#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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#29 on the 2023 Bacon Top 31 — Arlo Parks

January 03, 2024 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

My Soft Machine by Arlo Parks

Breaking away from the parade of old white dudes we saw at #30 and #31, here comes Arlo Parks with her sophomore record, My Soft Machine. “Soft” is the optimum word here – there’s no denying Parks’ songwriting prowess, but the end result often paints a rose-tinted, soft-focused soundscape of pop.

Parks (whose real name is Anaïs Oluwatoyin Estelle Marinho) saw her debut album, Collapsed in Sunbeams, land at #14 two years ago. Machine picks up where that stellar, Mercury-prize winning album left off, and Parks shows that she’s grown in the interim. A little more edge, a little more bite, and even closer to what I’ve liked from similar artists, like Japanese Breakfast.

If you liked Arlo Parks’ previous album, you’ll like this one, too. You can check it out on the playlists below.

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#3 on the 2021 Bacon Top 31 — Japanese Breakfast

January 29, 2022 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

Jubilee by Japanese Breakfast

Despite striving myself on my punctuality, I’m often late to the party. Japanese Breakfast, a band of indefinite size and location fronted by Korean-born, Oregon-raised renaissance woman Michelle Zauner, is a prime example. Their album, Jubilee, that I have so valiantly placed at #3 on my Top 31 for the entirety of 2021, did not enter my audio purview until December 28, 2021. If I’d posted my Top 31 in December, as I used to do until a few years ago, this album would have not been included at all.

Instead, I learned about it thanks to the fantastic KEXP community, who voted this phenomenal third album from the band as their #1 album of the year. I didn’t even hear the live broadcast of that announcement. I read about it a few days later, decided to listen to the album that had struck everyone’s fancy, and was subsequently left trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces of my exploded brain that had scattered around the living room.

This is pop music in its purest, most exciting form. Zauner’s wit, song structure, and bubbly voice – equal parts Grimes and Jenny Lewis – weave a tapestry of pure joy for ten solid songs. The peak of the joy comes at song #2, “Be Sweet,” featured in the video shown above. That chorus – “Be sweet to me baby. I want to believe in you, I want to belieeeeeeve” – is so sickly sweet, I die.

The last song on the album, “Posing for Cars,” is the least pop-like song on the album, but the extended, Doug Martsch-esque guitar solo showcases Zauner’s skills on the instrument. And skilled she is. In addition to having penned three albums with Japanese Breakfast, Zauner is also the director for nearly all of their music videos. And these aren’t some cheap band-performance videos. They’re full-on stories, sometimes strung together into epics. The other two videos from Jubilee are “Posing in Bondage” and “Savage Good Boy,” featuring Micheal Imperioli (best known as Christopher Moltisanti from the Sopranos), and is meant to be a prequel to the story shown in “Bondage.” Zauner has also directed videos for Better Oblivion Community Center, Charly Bliss, and Jay Som.

As if that weren’t enough, she released her first book in 2021. Crying in H Mart: A Memoir debuted at #2 on the NYTimes Best Seller List in April. And it’s now being adapted into a film by Orion Pictures, of which the soundtrack will be supplied by Japanese Breakfast.

Jubilee has been nominated for Best Alternative Music Album, and the band for Best New Artist Grammys (not sure how that works, given that this album is their third as a band). Pitchfork, in their 7.8/10 review of Jubilee, declared 2021 as “Jbrekkie Season,” and I have to agree. This doesn’t feel like the top – this feels like we’re only at the beginning of something huge, like, the birth of a new Michelangelo. I absolutely cannot wait to see what comes next.

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4. A Way Forward by Nation of Language
5. Things Take Time, Take Time by Courtney Barnett
6. Little Oblivions by Julien Baker
7. Valentine by Snail Mail
8. sketchy. by tUnE-yArDs
9. A Very Lonely Solstice by Fleet Foxes
10. Hey What by Low
11. Local Valley by José González
12. Head of Roses by Flock of Dimes
13. The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows by Damon Albarn
14. Collapsed in Sunbeams by Arlo Parks
15. Loving In Stereo by Jungle
16. Flying Dream 1 by Elbow
17. Screen Violence by Chvrches
18. Blue Weekend by Wolf Alice
19. Mainly Gestalt Pornography by Pearly Gate Music
20. Peace Or Love by Kings of Convenience
21. These 13 by Jimbo Mathus & Andrew Bird
22. Mr. Corman: Season 1 by Nathan Johnson
23. Home Video by Lucy Dacus
24. I’ll Be Your Mirror: A Tribute to The Velvet Underground & Nico by Various Artists
25. Siamese Dream by Fruit Bats
26. NINE by Sault
27. Observatory by Aeon Station
28. The Monster Who Hated Pennsylvania by Damien Jurado
29. A Beginner’s Mind by Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine
30. Where the End Begins by Knathan Ryan
31. Private Space by Durand Jones & The Indications

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