#30 on the 2023 Bacon Top 31 — Peter Gabriel

i/o by Peter Gabriel

Somewhat unbelievably, here comes 75-year-old Peter Gabriel with a brand new album. After initially loving his 2010 cover concept album Scratch My Back (#27), my opinion of Gabriel soured due to the fall-out of that album’s companion I’ll Scratch Yours. It felt at the time that the theme of Gabriel covering other artists’ songs and then having those artists cover a Gabriel song was a desperate attempt by an aging artist to stay relevant in a musical world that was quickly outpacing him. David Bowie, Neil Young, and Radiohead backed out or never agreed to record a Gabriel song, and yet he pushed forward releasing covers of their songs, in what felt like an attempt to force those artists back to the table.

While that album floundered, Gabriel released an album of orchestral instrumental covers of his previous work, New Blood, in 2011, further cementing his place on the “past my prime so I’m milking the past” pedestal. The compilation of Gabriel covers by other artists eventually did get released, in 2013, as And I’ll Scratch Yours, with Brian Eno, Joseph Arthur, and Feist filling in for those who had backed out earlier. Neither of those albums made it onto the Top 31 that year.

Despite my best efforts to no longer like the man, I like i/o. The last time Gabriel released wholly new material was 2002’s Up — 21 years ago! Amazingly, some of the production for this new album began even earlier than that, in April 1995. Consequently, this album sounds like the Peter Gabriel you remember from the 90s. The fact that it still hits home speaks to the timelessness of his sound. Soft pop music under lyrics about life and death, with lively orchestration and soaring choruses. There’s no “Sledgehammer” or “Steam,” but you’ll recognize the song structures of “Don’t Give Up” or “Blood of Eden” in this new body of work.

Gabriel still suffers from an inability to edit himself, the mark of a performer still questioning himself and what his audience wants. i/o was released as a double-album, with each song having been mixed by two separate engineers: renowned English producer / engineer Spike Stent (“Bright-Side Mix”) and renowned Texas-born producer / engineer Tchad Blake (“Dark-Side Mix”). I’ve listened to both, and they’re equally good and frankly, not noticeably different enough to warrant the double-album treatment they’ve been given. A third, alternative Dolby Atmos mix was released separately, “In-Side Mix,” mixed by Hans-Martin Buff.

Despite the grandeur of presentation, if you’ve liked Gabriel at any point in your life, you owe it to yourself to give this new album a chance. Like me, you may be pleasantly surprised.

__________________________________________

31. Los Angeles by Jacknife Lee, Budgie & Lol Tolhurst

Subscribe to the Top 31 playlists!

Full Albums
All albums in their entirety

• Apple Music Full Album Playlist
• Spotify Full Album Playlist
• YouTube Music Full Album Playlist

Radio Station
The best song pulled from each album

• Apple Music Radio Playlist
• Spotify Radio Playlist
• YouTube Music Radio Playlist

View all previous years’ Top 31s

#8 on the 2019 Bacon Top 31 — Elbow

Giants of All Sizes by Elbow

From one former #1 (Bon Iver, just seen at #9) to another, this time the venerable British masters Elbow. Unlike Bon Iver, I did not learn about Elbow until well into their musical careers, picking them up on the heels of their fantastic fourth album, 2008’s The Seldom Seen Kid. Every album they’ve released since then has appeared on the Top 31. Even though this new one, their eighth, is appearing in the lofty slot of #8 in this year’s Top 31, that represents a downward slide from all previous Top 31 appearances: Build a Rocket Boys! was #5 in 2011, The Takeoff and Landing of Everything just missed being #1 in 2014, and they quickly recovered with their #1 album Little Fictions in 2017. An outstanding showing overall.

Giants of All Sizes is a bit different from previous efforts, and that may account for their slip here in 2019. Little Fictions took the #1 spot based on its connection to my personal life that year. It featured songs that felt like they were speaking directly to me. Giants of All Sizes evokes a wide variety of new styles and influences for the band, but it doesn’t have that same feeling of connectedness for me. The first time you hear Elbow, your instinct is to compare them to Peter Gabriel, as lead singer Guy Garvey’s voice is Gabriel’s vocal doppelgänger. On top of that, the band’s production sits squarely in the same neighborhood as Gabriel’s later work (1986’s So and after). Outside of that, Giants sounds a bit like The Beatles at times (check out “”).

The lyrics of this album are decidedly darker than past albums — a purposeful slant, as three key figures in the band’s orbit all died during the production of the album (including Garvey’s father). But that doesn’t diminish the sweeping orchestral arrangements and slow builds, which have become Elbow’s signature over their 23 years of existence. If you’ve not listened to Elbow in the past, pick a spot anywhere and dive in. Giants is a perfectly fine spot to get your first taste, but be sure to move onto any of the last three albums. Elbow is consistently great, something that’s surprisingly hard to say about a lot of artists these days.

__________________________________________

9. i,i by Bon Iver
10. Kiwanuka by Michael Kiwanuka
11. The Destroyer (Parts 1 + 2) by TR/ST
12. When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? by Billie Eilish
13. Cheap Queen by King Princess
14. Anima by Thom Yorke
15. Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Parts 1 + 2 by Foals
16. Gallipoli by Beirut
17. My Finest Work Yet by Andrew Bird
18. Four of Arrows by Great Grandpa
19. Designer by Aldous Harding
20. Norman Fucking Rockwell! by Lana Del Rey
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

Subscribe to the 2019 Bacon Top 31 Apple Music playlist
2009-2018 Top 31s

#30 on the 2018 Bacon Top 31 — Angélique Kidjo

Remain in Light by Angélique Kidjo

Those who know about these things may find it debatable as to where rock ’n’ roll began, but they all agree that the roots of rock ’n’ roll are a combination of African musical tradition with European instrumentation. White musicians have appropriated African rhythms into their music since before the dawn of rock ’n’ roll in the mid-1900s. And a few of those musicians have done so to their own great benefit, namely the Talking Heads in the late 70s / early 80s (and David Byrne beyond), Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel in the 80s and 90s, and all the way up to Vampire Weekend in the late 2000s / early 10s.

Enter Angélique Kidjo, a three-time grammy-winning Beninese (via-Paris and finally New York City) singer / songwriter. After a long and fruitful career of writing her own music (starting in 1981 with her debut Pretty) Kidjo has taken her music in a new direction, latching onto the seminal Talking Heads album Remain in Light and recording a track-for-track remake, pulling what was a rock ’n’ roll album back over to the African roots it always hinted at. If you didn’t recognize the David Byrne lyrics in these songs, you would most definitely be fooled into thinking these songs began with Kidjo in Africa.

According to Pitchfork, Kidjo first heard “Once in a Lifetime,” the big hit from Remain in Light, at a college party after escaping Benin for Paris in 1983. The song lodged itself in her brain, but only 35 years later did she seek out its source (even after having been championed by David Byrne in the 90s). She heard the full album and was moved by its continued political relevance, 30+ years after its debut. So she spun it for herself, and created this masterpiece.

It’s exciting to hear these songs in a brand new way. Remain in Light is one of my favorite all-time albums, and Kidjo’s renditions breathe new life into it. While this was my first exposure to Kidjo, I feel that’s a result of me not paying attention. For instance, here’s Kidjo with Ezra Koenig on stage at Austin City Limits during her 2014 PBS special, performing Vampire Weekend’s “I Think Ur a Contra”. Brilliant. Give this album a listen, whether you’re familiar with the original or not. You will not be disappointed.

__________________________________________

31. This One’s for the Dancer & This One’s for the Dancer’s Bouquet by Moonface

Subscribe to the 2018 Bacon Top 31 Apple Music playlist
2009-2017 Top 31s

#1 on the 2017 Bacon Top 31

Little Fictions by Elbow

Here we are at the #1 album for 2017, Elbow’s absolutely stellar Little Fictions. The Top 31 is my way of trying to capture my year in music — what I was listening to, what I was enjoying. As the soundtrack to my life, the Top 31 is always influenced by the events from the year, but that’s not to say the events we all felt in 2017 are what drove my musical tastes. Ask anyone I consider a friend, they would probably say that 2017 was a shitty year for Americans. Over the year I grew more and more terrified by what is happening in our country, politically. But in my personal life, my year was far from shitty. It was quite glorious, in fact: I moved in with my girlfriend at the beginning of the year, and then we got pregnant shortly thereafter. We followed that by getting married in August and then the birth of our lovely daughter in October (if I had a Top Songs of All Time countdown, “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie would be #1 for 2017). That’s a lot of awesomeness to cram into one year.

Following me along throughout all of those experiences was this fantastic album by Elbow. For those of you that don’t know, Elbow is a band out of a small town outside of Manchester, England called Ramsbottom. While the band has been playing music together since 1990, they didn’t become “Elbow” until 1997 (which was still 21 years ago — and aside from drummer Richard Jupp leaving the band in 2016, replaced by session drummer Alex Reeves, they’ve performed with the same lineup for that entire time). Little Fictions is their seventh album in that span. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every release they’ve put out, and their last two albums were featured prominently on the Top 31s in their respective years (The Take Off and Landing of Everything was #2 in 2014; Build a Rocket Boys! was #5 in 2011).

I can’t talk highly enough about this band. Guy Garvey’s voice is like butter (and to unaccustomed ears, he sounds a lot like Peter Gabriel). The rest of the band (brothers Craig (keyboards) and Mark Potter (guitar), along with Pete Turner (bass)) put together one solid rock n roll hit after another. Often quiet, with key moments of electric bombast, the band manages crescendo like no other. And each album is every bit as good as the last. It’s an amazing feat.

This album — THIS ALBUM — may be the best yet. But that may also be how this album is tied to my experiences over the year. The first song on the album, “Magnificent (She Says),” featured in the video above, is Garvey’s response to how terrible 2016 was. He says in this video regarding the song that he needed a way to process all the shit that had happened. So he chose to look at it from the perspective of a wide-eyed little girl, full of innocence and love.

And there she stands
Throwing both her arms around the world
The world that doesn’t even know
How much it needs this little girl

It’s all gonna be magnificent, she says
It’s all gonna be magnificent

Glorious. Did I mention I now have a daughter, born only in October? And then there’s the second song, “Gentle Storm”:

Counting down, now the clocks reset when I met you
Do we start a new life?
Yours and my spit-shone restless hearts, they were meant to
Beat one time, share one fate
From this day

Gentle storm
Rage away
And fall in love with me
Fall in love with me
Fall in love with me
Everyday

Gobstopping. Did I mention I got married in August? Be sure to check out the video for that song, which features Benedict Cumberbatch.

From there, the album just continues unabated on its ascendance to greatness. “All Disco” sums up music and life nicely, the title from a quote by Frank Black (“whatever music you love, it’s all disco”). There’s a nice docu-video featuring that song. The last song on the album, “Kindling,” is a slow and quiet outro for the album that primes you for the replay you have inevitably already set up. There’s a great little acoustic alt-version of that song featuring a duet between Garvey and John Grant.

The penultimate song on the album, the title song “Little Fictions,” is an 8+ minute orchestral dream. Put on headphones and play it loud. The song starts with dissonant chords on a piano interplaying with a programmatic drum beat. Enter Garvey, singing about what feels like jabs in a relationship that has passed its due date. The chorus comes in:

We protect our little fictions
Like it’s all we are
Little wilderness mementos
But there’s only you and me here
Fire breathing
Hold tight
Waiting for the original miracle

And with that the song keeps building to one hell of a climax, violins and violence raging and building to the lyrical reveal: “Love is the original miracle.” Whether or not the couple in the song reconciles their differences is unclear, but you’ll most certainly feel spent at the end of it.

I can’t get enough of this band and this album. I want everyone to love them as I do. Give it a few listens. Put it on in the background, or play it loud in the fore. It will fill you with warmth and envelope you with joy.

__________________________________________

2. Half-Light by Rostam
3. Everything Now by Arcade Fire
4. Sleep Well Beast by The National
5. Soul of a Woman by Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
6. Relaxer by Alt-J
7. Hot Thoughts by Spoon
8. Colors by Beck
9. Mental Illness by Aimee Mann
10. The Wild by The Rural Alberta Advantage
11. american dream by LCD Soundsystem
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

Subscribe to the 2017 Top 31 Apple Music playlist
2009-2016 Top 31s

#2 on the 2014 Bacon Top 31

The Take Off and Landing of Everything by Elbow

Deciding which band would take the number one spot and which band would be relegated to number two this year was particularly difficult. I love the band at #2: Manchester, England’s Elbow. And their 2014 album, The Take Off and Landing of Everything — their sixth — is by far my favorite of all their recordings. Even when I started writing this review, I waffled, thinking, “Maybe the band at #1 should be #2 and this album should be #1.” Talk to me tomorrow, or next week, or next month, and I might actually regret having not made this album #1. But here we are, at #2, which is a perfectly fine place for any band to be.

This band, and this album, are all about subtlety. Sure, there are plenty of bombastic moments, full of horns, strings, and keyboards. But it’s the quieter moments, of which there are many, that move this album to the near-top of the list. There’s the lazy beat of “This World Blue,” which hesitates for what feels like an eternity two minutes into the song (at 2:05, specifically), and then again at 4:29. Only then does the full sound of the song hit you, and there’s nearly 3 minutes of song left to go.

And then there’s “Fly Boy Blue/Lunette,” which I posted the video for way back in January. There’s that seminal moment, 3 minutes and 7 seconds into the song, when the key changes, the timing changes, and it becomes a completely different song yet somehow, impossibly, holds together.

Take “My Sad Captains,” which is featured in the video above. At six minutes, it comes in just over the average of all the songs on the album (that average being 5 minutes, 43.5 seconds across all 10 songs), and yet you want it to go on longer. It’s slow, methodical, and beautiful in its telling of “missing my friends that have dropped out of the drinking culture that we all met in, or moved away, or died,” as lead singer/lyricist Guy Garvey said in an interview in Q magazine back in February 2014. If you’re over 35, you’ve experienced that sort of life change, and the song just resonates unbelievably well.

There are quite a few videos the band has created for this album. In addition to “Fly Boy Blue/Lunette” and “My Sad Captains” (above), three other videos can be found:

• “New York Morning”
• “Real Life (Angel)”
• “Charge”

A couple friends and I had a little Memorial Day Weekend adventure this year to make sure we were able to see Elbow in concert. The band was coming through town to play Sasquatch, and there was no way we were going to be able to go there. So instead we bought tickets for the band’s Vancouver, BC performance at the Commodore Ballroom. It was worth the trip. Garvey is a consummate showman, crooning and gesturing to the crowd, working the stage, bringing us all along with him. There were no horns touring with the band, which was a little bit of a letdown, but the rest of the band was able to fill in those missing parts from the new album, substituting in keyboards and guitars. The Commodore is a great space, similar in layout to the Showbox Market, but a bit larger. It was the perfect spot for the band.

This album is gorgeous from start to finish, and I could be quite happy if I only had this one album to listen to for the rest of my days. If you’ve not heard of Elbow before, your first reaction will be “Damn, they sound so much like Peter Gabriel,” and you could be forgiven for thinking that. But that feeling dies pretty quickly as you start to identify these songs as Elbow songs. The Take Off and Landing of Everything is a great place to start your new obsession. Then move onto The Seldom Seen Kid, their Mercury-prize winning, platinum-selling 2008 album. Then branch out from there. 2011’s Build a Rocket Boys! was ranked on the Top 31 at #5 in 2011. Leaders of the Free World, from 2005, is phenomenal as well. SO MUCH GOOD MUSIC. And it’s all there for the taking. Hop to it.

__________________________________________

3. They Want My Soul by Spoon
4. Are We There by Sharon Van Etten
5. And The War Came by Shakey Graves
6. Nicky Nack by tUnE-yArDs
7. Not Art by Big Scary
8. The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett by Eels
9. Owl John by Owl John
10. LP1 by FKA Twigs
11. Black Hours by Hamilton Leithauser
12. Give the People What They Want by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
13. Lost in the Dream by The War On Drugs
14. Warpaint by Warpaint
15. Heal by Strand of Oaks
16. Stay Gold by First Aid Kit
17. This is All Yours by ∆
18. Brill Bruisers by The New Pornographers
19. Only Run by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
20. Augustines by Augustines
21. El Pintor by Interpol
22. I Never Learn by Lykke Li
23. Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes by Thom Yorke
24. The Voyager by Jenny Lewis
25. Voices by Phantogram
26. Morning Phase by Beck
27. Hungry Ghosts by OK Go
28. Run the Jewels 2 by Run the Jewels
29. Cosmos by Yellow Ostrich
30. Teeth Dreams by The Hold Steady
31. With Light & With Love by Woods

2009-2013 Top 31s