#28 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Jessica Pratt

January 04, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Here in the Pitch by Jessica Pratt

Jessica Pratt, the folk singer / songwriter out of Redding, California, turned 37 in 2024. Meaning she was – unbelievably – born in 1987, well after the 1960s. Go ahead and hit play on the song “Life Is,” featured in the video above, and I dare you to tell me you haven’t been transported to some tropical island locale from 60 years ago.

Here in the Pitch, Pratt’s fantastic 2024 release, is her fourth album. She’s been releasing lovely, critically-acclaimed music since her self-titled debut album in 2012, when she would have been only 25, and based on the strength of Pitch I aim to cue up those previous releases ASAP. She’s the closest you’ll get to new music from Leonard Cohen in the 21st century.

A gorgeous, dreamy, acoustic-guitar and brushed-drum-laden blanket of warmth – that is what you experience in these quiet-yet-powerful songs. Pratt’s voice is echoed throughout, as if she were singing on a darkened stage in an abandoned cathedral. Guitar, voice, and soft percussion are the mainstay, with an occasional doubling or harmonizing of her own voice, and “Life Is” is not an anomaly – check out “World on a String” and you can extrapolate the rest of Pitch from there.

Put this album on while hosting your next Kodachrome-colored back-yard BBQ or luau, or have it playing in the background of your next key party. Pop it onto your reel-to-reel, blast it through your hi-fi, light up a joint and be whisked back to the era of your parents (or grandparents?). Pratt’s music just hits better that way.

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#14 on the 2016 Bacon Top 31

December 18, 2016 by Royal Stuart

You Want It Darker by Leonard Cohen

Now that we’re into the better half of the Top 31, there tends to be for me more invested in the albums featured. Take this album at #14, Leonard Cohen’s masterful — and final — album. Cohen was a month into his 83rd year when he released You Want It Darker. He died three weeks after its release, bringing new light to the album’s overt themes of death and god.

Cohen released his first album at 33, after failing to earn a living writing poetry and fiction. You Want It Darker was only his 14th release across his 49-year musical career, a pace of an album every 3½ years. That should tell you something about his dedication to his craft. This album is indicative of his later efforts, with Cohen’s spoken-word poetry layered over sparse strings, guitar, and quiet brushed percussion. There should be a section at the record store called “gravel,” dedicated to the later-year Cohen, Tom Waits and Bob Dylan albums that all speak volumes to the lifetimes these men have bared openly for us, the listeners.

As it was for David Bowie’s final album (featured earlier in the 2016 Bacon Top 31), Cohen’s death permeates every beat of this album. It’s impossible to listen to it without picturing the man on his deathbed, contemplating the previous 82 years and what it all meant. This is not a bad thing, it’s not a dark cloud that hovers. But it’s not happy either. It simply is. One has to imagine that once he got into his eighties, he’d had a long and fruitful life, content with where he’d been and what he’d done. His legacy will live on well past 2016, and this album will play a big part in that.

Hallelujah.

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15. Painting Of A Panic Attack by Frightened Rabbit
16. Why Are You OK by Band Of Horses
17. Not To Disappear by Daughter
18. Sunlit Youth by Local Natives
19. I Had a Dream That You Were Mine by Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam
20. ★ by David Bowie
21. Farewell, Starlite! by Francis and the Lights
22. This Unruly Mess I’ve Made by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
23. LNZNDRF by LNZNDRF
24. Puberty 2 by Mitski
25. Light Upon the Lake by Whitney
26. A Corpse Wired for Sound by Merchandise
27. Away by Okkervil River
28. case/lang/veirs by case/lang/veirs
29. Love Letter for Fire by Sam Beam & Jesca Hoop
30. Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future by Underworld
31. Preoccupations by Preoccupations

#20 on the 2016 Bacon Top 31

December 12, 2016 by Royal Stuart

★ by David Bowie

We lost quite a few great musicians in 2016. Prince. Leonard Cohen. Sharon Jones. Phife Dawg. And Bowie. David fucking Bowie. I can’t say his death was the hardest to take. They were all difficult. But it wasn’t easy, that’s for sure.

He presented himself to us as a pure entertainer, his life for the stage, and Bowie orchestrated his death in exactly that same way. He released ★ (aka Blackstar), his 25th album, on his 69th birthday, January 8, 2016. Two days later he died of complications from liver cancer, something he’d been secretly battling for a year and a half. From Tony Visconti, the coproducer of the album:

“He always did what he wanted to do. And he wanted to do it his way and he wanted to do it the best way. His death was no different from his life — a work of art. He made ★ for us, his parting gift. I knew for a year this was the way it would be. I wasn’t, however, prepared for it. He was an extraordinary man, full of love and life. He will always be with us. For now, it is appropriate to cry.”

This is a sad, exhausting album. The sadness comes from the overt lyrics, which Bowie wrote about the experience of cancer treatment and impending death. The exhaustion comes from knowing what Bowie must have been feeling, himself, as he wrote it, which comes through in every slow tempo, every bass beat. It’s the perfect counter to the previous album on the countdown, Farewell, Starlite! Sure, there are many albums I’d reach for to memorialize Bowie by before reaching for this one, but ★ is still the perfect swan song, and I can’t recommend it enough.

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21. Farewell, Starlite! by Francis and the Lights
22. This Unruly Mess I’ve Made by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
23. LNZNDRF by LNZNDRF
24. Puberty 2 by Mitski
25. Light Upon the Lake by Whitney
26. A Corpse Wired for Sound by Merchandise
27. Away by Okkervil River
28. case/lang/veirs by case/lang/veirs
29. Love Letter for Fire by Sam Beam & Jesca Hoop
30. Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future by Underworld
31. Preoccupations by Preoccupations