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Top 100 songs of 2015.

As with all of my music lists, this represents my personal preference. If I don’t like a song, it’s not here. That wipes out some critically-acclaimed artists’ 2014 releases entirely, including Sufjan Stevens, Kendrick Lamar, Drake (are you kidding me with this?), Deafheaven, Father John Misty, and The Weeknd. Other folks liked that stuff. I didn’t.

The top 100 playlist has all tracks ordered from 100 to 1; I excluded one song, Everything Everything’s “Regret,” from the list because it’s not technically available in the United States and isn’t on Spotify here either.

You can alsy try this direct Spotify link if that doesn’t work.

Here’s last year’s top 100, andmy top 15 albums of 2015; I refer to both links numerous times below.

100. Heartless Bastards – Gates of Dawn. A bluesy four-piece from Cincinnati with a fantastic name, Heartless Bastards have been around for a decade, but this was the first time they hit my radar, with a yearning, gloomy guitar-driven track.

99. Hinds – Garden. This quartet from Barcelona has had a ton of hype that might exceed the quality of their output, but I find it hard to resist their ebullient acoustic-folk sound and their crude-by-design vocals.

98. Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Can’t Keep Checking My Phone. UMO’s sound varies widely across their output, but when they click, as they do here, it’s the vocal hook that keeps you coming back.

97. Battles – The Yabba. Incredibly experimental and, well, just flat-out weird, but that’s Battles’ whole output, isn’t it? Just bear with the intro, which sounds like some sort of test pattern, to get to the meat.

96. Rose Windows – Glory Glory. This Seattle-based psychedelic rock band called it quits abruptly in March, just weeks before their second album dropped, although singer/songwriter Chris Cheveyo is already in a new outfit called Dræmhouse. In the meantime, this was Rose Windows’ best song, a blues-rock number reminiscent of the best work of Trouble.

95. Drenge – Favourite Son. Their second album barely made my top 15 albums of 2015, and this was the best track by virtue of being the most like their first album – fast, angry, a bit obnoxious, yet underneath all the youthful arrogance, undeniably melodic.

94. Boxed In – Mystery. It’s a bit sparse, but this single from Oli Bayston, who records as Boxed In, has a great little hook in the keyboard line that brings you into the song and a bigger one in the chorus, kind of like a Bombay Bicycle Club track but more focused and less experimental.

93. Floating Points – Peroration Six. Speaking of experimental, Floating Points, the nom de music of English musician and neuroscientist (!) Sam Shepherd, is way out there too, but Shepherd goes the electronic route rather than following Battles’ rock-based approach. It’s not trance music, but the vibe is trance, although nothing is as potent here as the sudden end of the crescendo of sound with ten seconds left in the track.

92. The Gills – Rubberband. A fun hybrid of a very standard garage-punk song and heavy blues rock, as if two forces were competing to pull the song in their separate directions.

91. Ten Commandos – Staring Down the Dust. I was hoping for a bit more from this supergroup of members of Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and QoTSA, but the album is very light on memorable hooks; this track, featuring former Screaming Trees vocalist Mark Lanegan, is by far its best.

90. Ghost BC – From the Pinnacle to the Pit. I went back and forth between this and “Cirice” as the album’s top track over the last few weeks, but while “Cirice” got a little airplay and is the more accessible song, this one is the superior track musically – although none of their lyrics, most of which sound like a ten-year-old obsessed with Satanism wrote them, do them any credit.

89. Total Babes – Blurred Time. The other guys from Cloud Nothings made a band and a record and no one seemed to pay any attention – but me, of course. Unsurprisingly, it sounds a lot like Cloud Nothings, but with a purer energy and less of the thrown-together feel of Dylan Baldi’s weaker material.

88. The Little Secrets – All I Need. This British duo has released exactly one song as far as I can tell, and I’m not sure if they’re even signed anywhere, but I couldn’t get enough of this track, which reminded me both in melody and in the sound of Stacy Jo’s vocals of the late, lamented Velocity Girl.

87. Sunflower Bean – Wall Watcher. I’m definitely drawn to groups that seem inspired by a couple of specific genres from my youth – late-70s British metal, 1980s New Wave and post-punk, and early-’90s grunge. Sunflower Bean definitely draw on the latter, more on the Mudhoney/Seaweed side of the house than the kind of grunge that crossed over into the mainstream, which is probably why this sounds fresh even though it’s rooted in a familiar sound.

86. Zhu – Hold Up, Wait a Minute. There are a few songs on here that I expect to get some flack for including, led by this one, which features Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and Trombone Shorty. I think it’s incredibly inventive and catchy while also feeding some of my nostalgia yen with some dope rhymes from the members of Bone Thugs and a brief nod to “Billie Jean” when the boys start singing. I could have used more Trombone Shorty, though.

85. Wolf Alice – Freazy. This album is so strong and so even that I could have slipped a number of songs into this spot, including the Grammy-nominated “Moaning Lisa Smile” or the stop-and-start “My Love’s Whore” (which has a tremendous coda), but the way Ellie Rowsell sing-talks this chorus is the album’s best earworm and also gives the disc its title.

84. Bloc Party – The Love Within. Bloc Party’s fifth album, Hymns, is due out in late January, and this lead track gives me hope that it’ll be miles above their disappointing fourth record, and more in line with Kele’s electronic-heavy, more experimental solo work.

83. Wavves – Heavy Metal Detox. Sneering California punk-pop with some big hooks all across the album; this track, the opener, presages several of the later ones and packs the most punch of all.

82. Veruca Salt – Laughing in the Sugar Bowl. The album was a huge letdown but this one single showed Louise and Nina recapturing their old magic for two minutes in a track that fits just fine between “Volcano Girls” and “Seether.”

81. Of Montreal – Bassem Sabry. I dig a lot of experimental music, but a lot of Of Montreal’s work goes a bit over my head – I know it’s good, but I just can’t quite get into it. “Bassem Sabry” wraps up that experimentation in a funk-rock track that has the feel of improvisational jazz but keeps the structure tight enough to feel familiar.

80. Orchid – Helicopters. You could say they’re highly derivative of Black Sabbath, to which I would respond by asking what the hell is wrong with that?

79. Animal Collective – FloridaDa. Much like Of Montreal, Animal Collective produces some wild stuff that manages to stray beyond the boundaries of what I can digest and enjoy – it’s a me problem, so to speak – but when they confine their sound into more conventional song structures, as they did on “My Girls,” there are few artists that can match their ingenuity. This lead single from their album Painting With, due out February 19th, has a very traditional structure, but the layers of sound here are like little else I’ve heard.

78. The Creases – Point. Another indie-pop act out of Australia, this time out of Brisbane, the Creases don’t seem to have made a dent here in the U.S. yet even though this is their second great jangle-pop track in two years, with “Static Lines” making my top 100 last year.

77. Kero Kero Bonito – Picture This. The sound is very J-Pop, especially with lead singer Sarah Midori Perry singing and rapping in both English and Japanese, but there’s an ironic undercurrent to the lyrics, mocking the selfie phenomenon from within and blunting the saccharine nature of the music.

76. Young Fathers – Shame. The 2014 Mercury Prize winners dropped their second album a few months after they received that award, continuing in the same vein of melding hip-hop with alternative rock, reminiscent of earlier TV on the Radio releases but lyrics that are rapped rather than sung.

75. Twerps – Back to You. More Australian jangle-pop, dancing on the edge of catchy and annoying, and the best track from another of my top albums of the year.

74. Shy Technology – High Strung. Shy Technology seems to reclaim the earnest piano-driven emo sound of the 1990s from the bastardized versions we hear on pop radio (looking at you, Gavin DeGraw), with stronger lyrics than almost any other artist in this vein.

73. Speedy Ortiz – Raising the Skate. Sadie Dupuis is a minor heroine of mine, resurrecting the half-dissonant noise-pop sound of artists like Helium that came and went way too fast in the mid-1990s, drowned in a wave of Britpop that crowded it out of even alternative radio slots. There are great melodies underneath the apparent cacophony of most Speedy Ortiz songs; both this and “Graduates” were highlights from their second album.

72. Courtney Barnett – Elevator Operator. The lyrics … I mean, I can’t get over how brilliant Barnett is, especially for someone so young. She’s an incredibly gifted storyteller and her first album (my #2 album of 2015) saw her incorporate heavier rock melodies to craft a masterful full-length debut.

71. Belle & Sebastian – Allie. Stuart Murdoch is at his best when setting dark stories to sunny melodies, as in this track about a disturbed young woman who tries to run away in response to news stories of bombings and terrorism.

70. The National – Sunshine on My Back. The side project El Vy didn’t do it for me – again, it’s Matt Berninger’s laconic delivery that just turns me off – but this one-off single featuring Sharon Van Etten shows that they can craft some really beautiful pop music.

69. Grimes – REALiTi. We got a demo version of this song in March from the album Grimes recorded and deleted, then got a slicker version when she finally released the amazing “Art Angels.” I think I prefer the rawer first attempt, although it’s such a great song it still works even though the cleaner production took off some of the edge.

68. Viet Cong – Silhouettes. There’s a strong Interpol vibe here, blended with some post-punk elements along the lines of Television. The band announced in September that they intended to change their name due to the negative connotations of their current one, which surprised me … it’s not like they named themselves Khmer Rouge, which was an actual punk band in the early 1980s.

67. Daughter – Numbers. This London trio may be about to cross over in a huge way, based on the two lead singles from their album Not to Disappear, due out on January 15th. It brings me back a bit to Coldplay’s first album, Parachutes, which couldn’t be more different from the disposable pop act they’ve become – they created suspense and intensity even in softer soundscapes, and Daughter has that same knack, along with much better lyrics.

66. Mourn – Gertrudis, Get Through This!. Another quartet of teenagers from Barcelona, Mourn go the punk route, melding deliberate dissonance with this wonderful sneering arrogance to create something that sounds new even though this kind of fusion has been around for decades.

65. CHVRCHES – Make Them Gold. The best showcase of Lauren Mayberry’s voice on their hugely successful second album, Every Open Eye, one of my top five albums of the year.

64. Telekinesis – Sylvia. Michael Lerner, who records as Telekinesis, changed his entire sound for this album, Ad Infinitum, going all-in on an homage to classic new wave sounds, very heavy on the synths. This and “In a Future World” were both standouts.

63. Sons of Huns – An Evil Unseen. Their album While Sleeping, Stay Awake just missed the cut for my best albums of the year, but if you like old-school thrash with some 1970s psych-rock elements, I strongly recommend it. This track had the best hook, whereas most of the album struck me as more atmospheric but less immediately catchy.

62. Of Monsters and Men – Crystals. I mentioned on the albums ranking that I thought this LP was somewhat maligned because it wasn’t like their first record, which was poppy and accessible but certainly became repetitive by the time you reached “The Lake House” near its conclusion. “Crystals” was the transitional track here, bringing back some of the harmonies from My Head is an Animal while introducing the mellower, more introspective bent of the new album.

61. Saint Motel – My Type. Pure pop goodness with “one-hit wonder” written all over it, especially since their follow-up single, “Cold Cold Man,” wasn’t one-tenth this catchy.

60. Coeur de Pirate – Carry On. Béatrice Martin’s voice is absolutely intoxicating, a little smoky, a little kittenish, a little mysterious with the hints of her Quebecois accent. This song came from her first album recorded in English and deserved a much better reception than it received.

59. Passion Pit – Until We Can’t (Let’s Go). I feel like this song, my favorite of theirs since “Little Secret,” was overshadowed by Michael Angelakos’ public acknowledgement that he’s gay, which shouldn’t even cause a ripple at this point. Passion Pit are strongest when they write music like they’re about to play a giant warehouse party, and that comes through here like it hasn’t in years.

58. Death Cab for Cutie – Black Sun. Death Cab’s album Kintsugi will be their last with guitarist/producer Chris Walla, and even here it already sounded like his influence on the songwriting had waned, with the record more uneven than Codes and Keys and lacking that record’s epic feel. “Black Sun” has Walla and Ben Gibbard rocking out like they did on “You Are a Tourist,” and this is the kind of song at which I think DCFC excels.

57. Ceremony – Your Life in France. They’re nominally a punk band, but their latest album was more post-punk like Joy Division of Gang of Four, led by this song and “The Separation.”

56. Wilco – You Satellite. I’m not a huge fan of Wilco’s overall output so I didn’t react to their release of the surprise album Star Wars with quite the enthusiasm as their longtime fans showed, but there were a number of standout tracks here … just not “Random Name Generator,” the song everyone else seemed to love.

55. Iron Maiden – Speed of Light. I’m not remotely sorry for including this, so don’t even start. Their album The Book of Souls floored me, as it was their best in more than two decades and one of the best albums of the year, good enough to forgive them the eighteen-minute closing track/endurance test.

54. SEXWITCH – Helelyos. That’s Bat for Lashes, singing folk songs from non-Western cultures in various foreign languages (I think this is Farsi), with the band Toy backing her up on the group’s six-song EP.

53. Wolf Alice – Giant Peach. The first Wolf Alice song I heard, one that really establishes the group’s rock chops, especially Ellie Rowsell’s merits as someone who can sing over a heavy rhythm and distinguish herself with her vocals.

52. Neon Indian – Annie. I’ve heard lots of Neon Indian stuff in the past, but his work on 2015’s VEGA INTL. Night School was brighter and a little more accessible, all to the good on songs like “Slumlord” and this track, which at first I thought was a new song from St. Lucia. (That’s high praise.)

51. Frank Turner – Get Better. Another album that really failed to meet my expectations, since I loved 2013’s Tape Deck Heart, although this lead single could easily have come from the preceding album given its music and lyrical theme.

50. Allison Weiss – Golden Coast. Indie-pop is such a mixed bag and as a result an increasingly worthless (decreasingly worthful?) term. Ingrid Michaelson still gets the tag, but she’s had two top-five albums and a handful of crossover hits. (She’s also cute, which never hurts a female musician and I find often is what people really mean when they say “indie.”) Anyway, Allison Weiss is better than Ingrid Michaelson and this song is one example.

49. Metric – The Shade. I’m pretty serious about lyrics; great lyrics often overcome mediocre music, and if the lyrics are dumb, then the music better be pretty fucking awesome, which the music and melody on “The Shade” are.

48. Hot Chip – Huarache Lights. A meditative track from some of the masters of electronic pop music; they’re not the edgy group that brought us the mocking “Over and Over” any more, but they’ve retrained their sights on more serious subjects like the depersonalization of man in an increasingly technological first-world society.

47. Lower Dens – To Die in L.A.. Dream-something – it’s not poppy, more ambient than anything else, but with a quicker tempo. I get a Robert Plant Principle of Moments vibe out of this for some reason.

46. Sleater-Kinney – Price Tag. The best song from their comeback album was “Bury Our Friends,” which made my top ten in 2014; this was #2 for me on No Cities to Love, followed by “Surface Envy.”

45. Superhumanoids – Anxious in Venice. Encouraging you all to listen to Superhumanoids is becoming an obsession of mine; not only is lead vocalist Sarah Chernoff incredibly talented, with both great range and precision in her voice, but the trio keep churning out smart, immersive tracks that feature slow builds and choruses that provide cathartic releases of all that pent-up energy. This was the lead single from their 2015 album Do You Feel OK?, another of my top albums of the year, and my second-favorite track from the record.

44. Wild Nothing – To Know You. A very promising return from Wild Nothing echoes Talk Talk’s “It’s My Life” in both music (bass line and chord changes in the verse) and lyrics (“Funny how…”). Their new album drops February 19th.

43. Savages – The Answer. These four women are back and they appear to be seriously pissed off. “T.I.W.Y.G.” is also solid, with both tracks on their sophomore album, due out January 22nd.

42. Grimes – Flesh Without Blood. The lead single from Art Angels, my favorite album of 2015, and the most acclaimed track from what I’ve seen so far … and hey, it’s a great song all around, although I think she reached greater heights both in her experimentation with structure and in her pursuit of her own brand of pop perfection. She does use her vocal range to great effect here.

41. Tame Impala – Let It Happen. Everyone but me loved this album; it’s too monotonous for me, so that a song like “Cause I’m a Man,” which is so smart and well-crafted, blends right into the rest of the album’s many soporific rhythms. “Let It Happen” is the longest song on my top 100, but Kevin Parker makes good use of the nearly eight minutes of the track – and lets his psych-rock inclinations come through a bit more.

40. Chemical Brothers – Go. I’m not gonna lie to you – you put Q-Tip on a track, I’m going to put it on my top 100. It’s pretty much automatic. Bring on The Last Zulu!

39. Kid Astray – Diver. I had this just a bit ahead of “Cornerstone” among singles from this Norwegian group’s first full-length album, Home Before the Dark; neither is as good as their first minor hit, “The Mess,” but these guys (and gal) have a great sense of melody and an overall sound like Naked & Famous.

38. Deerhunter – Snakeskin. Their 2015 album Faded Frontier is a bit of beautiful chaos, although some of the experimentation doesn’t quite work; this lead single’s syncopated rhythm (with a chord change that reminds me of Fiona Apple’s “Criminal,” of all things) gives you an uncomfortable sense of being off-balance through the entire song’s groove.

37. Kenneths – Cool As You. A London punk trio who revel in the melodic hardcore sound first popularized by groups like the Descendents.

36. Waxahatchee – Under a Rock. There’s a little-but-fierce quality to Katie Crutchfield’s voice here, set against a jangly guitar riff that wouldn’t be out of place in an alt.country playlist, one that works better on this rock track than on the more lugubrious songs that flesh out her newest album, Ivy Tripp.

35. Modest Mouse – Lampshades on Fire. They’re at their best when they’re a little crazy, which they are here and on “The Ground Walks, with Time in a Box,” songs that are more “Dashboard” than “Float On” even though Johnny Marr has moved on.

34. The Wombats – Greek Tragedy. Probably the best-known song from Glitterburg, a joyous pop trip from start to finish that’s fueled by Matthew Murphy’s utterly bonkers lyrics with their strongest melodies yet. How many artists could work in a reference to falling up a set of Penrose steps without sounding ridiculous?

33. Dagny – Backbeat. This debut single from a Norwegian solo artist (real name Dagny Sandvik) gets a big boost from my daughter, who latched on to this song on first listen and has made it one of her most-played tracks of the year.

32. The Dead Weather – I Feel Love. With Jack White’s solo output rather disappointing, I’m glad we at least have the Dead Weather to give us some of that unapologetic ’70s heavy-blues sound that influenced so much of the White Stripes’ best work.

31. St. Lucia – Dancing on Glass. The first single from his upcoming sophomore LP was very promising; the second single, “Physical,” was far less so. St. Lucia’s debut album was one of my favorites of 2013 but attracted almost no attention; I’m hopeful he won’t change his sound as a reaction to the lack of sales.

30. CHVRCHES – Never Ending Circles. Of the hits on their second album, this was the one that I think would have fit best on their debut album – which is very much a compliment, since The Bones of What You Believe was so strong, but I was also happy to see some evolution in the trio’s sound on Every Open Eye.

29. Jamie xx – See Saw. I’ve never been wild about The xx, but their keyboardist/producer outed himself as some kind of genius with his debut album In Colour, full of these atmospheric, dense electronic tracks, here highlighted by vocals from his xx bandmate Romy.

28. Prince – Stare. I think he’s now put out four albums in the last fifteen months, although much of his output these days amounts to quantity over quality. I’ve been a huge fan of Prince since 1982 or so, but his material tailed off badly from 1994 on, starting with Come, the last record he released as Prince before the whole name-change folly. The funky, horn-driven “Stare” is stripped-down compared to the glam-funk style he pioneered in his heyday, but it’s his strongest track in over two decades.

27. The Libertines – Gunga Din. On the one hand, I’m glad the Libertines are back together, not least because it means Pete Doherty hasn’t died of a drug overdose yet. On the other hand, the likely lads seem to have grown up a little too much – the joyous excess of their first two albums is muted by maturity and perspective here. “Gunga Din” is the main exception, a song about, what else, drinking too much (and perhaps regretting it).

26. Gardens & Villa – Fixations. I feel like they should have named their album Music for Degs instead of Music for Dogs, but maybe that’s just me. If I hadn’t known who sang “Fixations” when I first heard it, I would have assumed it was a Shins song – and I mean that in a good way, with a really memorable hook and very specific, immersive, piano-and-keyboard sound.

25. HAERTS – Animal. I assume this track, released as part of a two-song single or EP or whatever the hell we call it these days when it’s all digital anyway, presages a 2016 album release. HAERTS goes a different route here than on their previous songs, with a very long, slow build that doesn’t bring lead singer Nini Fabi into the track until just past the two-minute mark. It’s highly effective primarily because Fabi’s voice is so strong that she can appear on less than half of the song’s length and still own it.

24. Mimicking Birds – Dead Weight. I admit that the opening lyric “I am a corpse/you are a corpse/we’re just corpses floating without a course” could be a bit of a turnoff, but give the song a chance – it’s dark folk, a sound I might expect to be on the soundtrack of a film set hundreds of years ago, with Nate Lacy’s always thought-provoking lyrics.

23. Purity Ring – push pull. Megan James’ lyrics are outstanding and her voice can be a real strength, but too much of their sophomore album Another Eternity puts her vocals through effects that distort it and emphasize some of the higher registers, to the songs’ detriment. She’s singing with little interference here, and the tenuous relationship between her vocal melody and the music gives the song a beneficial tension that never really lets up.

22. White Reaper – I Don’t Think She Cares. This Louisville quartet melds punk, hard rock, and some late-60s psycheledic elements on their amusingly-titled debut album White Reaper Does It Again, with this song and “Pills” the two standout tracks.

21. Django Django – Shake and Tremble. Born Under Saturn couldn’t quite live up to their Mercury Prize-nominated self-titled 2012 album, but if you wanted more of the same vibe from this genre-fusing British band, you certainly got it here – it wasn’t as innovative but it was still a lot of fun.

20. Atlas Genius – Molecules. Australia is producing so much great pop/rock right now I can barely keep up with it. Atlas Genius broke through with “If So” off their first album but had several more great singles off their followup Inanimate Objects, including this and “Stockholm.”

19. Potty Mouth – Cherry Picking. I thought this song, which draws directly on early-90s alternative groups from Belly to Lush, would be a huge hit, but perhaps it’s a little time out of joint. It’s punk-inflected pop with a definite riot-grrl sneer to the vocals.

18. Waters – Up Up Up. Lead singer/songwriter Van Pierszalowski is both a huge Dodgers fan and a coffee snob, so I’m predisposed to like the band’s music anyway, but this is a great, sunny, southern California kind of pop/rock song.

17. Houndmouth – Sedona. It got overplayed once pop-radio discovered it six months after its release, but hey, I told you about the song back in April. I don’t know how this quartet can ever avoid comparisons to the Mamas and the Papas, although that’s pretty good company for any band.

16. Wolf Alice – You’re a Germ. I loved this whole album, but no single song encapsulated its greatness as much as “You’re a Germ,” where Ellie Rowsell goes from sultry to scream and absolutely owns the shit out of the entire track; my favorite vocal on the entire album is in the chorus here, a line I’m not even 100% sure I understand but definitely involves sending someone to hell.

15. Foals – Mountain at My Gates. Foals seem to be a lock for one great song per album; last time around it was “Inhaler,” and this time it’s “Mountain at My Gates,” even though the “I see it more and more each day” line is such a throwaway that it detracts from the imagery Yannis creates across the rest of the lyrics.

14. Grimes – Venus Fly. Janelle Monae takes control of most of the lyrics here, but the two girls combine for a feminist rant that keeps defying lyrical and musical expectations. When both women say “Why you looking at me” don’t you expect to hear something like “…boy?” afterwards? In an industry still too driven by men who evaluate female musicians by looks, this song inserts itself into the conversation with a declaration of independence for two musicians who just happen to be attractive but matter because they’re so talented.

13. Freddie Gibbs – Extradite. The best new rap song I’ve heard in years, powered by Gibbs’ very old-school, precise delivery and a tremendous guest appearance by Black Thought, over a track that sounds like vintage Eric B. and Rakim.

12. San Cisco – Too Much Time Together. This Australian group focuses on bright, witty material that fits in with the Wombats for the combination of upbeat music and ironic lyrics, often making use of dual vocals thanks to multi-talented drummer Scarlett Stevens.

11. Belle & Sebastian – Nobody’s Empire. The music alone would have put this song in my top 50, but “Nobody’s Empire” has some of my favorite lyrics of the year, as Stuart Murdoch – who always manages to tell a good story – has created something of an epic here, with more quotable, imagery-drenched lines than most groups fit in a whole album. The last verse just kills me.

10. Superhumanoids – Norwegian Black Metal. This song title is just pandering to me, even though there’s no hint of metal anywhere in the track, let alone metal of the Norwegian black variety; it is the best showcase for Sarah Chernoff’s voice on the album, and I can vouch for her talent, having seen them play live in September.

9. The Wombats – This is Not a Party. I don’t know why their label didn’t push this out as a single, as it’s incredibly catchy and has some of the funnier lyrics on the record; “Edward’s on the big white telephone to God” just creates this image in my head of a stoned preppie talking on an oversized telephone to … well, I’ll let you decide that for yourselves.

8. Chairlift – Ch-Ching. Their new album should be out in January, but if this is a taste of what we’re getting it should be a contender for the best album of 2016, with Caroline Polachek’s vocal gymnastics leading the way. I know there’s speculation over what the combination “27-99-23” means, but I keep imagining it as some kind of NFL play call.

7. Cloves – Frail Love. Cloves is just 19, from Melbourne, Australia, with a very distinctive (if odd) way of pronouncing certain words, and I hear a young Fiona Apple all over again, especially when she drops to the lower end of her vocal range. It’s a song to rip your heart right out of your chest.

6. Pure Bathing Culture – Pray for Rain. This song came out of nowhere for me – I knew PBC but can’t say I ever connected with any of their songs as I did with this slice of smart synth-pop that

5. Grimes – California. It’s a sunny pop song masking a harsh vocal indictment of the music industry’s treatment of independent artists: “When you get bored of me, I’ll be back on the shelf.” The metonymical use of California as a stand-in for the industry is one of many poetical flourishes on Art Angels, my top album of 2015.

4. Jamie xx – Loud Places. Jamie xx’s debut solo album was a revelation, as he seemed to grasp the mantle from pioneers like the Chemical Brothers even as the latter put out their first new album in five years. This song is Jamie xx and electronica at their best, using samples to create multiple layers of sound, shifting tempos, setting Romy’s soft, breathy vocals in counterpoint to the rising wave of music he’s building beneath her. By the time the song reaches its devastating close, you feel like a hundred musicians have appeared on the song.

3. CHVRCHES – Leave a Trace. Every Open Eye was more of the same from CHVRCHES, but better, and no song exemplified that so much as “Leave a Trace,” the lead single from the album. The track keeps Lauren Mayberry out in front where she belongs, with a powerful crescendo leading up to each chorus, and it benefits greatly from the album’s higher production quality.

2. Courtney Barnett – Pedestrian at Best. Barnett is the best lyricist in music right now, telling Dylanesque stories with irony, wit, and empathy for the characters she creates, even when the character is herself. “Give me all your money/and I’ll make some origami, honey” is the greatest fake come-on of the year, and I think the biting nature of her humor works much better when the songs are uptempo.

1. Beck – Dreams. Yeah, he’s a member of a dangerous cult, but Beck is certainly a genius, and a shapeshifter too, as comfortable making mournful folk albums as he is here, making a song replete with funk elements that has been a mainstay on my playlists for the six months since its release. “Dreams” seems too complex to be pop but, because it’s Beck, is so infused with hooks and melodies that it seems silly to call it anything else. I wasn’t on the Morning Phase praise train, but when Beck gets back to his roots, crafting innovative songs that shove up against the boundaries of pop music without ever truly leaving it, I’m all in.

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Top 15 albums of 2015.

My ranking of the top fifteen albums of the year is below, and reflects my own personal preferences, with a balance between albums that have a few standout songs and ones that worked better as cohesive units. You can see last year’s top 14 albums list for a comparison. I heard a lot more than I ranked here, but getting to fifteen albums I truly liked and would recommend wasn’t even easy.

Linked album titles go to full reviews. My ranking of the top 100 songs of the year will follow in a few days.

15. Drenge – Undertow. The British duo’s follow-up to one of my favorite albums of 2013 was a bit of a disappointment, because I loved their raw guitar-and-drum sound and wasn’t thrilled with the expansion into bass lines and reverb effects, but the album was a step forward in sound and songcraft – it’s just not more of the same when I actually wanted more of the same.

14. Horrendous – Anareta. (amazon • iTunes) I only found a few extreme-metal releases in 2015 that I liked at all, including Tribulation’s The Children of the Night (Swedish black metal with some classical elements), Krisiun’s Forged in Fury (very dark Brazilian death metal with strong technical riffing), and even Children of Bodom’s I Worship Chaos (highly melodic death metal but the lyrics leave a lot to be desired). Nothing could touch Horrendous’ sophomore album, the followup to 2014’s Ecdysis, itself one of the best metal albums of that year. Horrendous is marketed as death metal, but it’s really highly technical progressive metal with death growls. You get relatively few blast beats, and the heavier turns are more akin to classic thrash than the more extreme corners of death metal. If you remember peak Death (the Chuck Schuldiner band that helped establish the subgenre), Horrendous has picked up where that group left off.

13. Twerps – Range Anxiety. Weird, jangly, lo-fi indie pop from Australia that veers from hooky to annoying and back again.

12. Of Monsters and Men – Beneath the Skin. Much-maligned, as it lacked the big hooks and choruses of their debut, My Head is an Animal, but I found the record more mature in lyrics and music, and appreciated the greater production emphasis on Nanna’s vocals.

11. Jamie xx – In Colour. (amazon • iTunes) Who knew that the real talent in the Mercury Prize-winning trio The xx was producer/keyboard player Jamie xx, whose brilliance came out in this ebullient collection of electronic and dance songs, highlighted by the two singles that feature his sometime bandmate Romy, “See Saw” and “Loud Places.” In a sea of monotony in electronic music, Jamie xx managed to stand out.

10. Belle & Sebastian – Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance. The Scottish group’s best record in years may have been uneven, but featured three standout tracks to start the album and Stuart Murdoch’s now-expected lyrical brilliance throughout.

9. Iron Maiden – Book of Souls. Go figure: the lads had one more masterpiece in ’em. I could have done without the eighteen-minute closer or the mortifying “tribute” to Robin Williams, but on an album of this length there are plenty of highlights, enhanced by the stylistic shifts by the multitude of songwriters who contributed.

8. Freddie Gibbs – Shadow of a Doubt. (amazon • iTunes) This is the first true hip-hop record I’ve included on my year-end lists, with Gibbs’ delivery and old-school writing separating him from the hordes of rappers who can’t hold a candle to the kings of the Golden Age. Two highlights: “Extradite,” featuring Black Thought of the Roots; and “Fuckin’ Up the Count,” which samples from and is based on a famous scene from The Wire. But as with most contemporary rap albums, Shadow of a Doubt has some cringeworthy lyrics, especially Gibbs’ free use of the female-dog epithet.

7. Sleater-Kinney – No Cities to Love. Nine years away and the ladies of Sleater-Kinney came back better than ever, with tighter songs and stronger hooks than any of their previous album showcased.

6. Wolf Alice – Our Love is Cool. (amazon • iTunes) One of the few pleasant surprises in the Granny Award nominations was seeing Wolf Alice get a nod for Best Rock Performance for “Moaning Lisa Smile,” although that might be the fifth-best track on their debut album. Ellie Rowsell has one of the sexiest vocal deliveries of the year, particularly when her fierce side comes out on tracks like “You’re a Germ,” while the band seems to channel everything from mid-90s Britpop to late-70s British steel.

5. Superhumanoids – Do You Feel OK?. I really feel fine, thanks, especially after listening to this indie-pop trio, led by singer Sarah Chernoff’s soaring vocals and backed by one strong melody after another.

4. CHVRCHES – Every Open Eye. CHVRCHES’ second top-five album on my lists – and second top-12 album on the Billboard charts – in the last three years was more of the same but better, like a hybrid of their first record and the Purple Rain-era Prince records the band members so revere.

3. The Wombats – Glitterbug. ($5 on amazon • iTunes) I never reviewed this album but included one track from it on each of four straight monthly playlists. Lead singer/guitarist Matthew Murphy is a clever, witty wordsmith who also has a great knack at crafting hooks that sound like ’80s new wave but are still novel. I could easily have put a half-dozen songs from Glitterbug on my top 100, including tracks that I omitted like “Emoticons,” “Give Me a Try,” and the not actually baseball-related “Curveballs.”

2. Courtney Barnett – Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit. By far the best lyrics of any album I heard this year, as Barnett expanded her range with more rock-heavy tracks and fewer of the folky ballads that dominated her A Sea of Split Peas double EP release. She’s a modern Bob Dylan for her way of telling a story within a four-minute song, setting scenes and working in dialogue without even abandoning her meter or rhyme scheme, and there are so many wry couplets on this album that she might have missed her calling as an existentialist comic.

1. Grimes – Art Angels. Grimes’ fourth record was a quantum leap forward from 2012’s Visions in every way, and was 2015’s best album for its combination of genre-bending sounds, strong melodies, and improved lyrics. Claire Boucher, who records under the nom de mic Grimes, is a chameleon, shedding her skin from one track to the next, changing textures and styles yet still producing a cohesive collection of songs that never lets up and delivers one strong hook after another.

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→ December 14, 2015
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Nashville eats, December 2015.

In what may be the last MLB winter meetings at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel outside of Nashville – praise be – I got to four new places, although I did add successful revisits to a couple of old favorites.

I’ll start with Two Ten Jack, an izakaya/ramen house in east Nashville that I’d visited solo back in April and thought would be perfect for one of our writer group dinners during the meetings. It was a huge hit across the board, and this time around I got to sample much more of the menu, including many of the yakitori (grilled skewer) options as well as many of the small plates, although I wasn’t going to skip their amazing pork-broth (tonkotsu) ramen either. Highlights included the tuna poke, JFC (Japanese fried chicken, which was thigh or oyster meat, with a negi dipping sauce), crispy Brussels sprouts, seaweed salad (not your ordinary one), the yellowtail sashimi with jalapeñ, and the pork belly yakitori. I also tried their sweet potato sh?ch?, a distilled liquor with a rather distinctive aroma but very mild flavor. The executive chef, Jess Benefield, is a big sports fan, and popped out to the table to say hello; she and her staff deserve extra praise for making many items gluten-free for the member of our party with celiac disease.

I finally made it to Barista Parlor, the ultra-hipster coffee joint in east Nashville that offers pour-over options from six different micro-roasters from around the country (including Four Barrel and Intelligentsia) and roasts their own blend, called Slayer, for espresso. The space is huge for a coffee shop, and the coffee options are fantastic, although the one pour-over I tried, an Ethiopian from Supersonic roasters, ended up kind of blah – if someone had handed me that cup blind, I would have guessed it was a blend of several beans because I didn’t pick up any notes or character in it. But the Slayer rocks, pun intended, and they offer pastries from Five Daughters Bakery, including the “100-layer donut” that most folks would recognize as a cronut before they inhaled it. I did make it over to Crema, my favorite local roaster in Nashville, before leaving on Thursday, but since they’re in the Gulch it wasn’t a reasonable commute from the Opryland.

Cochon Butcher, an offshoot of the two Cochon places in New Orleans, is all about the pig – if you don’t eat pig, I suggest you give it a miss – with various cuts of pig available in small and medium plate preparations. I was there for a quick lunch between appointments and had the pork belly sandwich with cucumber and mint along with a side of marinated Brussels sprouts. The pork belly was spectacular, not too fatty, and a reasonable portion of meat for one person (although I’m a small person so perhaps others would say it wasn’t enough), although I wish it had been on better bread – it came on white bread, better than store-bought but still a bit lacking in character to stand up to the strong flavors of the pork and the mint. The Brussels sprouts were salty and a tiny bit spicy, a bit more than I’d usually eat by myself but fine for sharing with another person.

Biscuit Love was the big letdown of the trip, especially given the name and my affinity for that very southern breakfast staple. Also located in the Gulch, Biscuit Love operated a food truck and has now expanded into a sizable space for breakfast and lunch, but what just killed it for me was that the biscuit was very plain and was very flaky, more akin to puff pastry than to the crumbly kind of biscuit I expect when I’m in the south. They also offer a number of options that douse the biscuit in things like sausage gravy, which is probably delicious but something I eat about once a year because it’s just so heavy. (I do love it, though – if you’re a carnivore, how could you not?)

And then there’s Avo, a brand-new spot near Vanderbilt’s campus, housed in an old shipping container, with an all-vegan menu with almost nothing cooked beyond 118 degrees. Our server gave us the tired shpiel about how serving the food in this raw or not-really-cooked state would “preserve the nutrients,” even though this is total bullshit, but the food was actually quite good. I had the falafel wrap, sprouted “raw” (but warm and clearly somewhat cooked) falafel wrapped in collard greens, served with raw tabbouleh and mint crème fraîche. The collard greens were the one mistake in the dish – they are way too tough to enjoy when raw and could use even a quick blanching to soften them up – but if I hadn’t known that falafel was sort-of-raw I would never have guessed it. The tabbouleh was solid, if a bit heavy on the parsley, and I don’t know what they used in the crème fraîche since they don’t use any dairy. My vegetarian friend said the vegan lasagna, made with a cashew-based ricotta, was also excellent, and her dish looked like it contained was about two days’ recommended allowances of vegetables. If you’re looking for a vegetarian or vegan option and/or just need more vegetables in your diet, I recommend Avo … but I can’t say I’d be racing to go there over Two Ten Jack.

I also ate at the Pharmacy (ate too much, to be exact) and brought a small and very appreciative group to Mas Tacos, where everything was a hit but nothing more so than their elote, grilled corn with cotija cheese and paprika. I could eat that three meals a day and be quite happy about it. And the Pharmacy’s tater tots and German potato salad are both superb, although I might have gone too far getting both of those as well as their farm burger, which comes with bacon and an egg on top. I don’t know how I was even able to move the rest of that night.

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→ December 12, 2015
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Top Chef, S13E03.

All my Insider links from the week are in today’s stick to baseball post, along with the link to my top ten new boardgames of the year plus the usual miscellany.

So the road tripping begins with this episode, as the crew heads to “Santa Barbara” … except they’re really going to Sanford Winery, which is up in the hills towards Lompoc.

* Frances … there’s more to that story about her dad kicking her out, right? That deserved some more explanation.

* We’re talking sea urchins, specifically uni, the gonads of the spiny echinoderms, which are eaten both raw (as sushi) and cooked, with a “briny, buttery,” “cucumber-melon” flavor, according to these folks. I’ve never had it raw, only cooked, in pasta with uni butter at a restaurant that’s now closed. I don’t particularly care about eating one part of the animal versus another – I’ve had heart, liver, thymus gland, tongue, “head cheese” – but can’t say I’m particularly drawn to sea urchins or their relatives, the sea cucumbers.

* Oh, it’s Dana Downer! Although she’s actually smiling in this episode, maybe because she just retired from Food and Wine.

* It’s a sudden death Quickfire, one of the worst gimmicks in Top Chef history, where the losing chef faces elimination. The chefs have 25 minutes to prepare a dish with uni and pair it with a Sanford wine.

* I noticed Kwame sampling the wine, but did we see any other chef do that? How can you pair a wine you haven’t tasted? With the exception of Chad (who says he’s recently sober) no one else has any excuse to not at least take thirty seconds to sip one or two of the wines.

* Frances worked in the Middle East for seven years and says there’s “no alcohol there,” although I think she was in Dubai, where you can get alcohol in the hotels that cater to foreigners but not elsewhere. She can’t pronounce the wine’s name so she says “whatever, I got a fucking wine.” If nothing else she’s a hell of a quote.

* Wesley says he’s used to cooking “subtle French cuisine,” which is hilarious because I’m pretty sure Jacques Pepin’s station doesn’t look like an F5 tornado just went through it after service.

* Giselle wants to make scrambled eggs with uni, but can’t find any eggs; it looks like Carl took a dozen eggs, which I guess is supposed to make him the bad guy here? This isn’t exactly the pea purée crisis redux.

* Isaac gets into the sea urchin with two cleavers, which amuses me for no particular reason. Chad says Isaac is “like swamp people on steroids,” which I think he meant as a compliment.

* Karen is whipping uni with egg yolks and wants to make an egg drop soup, but won’t the uni’s flavor just get overwhelmed in a dish like that? When you eat egg drop soup, the flavor of the egg isn’t exactly front of palate.

* Angelina says she’s playing it safe, which is always a good idea. (Note: It’s never a good idea.) She’s making pasta with uni butter, which isn’t just safe, but totally uninspired. The place where I had that dish wasn’t even going for haute cuisine – it was just a smart Italian restaurant.

* Grayson seems to be one of the only chefs here who gets the idea that the uni has to be the star ingredient of the final dish – the first time she’s acted like she’s been here before.

* Karen’s uni just dissolves in the soup. That’s not exactly what I was predicting, but the dish was just a bad idea from the start.

* Favorites: Grayson, who made a crab salad with cucumbers, grapefruit, and uni, paired with a Viognier (a white grape related to Chardonnay, per Wikipedia), is praised for the dish’s simplicity and her showcasing of the uni. Wesley’s uni with creamed corn, fennel, salmon roe, and scallop, paired with Chardonnay; Padma and Dana loved the building of flavors. Carl’s eggs and uni – he made am omelet with herbs and green chili, also paired with Chardonnay – are “such a great pair,” and the dish exemplified what the challenge was about. The winner is … Grayson. It’s like she got out of LA and remembered she was on a competition show.

* The least favorites: Angelina, who made one of Dana’s favorite dishes (cacio e pepe with uni butter and Parmiggiano) and made it too salty. Karen, because it was hard to find the uni in her soup. Giselle, who made a potato with uni and onion jam; the potato wasn’t completely cooked and there was too much onion flavor from the jam. Giselle is the bottom and picks Angelina for her sudden-death cook-off, which is probably the right call.

* An aside: I know jack about wine, but isn’t Chardonnay kind of a ‘common’ wine? I mean that in the sense of lacking sophistication, rather than just something popular, although the latter can often lead to the former. I was surprised how many chefs chose it, especially since its main note is usually the assertive flavor of oak.

* Giselle and Angelina have to cook ostrich eggs. Angelina mutters “you better kick ass…” but admits she’s never worked with ostrich eggs before. (Really? Come on, I have a dozen in my fridge right now.)

* Giselle makes soft scrambled eggs with avocado, chipotle salsa, and pepitas. Angelina made a spicy tomato jam with scrambled eggs, shiitake mushrooms, and carrots.

* Dana didn’t seem to like either dish. Giselle rushed her presentation and too many pepitas. Angelina’s dish was overdone in more than one way. Giselle wins but I wonder if this was by default since both dishes sucked.

* Elimination challenge: Pair up to make the ultimate surf and turf dish. Grayson is a team of one because she has immunity. No one wants Giselle or Angelina so they end up a pair.

* There’s a mad rush to grab proteins. It’s the same stupid shit every year. In what possible way is this measuring chefs’ skills? If anything it’s just favoring the stronger or faster, not the better cooks.

* OK, now that I’ve got that off my chest, I don’t have much more patience for chefs who complain about the proteins they end up with because you’re kind of supposed to be able to cook anything, right? Kwame and Chad end up with lamb and crab … yeah it’s weird, but so what? Show off. Why go traditional? I’d think the judges would be more impressed by a clever lamb/crab surf-and-turf than an expected combo like steak and lobster.

* Also, surf-and-turf is incredibly passé. It’s a sign of an era when consuming lots of animal products was considered a sign of status, rather than a sign that you don’t give a rat’s ass about the world.

* Tom shows up. Cue dramatic music. Teams are no longer together, but are going to cook against each other – surf vs. turf. Grayson gets to choose who to go against (she picks Wesley/Amar, because she wants the challenge) and can go surf or turf. Suddenly Giselle and Angelina have to be happy with their pairing.

* Carl, in confessional, says, “I should have picked Giselle!” The sad part is he’s probably right – she and Angelina have quickly emerged as two of the weakest chefs here.

* Even though they’re competing, Kwame helps Chad butcher his lamb. That’s impressive.

* Guest judges include Jon and Vinny from Animal, Cat Cora, Michael Cimarusti from Providence restaurant, and our friend Richard Blais. Wesley took over as executive chef for Blais at The Spence in Atlanta earlier this year, now that Blais has relocated to San Diego, with two restaurants there in Little Italy.

* Wesley is using stencils for plating, which is too clever by half. Get the dish done first, then worry about artwork. And sure enough, he doesn’t get everything on the plate, and the meat isn’t tender enough even though he used sous vide to try to soften it up. (We could have used some more detail on that, just from an education perspective – why it might not have worked, or whether it was even a good idea.)

* And now the dishes … First up is Amar, Wesley, and Grayson. Amar serves olive oil-poached halibut with an “eggless Bearnaise” (isn’t this just a tarragon beurre blanc?), asparagus, and morels. Tom says the fish a tick overcooked. Cat, who calls it a hollandaise, says there’s “no complexity” to the sauce. Wesley serves a sous-vide and smoked ribeye with asparagus puree and morels. No one likes it. Grayson serves a spiced carrot puree under a tangy lacquered pork belly with cara cara oranges (a red-fleshed navel orange with nuanced flavors) and cacao nibs. Blais says the purée is “fascinating and dynamic.” Grayson takes the first five voters, so she wins the challenge.

* Blais says that Wesley’s dish is “what gives sous vide a bad rap.” I know it’s a widely accepted technique, but putting food in a plastic bag and cooking it in warm water isn’t exactly an obvious approach for most home cooks. Tell us more about when and why it’s a good idea.

* Second service is Jeremy vs Philip. Jeremy made spot prawns roasted in their shells with potato gnocchi, English peas, and preserved lemon. Tom says it’s “all about finesse.” Philip served a center cut ribeye over rutabaga puree with a nori beurre blanc. Cat raves about the meat, saying she “probably could have cut it with my fork,” but now we’re getting technical about whether it’s a beurre blanc. Jeremy wins by a sliver, although there’s praise all around for Philip.

* Since it’s now come up twice: Beurre blanc is one of my favorite sauces to make at home because it’s simple and very potent, ideal with fish and most cooked vegetables. You cook shallots with white wine and vinegar, reducing till it’s almost a glaze in the pan, and then whisk in too much butter to believe. The butter must be cold to form and maintain an emulsion in the pan. It’s also highly extensible – I’ve swapped in all kinds of citrus juices for the vinegar, seasoned it with herbs at the end, even used beet juice to make a sort of “beurre blood.” Unlike egg yolk-based emulsions like Bearnaise and hollandaise, beurre blanc comes together faster and is far less likely to break.

* Third service is Angelina vs Giselle. Angelina made marinated mussels with a light escabeche sauce, fennel leek puree, potatoes, and radishes. The mussels are dry and flavorless, and Tom says she “tortured” the ingredients. Giselle made quail with cucumber radish salad and a tamarindo sauce. The judges like the serrano chilies she seems to have used in the sauce. Giselle wins.

* Angelina’s response afterwards: “This bitch beat me again.” I can only imagine what Madeleine Albright would think of this.

* Fourth up is Kwame vs Chad. Kwame made a rock crab salad with turmeric, asparagus, and radish. Tom called it “Playful and fun.” I’m just surprised to hear turmeric, which I associate with color but not flavor (or at least not a positive flavor), cited as the first item after the protein. Chad made a spicy bean, honey, and orange lacquered roasted lamb with asparagus and mint puree. The lamb was cooked perfectly, and the puree was “rockin’.” With four votes apiece, Tom breaks the tie with … “Kwame for President,” which I can only assume is an allusion to the late Ghanaian President and dictator Kwame Nkrumah.

* Other than Giselle and Angelina, every team seems to be getting along. I’m not sorry to see a lack of enmity here – too often that ends up taking screen time away from the food.

* Fifth service is Isaac against Carl. Isaac serves a fennel-crusted halibut with English peas and a brown butter hollandaise (that sounds like a really good idea, by the way). The halibut is a tick overcooked and needs a hit of acid. (Don’t we all.) Carl made a roasted chicken thigh with prosciutto, English peas, and a white wine dijon sauce. Cat says it’s very reminiscent of home and they’re all talking about the chicken like it’s fried, so I assume he did something to crisp the skin. Carl wins although Isaac gets three votes.

* Sixth service is Karen vs Marjorie. Karen is missing a piece of fish … and Padma ends up with the plate without it. Karen looks like she wants to die; I can feel her mortification through the television. Her dish was a seared rock cod with carrot-orange puree, blood orange vinaigrette, and roasted carrots. David Lentz, chef at the Hungry Cat, says it’s “one of the best dishes” of the day. Everyone loves it, except Padma, who looks forlorn as everyone else raves. (I think we got more shots of Sad Padma on the screen than we did of the food itself.) Marjorie made a roasted pork loin, olive oil crushed potatoes, citrus gremolata, bok choy, and carrot. Dana just murders this dish, and Marjorie overcooked the pork. Karen wins despite the mistake.

* Seventh and final service pits Jason against Frances. Jason made a marinated grilled pork loin with “steamed crudit&eacutes,” and a Thai egg. Who the heck calls anything “crudité” in 2015? That’s 1970s cocktail party shit. Tom says he needed to develop more flavors. Frances made a ginger-glazed black cod with jicama and cucumber salad. The skin is rubbery, and with dripping disdain David says, “just take the skin off if it’s going to be like that.” Nobody likes hers either, with Tom calling it a “hodgepodge of stuff on a plate.” (I thought Hodgepodge was a rabbit, not a black cod.) Tom has to break the tie again and picks Jason.

* Wesley is having a big pity party out on the veranda there in the beautiful weather, where Kwame is simultaneously trying to give him a pep talk and tell him he’s being a big whiny baby.

* Judges’ table – the favorites: Jeremy, Kwame, and Karen. Karen is immediately DQ’d because she didn’t serve Padma fish. Kwame’s dish was strong, creative, and respectful of the ingredients; I get the sense he did more with less. Jeremy had never worked with spot prawns that quality and gets raves for his treatment of it. Kwame wins and gets his own barrel of wine from Sanford Winery.

* Bottom three: Frances, Angelina, and Wesley. Wesley didn’t start plating in time, and Tom kills him for playing with stencils. Wesley explains that the steak had no marbling (finally, some real explanation), and thought sous vide would soften it, but Blais says “it didn’t eat that way.” Angelina’s mussels dried out once they were out of the shell; Michael said they would have loved it had the mussels been cooked right. Frances added acorn squash because she thought the dish was too simple with just black cod and jicama relish, but that appears to have overcomplicated things, although everyone killed her on the rubbery cod skin anyway. Blais hits them all on time management – he says they had plenty of time but didn’t use it well, especially Wesley.

* Frances is out. That’s too bad for us because her commentary was entertaining. Meanwhile, the chefs are packing up right away and going to Palm Springs.

* LCK: Frances and Garret start trash-talking each other right away. Challenge is to cook a vegetable three ways, using the whole thing, with all trimmings on the station to be factored into the grading. The chefs must use Hidden Valley Ranch seasoning in one of the three ways; I guess even Top Chef has to pay the bills. Frances says, “I’m from Third World country (sic), you use everything!” She picks broccoli, which is a fairly easy vegetable for this challenge – the stalks and leaves aren’t just edible but are good. Garret picks beets. He slices the bulbs into discs and grills them, which … I actually don’t know how that would work. They take so damn long to cook otherwise. He also fries the beet peelings in the deep fryer to see if he can use them rather than creating more waste. Frances cooks the broccoli scraps, pur&eacuate;es them, and seasons with the HVR to make the sauce.

* I was fine with all the taunting going back and forth until Garret said, “suck it Frances.” That’s a terrible expression in general, especially for a man to say to a woman. Trash-talking is fine until someone loses an eye.

* Garret made pickled beet stems, chiffonaded greens, beet vinaigrette, fried skins, and grilled beet bulbs. Tom was obviously impressed because beet skins would ordinarily be food waste. Frances made a broccoli puree with chili and yuzu, pickled broccoli stems with yuzu and olive oil, and stir fried broccoli florets.

* Tom: Garret’s grilled beets were bland, while Frances overspiced a few things. Garret wins – the fried skins appear to have won the day for him.

* Quick power rankings: Kwame, Carl, Jeremy, Amar, Karen. Kwame’s the one holdover in my top three this week, but through three episodes he’s the only chef who’s stood out every single time. Bottom three: Angelina, Giselle, Wesley.

* Don’t forget to check out my annual cookbook recommendations and my 2015 gift guide for cooks as Christmas approaches.

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→ December 12, 2015
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Stick to baseball, 12/12/15.

Paste published my ranking of the top ten new boardgames of 2015 this week, as well as my review of 7 Wonders Duel, the new two-player game based on 7 Wonders.

I wrote a lot for Insider this week, reviewing signings and trades. Here’s the full list:

• Jason Heyward to the Cubs
• The Bethancourt/Kelly trade
• The Brett Lawrie trade
• The Walker/Niese trade
• The Kenny Giles trade
• The Adam Lind trade
• The Cubs’ moves with Zobrist and Castro
• The Shelby Miller trade
• The Jay/Gyorko trade
• The Carson Smith/Wade Miley trade
• Hisashi Iwakuma to the Dodgers
• Jeff Samardzija to the Giants
• Zack Greinke to the Diamondbacks

And of course, there was a Klawchat this week.

And now, the links…

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→ December 11, 2015
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Klawchat 12/11/15.

Klaw: Come for the wuggas, but stay for the jiggy-juggas. Klawchat.

Jean Lazure: Hi Keith – you said this morning in your appreciation of Ricardo Rodriguez that he has “more skills than tools”. Is a tool innate and a skill learned? Was just wondering…thanks.
Klaw: That’s a good quick and dirty summary. Tools are largely physical – run, power, throw – but can incorporate the mechanical too. Skills represent refinement, and are about what happens during games more than tools, which express raw abilities.

Jack: Thoughts on Oaklands offseason so far? Personally not a huge fan of relief expenditures or selling so low on Lawrie.
Klaw: A bit confused. I’ve never believed in buying relievers, especially when your budget is low. I don’t know if they sold low on Lawrie so much as they got rid of a guy whose character flaws outweigh his mediocre production.

Bob: Overall thoughts on the Chapman situation ??
Klaw: If he did what his girlfriend accused him of doing, I’d be fine with never seeing him in an MLB uniform again.

Danny: Orioles seem lost at sea again. Have to be early leaders for worst offseason direction so far.
Klaw: I’m really not a fan of judging any team’s offseason when they haven’t done much yet. There’s a lot of time left and a lot of players without teams.

Rauzer17: Which is worse, the Opryland Hotel or downtown Detroit?
Klaw: Well you’re not likely to get shot at the Opryland, but you might die of starvation wandering its halls.

Nelson: Will we be getting a Nashville dining review?
Klaw: Of course, although I only went to three new places. Two Ten Jack was the big group dinner and an enormous hit. I love everything about that place.

LarryA: Do you think Henson is ready to take over yet in Pit after the Walker trade?
Klaw: I assume the infield includes Harrison and Kang at 2b and 3b.

Mmmmmmm: Could Javier Baez really play CF?
Klaw: I doubt it.

Jimbo: Can you give Braves fans an idea of just how great it is to have picked up Dansby Swanson?
Klaw: It’s “having a major league stadium on public transit” great.

Rob: How did Dave Stewart get a GM job?
Klaw: His buddy hired him. That’s the number one way to get a GM or manager job in baseball right now – make sure you have a friend doing the hiring.

Jérôme Champagne: Any recommendations for two player entry level board games? I saw you mention 7 Wonders Dual but that seems a bit intimidating for someone new to board games.
Klaw: Jaipur. If you go to my top 80 boardgames (http://klaw.me/1iWV10k) there’s a ranking of two-player games at the bottom.

Barry: What do you think about Mark Shapiro’s response to the Jays’ limited activity since signing Happ? Is a front office’s obligation to ‘run a successful business’ or is it to win? Winning can make a business successful, but doesn’t it work the other way only rarely?
Klaw: Winning generally leads to financial success in baseball. Losing sometimes does, especially when the league is subsidizing you (coughMarlinscough), but winning is a much better formula.

Bobby: Small trade, I know, but any thoughts on the SP’s the Yanks got back in the J Wilson deal? Also, re “Too Many Cooks,” I am not a big believer in changing original text, but I do agree that the repeated use of that word diminish the ability to enjoy the text. In this case, I would probably advocate making a change and hoping a good forward or note on the topic fosters interesting discussion. Thanks, as always…
Klaw: I like Cessa as a depth guy, liked him for Detroit in the Cespedes deal but think Wilson provides now value and fits their roster better. Not sure why the Yanks have become cost-conscious all of a sudden.

Corey: Are you going to do an espn writeup for the bethancourt trade or can you comment here?
Klaw: Already posted about a half hour ago. Here it is.

Marshall: Dusty Baker sure is off to a “great” start as manager for the Nats with his supportive comments toward Chapman. The more Baker talks the more he sounds like a guy stuck in a bygone era.
Klaw: What he’s saying isn’t just insensitive, but indicative of someone who doesn’t think before he speaks. That should concern the Nats’ FO and ownership most of all.

Silv: Any idea as to the return from the Dodger side in the Chapman deal? Leaving aside his alleged actions, abhorrent as they may be, I’m having a hard time understanding why LA would deal the rumored two+ of their top ten prospects for a 65 inning reliever, regardless of how hard he throws.
Klaw: No idea, and while I know someone said it was “two significant prospects” on air the other night, I don’t even know if THAT was true. The one way I could justify it for LAD would be if they intended to use Chapman for more like 100 innings in relief. He could be a 4 WAR reliever, higher by WPA if the manager used him in high-leverage situations.

Josh: What are your thoughts on Jabari Blash (other than the outstanding name)?
Klaw: Always thought he was a AAA or 4A slugger type. Toolsy but not very disciplined. This was his third straight year with AA time and second in the PCL.

Jason: Tell us about Dansby Swanson, can he really be a 15/25 guy and does he go back to second base with the Braves having Albies at SS?
Klaw: No, I think he’s the one who pushes Albies, whose arm is a little light for short, to second. I don’t know what the 15/25 refers to.

Josh: Are the Padres crazy for having four Rule 5 guys on the roster, or is it a decent gamble that one may pay off for a relatively small investment?
Klaw: Doubt they keep more than two. Really no disincentive to do what they’re doing – $25K a pop for extended tryouts in March.

Tom: Much to make about LAA trading Gott for Escobar?
Klaw: Not really. Should ensure Rendon goes back to 3b where he belongs.

Silv: Does Utley actually have anything left, or are the Dodgers basically paying him 7mm for #grit. Friedman wouldn’t be so foolish as to block Peraza, right?
Klaw: Don’t think he has much left but I wouldn’t say he’s done. Half a year in AAA wouldn’t kill Peraza – in fact, I’d move him back to short and see if he can still do it.

Bruce: Do you get more or less questions now than over at ESPN?
Klaw: Fewer in total, but no fewer quality questions.

Josh: If you are the Padres, do you try to stretch out Pomeranz in the spring, or leave him in the pen?
Klaw: Bullpen. Never has had a good enough changeup to get RHB out.

Josh: Rosenthal, Heyman, and others are reporting Heyward to the Cubs. On paper, are the Cubs the best team in baseball right now?
Klaw: I think so. But I wonder if this opens them up to trade Soler. Heyward can handle CF but I doubt he’s plus there. We know he’s ridiculously good in RF.

M. Pemulis (Enfield): How has the ratio of trolls to real questions changed since the chats moved over to here?
Klaw: Most trolls are gone. Also don’t get the people who complain that I answer non-baseball questions.

Chris: How long until Boras calls up Ted Lerner to give Davis a monster contract since they missed out on Heyward?
Klaw: You act like that hasn’t already happened in the last ten minutes.

Mar: You’ve mentioned before fans don’t understand basic economics and that’s why they disapprove of player salaries. I’m skeptical economics truly drives salaries. Do teams know the relation between wins (or even star power) and revenues?
Klaw: Hell yes they do.

Skip: What are your thoughts on Maeda? Where should he slot into a rotation?
Klaw: Fourth starter. Very worried about durability. Smaller frame guy who’s had some issues getting through a full season healthy.

Zach: Given your love of literature and coming from a front office background, was it natural for you to begin writing? Is the writing process still frustrating for you at times, or did you fall into it pretty naturally?
Klaw: I’ve always been a natural writer (in the sense that I don’t find it difficult or frustrating, not that I’m some innate Hemingway). I’m more comfortable expressing myself in writing than verbally, although I’ve had to get better at the latter.

Chris: Bethancourt and Alfaro seem similar based on write up on bethancourt, is that the case?
Klaw: Yes. Alfaro’s a better hitter though.

Adam: Hi Keith–I was curious if you’ve ever tried cooking sous vide-style at home?
Klaw: I have not. Devices were pretty expensive until the last year or so.

Ben: Confirmed that Cubs got Heyward. You think that’s a better use of resources than grabbing a CF and another SP?
Klaw: Not sure they need another SP; Hammel is the 5, and they have Warren and Wood in the pen as long options, which could also make Hendricks a short starter. CF options this winter weren’t great. All depends on the cost but I don’t think this is a poor use of resources. Also bear in mind that next winter’s free agent class is a dumpster fire.

Marshall: Until proven otherwise do the Twins just need to treat Alex Meyer as reliever rather than a starter?
Klaw: Yes. Needs to show he can throw enough strikes first, then to get some left-handed hitters out.

Boogie: It’s being reported that the Cubs “won the Heyward sweepstakes”. How good does this make them? Adding Zobrist/Heyward is an amazing offseason…
Klaw: I love that phrasing – like Casey Close just showed up at the door, but instead of carrying a giant check, he was asking for one.

Joshua: With it looking like the Nats (hopefully) will have Turner starting as their SS, what can you tell me about Difo. Is he a legitimate starting threat at 2B this year, or should I still be expecting to see Espinosa out there? Thanks, Keith.
Klaw: I don’t think he’s ready now, but he could be their starting 2b in 2017. Pretty toolsy kid who put everything together a little late, like Willson Contreras with the Cubs.

Chad: Where does that leave the Cards? without Lynn, an OF Grichuk and Piscotty and Adams at first.. that’s not exactly encouraging? Do they sign a different OF?
Klaw: I don’t know their plans – I’m sure they’re scrambling a little bit right now – but I think they’d be better served to see if there’s a hitter available in trade, and spending their available cash on one of the many good SP out there. Leake and Kazmir come to mind immediately.

Archie: Higher ceiling Gleyber Torres or Ozhaino Albies?
Klaw: Torres. Better fielder and I think more chance to hit for power. Albies is the safer bet to hit.

Chris: Nola Hellickson Oberholtzer Velazquez Eickhoff?
Klaw: Is this some sort of curse?

Bruce: Will you ever write a novel?
Klaw: I would love to do so. There are one or two projects I need to complete (or start and complete) first.

Ray: Thoughts on Derek Fisher- can he be a low average, high OBP, 20+ HR, 20+ SB hitter in Philly or do we need to see how he performs in AA?
Klaw: I’m a bit down on him after that first year in pro ball and a very bad look in the AFL after I saw him so much better in college. Lot of holes in his game for someone whose tools are so damn good.

Ed: Have you been to Blais’ crack shack yet? Very good fried chicken, sides aren’t the best.
Klaw: No, but I’ll probably get there in March. I think Hedges has value because there is always more demand for catching than supply, but yeah, the way they mishandled him in 2015 didn’t help.

Anonymous: Just started working at Rice University—any players of note to watch there in 2016-2017?
Klaw: Duplantier, if he’s not hurt, which he has been, which I know you’ll find terribly surprising for a Rice pitcher.

TJ: Two HOF write-in voters for Pete Rose so far…
Klaw: An utterly pointless gesture, regardless of his merits as a player.

Brandon in DC: In discussing the Jason Hayward free agency with a friend of mine, he said he was dubious of Heyward’s value because he believes WAR overweights defensive metrics. I know the calculation and components of the various forms of WAR have been often debated, but what is your current view about the weight given to defense, and whether you think WAR would properly measure Heyward’s value? Thanks!
Klaw: I think defensive metrics, especially the proprietary ones that teams use, are more accurate than critics understand, even if they lack the precision that offensive measures provide. The question is seldom “how much was he worth” but “how much will he be worth?” To answer the latter, you need to try to impute the player’s true talent level from his performance. That is less about precision in a single period of time and more about directional accuracy over a larger sample.

Jesse: Hi Keith, thank you for your advocacy for mental health and science issues. I’m interested in your thoughts on GMOs – I am not against the development of GMOs on principle as many people are, but do have a fear that the biotech industry is writing the rules and don’t trust individual corporations to regulate themselves. Despite GMOs being generally safe and effective, I can’t get over the fear of an environmental catastrophe is something is developed without adequate oversight. You seem comfortable with the use of GMOs, how do you reconcile this concern?
Klaw: Comfortable but concerned would be a good way to put it. Evolution has been genetically modifying organisms for millions of years, yet only one has become dangerous enough to wipe out thousands of other species and take over the planet: Us.

Jack K: What about Jason Heyward’s swing are scouts concerned about? Do you see a higher offensive ceiling for him?
Klaw: The Cards made some tweaks last year that helped him. He starts high and often comes a bit down towards the ball, which produces a lot of groundballs, something he didn’t do as much as a minor leaguer. He’s big enough and has the lower body strength to hit for more power. I think there’s a chance he does that now.

Alison: Odds that the draft picks the Cards get from the Cubs signings turn out to be HOF’s.
Klaw: I’m going to say under 1%. Had to think for a second about it when you said “picks” but you’re right (and I was wrong!).

Jack: What are your thoughts on Renato Nunez? I’ve read conflicting reports about his ability to stick at third, and it doesn’t seem his bat will carry playing first.
Klaw: That’s about right. I don’t know if he stays at third, and he probably won’t, but I’d give him every chance to do so.

Brando: Think that the BBWAA HOF voters hold it against Griffey for being a prick during his career? I bet it cost him some votes
Klaw: Maybe a couple but it won’t matter in the end. He’ll get 95% or more. And yeah, he was not a good guy, especially not as a teammate (so I hear – this is terribly secondhand, so feel free to dismiss it), but he skates on that while Bonds gets murdered for it.

Matt: With Greinke Miller Corbin leading Dbacks rotation this makes them the favorite for the NL west correct?
Klaw: Ehhhhhh i’m not so sure about that. As I said above, there’s a lot of offseason left to be played. They may think Corbin’s ready to make 32-33 starts, but in his first full year back from TJ that’s very foolhardy. They were also well behind LAD/SF on paper coming into the winter; they’re slightly ahead now, but the other two clubs have barely made any moves while the Dbacks are probably done. AZ still needs something in the middle infield, though; Ahmed is terrible and Owings isn’t much better.

Jugdish: I know you are a Top Chef fan. Do you liked Chopped and have you ever tried to be a contestant?
Klaw: No, and no – aren’t those contestants actual chefs?

Adam: What should the Braves do with all of these OF’s? Wouldnt the best move be to play Olivera at 3rd and see if he at least improves until they can clear the OF traffic?
Klaw: He was pretty awful at 3b and 2b, and he’s not a prospect – he’s old enough that hoping for improvement is wishful thinking.

Archie: Do you see Drury opening the season as the Dbacks 2B if they don’t trade for Phillips?
Klaw: If he shows his glove is good enough. He was not good last spring when I saw him in AZ.

Alison: Alison 1, Klaw 0. It was a tongue in cheek question because no matter who they lose, things tend to work out for the Cards. And not work out for my Cubs.
Klaw: you forgot to say #cardsdevilmagic.

Horacio: Hi Keith, I was introduced into Chvrches by one of your previous ‘best of’ lists and now I love them. I attended a concert a couple of weeks ago here in London and it was superb. I just wanted to thank you for that!
Klaw: They’re so good – and good live, which I didn’t expect because Mayberry has something of a “little” voice.

Greyson: Considering Christian Bethancourt’s ridiculous arm (I still remember his snap throw at the 2012 futures game) and problems receiving, could he be converted to a pitcher? Or is it too late?
Klaw: A scout I know well suggested that maybe four years ago to me, and I think the idea still has merit. He’d have to be mid-90s.

Jeff: Keith, is John Hart just smarter than everyone else in the room or does he have some naked photos of them with their mistresses? I don’t understand how he keep getting these teams to make trades like the Shelby Miller for Dansby Swanson and others.
Klaw: Atlanta (I think Coppolella is the one making the calls rather than Hart) has done an excellent job of taking advantage of a GM with no effective front office experience and what appears to be a thoroughly outdated view of the game.

James: The Royals are saying they thing Bubba Starling will become a starting OF in the future, but I don’t see it. What are you thoughts?
Klaw: Too optimistic for me.

Chris: JP Crawford go full time in 2017 at this rate?
Klaw: I think by July 1st he’s the shortstop in Philly, barring injury or cholera or something.

Pat: To your knowledge, do or have the Blue Jays used financial derivatives to hedge exchange rate risk, particularly is much of their revenue is C$ but their expenses are US$ (player salaries)?
Klaw: Yes, they have for at least 15 years. I think it’s even in Rogers’ annual report.

Josh: What are your thoughts on AJ Preller? Seems to me he cleared out some prospects he wasn’t high on last year for a chance at a run, but after it didn’t work he is flipping them for prospects he does like.
Klaw: That’s a fair characterization, and I’m pretty good with that overall, although I thought all last year that failing to address CF or SS or the lack of RHB in the lineup were mistakes.

Joshua: Curiosity questions: I know (or maybe presume I know) that you are not a big Pearl Jam fan. I have read that you really like(d) Mother Love Bone. Just curious as to why. Thanks.
Klaw: Very different sounds IMO. Pearl Jam derives more from classic blues-rock and arena rock. MLB (!) were more influenced by psychedelia, and Andrew Wood’s lyrics were insanely great.

Dan: According to Alex Pavlovic, Giants might be considering Christian Arroyo in LF…do you see this as a legitimate possibility?
Klaw: Silly. No reason he can’t play 2b. I know Panik is there now, but a) I think Arroyo might end up a better player and b) something totally unexpected could change Panik’s career arc too.

Jesse: What is your gut on Dansby Swanson and his upside
Klaw: At least an above-average everyday shortstop who may make a couple of All-Star teams in his career. And I think he could be ready at some point in 2016 if Atlanta allows him to move quickly – start him in high-A, move to AA if he wrecks the league like I expect.

Mark: Are certain tools available throughout the draft? For example, can you find an 80 runner in the 40th round? How about an 80 fastball guy in the 30th round? How about 80 power, 80 defense?
Klaw: Anything after the 10th round is no longer about talent but about signability now. You can definitely find 80 runners who can’t do anything else into the 8th-10th round range. I know of potential 80 defenders (future 60 or 70, project to 80) who’ve gone in the 6th or 7th. Those are guys who have massive deficiencies somewhere else – an 80 defender in center with a 30 hit tool isn’t flying off the board.

Jeff: When will we get your review of the Top Chef episode from last night? I thought it was a pretty interesting episode. I’ve been to the Sanford Winery and not only is it a beautiful property, but the wines are very good.
Klaw: I haven’t watched it yet – my sister-in-law and niece were here this morning and I wanted to spend time with them and also not expose the baby to that sort of language.

Corey: If somehow Moncada, Devers and Benintendi all arrive roughly at the same time, say ’18, where do you play them and where is Mookie in that alignment ?
Klaw: Moncada 2b, Devers 3b, Benintendi cf/rf, Betts cf/wherever. He can play a lot of places. I presume Bogaerts at ss still.

Silv: No question, just a comment. Good golly, the Cubs are LOADED.
Klaw: Yes. They have good players, too.

James: Michael Gettys or Monte Harrison?
Klaw: Harrison has more chance to hit. Gettys has crazy tools but has never hit at all and his swing has always had problems.

James: After a club loses its first draft pick, does it matter how many more it loses. For the Cubs, they have lost a first round and either a sandwich pick or a second rounder, do they care if they lose the next pick?
Klaw: Nope. I would never let a second-round pick stop me from signing a premium free agent. First-round yes, second-round … I guess I’ll say almost never.

Greg: Does Yordano Ventura ever become a top 20 pitcher or have we seen his best?
Klaw: I don’t think we’ve seen his best, but he’s got to be one of the biggest blowout risks of any MLB starter.

Lenny: Are you receptive to questions from obvious pseudonyms or “celebrity imposters” as long as the questions are legit/respectful? Or do you prefer answering questions from people who are apparently using their real names? Just curious for future reference.
Klaw: Doesn’t matter. I don’t usually look at the names at all, just the questions. As long as you’re civil, I’ll take any question, even ones that criticize me or call me out for my stupidity.

Chris: Do you watch video of players that you’ve correctly scouted to keep your eye trained for what to look for, or any similar practice?
Klaw: Much better use of time to revisit guys I got wrong. Although I don’t have enough time to do that much.

James: I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder last April and I hear that things like meditation will help me immensely. Any other reccomendation Keith? Thanks!
Klaw: EMMET: Exercise, Meditation, Medication, Eating better, Therapy. Bipolar is serious bidness, much more so than my anxiety, so definitely work with your doctor on finding meds that help.

Greg: Keith, where did you learn to scout from? Did you go to scout school?
Klaw: From colleagues with Toronto and scout friends over the years. I did not go to scout school. Scout school does not teach you to be a scout. Plenty of people brag about going to scout school and couldn’t tell a player from a potted plant.

Chris: Have there been any recent misses that made you wonder what you were looking at or caused you to look again?
Klaw: I write about 5-6 of them or more every September on ESPN.com. Missing on Goldschmidt has made me look at Rhys Hoskins differently, to give you one recent example.

Rob: Does the Bethancourt trade have any implications for Derek Norris? What’s your view on him? Still improving? Is what he is? Other?
Klaw: Norris can hit and isn’t a very good catcher. Either he goes to 1b or gets traded. I don’t think he’s going to last as a catcher in this new, defense-conscious environment.

Andrew: Your thoughts on Mizzou pitcher Tanner Houck or too early to speculate for a 2017 guy?
Klaw: He’s got first-round possibilities but I don’t like getting that far ahead unless it’s a clear top-of-the-draft guy.

Marshall: If the Marlins are a in “rebuilding phase” (seemingly on an endless loop) and receptive to trading Jose Fernandez, wouldn’t now be the perfect time to see what the market is for Dee Gordon?
Klaw: I don’t think their ownership allows the front office to stick to a single coherent strategy. They have smart people there, but Loria and Samwise there can’t stop interfering.

Adam: Does Mississippi State have any prospects this year?
Klaw: Dakota Hudson, who I think is supposed to be healthy in the spring.

JD: The Braves are offering some kind of “tracking stock” where you can essentially invest in the team without being an actual investor. Huh?
Klaw: I really thought those fell out of favor ten years ago. They were a bad idea then and are no better now.

Corey: Corollary to the Moncada, Devers, et al question – what do the Sox do with Pedroia then ? Obvious answer is a trade but that’s complicated given who we’re talking about. Put him in the Holt super UT role? 1B ?
Klaw: Pedroia is 32, may be starting to break down, and is clearly not the hitter he was two or three years ago. If he’s not your best 2b, you sit him.

Joshua: What are your thoughts on Tanner Roark? With the Nats losing both Zimmermann and Fister, he seems to be a logical choice for their rotation. However, if past indications tell me anything about this year, the Nats may not be sold on him. What are your thoughts? Thanks.
Klaw: I think he’s a back-end starter for almost any team in baseball. If the Nats don’t think that and aren’t planning to use him as an Adam Warren-type swing man, they should trade him because I’m pretty sure they could get something they value in return.

Marshall: If David Samson is Samwise, does that make Loria Frodo or Gollum?
Klaw: I thought it was obvious. He’s Sauron. And that’s all for this week’s chat! Thanks for joining me. I’ll be back next week, most likely on Thursday, and then we’ll play it by ear the week of Christmas. Look for something on Heyward later today after we know his contract details. Thank you as always for reading and for all of your questions!

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→ December 10, 2015
→ By

Language Arts and my year of 100 books.

Stephanie Kallos’ 2015 novel Language Arts first crossed my radar over the summer when I saw that Paste named it the best novel of the first half 2015, shortly after which I spotted it for $2.99 for the Kindle and picked it up to save for … well, the MLB winter meetings, as it turned out. It’s a bit sentimental with some purple prose, but the story itself is engaging and thoughtful, tied together by a surprise near the novel’s end that, with hindsight, makes clear so much of what was going on beneath the text in the first three-quarters of the book.

The center of the story is Charles Marlow and his autistic son Cody, whose sudden withdrawal as a toddler precipitated the breakup of Charles’ marriage to Alison and triggered a long-dormant memory of Charles’ childhood friendship with a developmentally disabled classmate. Through staggered flashbacks and shifts in present-day scenes from Charles to Cody (living in a group home) and a nun suffering from dementia that has caused her to revert to her young adulthood in Italy – a few too many abrupt shifts for me – Kallos unfolds what is really the story of Charles overcoming a series of mental obstacles to find some way to connect to his son.

While florid language often gives the book the feel of pop literature – the moon as a “melting scoop of vanilla ice cream” was a metaphor too far – Kallos invests the three mentally infirm characters (Cody, the nun, and Charles’ classmate Dana) with the complexity normally reserved for the not-disabled. While Cody is, of course, limited in expression and cognitive powers, he’s still given a broad range of emotions and treated like a whole person, both by other characters and by Kallos herself in describing his movements, habits, and attempts to communicate. Charles himself is the most fully fleshed-out character in the book, but there’s a hint of a sad-sack cliché about him, whereas Cody is one of the most refreshing, novel (no pun intended) portrayals of a developmentally disabled person I’ve ever seen.

Whereas Kallos’ phrasings often detracted from the book, she avoided many obvious plot pitfalls that would have turned this into a Hallmark movie of the week. Charles wrote an award-winning story as a fourth grader that resurfaces when his elementary school is slated for demolition; at a reunion with other students from that Langauge Arts class, he meets up with one of the other prize students, who’s also divorced, and … nothing happens. It would have just been too easy to have them date, or sleep together, or fall in love and give Charles a well-rounded, happy ending, but Kallos doesn’t go there, just as she doesn’t give Cody a miraculous recovery or reunite Charles and Alison or choose any of a dozen other easy ways out. The cathartic climax of the book is of the small kind, and it feels genuine, the kind of tiny miracle that can happen any day through nothing more unlikely than the kindness of others.

There’s a hint of pop spirituality, a sort of false ecumenicalism, running through Language Arts that did ring a bit off-key for me; it’s certainly true that we see many people turning away from organized religion while retaining some kind of spiritual belief system, but here Kallos wants to ask the Big Questions without doing much more to address them than point out that we’re all looking for answers. Between that and the prose, I could never quite get over the disconnect between the intense, thorough characterizations and the feel that Kallos was talking down to the reader – not from a point of intelligence looking down on the less clever, but the way we might look at a self-help guru dispensing empty platitudes. I can forgive quite a bit for a story and cast this compelling, where the conclusion delivers in a huge way without diverting from the book’s relentless realism.

–

This was the one hundredth book I’ve read in 2015, a peculiar goal but one I’ve wanted to reach for a very long time. I was on track to do it back in 2002, my first year working for the Blue Jays, one where I spent a lot of time on my own in Toronto (and prowled many of that fine, fine city’s many used bookstores … I remember a wonderful one near Little Italy where I went nuts), and read 75 books by early September. It was Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises that stopped me cold; I’ve tried so much Hemingway before and after that, but his prose is so cold and his depression so thoroughly reflected in his stories and characters that I’ve found his work more of a chore to read even than the labyrinthine language of Faulkner. That year I just hit a wall, and went as long without reading anything as I have at any point since then.

The year that my daughter was born (2006) was, naturally, another low point, although I still got to about 50-55 books read that year; I didn’t travel between spring training and the Futures Game, which cut down on reading time, and of course if I tried to read when my daughter was an infant I’d just fall asleep wherever I sat. But I’ve steadily ramped back up the last few years and read religiously for an hour or more just about every day. My therapist back in Arizona encouraged me to do it when I expressed some reservations about devoting time to such a solitary activity when I had a family and a job and, like everyone, a million other things I “should” (dangerous word there) be doing. She insisted I consider it part of my “self-care” regimen, the way I would meditation or exercise or getting enough sleep or eating well. So I have, going through 70 to 80 books a year most years since my daughter started sleeping through the night.

This year’s been an exceptional one though, even though I’ve had my share of longreads, because of my daughter. She’s supposed to read for a half an hour every night, so our deal, when I’m home, is that we read together, usually sitting next to each other on the couch (or her lying on top of me, which was a lot easier before she got to be more than half my weight), although if she’s annoyed at me for making her do her homework she might exile herself to the other side of the couch. She’s even been cheering me on towards the 100-book goal, which is wonderful encouragement, and delights me to see that she’s acquired some of my own yearning for achievements, no matter how arbitrary or meaningless to anyone but myself.

This year’s list of books has been suitably eclectic, with everything from Ngugi wa Thiongo’s epic Wizard of the Crow to Jasper Fforde’s two most recent Chronicles of Kazam books (which I read to my daughter a chapter or two a night), from books on quantum entanglement to the last two-thirds of Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy. The list included fourteen Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winners and one for Non-Fiction; ten Hugo Award for Best Novel winners; and two titles from Nobel Prize for Literature winners. (I didn’t like either of those two.) Three books were collections of works from various authors; of the other 97, twenty-two were written by women. Eighty-seven of the titles were works of fiction. Eight were audiobooks to get me through the drives to and from Bristol or the occasional bout of yardwork. I read four titles each from Agatha Christie and Rex Stout; three by Waugh; and two apiece from Fforde, Neil Gaiman, Philip K. Dick, and P.G. Wodehouse. And one was by an author I know personally, a rare pleasure and a case where I didn’t bother to feign objectivity.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve just begun John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (just $5 on Kindle right now!) and you’re keeping me from my reading…

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→ December 8, 2015
→ By

Too Many Cooks.

I have new Insider posts up on the Wade Miley-Carson Smith trade and the Hisashi Iwakuma contract. My latest boardgame review over at Paste covers 7 Wonders Duel, the new two-player game that uses the theme and some mechanics from the outstanding original 7 Wonders.

I don’t normally post on books in series, since part of any series’ appeal is the familiarity you get from title to title, but Rex Stout’s Too Many Cooks, the fifth of what would eventually be his thirty-three novels starring the corpulent detective Nero Wolfe and his milk-swigging sidekick Archie Goodwin. (I’ve now read thirteen of them, plus four books of short stories or novellas.) But this book merited some comment for two reasons, or perhaps two and a half if you consider the new meaning of the book’s title:

The story itself is one of the few that has Wolfe leave his famous brownstone, from which he solves most of the cases that come to him, usually in a climactic scene where all of the suspects gather in his parlor for the Big Reveal. In Too Many Cooks, Wolfe and Goodwin travel to a spa/resort in West Virginia for the festivities of the Quinze Maîtres, a collection of chefs (fifteen in name, with only twelve attending due to the deaths of three since the previous meeting) from around the world who gather every five years for enormous meals, presentations on food, and, in this case, murder. When one of the twelve is killed during a tasting experiment he’s running, Wolfe first has to clear the chef who invited him to the shindig, and eventually solves the murder when the killer takes a shot at Wolfe himself.

Wolfe’s view of the world always involves food and drink (usually cold beer), as he employs a full-time chef, Fritz, and cooks frequently himself, but Stout outdoes himself in the descriptions of the dinners the Maîtres enjoy, as well as the sauce printemps that’s used in the tasting test during which the murder occurs. I found it fascinating to see how different haute cuisine – or, I guess, what Stout considered haute cuisine – looked in 1938, when the book was published, from what it has become now. The sumptuous meals in Too Many Cooks are almost entirely derived from French cuisine, directly or through some translation on the American side of the ocean, with nothing from outside of Europe, and the overemphasis on animal proteins is almost embarrassing to an educated eater today. The test in question is clever, although I wonder how feasible it would be in practice: One chef prepares the same sauce nine different ways, each time omitting one critical ingredient, and the other chefs must taste each sauce once and fill out a card indicating which batch was missing which ingredient. The test is tangential to the main plot, more red herring than essential element, but I also inferred that Stout was having a little fun with his fascination with food.

On the flip side, however, of all of the Nero Wolfe works I’ve read, I don’t think any used the n-word as frequently as Too Many Cooks does, even though most of the time it’s used it comes from the mouth of one of the southern whites in the book – such as the redneck local sheriff who shows up to investigate the murder. This prompted a question in my mind that I’ll pose to the group. In general, I don’t support the idea of bowdlerizing older works of art – film, literature, etc. – to remove language that was in the common vernacular of the time but has since become objectionable or effectively prohibited. This is how people talked and acted, and removing those words or actions (such as the awful blackface scene in Holiday Inn) not only reduces the works’ historical accuracy but has the possibly unintended effect of allowing us to pretend that this crap never happened. At the resort in Too Many Cooks, the kitchen staff members are mostly black, and everyone but Wolfe refers to them in derogatory terms, liberally sprinkled with that odious epithet. In reality, you could clean this text up, removing most of those uses of the term and replacing with less offensive words that still express the racism of the speakers, without materially impacting the text. Failing to replace those words makes the book much less enjoyable to read, and I would guess many if not most African-American readers today would find it unreadable. (Don’t even get me started on Gone With the Wind.) So what would you prefer: Leave these works as they are, as I believe we should, as testaments to our history, or “edit” them to be more culturally sensitive?

Next up: Stephanie Kallos’ 2015 novel Language Arts.

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→ December 7, 2015
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The Keepers of the House.

My thoughts on the Jeff Samardzija contract are up for Insiders. I’m still waiting for details on Hisashi Iwakuma’s reported contract before writing that one up.

Shirley Ann Grau’s novel The Keepers of the House, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1965, is an outstanding work of seething rage that manages to address themes of race and racial injustice by telling the story of a white family, of all things, in rural Alabama, from the late 19th century through the period just before the book’s publication. It is obvious to me why it won the award, and baffling to me that it has all but disappeared from reading lists, with no film adaptation or anything else to keep it alive.

The book nominally details seven generations of the Howland family, but the focus is primarily on two of them: the fifth William Howland and his granddaughter Abigail, who returns with her mother to live with her grandfather after her father abandons the family to fight in World War II, and ends up raised by her grandfather after her mother dies shortly after. William brought a young black woman named Margaret in to be the housekeeper after his own wife died in childbirth, and Margaret eventually became his mistress, bearing him three children, each of whom was sent away to schools in the north where their mixed heritage would not be held against them. While the relationship was commonly known in the area, the locals – depicted by and large as the sort of upstanding racists you might associate with the South of the 1950s – overlooked it as a quirk of those crazy Howlands.

After William dies, Margaret moves back to the black section of town with her family, and Abigail and her ambitious politician husband John Tolliver move into the Howland estate. When John runs for Governor of Alabama, a post he’s favored to win in a landslide, one unknown detail emerges about William and Margaret that derails his campaign and marriage while bringing the wrath of the town upon Abigail, thereby unlocking within her generations of outrage at the hypocrisy all around her, from the local whites who would tolerate such miscegenation up to a point to William and Margaret’s children who try to reject their black heritage.

The first three-fourths of Grau’s novel feel like many other novels in the subgenre of southern literature, telling a vast story of a family that once ruled a vast estate or accumulated great wealth but watched it fritter away via complacent or dissolute descendants. But Grau plants many seeds (no pun intended) in the early going to set up a dynamite climax (same) that gives Abigail two shots at revenge on her family’s tormentors, taking advantage of the unspoken dependence of the townfolk to enact a vicious vengeance. Abigail serves her revenge piping hot, and because of its genesis, it’s an extraordinarily satisfying conclusion for the reader.

It’s even more potent for Grau’s decision to tell the story with Abigail as the narrator. Imposing that fog over the family history – it’s passed down orally, so bits of it seem embellished, perhaps impossible – meant that images become clearer as the story approaches the material Abigail herself would have seen, and allows us to trace the development of her identity as a Howland, especially from the time when she goes to live on the family estate. In the time when Grau wrote Keepers, it was unthinkable to have a black character enact the sort of revenge Abigail gets – as it was, Grau ended up with a cross burned on her lawn after the book was published – so giving us a white woman who was raised in a house where black children were treated as cousins was probably the closest Grau could get. And in so doing, she never spared the white racists who smiled and said the right things but harbored the same centuries-old bigotry in their hearts.

Next up: I just finished Rex Stout’s Too Many Cooks, a Nero Wolfe mystery, and have begun Stephanie Kallos’s highly lauded 2015 novel Language Arts.

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→ December 5, 2015
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Stick to baseball, 12/5/15.

I have written three Insider pieces this week, one on David Price and Chris Young, one on Zack Greinke and John Lackey, and one on Jordan Zimmermann and J.A. Happ. I also held my weekly Klawchat on Thursday.

Top Chef recaps began this week with episode one and episode two.

And now, the links…

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