#29 on the 2021 Bacon Top 31 — Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine

January 03, 2022 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

A Beginner’s Mind by Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine

Another year, another Sufjan Stevens album on the Bacon Top 31. The man is prolific. He‘s had four albums on the Top 31 (#9 last year, #30 in 2017, #4 in 2015, and famously #3 in 2010), and would have more if I’d been charting when his earlier 00’s albums were released.

As such, it’s hard to listen to any of his new music with unbiased ears. He’s settled into two basic musical modes: soft and delicate (similar to Elliott Smith) or electronic and noisy (think Reznor-era David Bowie), and I enjoy both greatly for different reasons. A Beginner’s Mind falls squarely in the quiet, dreamlike mode, almost like a downy blanket laid gently over your torso. It didn’t hit me as deeply as Carrie & Lowell, his tribute to his parents that hit #4 in 2015, but it’s loveliness clearly couldn’t keep it off the Top 31 entirely.

Each of Stevens’ albums have an overarching conceptual narrative hook, be it a US state (Michigan, Illinois) or mental health (The Age of Adz, Carrie & Lowell). A Beginner’s Mind is no different: each track from the album is inspired by a different movie of the 20th and 21st century. There are songs dedicated to films as varied as All About Eve, Hellraiser III, Bring It On Again, and Point Break. The beautiful “Cimmerian Shade” is sung from the perspective of Buffalo Bill, the serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs.

Stevens partnered with longtime friend and collaborator Angelo De Augustine, an LA-based singer/songwriter whose last two solo albums were released on Stevens’ record label Asthmatic Kitty. De Augustine’s solo work pairs nicely with Sufjan’s softer side – A Beginner’s Mind makes sense in either artist’s catalog.

If you like quieter, lightly strung instruments and near-whispered vocals, this album is definitely for you. By now you should know whether you like Sufjan or not. But if you‘re new to his music, don’t start here. Check out Illinois, from 2005. So much has come from that seminal work – I’m excited simply by the thought of someone opening the door and letter Sufjan in for the first time. You’re in for a musical visit unlike any other.

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30. Where the End Begins by Knathan Ryan
31. Private Space by Durand Jones & The Indications

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#30 on the 2021 Bacon Top 31 — Knathan Ryan

January 02, 2022 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

Where the End Begins by Knathan Ryan

Nobody needs to be reminded that 2020 was an extremely dark year. I talked a lot about that darkness in my 2020 Bacon Top 31 posts, using the music of the year to carry larger diatribes about Covid lock-downs, Black Lives Matter protests, and facist dictatorships. At the end of the 2020 Bacon Top 31, in my review of the #1 album, Waxahatchee’s Saint Cloud, I landed on a hopeful, positive note about the year ahead:

“Now, a month into 2021, I have a newly-lit hope that the perspective wrought by the [2020] will ultimately drive positive, lasting, unbreakable change. I once was blind, but now I see. Let’s work together to do great things with our new eyes.”

How naive I sounded, but such was the general feeling of early 2021! It was supposed to be the year where everything turned around, where the darkness subsided. But it just didn’t happen. Covid is still very much prevalent in our world, causing yet another years’ festivities to be dialed back or canceled altogether. The specter of the year-old end of the Trump presidency continues to generate mass amounts of anxiety about the future of our country. And while those responsible for the deaths of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery were found guilty of murder, the recognition and punishment of racist acts on the whole continues to be carried out uncomfortably inconsistently.

If anything, the mass depression and general malaise of the world has taken on a new insidiousness. We’re pushing down those feelings, no longer wearing them on our sleeves. We’re burying them just below the surface, where they color our actions and the view of the world. We’ve replaced the concern of “this sucks right now but is temporary” with “it’s going to suck like this for a much longer time than originally expected, so we might as well get used to it.”

There are many ways I work to fight back the darkness and cope with the malaise. One big part of my defense remains listening to and discovering new music. It’s also a large part of my motivation in creating the Bacon Top 31 – to share in my discovery, in the hopes that it can help you, too. In the same turn, it’s helpful to me to hear of others’ struggles and difficulties, to hear how they’re coping (or not), and I hear a lot of those struggles in music is you know where to look. The man at #30 fits this description perfectly.

Knathan Ryan is a West Seattle-based singer/songwriter who doesn’t hold back. Speaking from personal experience (he’s one of my oldest friends in Seattle), he is nothing if not genuine, truly listening to you when you need to share, and sharing honestly and deeply when you want to listen. From his debut solo album (2003’s Vincible, minus the “K” in his name), the follow up 03 to TEN (#30 in 2010), to turns with his bands The Bruised Hearts Revue and The Silent Ks, Ryan has been producing heartfelt, thoughtful music for a very long time. Where the End Begins is his most personal, most “bare it all” album, and it’s also his best yet.

Ryan puts into song things we’re all feeling. Where the End Begins is full of difficulty – in carrying on, in maintaining relationships, in faith. “Anxiety”, in the middle of the album, hits particularly close to home in these covid-fueled times. And you can hear the struggle in songs like “Ain’t My Love?” (a version of which is featured in the video above) and “Sorry Just Don’t Cut it Anymore”, working hard to maintain relations during these trying, stuck-with-the-one-you’re-with times. But these songs aren’t sad, they’re upbeat and exciting and glorious. Ryan has a knack for taking a difficulty and twisting into a beautiful melody.

With songs firmly rooted in old-time country as well as indie rock, he keeps things close to the mic and approachable. The warble in his voice, not quite a yodel, is unmistakably his. The highlight for me is “Hey, Rooster!”, near the end of the album. That’s the song you’ll hear in the Radio Station playlist links below. When those horns kick in around 1:45, and then really take off at 2:07 – that is pure listening gold.

Yes, I’m biased in listening to these songs, as I’ve known the man behind these songs for over twenty years. But don’t let that stop you. Where the End Begins is a beautiful record, and you will enjoy it every bit as much as I do.

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31. Private Space by Durand Jones & The Indications

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#31 on the 2021 Bacon Top 31 — Durand Jones & The Indications

January 01, 2022 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

Welcome to another Bacon Top 31. I’d written a long diatribe about the general state of things here at the end of 2021, but I’ve decided to NOT start the year off on a down note. Let’s instead start the 2021 list off right: with the excitement I feel for the coming month of daily album reviews.

For those new here, a quick recap of what the Top 31 is. In the mid-00’s, a good friend of mine (hi Ryan!) created the Musical Advent Calendar, where he would count down his favorite 25 albums, with #1 being announced on Christmas Day. Despite remaining an active listener of new music, he decided to put down his quill in 2008.

I had liked his format of counting down an album a day, I was already personally charting what I was listening to each year up to that point, and I enjoyed learning about new music I’d heard because of his annual lists. So I decided to pick up where he left off — since 2009 (the Bacon Top 31 is officially a teenager this year!) I‘ve been counting down not my Top 25, but my Top 31 (as I did not want to tie my list to the Christian holiday).

This list is generated solely by your truly, and therefore reflects only my personal opinion. As you’ll see, I do enjoy listening to a wide range of music genres, but I definitely have my biases. This isn’t Pitchfork’s Top 50, or even Casey Kasem’s Top 40, but is instead all me, Royal Stuart, aka @royalbacon. Onto the show! The #31 album of 2021 is:

Private Space by Durand Jones & The Indications

2021 was another great year for music. Like 2020, spending a good portion of the year at home, with family all around, meant my listening habits were heavily influenced by their likes and dislikes. Not better or worse, just different from years past. With an active 3- (now 4-) year-old running around, a lot of fun, dancey music ended up in the rotation. And that’s why we’re starting this year’s Bacon Top 31 with the disco-influenced music of Durand Jones & the Indications.

The quintet met at university in Bloomington, Indiana. Led by lead vocalist Durand Jones, the band sounds as if they’ve been around since the early 70s, despite having only formed about 10 years ago. There’s no mistaking the grooviness of these songs. Your hips will instantly start shifting from side to side as soon as the bass line of the first song hits your ears. “Witchoo” – the 2nd song on the album and featured in the video above – is one of their most active songs. I especially love the crowd participation portion at the end.

Private Space is only the band’s third album, and I’ve not yet heard their earlier works. At 39 minutes, this album takes you on a ride from slow to bounce and back again, but never leaves the platform shoes and polyester suits behind. If disco is your jam, or even if you just simply like to cut a rug from time to time, you’ll definitely want to check out this album.

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Thom Yorke feat. Radiohead - Creep (Very 2021 Rmx)

July 15, 2021 by Royal Stuart

Unexpected and WOW.

It really kicks in at 3:06.

#1 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Waxahatchee

January 31, 2021 by Royal Stuart

Saint Cloud by Waxahatchee

I’ve never met Katie Crutchfield, but in the last year, I grew to feel as though I’ve known her for decades. Her intimate, earth shattering album, Saint Cloud, is the best album of 2020. The album, her fifth Waxahatchee release, came out on March 27, just as the world was closing in on us. In the latter half of March 2020, restaurants, bars, and music venues were shuttered, essential stores were constricted to an extremely limited capacity, and we were told to stay away from everyone outside of our immediate households for what we hoped would be just a couple of rough weeks, or a month, tops. Spring tours (including Waxahatchee’s, for which I had two tickets to excitedly see her perform here in Seattle on May 15), were postponed and rebooked for later in the year, and we all settled into our sweatpants behind our glowing screens to ride out the naively-expected-to-be-relatively-short isolation.

Unfortunately, weeks of lock-down turned into months, and then months turned into seasons. Public indoor spaces were opened prematurely and then closed again. And now here, at the end of January 2021, we’re coming up on a full year of life-saving isolation. To date, Covid-19 has taken over 400,000 people in the US alone, and that number is sadly expected to continue to grow by vast numbers by the time enough of us have been vaccinated. Many of those who have contracted the illness but survived will have long-term maladies caused by the original virus. And the healthy majority in the country, those who manage to get inoculated before ever coming into contact with Covid-19, will be left mostly physically fit but emotionally and socially (and educationally, for the younger set) stunted. Thus is the mental toll of this past year.

And while our mental health has suffered greatly, I can confidently say: having the warm embrace that is Saint Cloud available at the touch of a screen has made all of the insanity a bit more bearable. Beyond the album, Crutchfield, along with her beautiful voice, deft finger-picking, and infectious smile, has made many screen-based appearances in my family’s home this past year. A week before the release of the album, just as the lockdown was beginning, she and her boyfriend Kevin Morby (a fantastic indie-rocker as well) began hosting weekly Thursday-night Instagram livestreams, where they performed both Waxahatchee and Kevin Morby originals and numerous covers, and had guest stars dial in, such as Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes and Crutchfield’s musical twin sister, Allison. They produced a Tiny Desk Concert From Home for NPR, and Waxahatchee was the headliner for the virtual KEXPY Awards from KEXP this past December. These were poor substitutes for an in-person live performance, but having her hold our virtual hands through the darkness that was 2020 was so much better than having nothing at all.

I’m a relative newcomer to the magic of Waxahatchee, having only started listening around the release of her Great Thunder EP in 2018. Her fantastic 2017 record, Out in the Storm, only hit my radar once the year had ended, missing inclusion on that year’s Top 31. At the time of discovery, the well orchestrated and produced Storm was greatly outshined by the sparse, raw, guitar-and-voice only songs on the Thunder EP. The lead single, “Chapel of Pines,” is the kind of song I could listen to on repeat for days. It’s simple – only one verse and a repeated, single-line chorus — and direct, with Crutchfield pushing her voice to its limit, cracking, as if she’s struggling to stay afloat in the murkiness of the still waters around her.

She brings that same close-to-the-heart rawness to Saint Cloud. It only occurred to me earlier this week that, while the song structure is quite different, the powerful, guttural strain from her voice reminds me of Jeff Mangum on Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (hands down my favorite album of all time), and that’s likely why I am so drawn to Saint Cloud. It’s real, it’s passionate, and it pulls me in like an inescapable magnetic field of emotion.

Listen to “Fire,” shown in the video above. It takes real chutzpah to belt a song like that right from the start, and I love it. Crutchfield’s lyrics, and the cadence of her rhymes, have always been great, but the crispness of the clip, the beauty in the beat of the words she chooses here feels otherworldly. To whit:

I take it for granted
If I could love you unconditionally I
could iron out the edges of the darkest sky
For some of us it ain’t enough
It ain’t enough

Breaking the second and third lines in the chorus in an unconventional way to have “I” and “sky” rhyme on the same 12th syllable is the kind of couplet that brings with it a pang of longing, a sadness that I can’t live in that chorus forever.

In 2018, Crutchfield recognized how her excessive drinking was not good for her or anyone around her, so she stopped. Essentially, she has been sober for the same length of time that I’ve loved her music, and I’m not so sure that’s a coincidence. Perhaps the clearness of thought is what allows her vocal and songwriting talents to really shine. In interviews, she’s said writing songs while sober has been more difficult for her. If we could only see the result that such a monumental life-shift might have on our creative output, that type of decision would be so much easier for each of us to make.

We are all better off because of the music and happiness Katie Crutchfield has shared with us throughout the last year. 2020 was the hardest year I’ve ever lived in so many ways, and it boggles the mind to consider how much of our future will be shaped by those 366 days. The final song on Saint Cloud, the title song, is a slow burner, very similar to the much-beloved “Chapel of Pines” I mentioned earlier. The song’s true meaning is obtuse, but that final stanza, “And when when I go, when I go, look back at me, embers aglow” might be how I look back at 2020. Crutchfield has a slight yodel she throws in her songs when she really wants to lay on the feelings. Those final “when I go”s get that extra oomph, and it adds a little flair of perspective to my vision of 2020, one that‘s not so bad.

I have truly loved the time I’ve been gifted this past year to spend with those closest to me — my wife and our two lovely children. But with that extra time has come a greater mental social cost that we have yet to recognize or quantify. We’ve been in a collective cocoon, and 2021 is when the world slowly breaks free and starts to spread its new wings. When we were deep in it last year, every day seemed to bring some new tragic headline, another horrifying fact or secret realization brought to light. Now, a month into 2021, I have a newly-lit hope that the perspective wrought by the year will ultimately drive positive, lasting, unbreakable change. I once was blind, but now I see. Let’s work together to do great things with our new eyes.

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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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#2 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Fiona Apple

January 30, 2021 by Royal Stuart

Fetch The Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple

Fetch The Bolt Cutters, Fiona Apple’s fifth studio album, took five years to create and only a day or two to become one of the best, universally acclaimed albums of 2020. It was released on April 17, about a month into the Covid–19-related lockdown in the United States. At the time, we had no idea how long this thing was going to last, and we hadn’t yet properly adjusted to the slower, insulated pace of working from home. The album’s title and theme, as stated by Apple, “Fetch the fucking bolt cutters and get yourself out of the situation you’re in.”

Knowing that the theme had been established well before the coronavirus had hit and we didn’t know what was coming, that’s one hell of a serendipitous coincidence. Screenwriter/author Bess Kalb said it best when she tweeted on the day of the release, “Fiona Apple was waiting for the entire world to descend into restless melancholic rage and then once we all started pacing in our kitchens in our underwear in the middle of the night she was like, ‘You’re ready.’”

I’ve been a devoted fan of Apple’s since her third album, Extraordinary Machine, which came out in 2005 after two years of fights with her label and the online leak of the original recordings in 2003 before Apple re-recorded everything and released it in earnest. It’s a great story about a great album, and she hooked me with all of it. Her even better fourth album, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than The Driver Of The Screw & Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do, was my #1 album of 2012. It’s been 8 years since that album came out, and aside from a duet with Andrew Bird on his 2016 album Are You Serious (#5 that year), we’d not heard much from Apple since that last album, which made the release of Bolt Cutters all the more unexpectedly perfect.

The album takes cues from The Idler Wheel’s sparse compositions, but Apple explores more of her raw and wild side on the newer album. Lots of non-musical objects became fodder for Apple to clang, beat and hammer on while she recorded the bulk of the record from her home using GarageBand on her Mac. Other found / unexpected sounds permeate the album, such as a kennel full of barking dogs at the end of the title song.

The album felt perfect for 2020 in so many ways, as if Apple had been living in self-inflicted isolation in preparation for what was to come. Since putting it at my #2 for the year, I see that Pitchfork ranked it #1, and NPR also ranked it #2, so I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you need polish, something “clean” to wash away the insanity of 2020. But for me I like to get address the insanity head on. (As if reading my other reviews from this year didn’t already inform you of that fact.) Immersing myself in the insanity just a bit helps me process it, and I’m so glad Fiona was there to hold my hand. I’m guessing you have a lot left to process from 2020, too, so please allow me to point you to Fetch The Bolt Cutters. You won’t be disappointed.

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#3 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Phoebe Bridgers

January 29, 2021 by Royal Stuart

Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers

The “sophomore slump” has been a real and documentable phenomenon. I don’t know how many bands I’ve lost interest in after the excitement of their first album failed to reappear in their second. But apparently Phoebe Bridgers believes the slump to be mere sophistry, as her phenomenal sophomore (see what I did there) album, Punisher, is a noticeable improvement over her very good by any measure 2017 debut album Stranger in the Alps. I’m still kicking myself for having paid attention to that album too late for it to make the 2017 Top 31, but I’m so glad I didn’t miss the boat on Punisher.

The laziest way for me to describe to you Bridgers’ music is via these three words: “female Sufjan Stevens.” Throughout the album, Bridgers undersells the power of her voice, singing at just above a whisper. Her tone is that of a delicate flower, fragrant and beautiful. But like Stevens at his best, she punctures that quietness in calculated bursts, wielding her power like a dagger hidden in an ankle holster. The production of her music places the mic close to the fingers on her guitar, so you hear every movement and pluck, and filled out with key strings and slide guitars and ever-so-perfect digital wisps layered on top. It’s lush, a valley of cool breezes and wildflowers.

It’s the stark changes, however, that truly remind me of Sufjan. “ICU” is a loud, digitally-infused rock song about breaking up with her boyfriend. “Now I can’t even get you to play the drums, ’Cause I don’t know what I want until I fuck it up.” He remains the drummer in her band, despite the scenes described in the song. “I Know the End,” my favorite song on the album, starts out simply enough, quietly describing the depression that comes from constant touring. But then it builds, and builds some more, in a Sufjan-esque way, to a beautiful cacophony of screams and noise. The song ends with Bridgers endearingly mimicking the sound of a stadium crowd screaming.

Even though she’s only been in the music business since around 2014, she’s worked with and performed with a crazy amount of top artists you know. She joined forces with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus to form Boygenius, who released an EP in 2018. And then she and Conor Oberst released an album as Better Obvlivion Community Center in 2019, all three of whom appear at various points on Punisher as well. She has performed many times with Matt Berninger and The National, most recently in 2020 when she appeared in Zach Galifianakis’s feature length movie “Between Two Ferns” as the lead singer of the fake band Phoebe Bridgers and The Spiders from Bars, with Berninger and two members of The Walkmen as the Spiders.

Bridgers, whose middle name is Lucille (which I love), was 25 when Punisher came out on June 18, a day early, like so many other albums that were released early in response to the global unrest caused by the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. She is politically outspoken and uses her platform to call attention to causes she believes in, and by choosing to release her album early she pushed her fans to donate to racial justice charities and called for the abolition of police. Additionally, she actively campaigned for Biden/Harris, vowing to cover Goo Goo Dolls’ massive hit “Iris” should Trump lose. She recorded the song with Maggie Rogers and released it on November 13.

Bridgers has released a number of great videos from the album. “Savior Complex,” shown above, was directed by Phoebe Waller-Bridge (a favorite of mine – go watch “Fleabag” right now if you haven’t seen it) and stars Paul Mescal (who starred in my favorite show of 2020, “Normal People.” It’s brilliant, go watch it right after you watch “Fleabag.”) “I Know the End” is cryptic, but since it’s my favorite song I’ll give it a pass. “Kyoto” and “Garden Song” were filmed just as the pandemic was taking hold, created in a necessarily lo-fi way.

If you’re like me, you’ve got a lot of catching up to do in the world of Phoebe Bridgers. Don’t sit on it — if she keeps up the rate at which she’s producing music, you’ll be permanently left behind, and we simply can’t have that.

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#4 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Taylor Swift

January 28, 2021 by Royal Stuart

folklore + evermore by Taylor Swift

If I were to allow myself a quick indulgence in forgetting the shit ton of god awful shit that happened, 2020 would go down as “The Biggest, Most Exciting Year For a Fan of The National That Doesn’t Feature a New Album by The National.” Not only was there the phenomenal debut solo release by lead singer Matt Berninger (Serpentine Prison, at #8), there were not one but two wholly-unexpected Aaron Dessner-produced and co-written jaw-droppingly good Taylor Swift albums, albums that could easily be called The National albums but with Swift slotted in for Berninger.

I would find it unbelievable if you told me you didn’t know Swift had released a couple albums in 2020. It’s impossible to be that in the dark that you somehow avoided hearing about the best selling album of 2020 (folklore set so many records upon its release on July 24, and it ended the year atop many best-of lists) and its sister album (evermore, released on December 11, may yet set records for sales in 2021, even if it will be out of contention for the critical year-end lists). But I can’t blame you if you discounted it outright, simply for being a couple of Taylor Swift albums. Well, I’m here to tell you that you’ve been thoroughly missing out. These albums are two of the most approachable, exciting, and universally-appealing records you’ll ever experience.

Swift was meant to team up with Dessner (guitarist, producer, and co-writer for The National, who have appeared on numerous Top 31s in the past, as well as one-half — with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver — of Big Red Machine, who appeared at #13 in 2018). Her personal, intimately written stories told in rhyming couplets and double entendres layer beautifully on Dessner’s musical tapestry. If you remove Swift’s words and voice from these songs, these are The National songs. It’s abundantly clear who drives the sounds of their albums. Then you add in Swift’s poetry and voice, and it’s almost too much for one person to handle.

folklore was a huge hit in our house from the day it was released. My family loved it as much as I did, including the youngest of us. Only two at the time of release, my toddler loves to proclaim “You know this song!” whenever she hears any song she’s heard more than once. We heard her say that a lot when we’d put it on. But when she got even more comfortable with it, demanding “Again!” at the end of the album’s best song (“Exile,” one of two duets Swift has with Bon Iver on the albums), and then started quietly singing the words from the song on top of Vernon and Swift… ouch my heart. Hearing my three-year old daughter singing “I never learned to read your mind, I couldn’t turn things around, ’cause you never gave a warning sign” will stick with me forever.

I’ve written so much about The National over the years, but I’ve not ever written about Taylor Swift, so let’s dive into how amazing she is for a minute. The woman has been producing music professionally since 2006, when she was only 17 years old. In the ensuing 14-year span, she’s put out 9 albums and a ton more EPs and single, all of which have sold over 227 million copies, good enough for #10 on the all-time list for most copies sold by any artist, ever. She’s won 10 Grammy Awards, an Emmy, and has set seven Guinness World Records, including “Biggest-Selling Album Worldwide For A Solo Artist” for her 2019 album Lover.

She is the perfect embodiment of female empowerment, and speaks out for herself, gun control, women’s rights, Black Lives Matter, LGBT rights and gender and racial equality, and the importance of voting. And she speaks out against white supremacy, systemic racism, and police brutality, all with an impeccable wardrobe and smile. On top of that, she’s picked up where Prince left off with his struggles against the leech-like record labels that suck every last dollar out of the artistic rights of their recording artists. She has publicly, continually, vehemently battled her record label for the ownership of her master recordings. Failing that, she’s decided to simply re-record all of her old recordings, no doubt making them better in the process and rendering the old masters all but worthless. “Commendable” doesn‘t even begin to define Taylor Swift.

All of that history makes the creation of folklore and evermore all that more astonishing. WIthout the pandemic-induced lockdowns, I don’t believe these records would have happened at all. Rather than being on a worldwide tour (that was supposed to begin in April), she set to recording new music. A few months of absolute chaos later, and she delivers the nicest care package imaginable.

These songs are without fault, and are infinitely listenable. The video above, which Swift directed, for her song “Cardigan” from the first album is not my favorite (see “Exile,” mentioned above), but even the worst song on the album is world’s better than 99% of what came out in 2020. The companion song from the second album, “Willow,” also has a Swift-directed video that starts exactly where the first video left off, and it’s not my favorite, either. For that, I’ll point you to the Justin Vernon co-produced song “Closure,” which doesn‘t feature Vernon’s succulent voice, but does feature key Bon Iver sounds and digitization, such as when he pushes Swift’s voice through his Messina – the vocal modifier that featured prominently on his 2016 Top 31 #1 album 22, A Million.

It’s clear I could keep gushing about these albums for much more — I’m finding myself striving to read all the background material out there (of which there is plenty, of course) to repurpose and regurgitate for you, dear reader. But I’ll stop here, and just tell you to listen, and then seek out the additional material yourself. There are deluxe versions and pared down versions and accompanying films and and and… The Taylor Swift machine is in high gear, per usual, but this time around I truly care, and I’m excited to see where she goes next. I hope there’s at least a few of you out there that I’ve convinced to listen to these records if you haven’t already. And for those of you that were as surprised as I was to find yourself in love with a couple of Taylor Swift albums in 2020, I’d love to hear from you about your experiences with the albums. Do reach out!

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#5 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Sault

January 27, 2021 by Royal Stuart

Untitled (Black Is) + Untitled (Rise) by Sault

Much like Run The Jewels at #6, Sault produces music that simultaneously answers to and defines the zeitgeist. But where RTJ is in your face and in your feeds to the point where they’re hard to avoid, Sault takes a much more subtle approach. Like RTJ, the music they produce is rooted in the plight and rise, the pain and joy of Black people worldwide, but it’s not outwardly angry. Instead, theirs songs are built on disco, soul, and R&B. They make you want to groove, in a 70s Marvin Gaye / Fela Kuti way, but they lyrically keep you firmly planted in the present.

The first of this year’s two albums, Untitled (Black Is), was released on Juneteenth, in the thick of global Black Lives Matter protests spurred on by the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. The second (and equally stellar) album, Untitled (Rise), came out three months later. They did the same thing in 2019, coming out of nowhere and releasing two earth shattering albums; 5 and 7 together appeared at #7 that year. That’s four amazing albums in 71 weeks. During a global pandemic and mass unrest at systemic racism and global warming. Just imagine what they could accomplish if we had had more quiet, complacent and complicit years. Personally, as difficult as it is to admit, I’d likely not have heard of Sault had the world not been boiling over due to the Trump kakistocracy. Or if I’d heard of them, I wouldn’t have latched onto them like I did in 2020. I once was blind, but now I see.

That said, you can’t really see Sault. The band is an enigma. Sure, they have Twitter and Facebook and Instagram feeds of their own, but they post to those only when a new album is released, in a very mechanical, unsocial way. And they certainly don’t respond to replies or comments. They don’t have a YouTube channel (the video above, and frankly all their videos, even the audio-only videos, appear to be created by fans). They’ve never toured. You won’t find them speaking out in front of cameras, or backing political candidates in overt ways. You won’t find them at all. What little information we do know about them has been dug up by über-music nerds at a handful of publications and has never been confirmed by the band.

Sault is likely made up of four main contributors: London-based producer Dean Josiah "Inflo" Cover (who also produced Michael Kiwanuka and Jungle albums that have appeared on the Top 31 in past years), keyboardist and co-writer Kadeem Clarke, London-based soul singer Cleopatra "Cleo Sol" Nikolic, and Chicago hip-hop artist Melisa “Kid Sister” Young. Michael Kiwanuka makes an appearance on (Black Is) in the song “Bow” shown in the video above as well.

We are all lucky to have been gifted such a wealth of amazing music from one source. Maybe someday we’ll get to thank them in person, but for now we must actively listen, enjoy, and then act. Despite the difficulty we all encountered in 2020, my “suffering” doesn’t begin to equal the generations of difficulty those that aren’t white have faced. Now that the scales are tipping back in the right direction, it will be too easy to sink back into our separate and unequal lives. Bands like Run The Jewels and Sault are here to remind us to stay vigilant. How did we get so lucky?

p.s. A big thank you goes out to my friend Ryan, who has created a Spotify version of the Top 31 playlist as a companion to my Apple Music playlist. On top of that, he’s gone so far as to create a “Singles” playlist, where he’s pulled one song from each album. In his words:

“The idea is that I want Royal Radio, I want the 2020 Top 31 countdown show you would air on KEXP if you had the opportunity.”

Thank you so much, Ryan. I’m elated that you’ve done this. Spotify users rejoice! And for the other readers out there who may not know, Ryan is 100% the reason I started the Top 31 back in 2009. Prior to my countdown, Ryan was doing his own annual musical advent calendar. When he pulled the plug after having created it for a few years, I decided to pick up the reins (with his blessing). We should all be thanking Ryan. Maybe this will be the start of a bigger collaboration in years to come.

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#6 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Run The Jewels

January 26, 2021 by Royal Stuart

RTJ4 by Run The Jewels

In the summer and latter half of 2020 when I needed a non-destructive way to take out my pent-up anger and mad-at-the-world rage (times of which were plenty), I would turn to RTJ4. Throughout the year, the hard hitting, nail-on-the-head music on Run The Jewels’ fourth full-length was my perfect go-to album. On top of that, Killer Mike, whose real name is Michael Santiago Render, is one-half of Run The Jewels, an outspoken politically-savvy voice in Atlanta, an ardent supporter of Bernie Sanders, and consequently someone whom I followed quite intently leading up to the 2020 election. I even bought a “Killer Mike for President 2020” tee. Run the Jewels were welcome MCs to the world in 2020.

Killer Mike and his partner El-P (born Jaime Meline), who produced the album in full, met via the Cartoon Network’s Senior Vice President and Creative Director of On-Air at Adult Swim Jason DeMarco (of all things) in 2011. El-P then produced Mike’s fifth studio album, R.A.P. Music in 2012, which sealed their partnership for good. Together they’ve released three self-titled numerical albums and finally the acronymed, (and best of the bunch) RTJ4. Run the Jewels 2 appeared on the Top 31 at #28 in 2014, and I ashamedly overlooked Run the Jewels 3 in 2016 (but have since listened and love it, too). All this is to say, these two have built up quite a resume, and the music they produce shows it.

RTJ4 is far from “toddler friendly.” This is the most vocal minority: dark, vulgar, and (rightfully so) angry. As I didn’t leave the house all that much in 2020, I had to really work at finding opportunities to listen to the album. I would look forward to those times when I could take a short drive to run an errand, cranking the volume inside my car. Nothing feels more cutting and raw and confusing and perfect to my middle-aged, caucasian, suburban, male and oh-so-privileged body than blowing out my ear drums and singing loudly along to the chorus of a song like “JU$T,” which repeats “Look at all these slave masters posin’ on yo’ dollar.” I feel energized and called-out all at once, which is exactly what I wanted and needed to feel in 2020.

The album was released 2 days ahead of schedule, on June 3. The murder of George Floyd, whose neck was pinned under Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin’s knee for 8 minutes and 46 suffocating seconds on May 25, 2020, and the subsequent protests that were set off worldwide through focused outrage at his death, pushed the duo to get their music out as quickly as possible. Their statement (via a now-deleted El-P Instagram post) says it all:

Fuck it, why wait. The world is infested with bullshit so here's something raw to listen to while you deal with it all. We hope it brings you some joy. Stay safe and hopeful out there and thank you for giving 2 friends the chance to be heard and do what they love. With sincere love and gratitude, Jaime + Mike.

We didn’t need to look hard for reasons to get incensed about all the injustice and negativity and horror in the world in 2020. But now, in late January 2021, if you find that you need a blatant reminder to actively and purposefully struggle against the cozy blanket of privilege you find yourself buried under now that the excess weight of the Trump regime has been shed, look no further. RTJ4 will have you up out of your seat, angrily punching the air and looking for ways to shake things up in no time.

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#7 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Fleet Foxes

January 25, 2021 by Royal Stuart

Shore by Fleet Foxes

This 2020 Top 31 is officially the twelfth time I’ve written about my favorite albums of the year. The history I’ve documented in that span is one of my favorite things about the overall endeavor. Getting to reread what I thought about a record ten years later is personally exciting.

For instance, I just went back and reread the reviews of the two previous Fleet Foxes albums that have appeared on the Top 31 (Crack-Up at #12 in 2017 and Helplessness Blues at #9 in 2011). My memory of the band is that I’ve always held them in high regard and unquestionably loved everything they’ve put out. But upon rereading those older reviews, I’m reminded of my own Fleet Foxes burnout just before Helplessness Blues came out. To me, now, that sounds like somebody else entirely. How could I have ever disliked the Fleet Foxes. And yet there it is, in black and white.

One thing I can say for certain: if I’d been writing about my Top 31 in 2008, the self-titled Fleet Foxes debut from that year would have been #1. Since then the band has been through ups and downs, breakups and reunions, mostly at the whim of the band’s principal songwriter and lead singer Robin Pecknold. After a long sabbatical while he went to Columbia University, the band’s release of Crack-Up in 2017 felt a little less “triumphant” than I would have hoped for. I loved the somewhat disjointed and melancholy album, but it didn’t exceed expectations. So when the band released Shore at the exact moment of the Autumnal Equinox (September 22, 2020, at 13:31 UTC), I was excited and genuinely curious where Pecknold was taking the band.

And I was so happy to hear that where he was taking them was exactly where I hoped they’d be. Shore, the band’s fourth album in their 14 year history, is a beautiful, orchestral masterpiece. Pecknold recorded the foundation of the album in a number of studios starting in 2018, working with many new collaborators while fully expecting to bring in his bandmates to round out the songs into a complete Fleet Foxes album. But then the pandemic changed everything, making it impossible for the band to gather throughout 2020, leaving Pecknold essentially alone to write lyrics and finish the album.

All of these factors make the album’s creation and subsequent sound all the more astonishing. The multi-layered harmonies, the strings and horns, and Pecknold’s ethereal and personal lyrics that the Fleet Foxes are known for are all there. As such, Shore couldn’t be mistaken for anything but a Fleet Foxes album. But that’s also where the album shines – it doesn’t sound like a throwback to another era, as their previous albums have. This isn’t 60’s hippie music. Pecknold brings a new level of experience, growth, and maturity to the album, demonstrating the potential greatest I saw in him back in 2007 wasn’t just a fluke. He just needed time to get there.

Accompanying the release of the album is a film of the same name shot and directed by Kersti Jan Werdal. It features the entire album playing over a beautiful set of Pacific Northwest landscapes. On top of that, the video above for “Sunblind” is great, and the only opportunity you’ll have to catch a video with 2020-era Pecknold in it. A video for “Can I Believe You” was also released, with dancers squaring off to the music in mesmerizing ways.

Shore was a calming presence for me as 2020 wound down. If I needed to relax and disconnect from the madness in the real world, I’d throw this on and quickly escape to a cold and misty Washington-state beach. We were lucky to have the Fleet Foxes in our world in 2020, given the way the album came together. Maybe in 2021 we’ll get to see them live once again. Fingers crossed.

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#8 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Matt Berninger

January 24, 2021 by Royal Stuart

Serpentine Prison by Matt Berninger

Matt Berninger may very well be my favorite performer, ever. If you’ve been following The Bacon Review for the last 11+ years, then there’s a good chance you’d know this already, given how much prominence the lead singer of The National has been allotted over the years. Including his main band’s appearances on the Top 31 (four times: #6 2019, #4 in 2017, #3 in 2013, and #1 in 2010), his side project, El Vy (#10 in 2015), and Berninger’s appearances in other performers’ albums (such as Chvrches and CYHSY), the man has been mentioned nearly every year that the countdown has existed.

I mention this history because it plays a big part in how I listen to and quantify the new stuff he puts out. It’s not just “how does this music compare to everything else this year?” but also “where within all the music of his that I love does this rate?” Never an easy question, and it inevitably changes over time. For instance, while The National’s High Violet ranked #1 in 2010, I don’t consider it the best amongst the four albums the band has on the countdown. (That honor currently goes to 2013’s Trouble Will Find Me. Ask me again tomorrow and I’ll give you a different answer.)

Serpentine Prison, Berninger’s first true “solo album,” is a great effort. No, it’s not a National album, but it’s damn close. And I’m sure it will stick with me a lot longer than the El Vy album has. Sonically, the album sounds similar to what a National album might be if they left the bombast that comes with a lot of their songs on the shelf. Prison is soft-spoken, and because of that it doesn’t immediately hook you. It’s more of a slow burn.

This is the kind of album that feels like good background music at first, but by the middle of the album you find yourself leaning in, listening intently, and picking out the hints of the album’s collaborators. The album has a good, down to earth feel that sounds full and polished, thanks to producer Booker T. Jones. (He of Booker T. & the MG’s and a ton of collaborations from the 60s on (including Otis Redding, Willie Nelson, Rita Coolidge, Bill Withers, and Neil Young, just to name a few.) Jones plays on a few songs as well, and helped bring together a slew of other big names to participate in the making of the record, including Andrew Bird, Gail Ann Dorsey (who featured prominently on The National’s 2019 album I Am Easy to Find), Brent Knopf (Berninger’s partner in crime in El Vy), and The National’s Scott Devendorf. The song above, “Distant Axis,” is probably my favorite of the album. The video is quite fun as well.

Berninger has been keeping himself busy since the last National album in 2019. In addition to creating this solo album, he’s released a couple of new songs worth listening to that don’t appear on the album. His fantastic duet with Phoebe Bridgers, called “Walking on a String,” is from Zach Galifianakis’s feature length “Between Two Ferns,” in which Berninger and Bridgers appear in the movie Phoebe Bridgers and The Spiders from Bars, along with two members of The Walkmen. He also released a cover of Mercury Rev’s “Holes” as part of a benefit series called “7-inches for Planned Parenthood.”

Perhaps after reading all this, you agree that Berninger is worthy of the praise I heap upon him. I can understand if his baritone and delivery aren’t your cup of tea, but I don’t think it’s possible to deny his greatness. Serpentine Prison is a worthy solo debut, and I highly recommend that you pick it up as soon as possible.

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#9 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Sufjan Stevens

January 23, 2021 by Royal Stuart

The Ascension by Sufjan Stevens

Much like yesterday’s Car Seat Headrest album, Sufjan Stevens’ latest solo work, The Ascension, is the worst album he’s produced since I started the Top 31: his last album, Carrie & Lowell, was #4 in 2015, and The Age of Adz was #3 in 2010. And once again, in any other year The Ascension would have ranked much higher than #9. It suffers not from being less-than-great, but instead from having been released in a year of a great outpouring of other stellar music.

This new album is a stark departure from the quiet and contemplative Carrie & Lowell. Dense and fully electronic, The Ascension is better defined as an extension of Adz, which was a real surprise to me and everyone else when it was released back in 2010. If you’re a longtime fan of Stevens, you won’t be surprised in the slightest. But if you’re still clinging to Lowell, or even farther back to the likes of 2005’s Illinois, you might wonder what the hell is going on with this new album.

Turns out, the album sounds like it does out of necessity: Stevens was in the process of moving from his longtime home in Brooklyn to a more remote spot in the Catskills during the recording of the album, and his stringed instruments were packed away, out of reach. Whether that was a conscious effort, a made up constriction, or entirely true is besides the point. Stevens is the master of his musical domain, and that domain is not bound by the soft and intimate analog world.

All of Sufjan’s deeply personal refrains are here, such as “I wanna die happy” repeated twenty-some-odd times in the song “Die Happy,” or “…I was asking far too much of everyone around me,” from the absolutely gorgeous title song. You’ll find your self swimming in those same waters as on past albums, but this time with day-glow paint and UV lights shining on the pool. If you’ve not listened to Sufjan in the past, I’ll first ask “why not?!” and then happily point you to this album; it’s a perfectly fine point to dive into his warm embrace, something much needed throughout all of 2020.

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#10 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Car Seat Headrest

January 22, 2021 by Royal Stuart

Making a Door Less Open by Car Seat Headrest

You’ve made it! Welcome to The Bacon Review’s Top 10 of 2020. At #10, we have recent Bacon Top 31 stalwarts Car Seat Headrest, with their worst album of the last five years. No, that’s not a joke. Making a Door Less Open, the band’s twelfth studio album and fourth I’ve listened to, is not as good as their last two albums, Teens of Denial, which hit #7 back in 2016, and Twin Fantasy (Face to Face), which made the top 3 in 2018. It’s pretty awesome when a band’s lesser work is still good enough to crack the Top 10 in a given year.

Making a Door Less Open sounds quite a bit different, musically. The band’s lead singer and principal songwriter Will Toledo still has his signature lazy delivery, but the instrumentation he’s built behind his lyrics sounds quite different. Where the past albums sounded fully analog, the new stuff is clearly digital, with interesting cuts and splices thrown on top of computer-driven alteration of Toledo’s voice and guitars, and a repetitive drum beat backing it all up. A couple songs devolve quickly into noise-rock that is difficult to crack into, but when it works, it knocks your socks off.

The opening tracks, “Weightlifters” and “Can’t Cool Me Down,” (shown in the above lyric video), are fairly typical Toledo, complete with highly repetitive choruses. But then the album shifts into entirely new and confusing territory, evidence of a man who’s cracking under the pressure his fame has brought upon him. Whereas his past work has been about how difficult the lives of the people around him have been, Door is a more personal, present affair. “Hollywood,” for instance, is intense and cacophonic, where we hear Toledo screaming “Hollywood makes me wanna puke!” over and over again.

Further evidence of Toledo’s inner turmoil is revealed in the few non-Car Seat Headrest things that surfaced between this and the last album. For instance, Toledo along with drummer Andy Katz created a fully electronic side project called 1 Trait Danger, led by Toledo wearing a fully-covering gas mask with LED-activated eyes, and full albums and an entirely fictitious backstory created for the band’s Bandcamp page. It’s a chameleon-like shift reminiscent of Beck’s stranger departures over the past couple decades. Probably should have left that door closed.

Making a Door Less Open, however, is well worth your time. If you’ve not listened to Car Seat Headrest in the past, start with Twin Fantasy (Face to Face) before diving into this one. But if you’re a fan, Door is an interesting shift that I think you’ll love.

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#11 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Glass Animals

January 21, 2021 by Royal Stuart

Dreamland by Glass Animals

I’m writing this review on the night of President Biden and Vice President Harris’s inauguration, and hooooo boy it’s amazing the difference a day can make. It would be foolish to think that all our troubles are behind us now that the 46th president has been sworn in, but it sure has been nice to feel that way just for an instant. There’s a long road ahead, but it feels so good to have a president that has already shown he has a plan and is headed in the right direction.

It couldn’t be more fitting a night to write about Glass Animals, whose fantastic third full-length album Dreamland is just barely missing the top 10 of 2020. This album is fun, bouncy, and instantly lovable. These songs evoke a sound of treacly throwback, to bands like Passion Pit or Suckers, with electronic-driven beats underneath higher-register male vocals.

After you first listen, and then repeat, and repeat again because you just can’t stop yourself, you start to hear the words to the songs. It’s only then that you start to realize the topics being sung about are deeply personal, often dark life stories. Dave Bayley, the band’s principal song writer, said this about the album:

The idea of Dreamland is to go from my first memory up until now, through all the big realizations that happen in life. It's about the things that happened and the people that surrounded me in that time, good things, bad things, horrific things, funny things, confusing things, bits where I hated myself, bits where I hated other people, first loves, discovering sexuality, sadness, abandonment, mental health. It's just painting pictures of those moments and times that, looking back, make you who you are.

Bayley, from Oxford, England, not only wrote the songs, but he also sang and produced all the songs on Dreamland, with a touch of help from his Oxford childhood friends and bandmates Drew MacFarlane (guitar, keyboards, backing vocals), Ed Irwin-Singer (bass guitar, keyboards, backing vocals) and Joe Seaward (drums, percussion). The band (or maybe just Bayley himself?) even put together a full video set for the album. Not just lyric videos, like most bands these days, but a short form video has been created for each song on the album. On top of that, the band’s website (glassanimals.com) is creatively genius. I don’t want to give it away — just click that link and look for yourself.

Then go buy the record and listen. I won’t be surprised when it doesn’t leave your speakers for days.

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#12 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Fontaines D.C.

January 20, 2021 by Royal Stuart

A Hero’s Death by Fontaines D.C.

You may remember Fontaines, D.C. from their appearance on last year’s Top 31, where their debut album landed at #26. Proving there’s always an exception to the rule, the Dublin-based band’s 2nd album, A Hero’s Death is anything but a sophomore slump. They created a work of art with their first release, but it wasn’t without mistakes — a little too predictable, a little too derivative. In the short span between that debut and the release of Death in July, they’ve clearly learned how to be themselves, how to create something that sounds like Fontaines D.C. and not like some earlier band they’re mimicking.

The songs they craft are hard hitting – driving drums, strong guitar lines and Grian Chatten’s droning vocals repeating common refrains throughout. Despite the repetitiveness, or maybe because of the repetitiveness, this music hits in a much different way than bands that came before. Those repeated refrains become the titles to the songs. Take “Televised Mind,” for instance. It starts with the line “That’s a Televised Mind” repeated six times. That happens two more times in the song, becoming the defect chorus, despite being only 4 words long. Most of the songs on the album are like that. Reading it this way, it sounds horrible and boring. But there’s something to how they deliver it, the droning yell, the incessant beat. It’s invigorating.

A mix of Television and Juno thrown together in a blender that’s missing a blade or two. The lads in the band (Carlos O'Connell on guitar and backing vocals; Conor Curley on guitar, piano, backing vocals; Conor Deegan III on bass guitar, guitar and backing vocals; Tom Coll on drums, percussion, guitar; the aforementioned Grian Chatten on lead vocals) all met the British and Irish Modern Music Institute, a collection of eight colleges scattered throughout Great Britain. The education pays off, clearly. They chose their name based on the character Johnny Fontane from The Godfather, and had to add a superlative to their name when they found out a previous band called The Fontaines had already claimed the name. “D.C.” was added as the initials for Dublin City.

The video above, for the title song, is fantastically weird. Starring well-known Irish actor Aidan Gillen, who played Tommy Carcetti on The Wire and Littlefinger on Game of Thrones, the video starts out fairly normally before devolving into a sick and twisted fever dream of repetition, ending in Gillen going in to kiss a ventriloquist’s dummy of himself. It’s tough to watch, and the refrain “Life ain’t always empty” replaying over and over and over on top of the visuals is a cruel irony for the pain that Gillen’s character is continually going through. But, hey, at least we got a great song with a great album to surround it.

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#13 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Gorillaz

January 19, 2021 by Royal Stuart

Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez by Gorillaz

Damon Albarn is a musical chameleon. He got his start with Blur in the early 90s (whose 8th album The Magic Whip was on the Top 31 at #21 in 2015). He’s also appeared on the Top 31 with The Good, The Bad and the Queen (#23 in 2018). And what started as a side project in 2005, Gorillaz has lately become Albarn’s main gig. The band’s seventh album, Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez appears here at #13 for 2020.

I’d lost interest in Gorillaz, despite my ongoing love for Albarn’s music. I haven’t loved anything he’s done with Gorillaz since their 2005 Danger Mouse-produced sophomore album Demon Days, and consequently the four albums prior to Song Machine that were released between 2010 and 2018 did not make the Top 31 cut. I’m glad that 2020 saw the release of another great Gorillaz album.

For those of you living under a rock, Gorillaz is a “virtual” band, with four fictional animated characters illustrated by Tank Girl-creator Jamie Hewlett. Musically, the band’s songs are principally created by Albarn, with a large collection of support characters and guest stars coming in to flesh things out. Since 2016, the band’s song creation duties have been shared with a third member of the band, Remi Kabaka Jr., who mans the lead percussion and produces the songs. Together they create a wide variety of digitally-created music with Albarn taking the lead on vocals, often singing with guest starts.

Song Machine started at the beginning of 2020 as a web-only music video series, a collection of singles released monthly with guest stars appearing on each song. There was no intention of releasing the songs as a full album. But, much like all the other plans launched in the first couple months of 2020, things changed. And we’re all the better for it.

The guest stars on Song Machine, Season One are what propelled this album into a prominent spot of my 2020 playlist. Robert Smith, Beck, St. Vincent, Elton John, and Peter Hook (among many many others) appear on the album. Not only do they lend their voices to these songs, but the songs they appear on shift tonally to the range that these voices are known for. So the album often sounds less like a Gorillaz album, and more like a movie soundtrack filled with great pop songs.

The album is very easy to love. Even if you’ve not been a fan in the past, I recommend checking it out. You just may surprise yourself.

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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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#15 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Nation of Language

January 17, 2021 by Royal Stuart

Introduction, Presence by Nation of Language

Throughout 2020, when I wanted to listen to something released in 2020, but be swept back to the simpler emo/goth days of the late 20th century, Brooklyn’s Nation of Language would be there for me. If I were to play their fantastic debut album, Introduction, Presence, for you, and I didn’t tell you who it was, I fully believe you’d wrinkle your brow and say, tentatively, “is this… Joy Division?” or “…Depeche Mode?” or “…The Cure?” depending on the song I put on. Yes, the band’s impersonation of our synth-pop heroes from the 80s and 90s is really that good.

No, I haven’t put any eyeliner on while listening to them, but lord I hope the kids are (please, somebody with a connection to teens or 20-somethings, gather intel and report back). The trio, Ian Richard Devaney on vocals, guitar, percussion; Aidan Noell on synth and background vocals; and Michael Sue-Poi on bass; started on their pilgrimage to another era back in 2016. Since then they’ve released amazing single after amazing single, slowly building up enough songs to compile it into this lovely debut album.

Introduction, Presence doesn’t really have a breakaway hit for me to point you to. Rather, the feeling the album evokes is an entire world I wish I could go back to. I know I’m being exceedingly glib about the late twentieth century (hello white privilege!) but it’s less of an era and more of a younger age sort of longing. The freedom, lack of responsibility, and excess amount of disposable income that comes with youth is what this music reminds me of. But that’s also a great reality check, as I put it on the page. Yes, life was different then. But I also didn’t have my son, who is twelve now. Or my daughter, who is three. Or my lovely wife, who is… not three. Listening to Nation of Language allows me to think of that previous life fondly, and to spread that joy around my currently life. Give it a listen, as I know you’ll find that joy, too.

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#16 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Sylvan Esso

January 16, 2021 by Royal Stuart

Free Love by Sylvan Esso

We’ve reached the apex of the curve, the middle point of the Top 31, and I couldn’t be happier to announce Sylvan Esso is strongly holding the #16 spot. On its surface, Free Love may sound quite similar to Grimes’ Miss Anthropocene, reviewed yesterday, but listen closer. Grimes’ has a knack for dark and gritty dance music, but where Sylvan Esso truly shines is crisp and clear vocals on top of crisp and clear melodies. There’s absolutely nothing gritty about Free Love.

I mean it when I describe them as “crisp and clear.” Put on some headphones and give the song “Free,” featured in the video above. It’s a very quiet tune, as if Meath is standing right next to you, barely singing directly into your ear. Listen for the movements of her tongue and lips in the recording — it’s all there, and it’s magical.

There are quite a few videos out for the album, which hasn’t been the case for most albums on the Top 31 this year (I assume because Covid made it quite difficult to pull a video crew together). I could have chosen any of these as the signature song to feature with this review:

“Frequency”
“Ferris Wheel”
“Train”
“Rooftop Dancing”

Sylvan Esso is two people, Amelia Meath on vocals and Nick Sanborn on the instrumentals, with both of them handling the production. Meath and Sanborn have been playing together since 2014, and they married in 2016. They’re adorable, and so is their music. They’ve been on the Top 31 once before, with their second album, What Now, having hit #19 in 2017. If they keep producing records like this, they’ll be on every Top 31 to come.

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