#27 on the 2023 Bacon Top 31 — Teenage Sequence

January 05, 2024 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

My love for Teenage Sequence started with a live performance. I was sitting in my car, driving who knows where, and listening to KEXP. Surprisingly, I didn’t switch to something else upon hearing there was going to be a live performance from some band I’d never heard of. By the end of my drive, I was thoroughly impressed with the band.¹

Teenage Sequence is the alter ego of London-born, Texas-living singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Dewan-Dean Soomary. On the record, Soomary was backed by co-producer Kevin VanBurgen, drummer James Gulliver, and Kristin Ferebee (who happens to have been a part of Bacon Review favorites Beirut once upon a time and is now Summary’s wife). In the KEXP performance he was backed by Nick Tamburro on percussion and synths, and Rob Barrett on drums.

If you’re longing for the days of early LCD Soundsystem, where James Murphy wouldn’t sing so much as talk/shout over his wonderfully intricate dance-driven beats, then Teenage Sequence is for you. And this reference to LCD is blatant – upon reading up on Teenage Sequence’s rise in the indie music world, you’ll see numerous comparisons of the album’s opening track “All This Art” to LCD’s “Losing My Edge”. Soomary has taken the comparison in stride, so much so that he opens that song in his aforementioned KEXP performance of the song with the line “I’m losing my edge.” It’s less derivative, more a wonderful, immersive continuation of that music you loved 20 years ago.

^{1. I love the rare phenomenon of hearing a musician perform live before hearing any of their recorded music and instantly falling in love with it. There are many many artists I’ve loved more because I saw them live. But hearing someone for the first time in a live setting, being present in the moment with them and truly hearing them enough to connect with them, that’s something special. KEXP live performances allow you to do that from the comfort of your personal space.↩}

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#31 on the 2023 Bacon Top 31 — Jacknife Lee, Budgie & Lol Tolhurst

January 01, 2024 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

Fifteen years! That’s how long I’ve been tracking my Top 31 albums by year. 15 years honestly doesn’t feel that long. When I started examining, categorizing, and logging what had formed my listening habits across the previous 12 months, I was 35 years years young. By the time I’m done reviewing the albums that shaped my 2023, I’ll be 50.

The little imposter syndrome voice in the back of my head says opinions on current music from a 50-year-old are less relevant now than they would have been 15 years ago. But I also know that the Bacon Review audience is special (you’re special!). Most of you have been following the Top 31 for years, your musical tastes growing older alongside my own. I do strive to push my own listening boundaries ever outward, and I am able to bring my fifty years of listening experience to more easily see the differences and similarities I hear in new music. Having an ever-expanding library of reference points is key to the enjoyment of new music here at The Bacon Review.

The music of 2023 continued its march into new and uncharted territory. But as you’ll see as the Top 31 unfolds, new music by past Top 31 bands proved to be the mainstay in my speakers. A quick count on the expected 2023 Top 31 has only 11 or 12 new-to-the-Bacon Review artists. That’s just under half of the new albums that will be featured over the next month. It feels like an imbalance to me, but I haven’t done a comparison to past Top 31s – maybe they’ve all been like that, or maybe there’s been a natural slow decline in new artists featured as the Top 31 gets older and the list of featured artists grows longer. There’s probably some mathematic principle that refers to the decline of new elements introduced to an annually-recurring list phenomenon. If you know what that phenomenon is called, please let me know.

Let’s get on with it, shall we?

Los Angeles by Jacknife Lee, Budgie & Lol Tolhurst

We’ll be starting the 2023 Top 31 off with an album from a handful of names you likely don’t recognize, but whose instrumentation you most definitely have heard before. Garret “Jacknife” Lee is an electronic artist who has been producing albums for U2, Bloc Party, Crystal Castles, The Editors, and even R.E.M.’s final studio album, Collapse Into Now (#30 in 2010). Peter Clarke, aka “Budgie,” is best known as the drummer for Siouxsie & the Banshees. And finally, Laurence "Lol" Tolhurst was the founding drummer for The Cure (he was asked to leave after Disintegration due to increasing complications from his alcoholism). Kevin Haskins, the drummer for Bauhaus, was originally in the project but had to bail early for a Bauhaus reunion tour, forever robbing the resulting album of ever achieving its full gothic glory.

Tolhurst and Budgie met while touring with Siouxsie and The Cure way back in 1979, and Los Angeles marks the first official songs they’ve created together as well as being their each of their solo debuts. Lee got involved in production on the album when Haskins left the project and the remaining drummers were feeling their work was too steeped in their gothic past. Starting anew in 2019, the trio wrote a suite of distinctly non-gothic instrumental tracks as the foundation for their budding album. The “band” was still trying to sort out what the songs would be when the pandemic hit in March 2020.

A couple of the tracks ended up in the hands of James Murphy (of LCD Soundsystem), who agreed to write lyrics and sing on the album. From there, the trio brought in a number of big names: the Edge (U2 guitarist), Bobby Gillespie (Primal Scream’s singer), and Isaac Brock (Modest Mouse’s singer). Joe Talbot from Idles was even going to appear on the album, but had to back out due to conflicting schedules. The resulting Los Angeles album feels a bit scattered in places, given the distinct vocal stylings of the singers who ended up performing on the record. But if you love Murphy, Gillespie, or Brock, I highly recommend checking out the album.

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#11 on the 2017 Bacon Top 31

January 21, 2018 by Royal Stuart

american dream by LCD Soundsystem

Just like the Fleet Foxes at #12, the band at #11 broke up at the beginning of the decade, only to reunite to great triumph years later. But where the Fleet Foxes went away in 2011 with a whimper, James Murphy and his band LCD Soundsystem went out in the biggest way possible, playing their “last show ever” at Madison Square Garden along with four warm-up shows at Terminal 5 in New York. The build up to those last shows was even followed by a documentary about the experience. It features many non-performance shots of Murphy in his daily life as well as him being interviewed by Chuck Klosterman, called Shut Up and Play the Hits (it’s great, if you haven’t seen it I recommend it highly). The band was 100% dead by the end of 2012.

Or so it seemed. Three years later, the rumors started flying around the internet that LCD Soundsystem was going to be reuniting in 2016. Thankfully, the rumors proved to be true. They reunited, and then proceeded to record this album, american dream, which is truly great. It sounds as if the band never went anywhere, picking up exactly where they left off in sound and stature. This isn’t the first time LCD Soundsystem has appeared on the Top 31. Their previous album, This is Happening, was #21 that year (looking back, I should have ranked it much higher, probably around #11 or #12, as I continue to listen to it fairly regularly).

Much like past LCD albums, there are one or two klunker songs, but overall it’s superb. The same influences are there (David Bowie being most prominent), with the same unmistakable sound and James Murphy’s near-spoken lyrics. If you’ve liked past LCD Soundsystem albums, you’ll like this one every bit as much.

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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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