#3 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Vampire Weekend

January 29, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Only God Was Above Us by Vampire Weekend

I did not expect good things from Vampire Weekend in 2024, and that is 100% on me. I have always been a big fan of the band, and the three albums that they’ve released while I’ve been tracking my Top 31s have all been near the top of the list in their respective release years (Contra at #6 in 2010, Modern Vampires of the City at #3 in 2013 and Father of the Bride at #3 in 2019). But five years had passed since the release of Bride, and apparently that’s just enough time to plant a seed of doubt in my mind that a band can’t possibly continue to succeed at the level they had previously.

I’m happy to report I’ve now learned my lesson: never doubt Ezra Koenig. The man is a genius songwriter, there’s really no bones about it. Only God Was Above Us, the band’s fifth album in sixteen years, is not unlike other Vampire Weekend releases. The jangly guitar, the bouncy rhythms, Koenig’s high-registered clear-as-day lyrics – it’s all here. In fact, the one thing that’s really changed in the past 16 years is everything else. Vampire Weekend stays brilliantly consistent while the world changes drastically around them. I mean, when the band’s self-titled debut album was released in 2008, we were still a year away from President Obama. That is more than a lifetime away from our current situation.

Production of Only God is similar to the last two Vampire Weekend albums. Koenig takes the lion’s share of the songwriting duties, with Ariel Rechtshaid partnering with Koenig on most of the production of the album. A pleasant surprise is former Vampire Weekender Rostam Batmanglij’s production on “The Surfer,” giving a small but no-less important indication that Rostam is still engaged with Koenig and the band, no matter how tenuous a connection that may be.

I had the immense pleasure of catching Koenig with bandmates Chris Thomson and Chris Baio on their late-Spring / Summer 2024 tour. Thanks to the pre-planning by friends of mine, I was overjoyed to get to watch the performance from the floor, just a couple people shy of the foot of the stage in the cavernous Climate Pledge Arena. The trio were joined by a handful of other musicians (violin, keyboards, a second drummer/percussionist), necessary to capture the full Vampire Weekend sound.

They put on a hell of a show. Theatrics, massive mid-show changes in set scenery, intimate shifts in lighting — this was’t just an indie-rock show, it was a a broadway musical, with Koenig commanding the stage at every turn. The band played nearly every song from Only God, and a huge variety of past songs as well, spanning about 90 minutes. After a short break, the band came out and told a short story. “We used to come out and take requests for Vampire Weekend songs that we haven’t already played in the evening and tried to muddle our way through them. On this tour, we’re taking a different approach. We’ll try to muddle our way through other bands’ songs. So, do you have any non-Vampire Weekend songs you’d like to hear?”

They then proceeded to play partial versions of songs shouted out or displayed on phone screens, sometimes quite poorly. “Graceland,” “Creep” (Radiohead, not TLC), “Just Like Heaven,” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” all were attempted to varying degrees of success. Being so close to the stage, I was able to yell out loud enough to be heard by Koenig, and he magically took my suggestion. He and the band then dove into a fantastic rendition of the first verse from “Psycho Killer,” just because I asked them to. They even played a portion of “Hold Up” by Beyoncé, from her phenomenal 2016 album Lemonade (under-ranked at #6 in 2016), which Koenig famously has a writing and production credit on.

I must make a quick tangent here to relate something I just learned that ties all of this together. A lot of you are probably aware that Koenig interpolated a line from the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s song “Maps” in a random tweet back in 2011, the entirety of which said “Hold up… they don’t love you like I love you,” which then became the core of Beyoncé’s “Hold Up.” Beyond that, amazingly enough, you can actually hear Koenig’s original demo verse for the Beyoncé hook here in this recording from Koenig’s Time Crisis podcast from back in 2016. In the original verse, he actually had the line “can’t you see there’s not other god above you,” which Beyonce changed to “…no other man above you” in the final version of the song, leaving Koenig’s original line on the cutting room floor. In the audio clip above, Koenig goes on to talk about the origin for that line, which is from a bible verse. Surely it can’t be pure coincidence that, here we are nine years post-altered-line-on-Lemonade and Vampire Weekend’s newest album is called “Only God Was Above Us.” But I digress.

It will likely be years before we get another Vampire Weekend record, if their history is any indication. I hope when that future album does come out, I remember this feeling from right here, right now: Vampire Weekend can really do no wrong. They’ve proven over five stellar albums that they make nothing but great music, entirely unique to themselves (having broken free of the very early references to Paul Simon and his Graceland album, specifically). I’m excited for a future of more Vampire Weekend music. And I’m guessing you are, too.

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#4 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Beyoncé

January 28, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Cowboy Carter by Beyoncé

If you know my family, then you knew Beyoncé was going to make the Top 31. Both my wife and daughter love her, and more importantly in the case of this blog, I do as well. So prevalent she is in our lives, in mid-December when I was talking with my friend Pete about the albums that had potential to show up on the upcoming Top 31, he said “Oh I know you’re a Beyoncé family,” and I responded “Beyoncé’s album was last year.” As a family, we’d not stopped listening to Beyoncé for two-and-a-half years: her fantastic #2 album Renaissance had come out on July 23, 2022, and that had blended right into the release of the phenomenal Cowboy Carter. It didn’t help that we’d seen her on the Renaissance World Tour in September 2023, either. Consequently, I had mistakenly remembered Cowboy Carter coming out in 2023, and not on March 24, 2024.

Few artists have been as consistently great as Beyoncé has. I personally was pretty late to the party, having only fallen for her on her groundbreaking album Lemonade (#6 in 2016), when she’d already been 16 years (!) into her singing career (including her Destiny’s Child work, which began in 1998). Beyoncé has been on a meteoric climb for as long as I can remember, but it was Kanye West’s outburst at the 2009 VMAs¹ that serves as a good demarcation line for the careers of both Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. From that fateful day, the two women have been battling each other to command the most eyes and ears of the ever-widening consumer public. Who is in the lead at any given point depends on by which metric you’re measuring (note Taylor’s 2024 album The Tortured Poets Department will not be appearing on the Top 31), but there are no other artists in contention for that top spot, nor have there been for the last few years.

Cowboy Carter is Beyonce’s eighth solo album, and fifteenth album overall when considering her work with Destiny’s Child and others. The album is the second of an announced trilogy that began with 2022’s Renaissance. These two albums, along with the apparent third yet to be released, were started in 2019 and then recorded during the pandemic. Cowboy Carter was supposed to be “Act I,” but Beyoncé swapped the order due to the pandemic still going strong in 2022 (she knew we all needed to dance). While Renaissance is unequivocally a dance / R&B album, Cowboy Carter blends many genres and is widely considered Beyoncés country album. By everyone except Beyoncé, that is. “I hope this music is an experience, creating another journey where you can close your eyes, start from the beginning and never stop,“ Beyoncé said in an Instagram Story just before the album’s release in March. “This ain't a Country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album.”

Personally, I wish she’d stayed more on the dance side of the spectrum. The country-esque songs are fantastic, and the inclusion of legends Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, and Linda Martell on the album speaks to the reach Beyoncé has achieved. And even if country isn’t Beyoncé’s strong suit, her country songs are still the current best in the genre. But it’s the power of her dance songs, like my favorite song on the album, “Ya Ya,” featured in the video above, that really makes this album a stand-out.

Beyoncé didn’t tour in 2024, and her Renaissance world tour ended in October, 2023. She had exactly one live performance, and she invented a new way to get in front of as many eyes as possible: the “Beyonce Bowl.” The NFL Christmas Game Day broadcast featured two games, to be broadcast on Netflix, who had no experience broadcasting football games to date. By connecting the games with Beyoncé, Netflix was bringing the big guns.

Overall, the viewership hit 27 million during Beyoncé’s performance, drawing the biggest Christmas Day NFL game audience since at least 2001. Beyoncé and Jay Z’s daughter Blue Ivy (12) even made an appearance (as she did when I saw her at Lumen Field in Sept. 2023, as well, when she was only 11), dancing alongside her superstar mother to an audience of 27 mil. It will be interesting to see where she goes over the next few years.

Beyoncé was set to have a big announcement on January 14, 2025, but she postponed due to the devastating wildfires ravaging LA at the time. New album? New documentary? New tour? All of the above, probably? We’ll know soon enough. We won’t know exactly what the overarching theme of Beyoncé’s trilogy is until we get the third album, but it seems a safe bet to expect something in yet another genre. Maybe we’ll get a folk or rock n’ roll album. Or maybe a jazz album that invokes Billie Holiday. Whatever she gives us, I’ll be first in line. It’s bound to be stellar.

^{1. This was the incident where Kanye West ran on stage unexpectedly to interrupt Taylor Swift’s Best Female Video acceptance speech. “Yo, Taylor, I'm really happy for you, I'mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time!” referring to “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It),” which itself ended up taking “Video of the Year,” rendering his entire interruption pointless.↩}

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#5 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Phosphorescent

January 27, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Revelator and Oh, Canada Soundtrack by Phosphorescent

Slow and steady. That’s Phosphorescent’s modus operandi. Matthew Houck’s songwriting vehicle may very well end up being my most favorite band of my lifetime. There are others that are in the running for that title, and it changes with the tides, but as of right now, no other band has more consistently answered the question “Hmmm, what should I listen to right now?” over the last 15+ years. I’ve gone up and down on where to slot Houck’s albums in amongst the rest of a year’s output – he’s fallen into the bottom half twice (#20 in 2010 and #19 in 2022), and has been the absolute best of the year twice (#1 in both 2013 and 2018 – the only artist to have done so two times) – but any one of his albums, and even those that came out earlier than 2009 when I started logging my Top 31, would be a fine choice to put on, in any mood, at any time, during any season.

Revelator is his ninth album, depending on whether you count live albums (that would make it 10), or do not count his 2022 effort that was released one song per month throughout the year (which Wikipedia does not have listed ¹, and would therefore make it only eight total). Like all eight of his other albums, it’s a slow burn of low-fi alt.country bliss. Houck’s voice gets scratchier, his delivery lazier as time goes on – but neither of these things are negatives. Like Tom Waits over time, Phosphorescent albums get more nuanced and rough-around-the-edges.

Be sure to hit play on the title song, above, or on these two other videos he’s released in support of the album: “Impossible House” and “The World is Ending.” The latter, “The World is Ending,” marks the first time an original Phosphorescent song was not written by Houck. Instead, it was written by his musical collaborator, partner, and mother of his children Jo Schornikow. There is no earthly way you’d be able to tell that difference if I hadn’t put it in writing here, as the album flows through the song without friction. In addition to Houck and Shornikow, the album was recorded with Jack Lawrence from The Raconteurs and Jim White of the Dirty Three.

We were lucky to get more than one Phosphorescent album in 2024. In addition to Revelator, Houck created the soundtrack for the film Oh, Canada, starring Richard Gere, Michael Imperioli, and Uma Thurman. I have not yet seen the film, but thankfully the soundtrack has been released for us all to enjoy. According to Wikipedia, director Paul Schrader “wanted something anti-anthemic” for the film, and deemed Phossy’s style as “officially anti-anthemic.” I don’t know about “official,” But I 100% second this emotion.

When my wife and I saw Phosphorescent perform at the Rickshaw in Vancouver back in October 2024, Houck revealed the upcoming soundtrack and played a few songs from it. He described the songs as having been old OLD Phosphorescent songs that he had reworked for the film. It will not surprise you to learn that these songs sound very much like contemporary songs from Houck, which is to say, he’s not aged one bit.

Another hallmark of Houck’s songwriting is the depression they evoke. Aside from Houck’s #1 2018 album, C’est La Vie, which is surprisingly upbeat in content and tempo, most Phosphorescent albums are slow and sad. Fantastic, wallow in the doldrums, tear me all the way down so I can climb back up kinda sad. This assessment will not be new to anyone who’s listened to Phosphorescent. After playing two songs at the show in October, Houck told us, “What I’ve learned is, right now, about the third song in is a pretty good time to let everybody know that it’s straight ’bummers’ from here on out” – which caused us all to burst out laughing, because the likelihood of that being true was great (See for yourself: watch my video of him saying that followed by a beautiful rendition of “The World is Ending”). But in the end, the rest of the show, like all of the shows I’ve seen him perform, had a great mix of loud and soft, fast and slow. A Phosphorescent performance is unlike any other, and worth traveling great lengths to enjoy.

The years between Phosphorescent records are both exciting and anxious. While Houck has never really stopped making music, it for some reason never feels like a sure thing that he’s going to keep going. He’s built up quite a legacy over his 25 years of making music, and I suppose I should be content with the wealth we’ve been given. But he keeps giving us more greatness, and like the spoiled children we are, we will always wont for more.

^{1. But thanks to me making my first-ever contribution to a Wikipedia page, it now does.↩}

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#6 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Girl and Girl

January 26, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Call A Doctor by Girl and Girl

And the winner for highest Top 31 debut for 2024 goes to: Brisbane, Australia’s Girl and Girl! This is a much-deserved recognition for an album that caught my attention so thoroughly this year that I couldn’t go more than a few days without listening to it. Since I first heard the album in August (it officially came out on May 24), anytime I met up with a music-curious friend who knows my proclivity for sharing good music, I would ask them, right out of the gate: “have you heard the Girl and Girl album yet?” followed shortly thereafter with “imagine Conor Oberst singing Clap Your Hands Say Yeah songs.” I still hold to that description, as it captures the sound of Girl & Girl’s music quite well.

Not only is this the band’s debut on the Top 31, the phenomenal Call A Doctor is the band’s official debut album. The band started out as a full family affair, but of the kind of mix I don’t believe I’ve seen before. On lead guitar and bass were brothers Jayden and Coby Williams, respectively. And on lead guitar/vocals and drums are Kai and Melissa “Aunt Liss” James, literal nephew and aunt, respectively. They started playing music together and released their first video and EP in 2021. In later 2022, Coby left the band, replaced by Fraser Bell on bass. Their self-released EPs, of which they released three between 2021 and 2023, found a wide enough following to get them signed to Sub Pop Records, the label their fantastic debut full-length is on.

Sub Pop Records has been killing it of late. I mean, the storied Seattle label has always been good, but look at the Sub Pop artists that showed up on the Top 31 this year: Naima Bock, Alan Sparhawk, Father John Misty, and now Girl and Girl. Four amazing albums, with more on the way.

I first found Girl and Girl thanks to their KEXP Live In-Studio Performance from May that was released in August. I’m actually going to ask you to pause here and hit play on the video above (or on the KEXP video link, as it starts the same way). “Call a Doctor,” the title song from the album, combined with “INTRO,” is an 8-minute epic, and will give you an immediate indication as to why I fell so hard for the band. Not only is Kai’s vocal track dynamic and invigorating, his knack for storytelling and baring his soul is second to none. The song starts with narration describing a “young hero” who’s in the emergency room, with a doctor telling him he’s actually just fine, while the inner voice inside the young man is telling him “You should call a doctor, you should call a doctor now” over and over again.

The story shifts to what I believe is the fabricated conversation our narrator has with the doctor he “calls.” The doctor’s voice tells the young man that not only is he not sick, but that he believes the young hero is subconsciously choosing to feel unwell to give him an out on life – if the young man is unwell, then he can easily point to that as the reason he is not excelling at life. It becomes apparent pretty quickly that this is Kai, talking to himself about his own issues of dealing with public humiliation and failure – of being deathly afraid of getting something, anything wrong, and in order to avoid being held accountable for any motivation or decision-making, he’s choosing to make himself sick. It’s a form of hypochondria I don’t believe I’ve heard described before, and I can’t speak to how exaggerated or auto-biographical it is, but I can certainly relate to the feelings he shares and the type of inner-voice conversation we all have with ourselves from time to time.

While not a complete concept album, the story told presents a theme of being unwell that carries on into other areas of the album, starting with the next song, “Hello.” This song makes it more plain that we’re hearing Kai’s inner turmoil spoken aloud. He narrates of hearing his name in the placating message he’s receiving from The Wesley Emergency Hall. “Oh, Mr. James, we’re glad you called, these thoughts you’ve had aren’t bad at all.” Followed shortly thereafter with him placating himself, “I guess I could try a more positive Kai.” Kai then exclaims he’d have been better off if he’d not called at all, because the forced positive thoughts that were recommended are “worse than hell.” The song then draws to a furious conclusion, repeating the refrain “so long, fairwell, auf wiedersehen, good night, and adieu, adieu, to you and you and you” from The Sound of Music, again and again and again.

It honestly makes me heave a sigh of relief to know that Kai is still with us. That’s the kind of sharing and openness I’ve not really experienced in music since “Floating in the Forth” by Frightened Rabbit. IYKYK.

Kai has the impressive ability to turn everything inside out, and for some reason it feels even more powerful to know that he’s performing these songs with his aunt. Two more videos have been created from the album, “Oh Boy!, and “Mother,” and they’re great songs. “OUTRO,” the last song on the album reads like a letter to a lover who’s moved away. “I hope you‘re well, ’Cause it’s hell down here. And this summer‘s long, not as long as you are near. And the doctors said any day, I’ll disappear. What a lovely day and such a shame to not be here.”

It all sounds so bleak and sad when typed out. And while Kai’s voice isn’t exactly uplifting, it’s dripping with emotion, and he sings with such fervor and the music is so bouncy, it has the strange effect of not being a depressing, doldrums listen. It is an affirmation of life, well worth repeated listening. I get to see Girl and Girl perform at the tiny Madame Lou’s theater underneath the new Croc on April 30, and I couldn’t be more excited. I urge you check out the album, and then pick up a ticket and join me. It amazes me this album hasn’t yet seen more interest, and I fully believe it’s just a matter of time.

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#7 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Cindy Lee

January 25, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Diamond Jubilee by Cindy Lee

Mystery and suspense have an affect on my musical tastes. I can’t define exactly what the impact is, but mystique adds a little something to the music. Underground or up-and-coming bands are part of it – getting to hear them before anyone else has. But there’s also something positive to a band themselves being mysterious. Look at Sault, for instance, who were #1 in 2022 and have appeared three other times on the list, despite not ever definitively naming the artists behind the music.

Cindy Lee, the artist whose unbelievably good double-album Diamond Jubilee shows up here at #7, brings mystery of a different kind: limited availability. You won’t find this album on any streaming sources (at least not legally – the artist is constantly having to fight fake accounts posting their beautiful work to Spotify). I first heard of the album from my friend Pete, via text back on April 12, of which he said “Interesting album” and linked me to the glowing Pitchfork review of the album (the 9.1 they gave the album is the highest rank of any album of the last four years — music discovery in 2024 is very different from music discovery of old.) At that time of the text, there were two ways to listen to the album: a full-album YouTube link (shown above, as it is literally the only video related to the album that has been put out, and whose 2-hour length breaks the mold on length of video posted on my site) or a freemium download from Cindy Lee’s Realistik Studios GeoCities website. Today, the only way to “own” the album is to purchase the album for download or on vinyl on Bandcamp – and I highly recommend that you do.

Cindy Lee is the alter ego of singer/songwriter Patrick Flegel. Flegel cross-dresses as Cindy Lee whenever he performs live, which is currently not often. When he released the album he booked a nationwide tour that started on April 6. On April 12, the Pitchfork review happened, changing the dynamic of the tour drastically. Just shy of a month later, on May 4, Flegel canceled the rest of the tour due to personal reasons. Between the canceled tour, and “going rogue” from the music industry (as Flegel has said in the past), it’s easy to draw conclusions that he is a recluse, scared of fame. Apparently at one of his last shows, Lee said on stage “I feel like a caged fucking animal,” which would seem to back up that story.

The album is a wonder to behold. It is free of time – it could have come out in 1965, 1985, or 2025. The album is two hours of non-stop jaw-dropping indie rock that Flegel mostly plays all by himself. The voice he brings to the songs – sometimes doo woo girl band (but with only one girl), sometimes folky Nico-esque, sometimes baritone crooner – is almost always sung with so much reverb it sounds like he’s standing in the back of a cavernous hall. The music is equally muted – sounding as if you’ve put on an aged vinyl record.

Diamond Jubilee is Cindy Lee’s seventh album. Only two of those albums are available for streaming, so this coy “just try and find me” vibe is not new. Despite all the hoops, Lee has built something magical here, and the people have come. Perhaps we’ll get something new from him yet, but honestly these two phenomenal hours will suit me just fine.

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#8 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Cheekface

January 24, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

It’s Sorted by Cheekface

I like humor in music. In the Top 31 so far this year we’ve got Father John Misty (over the top crooner), King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (good ol’ boys), Vulfmon (downright silly), and even yesterday’s artist, MJ Lenderman, is humorous in his own ironic, lyrical way. The band here at #8, LA’s Cheekface, excels at dry, matter-of-fact humor – the exact kind of humor living in today’s uber-politicized world requires.¹ To whit:

I just want to be popular to watch
In the movie you put on from the camera on your porch
Your across-the-street neighbor walks his dog on TV
The future is now, unfortunately
And if I’m never, ever gonna be alone
Here in my community neighborhood home
Then I wanna be popular to watch
In the movie you put on from the camera on your porch

That, dear friends, is the chorus for “Popular 2,” my favorite song from Cheekface’s 4th rockin’ album, It’s Sorted. I can’t describe what a sense of accomplishment I felt when I was able to finally sing that verse word-for-word by memory. It’s so good! Is this musically challenging, ground breaking music? No! Does it make me smile, repeatedly, on every listen? Yes! Do I regularly put exclamation points in my reviews? No! Does Cheekface make me want to use exclamation points? Yes!

I don’t know about you, but I can’t handle a lot of what’s going on in the world right now. Music has the magical power to take you in all kinds of directions: sadness, elation, anger, happiness, emotional, gleeful. Which direction is not necessarily the point, as long as that direction is away from the right now. Cheekface’s magic is that they keep you mostly grounded in the right now, with blunt reality tinged by dry, direct delivery, while still managing to pull you away to some new reality where the absurdity of life is humorous.

The song “Don’t Stop Believing,” very similar to “Indian Summer” by Beat Happening, features the lines “Everyone cool will die. Everyone weird will also die. What lives on is the destruction caused my market economics. Being unique does not fit neatly into the grid of corporate needs. Still, I work like a dog doing a dog day’s work, and who could blame me? I live in a society.” There is nothing funny about those lives. They’re bleak and sad. But lead singer Greg Katz’s baritone delivery is comical. He stumbles over himself trying to cram in the line about working like a dog. It doesn’t fit the beat, but he successfully pulls it off.

The chorus for “Plastic” goes like this: “Everything is gray now, do you like it? You know I only want it if you want it. Whatever you need now, we can make it out of plastic.” These are not song lyrics, this is a letter from a pen pal who’s on the verge of a mental breakdown. The bridge of the same song is a call-and-response with “Is there recycling?” followed by “It’s sorted.” It doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to make me smile.

I first covered Cheekface for their great third album, Too Much to Ask at #22 in 2022. Here we are two years later and that album still sees regular airplay in my home, along with It’s Sorted. “Life in a Bag” (featured in the video above) is one of many highlights across the album. Each song I listen to as I write this review compels me to put the lyrics here in writing – they’re all just so nonsensical but somehow make all the sense in the world. But I’ll stop – just go listen to the damn thing yourself and watch the lyrics as you do.

You can meet the entire band (Greg Katz on lead vocals and guitar, Mandy Tannen on backing vocals and bass, and Mark “Echo” Edwards on drums) by watching the It’s Sorted Album Commentary the band put out in support of the record. One of the more amazing and endearing things about the band is they self-release and self-promote everything they do. The band is very active on social media, their albums come out on Katz’s own New Professor Music record label, and they have toured extensively for the short few years that I’ve known of them.

I saw Cheekface in 2022, missed them last year, but am excited to get to see them again, at Neumos on May 23. Based on the number of “5th album” talk happening in their social posts and on the band’s hosted Discord, I’m confident their next album will be out by then. At the show, there will be lots of singing along, shouting at key moments, likely Katz leading us in some guided dancing, like we are the puppets and he holds the strings. Cheekface shows are very interactive. And the best part? I am very confident that my cheeks will hurt from smiling by the end of the show. Maybe that’s why they call themselves Cheekface.

^{1. Wikipedia take all the fun out of describing the fun that is Cheekface: “The group's songs, characterized by [lead singer Greg] Katz’s talk-singing, are typically short and lyrics-driven with a dry sense of humor and tend to share a thematic interest in anxiety and sociopolitical unease.” ↩}

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#9 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — MJ Lenderman

January 23, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Manning Fireworks by MJ Lenderman

I first heard MJ Lenderman on the lovely Waxahatchee song “Right Back To It,” which came out on January 9, 2024. I’d been anxiously awaiting something new from Waxahatchee, so the new single was a much welcome surprise, despite the new sensation of having male backing vocals crowd in on Katie Crutchfield’s lead. When the new full Waxahatchee album came out in March, we learned that MJ Lenderman was all over that album, singing with Crutchfield on four songs, and playing electric guitar across the entire album. Just who was this guy suddenly thrust into my Waxahatchee-loving world?

Thankfully, later in the year, I learned exactly who MJ Lenderman was. His great record, Manning Fireworks, lands way up here at #9 on the Top 31. And once again, I’m late to the party. Fireworks is the fourth album Lenderman has released since 2019. His last album, Boat Songs, is apparently something special as well and I aim to check it out. On top of that, he is actively in the band Wednesday, with whom he has also released three albums in that same time period. Their 2023 album, Rat Saw God, barely missed the Top 31 last year, remaining in contention for one of the upper 20s spots until just before I started up the Top 31 (they can’t all win, and I often make the wrong choice in retrospect).

Lenderman’s voice is somewhere in the same area of the musical chart next to Eef Barzelay from Clem Snide, slightly scratchy, a touch of strain, and all emotion. There’s also hints of Stephen Malkmus, whose off-key delivery always put me off but I somehow find endearing with Lenderman. And there’s a straightforwardness, an earnestness to the delivery that feels very much like Neil Young. Lenderman’s fuzzy guitar often evokes some Neil as well.

The lead singer of Wednesday, Karly Hartzman, who is also Lenderman’s ex romantic partner, features prominently throughout Fireworks. It’s her backing vocals we hear on all but three of the nine songs. As opposed to Hartzman and Lenderman’s Wednesday albums, Lenderman and his solo-album band have slowed things down mostly into an alt.country lane, complete with pedal steel guitar. “She’s Leaving You,” featured above, is one of the more straightforward rock songs on the album, and Lenderman’s unpolished voice really drives it home. “Joker Lips” is slower, squarely country, as is “You Don’t Know the Shape I’m In” – the two other songs he’s produced videos for from the album.

The album ends with a ten-minute epic of a song called “Bark at the Moon.” The song starts out as nearly every other Lenderman song does, with a bit of lyrical humor. “I‘ve lost my sense of humor. I’ve lost my driving range. I could really use your two cents, babe. I could really use the change.” He then carries further into a depressing tale, where it’s clear he’s experiencing a breakup and his soon-to-be-ex is moving away from him. “Don’t move to New York City, babe. It’s gonna change the way you dress.” The lyrics then wrap up the story bringing us home to the reasoning for the song title, which also happens to be an early 80s Ozzy Osbourne track and album title. “I’ve never seen the the Mona Lisa. I’ve never really left my room. I’ve been up too late with Guitar Hero playing ‘Bark at the Moon.’ Awooooo.” The song then devolves into six minutes of glorious guitar drone that is quite pleasant in its loudness.

I’m excited to get to see Lenderman in February, at the Neptune here in Seattle. I’ve always had a soft spot for alt.country,¹ and with MJ Lenderman showing up in two of my favorite albums from 2024, I‘m going to be watching him closely for the foreseeable future.

^{1. I just looked up the wikipedia page for “alternative country,” to see if anyone still referred to it as “alt.country” as I still do, and saw that another name for it is “y’allternative.” I won’t start using that, preferring to stick to my late 90s verbiage, but I do love that turn of phrase.↩}

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#10 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Billie Eilish

January 22, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Hit Me Hard and Soft by Billie Eilish

Welcome to the Top 10 of 2024! This is the point in the Top 31 where the decisions I’ve made about what albums to include and where they sit in the Top 10 can really be contentious with the small group of you who are paying close attention. A lot goes into my thought process of where to put an album that I enjoyed greatly throughout the year. There’s the quantitative side – literally how much did I listen to a given artist, but that plays only a small part in my decision. A Top X of anything as derived by a single individual is always a qualitative, gut-feeling endeavor. The Bacon Top 31 is no different. It’s a blend of: How much do I enjoy an album? How often did I listen to it in certain scenarios of my life? How much was the album loved / requested by one of my children?

The album at #10, the fantastic Hit Me Hard and Soft from global powerhouse Billie Eilish hits just the right notes of all of those questions. I enjoy it greatly, I listened to it often around the house and in the car, and the album was VERY MUCH loved by one of my children. But it should be said just because an album is loved by my children doesn’t mean it will show up in the Top 31. You don’t see a Bluey album in here, do you?

Billie Eilish has been making music for 10 years now, and yet she was born in the current century. She is a month into being 23 years old (born December 18, 2001), and yet each of the three full-length albums she’s released have sold more than 2 million copies each. You rarely see that kind of success from anyone, and you never see it from someone who has only been alive for just over two decades. Hit Me Hard and Soft is a VERY good album, and I can’t help but compare it to other releases by global, white, female, megapop stars in 2024. This album is much better than Taylor Swift’s 2024 album The Tortured Poet’s Department, released a month before Eilish’s album. It’s also way better than Sabrina Carpenter’s Short N’ Sweet and Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine. It may be on par with Charli XCX’s Brat, and I’m sorry to say I can’t really give an opinion there, because I simply did not give Brat much attention (but I still hope to). To me, Hit Me Hard and Soft is the best of that bunch.

I’ve been enjoying Eilish’s growth in fame and musicality over the years.¹ I was enamored with her EP Don’t Smile at Me but it did not appear on the Top 31 because I used to have stupid requirements about what qualified as an “album.” Her debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? showed up at #12 in 2019. Unfortunately, I didn’t give her sophomore album Happier Than Ever its due, but if I were to rejigger that list from 3 years ago I’m sure there would be some changes now. All that said, Hit Me Hard and Soft is truly her best yet.

“Birds of a Feather” (featured in the video above) is a great song about love and connection, and the video is fun to watch in an Everything, Everywhere, All At Once kind of way. (Watch the short behind the scenes video about the making of, too.) “Chihiro” is my second favorite track on the album, and its quieter tone goes well in an otherwise high-energy album. “Lunch,” the lead single from the album, is catchy but a bit vapid in its lack of complexity. It feels as though it’s seen popularity due to the nature of a young woman singing “I could eat that girl for lunch” evoking thoughts of a still-inexplicably-scandalous lesbian nature. The behind the scenes on this one is less interesting, but it’s neat she also released three of the complete one-take lip syncs of the song for fans to enjoy: (One Take T002), T004, and T009.

If you only give the music a quick pass, and don’t think too much about what you’re hearing, it may be easy to write off Eilish and her producing partner, cowriter, and brother Finneas as merely being in the right place at the right time. But once you start to dig, you really see how much effort these two put into making something the best it can be. A good example of this effort can be seen in the “NPR Tiny Desk Concert” the two of them performed on, “unplugged” style, with a backing band. Eilish doesn’t come off as her only 22-years-of-age, but she is still very endearing as far as global megastars go.

As I mentioned in my Tyler, The Creator review at #12, I do my best to encourage the positive ends of my children’s music listening. They are often stuck listening to my personal favorites while I drive them around to various activities, but I also give them a window into being able to request things. I try to not just shoot their requests down because it’s not something I would traditionally want to listen to. This mentality has brought a lot more good music into my world. In the case of Billie Eilish, I was already well into her world prior to my youngest’s own love of Eilish’s music. But it‘s because of my youngest that my “well into” turned into a “love” of Eilish’s music in 2024. I look forward to other music turning into loves for me as she grows up.

^{1. I’ve also avidly watched the annual interview that Vanity Fair magazine has been creating with Eilish for the past eight years. Watch for yourself if you’ve not seen them before. ↩}

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#11 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Porridge Radio

January 21, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me by Porridge Radio

Porridge Radio, the indie rock trio out of Brighton, England, made a pretty big splash on the 2022 Top 31 with their third album, Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky showing up at #12. And now they’re back, two years later, with an even better album here at #11: Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me, their 4th LP in their 10-year history.

There are some great singles on Waterslide, but Clouds holds together as a single idea, executed well. After touring extensively throughout 2022 in support of the last album, Dana Margolin, the band’s dynamic, deep voiced lead singer and principal songwriter, returned home and shortly thereafter split up with her partner. It is from the ashes of that exhausting tour and subsequent breakup that Clouds sprang. When describing the band to new listeners, I more often than not say “they’re the second coming of Modest Mouse, with a female lead.” That gets to the heart of the band’s music, but the person I most want to compare Margolin to is Spencer Krug (as seen back at #14). It’s impossible to compare one unknown tortured singer/songwriter to another without really knowing the individuals in question. But know this: Margolin uses her powerful voice to sing about universally felt emotions while creating songs like no other female-led band in the 20’s.

I’m excited to see Porridge Radio for the second time, in just a couple weeks from now. The last time I saw them was in 2022 during the band’s torrid stretch of worldwide touring. Margolin had recently shaved her head bald, and the show was a blast, but it wrecked the band members by the end of the tour. Looking at the current videos, it appears that she’s got shoulder length hair now, and looking a bit more stable. Check out the video above for “A Hole in the Ground,” or for the lead single from the album, for the song “Sick of the Blues,” and you’ll get a good glimpse of their stage presence. I suppose looks can be deceiving, as the band announced on January 15 that they’ll be splitting up after this tour. No reasons given.

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I hope the rationale for closing up the Porridge Radio shop is something innocuous. But since no reason was given, my gut says it’s something more, something dire. You don’t step away from your still up-and-coming band without a lot of introspection and difficulty. I’m glad they’re not so bad they have to cancel the tour. I do wish them well. And, like Spencer Krug being the heart of Sunset Rubdown, Margolin is the heart of Porridge Radio – the songs and the sound they evoke are hers, so I suspect (and very much hope) we’ll be hearing more from her in another capacity soon.

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#12 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Tyler, The Creator

January 20, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Chromakopia by Tyler, The Creator

At the end of 2023, many music-related news outlets started declaring that hip-hop was dying or perhaps even dead. The genre had experienced a major surge throughout the 2010s, so great that it beat out rock-n-roll to become the #1 listened-to genre in music in 2018. It’s been able to maintain that ranking every year since, just as streaming music has become the only game in town, but the sizable lead it built up over the other genres has been declining in recent years. The number of chart topping hip-hop songs had dropped significantly while the genre became a reflection of the results of streaming on the whole: there’s less concentration on two or three huge artists while everyone finds and follows their own lane. Popular music on the whole was becoming homogenized.

Amazingly, that wasn’t the end of the story. In 2024, hip-hop saw popularity coalesce around a handful of artists (see Doechii at #18). With that focusing of excitement came the artists driving #1 songs and albums throughout the year, reinvigorating the genre. Tyler Okonma, otherwise known as Tyler, the Creator, was one of this artists that caused the turnaround of events with his phenomenal eighth studio album Chromakopia, coming in at #12.

I’ve been sleeping on Tyler for pretty much his entire career. I mean, I’ve known about him for a long time, but I’ve had very little bandwidth for hip hop on the whole, so I hadn’t paid him much attention. In past years when I’ve latched on to acts like Run the Jewels (#6 in 2020, #28 in 2014), they essentially fulfilled my hip-hop allotment for the year (I’m not proud, it’s just the truth). Not so in 2024 — I listened to more hip hop this year than I have since I first dabbled in the genre as a high school freshman trying to figure out his particular flavor of rebellion by listening to NWA and The Geto Boys in the late 80s.

There’s a few reasons I’ve listened to more hip hop in 2024 than in any previous year, and “the music just got better!” can’t be one of them, no matter how much it may feel like it’s true to me. The simple truth is I seem to have unintentionally allowed hip hop to have a bigger presence in my life. 2024 started with a birthday surprise from my wife, taking me to a listening party centered around Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange. (I’d loved his Blonde album, (#4 in 2016) but hadn’t been able to give the earlier album much love, so I re-listened to it a lot in January of 2024.)

Secondarily, the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar leapt over the cultural divide and became a minor obsession for me. There were other smaller beefs (Charlie XCX and Lorde, Tyler and Childish Gambino), but the rift that grew between Drake and Kendrick that began in March of 2024, or back in 2011 depending on where you draw the line, slowly filled every bit of idle time I had, with me reading articles and podcasts (such as the always wonderful Dissect) and other non-music related content. Not only was I listening to more hip hop as a result, I was reading and learning more about it, too.

And likely the biggest reason for there being more hip hop in my life in 2024: my 16-year-old child has found a new love of hip hop, and has been listening to a lot of it recently. Having your teenage child grow into their own musical tastes that are separate from (but hopefully influenced by) your own, and then feeling compelled to talk to you about what they’re finding and listening to — that’s where the magic is. As a proud father who loves music, I’ll fall over backwards to accommodate any music-related ambition from my children. If they love Tyler, the Creator, I’ll be damned if I don’t love Tyler, the Creator, too. If they love Tyler’s past albums, I’ll love those, too (I’m looking at you, IGOR, which is cued up in my earbuds to listen to next).

Thankfully, Tyler is easy to love. Chromakopia is a rich, leaning-forward-into-the-momentum album that is a compelling listen. The number of guest stars on this album is astounding, including Top 31 past favorites Childish Gambino, Thundercat, Doechii, and Inflo, as well as future favorites GloRilla, Lil Wayne, ScHoolboy Q, Santigold, Willow, Daniel Caesar, Sexxy Redd, Teezo Touchdown, and Solange, and at least 20 other people. The production on the album, done by Tyler himself, along with the songwriting and arranging, is all-encompassing.

Hit play on the video above, for the song “NOID,” and you’ll get a taste of what I mean. The song, autobiographically concerned with the paranoia Tyler feels as his fame grows ironically larger, prominently features a sample of the Nambian band Ngozi Family’s song "Nizakupanga Ngozi,” from their 1977 album 45,000 Volts to great effect. Watch closely and you’ll see Ayo Edebiri from FX’s The Bear acting disturbingly psychotic with a gun. “NOID” is my favorite song on the album, so it’s convenient that it’s the only song for which Tyler made a video. “Balloon” featuring Doechii (#18 this year) is my 2nd fave, specifically because of Doechii’s appearance. That girl can do anything.

Nearing the end of the year, on Christmas Day, Tyler released “THAT GUY” – a freestyle remix of “Hey Now” from Kendrick Lamar’s 2024 album GNX, which only itself came out on November 22. Tyler seems to me that he’s mimicking Kendrick’s delivery style on the song. Or maybe my untrained ears are adding something where it’s not needed. Either way, I really like that beat, and Tyler’s verse on top of it is fantastic.

Chromakopia is wonderful. It’s still full of swears, but it’s much less than you’ll find on the Doechii album, if for some reason you found that a bit off-putting in her album. I am looking forward to giving IGOR a chance to ascend my “greatest regrets” list, for having not appeared on the Top 31 of the 2019 list when it really should have. And as for you, if you’ve not heard this new album yet, you know what to do.

Hop to it.

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#13 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Vulfmon

January 19, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Dot by Vulfmon

It feels good to write a blog. It feels good to write a blog. It feels good to write a, write a blog. Yeah!

This is going to be one hell of a rambling, wandering review, because I’ve unexpectedly fallen into a sprawling world that was previously unknown to me called Vulfmon. Hopefully by the end you (and I) will have been able to make some sense of it all.

Vulfmon’s out-of-left-field 2024 album Dot came to me as a recommendation from my friend Ryan just over a month ago, on December 10. Everything in my life up to that date shall now be known as BV (before Vulfmon) and we are currently living in the AV (after Vulfmon) timeline. Let’s talk about the album without any other context, as I first heard it on that fateful day. This album will catch you off guard. These songs are really, really good. But they also sound of another era, as if this is a movie soundtrack or compilation from the 60s/70s that I am only now hearing, made up of all sorts of acts I recognize but can’t quite place. “The Beatles” are on this album (“Little Thunder”). As are “The Jackson 5.” There’s funk, there’s disco, there’s more than one sax solo (see “Hit the Target (Vulfmix feat. Eddie Barbash)”). And there’s actually a legit Beach Boys cover of “Surfer Girl” that lends to the legitimacy of the other soundalike-but-not-the-real-deal songs.

So there’s the angle that these are songs made to sound like other songs, other eras of songs. And then there’s the humor. The collection of people working with Vulfmon on this album were clearly having a blast. Songs like “It Feels Good to Write a Song” and “Too Hot in L.A. (Vulfmix)” are so over the top silly but yet infinitely catchy, you’ll be humming them to yourself long after you’ve put the album down for the day. This isn’t “Weird” Al parody, it’s more along the lines of Reggie Watts’ “Fuck Shit Stack.” Notice I didn’t even mention “Disco Snails,” (featuring vocals from Zachary Barker) which is the video featured above, and not to be missed. “The simple answer is they’re dancers.”

This is a great album. Vulfmon has figured out the formula that hits the right spot in my brain. But what the hell is going on, how did it get made, why does it exist, and who is this Vulfmon? Vulfmon is the mononym of Jack Stratton, from Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and he’s been making music since he picked up two drum sticks when he was a kid. He is one of four founding members of the band Vulfpeck, who formed in Ann Arbor, Michigan when Stratton (keyboards, drums and guitar) started an “imagined German version of the U.S. session musicians of the 1960s” band with his U-M friends Theo Katzman (guitar, drums and vocals), Woody Goss (keyboards), and Joe Dart (bass). Vulfpeck has been making music together since 2011, and have released six studio albums since then.

You may have heard of Vulfpeck’s work, but would have potentially dismissed it as “legend” or “folklore.” Back in 2014, the band came up with a scheme to take advantage of Spotify’s royalty structure to then turn any royalties they received into an admission-free tour. They created an “album” called Sleepify that had ten tracks of literal silence and no actual music on it, and encouraged their listeners to stream the album on repeat while they slept. The album flew under the radar on Spotify, gaining thousands of plays while listeners streamed the album on replay overnight, until Spotify caught on and pulled it down two months later. The ploy exposed a loophole in Spotify’s royalty calculation, and it cost the company a total of $20,755, with which Vulfpeck made good on their free-of-charge tour in September 2014. I know I’ve heard some flavor of this story over the years, and I’m glad to now have a real world reason to get back to it.

Dot is Stratton’s third solo release in three years. “Solo” is a bit of a misnomer, because most if not all of these songs were created with like-minded individuals. The most prevalent collaborator is Jacob Jeffries, who appears on four songs and is now a touring member of Vulfpeck. Jeffries’ sings backing vocals on those songs, except for the Jackson 5-esque song, “Nice To You (Little Yacov Version),” where he takes the lead. But for that song, his voice has been run through an AI filter to sound like young Michael Jackson, to great effect.

Another frequent collaborator on the album is Evangeline Barrosse who appears on three songs: “Got To Be Mine,” “Letting Things Go,” and “Tokyo Night feat. Evangeline.“ They are all fantastic, and her voice fits the vibe perfectly.

In addition to everything above about Vulfmon, Vulfpeck, and the many facets of their music, there’s even more that contributes to the amazingness of this man and this band. Vulfpeck.com is a well-designed, very bare-bones website, currently offering links to buy tickets to the band’s two upcoming shows at Red Rocks and Madison Square Garden (these guys have a major following). The website also has a link to the Vulf Compressor – Stratton’s own digital compression tool for making instruments sound old or sampled, used widely on songs you’ve definitely heard before (such as on HAIM’s 2020 album _Women In Music Pt. III, #19 in 2020). Additionally, there’s a link to the Vulf Conservatory, where Stratton offers a Masterclass in Mixing for $250. And there’s a link to their two fonts, Vulf Mono and Vulf Sans. Yes, I said fonts. Mind-blowing.

I’m sure I could keep digging and producing weirder and more endearing shit, but I think I’ll stop there. I’m hooked. Vulfmon and Vulfpeck, you have my attention (and I’m aware I’m late to the party by a lot of people’s standards, as I watch their 2023 performance on the Bonnaroo main stage). I know there are a lot of links in the post above – if you’ve not been able to click on any of them, I recommend you skip them all and just watch all the videos in one go with the 30-minute “Full Visual Album” of Vulfmon’s Dot. I predict you’ll be as blown away as I have been. I’ll be sure to ping you when the next batch of craziness gets released.

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#14 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Sunset Rubdown

January 18, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Always Happy to Explode by Sunset Rubdown

I have an infatuation with Spencer Krug, the principal songwriter, lead vocalist, and creative force behind Sunset Rubdown, whose fifth album Always Happy to Explode has risen with a bullet all the way up to #14 on my Top 31 of 2024. If you don’t recognize Krug’s name, you’ll probably recognize his voice. Go ahead and hit play on the video above, for the song “Reappearing Rat.”

My infatuation with the man is plain as day: I’ve written about Krug numerous times, thanks to his efforts as half of the singing/songwriting of Wolf Parade, as well as his solo-ish work as Moonface. Those two Krug projects have appeared on my Top 31 six times: #17 in 2010, #27 in 2011, #23 in 2013, #14 in 2017, #31 in 2018, and #26 in 2020.

Krug, 47, from Penticton, British Columbia, first hit my radar on Wolf Parade’s 2005 album Apologies to the Queen Mary, and I loved Sunset Rubdown’s 2006 and 2007 albums, Shut Up I Am Dreaming and Random Spirit Lover, respectively, as well as Wolf Parade’s 2008 album At Mount Zoomer. In my inaugural year of Top 31s (2009) I somehow missed Sunset Rubdown’s album Dragonslayer, but nearly every other album release that Krug has been a part of in the ensuing years has ended up in my Top 31 (his three true solo albums released in the Covid years 2021-2023 barely missed the cut as well).

His voice is entirely unique, unlike any other singer you’ll hear. While I can’t define his voice by saying that he sounds like any other singer, it’s easier to compare his voice to the not-unpleasant sound of a cat whose tail has been stepped on. (The sound of his voice is not-unpleasant, but I’m sure the cat whose tail gets stepped on feels much different). And in case you couldn’t tell from the wealth of albums and bands mentioned above, the man is prolific. He’s been a part of 26 album releases since 2002, an average of more than one album a year – not the same pace as King Gizzard, but he’s close.

This great new Sunset Rubdown record, Always Happy to Explode, is coming at us a full 15 years after the previous Sunset Rubdown album. When they released Dragonslayer in 2009, they soon thereafter disbanded quietly. No official announcement, but also no hint of anything new coming out. Of course Krug had his many other alternative creative outlets he was able to tap into in the ensuing years, with no real reason to go back to the Sunset Rubdown well. But then, according to Wikipedia, Krug had a dream in which a reunion with the band did happen and it was enjoyable. So he acted on that dream, called up his previous bandmates, and together they decided to put a tour together, because why not? That was 2023.

From the success of that tour came the drive to record together. Krug has maintained a Patreon account since 2019, where he releases a newly-written song every month. From those songs, the Sunset Rubdown crew chose nine songs to recombine and rework and record, and thus we now have a fantastic new Sunset Rubdown record.

It must be magical to be in Spencer Krug’s creative circle. To be given a call, out of the blue, to suggest you join him on tour, have a great time, and then, hey, let’s get in the studio and remake some of these 60 songs I’ve self-released over the last five years. I want to be in that circle, but I’m no musician. So I’ll gladly take all the creativity he puts out into the world and consume it with fervor. I don’t yet subscribe the Patreon, but I’m about to change that. He’s given me lots of joy over the last 23 years, and it’s the least I can do to repay him. That, and gushing about him here on The Bacon Review. Enjoy the music!

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#15 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — The Cure

January 17, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Songs Of A Lost World by The Cure

The first time my ears were exposed to The Cure, the goth rock gods here at #15, was when I first heard “Lullaby,” from their genre-defining 1989 album Disintegration. The 45 had been added to the jukebox at the Pizza Hut I worked at (at the request of my coworker and friend, Matt Leland) when I was 16 years old (so therefore this was likely sometime in the summer of 1990 — 34+ years ago), in rural Oklahoma. The internet wasn’t yet available, and I didn’t have cable (aka no MTV), so in my own defense as to why I came to The Cure so late: I had no legitimate way to hear any music outside of what limited music was being played for me on classic rock station KMOD 97.5 FM. By introducing me to The Cure in this way, at this impressionable time of my life, my friend Matt had inadvertently shifted the course of ~~time~~ my musical tastes forever.

That fall (November 1990) I purchased Mixed Up, a collection of remixes, acting as a “greatest hits” and opening for me the door to The Cure’s extended back catalog of wonderful songs. From that point I was hooked. In the following 18 years, the band released only five new albums, to ever-middling results, never able to match the majesty of Disintegration or anything from the seven albums that preceded it. I don’t know that I ever listened to 2008’s 4:13 Dream, the last album they released until the unbelievably good Songs of a Lost World came out a full 16 years later.

I could have happily listened to The Cure’s 1979-1990 catalog (plus a few singles from the later years) for the rest of my life. I didn’t need or expect any new music from the band in 2024, and I certainly didn’t expect that it would be this great. But great it is, and there’s word that even more is coming (a companion album has been hinted to come out later this year, before the band embarks on another world tour in support of it).

Songs of a Lost World evokes the same feelings the 16 year old me felt back in 1990, listening to Disintegration. The albums are very similar, and that connection is definitely intentional, despite the 35 years that have passed between them. Hit play on the video above, “A Fragile Thing (Radio 2 In Concert),” and you’ll hear that Smith’s voice and the band’s sound has not aged a day – to great effect. (The same cannot be said for Smith’s appearance – the man looks like a bloated Mrs. Potato Head that’s been bleached white from sitting atop the dump pile for far too long). When the album launched on November 1 (intentionally on the day after Halloween, at lead singer / songwriter Robert Smith’s insistence), the band performed and broadcast a three-hour live stream for all to see. They came out on London’s Troxy stage to the sounds of a dreary thunderous rainstorm, played all eight songs from the new album, took a short break and then returned to play 23 more songs from the rest of their catalog. They’ve released those first eight songs of the performance as a live album, Songs of a Live World: Troxy London MMXXIV. It is a tour de force.

Songs of a Lost World marks the first album since 1985’s The Head on the Door that was composed solely by Smith. His voice, his guitar, his orchestration, his songs – The Cure is Robert Smith, but he did not play all the instruments. Smith is the only original member of the band, but note that bassist Simon Gallup has only missed inclusion on two of their 14 studio albums. The current band lineup, as represented on the album and in the stage band, is Smith, Gallup, Reeves Gabrels on second guitar (since 2012), Roger O’Donnell on keyboards (since 1987), Perry Bamonte on keyboards (since 1990), and Jason Cooper on drums (since 1995). That’s a lot of old dudes making great music.

My head keeps wanting to draw a parallel to any other band that has enjoyed the history The Cure has. Songs came out 45 years after The Cure’s 1979 debut, Three Imaginary Boys. When The Rolling Stones, for instance, released their 2005 album, A Bigger Bang, which would have been 41 years after their debut self-titled 1964 album, was the reception as big for it by fans of the entire Stones catalog as was the reception for The Cure? I have no real frame of reference, no way to know for sure.

But it does feel as though this feat Smith and band have pulled off feels unreal. Maybe that’s how he wanted it. Maybe we’ve all been asleep for the 35 years that have passed since Disintegration came out. That was one crazy dream we had between 1989 and 2024, wasn’t it?

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#16 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — IDLES

January 16, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

TANGK by IDLES

My love and acceptance of IDLES as a force to be reckoned with has been a long time coming. I got swept up in the KEXP-driven mania around the band back in 2018, and ranked their sophomore album that year, Joy as an Act of Resistance, at #16. I hold by that ranking, that’s a great album and the accolades are well-deserved. In 2020, the band’s third album, Ultra Mono, slipped a little, down to #24. Their fourth album, Crawler, from 2021, failed to stay on my radar; I was aware of its existence, but I had no place for it in my listening habits of those middle Covid years. Enter TANGK, the band’s fifth album, here at #16, and the band has come roaring back with a vengeance.

A few factors have led to this shift of opinion, with IDLES being able to ascend to somewhere near the top of my proverbial “favorites” list: TANGK is their best album yet, and it was produced by Nigel Godrich; the band has released some phenomenal videos in support of the album; and I got to see the band live at the Paramount this past May.

TANGK is still a loud, in your face album that will put off a lot of people. But when compared to IDLES’ œuvre, TANGK is downright tame, much more approachable than past works. I have to believe that Nigel Godrich, who coproduced the album with Kenny Beats and Mark Bowen (IDLES’ lead guitarist), had something to do with this album appealing to my ears more than any of their past albums. Godrich is responsible for the production of all the Radiohead albums that I love , as well as the Beck albums Mutations and Sea Change, all of which would have qualified as “best album of the year” had I been documenting my Top 31 in the late 90s / early 00’s¹.

The band is visually minded in addition to producing great, anger-inducing music. Check out the video above, for the song “Grace,” and watch closely. Rather than spoil it for you, I’ll pause here so you can watch the first 30 seconds of the video or so, then leave it playing while you come back here to finish reading. No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you: that is Chris Martin from 25 years ago, as seen in the original video footage for Coldplay’s 2000 song “Yellow.” But this time, he’s singing the words to IDLES’ “Grace,” through the magic of Deepfake AI. The video is a result of a dream Talbot had, who then took the concept to Martin who was more than happy to lend the video to the band, so much so that he even helped them train the AI model that built the new mouth movements.

Other videos from the album include “Gift Horse,” which is a great song with a disjointed, nonsensical video. “POP POP POP,” a song that amazingly rhymes “strong like bull” with “vulnerable,” has a video that concentrates on Talbot’s magnetic, mustachioed face. The band recently released an alternate version of this song with an electric new verse by Danny Brown to open the song. And finally, “Dancer,” which was the lead single for the album and has a video that sees the band… dancing? One of the many things I love about this band is their ability to not take themselves too seriously.

IDLES’ live performances are not to be missed. Their show back in May was intense and emotional. It was also the only time I’ve shed a tear at a live show in recent memory. I was sitting in the front row of the balcony, looking down on the band on the stage and the very active mosh pit in the middle of the floor. At one point the band’s two guitarists, Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan, came down off the stage and slowly worked their way through the crowd while the roadies did their best from the stage to keep their guitar cables from becoming disconnected. When the guitarists got to the middle of the pit, they began playing back to back while encouraging the crowd to rotate around them, like a human tornado. The sea of people circling around the two musicians was a site to behold. During this time in the show, I noticed an older man (ie: my age) carrying a smaller child in his arms and hanging around the outside of the maelstrom but not completely outside of it. This clearly aging rocker was introducing his son to the wonders of the pit in as safe a way as one can – “that’s one lucky kid,” I thought.

After the guitarists returned to the stage, and the tornado calmed down to a more normal turmoil, I couldn’t stop watching this dad with his child from above. They were having a great time, the dad never putting the child down, staying near the edges of the moshing. Between songs at one point, Joe Talbot, the charismatic, deep-throated lead singer, noticed the pair, too. “I’ve got bad eye sight, so my eyes may have been deceiving me, but I swear I saw a child out there in the pit. Is there a child out there?” The crowd pointed them out, and Joe proceeded to have a conversation with the dad and child from the stage, while 3,000+ people listened on. Through this conversation, I learned that it was a boy, that he was 8 years old, and this was his first mosh pit experience. “Well, this is a good most pit to be in. IDLES fans take care of each other.” Joe asked him a couple more questions, with the child and the dad yelling their answers back as loudly as they could to be heard on the stage. At the end of their conversation, Talbot got serious for a minute. “If there’s one thing I want to make sure you take away with you from this show, one thing that will live on with you long after you leave here, it’s this: if you ever feel down, or withdrawn, or sad – tell someone. It’s important for you to share those feelings, because that’s how you will find out you are not alone. Seriously, that is so important: YOU ARE NOT ALONE.” And that’s how I got choked up, my eyes welling up at a fucking IDLES show of all things. It chokes me up writing about it now. What a positive message to impart on this impressionable kid.

“You are not alone” is the tag line from my favorite radio station, KEXP, and a constant message delivered from the morning DJ and the station’s loudest cheerleader, John Richards. He and Talbot have been very close since Joy made an impression in 2018, and they are kindred spirits. “You are not alone” is such an important statement, very much needed in these current times of unrest. As our 47th president is sworn into office next week, “you are not alone” is a sentiment I carry with me daily, and will lean on a lot in the coming years. That, and also the fact that IDLES is a band of great people who make great music, and KEXP is a great radio stations that plays that great music for us all to hear. It makes me feel not alone just thinking about it, and I hope you feel it, too. You are not alone.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

^{1. If my listening habits in the ensuing years are any indication, it is not hyperbolic to say that Radiohead’s 1995 (The Bends), 1997 (OK Computer), 2000 (Kid A), 2001 (Amnesiac), 2003 (Hail to the Thief), and 2007 (In Rainbows), albums, and Beck’s 1998 (Mutations) and 2002 (Sea Change) albums – all produced by Nigel Godrich – would have been #1 in their respective years if I had written up a Top 31 in those years. Only the production credits of George Martin, aka “the fifth Beatle,” has had more influence on my musical tastes than Nigel Godrich.↩}

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#17 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Nilüfer Yanya

January 15, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

My Method Actor by Nilüfer Yanya

I remember seeing the artist at #17 – London, England’s Nilüfer Yanya – back in 2019 when she was promoting her debut album, Miss Universe, by opening for Sharon van Etten’s national tour. Yanya made quite the impression on van Etten to ask her to open the tour, and on the crowd in attendance. It’s not an easy feat to open for a powerhouse like van Etten, but Yanya filled the spot easily.

Because of that performance, I’ve been tracking her career for five years, and I’m so glad to report that the strength of that opening act five years ago is finally translating to a recorded version that has ascended to a place on the Top 31. My Method Actor, Yanya’s third album, is fantastic. Her sound falls into the quieter side of Sharon van Etten, or somewhere alongside Mitski. Not as pop-y as Japanese Breakfast, and also not as unexpected as Naima Bock back at #23, My Method Actor is a perfect gem of an album.

Yanya, born to an Irish/Barbadian mother and Turkish father, was (according to Wikipedia) named after a Turkish pop singer from the 90s who went by the singular “Nilüfer.” Turkish and classical music were the most common sounds that Yanya grew up with, and she is apparently starting to embrace her Turkish heritage even more by learning the language.

My Method Actor was produced by Yanya’s longtime production partner Will Archer, who cowrote the songs and plays nearly every instrument on the record. Yanya’s voice is often doubled throughout the album, to give her a more full sound. “Like I Say (I runaway)” (featured above) is my favorite track on the album, evoking St. Vincent in its rhythm and loud treatment of the chorus. Yanya has released a couple other videos for the album: the title song “Method Actor” and the lovely acoustic-guitar driven “Just a Western.”

If you’re a fan of any of the strong female voices I’ve mentioned above, then you need to be listening to Nilüfer Yanya. Much like Doechii from yesterday, I suspect Yanya is just getting started. I’m excited to hear where she takes us next.

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#18 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Doechii

January 14, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Alligator Bites Never Heal by Doechii

You don’t need to remember the name Jaylah Ji'mya Hickmon, but you’ll most definitely want to remember her stage name, Doechii. While this may be the first time you’re hearing her name, it will certainly not be the last. Doechii, 26 years old, was born in Tampa, Florida, currently resides in Los Angeles, and with her third full-length mixtape in her short five-year career, Alligator Bites Never Heal, she is finally being discovered by the half-centenarian suburbanite market.¹

Doechii came up with her nickname as she was moving from elementary school to middle school in 6th grade, as something of an alter ego. She had been bullied for her shyness in elementary school, so came up with a new name to represent a different side of her personality. Jaylah was bullied, but Doechii would never stand for that.

While I’d no doubt heard Doechii’s voice prior to hearing Alligator for the first time, the first time I saw her name and thought “who is this?!” was her guest spot on the song “Balloon” on Tyler, the Creator’s 2024 album Chromakopia. That led me to Alligator and I quickly fell in love with the album. There are some great hip hop songs on here. “Nissan Altima,” one of the early singles, one of the most vulgar songs, and also my favorite song from the album, demonstrates Doechii’s skill as a rapper and lyricist.

In “Nissan Altima,” Doechii declares, “I’m the new hip-hop Madonna. I’m the trap Grace Jones.” With Doechii, it’s easy to accept this level of bravado as fact. The music is amazing, don’t get me wrong, but the reason I know she’s going to grow to become one of the most popular voices in pop culture – as big if not bigger than Madonna or Grace Jones – very soon is her attitude and outlook on the music industry and life. A couple interviews she’s done recently do a good job of showing Doechii, the person: “[Zane Lowe’s Apple Music interview]”(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQI9zoqmcqM) from Dec. 14, and “[Nardwuar² vs. Doechii]”(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bjFEMRgOz8) from Dec. 20.

In case you couldn’t tell, Doechii is exceedingly media savvy. In addition to the video for “Nissan Altima”, she also released two other visually compelling videos around the same time this past summer, before the full mixtape came out on August 30:“Bullfrog” and “Catfish.” That could have been enough on its own to carry the album to great success, but the hype machine continued. She performed “live on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on December 5, and then released an “NPR Tiny Desk Concert a day later.

She then kicked it up to a full maelstrom of content, all leading to the release of the amazing video featured above for the fantastic song “Denial is a River.” To increase hype for the song and video, Doechii worked with directors Carlos Acosta and James Mackel to release a series of odd TV-based teasers, using the song title (but not the song itself) as the name of a fictitious new 80s TV show. Over the days between Boxing Day (Dec 26) and the full video being released on January 2, she released a total of five such teasers on Instagram and other social media outlets (in addition, I believe, to playing them on actual broadcast television, “Adult Swim”-style):

Teaser 1: Denial Is A River Show Opening Credits (featuring the theme song to “Family Matters”)

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Teaser 2: Doechii Slaps Brad Pitt (aka Earl Sweatshirt)

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Teaser 3: La Rosa De Doechii

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Teaser 4: Can I Hit That?

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Teaser 5: The Doechii Experience

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That last teaser pays off the name of the song by finishing the age-old joke, “Denial is a river in Egypt”. The day after that last teaser, the full video for the song came out. Meanwhile, Doechii and a cast of characters hosted a nearly 2-hour live stream called “Denial is a Stream.” All told, the list of guest stars across the entire set of videos is long, including (but not limited to) actor-comedians Zack Fox and Rickey Thompson, and Top Dawg Entertainment peers ScHoolboy Q and SiR, as well as Teezo Touchdown, Earl Sweatshirt, Baby Tate, and DJ Miss Milan (no, I didn’t know all those names prior to watching the videos, but I’m learning). That is an impressive amount of preamble for a 2 minute, 44 second video for an even shorter (but no less great) song.

It seems all but inevitable that Doechii will be taking home a handful of Grammys when the award show airs the first weekend of February. She’s nominated for four awards, and it would not be surprising to see her on the stage four times. Mark my words: this is just the beginning. We’re nowhere near the top of what Doechii can achieve, and at 26, she’s got a long, star-studded red carpet ahead of her.

^{1. I jest – there’s nothing lucrative about my personal demographic when it comes to up-and-coming or even currently-hot-shit musicians. But I have a strong sense that I’m probably very much in the minority of my peers who have heard of Doechii. But I’m also certain that that will be changing very soon.↩}
^{2. I’m ashamed to admit I only discovered Nardwuar this year. (Thanks Pete!) If you’ve never heard of Nardwuar, I encourage you to watch him interview Doechii (link) and then watch any number of the thousands of interviews he’s done since he started in October, 1987. His interviews are unlike anything you’ve ever seen, and you will not be disappointed.↩}

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#19 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Jack White

January 13, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

No Name by Jack White

It’s safe to say I’d fallen out of love with Jack White. I had his band The Dead Weather’s debut album Horehound at #14 in 2009 (the Bacon Top 31’s inaugural year). Since then, there have been two additional Dead Weather albums, a Raconteurs album, and five Jack White solo albums, none of which landed in my Top 31 favorites of the years they were released. White did appear once as part of another album: he played on Beyoncé’s Lemonade in 2016.

And so it is with immense pleasure and a small amount of surprise that I can say that Jack White released a wonderful new solo record in 2024. Playfully titled No Name, there’s a very good reason why this album has drawn my and others’ attention more than White’s more recent releases: it sounds like old Jack White, the one we all fell in love with in the early 00’s. His original band, The White Stripes, was groundbreaking – the husband and wife performed stripped down garage / blues rock, almost exclusively with Jack playing electric guitar and Meg playing drums. And over 8 years (1999 - 2007), the duo produced six stellar albums.

Meg retired from music in 2011, Jack continued on, but the White Stripes were no longer. The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather, and White’s solo albums since then have all been outside of the pure garage rack ethos. Bigger groups, more full production, seemingly more “crafted” for a wider audience but somehow much less interesting. No Name is not that. Minimal production, fuzzed out guitar, White’s screeching voice – this is a true return to form, and it’s glorious.

Like the White Stripes albums, No Name is a family affair, with White’s current wife, Olivia Jean, from the band the Black Belles, playing bass and drums on three tracks and White’s daughter Scarlett playing bass on two other tracks. White produced the album himself, with a cadre of additional people filling in at poignant spots, playing almost entirely guitar, bass, and drums. Keyboards make an appearance on four of the 13 tracks, and there you have the full album instrumentation.

White has only released one video in promotion of the album, for the song “That’s How I’m Feeling” (featured above). The song features one of the many scathingly loud and raucous choruses on the album. The video is nothing like the Stripes’ groundbreaking video work with Michel Gondry – it’s just simple live shots of Jack White performances. It’ll do.

I’ll be seeing Jack White later this year, and the strength of this album has got me very excited at the prospect of hearing new and old songs from him. For now, this new album will tide me over. Here’s to hoping White produces more of the same in the future!

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#20 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

January 12, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Flight b741 by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

As I wrote in my entry for the band here at #20 in last year’s Top 31 for their two 2023 albums (at #5 last year), I was only recently indoctrinated into the lighthearted cult that is King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Now that another full year has passed since I wrote that, I am fully vested in the band. To whit: I jumped on their latest album, the phenomenal Flight b741, and devoured it as soon as it came out in August; I got to see the band perform a balls-to-the-wall 3-hour set at my favorite summertime venue, The Gorge; and I’ve now bought a ticket, a flight, and a hotel room for a one-night excursion to see the band in another city (San Diego) in 2025. I am 100% all in.

Go back and read last year’s entry (linked above) to learn more about the band and their 15-year history. As is their wont, Flight b741, their 26th album (and surprisingly, the only album they released in 2024), is completely unlike either album they released in 2023. Gone is the barking, driving rhythms of heavy metal and the techno-centric bleeps and bloops. In its place, there’s wailing harmonica, high-energy fuzzed-out guitar, and swinging southern-blues rock & roll. Forget Metallica and Animal Collective, and instead think of Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Black Crowes. It’s a complete 180, but it’s expected from KGLW, and it’s great.

Thus is the power of King Gizzard. These six guys from Melbourne have a knack for adaptation and synthesis. To my ears (admittedly still in elementary school when it comes to KGLW), the only consistent sound across their albums is the “wooo!” from the band’s most consistent frontman, Stu Mackenzie¹.

After having spent many Memorial Day weekends at the Gorge in the 00’s and 10’s for the best-ever music festival (Sasquatch), it holds a special place in my heart. When I saw King Gizzard play there in September, that feeling came back — not just because of the venue, but because of the breadth of music played by the band. With 26 albums in their catalog, and so many genres to pull from, you’d think you’d get a bit of whiplash going from genre to genre to genre. But instead, you’re guided along, each song feeling like it belongs with the previous and the following, as if the band is some aural trail guide taking you on a previously unexplored adventure. We left there feeling as if we’d been to a full music festival, rather than having seen a single band peform.

KGLW also did something completely unheard of for last year’s tour: they had a multi-camera film crew stream every show live on the web for free. And afterwards, anyone could choose to host the live video on their own YouTube channel, again, for free. Eventually the band put the livestreams up on their own YouTube channel (watch “Live at the Gorge ’24”). I found out as I was researching for this article, in the link description for that Gorge performance the band posted the full high-quality audio files from the show for download, again for free. They also provided a separate Dropbox link to be able to download the stems from the show – meaning, anyone could have Cavs’ (Michael Cavanagh’s) drums, or Ambrose Kenny-Smith’s² keyboards singled out from the 3-hour performance, to remix and use however they see fit. All for free. This type of overabundance of goodwill towards their fans goes a long long way in creating the kind of adoration from their fans that evokes the “cult” label.

While being prolific on the tour circuit, they were pretty subdued on the recording front. They’ve only produced one video for Flight b741, linked above, for the song “Le Risque.” But it’s a good video, and it shows just how much fun these guys have together. I’m jealous.

Despite only releasing one album in 2024, later in the year the band released a non-album track called “Phantom Island” and announced that they indeed did have another album in the hopper, that was recorded at the same time as Flight b741. And that post is why I will be flying to San Diego to see them perform later this year – in promotion of the yet-to-be-released album, they’ll be performing with a full 28-piece orchestra, and they decided they weren’t bringing the orchestra anywhere near the Pacific Northwest. So, to them, I go, because of course I do.

It feels as if eventually everyone will become a fan of KGLW. They are infectious, and they produce so many different kinds of music, they’re bound to land on something you like. If you didn’t like last year’s albums, give this year’s album a try. And if that’s not your bag, maybe their 2025 release(s) will float your boat. It’s ok if it takes time; I know eventually everyone will come around.

^{1. A quick aside here to give a shoutout to the anonymous writer on Mackenzie’s wikipedia entry, who quipped, “Mackenzie formed King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard as a casual band for his friends in the Melbourne music scene to play together in without needing to rehearse or practice. They have since recorded 26 studio albums.”↩}
^{2. I’m ashamed to admit I never did get around to listening to Ambrose’s side-project album he made with Jay “GUM” Watson, called Ill Times, but I’ve heard good things about it.↩}

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#21 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — The Decemberists

January 11, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again by The Decemberists

At #21 we find a band I thought we’d never see on the Top 31 again. What’s even more surprising is that there’s at least 3 other bands coming up in the 2024 Top 31 that I would have lost money betting on them never making another appearance. So, I believe kudos are in order for The Decemberists, that merry band of minstrels hailing from Portland, Oregon, for truly surprising longevity, and for producing a truly great album in As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again.

It’s been six years since we last heard from the quintet (I’ll Be Your Girl, #15 in 2018), and it’s the fifth time the band has appeared in the Top 31 (rounding out the five are #18 in 2015, #3 in 2011 and #2 in the inaugural 2009 list). I’m confident had I been making my list since the turn of the century, all four of the band’s even earlier albums would have made an appearance. 22 years, The Decemberists have been making music. And it’s safe to say I’ve been a fan for the entire journey.

I must be suffering from some strong recency bias, as As It Ever Was ranks not only as a great record, it ranks as a great Decemberists record, much better than any of the past, oh, 3 albums. And yet here I am, placing it further down the list than any previous Decemberists album has appeared. Be that as it may, I’m going to stick with the narrative that this new album is a real return to form for the band. I suppose I should have expected that, given the title blatantly saying as such.

All the usual melancholy themes are here: death, darkness, and dread, sung with the same chipper trill I’ve loved for two decades from lead singer/songwriter Colin Meloy. Chris Funk (guitars), Jenny Conlee-Drizos (keyboards, and, more importantly, accordion), Nate Query (bass), and John Moen (drums), have all returned, happily writing and performing complex baroque-pop prog rock music accompaniment.

The band has traditionally produced some great videos to pair with their highly visual songs, but not this time around. The video above is a live version of “Oh No!” produced by the band, and a great Squirrel Nut Zippers-esque song. You can watch the band’s KEXP Live performance to hear a handful of other songs from the album, all great. But if you want to hear my favorite song from the album, you’ll have to tune into an “Official Audio” version from YouTube.

That song is “Joan in the Garden,” and it is a 19 minute, 21 second masterpiece. It has all of Meloy’s favorite words in it, like “firmament,” “mariner,” and “parquet.” It sounds a bit like a lost track from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. And it is wonderful. The Decemberists have excelled at the exceedingly long epic. There first was “California One / Youth and Beauty Brigade,” from their debut album, clocking in at 9 minutes, 50 seconds. Their EP, The Tain, from 2004, a telling of the Irish mythological story Táin Bó Cúailnge, covers the span of 18 minutes, 35 seconds of prog rock bliss. “The Island, Come And See, The Landlord’s Daughter, You’ll Not Feel The Drowning,” (yes, that’s the title of a single song), from 2006’s The Crane Wife, is 12 minutes, 26 seconds long. And that album also has its title song, broken up and switched around across parts “3” and “1 And 2” at 4:18 and 11:24, respectively (15 minutes, 42 seconds total). The Hazards of Love had “The Hazards of Love” parts 1-4 (“The Prettiest Whistles Won’t Wrestle The Thistles Undone,” “Wager All,” “Revenge!,” and “The Drowned”), but in reality the entire album is a single story, clocking in at 58:37. “Joan in the Garden,” from the year of our lord 2024, is better than all of them.

How a band of misfit theater nerds has ever achieved the longevity and accolades that The Decemberists have is beyond comprehension. Colin Meloy is a master storyteller, and the musicians who have long made up the band are masterful in their craft. While I never expected to get another great album from them, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again was a very pleasant surprise, and well worth the wait.

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#22 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — The Smile

January 10, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Wall of Eyes and Cutouts by The Smile

Sometimes I’ll get to the end of the year, export the list of albums I downloaded to my library in Apple Music over the past 12 months, and be surprised to learn upon review that such-and-such album only came out this year (as opposed to earlier). Such is the case with Wall of Eyes, the first of a pair of albums from Radiohead side-project The Smile that were released in 2024. Wall of Eyes came out nearly a year ago, on January 26, and its sister album, Cutouts, on October 4.

The Smile – the trio of Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead, and Tom Skinner on drums – also appeared on the Top 31 with their 2022 debut album, A Light for Attracting Attention, which landed at #15 that year. While Nigel Godrich produced the debut, both of the 2024 albums were produced by Sam Petts-Davies, who previously worked with Yorke on his soundtrack for the movie Suspiria that came out in 2018 (#22 that year) as well as his Confidenza soundtrack, which came out in April this year and will not be appearing on the Top 31 because, frankly, I had forgotten it existed until right now (whoops!). These two The Smile records mark the first time we’re hearing output from the duo of Yorke and Greenwood that was not produced by Godrich since Radiohead’s debut, Pablo Honey, (32 years ago!).

Petts-Davies’ production allows Greenwood, Yorke, and Skinner the freedom to move about, opening the door for a more raw, immediate, and guttural execution than anything you’ll hear on a Radiohead album. Between the two 2024 albums, the latter Cutouts feels more amped up, featuring a number of guitar-driven songs that have Greenwood playing like a kid set loose in a candy store. Currently, my favorite song across both albums comes from this frenzy: “Zero Sum,” which has an appropriately crunchy, digital visualizer created by artist Weirdcore (who created visualizer videos for the entire Cutouts album).

When Wall of Eyes came out, it was ushered into the world with two PT Anderson-directed videos, for “Friend of a Friend” (featured above) and title track “Wall of Eyes.” Outside of those two “proper” videos, the rest of Wall has visualizer videos created by animator Sabrina Nichols and longtime Radiohead visual collaborator Stanley Donwood. I’ve come to realize I’m a much bigger fan of live-action short-film videos as opposed to visualizer videos, which have a place more as the backdrop to a live band than they do as a vehicle to carry a song.

These albums don’t have the overhead that a Radiohead album would, and that rough-around-the-edges feel contributes to a more ephemeral vehicle for Yorke’s always-dreamy vocals. He will always sound like himself, but without the Godrich production and the rest of Radiohead to back him up, I’m guessing I won’t often reach for these two albums down the road. Why would I, when I can just as easily put on any one of Radiohead’s albums and be infinitely more pleased? Despite all that, please don’t be deterred in listening to these alternate-universe Radiohead songs. Even a second-rate effort by Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood is better than a first-rate effort from the other 99% of the music world. It is literally impossible for them to produce anything less. Listen now and enjoy.