#2 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Waxahatchee

January 30, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Tigers Blood by Waxahatchee

It is surprisingly difficult to reread my review of Waxahatchee’s last album, Saint Cloud, my #1 album of 2020. That album came out March 27 that year, just as the world was locking down. This was the first year of Covid, with (only) 400,000 deaths. Saint Cloud was the blanket that kept us warm, the unexpectedly bright star in that darkness. 2024 wasn’t nearly as dark, as Covid is mostly controlled, having left the world scarred and scared. And here as I write this at the end of January 2025, we’re in a different kind of dark times, unsure where the world is headed. “Unsettled,” as a vibe.

We’re so lucky to have Katie Crutchfield and her band to help prop us up and give us the energy we need to carry on. Like Katie to her sister Alison, Tigers Blood is very much a twin to Saint Cloud. Crutchfield brought back Brad Cook to produce the album (he also plays bass on every song aside from one). His ability to bring the coziness of the recording space into these songs is impeccable as always. You could easily play both albums back to back and have no real indication where one album ends and the other begins, aside from one notable exception: the backing vocals of one MJ Lenderman.

You may recall Lenderman, whose recent solo album was featured at #9 this year. His dry drawl is a perfect lower-register match to Crutchfield’s strong twang. Lenderman’s guitar appears across every song on the album, and he provides exquisite harmonies on four of them, often singing an unexpected harmonic tone underneath but not hidden from the forefront. The first single from the album, “Right Back To It” has Lenderman’s voice so prominent that he received a “ft. MJ Lenderman” credit in the song title. Released just over two months before the album came out, it was a strong indication of where Waxahatchee was headed.

Another highlight of Lenderman’s backing vocals is the “title song,” a slow, depressing-in-a-good-way dirge that ends with the entire band lending their voices to the chorus. I challenge you to zone in on Lenderman’s voice when you can pick it up underneath Crutchfield. The choices he makes for the harmony line are entirely unique and surprising. It makes me want to go back and give his band Wednesday’s 2023 album Rat Saw God another proper listen.

The highlight for me on the album is also the most sparse, “365.” I first truly fell for Waxahatchee on her song “Chapel of Pines” from the 2018 EP Great Thunder. It’s a simple song, just an acoustic guitar and Crutchfield’s strong, dripping-with-emotion voice planted firmly in your ear. This is where Waxahatchee shines brightest, when she is at her most intimate. “365” is similar in tone – simple acoustic baritone guitar from Brad Cook, organ from his brother Phil, Lenderman on a second acoustic guitar, and drummer (and Jeff Tweedy’s son) Spencer Tweedy playing a lone cymbal, everything drawn back to let Crutchfield’s voice proceed unhindered. The song is a gut punch, describing a person whose whole being is wrapped up in their broken-beyond-repair partner:

“I catch your poison arrow. I catch your same disease. Bow like a weeping willow, buc-kle-in’ at the knees, beg-gin’ you ‘please.’ If you fly up beyond the cosmos, it’s a long way to fall back down. Ya always go ’bout this the wrong way, and I’m too weak to just let you drown. So when you kill, I kill, When you ache, I ache. We both haunt this ol’ lifeless town When you fail, I fail When you fly, I fly, And it’s a long way to come back down.”

Crutchfield’s own voice doubles up her lead vocals, going up even higher on the verse above. It is such an unbelievably wrenching baring of emotion, you can feel throughout your entire being this person’s anguish at being stuck in this situation.

There is not a bad song on Tigers Blood. You can watch videos for the much more amped up and rocking “Bored,” evoking sounds of Rilo Kiley¹, and the more traditional slow country “Much Ado About Nothing.” Better yet, you should watch Waxahatchee’s latest “NPR Tiny Desk Concert” from December, 2024. This is their third appearance in the series, having appeared back in 2013, young, solo on guitar, and rough around the edges, and again with a special “Tiny Desk (Home) Concert” in April 2020, with her boyfriend Kevin Morby (another Top 31 alum – #3 in 2022²).

Waxahatchee has been on a massive wave since I started following them shortly after the release of their 2018 EP. The audience keeps getting bigger, and Crutchfield’s reach keeps getting wider. This year she’s been nominated for a Grammy, for best Americana album. The category is full of names I don’t recognize, aside from the heavy hitter T. Bone Burnett, who I imagine would be a lock with the Grammy voters. But maybe we’ll be able to see Katie sharing that stage with Beyoncé or Taylor Swift or Kendrick Lamar on February 2. If not, I’m fairly certain this won’t be her only opportunity. Here’s to looking forward to the next one!

^{1. I’ve learned today that Rilo Kiley, led by Top 31 alum Jenny Lewis (#24 in 2014) is reuniting and touring this summer – I’m going to assume Waxahatchee leading the currently indie rock scene into alt.country heaven is what has made that happen.↩}
^{2. Crutchfield showed up in 2022 as well, as half of the duo Plains with Jess Williamson on their fantastic I Walked With You a Ways at #13.↩}

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#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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#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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#4 on the 2023 Bacon Top 31 — Caroline Polachek

January 28, 2024 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

Desire, I Want to Turn Into You by Caroline Polachek

Every year for the past few years the Bacon Top 31 family has latched onto a single dance/pop-driven woman-led artist that has carried us through the year. Last year it was Beyoncé, the year before that, Japanese Breakfast, Sylvan Esso in 2020, 2019: Lizzo, 2018 had three, with Chvrches and Janelle Monáe and Christine and the Queens all in the Top 10. 2023 was no different. Caroline Polachek’s unbelievably good Desire, I Want to Turn Into You is the Bacon Review’s most-loved pop album of 2023.

Caroline Polachek has been around the music scene for quite some time, but only in the last 4 years or so has she started to see the kind of attention her presence deserves. You may remember her from her ’00s and ’10s band Chairlift, whose biggest hit was in 2009 (“Bruises,” which you may recognize thanks to its repeated refrain “I tried to do hand stands for you.” Just watch that video and see a mid-20s Polachek doing her thing). While remaining in Chairlift, Polachek released her first solo album, Arcadia, under the pseudonym “Ramona Lisa.” Chairlift released their final album in 2016 and broke up after their final tour in 2017, but not before Polachek had released her second solo album, Drawing the Target Around the Arrow, this time under her initials, CEP, while also appearing on other artist’s work, such as Charlie XCX.

But it wasn’t until 2019’s Pang, released finally under her full, given name, where Polachek started to find her real niche. I haven’t listened to Pang, yet, but my sources (aka: online music sites and wikipedia) tell me it was “well-received” and “critically acclaimed.” My first recognition of the “Caroline Polachek” version of Polachek came in 2021, shortly after she released the single “Bunny is a Rider.” It’s a fast-paced, ear-worm of a song, and if you watch the video you’ll hear why I instantly fell in love with it. Throughout 2022 she released a handful of additional singles: “Billions,” “Sunset” (featured above), and “Welcome to My Island.” By the time Desire, I Want to Turn Into You was released on Valentine’s Day, 2023, thanks to those early-released singles I’d already played a third of the album on repeat for the better part of a year.

“Sunset” is the standout for me. Flamenco-inspired, the song features an auto-tuned Polachek singing an otherworldly, wordless chorus. The song came out just two weeks before Season 2 of one of my favorite shows, White Lotus, came out on October 30, 2022. I don’t remember which I heard first: “Sunset” or the theme song to the show, but the two songs will forever be entwined in my brain. Listen for yourself (the video for “Sunset,” above, and the theme song to White Lotus Season 2), and I dare you to not feel the two songs were both made by some alien intelligence trying to seduce us.

A lot of the songs on the album put some affectation on Polachek’s voice that may make you think she couldn’t possibly produce the range on her own. Thankfully, we have her Tiny Desk Concert from October 2023 to prove us otherwise. She has the range and the talent — the affectation played into the album is there merely for added affect.

Despite her age (38) and the length of time she’s spent in the industry, there’s still some subtle awkwardness in how she moves in her videos. Watch the only other video she’s released from the album, for her song “Smoke,” and maybe you can see it, too. That extremely-subtle-but-still-there uncomfortableness in dancing for the camera reminds me of Taylor Swift. No matter how big or comfortable with they get with being in the spotlight, there’s something endearing about that little bit of “I’m just a regular person like you.”

Polachek may very well just be getting started with Desire. But after a nearly 20-year career in the music business, this could very well be the mountaintop that she chooses to exit the spotlight from, going out very much on top. That would be ok, too. She has proven to be a chameleon, capable of multitudes, and I am here for it.

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#1 on the 2022 Bacon Top 31 — SAULT

January 31, 2023 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

Air, 11, AIIR, X (Angel) EP, Earth, Today & Tomorrow, and Untitled (God) by SAULT

Yes, my #1 album of 2022 is actually six albums and an EP. It’s my Top 31 and I do what I want. But also, if you heard any or all of these albums, you’d understand why I can’t pick just one¹.

SAULT are an enigma. They are a musical collective, made up of an unknown number of people, led by who smart people are 99% sure is producer Dean Josiah Cover, professionally known as Inflo, most famous for working with Bacon Review alum Michael Kiwanuka (#10 in 2019) and British rapper Little Simz². Nobody in the band has given an interview, presented a photo of themselves as part of SAULT, or created a single music video. They are nowhere, the anti-Beyoncé, an R&B, hip hop, house, and disco-fueled puzzle, and these 6.5 albums collectively represent the best the music industry had to offer in 2022.

Between 2019 and prior to 2022, SAULT had released five albums. (Their first two albums, 5 and 7 were jointly #7 in 2019. Their third and fourth albums, Untitled (Black Is) and Untitled (Rise) were jointly #5 in 2020. NINE was #26 in 2021, and if you recall, this album was only available for download / streaming for 99 days, and it is now frustratingly unavailable everywhere.) In April of 2022, the collective surprised the world by releasing a modern classical album, devoid of any vocals, called Air. On October 10, they put out an EP called _X_ that had a lone, 10-minute track on it. And then, on October 31, they posted this on Twitter and Instagram:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by SAULT (@saultglobal)

The next day, they provided a link to a password-protected WeTransfer page that allowed anyone who accessed it a free, high-quality download of five brand new albums, a total of 3 hours and 40 minutes of bliss.

I haven’t loved everything SAULT has created. Air, their all-orchestral classical album from early in 2022, was so jarring and out of left field, I couldn’t ever connect to it. But when they released “Angel,” the lone, 10-minute song on the _X_ EP, (and featured in the audio YouTube link above), I’d found a new obsession. It is their best track, period. It has three parts to it, starts off in reggae, leads through a gospel choral arrangement, and ends in a gentle acoustic realm. It is pure magic.

The five albums released on November 1 are strewn with fantastic, genre-spanning music. My favorites are “Morning Sun” and “Together” from 11; “The Return” and “Above the Sky” from Today & Tomorrow; “The Lords With Me” and “God Is In Control” from Earth; the disco-tinged “Faith” from Untitled (God). They did claim these five albums were “an offering to god,” and yes there’s a lot of theology within, but music is my church of choice, and this is the most eclectic religion you’ll ever encounter.

SAULT’s mystery may soon be vanquished. On November 19, the collective posted to their Twitter and Instagram, asking “If we were to do a live show…………which songs would you want to hear?” Nothing more has come of the posts, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see SAULT show up on a festival lineup sometime this summer. Nobody has any idea what they’ll do on stage. Maybe they’ll pull a Daft Punk and hide their faces. Or maybe they’ll put up a scrim and perform behind it, broadcasting cartoon versions of themselves onto it, a la Gorillaz. Or maybe they’ll be the next holographic Tupac. I’m on the edge of my seat waiting to find out.

SAULT’s full repertoire isn’t for everyone — I’d even make the case that the entirety of it is most definitely not for anyone. But there is something in here for each of us to love. The amount of music they produced in 2022 alone, and the musical span of what they released, is unmatched by any other artists. Seek out what you can, and then join me in the scavenger hunt for the rest. Who the hell knows where they’re going next.

^{1. Additionally, it’s become common practice around these parts to award an artist for every album they put out, collectively, that year.↩}
^{2. Little Simz released another Inflo-produced album, her third, titled No Thank You, on December 19, 2022. With Inflo the main person in SAULT, and Little Simz having appeared numerous times in across their albums (including the wonderful “Free” on Untitled (God)), I considered including that album as part of this #1 parade. ↩}

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2. RENAISSANCE by Beyoncé
3. This Is a Photograph by Kevin Morby
4. Lucifer On the Sofa by Spoon
5. Palomino by First Aid Kit
6. We've Been Going About This All Wrong by Sharon Van Etten
7. SOS by SZA
8. Wet Leg by Wet Leg
9. Chloë and the Next 20th Century by Father John Misty
10. Big Time by Angel Olsen
11. Ants From Up There by Black Country, New Road
12. Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To the Sky by Porridge Radio
13. I Walked with You a Ways by Plains
14. The Last Goodbye by Odesza
15. A Light for Attracting Attention by The Smile
16. Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers by Kendrick Lamar
17. Inside Problems by Andrew Bird
18. Laurel Hell by Mitski
19. Full Moon Project by Phosphorescent
20. Skinty Fia by Fontaines D.C.
21. I Love You Jennifer B by Jockstrap
22. Too Much to Ask by Cheekface
23. Dripfield by Goose
24. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You by Big Thief
25. And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow by Weyes Blood
26. NOT TiGHT by DOMi & JD BECK
27. Preacher’s Daughter by Ethel Cain
28. Live at KEXP, vol. 10 by Various Artists
29. All You Need Is Time by Daisy the Great
30. Cool It Down by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
31. CAPRISONGS by FKA twigs

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#2 on the 2022 Bacon Top 31 — Beyoncé

January 30, 2023 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

RENAISSANCE by Beyoncé

There are megastar pop stars, and then there is Beyoncé. Of the pile of the musicians you could claim are “on top of the world,” from Kendrick Lamar to Taylor Swift, Queen Bey is standing atop that pile with her flag firmly planted. She has won 28 Grammys from 88 nominations across her 25 year career, making her the most honored singer ever (across both of the outdated male and female categories). As a solo artist and as part of the groundbreaking Destiny’s Child, her albums have sold a combined 260,000,000 times worldwide. That is nearly enough sales so that every American, from your 100-year-old grandma to that newborn who was just born yesterday, could have their own Beyoncé record.

She’s achieved this level of fame and glory not by following the path of those who came before — Madonna, Janet Jackson — but rather, defining the path for those to follow. Beyond her pace-setting music, she is a vocal advocate for Black Lives Matter, going so far as to appear at the 2016 Super Bowl halftime show with back up dancers dressed up as Black Panther Party representatives. She has put her excessive cultural weight behind other groups as well, such as when she spoke out against those (including our 45th president) who would remove the rights of transgender youth throughout public schools.

RENAISSANCE, her seventh — and best — album, marries all of the above into a tour de force unlike no other. Simultaneously a “dazzling tribute to underground and under-appreciated Black culture” and “the sound of a once-in-a-generation superstar performing at her peak” (according to critics Kate Solomon from i and Vernon Ayiku from Exclaim! respectively), RENAISSANCE is the strong dose of dance-infused medicine our Covid-19 stricken society needed. This isn’t Lemonade part 2 (#6 in 2016) – there are no genre-hopping scorned lovers on this record. As Julianne Escobedo Shepherd from Pitchfork said:

“Renaissance is inherently about bodies undulating in the dark, under strobes; sexual agency; and the Black queer and trans women who are both politicized and the most endangered people among us.”

Despite oozing sex appeal throughout her career, this album is Beyoncé at her most carnal. Shepherd goes on to say “Beyoncé has never been this horny in public,” and I concur. Nor has Beyoncé ever been this vulgar. I have a staunch “no clean versions” policy in the music I listen to. My children have grown up in a house that revels in all language, from Macklemore to Run the Jewels to Lizzo. But all those are tame when placed next to RENAISSANCE, to the point that I gave pause a couple times when putting the album on. The album opens with a quickly repeated “Please, motherfuckers ain’t stopping mе.” “Might I suggest you don’t fuck with my sis” is heard prominently shortly thereafter. “We getting fucked up tonight. We gon’ fuck up the night” is the repeated chorus just a couple songs later. And we’ve only made it four songs into the 16-song, hour-long set. It’s gloriously raunchy.

At its heart, this is a dance album from the drop. Songs blend from one to the next, as if a DJ was eloquently spinning one hit after another together at the best dance night you’ve ever been to. But these aren’t existing songs — these are expertly assembled, sampled, historically-, culturally-, and musically-significant artists pulled together to represent a whole that is a million times greater than its individual parts. Grace Jones next to Skrillex, trans black television personality Ts Madison up against Right Said Fred — the whole album is a true marvel. What sounds like a glorified Girl Talk album on paper is something completely different. Just listen to “CUFF IT” blend into “ENERGY” and then bleed into the album’s first single, “BREAK MY SOUL”¹. Be sure to check out the video above — Beyoncé’s team pulled it together for when RENAISSANCE was certified platinum. The video is a quick-cut collection of TikTok and other fan-made videos of people of all shapes and sizes, genders and sexuality dancing to “BREAK MY SOUL,” and it’s so damn empowering, you’ll find yourself fighting back happy tears.

RENAISSANCE is a phenomenal record. If you’ve not heard it yet, I command you to do so. Nobody can deny the greatness of it. It’ll be surprising to my wife (and potentially others) that it’s not my #1 album this year, given how much we played it in our house. Any artist able to beat Queen Bey this year had to go to extraordinary lengths, and indeed, the artist at #1 did. You’ll read exactly how tomorrow. For now, put RENAISSANCE on repeat, crank the volume, and I’ll see you tomorrow, sweaty and exhausted.

^{1. This is the first downfall I’ve seen when it comes to YouTube Music – each of these three videos has a disclaimer at the beginning regarding the dangers of flashing lights for some people. It’s a few-seconds pause at the beginning of the song, thereby preventing the listener from going seamlessly between the tracks of this album. This is a fairly significant downside, given how this album is meant to be heard as one can’t stop, won’t stop, non-stop beat.↩}

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3. This Is a Photograph by Kevin Morby
4. Lucifer On the Sofa by Spoon
5. Palomino by First Aid Kit
6. We've Been Going About This All Wrong by Sharon Van Etten
7. SOS by SZA
8. Wet Leg by Wet Leg
9. Chloë and the Next 20th Century by Father John Misty
10. Big Time by Angel Olsen
11. Ants From Up There by Black Country, New Road
12. Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To the Sky by Porridge Radio
13. I Walked with You a Ways by Plains
14. The Last Goodbye by Odesza
15. A Light for Attracting Attention by The Smile
16. Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers by Kendrick Lamar
17. Inside Problems by Andrew Bird
18. Laurel Hell by Mitski
19. Full Moon Project by Phosphorescent
20. Skinty Fia by Fontaines D.C.
21. I Love You Jennifer B by Jockstrap
22. Too Much to Ask by Cheekface
23. Dripfield by Goose
24. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You by Big Thief
25. And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow by Weyes Blood
26. NOT TiGHT by DOMi & JD BECK
27. Preacher’s Daughter by Ethel Cain
28. Live at KEXP, vol. 10 by Various Artists
29. All You Need Is Time by Daisy the Great
30. Cool It Down by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
31. CAPRISONGS by FKA twigs

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#7 on the 2022 Bacon Top 31 — SZA

January 25, 2023 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

SOS by SZA

You won’t find the amazing album at #7 on my list on any other Top Albums of 2022 lists, but not because you’ve not heard of it. It’s because it came out on December 9, right when all the prominent music magazines and blogs were already publishing their best-of lists. This album likely won’t appear on any of those lists at the end of 2023, either, because it would be strange to feature an album that came out in 2022 in a Best of 2023 list. It took me a few years of compiling my own Top 31 lists to figure it out: if your album comes out in December, or really even in November, it will be hard or impossible to rank it in any meaningful way. So compilers of lists are left with either making a wild assumption (“I’ve heard this album for a day, it’s definitely better than X number of albums already considered the best this year”), a flat out guess (“Two songs have been released from this album that is supposed to come out in the next week. It will be better than these X albums”), or simply not listing them at all. That’s the only option for any reputable publication.

Or you can do what I do: wait until the year is, you know, complete before ranking the albums from the full year. Or maybe just call your list “The Top 50 albums from the first 11 months of 2022.” Delaying like I do is still not perfect — an artist releases an album on December 30, chances are I’m not going to hear it or be able to include it in my Top 31. I’m not sure what drove the decision to release the long-awaited SZA album on December 9, but I have to believe it was a calculated business decision. So much business is wrapped up in a SZA release, there are lots of players, weighing lots of options, and I suppose making it onto the Best Of lists is not how the money is made. I just checked, and this album has been #1 on the Billboard charts (meaning it has sold more than any other album) for the last five weeks (that’s the last 2 weeks of December, and the first 3 of 2023).

So, clearly people are finding SOS, SZA’s 2nd full-length album, and first since her 2017 debut, Ctrl, despite it not appearing on any end-of-year lists. But at least it’s appearing on my list. I can feel confident in the exceedingly modest number of streams I’ll have been personally responsible for for the megastar. At just over an hour long, this album is jam packed with 23 amazing songs spread across numerous genres, from R&B to hip hop, pop to grunge. Rather than feeling like the work of a single artist, it plays more like a really good Top 40 yet commercial-free radio station, cycling through the hits of the day¹.

SZA, whose full name is Solána Imani Rowe, was born in St. Louis. Despite having only two full length records to her name, she is an international pop sensation who has been making popular music for the last 10+ years. She connected early with the likes of Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar, and while I’m confident her songwriting prowess and phenomenal voice would have propelled her to stardom eventually, having the door opened by those two can‘t hurt. My first taste of SZA came on the Black Panther soundtrack (#21 in 2018). The duet she sings with Lamar, “All My Stars,” is the best song on that album, in no small part because of the powerful chorus led by SZA. I didn’t listen to Ctrl, although I wish I had.

The best comparison I can make for this SZA release is to Frank Ocean’s Blonde (#4 in 2016). Like SOS, Blonde bounces all over the place, has strange digital artifacts thrown in throughout, and is a fantastic hip hop / R&B-based album. If you loved that album like I do, you will love SOS like I do.

Rumors and announcements about the release of SOS came out as early as 2019. A mix of pandemic buying patterns, production shifts, and a massive outpouring of talent from SZA herself no doubt slowed up the release all the way to nearly missing 2022 entirely. A few singles had been released well before the album came out. “Good Days,” was the first to be released, in 2020, a great song whose video features SZA as a dancing mushroom² (I’m not sure what business decisions forced the single that preceded this one, the great “Hit Different,” was not included on the SOS release.) The next single, “I Hate U,” came out in December 2021, just over a year prior to the release of the album, and with a video starring LaKeith Stanfield. The official version of her song “Shirt,” was released as a single just over a month prior to the album release. The video stars SZA alongside LaKeith Stanfield, in a bloody shoot-em-up video, a la Quentin Tarantino. On January 6, SZA released the single for my favorite song on the album, “Nobody Gets Me,” which is eerily reminiscent of Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You,” and probably why I like it so much. And finally, SZA released the single for “Kill Bill,” on January 10, 2023. The video is amazing in its ability to recreate key scenes from the pair of movies, recast with SZA in the seminal Uma Thurman role.

My favorite non-single from the album is “Ghost in the Machine,” on which Bacon Review favorite Phoebe Bridgers (#3 in 2020) sings along with SZA. Bridgers and SZA are similar in a couple key aspect: they’re not shy about guest starring on someone else’s song; and they make any song they appear on better. I will (and have) go out of my way to track down “with SZA” or ”…Bridgers” songs, and am continually rewarded for doing so. As long as they keep producing their own songs, I’m all for them spreading the love around.

I’ve written more than enough about this album. If you’re not convinced by now, there’s nothing else I can say that will sway you. Listen to this album, all 67 minutes of it. You’ll see.

^{1. There is exactly one song I cannot stand on the album. I’m such a dedicated fan of the form, I don’t usually single out any one song and say “this is not for me, I’m skipping it.” The song in question is the lone rock pop song, “F2F,” which SZA wrote with Bacon Review favorite Lizzo (#1 in 2019). Check it out for yourself, but you’ve been warned.↩}
^{2. As I write this, we’re two episodes into the great new HBO series The Last of Us, and seeing SZA as a mushroom here gives me entirely different feelings than it would have two weeks ago.↩}

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8. Wet Leg by Wet Leg
9. Chloë and the Next 20th Century by Father John Misty
10. Big Time by Angel Olsen
11. Ants From Up There by Black Country, New Road
12. Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To the Sky by Porridge Radio
13. I Walked with You a Ways by Plains
14. The Last Goodbye by Odesza
15. A Light for Attracting Attention by The Smile
16. Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers by Kendrick Lamar
17. Inside Problems by Andrew Bird
18. Laurel Hell by Mitski
19. Full Moon Project by Phosphorescent
20. Skinty Fia by Fontaines D.C.
21. I Love You Jennifer B by Jockstrap
22. Too Much to Ask by Cheekface
23. Dripfield by Goose
24. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You by Big Thief
25. And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow by Weyes Blood
26. NOT TiGHT by DOMi & JD BECK
27. Preacher’s Daughter by Ethel Cain
28. Live at KEXP, vol. 10 by Various Artists
29. All You Need Is Time by Daisy the Great
30. Cool It Down by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
31. CAPRISONGS by FKA twigs

There are many ways to listen to the 2022 Bacon Top 31. Subscribe now and enjoy the new albums / songs as they are revealed on the countdown!

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A single song selection pulled from each album.

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#24 on the 2018 Bacon Top 31 — Noname

January 08, 2019 by Royal Stuart

Room 25 by Noname

I’ve spoken before about the distinct lack of gender parity within my musical tastes; I’ve never had more than ten woman-led acts on any Top 31. And gender is not the only place where the Bacon Review lacks diversity. Without doing a formal count, it looks like I’ve not had more than 20 non-white acts within the entire 10-year run of the Bacon Top 31. Not just in one year, but in all years, combined. The Venn diagram between those two minority representations within the Top 31 is consequently miniscule: I count six women of color across all past Top 31s — Sharon Jones (R.I.P.), Mitski, Grace Love, Beyoncé, FKA Twigs, and Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes.

For the last few years, I’ve been pushing my musical boundaries, embracing albums that might never have made it into my purview 10, 15, 20 years ago. Enter Chicago’s Fatimah Nyeema Warner, better known by her stage name Noname. Female, African-American, jazz and neo-soul fueled rap is nowhere near my comfort zone. And yet, here we are.

While Room 25 is Warner’s debut, the word “debut” is dubious here. She’s been on the scene since 2013, when she appeared on the second mixtape from Chance the Rapper (whose own 2016 mixtape, Coloring Book, would definitely have been on the Top 31 that year had I only heard it in time — when listening outside of my comfort zone, it can take a little bit longer for the music to reach my ears). Since then, Warner made guest appearances on many people’s own albums, and released her own mixtape in 2016 that I have yet to hear.

Regardless of your musical proclivities, there’s something for everyone on this album. If you’re reading this and you’re a friend of mine, then it’s probably not something you’d normally listen to. But give it a shot — I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

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25. WARM by Jeff Tweedy
26. God's Favorite Customer by Father John Misty
27. Vessel by Frankie Cosmos
28. For Ever by Jungle
29. Twerp Verse by Speedy Ortiz
30. Remain in Light by Angélique Kidjo
31. This One’s for the Dancer & This One’s for the Dancer’s Bouquet by Moonface

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#4 on the 2016 Bacon Top 31

January 09, 2017 by Royal Stuart

(video above is NSFW)

Blonde by Frank Ocean

I’m not gonna lie: I like the sound of extreme autotune. So long as it’s being used to push the limits, calling attention to its own “digital-ness,” then I’m all for it. You heard this quite prominently in Francis and the Lights, back at #21 on this year’s Top 31. And here we are all the way up at #4 with another heavily autotuned masterpiece, Frank Ocean’s Blonde.

Like Beyoncé at #6, Frank Ocean is a name I knew but didn’t pay much attention to before 2016. This is only Ocean’s 2nd release, coming out four years after his widely-acclaimed pop debut Channel Orange. I listened to Channel Orange back in 2012, but dismissed it as being way too over-hyped. I’m glad I didn’t give up on Ocean for good, because Blonde kills.

Not to beat a dead horse, but probably for the same reasons I love Beyoncé’s album so much, the endless sea of stellar partnerships makes this album so great. There are a TON of guest artists on this album, from André 3000, to Beyoncé herself, James Blake, Rostam Batmanglij (featured at #19), and even a string arrangement by Jonny Greenwood (featured at #10). I’m pretty sure there are about 80 collaborators / personnel listed on the wikipedia page for this album). You could fill an entire Grammy awards just with the people on it.

But unlike Beyoncé’s album, this is not something for everyone. The song structure is a bit on the bizarre (which is another reason why I like it so much), but when it clicks, it’s fantastic. There are even a couple spoken-word “songs” on it that I skip outright. But I encourage you to give this at least three listens before dismissing it. If you’re like me, it’ll sink it’s claws in well before you finish the third lap, and then you won’t want to stop listening.

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5. Are You Serious by Andrew Bird
6. Lemonade by Beyoncé
7. Teens of Denial by Car Seat Headrest
8. Goodness by The Hotelier
9. The Mountain Will Fall by DJ Shadow
10. Junun by Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood & The Rajasthan Express
11. The Hope Six Demolition Project by PJ Harvey
12. Amen & Goodbye by Yeasayer
13. Sea of Noise by St. Paul & The Broken Bones
14. You Want It Darker by Leonard Cohen
15. Painting Of A Panic Attack by Frightened Rabbit
16. Why Are You OK by Band Of Horses
17. Not To Disappear by Daughter
18. Sunlit Youth by Local Natives
19. I Had a Dream That You Were Mine by Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam
20. ★ by David Bowie
21. Farewell, Starlite! by Francis and the Lights
22. This Unruly Mess I’ve Made by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
23. LNZNDRF by LNZNDRF
24. Puberty 2 by Mitski
25. Light Upon the Lake by Whitney
26. A Corpse Wired for Sound by Merchandise
27. Away by Okkervil River
28. case/lang/veirs by case/lang/veirs
29. Love Letter for Fire by Sam Beam & Jesca Hoop
30. Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future by Underworld
31. Preoccupations by Preoccupations