#26 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Wolf Parade

Thin Mind by Wolf Parade

Starting up this review, the first thought I had was “it wouldn’t be a Top 31 if a Spencer Krug or Dan Boeckner band wasn’t on it.” While that’s not entirely true, with the latest Wolf Parade album here at #26, these two men have now appeared on 66% of my Top 31s: three times combined as Wolf Parade (#17 in 2010, #14 in 2017, and now Thin Mind in 2020; Krug thrice as Moonface (#27 in 2011, #23 in 2013, #31 in 2018); and Boeckner twice (with The Divine Fits at #11 in 2012 and The Operators at #31 just last year). The men are prolific at making great rock music.

Thin Mind is Wolf Parade’s fifth LP, and they continue to build upon the same formula that brought them to mass stardom with Apologies to Queen Mary back in 2005. There isn’t much “new” about this new album — it’s still unmistakably them, thanks to the unique vocals from Krug and Boeckner. According to the album description by their label, the always-great Seattle-based Sub Pop Records, the subject matter of this collection of songs is all about how “…the way that being around too much tech has made our focus thin” according to Krug, but I would never know it. My love of Wolf Parade is purely about the music and the voices-as-instruments of the two lead singers. The same guitar-driven hooks dominate, the bouncy Modest Mouse-like choruses get you banging your head in just the right way.

Wolf Parade was prominently on my brain in 2020 not just because of this great new album. They were also one of the last bands I saw live (February 11, 2020) before our ability to gather anywhere in public dried up thanks to Covid-19 lockdowns. The band always puts on a stellar live show, and while I was sadly missing watching live performances throughout the remainder of the year, the memory of that show, on The Showbox stage, has helped carry me through the drought. Putting the album on in my house takes me back there, every time.

Even though you weren’t there with me, maybe the album can do the same for you. Put it on, close your eyes, and imagine you’re standing on the upper level of The Showbox, ear-plugged, just to the left of the sound board, with a great view over the heads of the crowd on the floor. Now lean back and enjoy the experience. Soon we’ll get to go back there in person.

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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

Subscribe to the 2020 Bacon Top 31 playlist: Apple Music / Spotify
All Top 31s

#31 on the 2019 Bacon Top 31 — Operators

Happy new year, and new decade! I honestly can’t believe it’s already 2020. It seems not that long ago we were all frightened about what Y2K would bring when that clock struck 12:00 — that was 20 years ago! Everyone knows that time speeds up as we get older (due to your personal experiences growing less and less unique the more you experience throuhgout your lifetime). It’s just a small but significant part of being human.

The same is true of music: the older we get, the smaller our individual world of undiscovered music gets. Happily, a huge amount of new music is dumped into the world every year, making it impossible to ever feel that you’ve heard it all, even if what you believe constitutes “good” music gets narrower as you age. That’s just the result of your tastes being refined, your knowledge of musical theory (whether studied in classrooms or absorbed through audio osmosis — audsmosis?) expanded, and the avenues through which and opportunities to hear new music dwindled.

As we get older, it would be very easy to stop listening to new music. I’m sure a lot of friends that are my age or older have done just that, content in the 40+ years of music they’ve added to their collections. I purposefully push against that friction; much like a daily crossword is meant to keep the brain functioning better well into old age, I believe a continuous, healthy dose of new music helps to keep those neurons firing at a youthful clip.

The Top 31 is my own personal battle against the inevitable atrophying of my brain. Because I know I’ll be cataloging things at the end of the year, it pushes me to want to always first check Apple Music’s “New Music” category when I’m putting on something to listen to. Most of the music I find in there is not great, but if I’m compelled to listen to something more than once, it gets added to my library and is easily found in my “Recently Added” category. 95% of the time, when I want to hear something, I start there.

But listening to new music for most of my available music-listening time has a downside, too: forgetfulness. I couldn’t possibly recall what new music I was listening to a month ago, let alone five or more years ago. And that’s where the Bacon Review Top 31 comes in. This 2019 Top 31 is my eleventh countdown. That’s 11 years, each with 31 albums of history, available for review at my fingertips. Looking for an older album to listen to but not sure where to start? Look back at the 2013 countdown (for instance) and pick something great that you’d forgotten about.

As every year nears its end, I toy with the idea of stopping the countdown. It’s a hefty chunk of work, it puts an added burden on me and my family throughout the month of January, and I could easily just leave it all behind. But then I remember past years, and how happy it makes me feel when a friend of mine tells me they’ve enjoyed listening to something that they first read about here. That alone is motivation enough to keep going. And so here we are, a brand new decade, and another year’s full of music to recap. Let’s dive in with #31:

Radiant Dawn by Operators

I’ve always fallen on the Spencer Krug (#27 in 2011, #23 in 2013, and #31 in 2018) side of the Wolf Parade (#17 in 2010 and #14 in 2017) fence, but Dan Boeckner, former lead singer of the Handsome Furs, former co-lead of the Divine Fits (#11 in 2012), and current lead of Operators, has been a quiet force of musical output for 20 years now.

I’m fairly certain that Operators should still be considered a “side project,” (to Wolf Parade’s “main project”), but that doesn’t mean Operators music is any less brilliant. Close your eyes and listen — you’d be hard pressed to guess that this isn’t just another Wolf Parade album. Boeckner, like his Wolf Parade co-leader Krug, is a Canadian singer/songwriter with an insatiable appetite for creating new music. Over the past 20 years, Boeckner has released 17 different EPs and albums, under five different monikers. His voice, affected and unmistakably his, is like a strong sour ale: an acquired taste.

If you’ve liked Wolf Parade, Divine Fits, Handsome Furs, or even Operators’ previous output (this is the 2nd full-length release from the project — the first was 2016’s Blue Wave), then there’s no reason for you to not like this album.

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Subscribe to the 2019 Bacon Top 31 Apple Music playlist
2009-2018 Top 31s

#3 on the 2014 Bacon Top 31

They Want My Soul by Spoon

And now for a band that has been in near-constant rotation since the early 2000s, but has never appeared in full here in the Top 31. The band’s lead singer, Britt Daniel, showed up as part of Divine Fits at #11 in 2012, but this is the first time Spoon has made the cut. They are still in the running for my Top 10 Albums of the Oughts, and excepting a goose-egg of an album in 2010 (Transference, which didn’t even make the Top 31 that year), Spoon has been amazing for the better part of two decades.

I hold the band’s 4th album, 2002’s Kill the Moonlight as my favorite of the bunch, but Girls Can Tell, Gimme Fiction, and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga are all bunched up as a close second-favorite. Given enough time, 2014’s They Want My Soul, the band’s eighth album, could damn well prove to be their best. It is solid from start to finish, and harkens back to their early-2000s heyday. The band has remained fairly static since that time, with Daniel on guitars and lead vocals, Jim Eno on drums, and Eric Harvey on keyboards and guitars. A couple of other guys fill out the current lineup, Rob Pope on bass and Alex Fischel on additional keyboards and guitars. The original lineup formed in Austin back in 1993, and only Daniel and Eno have remained with the band in that time.

If you’re not familiar with Spoon, please crawl out from under that rock you’re currently stuck beneath and educate yourself. They play guitar-heavy indie rock. These are intelligent songs, sometimes noisy, sometimes a little psychedelic, but almost always brilliant. “Knock Knock Knock” is my favorite from the album, and in August I linked to a live performance of the song they did at KEXP that you simply must see to believe. My second favorite, “Do You,” was posted here back in September. “Inside Out,” the video shown above, isn’t the best song on the album, but it’s a damn fine song and gives you an idea just how good this album is.

If you’ve liked Spoon in the past, you will love this album. If you’re not familiar with Spoon, this album is an excellent way to fall in love with the band I’ve loved for a very long time. Either way, buy it now. You won’t regret it.

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4. Are We There by Sharon Van Etten
5. And The War Came by Shakey Graves
6. Nicky Nack by tUnE-yArDs
7. Not Art by Big Scary
8. The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett by Eels
9. Owl John by Owl John
10. LP1 by FKA Twigs
11. Black Hours by Hamilton Leithauser
12. Give the People What They Want by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
13. Lost in the Dream by The War On Drugs
14. Warpaint by Warpaint
15. Heal by Strand of Oaks
16. Stay Gold by First Aid Kit
17. This is All Yours by ∆
18. Brill Bruisers by The New Pornographers
19. Only Run by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
20. Augustines by Augustines
21. El Pintor by Interpol
22. I Never Learn by Lykke Li
23. Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes by Thom Yorke
24. The Voyager by Jenny Lewis
25. Voices by Phantogram
26. Morning Phase by Beck
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

#11 on the 2012 Musical Bacon Calendar

A Thing Called Divine Fits by Divine Fits

Sometimes an album appears to go unnoticed, no matter how much I thought it would achieve great success. This album, A Thing Called Divine Fits, was one of those albums. It was created by what could be called a “super group” — where two successful groups unexpectedly form one collective and put out an album together.

Divine Fits, a combination of parts from Spoon (lead singer Britt Daniel), Wolf Parade/Handsome Furs (lead singer, guitarist Dan Boeckner), and the New Bomb Turks (drummer Sam Brown), should have killed. This album is solid from start to finish, taking on a similar format as Wolf Parade, where Boeckner sings lead, then the next song Daniel takes over. I’m not sure if the songwriting is broken up similarly, but I don’t really care.

All the songs are great, the guitar solos are awesome, and at times the album sounds like an extension of all of the bands mentioned above. That is due mainly to the unique sounds of the lead vocalists, but even the chord structures and drum beats feel very familiar. These guys’ other bands are so beloved, it’s astounding to me that this album hasn’t taken off more than it has.

Maybe it’s a slow burner. Maybe they have terrible PR, and nobody has heard of it. Maybe people think it sucks and my positive opinion of the album is an outlier. I hope that the band continues to work together and create interesting music. And I hope they come back through town (I missed them the last time). This is not a lineup people should be ignoring. Do your part. Download now.

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12. Some Nights by fun.
13. Tramp by Sharon van Etten
14. Fear Fun by Father John Misty
15. Love This Giant by David Byrne and St. Vincent
16. To The Treetops! by Team Me
17. The Master: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Jonny Greenwood
18. There’s No Leaving Now by The Tallest Man On Earth
19. Transcendental Youth by The Mountain Goats
20. A Church That Fits Our Needs by Lost In The Trees
21. Hospitality by Hospitality
22. Free Dimensional by Diamond Rings
23. History Speaks by Deep Sea Diver
24. A Different Ship by Here We Go Magic
25. Negotiations by the Helio Sequence
26. Moms by Menomena
27. The Sound of the Life of the Mind by Ben Folds Five
28. Shields by Grizzly Bear
29. Every Child A Daughter, Every Moon A Sun by The Wooden Sky
30. Fragrant World by Yeasayer
31. Reign of Terror by Sleigh Bells

What is the Bacon Calendar?

2011 Musical Bacon Calendar
2010 Musical Bacon Calendar
2009 Musical Bacon Calendar