#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 2023 Bacon Top 31 — The Chemical Brothers

January 15, 2024 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

For That Beautiful Feeling by The Chemical Brothers

The Bacon Review has been a fan of Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands’ big-beat electronica outfit The Chemical Brothers for a very very long long time. Their stellar debut album, Exit Planet Dust, came out in 1995, and I loved it and their subsequent releases (1997’s Dig Your Own Hole and 1999’s Surrender). You might think music that resonated with someone in the heart of their 20s youth may no longer relate to the nearly-50-year-old father of two he has become in the subsequent decades, but you’d be very wrong. Granted, the six albums that came out between 1999 and 2019 didn’t land as squarely in my day-to-day listening. But there’s something about the band’s stellar tenth album, For That Beautiful Feeling, that hits different.

This is the Chemical Brothers back in their 1990s glory. Intense bass beats, sampled and repeated vocals about love and life, big sweeping crescendos that take over your body no matter where you are when you hear them — what you remember most about the band is all mostly there. The only real difference is the Beth Orton and Noel Gallagher cameos have been replaced by the French singer/songwriter Halo Maud and everywhere-man Beck.

The band has released a handful of videos from the album:

The above “Live Again” features a dancer stuck in a loop, continually stepping out of her trailer into an ever-changing landscape, brought on by some barely-scene tentacle-laden alien.
No Reason is a great song shown to the green-screen escapades of a dancing marching band
Goodbye features a colorful couple in love
Skipping Like a Stone ft. Beck is the most ambitious video, but takes the idea of a skipped stone with a hero complex to its illogical extreme.

If you liked The Chemical Brothers back in the day, and if your ears can still hear and your body can still move, then you should definitely check out Feeling. And if the band is new to you, give it a listen to hear what people were dancing to 30 years ago. I’m genuinely curious to hear a current 20-something’s take on the style of dance music that was created 10 years before they were born. Beyoncé, with her most recent house-driven masterpiece, RENNAISANCE (#2 just last year), and others have been giving everyone a taste of what 90s dance music was like. The Chemical Brothers were one of the originators. It’s time for us all to get re-educated.

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#10 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Car Seat Headrest

January 22, 2021 by Royal Stuart

Making a Door Less Open by Car Seat Headrest

You’ve made it! Welcome to The Bacon Review’s Top 10 of 2020. At #10, we have recent Bacon Top 31 stalwarts Car Seat Headrest, with their worst album of the last five years. No, that’s not a joke. Making a Door Less Open, the band’s twelfth studio album and fourth I’ve listened to, is not as good as their last two albums, Teens of Denial, which hit #7 back in 2016, and Twin Fantasy (Face to Face), which made the top 3 in 2018. It’s pretty awesome when a band’s lesser work is still good enough to crack the Top 10 in a given year.

Making a Door Less Open sounds quite a bit different, musically. The band’s lead singer and principal songwriter Will Toledo still has his signature lazy delivery, but the instrumentation he’s built behind his lyrics sounds quite different. Where the past albums sounded fully analog, the new stuff is clearly digital, with interesting cuts and splices thrown on top of computer-driven alteration of Toledo’s voice and guitars, and a repetitive drum beat backing it all up. A couple songs devolve quickly into noise-rock that is difficult to crack into, but when it works, it knocks your socks off.

The opening tracks, “Weightlifters” and “Can’t Cool Me Down,” (shown in the above lyric video), are fairly typical Toledo, complete with highly repetitive choruses. But then the album shifts into entirely new and confusing territory, evidence of a man who’s cracking under the pressure his fame has brought upon him. Whereas his past work has been about how difficult the lives of the people around him have been, Door is a more personal, present affair. “Hollywood,” for instance, is intense and cacophonic, where we hear Toledo screaming “Hollywood makes me wanna puke!” over and over again.

Further evidence of Toledo’s inner turmoil is revealed in the few non-Car Seat Headrest things that surfaced between this and the last album. For instance, Toledo along with drummer Andy Katz created a fully electronic side project called 1 Trait Danger, led by Toledo wearing a fully-covering gas mask with LED-activated eyes, and full albums and an entirely fictitious backstory created for the band’s Bandcamp page. It’s a chameleon-like shift reminiscent of Beck’s stranger departures over the past couple decades. Probably should have left that door closed.

Making a Door Less Open, however, is well worth your time. If you’ve not listened to Car Seat Headrest in the past, start with Twin Fantasy (Face to Face) before diving into this one. But if you’re a fan, Door is an interesting shift that I think you’ll love.

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1. Saint Cloud by Waxahatchee
2. Fetch The Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple
3. Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers
4. folklore + evermore by Taylor Swift
5. Untitled (Black Is) + Untitled (Rise) by Sault
6. RTJ4 by Run The Jewels
7. Shore by Fleet Foxes
8. Serpentine Prison by Matt Berninger
9. The Ascension by Sufjan Stevens
10. Making a Door Less Open by Car Seat Headrest
11. Dreamland by Glass Animals
12. A Hero’s Death by Fontaines D.C.
13. Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez by Gorillaz
14. Mordechai + Texas Sun EP by Khruangbin
15. Introduction, Presence by Nation of Language
16. Free Love by Sylvan Esso
17. Miss Anthropocene by Grimes
18. 3.15.20 by Childish Gambino
19. Women In Music Pt. III by HAIM
20. The Third Mind by The Third Mind
21. Superstar by Caroline Rose
22. Impossible Weight by Deep Sea Diver
23. We Will Always Love You by The Avalanches
24. Ultra Mono by IDLES
25. Visions of Bodies Being Burned by clipping.
26. Thin Mind by Wolf Parade
27. The Loves of Your Life by Hamilton Leithauser
28. Palo Alto (Live) by Thelonious Monk
29. color theory by Soccer Mommy
30. Fall to Pieces by Tricky
31. Quarantine Casanova by Chromeo

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#13 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Gorillaz

January 19, 2021 by Royal Stuart

Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez by Gorillaz

Damon Albarn is a musical chameleon. He got his start with Blur in the early 90s (whose 8th album The Magic Whip was on the Top 31 at #21 in 2015). He’s also appeared on the Top 31 with The Good, The Bad and the Queen (#23 in 2018). And what started as a side project in 2005, Gorillaz has lately become Albarn’s main gig. The band’s seventh album, Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez appears here at #13 for 2020.

I’d lost interest in Gorillaz, despite my ongoing love for Albarn’s music. I haven’t loved anything he’s done with Gorillaz since their 2005 Danger Mouse-produced sophomore album Demon Days, and consequently the four albums prior to Song Machine that were released between 2010 and 2018 did not make the Top 31 cut. I’m glad that 2020 saw the release of another great Gorillaz album.

For those of you living under a rock, Gorillaz is a “virtual” band, with four fictional animated characters illustrated by Tank Girl-creator Jamie Hewlett. Musically, the band’s songs are principally created by Albarn, with a large collection of support characters and guest stars coming in to flesh things out. Since 2016, the band’s song creation duties have been shared with a third member of the band, Remi Kabaka Jr., who mans the lead percussion and produces the songs. Together they create a wide variety of digitally-created music with Albarn taking the lead on vocals, often singing with guest starts.

Song Machine started at the beginning of 2020 as a web-only music video series, a collection of singles released monthly with guest stars appearing on each song. There was no intention of releasing the songs as a full album. But, much like all the other plans launched in the first couple months of 2020, things changed. And we’re all the better for it.

The guest stars on Song Machine, Season One are what propelled this album into a prominent spot of my 2020 playlist. Robert Smith, Beck, St. Vincent, Elton John, and Peter Hook (among many many others) appear on the album. Not only do they lend their voices to these songs, but the songs they appear on shift tonally to the range that these voices are known for. So the album often sounds less like a Gorillaz album, and more like a movie soundtrack filled with great pop songs.

The album is very easy to love. Even if you’ve not been a fan in the past, I recommend checking it out. You just may surprise yourself.

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#24 on the 2019 Bacon Top 31 — Beck

January 08, 2020 by Royal Stuart

Hyperspace by Beck

It’s difficult to compare how much I like an album that came out at the end of November 2019 to one that came out in January of that same year. I just don’t have the proper amount of time to listen properly to an album when I have to start counting down the year just a little over a month later. This album came out a week before Thanksgiving. It got sidelined immediately for Christmas music. So, the chances are much higher on this album, Beck’s 14th studio album, that I’m going to wish I’d ranked this album in a different place than here, at #24 out of all the albums I listened to in 2019.

I’m going to stick with this digression a little bit longer. Looking back at the Beck albums that have made the Top 31 in its 11-year run, I can’t say I agree with any of the placements I’ve given his albums. I ranked the utterly amazing Morning Phase at #26 back in 2014 (way too low, as I listen to this album at least once every couple of months). I ranked 2017’s Colors at #8, and while that’s not too far off, I probably should have put it a little lower than I did, when I look back and see LCD Soundsystem, Fleet Foxes and Big Thief all ranked much lower that year. And in 2009 I clearly had no idea what I was doing, because I ranked his full-album cover of Velvet Underground & Nico at #7(!). I’ve not listened to that album again since.

Out of all three of these, the Morning Phase ranking at #26 is most troubling. That album came out in February that year, so I had plenty of time to determine that I should love that album forever. And yet… I’ll never stop being amazed at how time and perspective can change one’s opinion of the music they’ve listened to. </digression> Let’s get back to his newest record.

Beck is a chameleon of music, although his more recent output seems to be falling into a pattern (a good pattern, but a pattern nonetheless). So much so that I’m inclined to say that Hyperspace is a “typical” Beck album. It has all the things you’ve come to enjoy in his music: Endlessly catchy hooks; Quiet, introspective and ethereal sounds; A mastery of the form. What more can you ask for?

On the flip side, there’s nothing that wows me here. It’s a great album, but there are so many better Beck albums to listen to, I’m not sure I’ll ever get fully into this album and listen to it for years to come. But don’t let my digression and subsequent lackluster review distract you (it’s probably just the month-long cold I have talking) — check out this new album. You won’t regret it. But maybe I will.

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25. Eraserland by Strand of Oaks
26. Dogrel by Fontaines DC
27. You’re the Man by Marvin Gaye
28. Big Wows by Stealing Sheep
29. 1000 gecs by 100 gecs
30. In the Morse Code of Brake Lights by The New Pornographers
31. Radiant Dawn by Operators

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2009-2018 Top 31s

#8 on the 2017 Bacon Top 31

January 24, 2018 by Royal Stuart

Colors by Beck

You all know Beck. He’s been a musical chameleon for nearly 25 years, starting with his massively successful single “Loser” in 1994. His last album, Morning Phase, has grown on me considerably since I ranked it #26 in 2014. And his 2009 project, Record Club, when he covered the entirety of Velvet Underground’s debut album, I ranked it #7 that year (Hmmm… I should go back and re-listen to that).

Beck can seemingly turn anything he does into gold. According to wikipedia, he “became known for creating musical collages of wide genre styles … he musically encompasses folk, funk, soul, hip hop, electronic, alternative rock, country, and psychedelia.” Like I said, a musical chameleon. I’ve been a fan of most of his work since he began, and it never ceases to amaze me when I’m playing something older of Beck’s and whoever is listening with me is surprised to learn that it’s him. Apparently, everybody has Beck pigeonholed into the mold of that one song they know by him (which could be any number of disparate songs). So when they’re presented with any of his other work, they’re thrown off.

Colors, his 13th album, gives us a dancey, disco-fueled version of Beck, led by the fantastically good song “Wow,” featured above. Go ahead and hit play, I’ll wait.

Did you hit replay when it was done? How many times? When this song first came out in June 2016 I was blown away, and then was disappointed to learn that no new album had been mentioned. 16 months later, Colors finally came out, and it delivered. If you haven’t yet heard it, I command you to do so.

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9. Mental Illness by Aimee Mann
10. The Wild by The Rural Alberta Advantage
11. american dream by LCD Soundsystem
12. Crack-Up by Fleet Foxes
13. Famous Last Words by The True Loves
14. Cry Cry Cry by Wolf Parade
15. Pure Comedy by Father John Misty
16. Shake the Shudder by !!!
17. La La Land (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by La La Land
18. The Underside of Power by Algiers
19. What Now by Sylvan Esso
20. 50 Song Memoir by The Magnetic Fields
21. Plunge by Fever Ray
22. DAMN. by Kendrick Lamar
23. Capacity by Big Thief
24. The Tourist by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
25. CCFX EP by CCFX
26. Woodstock by Portugal. The Man
27. MASSEDUCTION by St. Vincent
28. On the Spot by Hot 8 Brass Band
29. A Deeper Understanding by The War on Drugs
30. Planetarium by Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner, & James McAlister
31. A Moment Apart by Odesza

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2009-2016 Top 31s

The Chemical Brothers — Go

July 31, 2015 by Royal Stuart

My love of electronic music has waned since its heyday in the mid-90s (back when we called it “techno”), but there are a few acts from that time that still get me excited when they release a new album. The Chemical Brothers are one such act, and they’ve just released their eigth studio album, Born in the Echoes.

I’m only just now listening to it for the first time, but if the rest of the album is as good as “Go” (don’t judge a song by its video), then it’s definitely going to be one of the year’s best. In addition to Q-Tip (from A Tribe Called Quest), Beck and Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent) make notable appearances on the album.

In the 90s (when I was a poor college student) I would have had to wait until I found this album in the used-CD bins at the local record shop, to which every trip meant leaving with a stack of new music in my hot little hands. Nowadays the equivalent is a flurry of album purchases on a single day, monthly or so. It’s not the same, and I long for the days of rifling through the used sections, but who has room or need for all that plastic? Not me. But a new Chemical Brothers album? Hell yes.

#26 on the 2014 Bacon Top 31

December 06, 2014 by Royal Stuart

Morning Phase by Beck

In 2002, the artist at #26 released an album that ended up at #3 on my Top 10 albums of the Oughts. He then went on to release three more enjoyable albums in the remainder of the decade, before taking the longest musical hiatus of his long career: six years from the release of Modern Guilt in 2008 to the release of the wonderful album Morning Phase this past February.

Beck is somewhat of a musical enigma. He’s released over-the-top poppy disco, down-in-the-dumps country, and indie-rock fueled rap. But it’s the orchestral side of Beck that really gets me. Sea Change had that, in 2002, and so does 2014’s Morning Phase. And that is by design, as Beck brought in a number of the musicians that performed on Sea Change to record the new album. It is very much a sequel, produced 12 years and four albums later.

But it’s not as good as Sea Change. It’s impossible for it — or almost any album — to be as good as that. But for 2014, it’s better than all but 25 albums in my estimation. And if you like Beck, you certainly loved Sea Change, and you’ll love this album, too.

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27. Hungry Ghosts by OK Go
28. Run the Jewels 2 by Run the Jewels
29. Cosmos by Yellow Ostrich
30. Teeth Dreams by The Hold Steady
31. With Light & With Love by Woods

2009-2013 Top 31s