#21 on the 2023 Bacon Top 31 — Pale Jay

January 11, 2024 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

Bewilderment by Pale Jay

Soul music has had its ups and downs here on the Top 31. From Seattle’s own Pickwick hitting #1 back in 2011, to Leon Bridges and St. Paul & the Broken Bones, to the goddess herself, Sharon Jones in 2017 (RIP), the genre remains alive and well. Enter Pale Jay, a newcomer to the field, with his debut album, Bewilderment. With a voice like Lee Fields or Curtis Mayfield, and easy-living music evocative of Khruangbin, Pale Jay will have you leaning back in your chair and blissfully dreaming about easy breezy summer days.

There’s not much information out there about Pale Jay. He has no wikipedia page, he plays anonymously, and his web presence is boiled down to a single Bandcamp page. He does maintain an active Instagram account, a la SAULT or Banksy. The music on his page only goes back to his first EP, back in October 2021. And aside from a couple singles, this short-but-sweet debut album (with eight songs and coming in at just 24 minutes) is all we get of him. I did find a site reviewing this album who claims Pale Jay was trained as a jazz vocalist and pianist and calls southern California home.

There have been a few artists over the years here on the Top 31 who have chosen to keep their identity a mystery. Some choose to wear obfuscating makeup, such as The Knife or Fever Ray (2009 and 2017). Others choose to stay out of videos and remain unnamed, like Sault (2019, 2020, 2021, and who could forget their SEVEN albums that were #1 collectively just last year). Or there’s artists like Orville Peck, who have worn a mask in public for their entire musical career, and have never dropped character when the public is watching or listening.

Pale Jay fits into the Peck line of anonymity. But whereas Orville Peck has been around long enough that people have been able to put together who his true identity is (thanks to matching up the tattoos he wears all over his body), Pale Jay remains entirely anonymous for the time being. He wears a red balaclava in public (reminiscent of Pussy Riot, who choose to remain relatively anonymous for fear of retribution from the Russian Government), along with a white bucket hat with a red plastic brim. Those combined generally with an all-white turtleneck and white pants, he is effectively covered from head to toe aside from his (yes, pale-skinned) hands, ankles, lips, eyes, and sometimes forearms. (It’s only a matter of time before someone identifies him by the bird tattoo on his left inner elbow.)

You can watch videos Pale Jay has created for each song on the album, each featuring the artist in his signature costume, mostly walking / biking / boating in one long take to each of these songs.

There’s also this video for a beautiful acoustic rendition of “By The Lake” that will set aside any worries that Pale Jay is unable to master that gorgeous falsetto in a live setting. I chose the featured video above only because it has him driving while lip syncing, with others blissfully trusting their lives to the masked man behind the wheel.

Put Bewilderment on, right now. It’s a short, 24 minute commitment, and you won’t be disappointed. I guarantee it.

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#14 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Khruangbin

January 18, 2021 by Royal Stuart

Mordechai + Texas Sun EP by Khruangbin

Things are heating up on the countdown as we get closer to the top 10, so allow me to introduce a nice cooler into the mix. Khruangbin, the mostly-instrumental band out of Houston, produces the best damn background music you’ll ever hear. Need something light to lift up your quiet afternoon, or the perfect mood-setter for an intimate dinner party (held outside and appropriately socially-distanced, of course)? Put on Khruangbin.

The band, whose name is Thai for “airplane” and is pronounced “KRUNG-bin”, features Laura Lee on bass, Mark Speer on guitar, and DJ Johnson Jr. on drums. Together, the trio create a soundscape of soul, surf, psychedelic, and funk that makes you feel like you’re sandwiched between a heavy down comforter and a fresh flannel sheet: cozy. They often combine their instrumentation with light, repetitive vocals from all three members that act more like a fourth instrument rather than anything that would take the lead.

That’s what you’ll hear throughout their excellent third full-length, Mordechai, and that alone could be enough to make the Top 31. But that wasn’t Khruangbin’s only release in 2020. They teamed up with Top 31 veteran Leon Bridges (whose debut, Coming Home, was all the way up at #2 in 2015) to produce a little EP called Texas Sun. Four songs of perfection, so great I wish they wouldn’t have stopped there. Maybe in 2021 they’ll form a new combined band called Khruangbridges. Until then I’ll have these two albums on repeat.

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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

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#23 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — The Avalanches

January 09, 2021 by Royal Stuart

We Will Always Love You by The Avalanches

“Well-known vocalists singing atop dreamy electronic music” has always been a favorite genre of mine, yet somehow The Avalanches have eluded me until now. Granted, they’ve only released three albums in their 23 years as a band, but all three are phenomenal, and I’m ashamed to have missed out on them until now. It’s ok, go ahead and laugh, I deserve it. But if you, too, haven’t heard of them before, have I got an album for you!

We Will Always Love You, at 71 minutes long, might actually be better bylined “The Avalanches and a mind-boggling number of collaborators.” A cake of fantastic original instrumentation blended with hundreds of samples, with the icing of roughly twenty “with…” names scattered across the 25 songs on the album. To whit (along with links to the videos):

“The Divine Chord” with MGMT and Johnny Marr, shown above
“Running Red Lights” with Rivers Cuomo and Pink Siifu
“Interstellar Love” with Leon Bridges
“Take Care In Your Dreaming” with Denzel Curry, Tricky & Sampa The Great
“Wherever You Go” with Jamie xx, Neneh Cherry and CLYPSO
“Reflecting Light” with Sananda Maitreya and Vashti Bunyan
“We Will Always Love You” with Blood Orange
And other song collaborations without videos featuring Orono, Perry Ferrell, Cola Boyy, Mick Jones, Kurt Vile, Karen O, Cornelius and Kelly Moran

Additionally, there’s another video medley of songs from the album, blended together as a film of experimental choreography created using 3D volumetric capture techniques in collaboration with TEM Studios and Rambert Dance London.

Whew! Impressive, to say the least. If you like Washed Out or Odesza, you’re going to absolutely love this record. Jump on it ASAP.

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#31 on the 2017 Bacon Top 31

January 01, 2018 by Royal Stuart

Happy new year! Here we are again, at the beginning of yet another Top 31.¹ 2017 was an exciting year for me, personally (I married my lovely wife in August, and together we have a beautiful daughter who was born in October).

Politically, 2017 felt like shit. It helps to think there have been many much worse years in American history, but it’s hard to keep that perspective when those worse years all came before I was politically aware.

Musically, the year felt muddled and off. There are many albums I discovered and enjoyed (well more than the 31 I’ll feature here), but overall it feels like there were no amazing albums in 2017. Part of that surely has to do with how busy I was personally, and how terrible things were politically. But I think it also has to do with how I discovered and listened to music. My Apple Music account allowed me to look at all the new releases every week and add any album to my active 2017 playlist, resulting in 111 2017 albums ending up in my music library (which is about 50% more albums than I typically listen to in a given year). That’s a lot of music to absorb in one year (3.7 days worth of music, to be exact).

I’ll be paying attention to my listening habits in 2018 to see if how I’m discovering and listening to music is affecting my opinion, or if the muddle lies in other, currently unknowable factors. I did manage to arrive at 31 favorites for the year. In some ways it was much easier to compile the Top 31, since I had so many more albums to choose from. And there’s even a #1 album. But first, we need to get through the 30 other albums I loved this year. Let’s get started, shall we?

A Moment Apart by Odesza

First up is an electronic duo out of Seattle you’ve probably heard of: Odesza. These two guys who met at Western have made quite a name for themselves in the past five years, going from obscurity to #3 on the US Pop chart in that short time. I hadn’t paid much attention to them or their two previous releases, but A Moment Apart caused me to sit up an listen intently.

The album has a few stellar guest appearances (including Regina Spektor). The song above, “Across the Room” features Leon Bridges, whose own album was #2 on the 2015 Top 31. I recommend watching this nice little documentary about the making of that song. A Moment Apart is fantastic from start to finish. It works best as background music, but beware: you’ll soon find yourself annoying the person next to you with your toe tapping toe and bouncing up and down.

And there we are — another year’s Top 31 is underway. I look forward to talking and listening with you over the next month as we count down to #1 together. Please share your own favorites when you can — I’d love to talk about them and compare with you.

^{1. In case you missed my note at the beginning of December, the Top 31 got pushed out a month this year (and will begin on January 1 in every future year). I’m glad I made this decision, as it allowed me to enjoy the holidays without concern about getting the next day’s post out, and to enjoy all of 2017’s music for the full year. But this also means I need to accommodate the last two months of 2016 that didn’t end up in last year’s countdown. So for those paying attention at home, this year’s countdown actually covers 14 months of music, from November 2016 through December 2017.↩}

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2009-2016 Top 31s

#2 on the 2015 Bacon Top 31

December 30, 2015 by Royal Stuart

Coming Home by Leon Bridges

You’d be forgiven if you thought the album at #2 was recorded in the early sixties and only surfaced this year. Coming Home,Leon Bridges’ debut album, is 60s soul through and through. Bridges, a 26-year-old from Ft. Worth, Texas, is the living definition of “throw back.”

He is the second coming of Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, and I don’t say that lightly. When playing this album for my dad (who lived through the 60s and enjoyed this type of music when it first came out) this past weekend, his reaction was positive. “I’ve always thought bands shouldn’t try to recreate the sound of a different era with new songs,” he said. “You can duplicate the sound, but they’re never successful in making a hit. But this is different. I like this.”

The album is retro to a fault, however. In the 50 years that have transpired since soul music first hit the scene, recording techniques have improved drastically. But Bridges and his recording engineer took the making of Coming Home to the extreme, making it sound like it was recorded on vintage equipment (it may very well have, but I can’t find evidence of that anywhere). The vocals sound tinny, the production a touch unclean, like we’re listening to a reel-to-reel tape rather than crisp digital or warm vinyl.

Even the design of the album cover is historic. Check it out:

This album is perfect from start to finish. My favorite track on the album is the last track, “River,” a slow, gospel-tinged tune that hits you in all the right spots.

In addition to the video for “Coming Home,” above, there are a lot of places to see and hear more from Bridges. I suggest watching them all:

No. 1 is coming up tomorrow. If you’ve been paying attention, it should be painfully obvious what’s coming up. I’m still looking forward to writing about it!

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3. My Love Is Cool by Wolf Alice
4. Carrie & Lowell by Sufjan Stevens
5. Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit by Courtney Barnett
6. I Love You, Honeybear by Father John Misty
7. Sound & Color by Alabama Shakes
8. Another Eternity by Purity Ring
9. Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance by Belle and Sebastian
10. Return to the Moon by El Vy
11. Hamilton (Original Broadway Cast Recording) by Lin-Manuel Miranda
12. Art Angels by Grimes
13. The Horse Comanche by Chadwick Stokes
14. Grace Love & the True Loves by Grace Love & the True Loves
15. Shake Shook Shaken by The dø
16. La Di Da Di by Battles
17. Sky City by Amason
18. What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World by The Decemberists
19. Untethered Moon by Built to Spill
20. Viet Cong by Viet Cong
21. The Magic Whip by Blur
22. Savage Hills Ballroom by Youth Lagoon
23. Not Real by Stealing Sheep
24. Beat the Champ by The Mountain Goats
25. Gliss Riffer by Dan Deacon
26. Dark Bird is Home by The Tallest Man on Earth
27. Gunnera by Pfarmers
28. Swimmer to a Liquid Armchair by Ricked Wickey
29. To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar
30. Live in Seattle by Moufang / Czamanski
31. High by Royal Headache

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