#27 on the 2022 Bacon Top 31 — Ethel Cain

January 05, 2023 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

Preacher’s Daughter by Ethel Cain

The second new-to-the-Top 31 artist this year is Ethel Cain, the fictional creation of Hayden Silas Anhedönia, from Tallahassee, Florida. Her debut album, Preacher’s Daughter is my #27 of 2022. While I love the song “American Teenager” shown in the video above, don’t be fooled into thinking her music and this album is full of similar pop treacle. Anhedönia’s typical musical style is slow and sultry, and she can be found sandwiched between Lorde and Lana del Ray in the “Jack Antonoff-esque” section of your nearest Tower Records. While she does sound similar to those other artists, Anhedönia differs from her Antonoffian competition in that she produces all her own songs.

She grew up in a tight-knit Southern Baptist community, her dad a deacon at their church, where she and her mom sang in the church choir. This small-town religious upbringing, and how it felt being a suppressed and ostracized non-binary gay teenager in the South is felt throughout the album, if not in lyric than in feel. On top of those already difficult social circumstances, according to Pitchfork she unveiled her true self as a transgender woman at age 20 via Facebook. This ultimately freed her to be everything she needed to create her art. Amazingly, in the interviews I’ve read and watched, she makes it clear that her upbringing was not all pain and difficulty, despite any preconceptions you and I may bring to the table about being transgender and raised in a majorly religious Southern Christian home. There were hard times, for sure, but she also is careful to point out all the good she’s carried forward with her from her days of daily churchgoing.

The dark, dulcet tones that run through the album are punctuated by extremes in volume and excitement, from upbeat songs like “American Teenager,” to the droning, heavy choruses of “Thoroughfare” and “Sun Bleached Flies.” Together, there’s a large soundwave that blissfully compels you through the full 76 minute opus. In this KEXP live performance from August of this year, Anhedönia talks about the direct influence that the KEXP live sessions from Florence and the Machine and Daughter (#11 in 2013 and #17 in 2016) had on her sound.

I encourage you to listen to Ethel Cain’s KEXP session. She belts three stripped-down versions of songs from Preacher’s Daughter (plus “Crush” from her equally great 2021 EP Inbred) while playing the piano and her band backs her up on guitar and percussion. It’s otherworldly. Then pick up her debut. It’s a perfect listen for those long cold winter nights.

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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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#20 on the 2019 Bacon Top 31 — Lana Del Rey

January 12, 2020 by Royal Stuart

Norman Fucking Rockwell! by Lana Del Rey

I’m as surprised as you are that I’m putting a Lana Del Rey album on the Top 31. But believe me, this is one of the best albums of the year! You can blame Cat Power for putting Del Rey on my radar, with the wonderful duet “Woman” from her top 10 2018 album Wanderer (#7 that year). Norman Fucking Rockwell!, her sixth release including her 2010 self-titled debut, is the first album of Del Rey’s that I’ve paid any attention to, and I’m so glad I did.

Del Rey is fully embedded in the “sadcore” side of alternative rock (of which Cat Power is the “queen”), and this album does not betray that notion. It’s slow, depressing, and dark, but it doesn’t ever fall into self-loathing or goth (which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing).

Del Rey, whose real name is Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, has always created music in this vein, with a particular “cinematic” quality to it. The video above, titled “Norman Fucking Rockwell,” takes that to its logical conclusion, turning three of the songs on the album into a 14-minute short film, less a music video and more a parable. It‘s well worth watching the whole thing.

If you’ve not yet heard this album, don’t let whatever your brain associates with the name Lana Del Rey discolor your opinion of it. Put it on, close your eyes, and hear it for what it is: a beautiful, perfectly executed album.

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21. Our Pathetic Age by DJ Shadow
22. Juice B Crypts by Battles
23. Pony by Orville Peck
24. Hyperspace by Beck
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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#7 on the 2018 Bacon Top 31 — Cat Power

January 25, 2019 by Royal Stuart

Wanderer by Cat Power

Cat Power has been soothing the world with her sultry voice for over twenty years, since her debut Dear Sir in 1995. The trajectory of her creative output has steadily slowed since that first album, having three releases between 1995-1996, then two releases two years apart, two releases three years apart, one four years after that, and then finally Wanderer, her tenth album, six years later. Despite ten albums in 23 years, only two of those have been released since the Top 31 began in 2009, and I don’t think I’ve once mentioned her in that span. Her 2012 album, Sun, did not impress me. And yet, I’ve listened to her music pretty regularly since her critically-acclaimed 1998 breakthrough album, Moon Pix, recorded with a couple members of the Dirty Three to great effect. She did have a track on the oft-mentioned Dessner-brother produced Red Hot compilation Dark Was the Night, which was #10 in 2009, and that’s the closest I’ve ever come to discussing Cat Power.

This post has been a long-time coming, I suppose. Her real name is Chan Marshall, and apparently she was discovered opening for Liz Phair in 1993 by members of Sonic Youth and Two Dollar Guitar. That’s a good way to get started on the right foot in the music business. Since the above-mentioned Moon Pix she’s had a slew of amazing albums that all would have been on the Top 31 had it existed, including 2003’s You Are Free (which happens to feature Dave Grohl and Eddie Vedder) and The Greatest in 2006 (featuring phenomenal Mempis-based studio musicians for an entirely unique feel).

Marshall has a way of stripping down a song to its bare essence, drawing you ever closer to the speaker in an attempt to hear the parting of her lips and the dancing of her tongue on the back of her teeth. In addition to her own fantastic songs, she is the master of the cover, having released two full albums of covers (The Covers Record in 2000 and Jukebox in 2008). Her gift is to make these songs her own, barely recognizable from the original. My favorite track on Wanderer is actually a cover as well, of of Rihanna’s 2012 song “Stay”. You must hear this song — thankfully there’s a video for you to be able to do just that.

The video above, for the song “Woman,” features Lana Del Rey on harmonies and background vocals. It was the first single for this new record, and it does a good job of summing up Cat Power and her ups and downs over the years quite well:

I’m a woman of my word, now haven’t you heard?
My word’s the only thing I’ve ever needed
I’m a woman of my word, now you have heard
My word’s the only thing I truly need

Her word, above all else, is what has carried her through many different phases of her life, and will continue to do so. If you’ve not heard of Cat Power before now, you’ve been living under a rock. Wanderer is a perfect way to get into her, and that album will bleed into her previous records quite nicely. You’d best get started — you have a lot of ground to cover.

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8. Tell Me How You Really Feel by Courtney Barnett
9. The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs by Wye Oak
10. Ruins by First Aid Kit
11. Cocoa Sugar by Young Fathers
12. Loner by Caroline Rose
13. Big Red Machine by Big Red Machine
14. I’ll Be Your Girl by The Decemberists
15. The More I Sleep the Less I Dream by We Were Promised Jetpacks
16. Joy as an Act of Resistance by IDLES
17. Hell-On by Neko Case
18. Superorganism by Superorganism
19. Living in Extraordinary Times by James
20. Thank You for Today by Death Cab for Cutie
21. Black Panther: The Album by Kendrick Lamar
22. Suspiria (Music for the Luca Guadagnino Film) by Thom Yorke
23. Merrie Land by The Good, the Bad & the Queen
24. Room 25 by Noname
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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