Music — Page 4

→ April 7, 2023
→ By keith

Music update, March 2023.

I think March was a pretty good month for new music, although I was on the road so much I had less time to explore than I do in most months. We did get comeback songs or albums from three of my favorite bands from the ‘80s, though. As always, here’s the direct link to the playlist if the widget below won’t load for you.

The Beths – Watching the Credits. This New Zealand quartet shared this power-pop gem, recorded during the sessions for my #1 album of 2022, Expert in a Dying Field, but failing to make the final cut.Also, check out their mini-concert as part of the NPR Music Tiny Desk series, including my two favorite tracks from that same LP.

Jungle feat. Erick the Architect – Candle Flame. Jungle announced their upcoming fourth album, Volcano, due out in August, and released this very upbeat lead single with rapper Erick the Architect of Flatbush Zombies, who gives the song a Q-Tip/Chemical Brothers sort of vibe.

Killing Joke – Full Spectrum Dominance. An actual new track from Killing Joke, released to honor their sold-out show at London’s Royal Albert Hall last month. Jaz Coleman is 63 and still delivers, with a track that would have fit well on 2015’s Pylon.

Depeche Mode – People Are Good. But I thought people were people? This is probably my favorite track from Memento Mori, Mode’s fifteenth studio album and first since the death of Andy Fletcher last May. The album is hit or miss but its best tracks recall the gothic new wave sound they brought mainstream in from Black Celebration through Violator.

Arlo Parks – Impurities. Parks’ second album, My Soft Machine, is due out on May 26^th, and all of the advance tracks indicate a vocal style similar to that of Collapsed in Sunbeams but with more electronicelements than the first album offered.

The Japanese House – Boyhood. Not to be confused with Japanese Breakfast or Japanese Wallpaper or Japandroids or the ‘70s band Japan, The Japanese House is Amber Mary Bain of Buckinghamshire, England, and this lush, dreamy song is just lovely – she reminds me quite a bit of Ben Howard circa Old Pine.

Daughter – Swim Back. I’m thrilled that the English shoegaze trio Daughter are back, six years after their last album Music from Before the Storm, a soundtrack to the video game Life is Strange: Before the Storm and maybe the best such example of an album I’ve ever heard. Their third proper album, Stereo Mind Game, comes out on Friday.

Bully – Days Move Slow. I’ve never loved Alicia Bognanno’s nasal, raspy vocal style, which often gets compared to Kurt Cobain’s but I think misses core differences in how they sang (or screamed, as the case may be). This song, about grieving the death of her dog, is one of her best melodies and recalls a lot of 1990s post-grunge indie rock, although once again she’s half-singing through her nose and I have a hard time getting around that.

Black Honey – Cut the Cord. Black Honey released their third album of sunny indie rock, A Fistful of Peaches, in March, featuring this track, “Heavy,” “Charlie Bronson,” and “Out of My Mind.”

Temples – Afterlife. The fourth album from this English psychedelic-rock band, Exotico, drops on April 14^th, their first new music since 2019’s superb Hot Motion.

Bartees Strange – Daily News. Another bonus track from Strange’s 2022 sophomore album, the excellent Farm to Table, where he continues to craft his own sound independent of his indie-rock influences.

Hatchie feat. Liam Benzvi – Rooftops. Hatchie can really write a melody, and she’s one of the best songwriters of dream pop working right now, but I have always lamented the lack of power to her voice. It’s boosted here by vocals from Brooklyn singer-songwriter Benzvi,

Christine and the Queens – To be honest. The lead single from his upcoming album PARANOÏA, ANGELS, TRUE LOVE is also a throwback to the grandeur of Chris and his prior work. The lyrics explore both his transition and the last four years since the death of his mother, although some of the lines – “I’m trying to love, but I’m afraid to kill” probably lose something in translation.

Alison Goldfrapp – So Hard So Hot. This is indeed the lead singer of Goldfrapp, who released their first album in 2000 (Felt Mountain), releasing her first proper solo record, with this electronica gem as its lead single.

Nabihah Iqbal – This World Couldn’t See Us. Iqbal used to work with the late producer/DJ Sophie as a vocalist, and is about to release her second solo album, Dreamer, on April 28^th. This track sounds like something right out of London’s post-punk/”cold-wave” scene circa 1981, right down to the reverbed vocals.

boygenius – Satanist. I will never love boygenius the way critics do, in part because I don’t love the laconic vocal style of all three members (Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker), but their second album, the record, is a big step up from their first record musically, with much better hooks.

BLOXX – Television Promises. BLOXX first hit my radar with 2020’s Lie Out Loud, which had two bangers in the title track and “Coming Up Short.” This new song has a similar punk-pop vibe but more topical and denser lyrics, with some clever turns of phrase at the cost of some of the track’s energy, and comes in advance of their EP Modern Day, due out in August.

Project Gemini – After the Dawn. I could have sworn this was a King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard track at first, but it’s actually British multi-instrumentalist Paul Osborne, who also works as an editor at Shindig! magazine. This track draws deeply on ‘70s and even late ‘60s psychedelia with some nifty guitarwork in the middle.

Slow Pulp – Cramps. Slow Pulp’s first new music since the 2021 EP Deleted Scenes brings back their grunge/shoegaze hybrid, with elements for fans of Snail Mail and Velocity Girl alike.

Island of Love – Fed Rock. This London band describes their sound as “brutal slamming death metal” on their Instagram, but they’re much more punk – no death growls here, fortunately, although this seems to be a running gag – and post-punk with a surprising sense of melody beneath the frenetic guitar and drums.

Metallica – 72 Seasons. I have to admit, this is pretty good. They’ll never be the Metallica of Puppets or Justice, but I’ll accept this substitute.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2023 in music, alternative, indie, metal, Music, rap

→ March 2, 2023
→ By keith

Music update, February 2023.

February spawned a lot of great music, as it turns out, enough that I have 82 minutes of new tracks for you here. As always, if you can’t see the Spotify widget below, you can access the playlist here.

Temples – Cicada. I seem to like whatever Temples puts out, at least for their singles; their take on psychedelic rock, often with the kind of influences from Asia and north Africa that gave us Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir.” I love the interplay between the guitar and vocals in the frantic chorus here.

Fucked Up – Cicada. What are the odds of two great songs called “Cicada” dropping in the same month? Technically this came out in late January on these Canadian punk/post-hardcore stalwarts’ sixth album, One Day, and if you told me this was a lost track from Hüsker Dü I’d believe you.

Geese – Cowboy Nudes. This is the first new song from this young Brooklyn band (including Mets fan Dominic DiGesu on bass!) since their standout debut album Projector, and it sees them expanding their sound substantially. It’s less dissonant, better produced, and definitely more art-rock than anything on Projector, which was an incredible throwback to the heyday of post-punk.

CHVRCHES – Over. A one-off single from the Scottish trio, who just signed a new deal with Island Records, “Over” goes back a little in time, with a sound reminiscent of “Clearest Blue” from Every Open Eye.

Altin Gün – Rakiya Su Katamam. I didn’t know Anatolian rock, also called Turkish psychedelic rock, was a specific subgenre, but I’m extremely into it after stumbling on this track by this Amsterdam-based outfit. The “i” in the song’s title should be the Turkish character ?, without the dot on type, but I don’t think it’ll display properly.

Brooke Combe – Black is the New Gold. Combe is just 22, from Midlothian, Scotland, and this is the title track from her forthcoming mixtape. The hook was stuck in my head for days, and I like both her singing voice and the slight syncopation (here, stress on the third beat of each measure) that gives the track its subtle groove.

Caroline Polachek – Blood and Butter. Polacheck was half of Chairlift, who produced two of my favorite tracks of the last decade (“I Belong in Your Arms” and “Ch-Ching”), but her solo stuff has left me pretty cold. This is my favorite of her songs since Chairlift broke up, as it has a much stronger melody while still showcasing her impressive voice.

John-Allison Weiss – Tell Me to Go. Another strong single from The Long Way, Weiss’ first album in over seven years and their first since coming out as trans and non-binary.

Bartees Strange – Tisched Off. One of two tracks on a double-sided single from Strange as part of Sub Pop’s singles series, along with a song featuring Daniel Kleederman.

STONE – I Let Go. The first new song from STONE after their 2022 EP Punkadonk is a raucous rocker that’s less punk and more hard-edged rock-and-roll.

bdrmm – It’s Just a Bit of Blood. This British act takes an experimental approach to post-punk and shoegaze, releasing this as the lead single ahead of their second album, I Don’t Know, due out in June.

Squid – Swing (In a Dream). Squid are even more experimental, with a post-punk underpinning but a very definite bent towards the dissonant and the offbeat, but the chorus here is a complete earworm.

wilt – puberty. wilt are an LA-based quartet who’ve released just three songs so far, including this most recent one, which has a slow burn to a big finish with giant guitar riffs that reminded me of the band Hum.

beabadoobee – Glue Song. A cute two-minute acoustic number from beabadoobee, not one of my favorites from her but a solid showcase for her voice.

Beck – Thinking About You. I generally do not love Beck’s slower acoustic tracks, even though they tend to garner him more critical acclaim. I also didn’t like this song the first time I heard it, but then I went back, and I liked it more the second time, and even more the third time. So here it is.

Black Honey – OK. I include just about every single Black Honey puts out at this point. Their third album, A Fistful of Peaches, comes out on March 17^th.

Girl Ray – Everybody’s Saying That. A North London trio that started out as an indie act and pivoted towards pop around 2018-2019, Girl Ray just released this funk-tinged pop track right at the start of February, with a great hook in the chorus and a prominent bass line that makes this a hell of a dance song too.

swim school – delirious. swim school describe themselves as “Tesco-value Wolf Alice,” which isn’t that apposite to this particular track, which is way more shoegaze than Wolf Alice’s cheerier indie-pop/rock style.

Inhaler – Just to Keep You Satisfied. Inhaler released Cuts & Bruises, their second full-length, two weeks ago, and I think they’ve stalled; this is more of the same from the Irish quartet, but even a step back in the quality of their melodies. Inhaler has a sound, and that only gets you so far without some hooks like their first album had.

Depeche Mode – Ghosts Again. I mean, if you want to go back to the sound of the ‘80s, you could just listen to one of the bands that made that sound. This is the first song from Memento Mori, the band’s fifteenth album and their first since the death of longtime band member Andy Fletcher. The album drops March 24^th, and it sounds like it will be a melancholy affair, which isn’t really my favorite flavor of Depeche Mode.

San Cisco – Lost Without You. The first new song from this Australian trio since their 2020 album Between You & Me is a typically bouncy alt-pop track with witty lyrics that offer a dark contrast to the music. The video, which stars the three in a Sting-like gangster film, is worth a watch.

Demob Happy – Voodoo Science. I was unfamiliar with Demob Happy, who’ve been around for fifteen years, before hearing this track, but I love the guitar riffing here, which reminds me of Porcupine Tree’s heavier moments.

shame – The Fall of Paul. This London-based post-punk band’s Food for Worms dropped last month and the highs (“Fingers of Steel,” “Six-Pack”) are high but there’s too much filler where the band sound like they’re just fucking around, unfortunately.

slowthai – Feel Good. British rapper slowthai’s third album, UGLY, which supposedly stands for “U gotta love yourself,” drops on Friday. I find his music more interesting than appealing, as he’s crossing and mashing up a lot of genres but his technical skill as a rapper isn’t his strength. This is one of the better songs of his that I’ve heard.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2023 in music, alternative, hip hop, indie, Music

→ February 7, 2023
→ By keith

Music update, January 2023.

Sorry this is a bit late, but I’ve been writing a few thousand words a day for my regular job. January turned out to be a fertile month for new single and even album releases, more so than usual (I think), so I’ve got a little catching up to do. If you can’t see the widget below, you can access this month’s Spotify playlist here.

Young Fathers – Rice. Heavy Heavy just dropped on Friday, so I haven’t had a chance to dive into it yet, but the reviews are ebullient, and I’ve loved two of the three lead singles. I don’t even know how you can categorize their music, other than that it’s mad and often brilliant.

Belle and Sebastian – I Don’t Know What You See in Me. A Scottish bent to the playlist, at least at the start. Belle & Sebastian returned with their second album inside of a year with Late Developers, which is poppier than last year’s A Bit of Previous and more consistently upbeat. I also loved “So in the Moment” and nearly put that on the playlist instead.

Måneskin feat. Tom Morello – Gossip. I know Måneskin aren’t very admired by critics, but this track, with Morello on guitar, is an absolute banger and was stuck in my head for more than a week after I first heard it.

The Clockworks – Blood on the Mind. This Irish quartet signed with Alan McGee’s Creation Records, the label that signed Oasis back in the early 1990s, in 2019, releasing a bunch of singles and one EP since then but still no proper album. They’re often described in the British press as punk or post-punk but this tack isn’t as hard-edged as those genres, with the high energy of punk but a better groove in the bass and drums.

The Lottery Winners – Worry. These guys can’t miss, at least when it comes to crafting big pop hooks. Their second album, Anxiety Replacement Therapy, is due out on April 28^th.

The Rills – Falling Apart. ThisLincolnshire band just missed my top 100 from last year with “Landslide,” but I’m going to guess this one will end up on my top 100 for 2023, as it has an even better hook and is the kind of English indie-rock that, for whatever reason, just speaks to me.

The Empty Page – Dry Ice. This post-punk duo from Manchester released their first album, Unfolding, back in 2016, but their follow-up has been delayed several times since then and is due out sometime this year. “Dry Ice” is the first single from it, released in November, with the next single due out March 3rd.

Etta Marcus – Smile for the Camera. Marcus is a 21-year-old singer/songwriter from London who gets compared to Lana del Rey and who I think would appeal to fans of Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, except I’m not a fan of any of those three singers but I love this song from Marcus.

Arlo Parks – Weightless. Auto-include whenever Parks puts out a new single. There’s a slight shift here with an electronic element in the backing music here, the first single ahead of her sophomore album, My Soft Machine, due out May 26^th.

Bree Runway w/Stormzy – Pick Your Poison. This came from Runway’s five-track December EP WOAH WHAT A BLUR!, mostly written by Stormzy, and it’s a very sweet and soulful ballad about heartbreak, a big departure from her usual sound.

Obey Robots – Porcupine. This song showed up on my Spotify Release Radar because it’s tagged as a collaboration with Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, but it’s actually a new project from Ned’s guitarist Gareth “Rat” Pring along with singer Laura Kidd. There’s a definite Ned’s vibe to the guitar work here, though.

White Reaper – Pink Slip. Another January album release, Asking for a Ride is the fourth full-length from these Kentucky garage-punk-pop stalwarts, although it’s just 29:21 long so isn’t that almost an EP? Anyway, I don’t think they’ve ever released a single I didn’t like.

Screaming Females – Brass Bell. Apparently I should know this group already, as Wikipedia tells me Spin named their singer/guitarist Melissa Paternoster the 77^th greatest guitarist of all time back in 2012, which… seems aggressive? Anyway, not knowing them is on me, and this song has a great guitar hook and an earworm in the chorus.

shame – Six-Pack. shame’s third album, Food for Worms, comes out on February 24^th, with this track and last year’s “Fingers of Steel,” this one in a more experimental vein with a frenetic energy that carries it through some of the discord in the guitars.

The New Pornographers – Really Really Light. This song is … fine. Not peak NP, not Twin Cinema or even Brill Bruisers, but it’s a perfectly cromulent New Pornographers song.

Black Honey – Up Against It. A Fistful of Peaches, Black Honey’s third album, is due out on March 17^th, with this the fourth single ahead of its release (“Charlie Bronson,” “Out of My Mind,” “Heavy”), further indicating their shift to a darker sound than they started out with on the All My Pride EP and their self-titled debut album.

Rival Sons – Nobody Wants to Die. Have you seen that Chevy Silverado commercial with what sounds like a blatant Led Zeppelin ripoff for its music? I assumed it was Greta van Fleet, but it was actually a track from Rival Sons from about a decade ago. This is their newest track, and it’s in that same blues-rock vein but nowhere near as derivative.

Tribulation – Axis Mundi. Melodic death metal that’s actually just traditional heavy metal with death-metal vocals – this track, and really a lot of Tribulation’s music, derives far more from early British heavy metal and doom bands like Sabbath and Maiden than from death-metal forebears like Death or At the Gates.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2023 in music, indie, melodic death metal, Music

→ December 31, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 12/31/22.

I skipped last Saturday’s post, since it was Christmas Eve (iiin the drunk tank…), but since the last roundup I’ve written up the Daulton Varsho/Gabriel Moreno trade and the still in-limbo Carlos Correa signing with the Mets.

Over at Paste, I ranked the ten best new board games of 2022, and posted reviews of two of them – Kites, a real-time cooperative game; and Lacrimosa, a heavier game based on the life of Mozart. For those of you interested in my board game content, I’m going to do some small giveaways of promos and small expansions via my Instagram account starting this week, so feel free to follow me there if you’re interested.

I’ve got a bunch of non-work writing to do this weekend before I get back to prospect calls on Monday, with a new issue of my free email newsletter next up once this post is done.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: This is about two weeks old, but the New York Times had an extremely in-depth investigative report on the toll of Putin’s war on Ukraine.
This week in “anti-abortion laws are going to kill women,” a woman in Louisiana was having a miscarriage and two ERs turned her away because they were afraid of prosecution under the state’s draconian anti-abortion law.
Meanwhile, an Arizona anti-abortion law has allowed a man to sue the clinic that gave his ex-wife an abortion, claiming wrongful death.
I know there was A Discourse around this article, but you should read the actual piece about the so-called “nepo babies” that ran in Vulture, as it’s more nuanced and thoughtful than the title or cover might imply.
Also from the New York Times’ investigative unit, this December 19^th story started the flood of revelations about Representative-Elect George Santos’s fictional resume.
Rolling Stone talked to Dave Coutts, the singer of the 1990s band Talk Show, which was Stone Temple Pilots without singer Scott Weiland, about his experience in that one-album band and his post-music career.
The hoax about computerized voting machines that flipped votes from Trump to Biden comes from a longtime fraudster named Dennis Montgomery, who sold a bunch of his so-called evidence to Mike Lindell and also has a history of selling bogus information to the federal government.
Des Moines, Iowa, removed police “school resource officers” from schools and tried restorative practices instead. In These Times looks at some of the results from the first year, where arrests dropped by about 80% but police calls only increased from 9 to 13. Not really mentioned is that this system, in addition to improving outcomes and keeping more kids in school and out of prison, is how much less it costs taxpayers, too.
Slate’s Justin Peters wrote about the finale of the “great Internet grievance wars” and what the so-called Twitter files actually say, even as some loud right-wing accounts on the site are still complaining about “shadowbanning” as we speak.
Aaron Rupar wrote about his experiences getting suspended from Twitter by a petulant Elon Musk. This came as the billionaire claimed an Internet account was responsible for a stalker trying to find him, even though police found no link.
Two journalists for the Bend Bulletin were reporting on the impact of a severe cold snap on the city’s homeless, and decided to get involved to try to help one such woman despite the dictum that journalists shouldn’t become part of any story they cover.
Texas hired a man to train school board members, even though he’d been convicted twice of defrauding federal agencies. Of course, this training was supposed to be an alternative to so-called “woke” agendas. Grifters have realized how easy it is to target these people.
Vox has a list of seven reasons why the planet might not actually be doomed, based on the proceedings at this month’s COP15 summit in Montréal.
This New York Times story on a South Korean tour group that was stranded in Buffalo by the snow, only to find themselves taken in by a local couple who just happened to have a bunch of Korean ingredients in their kitchen, is both a rare bit of good news and a testament to the power of food to bring people together.
The anti-vaxxers and other COVID denialists who’ve sown distrust and ignorance around COVID vaccine have led to rises in chicken pox, measles, and other vaccine-preventable diseases as the dupes fooled by their misinformation are now skipping other critical vaccines.
The Atlantic points out that Republicans’ anti-vaccine policies have killed more Republicans than Democrats, although the article doesn’t try to pinpoint a death toll from this.
Meanwhile, Florida’s hyperpartisan Supreme Court has impaneled a grand jury to “investigate” COVID-19 vaccines. I assume they’ll find whatever Gov. DeSantis tells them to find.
DeSantis also reached out to Chaya Raichik, the hatemonger behind the anti-LGBTQ LibsOfTikTok account, after her identity became public, offering to hide her at his Governor’s Mansion even though she is a California resident. I don’t understand why Florida taxpayers are okay with this sort of use of their money, but it appears they are.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, environment, florida, frauds, iowa, lgbt rights, links, longreads, Music, police, russia, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines

→ December 22, 2022
→ By keith

Top 100 songs of 2022.

There was such a flood of new music in the last two months of 2022 that I struggled to keep up with it, even slipping a couple of new albums on my best of 2022 list that I’d only listened to in their entirety in the last couple of weeks. It’s a good outcome, though, as 2022 shaped up to be a better year for new music than I would have said it was coming out of the summer, and I had more songs to put on this list than I could fit (and no, I’m not going past 100, this is work enough for something that’s not my actual job). You can see my previous years’ song rankings here: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012.

If you can’t see the Spotify widget below, you can access it here.

100. beabadoobee – 10:36. Beatrice Kristi Laus’s second album, beatopia, refers to a fantasy world she created for herself when she moved with her family from the Philippines to London at age 7. It’s a clear step forward in her songwriting and gets her out of the lo-fi world of her first record. This was my second-favorite track on the album, although “Last Day on Earth,” her one-off single from 2021, isn’t on the LP at all.

99. Stella Donnelly – How Was Your Day? The Welsh-Australian singer-songwriter Donnelly released her second album, Flood, this spring to positive reviews. This track’s witty lyrics, revealing the hidden layers behind that innocuous phrase, and sunny indie-pop make it the album’s best.

98. Young Guv – Nowhere at All. Ben Cook of the Canadian band No Warning released his third album as Young Guv early this year and then followed it up with this one-off jangle-pop single that reminded me quite a bit of last year’s debut record from Chime School.

97. The Linda Lindas – Tonite. I’ve been a bit surprised that the Linda Linda’s debut album Growing Up didn’t appear on any year-end rankings or roundups of the year’s best music that I found, given the hype around the teenage punk band a year or two earlier – and given how good they sound for a bunch of kids. This is a great, vibrant young punk album, just angry enough about the right stuff. I admit it’s not breaking a ton of new ground, but tracks like this one are pretty infectious and point to a promising future.

96. Arlo Parks – Softly. The only music Parks released this year was this track, which brings some electronic music elements to her lovely vocals.

95. Bartees Strange – Wretched. Strange’s second album, Farm to Table, is his big coming-out as a songwriter, bringing him out from under the shadow of his influences (notably the National). This track was one of the album’s standouts, a slower, mournful song that offers thanks to the people who stood by him when he was at his worst.

94. Jungle – Good Times. One of two songs Jungle released this year ahead of an album that didn’t appear in 2022, although I imagine it won’t be that much longer now that their summer/fall tour is over.

93. SAULT – Money. SAULT released six albums this year, five of them at the start of November. One of those five was Today & Tomorrow, the band’s most rock-oriented record to date, even bringing in some punk influences. You can hear it here, where they channel the 1970s punk act Death.

92. The Cool Greenhouse – Get Unjaded. I know this style of very English art-rock music with talk-sung lyrics isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but where else would you find a couplet like “Googling questions like ‘Should I start microdosing?’/And ‘How come I’m standing outside Four Seasons Total Landscaping?’”

91. The Fashion Weak ft. Gruff Rhys – Welsh Words. I admit to some pro-Cymru bias here, but this song is both extremely catch and makes me laugh every time I hear it. Rhys is the lead singer of Super Furry Animals, who’ve recorded entire albums in Welsh, while the Fashion Weak are a new wave revival act whose second single, “Fly Fishing,” featured Miki Berenyi of Lush.

90. Superbloom – Falling Up. The first few seconds are sort of nonsense, the kind of thing the band will grow out of, but I like where the track goes afterwards as these over Nirvana fans expand beyond the well-crafted mimicry of their first album into something more original over the foundation of grunge revival.

89. Stars – Pretenders. Stars’ first album in nearly five years was typically lovely, if perhaps a bit unambitious, featuring plenty of back-and-forth vocals from the two lead singers. They bring an ethereal beauty even to upbeat rock tracks like this one, my favorite on the record.

88. All Them Witches – Hush, I’m on TV. According to Wikipedia, ATW released nine original singles in 2022 plus two covers, but no album. Anyway, I dig their heavy, stoner/blues rock sound, which settles in after the loud, layered riffing that opens this track before the buzzsaw hits in the chorus.

87. The Wombats – Everything I Love is Going to Die. The two best tracks from the Wombats’ 2022 album Fix Yourself, Not the World were both released in 2021, so even though the LP made my best-of-2022 list, this is the only song from the record on this year’s top 100.

86. Preoccupations – Ricochet. The best song from Preoccupations’ fourth album Arrangements is this track, which fuses their typical post-punk/early new wave sound with elements of early ‘90s shoegaze.

85. Porcupine Tree – Rats Return. “Harridan” was my favorite song on CLOSURE/CONTINUATION, but this is a close second, less ambitious but highlighted by the best guitar riff on the entire album, a dark, minor-key line that infuses the whole song with a sense of foreboding.

84. Cory Wong – Power Station. Wong released two albums in 2022, Wong’s Café in January and Power Station in April, with this, obviously from the latter album, sounding like something discovered in Prince’s archives from the early 1980s, just with a better guitar solo.

83. The Afghan Whigs – I’ll Make You See God. The Whigs have always been able to rock, but this track goes 0 to 90 in the opening seconds and never lets up – enough that it ended up in the video game Gran Turismo 7. The lyrics appear to be total nonsense, but man, this sucker rocks.

82. Gojira – Our Time is Now. Gojira put out the best metal song of the year – and it’s the only song they released all year, although I’m hopeful we’re getting a new Gojira album soon. It’s not my favorite Gojira song ever, but it might be their most accessible, if that’s possible.

81. Black Honey – Heavy. I didn’t love their previous single, “Charlie Bronson,” but “Heavy” is more the Black Honey I know and love, indie-rock with a strong melody crossed with a harder edge.

80. Crawlers – I Don’t Want It. Barely over two minutes long, this little earworm from the Liverpudlian quartet Crawlers is their best track to date and one of two strong singles from their second EP, Loud Without Noise, along with “Too Soon.”

79. Sports Team – The Drop. I could have put as many as five songs from Gulp! on this top 100, but ended up with two, adding this track because the main hook is so memorable, and it’s one of the more interesting tracks on the album because of the one right turn it takes at the bridge.

78. Killing Joke – Lord of Chaos. Jaz Coleman is 62, and with his age and seven years passing since Killing Joke’s last album, Pylon, I figured we were done getting new music from the band. Killing Joke defy labels as much as any artist I can think of – I suppose people who know Sparks’ music would say the same, but I don’t know their oeuvre as well – so it was sort of a pleasant surprise to hear this track and “Total” follow in the same heavy-rock vein as that last album, which gave us the incredible single “Euphoria.”

77. Band of Horses – Warning Signs. Band of Horses’ best songs can be pretty great, like “Is There a Ghost,” but I find their albums nearly always let me down, and this year’s Things Are Great was more of the same. This was my favorite track, although I think that’s probably because it reminds me of the way I want Band of Horses to sound all the time.

76. Melt Yourself Down – Balance. I admit to ignorance on Melt Yourself Down, and I need to explore their discography some more, as I liked what I heard from this year as they released their fourth album Pray for Me, I Don’t Fit In. Their music doesn’t just blend genres from around the world, but it does so in a frenetic fashion that holds my interest even when the song doesn’t have a great hook (“Nightsiren”). This was the best track from the album, with three great hooks in the vocals, the saxophone line, and the guitar riff around the 1:30 mark.

75. The Mysterines – Means to Bleed. The Mysterines released their debut album, Reeling, in March, but it didn’t include most of the great singles they’d released over the previous couple of years, like “I Win Every Time,” “Love’s Not Enough,” “Bet Your Pretty Face,” or “Gasoline.” The album has the right vibe, just without the highlights, although this and “Hung Up” are solid examples of their sound and their potential.

74. Jack White feat. Q-Tip – Hi-De-Ho. The Jack White/Q-Tip partnership that first appeared on record with A Tribe Called Quest’s swan song We Got It From Here … Thank You For Your Service continued this year with Q-Tip’s guest spot on this track from the first of White’s two albums released in 2022, Fear of the Dawn. The result here, based on an interpolation of Cab Calloway’s famous scatting phrase, is wonderfully weird and catchy, and by now you probably realize I give 5 bonus points to any track including Kamaal the Abstract.

73. Kid Kapichi – Rob the Supermarket. I can’t avoid thinking of this as some sort of late-stage capitalist response to the Clash’s anti-consumerist “Lost in the Supermarket,” while also marveling at how Kid Kapichi have taken the mantle that Alex Turner dropped somewhere in the late teens.

72. Freddie Gibbs feat. Moneybagg Yo. Gibbs is one of the best technical rappers going now, and pairs it with consistently interesting and often weird backing music; this track, the best from the regular edition of Gibbs’s $oul $old $eparately, shows off his rhyming speed and rhythm better than anything else on the record.

71. beabadoobee – Talk. The best track from beatopia has a little harder of an edge to the music and mixes her vocals up accordingly to pair with the walls of distortion in the chorus, along with the album’s best melody.

70. Talk Show – Cold House. Talk Show, unrelated to the Stone Temple Pilots offshoot from about twenty years ago, released two EPs this year; Touch the Ground had six songs, including last year’s “Underworld” and this track that encapsulates their blend of post-punk, new wave revival, and dark wave.

69. HAIM – Lost Track. I’ve never gotten the hype for HAIM, but man this song has a hell of a hook in the chorus, and it’s the perfect length for a song of this simplicity.

68. FKA twigs featuring Jorja Smith and Unknown T – darjeeling. I love FKA twigs and I love Jorja Smith, so I’m clearly in the target audience for this track from FKA twigs’ ~~album~~ mixtape, and indeed it’s Smith’s vocals that elevate the track.

67. Tei Shi – GRIP. Big year for songs/albums calling out the music industry’s more exploitative practices. Tei Shi pulled her 2021 album La Linda from streaming services after Downtown Records refused to pay her the remainder of her advance two years aft, er its release. “GRIP” is her diss track against that label and the industry as a whole.

66. Editors – Karma Climb. I was a little underwhelmed by EBM, Editors’ latest album and first with Blanck Mass (Benjamin Power) as a member, but the chorus on “Karma Climb” is extremely catchy and I think a good example of their early Interpol-esque dark indie sound.

65. Greentea Peng – Your Mind. Greentea Peng’s eclectic mix of styles can be very hit or miss, missing on “Stuck in the Middle” but hitting here on “Your Mind,” which incorporates traditional soul, jazz, and some rock guitar lines. Both appeared on her mixtape GREENZONE 108 this September. I wonder if it’s more than a coincidence that this song’s length is 4:20.

64. Sudan Archives – Home Maker. The opening track from Natural Brown Prom Queen, my #2 album of the year, fakes you out with a minute-long intro that almost sounds like someone pressed ‘record’ before anyone was ready, but it’s all a matter of building tension before Britt Parks starts up with her mixture of rap and vocals, and by the two-minute mark she’s shipped you back almost fifty years in time with her classic R&B sounds.

63. Sky Ferreira – Don’t Forget. I had forgotten, it turns out, as Ferreira released just one song between 2014 and 2022, 2019’s “Downhill Lullaby.” This track is supposed to herald the release of her long-awaited second album, Masochism, although it’s still unscheduled; if this is where her sound has evolved after the long layoff, into a darker version of synth-pop, I’m all for it.

62. Sprints – Literary Mind. Sprints released an EP earlier in 2022, Modern Job, featuring the title track and “Delia Smith,” while this single came later and might be their catchiest song to date, without losing any of their signature garage or punk elements.

61. Automatic – Skyscraper. Automatic released their second album, Excess, in June, and this third single from the record was actually the first of their songs I’d heard, a pulsing, dark synth-pop track powered by a prominent, wandering bass line.

60. Dry Cleaning – Don’t Press Me. I’m very sensitive to how a vocalist sings, and often it doesn’t even make that much sense to me. I don’t love the vocals from Dry Cleaning, even though that flat, almost toneless style of sing-talking doesn’t necessarily bother me from other singers, just as I can’t stand Porridge Radio’s whiny, cracking vocals. “Don’t Press Me” is a rare example where the vocals on a Dry Cleaning song aren’t enough to deter me from an outstanding Wire-ish track.

59. Hatchie – Quicksand. I was a little … not underwhelmed, but maybe just whelmed by Hatchie’s new album this year, as it seemed like the Aussie singer/songwriter might be stagnating; the best track was last year’s “This Enchanted,” followed by this song, both solid examples of her particular brand of dream pop.

58. CVC – Good Morning Vietnam. CVC have been gigging in Cardiff (that’s Wales) since before the pandemic but didn’t start releasing music until this year, when they dropped a couple of singles, including this odd mélange of psychedelic rock and ‘70s soft rock with a funk-adjacent bass line. “Docking My Pay” is also worth checking out if you like this track, as we wait for CVC to drop a full album.

57. Yard Act – Pour Another. Yard Act’s debut album The Overload dropped in January and its best songs had already appeared, including the superb title track and the peculiar “Payday,” leaving this as the best song from the band in 2022. I’ll forever compare them to Gang of Four, although here there’s a more joyous, almost silly vibe.

56. Crows – Garden of England. The standout track on Slowly Separate, bringing punk energy to their particular brand of hard-rock-verging-on-metal. I’d fly to London tomorrow for a Kid Kapichi/Crows double billing.

55. MUNA – What I Want. MUNA’s self-titled third album made a few best-of-2022 lists, although it didn’t quite make the cut for me. I do like their unabashedly poppy approach; I just feel like they’re often a little short in the hooks department. This was the best track on the record for me, and unsurprisingly I think the most acclaimed as well.

54. shame – Fingers of Steel. shame’s sophomore album Food for Worms is due out February 24^th, with this the lead single. I see them tabbed everywhere as “post-punk,” but I don’t think it fits; they’re an alternative rock act in the clearest sense of the word, working with dissonant sounds and unusual rhythms that will probably always keep them out of the mainstream. I’m also in awe of the fact that they named a song “Baldur’s Gate” after my all-time favorite CPRG series.

53. John-Allison Weiss – Different Now. Weiss’ first new music since coming out as non-binary & trans in 2017, and first for Get Better Records, was this aptly titled song that doubles as a bittersweet breakup track.

52. Death Cab for Cutie – Here to Forever. DCFC seem good for one real standout single on every album at this point, such as “Gold Rush” from 2018’s Thank You for Today and “Black Sun” from Kintsugi. That may not quite hit the highs of Codes and Keys or Transatlanticism, but I’d say this is pretty good for a band approaching the 25^th anniversary of its first album, and singing about mortality and surviving.

51. STONE – Waste. This Liverpool garage-punk band signed to Polydor earlier in the year and ended it with a banger of a six-song EP, highlighted by this abrasive track that starts angry and ends up furious.

50. Sam Fender – Alright. A tremendous non-album single from the Seventeen Going Under sessions, included in a live version on a bonus version of the 2021 LP released this summer. You’ll notice I don’t include many slower-tempo songs on these lists, especially ones that aren’t acoustic, so that should give you some sense of how much I like this.

49. Foals – Looking High. I thought Foals’ Life is Yours was just a big ol’ mess of danceable fun, but it didn’t receive the plaudits I expected, with a lot of criticism over the lyrics – which has never been a strength of Foals’ songwriter Yannis Philippakis. (“I see a mountain at my gates/I see it more and more each day.” Shades of Keats and Shelley there.) This or “Wake Me Up” vie for my favorite track on the album.

48. GIFT – Gumball Garden. A five-minute opus that starts out in shoegaze territory and then shifts almost to power-pop territory before turning back around on itself. Their album Momentary Presence has a lot of that combination, bigger melodies and faster tempos mixed with shimmering guitars and synths out of shoegaze.

47. Lizzo – About Damn Time. You may have heard this song. Special lists twenty-five different people as producers, and somehow, none of them was Nile Rodgers. This track is so chic Rodgers might as well have produced it and played guitar.

46. Kendrick Lamar feat. Sampha – Father Time. Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers is certainly ambitious, but it’s too long and inconsistent, which led me to leave it off my top albums of the year list. “N95” is solid, and “Auntie Diaries” has a truly incredible and necessary sentiment (although it contains a word best omitted, despite the message). This song was the real highlight for me, thanks to the chorus from Mercury Prize winner Sampha.

45. The Head and the Heart – Shut Up. Every Shade of Blue had its highs and lows for me, which is how I pretty much always feel about H&H’s albums, although I loved this song and “Virginia (Wind in the Night)” from their latest.

44. SAULT – Above the Sky. The best track from the best of the six albums SAULT released this year (Today & Tomorrow), incorporating rock elements into the sound they honed on their first four albums, including a guitar solo with distortion and reverb that evoke Hendrix. Also, it’s kind of nuts that SAULT has released eleven albums in three and a half years.

43. The Lathums – Say My Name. The Arctic Monkeys meet the Amazons? It’s anthemic, muscular rock, and I’m fine with that, even if it’s of a sort we’ve heard before.

42. Anxious – Call From You. It’s post-hardcore, emo, whatever, but with real harmonies, and that little guitar riff you hear in the intro is so unexpected from this subgenre that it has consistently brought me back to this song on a generally great album.

41. Just Mustard – Mirrors. So I’ve said many times I was never a My Bloody Valentine fan, even with their general critical acclaim and my own affinity for shoegaze, because I just hear waves of noise, not individual notes or chords. “I Only Said” is the exception, because there’s an actual melody to latch on to. If you made an even more accessible version of that song, you’d get “Mirrors.”

40. Danger Mouse & Black Thought feat. MF Doom – Belize. Of course, I had to include this track from Cheat Codes, as it’s probably the final recording to feature the late MF Doom (a.k.a Zev Love X), although it’s hard to single out any particular tracks on the generally excellent DM/BT collaboration.

39. Young Fathers – I Saw. The Mercury Prize winners will drop their fourth album, Heavy Heavy, early in 2023, and from the first three singles it looks like we’re in for even more musical experimentation. This was by far my favorite of the three, though, as there’s a hint of their rap origins and a rising sense of indignation as the song progresses.

38. Belle & Sebastian – Unnecessary Drama. I don’t know why people get upset when Belle & Sebastian rock out a little, or hit the dance floor, as long as their essential Belle-and-Sebastian-ness is intact. Stuart Murdoch’s wry, sardonic lyrics are still here, as are the band’s harmonies, so who’s to argue if they have a little more fun?

37. Gang of Youths – in the wake of your leave. I don’t think any album disappointed me more than angel in realtime., which had three incredible singles to tease it (“the angel of 8^th ave.” and “unison”) and nothing else of note. The rest of the record felt self-indulgent, even pretentious, and worst of all devoid of energy. But those three tracks … I’m not sure anyone has evoked early U2 so effortlessly.

36. Khruangbin feat. Leon Bridges – B-side. The collaboration that began two years ago with Texas Sun continued this year with Texas Moon, highlighted by this danceable, soulful, and of course jazz-inflected single.

35. The Beths – Expert in a Dying Field. The title track from my #1 album of 2022 is just a perfect Beths song, shiny and bright and poppy and just a little dark around the edges.

34. Sunflower Bean – I Don’t Have Control Sometimes. Sunflower Bean had a moment this year, pun intended, with “Moment in the Sun” appearing in the final episode of Netflix’s Heartstopper, and their latest album Headful of Sugar had a number of similarly melodic lo-fi gems, including this one, which hits you with the melody right out of the chute.

33. The Smile – Thin Thing. The more I listened to the Smile’s debut album, the less I liked it, finding it experimental in some ways but often exactly what you’d expect if you smushed Jonny Greenwood’s soundtrack work with Thom Yorke’s vocals and the drummer from jazz group Sons of Kemet. It turns out it’s not that interesting. This track has the most to offer, starting with that odd syncopated guitar line that opens the song and moves on through it.

32. Blossoms – The Sulking Poet. Good luck getting this chorus out of your head. It’s a bit of Lord Huron, a bit of Head and the Heart, a bit of the Kooks, and oddly American-sounding for a band from Stockport, England.

31. Everything Everything – Bad Friday. If you liked Everything Everything’s early work, like “Cough Cough,” “Kemosabe,” “MY KZ UR BF,” and so on, this would likely be your favorite song from their newest album Raw Data Feel. It’s their most frenetic, most freewheeling track on the record, and we get more of the falsetto vocals that show up on just about all of their best songs.

30. Megan Thee Stallion – Her. I think Megan Thee Stallion is in the uppermost echelon of rappers today when it comes to speed, flow, and verbal dexterity, but I don’t think she picks music that does enough to accentuate her skills – or at least to work with them to make better songs. Only this and “Plan B” really stood out to me from Traumazine as songs that worked on all levels, from rhyme to music.

29. Rina Sawayama – This Hell. Sawayama’s second album, Hold the Girl, sees the singer/songwriter leaning far more into her pop sensibilities, which means it lacks the edge or ambition of her debut record, but also has a few more mainstream-ready tracks like this one. It’s her most overtly pop song yet, opening with a trite callback to Shania Twain and passing through a number of popular catchphrases and allusions, but highlights her idiosyncratic blend of styles and ability to craft a memorable hook.

28. Kae Tempest and Grian Chatten – I Saw Light. A spoken-word track over a hypnotic, minimalist synth line that sees the English poet/rapper Tempest sharing the vocals with Fontaines D.C. singer Chatten. Tempest’s lyrics are superb – a song like this can’t succeed without that – and the sparse music behind them creates a forbidding mood without getting in the way of the two speakers.

27. Griff & Sigrid – Head on Fire. Griff is a rising superstar, taking home a couple of Brit Award nominations last year shortly after she turned 21 (including Best New Artist, which she lost to Little Simz … who won for her fourth album), while Sigrid is already a star in Europe, so it was a little disappointing to see this track, with its catchy-as-hell chorus, fare poorly on the charts even in their home countries.

26. White Lies – Trouble in America. A bonus track on the deluxe edition of As I Try Not to Fall Apart that should have made the record proper given how potent this chorus is. It’s one of my favorite tracks ever from White Lies, six albums in, with some tremendous bass work from Charles Cave.

25. Phoenix feat. Ezra Koenig – Tonight. The best track on Phoenix’s fun, straightforward new album Alpha Zulu, which had a few other standouts, including “All Eyes on Me.” This one features Vampire Weekend lead singer/founder Koenig, but I like it anyway.

24. Christine and the Queens – Je te vois enfin. The best track from Redcar les adorables étoiles (prologue) recalls the dark pop sounds from his 2020 EP La Vita Nuova and even parts of his 2018 album Chris.

23. Soccer Mommy – Shotgun. My favorite track from Soccer Mommy’s acclaimed album Sometimes, Forever has some of her strongest vocals – I find her voice can be droning, but here it’s well paired with the music and comes off as more ethereal and dreamy than whiny.

22. Little Simz – Angel. Simz won the Mercury Prize in October for Sometimes I Might Be, my #1 album of 2021, and then released NO THANK YOU, a simpler album that excoriates the music industry,twomonths later. This opener is a six-minute polemic against the exploitation Simz faced over the last year-plus since her magnum opus was first released, although I found in general NO THANK YOU doesn’t have the same degree of musical ambition as the preceding LP.

21. Mandrake Handshake – Emonzaemon. This Oxford-based psychedelic rock band released their second EP, The Triple Point of Water, last month, with three songs that run a total of nearly 20 minutes. I could see them being big on the jam-band circuit with this sound and those running times, but that’s not to dismiss the great guitar lick that opens this track and carries it all the way through until the heavier guitars kick in for the last thirty seconds.

20. Lizzo – 2 Be Loved (Am I Ready). The best track on Special is the one that calls back to Prince both in title and in sound, which couldn’t have been more tailor-made for me.

19. Momma – Speeding 72. There’s a big Veruca Salt vibe to the vocals on this track, but mixed with fuzzier garage-rock production and some heavier bass work from a band that likes to employ the drop-D tuning more associated with metal acts.

18. The Reytons – Avalanche. Sometimes I just want a big, crunchy rock song that announces its presence with authority in the opening seconds and never lets up on the gas pedal until it’s done. So I give you “Avalanche.”

17. Sharon van Etten – Mistakes. As with Soccer Mommy, van Etten’s vocal style often grates on me – she sounds stoned or just disinterested on so many of her songs – even when I like her music. Here she belts it out on the earworm chorus, maybe the best hook she’s ever crafted.

16. Kid Kapichi feat. Bob Vylan – New England. Vylan is the perfect collaborator for Kid Kapichi’s style of bitter, sarcastic attacks on modern British society between the duo’s track “GDP” last year and Kapichi’s … well, their entire catalog to date. “You’re such a fool, Britannia” probably wouldn’t get anyone many votes but it’s certainly sums up the Brexiteers.

15. Wet Leg – Angelica. I know “Chaise Longue” and “Ur Mum” have earned more plaudits, and the former was a legitimate commercial breakout track, but this is their best song by a mile – it’s got a better hook, the sonic interplay between the two vocalists works far better here than on other tracks, and this time the lyrics are actually funny.

14. Spiritualized – The Mainline Song. Everything Was Beautiful, the space-rock pioneers’ first new album in four years and only their second in a decade, came out in April, highlighted by this gorgeous, textured, melancholy song, the only flaw in which is that it could use some additional lyrics.

13. Let’s Eat Grandma – Levitation. I understand this band’s name (think “eats, shoots and leaves”) but it still kind of bugs me. They can write a pretty great synth-pop song, though.

12. Lucius – Next to Normal. One of the year’s best bass lines came on this funky track from Second Nature, Lucius’ first album of new material since 2016.

11. Metronomy – Good to Be Back. What a weirdly happy, bouncy song – it feels like someone slipped it into the TARDIS in the early 1980s, from the new wave-y sound to the sparse production, but that main synth line is so catchy it would fit in any era. The song is so good that Panic Shack’s punk cover of it works just as well.

10. FKA twigs feat. rema – jealousy. The best track from CAPRISONGS includes the Nigerian “Afrorave” singer Rema and has a swirling, Afrobeat-like backdrop to the vocals that feels immersive even with a too-short running time below three minutes.

9. Riverby – Chapel. Riverby is a punk act from Philly, but this song from their latest album Absolution is an absolutely gorgeous ballad that showcases lead singer/guitarist August Greenberg’s beautiful voice. I’d take a whole album made out of this, thanks.

8. Blossoms – Ode to NYC. The most Lord Huron-ish track on Ribbon Around the World also feels like the replacement for Ryan Adams’ “New York, New York.” As someone who grew up in the suburbs of the Big Apple, I was never not in love with New York City, but I’m also always happy to sing along with praises of my favorite place in the U.S.

7. Mattiel – Lighthouse. There are two great hooks in this track, both driven by the powerful voice of lead singer Mattiel Brown, from her new album Georgia Gothic. It reminds me a ton of Swing Out Sister’s breakout hit … uh, “Breakout,” from 1986, which I mean as a high compliment.

6. Jamie T – The Old Style Raiders. In a year when the Arctic Monkeys gave up on rock, we didn’t lack for artists stepping in to fill the void they’ve left behind, from the Lathums to the Reytons to Kid Kapichi, along with this track from British star Jamie T, whose 2022 album The Theory of Whatever hit #1 in the UK.

5. Sports Team – Dig! I loved Sports Team’s new album Gulp! and this is the song I keep coming back to. If I were a big-league reliever, I’d warm up to this track, which brings huge energy with the initial bass line and that three-chord riff, like someone put a cinder block on the gas pedal.

4. Sudan Archives – NBPQ (Topless). The best track from my #2 album of the year refers to that LP’s title, Natural Brown Prom Queen, and wanders through what feels like three different genres while always coming back to the tagline from the chorus, “I’m not average.” She’s anything but.

3. The Beths – When You Know You Know. If anyone ever asked me why I like the Beths so much, I’d just play this song, which has everything that makes them great: a big hook in the chorus, sunny vocals with a great harmony, witty lyrics, and jangly guitars. Almost all of Expert in a Dying Field is like this, but here everything comes together perfectly for the best song the Beths have ever recorded.

2. Spoon – Wild. Man, Lucifer on the Sofa did not live up to this single at all, but for three minutes it felt like we had peak Spoon again. That simple, sparing guitar line in the verse feels like a rubber band about to snap, and the song never quite lets out that tension. I liked the previous single, “The Hardest Cut,” as well, but the rest of the record was just filler after these two songs.

1. Bartees Strange – Heavy Heart. What’s the opposite of the sophomore slump? Strange’s debut album was solid, and promising, but also limited, and it seemed like he might just be another indie-rock singer/songwriter who had a distinct voice but whose music sounded like too much else from indie/college radio of the last decade or so – notably his primary influence, the National. Instead of continuing in that vein, we got Farm to Table, a wide-ranging, genre-skipping, guitar-driven record with sensitive, introspective lyrics, led by this song, which feels like two for the price of one, punctuated by that giant guitar break just after the two minute mark that I would bet brings the house down when he plays it live. I had Strange in the wrong category after the first record, figuring I’d respect his music more than I liked it. His growth as a musician and lyricist is one of the great stories of music in 2022.

Feel free to throw any of your favorites – songs, albums, EPs, mixtapes – in the comments!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2022 in music, alternative, hip-hop, indie, Music, rankings

→ December 21, 2022
→ By keith

Top 22 albums of 2022.

I don’t think 2022 was as strong for albums as 2021 was, where I could have run 30 deep on the rankings, but I had enough that I could keep up this gimmick of ranking a number of LPs equal to the last two digits of the year, and even made a few cuts in the final go. I know streaming has sort of killed the album in a sense, and I’m partly to blame as someone who generally prefers listening to specific songs over full records, but I also appreciate the artist’s vision for an album and am happy to support that in a tiny way here, even if it’s just “I like this collection of songs.” Honorable mentions include Everything Everything’s Raw Data Feel, Foals’ Life is Yours, and the Mysterines’ Reeling (which would have made the cut if they’d included more of their early singles), MUNA’s MUNA, Little Simz’s NO THANK YOU (released just five days ago, and very good, but I need to listen to it more), and beabadoobee’s beatopia.

You can see my previous year-end album rankings here: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and my top albums of the 2010s. My top 100 songs of 2022 will go up in the next day or two.

22. Elder – Innate Passage. A very last-minute addition to the list, as Ian Miller of Kowloon Walled City recommended this LP to me over the weekend, and, since he knows my tastes pretty well, it hit its mark. Elder is a progressive metal band with heavy stoner/doom elements to their music, and this album, their sixth, is their first with vocalist/guitarist Nick DiSalvo as the only remaining founding member. It’s just five tracks and runs 53 minutes, with a solid mix of proggy metal riffing, tempo and tone changes, and even some harmonies in the vocals.

21. Sunflower Bean – Headful of Sugar. I feel like Sunflower Bean are a post-hype prospect at this point; the music press seem to have moved on, or decided the band isn’t going to hit its ceiling, rather than appreciating them for what they are and for the potential they still have. Their brand of sunny jangle-pop with a little bit of garage to it might be a little familiar, but they offer a perfect slice of it on this album. Highlights include “Baby Don’t Cry,” “Who Put You Up to This?,” “I Don’t Have Control Sometimes,” and the bonus track “Moment in the Sun,” a one-off single they added to the album after it was used in Heartstopper.

20. Porcupine Tree – CLOSURE/CONTINUATION. Porcupine Tree returned after a 12-year hiatus as if they’d never left, still proggy after all these years, but without becoming overindulgent as the genre often sees. Founder Steven Wilson has produced three Opeth albums in the interim, and Porcupine Tree previously toured with the prog-metal giants, so it’s hard not to hear the latter’s influence here in some of the strongest guitar riffing. Highlights include “Harridan,” “Chimera’s Wreck,” and “Rats Return.”

19. Danger Mouse and Black Thought – Cheat Codes. Hard to believe, but this was Danger Mouse’s first hip-hop album in 17 years, since the last Danger Doom collaboration with the late MF Doom, whose vocals appear on the track “Belize.” This is peak Black Thought, with solid contributions from Danger Mouse, although the producer gets first billing here. Highlights include “Belize,” of course, as well as “The Darkest Part” and “Aquamarine.”

18. The Wombats – Fix Yourself, Not the World. A return to form for the Wombats after the uneven Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life, the band’s fifth album veers more into an overt pop direction than their best LP to date, Glitterbug, but doesn’t skimp on the witty lyrics or shifts in tone and tempo. The EP they released in November of tracks that didn’t make the album, Is This What It Feels Like to Feel Like This?, has six more songs in a similar vein, several of which probably should have made the cut. Highlights from the LP include “If You Ever Leave, I’m Coming With You,” “Everything I Love Is Going to Die,” and “Method to the Madness,” the last one of the most ornate songs the group has ever released.

17. Belle & Sebastian – A Bit of Previous. The Scottish indie stalwarts’ first new album in seven years, although they’ve released three EPs in the interim, A Bit of Previous doesn’t abandon the sunnier pop melodies and sounds of their last record, the effusive Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, although it’s a bit darker in tone and lyrics. Highlights include “Young and Stupid,” “Talk to Me Talk to Me,” and “Unnecessary Drama.”

16. Lizzo – Special. No record surprised me more than Lizzo’s Special, since I was certainly familiar with her work and her impressive voice, but never connected with her music at all. On her fourth album, Lizzo produced an ebullient record full of musical callbacks to pop, disco, and funk from the 1970s and 1980s, along with more than a little nod to Prince here and there. I guess we’ll always have to wonder what that never-made Lizzo EP that Prince was slated to produce would sound like, but I’d like to think we got some of that sound on Special. Highlights include “2 Be Loved (Am I Ready),” the #1 single “About Damn Time,” “The Sign,” and “Everybody’s Gay.”

15. Anxious – Little Green House. The debut full-length from this Connecticut quintet, which draws on emo and punk with a real dose of pop hooks and harmonies, was one of the best straight-out rock records of the year, and would have fit in quite well on a best-of list from 20 years ago at the height of emo and the absurdly titled “screamo” subgenre. There is a decent bit of screaming here, some of which I could have done without, as there’s plenty of dissonance coming from the guitarwork. The album is a raucous joy straight on through until the shocking closer “You When You’re Gone,” a slow song (!) with vocals from Stella Branstool of Hello Mary. Highlights include that track, “In April,” “Call from You,” and “Afternoon.”

14. Freddie Gibbs – $oul $old $eparately. Gibbs might be the best technical rapper going now, and he is certainly the most interesting, doing far more with the music over which he rhymes than anyone else I can think of. He has a host of guests on this sprawling, hour-long record, including Anderson .Paak, Raekwon, Pusha T, Musiq Soulchild, and Scarface. Highlights include “Too Much,” “Feel No Pain,” and “Dark Hearted,” as well as “Big Boss Rabbit” from the bonus edition.

13. Bartees Strange – Farm to Table. Strange’s sophomore album finds him leaning even more into his trad-rock side, and away from the comparisons to one of his inspirations, The National. The glimpses we had of the real Bartees on his debut are the dominant theme here, with great hooks and wistful lyrics about small things like the meaning of life and the prevalence of death. Highlights include “Heavy Heart,” “Wretched,” and “Black Gold.”

12. White Lies – As I Try Not to Fall Apart. Wikipedia calls White Lies a “post-punk revival” band, but this is new wave, and I will not stand for any erasure of that genre. (Get it? Erasure? Never mind.) Their sixth album feels like a culmination, as if they’ve truly identified their sound and have been working towards this for several records now, with previous albums having similar highlights (“There Goes Our Love Again” from Big TV, “Tokyo” from Five) but lacking this one’s depth and consistent quality. The contrast of melancholic lyrics and darkly joyous music is the strongest callback to 1980s new wave, and it’s practically pandering to an audience of me. The bonus edition includes four more tracks, including the outstanding “Trouble in America.” Highlights include the title track, “Am I Really Going to Die,” “I Don’t Want to Go to Mars,” and “Step Outside.”

11. Crows – Beware Believers. I was surprised how little press this sophomore album from Crows received, given the positive reception for their 2019 debut record Silver Tongues. Crows get billed as a punk band, but that sells them short – they’re a hard rock band in the old style, writing heavy, grinding tracks with distorted guitars, big riffs, and no pretense. Highlights include the title track, “Garden of England,” “Healing,” and “Closer Still.”

10. Christine and the Queens – Redcar les adorables étoiles (prologue). Redcar is Christine & the Queens’ latest nom de plume, after he used Chris on his last album and briefly used the name Rahim last year. It’s a breakup album, at least off the lyrics, but the music is anything but depressing. He backs up these tracks about a lost love (or loves?) with soulful music that draws on pop, soul, even elements of jazz. Highlights include “rien dire,” “Ma bien aimée bye bye,” and “Je te vois enfin.”

9. Just Mustard – Heart Under. This Irish shoegaze band showed promise on their 2018 debut album Wednesday, but this album carves out its own post-shoegaze sound, with the same droning guitars but without the inscrutable walls of sound that made My Bloody Valentine critical darlings whose music I couldn’t abide. Highlights here include “Still,” “23,” “Mirrors,” and “I Am You.”

8. Sports Team – Gulp! Coming in at a scant 33:41, this barely full-length record from Sports Team, the band’s second, is ten tracks of raucous, fun, art-punk-inspired rock-and-roll. It gets off to a strong start with “The Game” and never lets up, with hooks and big energy all the way through. Highlights include “Dig!,” “The Drop,” “The Game,” and “R Entertainment.”

7. White Lung – Premonition. The newest album on the list, released just two weeks ago, is also the swan song for this Vancouver punk-metal band, as lead singer Mish Barber-Way decided to call it quits after having her second kid last year. (She’s also apparently still executive editor of Penthouse.) Premonition has apparently been in the works since 2019, but baby #1 and the pandemic pushed the record back, so while they’re going out with a bang, it appears this is the end for this underappreciated act. Highlights include “Tomorrow,” “Date Night,” and “Bird.”

6. Kid Kapichi – Here’s What You Could Have Won. In a year when the Arctic Monkeys confirmed for us all that they’re no longer a rock band – and some critics seemed unwilling to point out that Alex Turner has no clothes – Kid Kapichi are here to take up the mantle of guitar-driven rock with intelligent, sardonic lyrics, here taking aim at the popular targets of those disaffected with late-stage capitalist Britain. Kid Kapichi start off making it very clear where they stand on the snarling opener “New England” – which is not about the changing of the leaves in Vermont – featuring Bob Vylan, and the rage never really slows from there, not even for the acoustic “Party at No. 10.” Highlights include “New England,” “Rob the Supermarket,” “Super Soaker,” and “Cops and Robbers.”

5. SAULT – Today & Tomorrow. SAULT released six albums in 2022, five of them on one day in November. Each of the five explored a different genre or style, with Today & Tomorrow, my favorite of the set, finding the secretive London-based group delving into rock and punk sounds for the first time. Highlights include “The Plan,” “Lion,” “Money,” and “Above the Sky.” If you’re curious about the others, I’d rank the five albums Today & Tomorrow, Earth, 11, Aiir, and God, in order from best to worst.

4. FKA Twigs – CAPRISONGS. She calls this a mixtape, but it’s 17 songs and 48 minutes long. It’s an album. It’s uneven, both in quality and theme, less cohesive than her album Magdalene, but the highs are very high here, and FKA Twigs (Tahliah Barnett) experiments more with tones and styles than on her formal LP. Highlights include “honda,” “darjeeling,” and “jealousy.”

3. Yard Act – The Overload. Thedebutrecord from these likely lads from Leeds might as well be a spiritual sequel to the earliest work of Gang of Four or maybe a lost album from The Fall, but updated with occasional flourishes of hip-hop (which, I concede, don’t always work) and a more modern take on the working class progressivism of their forebears. Highlights include the title track, “Payday,” “Pour Another,” and “The Incident.”

2. Sudan Archives – Natural Brown Prom Queen. Sudan Archives is violinist/singer Brittney Denise Parks, who released her second LP this year to massive and well-deserved acclaim. It’s a genre-bending, world-spanning record that features abrupt tonal shifts within and between songs, lyrics that are by turns smart and frivolous, and a whole bunch of songs that just plain groove. Highlights include “NBPQ (Topless),” “Yellow Brick Road,” the sinister-sounding “Homemaker,” and “Freakalizer.”

1. The Beths – Expert in a Dying Field. This is the album I’ve been waiting for the Beths to make since I first heard “You Wouldn’t Like Me” back in 2018. Expert in a Dying Field is a perfect exemplar of this New Zealand band’s sunny take on power-pop, with perfect harmonies and an endless supply of melodies. They call back to ‘80s power-pop standouts like Jellyfish and Apples in Stereo while adding their own stamp, not least from lead singer/guitarist Elizabeth Stokes’ delightful accent. There’s enough diversity in the tracks here to make it worth listening all the way through, but it’s also the best collection of singles I heard in 2022. Highlights include the title track, “When You Know You Know,” “Knees Deep,” and “Silence is Golden.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2022 in music, alternative, hip-hop, indie, metal, Music, progressive metal, rankings

→ December 2, 2022
→ By keith

Music update, November 2022.

A shorter playlist this month, although that doesn’t quite reflect the month in music, since a number of artists on this list released new albums in November. The next music posts from me will be my year-end albums and songs rankings, which I’ll probably run the week of December 19^th. As always, if you can’t see the widget below you can access the playlist here.

SAULT – God in Disguise. SAULT released five new albums on November 1^st, offering them as a free download for five days through their site, but they’re also now all on streaming platforms. I haven’t even gotten through two of them, but there’s far more of the soul, funk, and R&B influences that were all over their first four albums and absent from this spring’s Air.

Metronomy – It’s Good to Be Back. So this song came out earlier in the year, and I missed it, only hearing it because the cover of the song done by the punk band Panic Shack showed up on my Spotify Release Radar. The cover borrows the basic chord pattern and vocals, but it’s nothing like this shimmering, sunny pop track. When Metronomy stays on the right side of the line, they put out some great pop melodies.

White Reaper – Pages. Just about anything new from White Reaper is an auto-include for me. These Kentucky garage-pop stalwarts will release their fourth album, Asking for a Ride, on January 27^th, but it sounds like their core sound hasn’t changed one bit.

Black Honey – Heavy. The third single ahead of their upcoming third album, A Fistful of Peaches, due out in March, this is less abrasive and more melodic than “Charlie Bronson” but still harder-edged than most of their first two albums.

Jamie xx – KILL DEM. Still no official word on a follow-up to 2016’s In Colour, which included two of the best songs of the decade in “Loud Places” and “SeeSaw,” although this is Jamie xx’s second new single of 2022. It’s more EDM than either of those tracks from In Colour, both of which slowed the tempo down for more melody and vocal elements.

Phoenix – All Eyes on Me. Also on my to-do list is Phoenix’s new album, Alpha Zulu, which came out in early November, although every song I’ve heard has brought their Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix heyday of effusive indie-pop to mind, and it feels like a step forward after 2017’s Ti Amo.

Crawlers – Too Soon. Another heavy, grimy track from this Liverpool quartet, who just released their first EP, Loud Without Noise, at the start of November, featuring this track and “I Don’t Want It.”

The Wombats – Good Idea at the Time. Yet another solid track from the leftovers EP Is This What It Feels Like to Feel Like This?, which has songs that didn’t make the cut for February’s Fix Yourself, Not the World.

shame – Fingers of Steel. A post-punk band from south London, shame (stylized in all-lowercase) will release their third album, Food for Worms, in February. The track has clear roots in early post-punk but with more elements of post-hardcore music like that of Quicksand or Thrice.

Weird Nightmare – So Far Gone. The debut album from METZ guitarist Alex Elkins, also called Weird Nightmare, dropped back in June, and he’s already back with another new track, which continues in the same vein of garage-pop that’s more melodic than METZ’s stuff.

Panic Shack – Meal Deal. Remember when I mentioned Panic Shack up top? Here’s their latest single, a raw, wryly comic punk song with some de rigueur commentary on consumerism.

STONE – Money (Hope Ain’t Gone). I exclude EPs from my year-end album lists now, but I will say STONE’s debut EP punkadonk is one of my favorite records of the year. It’s just five tracks, but this one and “Waste” are both excellent, and the Liverpudlians show some range here beyond just pure punk.

Venomous Concept – Voices. I’m not usually into super hardcore punk, but this song is on the accessible side of that genre, and the band is interesting, as it was founded in 2004 by former members of Brutal Truth and Napalm Death and once included Buzz Osborne of the Melvins.

Wheel – Impervious. This Finnish prog-rock act released a three-song EP in November called Rumination, although there’s no word yet on a new album.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2022 in music, alternative, indie, Music, post-punk, progressive metal

→ November 2, 2022
→ By keith

Music update, October 2022.

October was a big month for new releases, but the one I was probably most excited to hear, Arctic Monkeys’ The Car, was a huge, boring disappointment. I wasn’t that enamored of the new albums from Dry Cleaning or Alvvays, to say nothing of larger acts like Taylor Swift or Tegan & Sara. But for lesser-known acts it was a great month, including a bunch of artists I heard for the first time. As always, if you can’t see the widget below, you can access the playlist here.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6K4bRVCxkcTXo4TrMkqT2q?si=72309fd0f0b54e64

Anxious – Where You Been. This Connecticut punk quintet just dropped their first full-length, Little Green House, and it’s one of the year’s best records, including the 2022 single “In April” (#76 on my top songs of 2021 ranking), “Sunsign,” “Call from You,” and “Let Me.” It’s hard-edged but with a strong melodic sense, too heavy to be punk-pop but too rough-and-ready to be post-punk.

The Lathums – Say My Name. Anthemic indie rock from Wigan, reminiscent of the Amazons but maybe a bit less slick? Their debut album came out last September, but this is the first track from them I’ve heard, from their upcoming LP From Nothing to a Little Bit More, due out February 24^th.

The Reytons – Avalanche. That opening riff … it’s Royal Blood, Turbowolf, the Amazons, Death from Above 1979. I can see why this south Yorkshire band are rising stars in the UK. As with the Lathums, they’re new to me, but had an album out last year called The Kids Off the Estate; this is from their upcoming album What’s Rock and Roll?

The Rills – Landslide. Merseyside lads who nod to the Arctic Monkeys and the Libertines as their primary influences. The B-Side, “Spit Me Out,” is almost as good, and maybe the title is a nod to the refrain of the Monkeys’ “Fake Tales of San Francisco?”

Crawlers – I Don’t Want It. This Liverpool band reminds me quite a bit of their neighbors The Mysterines, both led by women singers with powerful voices and crunchy guitar rock behind the vocals.

Black Honey – Out of My Mind. I’ve been on Black Honey’s wavelength since day one, with “Hello Today,” and this track reminds me of a few of their earliest tracks, with a crisper melody and less of the harder edges (which also work) from their second album or this year’s “Charlie Bronson.”

CVC – Good Morning Vietnam. That opening melody line sounds familiar to me, like it might be almost borrowed from something else, but I’m still in on this new Welsh band’s updated psychedelic rock sound.

Inhaler – Love Will Get You There. I feel like Inhaler has produced enough good new music that we can stop talking about who anyone’s father is, although if you listen to any of their tracks you’ll probably realize how much the lead singer sounds like his dad. I love how their sound feels like an evolution of you-know-who without sounding derivative; here it sounds like they’ve been listening to a bit of Lord Huron, incorporating that kind of folk-rock shuffle into their normal style.

Autre ne Veut – Okay. Arthur Ashin’s first new music in seven years, “Okay” is a lovely track that somehow manages to sound lush without coming off as overwritten or overproduced. Critics tend to describe their music as some form of R&B, but I think that sells it a bit short, with jazzier elements and more electronic work in the backdrop.

Cumulus – Teenage Plans. “Can you please slow it down?/It’s too much change to take.” There are so damn many songs about being a teenager and trying to slow down time to appreciate the moment – or being older and wishing you’d thought more like that when you were that age – that it’s rare for something else to break through the monotony, but this new track from Alexandra Lockhart does so, notably with the melody in the chorus.

John-Allison Weiss – Feels Like Hell. I think I liked Weiss’ previous single, “Different Now,” better, but this is also some great indie-pop ahead his 2023 album The Long Way.

The Wombats – I Think My Mind Has Made Its Mind Up. The second track from the Wombats’ forthcoming EP Is This What It Feels Like to Feel Like This?, which will be their second release this year after the full-length LP Fix Yourself, Not the World, which all puts them on track to put out the most good new music of any band this year.

Sports Team – Fingers (Taken Off). Gulp! is one of my favorite albums of the year so far, the second full-length album from this London band who just sound so very English between the vocals and the offbeat lyrics.

The Cool Greenhouse – Get Unjaded. Singer/lyricist Tom Greenhouse has a way with words and packs them into this tight post-punk track, talk-singing his way through a track that slithers like a tritone in search of its resolution.

The Go! Team – Divebomb. The Go! Team have been around for 22 years, so I’m rather remiss in that this was the first song of theirs I’ve heard. Their mix of samples and various pop styles reminds me a bit of the Space Monkeys’ “Sugar Cane” and the more contemporary Bad Sounds.

Young Fathers – I Saw. Heavy Heavy is due out on February 3^rd, with this the second very promising single from the Mercury Prize-winning trio, who’ve moved away from their original alternative-rap style to a more experimental lo-fi electronic sound instead.

Archers of Loaf – Screaming Undercover. Reason in Decline is the first new album in 24 years from this Chapel Hill band, who had a brief run of critical success and built a cult following in the mid-90s with their hard-edged indie rock sound.

Crystal Axis – Black AF. This is the third single from Crystal Axis, a Nairobi Afro-punk band whose lyrics are a mix of Swahili and English. I found them via this BBC profile.

Pinkshift – nothing (in my head). One of two tracks from this Baltimore trio’s new EP i’m not crying you’re crying. If you wondered what Paramore would sound like if they didn’t suck, this is a pretty good approximation. The title track from the EP is solid too.

Quicksand – Felíz. Another remnant from the Distant Populations sessions, but man, if this is what you leave on the cutting room floor, you are doing something very right. This thing rocks with this giant muscular riff that frames the sludgy chorus, where they sound most like the post-hardcore icons they are. They’re on tour right now with Clutch and Helmet, in case you wanted to wonder what year it was.

Blessed – Anything. This Canadian art-rock band announced their second full-length album, Circuitous, and released this lead single, which has a very doom- or sludge-metal feel without the big crunch.

Gojira – Our Time Is Now. I’ve been listening to less metal overall this year, but I will stop traffic for a new Gojira song, and this track has a glorious opening followed by some intense riffing in the verse before the bottom-heavy chorus.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2022 in music, alternative, hard rock, Music, post-punk, progressive metal

→ October 22, 2022
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 10/22/22.

My second and much longer notebook on guys I saw in the Arizona Fall League went up this week for subscribers to the Athletic. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

My guest on The Keith Law Show this week was Craig Calcaterra, writer of the excellent Cup of Coffee newsletter and author of the book Rethinking Fandom: How to Beat the Sports-Industrial Complex at Its Own Game. You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can sign up for my free email newsletter and maybe I’ll send another edition out this week. Also, you can buy either of my books, Smart Baseball or The Inside Game, via bookshop.org at those links, or at your friendly local independent bookstore. I hear they make great holiday gifts.

My friend and former colleague at ESPN Sarah Langs announced a few weeks ago on Twitter that she has ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Mandy Bell of MLB.com set up a GoFundMe for Sarah, if you’d like to join me in contributing.

And now, the links…

Climate change could cause the collapse of Antarctica’s ice shelves even sooner than forecasted, in case you were feeling too good about anything this week.
Two stories of women who nearly died because anti-abortion laws denied them access to medical care, one in Texas who suffered a miscarriage and had to wait so long she developed sepsis before doctors would intervene, and one in Missouri whose own state Senator referred her to an anti-abortion clinic. The latter woman had to go to Illinois to get medical care to save her life.
Parker Molloy wrote about how the English press, buoyed by transphobic parents, bullied a schoolteacher who came out as trans into suicide. One of the main writers who attacked Lucy Meadows was Richard Littlejohn, who is still alive and writing twice a week for the Daily Mail, which ignored calls to fire him for his role.
WIRED has an excerpt from Rebecca Gilbin and Cory Doctorow’s new book Chokepoint Capitalism on how streaming services control what we hear and what music gets made, abrogating the promise that the technology would democratize music.
A Supreme Court case around copyright law, fair use, and an Andy Warhol piece may permanently alter the landscape of American art.
Florida’s state Surgeon General issued new guidance around COVID vaccines based on research that produced howls of derisive laughter from actual experts. Here’s one takedown of its many, many flaws. Charles Pierce put it well when he wrote that Florida will just keep “asking questions” until it gets the answer it wants ($).
Dr. Mehmet Oz, currently running for Senate, met a gun-violence victim at a campaign stop, but failed to disclose that she works for him and has received over $2100 from the campaign. The Associated Press reported on the encounter without noting the conflict. Do your fucking jobs, AP.
While on TV, Dr. Oz also promoted Joseph Mercola, long one of the biggest purveyors of anti-vaccine and other forms of medical misinformation online. Mercola has been selling supplements by denigrating evidence-based treatments since at least the 1990s, when I first came across his site’s claims that aspartame caused multiple sclerosis and all sorts of other health problems that it doesn’t cause at all.
Oz’s opponent, John Fetterman, accused the super PAC Democratic Coalition, run by Scott Dworkin, of misleading donors into thinking their money is going to support candidates like him.
Will Leitch wrote about the abysmal media response to Tua Tagovalioa’s second head injury in five days.
Slate’s Evan Urquhart defended Jon Stewart’s interview with and humiliation of Arkansas’s bigoted Attorney General, where he makes it clear she’s either ignorant of the facts on the issue of gender affirming care or just denying them.
How did social media content moderation become such an issue in the culture war?
This is sort of old news by now, but if you haven’t heard the racist comments by members of the Los Angeles City Council, you should check it out. Only one of the three people making those comments, Nury Martinez, has resigned, as calls mount for the other two to do the same.
Wildfire smoke doesn’t just pollute the air, but it can carry bacteria and fungal spores across long distances, thus potentially expanding the area where Valley fever and other diseases of rural/desert areas into more population regions.
Research published in Polymers showed microplastics in human breast milk.
Many artists are pushing for more student debt relief, as the $10,000 offered is a “drop in the bucket” compared to their debt loads.
An Oklahoma teacher encouraged students to call a special-needs student in the class the f-slur. The school district dragged its feet, so the state is investigating while many parents are calling for the teacher’s removal. This is the lowest bar, really.
Is hip-hop’s dominance in American popular music finally slipping? Billboard spoke to industry executives who believe it is, and I would point to the lack of innovation in the space as a reason – and streaming may be the cause, as seen above.
A terrorist group calling itself a branch of ISIS is attacking villages in northern Mozambique, killing men and raping women, while threatening one of the most important natural gas supply lines in Africa.
Amidst news of ethnic cleansing in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, the Economist called for sanctions against Eritrean dictator Issaias Afwerki ($), calling him “equally malign” as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.
Randy Kaufman, running for the Maricopa County Community College District Governing Board and who said he wanted to “protect our children from the progressive left,” suspended his campaign after he was arrested for masturbating in his car near a preschool. Always be wary of those who doth protest too much.
Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R) refused to say whether she would accept the election results if she loses.
Republicans in Congress have introduced a “Don’t Say Gay” bill that would prohibit schools, libraries, and other institutions that receive federal money from teaching children about, well, anything related to sex, gender, gender identity, and so on, and would allow parents to sue if they did. The Human Rights Campaign has denounced it. The end result of bills and laws like this is more youth suicides, and if that’s your goal, we’re not going to agree.
George M. Johnson wrote about his experiences seeing his book, All Boys Aren’t Blue, a memoir of growing up Black and queer in America, become the second-most banned book in the country.
Michigan Republicans introduced an anti-trans bill that would jail parents for life if they sought gender-affirming care for their kids. This is the totalitarian playbook: demonize a small, vulnerable minority to rally your adherents and get them to the polls.
Florida Times-Union columnist called Gov. Ron DeSantis’ closed-door selection of Sen. Ben Sasse, both Republicans, as the new President of the University of Florida, the “crowning achievement of the DeSantis-led effort to defile” the college, questioning Sasse’s qualifications and his intentions.
A Texas sheriff certified that the nearly 50 migrants DeSantis trafficked to Massachusetts are “crime victims,” creating the possibility they could receive special visas to stay in the U.S. Unintended consequences FTW!
In the wake of Hurricane Ian, DeSantis relaxed voting restrictions in three heavily Republican counties, but not in heavily Democratic Orange County.
Police body camera footage shows officers arresting people for so-called voter fraud, as DeSantis proudly announced a sweep and emphasized the criminal records of the arrestees, who were overwhelmingly Black.
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist James Causey called Sen. Ron Johnson’s comment that his opponent this year, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (D), has “turned on America” and “finds America awful” a “cheap shot,” saying that you can love America and still criticize it. Johnson’s campaign has also run ads that darkened Barnes’s skin tone and claimed he’ll be soft on crime.
South Carolina’s medical licensing board has yet to discipline any physicians for spreading misinformation on COVID-19 or the vaccines that help prevent it, apparently for fear of backlash from the conservatives who run the state government.
Marin County in northern California was once a haven for highly educated anti-vaxxer parents. COVID-19 vaccines changed that, and the county now has one of the highest uptake rates in the country at 91%.
Jazz Chisholm was impressive in his brief stint on MLB Network’s studio coverage of the first round of the playoffs.
A new property, the Hotel Lyra, is trying to revive a nearly-abandoned town in Croatia called Licko Petrovo Selo. The town, which is near the country’s scenic Plitvice Lakes National Park, was destroyed during World War II, rebuilt by the Yugoslav government, and then heavily damaged during the Balkan wars, with most of the population, especially its Serbs, driven out.
The white nationalist teenager who opened fire outside an LGBTQ+ bar in Slovakia had posted anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ+, and white replacement views on Twitter and 4chan. The Anti-Defamation League says in response that Twitter and similar sites don’t do enough to moderate hate speech.
Board game news: Rock Manor Games, run by my friend Mike Gnade, has a Kickstarter up for its new role-playing game The Few and the Cursed.
BoardGameTables, who make tables for board games (!) and have also published titles like On Tour and Sequoia, have a Kickstarter up for three small-box games, including Pollen, a re-theming of Reiner Knizia’s Samurai: The Card Game.
Rising Waters, the historical co-op game about the 1927 Mississippi Flood and the racial disparities it exposed, just funded in the last few days, with about a week and a half to go in its Kickstarter.
Race to the Raft, a cooperative game from Isle of Cats designer Frank West, is already about 8x funded on Kickstarter.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, africa, arizona, arkansas, art, baseball, board game news, california, climate change, croatia, florida, football, frauds, hip-hop, lgbt rights, links, los angeles, missouri, Music, oklahoma, pennsylvania, social media, south carolina, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines, wisconsin

→ October 2, 2022
→ By keith

Music update, September 2022.

Lots of new music in September … but not a lot of great music, I think, even with two extremely strong new albums and a couple of others of note. As always, you can see the Spotify playlist here if you can’t see the widget below.

Kid Kapichi – Super Soaker. Two of my favorite albums of 2022 so far came out in September, including Kid Kapichi’s second album in the last 18 months, Here’s What You Could Have Won, which carries forward the harder-edged rock with Alex Turner-like lyrics but expands their musical palate somewhat, such as adding a guest appearance from Bob Vylan.

The Beths – When You Know You Know. And then there’s The Beths’ third album, Expert in a Dying Field, their best one yet, with more uptempo songs and a more consistent musical throughline over the entire album.

White Lies – Trouble in America. A tremendous track from the bonus edition of As I Try Not to Fall Apart, frankly a better song than several that did make the original LP.

Sports Team – Dig! Another banger from Sports Team, but unusual for them in that the vocals are far more conventional, and clearly play second fiddle to the driving guitar work.

Sprints – Literary Mind. These Dublin punks go a little more pop here, without losing any of their usual intensity, in what I think is their longest song yet.

Courtney Barnett – Words and Guitar. A cover of the Sleater-Kinney song from an upcoming album of covers of the band’s 1997 album Dig Me Out.

John-Allison Weiss – Different Now. This is the first new music from Weiss, who has previously recorded as A.W., since 2017’s “Runaway,” although their indie-pop sound is quite similar even after the five-year hiatus.

Editors – Vibe. Editors just released their seventh album, EBM, their first with Blanck Mass (Benjamin John Power) as a full-time member. The sound across the album is similar to what they’ve shown since their big stylistic shift around 2009-10 to something more electro-noir, with a heavy New Order influence. I also really liked “Karma Climb,” the first single from the record; and “Kiss,” which is great in the sub-4 minute single version but wears out its welcome at 8 minutes on the album.

The Fashion Weak feat. Gruff Rhys – Welsh Words. The debut single from a new Welsh band, with help from Super Furry Animals lead singer Rhys, with hilarious lyrics about songwriting advice from Joan Didion.

Freddie Gibbs feat. Moneybagg Yo – Too Much. Gibbs might be the best active rapper going, certainly in terms of flow and delivery, and just dropped his fifth album, the expansive $oul $old $eparately, on Friday. “Dark Hearted” and “Space Rabbit” are also highlights.

Phoenix feat. Ezra Koenig – Tonight. I like this song despite the intrusion of Vampire Weekend (via Koenig, their twee-voiced lead singer and songwriter).

Jamie xx – KILL DEM. The second new single this year from Jamie xx, whose In Colour was one of the best albums of 2015 and provided two standout tracks of the entire decade in “Loud Places” and “See Saw,” but who hasn’t put out another LP since. His solo work is electronica, but he’s also one of three members of the indie band the xx.

Quicksand – Giving the Past Away. A muscular new track from these post-hardcore icons, left over from the sessions for last year’s album Distant Populations.

Palm – On the Sly. A Philly art-rock outfit that’s been around for a decade, Palm just crossed my radar this month with this new track reminiscent of some of Battles’ better work.

WITCH – Waile. WITCH are legends of Zamrock, a musical style from the sub-Saharan country of Zambia that emerged in the 1970s, and were active from 1972-1984, by the end of which they’d moved away from rock and towards disco. This is a new recording of a song they played live in their heyday but never committed to wax. With the crossover success of Mdou Moctar, I could see WITCH (which stands for We Intend to Cause Havoc!) finding a new audience as they continue to tour.

Wheel – Blood Drinker. I’m a big fan of this Finnish prog-metal outfit, whether it’s their ten-minute, multi-section tracks or tighter radio-friendly ones like this one, primarily because of their guitarwork, both the sound itself and the intricacy of some of their guitar lines. This is the advance single from their upcoming EP Rumination, which follows last year’s full-length album Resident Human.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2022 in music, alternative, hip-hop, Music, progressive metal, rap

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