law: Yes – if you look at the links at the top of this chat I included Dragomino, a new game for ages 5+ (really, for 4+) based on Kingdomino, in both year-end roundups.
Keith Law: I also think Ticket to Ride First Journey is great, as are Friends of a Feather, Outfoxed, and Hoot Owl Hoot.

Sadtigerfan: Who do you think will be the better overall player Riley Greene or Spencer Torkelson?
Keith Law: Torkelson will get there first, but unless he ends up playing third base, I might bet on Greene as the better long-term player. He has the higher ceiling, at least, although that’s not the same thing.

Terry: Is there a big-ticket move that you like best for the Mets? Trade for Lindor/Arenado? Sign Springer? Sign the Alt-Righty? Trade for someone else?
Keith Law: Any of those, really. But if you are one of the only owners willing to spend, the best values should be found in free agency rather than trade.

JR: The Mets signing Mcann feels very much like the old Mets regime. Overpaying for a fringe backup player to fill an open position rather then getting the top dog or waiting on the market (or even a GM) to see if you could get a better option. Hopefully a blip in the road and not a sign of things to come.
Keith Law: I largely agree with this. It also is a weird bet on very tiny samples, and that seems like the sort of thing teams did 20 or 30 years ago.

Dallas: What level will the top HS picks from 2019 start at this year? I assume the top picks (Witt, Greene, Abrams, Baty, Cavaco, Carroll, etc) were part of the 60-man pools so I’m curious if that allows them to possibly start at 2A (maybe even the Majors for Witt). Thanks.
Keith Law: There is no chance Witt starts in the majors. He hasn’t played above short-season ball. I doubt any player you listed starts above high-A.

John: Happy Holidays, I hope you and yours are safe and healthy this season. When are you estimating you’ll get a COVID vaccine, I’m hoping I get the full treatment by mid-summer but recognize that thankfully many more people need it before me?
Keith Law: I will get it as soon as I’m allowed, but I’m not in any category that would put me in the first or second tiers – not an essential worker, not old enough, no known comorbidities, not working in any settings where I’d be justified in skipping the line.

Claudio: Ciao KLaw! I get I might be biased (Braves fan) but I don’t get how Andruw is so far away from the threshold. 10 years average of 34 HRs and 103 rbi, 10 straight gold gloves while playing one of the best (if not the best) CF in history. Are his last few years enough to discourage writers to vote him in? I don’t get it.
Keith Law: RBIs don’t matter, Gold Gloves are stupid (although he is, IMO, the best defensive OF of all time), but his career was basically over at age 31 because of knee problems. I think he’s very borderline, but have voted for him because his impact on baseball in Curaçao and Aruba has been enormous. Without him, we may not have Xander Bogaerts, or Andrelton Simmons, or Ozzie Albies.

Brian: Am I going mad? I thought you had a Twitter link to a rule 5 article on the Athletic…which was not there when I sighted in…
Keith Law: I didn’t write up anything on the rule 5 other than a ‘brief’ where I mentioned that the two best guys taken were probably Akil Baddoo and Jose Soriano, both of whom are recovering from elbow surgery.

Jason S (Brewcrew): How broken is the league? I just honestly dont understand Rob Manfred anymore. I am an accountant. To me– he’s running the league from the standpoint of a PE exec, not someone who loves baseball. I hate Roger Gooddell, but at least we know he loves the game.
Keith Law: Well, he’s not extracting money from teams like private equity folks do, at least not yet. I don’t get a lot of what Manfred does and says, though.

Beeds: vladdy looking fit! This the year he gets in the Acuna Tatis stratosphere?
Keith Law: I still think he’s going to be an offensive star, but these news stories are just early “best shape of his life!” folderol.

Kevin: What length of contract/$$ would you be comfortable giving Springer if you were Jared Porter??
Keith Law: I would give him the largest contract of anyone this winter – which is why I ranked him #1 – probably six years and something in the $30MM/year range, although the market may not support it this year.

Beeds: Fit Vladdy! Assuming he now stats to reach his Offensive potential how “good” of a defender at 3B does he need to be to be plus plus value?
Keith Law: Same question twice, sort of, but I don’t see any way he plays third base.

Patty O’Furniture: Is there any chance the Reds would be interested in moving Eugenio Suarez to a team that falls short on a trade for Kris Bryant (Braves, Nats, etc.)
Keith Law: They should, and then put Nick Senzel back on the dirt where he belongs.

That Guy in Detroit: Tuberville is a place where fantasies become conspiracies
Keith Law: His election is proof that you could run Mickey Mouse on the right party ticket in a strongly red/blue state and he’d still win.

Chuck S.: Feelings on “separating the art from the artist?” Because this new Ryan Adams album is damn good.
Keith Law: That’s a great question to which I don’t have a great answer. My personal policy has been to avoid spending money on art from artists whose behavior are so odious – I won’t pay a dime to watch anything with or by Mel Gibson, for example. Is Adams over that line? I feel like he probably is. But it’s also hard for me to forget that I loved some of his music before we knew who he really was.

Kip: Happy holidays. When your daughter was younger how did you maintain your reading habit? We have an infant with another on the way and it’s incredibly difficult. I’ve tried reading a set number of pages per night but it feels like work.
Keith Law: The year she was born was my personal reading low, as in the fewest books I’ve read in any year since I started tracking how many books I read a year. By year two, I was traveling a good bit more, though, and I read a lot while I’m on the road.

Shane: Josiah Grey a #1?
Keith Law: I don’t believe so.

Kevin: So obvioudly the NL needs the DH to continue but it looks like Manfred might use it as a “bargaining chip” in the next CBA so it won’t be there in 2021. With that in mind what should the Mets do for 2021 with Dom and Alonso. Just hold onto both and wait for 2022? Personally I would love for them to see what Alonso would get in a trade but I doubt they will do that.
Keith Law: I’d hold on to both – I can’t see them dealing Alonso, given his popularity and value.

Jim: Keith- big local Trenton Thunder fan here. What is the viability of the MLB draft league?
Keith Law: I don’t know what their economic model will be now – I assume from the minor league teams’ perspective, their costs are going to be pretty similar, since they weren’t paying the players’ salaries as minor league affiliates, and now the draft league players won’t be paid because they’re amateurs. How much will revenues decline with the new model? These teams certainly lose out on the annual boost when, say, Aaron Judge comes through for a couple of rehab games, and that’s probably a decent part of their annual revenues. If their average attendance in ‘regular’ games goes down as well, are they no longer profitable?
Keith Law: I don’t know. Nobody really knows, but I have my doubts that all of these dis-affiliated teams will survive.

Guest: Keith, why does it take the Cleveland organization 1-2 years to change the racist name of their baseball club to the “Cleveland Spiders?” It should be done yesterday.
Keith Law: Yep. They have probably 90 days or so until anyone is reporting to spring training. They could get it done if this actually mattered to them.

Matt: Should Andrew Vaughn be slated to start the season in Chicago? Pretty big hole at DH on the south side
Keith Law: No, since there’s no real reason to think he’s ready for the majors.
Keith Law: Prospects aren’t ready when you want them to be; they’re ready on their own timetables. Rushing them doesn’t change that, and there’s always some small chance that it ends up slowing their development.

Tommy: Played settlers for the first time over thanksgiving and loved it. im sure you’ve played a ton but where does it rank all time for you?
Keith Law: I just happen to have a ranking of my top 100 games right here for you.

CR: If you’re the Mets, do you prefer Bauer or Springer? I’m all in on Springer but admittedly biased because I think he’s a great guy and his work with kids who stutter hits close to home. But from a baseball standpoint, I think the Mets resources would be better spent on Springer plus two second tier starters. And a trade for Lindor of course. Thanks for the chat!
Keith Law: Position player over pitcher.

Andy: I would think Cano would be a debatable HOF case based on #’s. I suspect that the positive tests doom him. First thoughts, if he’s done would you be voting for him?
Keith Law: He’s probably over the bar for me. I haven’t barred anyone from my ballot over positive tests, but when I had more names than slots, I prioritized guys without over guys with (e.g., Manny Ramirez was off my ballot until I had room). Also, Cano has a slightly higher career WAR than Chase Utley, but I’d put Utley higher.
Keith Law: And both Lou Whitaker and Bobby Grich had more WAR than Cano and still can’t get a damn sniff.

Tyler: Game recommendation for a 5 1/2 year old: Sleeping Queens. There’s some math learning as well as a little strategy so it’s not too painful for the adults. It also has gentle elements of messing with each other so it’s been a great chance to learn about sportsmanship.
Keith Law: I will check that one out, thank you.

Victoria: Have you ever read Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene?
Keith Law: Yes – I’ve read every Greene novel still in print. My favorites are still Our Man in Havana, The Power and the Glory, and The Quiet American.

Robbie: It’s Ronald Acuña Jr.s 23rd birthday today. Do you think he’ll ever fix the hole in his swing so that he can maximize his potential and actually be top of the league caliber
Keith Law: If he has a hole in his swing, what would he be like if he “fixed” it? Mike Trout?

Sedona: I’ve seen articles on how Aaron Ashby really impressed during alt site. Is he a legit prospect? Future rotation piece?
Keith Law: Legit prospect and possible rotation piece, yes.

Justin: How long do you think it takes for the Lindor trade market to get moving? I’ve seen opinions that he won’t get Cleveland as much as Boston got for Betts, and Betts is the better player probably? But Boston did attach Price’s contract to that deal and at most, Cleveland adding someone like Carrasco to the deal wouldn’t be the albatross (not the right word, but best I could come up with) that Price’s deal was, right?
Keith Law: Betts is the better player, and I wonder if there was more belief Betts would consider an extension than Lindor, who has been adamant about getting to free agency (as is his collectively bargained right, I might add). But there isn’t that much difference between the two. As for when it gets going, I don’t know. Something has to happen to set a market, but what prompts that first something?

CR: Last comment from me, but I messaged in the last chat about my family suffering from covid after my wife, who is a nurse, brought it home from the hospital. We’re all recovered now, but it was a hellish three weeks. Absolutely not a joke. I hope everyone gets the vaccine and trusts the science, but if history is an indication…
Keith Law: Glad to hear you’re recovering. There are still way too many people who should know better acting like this thing doesn’t kill, even with a new report this week that the death rate for Americans 25-44 was much higher this year so far due to the pandemic.

Kevin: There seems to be a narrative going around that Bauer has overcame poor genetics to succeed via hard work. He’s like 6’1” and not exactly rail thin though, he doesn’t look like lincecum or anything. Am I missing something?
Keith Law: I have heard that narrative and don’t really understand it. He’s like 5″ taller than Stroman or Sonny Gray, both of whom had to overcome a lot more bias in the industry against short right-handers.

Sedona: Domingo German looks nasty in winter league… are the Deivi’s and Schmidt’s overtake him if all are healthy?
Keith Law: I don’t really ever need to see German in the majors again. I also never bought him as a starter.

Canadian person: Would signing Realmuto, and then trading from their catching depth to address other areas be a good plan a for the Jays?
Keith Law: Yes, absolutely. I know a lot of fans would be bummed to see Kirk go, and there’s a chance he ends up some kind of outlier star, but there’s a lot of risk there given his build.

Chris: thoughts on the new season of “Big Mouth?”
Keith Law: Haven’t watched yet.

Nate: Thoughts on Jo Adell and what he just did in 2020, I know super small sample size, but swing and miss has always been part of his game. What does he need to adjust to in your opinion?
Keith Law: He needed more time in AAA, and I’d put him and similar prospects in the group more likely to be hurt by all the lost at bats.

Jon Sloan: Hi from SD Keith, can’t wait to have you out next year, eat some fried bird and talk baseball
Keith Law: I was just thinking about the Crack Shack (where Jon is exec chef) the other day when I was talking to my daughter & my partner about fried chicken sandwiches … and then again because someone brought up the 2019 Winter Meetings. I don’t miss the meetings per se but damn a trip to San Diego would be nice right now (gestures at 2″ of ice and snow outside).

Noah: Do you have a favorite chicken recipe? I’ve got two chickens I’m breaking down for the weekend (BBQ legs tonight) and need a good one for the breasts tomorrow. Thanks, Keith!
Keith Law: Sticking with a theme … I don’t like cooking plain chicken breasts on their own, because they dry out too easily. Either I roast them on the whole bird, or I slice them thinly into cutlets and bread & fry them (season with salt, pepper, and smoked paprika; dredge in egg; then coat in panko and fry two minutes per side in olive oil).
Keith Law: That’s for your regular store-bought broiler/fryer. If you have access to really high quality chicken, though, that’s another story.

mike: I’m a big comp guy for some reason, so feel free to shoot this one down. Does Austin Martin have the chance to become a Mookie Betts type player? Developing power on top of a stellar hit tool…
Keith Law: I don’t do comps, really. I think Martin could be a superstar, given his athleticism, contact skills, and chance to be a plus fielder at a skill position. I don’t think he’s much like Betts.

Marc: you see Kumar Rocker as the best pitcher in the draft?
Keith Law: I do not. Most famous, yes, but not best.

Tom C: So Keith based on some of your recent tweets, do you think the Eagles take the cap hit and trade Wentz or… wait what the hell chat am I in here
Keith Law: God I hope they do. Wentz didn’t even take a snap last Sunday, yet he was sacked four times and picked off twice.

Snowy: DeSclafani looks like another good under the radar signing from Farhan. Do you think they still have work to do filling out rotation behind Gausman-Cueto-Tony Disco?
Keith Law: I’m not sure he’s ever going to be a starter for them.

xxx(yyy): any documentary recs from the last few months?
Keith Law: Transhood was great. Haven’t seen any buzz about that one. The Donut King was above-average too even though I had some small criticisms.

xxx(yyy): is cautious excitement the right reaction to the Rangers naming Chris Young as the GM?
Keith Law: I don’t know anything about him or what his philosophy might be, so I don’t have an opinion either way. I would prefer to interview him if we’re both sitting down first, though.

Andy: Re COVID-19: Eduardo Rodriguez had heart issues. Mo Bamba (NBA player) is still recovering from his infection in June. A college basketball player collapsed on the court. These are professional athletes in their prime who are suffering non death related complications. There’s more than just dying to getting sick. Wear your masks and social distance.
Keith Law: We are pretty lucky nobody in MLB got terribly sick – and by “in MLB” I’m including non-player personnel, some of which surely did get COVID-19 during any of the outbreaks (Marlins, Cards, Dodgers). Just because we didn’t hear about it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

xxx(yyy): do you listen to Jazz? any favorite albums?
Keith Law: Not much, just some of the most well-known stuff – Coltrane, Miles Davis. I loved Moses Boyd’s album this year Dark Matter and enjoyed the work he did with Tori Handsley.

Noah: My butcher in Brooklyn – The Meat Hook, they’re the best – has high quality, pasture-raised chicken from small farms in upstate NY. But appreciate the suggestion!
Keith Law: Those birds are going to taste completely different in the best possible way. Also you probably get a higher dark meat/light meat ratio. Enjoy!

Key Flaw: With the pandemic and minor league (and amateur mostly) shut down, is there a chance that this will positively affect young arms because they aren’t overused? I’m thinking fewer high school seniors and college pitchers throwing 180 Pitches might be better than missing out on a year of development?
Keith Law: Yes, I’ve speculated that and also that some pitchers who were heading towards arm trouble might be spared that by a forced year off from competitive pitching. Not just trying to find a silver lining, but I think giving a wearing-down shoulder like 18 months between pitches thrown in anger might be a good thing?

Guest: When you play board games, how important – if at all – is that you win?
Keith Law: Now, not at all, as long as I feel like the game gave everyone a chance to win.

xxx(yyy): what is your process for “finding” articles for things like the newsletter or stick to baseball? twitter discovery? RSS readers? other content aggregators?
Keith Law: Yep, all of those. My partner sends me a lot of great articles she finds, and since we work in totally different spheres she sees things I don’t.

Mike: Any chance the Rockies actually play any young players this year? What is the point of being a draft-and-develop type organization if you won’t play players when they are ready?
Keith Law: I understand the frustration, but also would cut them a little slack in that they’ve had the odd misfortune of having prospects develop and then be blocked by established big leaguers (e.g., Macmahon, who did play some last year, was a third baseman before they moved him).

Frank: End of the year movie wrap-up, starting to see some “best of…” lists come out. Have not see much push for it, but best film I saw this year is ANTEBELLUM. Really thought it was directed well and Monae had a blistering performance. I think it was dismissed due to it is basically an elaborate Twilight Zone episode. Also saw as criticism that it suffers from GET OUT fatigue?!?! (How many smart, african american horror movies have their been??)
Keith Law: You are literally the first person I’ve seen say a good thing about that movie. I know the spoiler, and oh my god, it sounds dumb.

Rob: What’s your preferred method to make at home pizza? Do you have any thoughts on the Ooni pizza ovens? Thank you!
Keith Law: I own an Ooni oven and it’s fantastic. Just hard to use when it’s 30 degrees (it works fine, I just don’t want to run in and out in this temperature).

BL: Speaking of the Rockies, if you’re in charge there, what are you doing?
Keith Law: As much as Rockies fans are frustrated right now, that’s the hardest GM job in baseball, in my opinion. Any exec there will have more of a challenge, even if all else were equal, than anyone else. I think that, even 28+ seasons in, no one has hit on a good formula for building a pitching staff that can last over multiple seasons. Until you crack that, you are constantly improvising, and doing so with less money than at least a few of your most important competitors. That doesn’t justify the money they’ve spent on relievers lately, though. That strategy hasn’t worked at all.

Chris: America’s Test Kitchen method for pizza is to put a pizza stone on the lower rack of your oven, crank the temperature to 500 degrees, and let it heat for an hour before cooking. It turns out perfectly crisp every time.
Keith Law: It depends on your dough, more than anything. I make pizzas that way (ATK didn’t exactly invent that) using a dough that’s higher hydration than the dough I use for the Ooni, which gets up to 800 degrees and thus cooks the pizza far faster, meaning less time for evaporation. My indoor pizzas cook in six minutes, but in the Ooni it’s about 90 seconds. Two different doughs, and different approaches to toppings too.

Sam: Does Spring Training start on time? Are we going to have a 162 game schedule this year?
Keith Law: Reports this week seemed to indicate no to both. 130 games? With a 100 game minor league season? I’d be ecstatic.

hogan: Isn’t ‘sportsmanship’ listed as something to be considered when voting for hall of famers? How do you square that when voting for guys who got cheating with PEDs?

Also, thoughts on the Negro Leagues being included statistically with MLB?
Keith Law: Sure. Define ‘sportsmanship.’ To say nothing of the probability that more players used PEDs than just the ones who tested positive. It’s an unsolvable quagmire that I choose not to use as a binary variable in voting. For what it’s worth, I think Cano has no chance – enough voters will hold two tests against him that he’ll languish well below the 75% mark, maybe even fall off entirely. But if he’s one of the ten best guys on the ballot, I will at least consider voting for him.

JL: Re: Andruw Jones and his career being basically over at 31. He started at 19/20. It seems he’d have been better served starting his career around age 23 and fading out at 33/34 than having it start and peak when it did. His peak was fantastic and over one 10 year period I believe, only Bonds had a higher WAR.
Keith Law: Yes, his peak was fantastic, but he didn’t have the longevity of most Hall of Famers. Not all, but most.

Jason: The CBAs for the NFL, NBA, and NHL require that roughly 50% of the revenue goes to the players. Obviously the MLBPA has always opposed a salary cap (in whatever form), and I know that you—quite rightly—don’t like the idea of artificially capping what players earn. With that said, what percentage of revenues in 2019 would you estimate the players received? I’m curious as to whether a similar arrangement would actually benefit the players now
Keith Law: That’s a great question to which I do not know the answer. I do think any attempt to cap players’ earnings will end up enriching the owners. You can bank on that. It might, however, redistribute the money paid to players in a way that benefits more players than it harms.
Keith Law: (I feel like there’s a socialism joke to make there but I’m too tired.)

Jim: Keith, thanks as ever for doing these chats! What do you think about the PCL withdrawing from MiLB? Inevitable leaving a sinking ship, ensuring they’re not drawn into any lawsuit, or …? Also, regarding the vaccine, while I have mixed feelings on making it mandatory, the MLBPA has no say in the matter since minor leaguers are infamously not part of the union and left by MLB players to twist in the wind.
Keith Law: I don’t know about the legal liability but the move was largely a paper one. MiLB is ceasing to exist as an independent entity. The MLBPA would have a say in the matter on vaccines for major leaguers.

Sedona: Corbin Burnes an ACE?
Keith Law: I’d be more comfortable calling him a very good #2.

John: are most non-elite starters fairly inconsistent year-to-year like RP or is there more consistency in 3,4,5 starters as a whole than I’m imagining? i’m not sure that is quantifiable or not but was always curious
Keith Law: That’s probably going to depend on your definition of a #3 or #4 starter. I would guess most GMs and managers would value more consistency in those spots even if they’re giving up some ceiling.

Dave C: Keith thanks for all the chats and columns in 2020. Was something I always enjoyed reading and learning from!
Kip: Thanks, Keith. I’ve long enjoyed your work and your perspective. Stay safe.
TomBruno23: No snarky questions from me, simply want to say Happy Holidays (Christmas for you, Hannukah for me, anything to anyone else out there) and thank you for all of the content you provide during the year.
Dr. Bob: No question today. Just thanks for the chats. Merry Christmas to all.
Keith Law: You’re quite welcome. I appreciate all of your support and readership over the years, not least during this one.
Keith Law: That’s all for this week, and I think that’ll be the last Klawchat until 2021. (I’ll try to sneak in a video chat of some sort next week, though.) Thank you all for reading and for all of your questions. Please stay safe during the holiday break, even if it means declining to see some friends or family members, and wear your masks any time you’re around folks outside of your household or pod. Have a happy holiday of your choosing.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: klawchat

→ December 16, 2020
→ By keith

Ghostwritten.

After reading Utopia Avenue this summer, I realized, with some help from readers, that I was missing out on quite a bit of the context because I hadn’t read enough of David Mitchell’s previous work. His first novel, Ghostwritten, introduces several people who’ll pop up again in his later books, while also introducing what I assume is the first appearance of one of his noncorporeal Horologists.

Ghostwritten is more of a short story novel, with each story connected in some small way with at least one of the previous ones – sometimes just by the detail of a character appearing in the background of one and becoming the protagonist of the next, sometimes more significantly. That made it feel much more like a tuneup for Cloud Atlas, where he weaves six separate novellas together but is more effective at making them all feel like parts of the same tome. That’s not to say Ghostwritten doesn’t work, but I definitely had more of a sense that I was reading a short story collection than a cohesive single work.

That story where we meet what I assume is a Horologist is probably the book’s best-written and most interesting, as the narrator is a spirit who can take over a person’s brain and can jump to another person with a touch. The spirit is in Mongolia, and ends up in someone who’s on the run from the secret police, so the whole chapter has a spy-story vibe that isn’t present elsewhere – the same way the Luisa del Rey chapter in Cloud Atlas read like a detective story within the larger novel.

One other oddly compelling story in the book is set on a tea shack on Mount Emei, one of the four sacred mountains in Chinese Buddhism, in a tale that spans almost the entire life of its main character. Beginning when the shack owner is just a young girl, the narrative follows her through regime changes, social upheaval, and multiple razings of the shack that require her to rebuild. There’s a powerful undercurrent of perseverance and acceptance, consistent with the tenets of that religion, demonstrated by her resilience in the face of what could have become crippling defeats.

The first and the penultimate stories in Ghostwritten revolve around a doomsday cult that launches a nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway, very much like the actual 1995 attack by the cult Aum Shinrikyo that killed 12 people, which was chronicled by one of Mitchell’s stated influences, Haruki Murakami. While the events, and ultimate confusion over what’s real in the depiction, make a useful framing device for the other stories within the novel, the translation of a real-world terrorist attack in such stark terms felt almost exploitative, especially given the extent of Mitchell’s imagination on display elsewhere in the book.

Perhaps reading Ghostwritten out of order, after reading what is widely considered his best book (Cloud Atlas) and two more written after that one (Slade House and Utopia Avenue), takes away some of its power, as I was left with the impression that I’d read a strong debut that hinted at better things to come but also felt uneven and in some ways unfinished. The concluding two chapters are especially unsatisfying, one because it’s an unsuccessful attempt at an experimental style, the second because it blows up (pun semi-intended) most of what came before. Had I read this first, I probably would have compared it to the rookie season of a player I thought would become a star but hadn’t shown it all in year one – say, George Springer in 2014. Now I’m biased because I know Mitchell can do so much better, and already has.

Next up: I just finished David Wondrich’s Imbibe!, a history of the American cocktail, and am almost halfway through Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: david mitchell, debut novels, experimental novels, irish literature, short stories, speculative fiction

→ December 14, 2020
→ By keith

Yes, God, Yes.

Yes, God, Yes is a delightful indictment of the way many puritanical religions, in this case particularly Catholicism, treat basic human sexuality, in a devilishly satirical, 80-minute comedy that features plenty of little nods to the culture right around the year 2000. Starring Natalia Dyer (Stranger Things) as Alice, who gets an unexpected window into the world of sex via an AOL chat room, the story follows Alice as she goes on a four-day indoctrination retreat with her Catholic school and encounters the rank hypocrisy of the religion.

Alice’s morality teacher, Father Murphy (of course), teaches that sex is only for procreation, and that when it comes to sexual desire, boys are like microwaves (turned on easily, no warm-up required) while girls are like conventional ovens. This useful lecture comes right before she receives a pornographic image from a creep she encounters in that online chatroom, which leads her to try masturbating for the first time – something she’s been told, repeatedly, will send her to hell. She’s also the subject of a nasty rumor that she engaged in a sex act with another student, but she doesn’t even know what the act is because she’s unfamiliar with the term used for it. She then heads off on that retreat, which is Kairos by another name, where she discovers that many people in charge of the endeavor don’t exactly practice what they preach.

Masturbation, specifically a girl masturbating, is at the heart of the story here, and that alone makes Yes, God, Yes rather unusual – if that act appears at all in movies, it’s usually boys doing it, and usually just played for laughs. That’s notable in and of itself; women’s sexuality is generally ignored in movies, or seen as something immoral or sinful, as in horror movies that kill off any of the teenagers having sex. To this film’s credit, Alice’s masturbation isn’t treated as a joke, but as a natural part of the story, and a way to keep throwing her into religious doubt. Her sneaking around also lands her in trouble, which in turn lets her see what some of the other campers – and authority figures – are up to.

The script doesn’t pull its punches on Catholicism – not its treatment of all non-procreative sex as sinful, not its inherent subjugation of women – and even ends with a coda that depicts devout Catholics as both provincial and uncurious, even as Alice realizes there’s a world beyond the walls of her parochial school. The film doesn’t delve into questions of faith, but deals with the real-world impacts of the man-made doctrines, which require willful ignorance of human biology and sexuality, and allows the question of why these myriad rules even exist when the Christian Bible has barely anything from Jesus himself about sex to lay unanswered at the edges of the story. Once Alice goes through the looking glass by seeing that single pornographic image, she’s on a path where she’s going to question far more than just what the Church told her about sex.

Dyer was one of the weaker actors on Stranger Things, partly because her character wasn’t that interesting, but also because she played Nancy so flatly, only coming to life when she got involved in a combat scene. She’s better here, because she has more to do, although I still don’t get a lot of energy from her performances. She’s at her best in Yes, God, Yes when Alice is befuddled, confused, or surprised by something, but less convincing when she’s angry, spiteful, or, in one scene, trying to be passionate. The film does rest largely on her, as there isn’t another major character and most of the secondary ones are pretty one-note, and in that sense she is more than up to the task.

Yes, God, Yes premiered way back at SXSW in March of 2019, but the pandemic wrecked its release schedule, and after a very limited run in drive-throughs and via virtual cinema, it went to Netflix in October. At a scant 78 minutes, it’s just the right length for its subject, and if you’re a lapsed Catholic like me, I think you’ll especially enjoy it.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2020 movies, comedies, movies

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