#3 on the 2025 Bacon Top 31 — Caroline Rose

January 29, 2026 by Royal Stuart in 2025, Top 31

year of the slug by Caroline Rose

This is now the fifth time I’ve written an opening sentence to this review of Caroline Rose’s remarkable sixth album, year of the slug. I write a few words, stop and think about them, erase and start over. Do it again. Again. So many emotions, so much excitement to share, and no clear path forward. That’s how the current iteration of Caroline Rose and their latest album make me feel.

Since we last saw Rose on the Top 31 (their last album, The Art of Forgetting, was #20 in 2023), they’ve taken their career in a new and commendable direction. The use-em-and-lose-em mentality of the recording industry combined with the earth-and-creativity-killing AI machine that threatens to reduce us all to drooling, screen-addicted blobs would likely prove to be a foe too formidable for most. But not Caroline Rose.

I’ve seen a number of artists over the years turn themselves into Patreon-driven living-room performers. This is a great way for artists who are a decade past their hey day to still connect with their stan-est of fans (fan-est of stans?) and continue to earn a living (unsure if it’s enough of a living to actually live by, but there’s enough artists out there doing it that I have to assume it’s at least mostly true). I’ve never been a big enough super-fan to be interested in (or perhaps too self-aware to buy into) attending an artist’s living room show (or, god forbid, hosting one — what sort of awkward conversation would ensue between me and my former idol who is now sitting in my living room, playing 20-year-old hits to me and ten of my closest friends?). To have your illustrious music career take this kind of turn has always felt to me like it was more out of desperation or for lack of knowing what to do with oneself after the fame and industry support has most disappeared. Thankfully, the above paragraph does NOT describe what Rose has done with their career in the slightest.

Rose, instead, pulled the plug, cut out the middle man. They’ve gone direct. At arguably the peak of their career, they’ve essentially told the music industry and the AI machine to simply fuck off. You won’t find year of the slug on any streaming services. And you won’t find Rose performing in any Live Nation, Ticketmaster, AXS or any of the other artist-killing conglomerate-owned venues around the nation. Instead, you’ll find the album only on Bandcamp or physical media for purchase at their web store. Tour tickets are available exclusively at their website. They’ve chosen to go it alone, letting their abundance of songwriting talent, stage presence, and years of built-up good will with their audience carry them forward.

I’m sure it’s not easy, but we’re all better off for it. The Uncle Carol (as they lovingly call themselves) we are getting today is naked and raw. Where Forgetting, and the two albums before it (Superstar at #21 in 2020 and Loner at #12 in 2018) were polished and often pop driven, year of the slug feels more like a 30-year-old recorded-on-a-boom-box Mountain Goats album. “I’m just trying to make music diverse enough that AI can’t reproduce it,” says Rose, on their Bandcamp page. Recorded straight into Garage Band from their phone, this album is Caroline Rose’s equivalent of Springsteen’s straight-to-tape Nebraska.

Nebraska is my favorite record from The Boss. year of the slug is my favorite record from Caroline Rose. The power of both of those albums comes from the stripped down production, reducing the songs to their bare minimum, forcing the storytelling to the fore. The album opens with “everything in its right place,” Rose playing an acoustic guitar while their doubled voice sings lyrics about the little things that happen in life in and around being in love. The next song, “to be lonely,” carries forward the motif of acoustic guitar plus doubled voice, but the tone has shifted, focused on longing and removed desire. “I want to be your fantasy / i want to be completely free / i want to hear that perfect sound / but all i’ve ever known is how to be lonely.”

“conversation with shiv (liquid k song)” shifts to an electric guitar, with a driving, canned drum beat keeping things moving quickly, featuring lyrics about wanting to “be somebody” but being lost in the travails of a hard life, including abortion and being stuck in a liquid ketamine low. The song ends with the repeated phrase “yeah i’m outside the Betty Ford.” The fourth song, “we don’t talk anymore,” wears its pain on its sleeve – trying to work through a break up without being able to lean on the person you’ve trusted to be able to for so long.

The next song, “strange things,“ is slow and haunting, but carries a mostly-uplifting message of being in love. Song six, “goddamn train,” is the peak of the album, giving us the most energetic beat, harkening back to the Rose we heard on “Money” from Loner. But what sounds exciting and inviting is actually about the endless tirade of the world today. “gotta keep quiet. gotta sit tight. gotta shake hands. gotta make plans. gotta get ripped. gotta stay fit. never get sick.”

“antigravity struggle” brings the drum machine back, slower, with an interpolated guitar riff from Lou Reed‘s “Sweet Jane” and lyrics that evoke the smooth dreamy quality of a righteous high. “dirge (it’s trash day) aka trash day dirge” is a short, wordless song, just the muffled sound of a piano in the minor key and the crackling of a tape deck and / or fire in the fireplace. The ninth song, “another life,” describes the endless search we all are experiencing, looking for “the answer” but never finding it; “but maybe I’ll find it in another life.”

“desperation, baby” speaks fondly of a past love, and the excitement that happened with and around them. But there’s a shift, bringing the whole affair crashing back into reality, “all our big dreams / well who cares now / x rated desperation here she comes.” The last song, “kings of east LA” feels like an unfinished friendship, paused without resolution. Little snippets from a lifetime ago.

year of the slug is an emotional drive around an F1 course. Caroline Rose is a master of the form, and I’m glad they’ve found a way to be able to keep making music in this fucked up world without fucking themselves up too much in the process. They have a beautiful grasp of how best to convey emotion with poetry and a simple melody. Rose also shines like the sun when performing on stage, letting the stories they’re singing come through in a way most singers can’t. They’re clearly feeling it, and it makes me in the audience want to laugh with them and cry with them and give them the biggest hug I possibly can. To get a taste of what I’m describing, check out my video of them performing “Bikini,” from Loner, solo at The Sunset Tavern this past November.

And then check out their performance of “Miami” from their 2023 KEXP live set. Stick with it – when they get to the final chorus at the end of the song, attacking it a cappella, with tears streaming down their face, it just guts you. And it’s sometimes exactly what I need.

There is the art of loving
This is the art of forgetting how
This is gonna break you
You’re gonna rip your own heart out
There is the art of loving
This it the art of forgetting how
This is the art of forgetting how
This is the art of forgetting how
This is the art of forgetting how
You’ve gotta get through this life somehow
You’ve gotta get through this life somehow
You’ve gotta get through this life somehow
You’ve gotta get through this life somehow

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#25 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Underworld

January 07, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Strawberry Hotel by Underworld

29 years ago, two seminal events happened that changed the course of my media intake forever. 1: Trainspotting, Danny Boyle’s life-affirming film of Scottish author Irvine Welsh’s heroin-fueled novel, hit the theaters on February 23, 1996, bringing with it a phenomenal soundtrack, including a lesser-known electronic band called Underworld and their top-10 all-time song, “Born Slippy .NUXX.” 2: Underworld released their sophomore album, Second Toughest in the Infants on March 11, 1996.

Trainspotting features a handful of mid-twenties friends trying to make it through life, at a time when I myself was coming into my mid-twenties. Both the novel and the film connected with me in a way that nothing else had to date. The soundtrack features a wide variety of artists, from classic rock of the 70s in Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, through 80s brit pop in New Order, Blur, and Pulp, to 90s electronic artists like Leftfield and Underworld. I developed a love of ALL of the artists featured on the soundtrack, but Underworld were above and beyond my favorite band of my 20s.

I remember the CD shop I frequented in college, and remember the day I picked up Second Toughest there. I can picture the location, the CD in my hand, excited to bring it to my apartment and listen to it. From its opening track “Juanita” through the closing “Stagger,” it is a phenomenal album through and through.

In addition to making great music, Karl Hyde and Rick Smith — the duo that make the bulk of Underworld’s music — were part of a graphic design collective called Tomato that, along with folks like David Carson, shaped the zeitgeist of design in the 90s. Being in school and studying visual communications at that time, absorbing everything aural and visual created by the band, seared them onto my still-forming mind.

I went back in time and fell in love with their great 1994 debut, Dubnobasswithmyheadman, and continued to love them through their third album, 1999’s Beaucoup Fish. As I grew older, they kept making albums, but I started to move on. I enjoyed their 2002 album, A Hundred Days Off, but 2007’s Oblivion with Bells didn’t fit my mid-30s world. I started documenting my Top 31 in 2009, but the band’s 2010 release, Barking, didn’t make it onto that year’s Top 31. Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future, from 2016, made it onto the list at #30, but reading my words about the album then make it clear they were receiving a consolation prize, a shadow of their former selves. 2019’s Drift Series 1 did not rate.

But I still found myself going back to those 90s albums — more out of reminiscing than anything else. I bought the vinyl reissue of Dubnobasswithmyheadman in the mid 10’s, and I love it. But nothing new they were creating in the 2000s was matching their 90s greatness. This is my long, circuitous route to getting to the crux of the matter: this sentiment has changed with the duo’s 2024 release, Strawberry Hotel, their 11th album. This album is a resurgence of the Underworld of old. It hits all the same notes for me, despite the fact that I am now in my 50s.

Hit play on the video above, for the opening track “Black Poppies.” Gorgeous and lush, this song creates a soundscape of warmth that hums with excitement. You can also watch an alternate version, “Black Poppies (Unplugged), performed by a six-piece string group of college students that was put together by the band. Absolutely beautiful. And the band still has a grasp on driving, thumping beats: watch the visualizer for “Techno Shinkansen” and you’ll hear what I mean.

Maybe now that I’m working on my fifth decade of living I am in a nostalgic world, trying to reclaim my youth. It’s impossible for me to not hear Underworld from that biased stance. But I do love Strawberry Hotel, and I’m energized by the fact that they (and by extension, me, too) can keep making relevant, exciting things in 2025. I hope you’ll join me in this excitement.

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#7 on the 2016 Bacon Top 31

January 06, 2017 by Royal Stuart

Teens of Denial by Car Seat Headrest

The album at #7 has a strong contender for my favorite song of the year. “Fill in the Blank,” by Seattle’s own Car Seat Headrest, is an anthemic, angsty, hard rocking song that has all the makings of an instant classic: fantastic chorus, insanely building bridge, loud guitars and quiet pauses. The song makes a Kramer-esque entrance on Teens of Denial, bursting into the room and causing you to jolt upright. (There’s only a lyric video available for that song, so I chose to go with “Vincent” to feature above, another great song from this album.)

Car Seat Headrest is the brainchild of Will Toledo, who is only 24, from Leesburg, Virginia, and Teens of Denial is his twelfth album release. But it’s only his first album produced via traditional studio processes, with a full band, released on Matador records. I’m not sure when he moved to Seattle, but we’re lucky to have him.

This album feels very Lou Reed, Strokes, Sex Pistols and Joy Division all while somehow being immediately current. It slams your head against the wall and makes you like it. The previous release, Teens of Style — the first Matador release — is more of a compilation of previously recorded Car Seat Headrest songs, rerecorded and reimagined. It’s good, too, but it’s no Denial. How one can record and release 11 albums and only on his twelfth really nail it is beyond me. I can only believe that he’s just getting started, here at 24, ready to take on the world.

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8. Goodness by The Hotelier
9. The Mountain Will Fall by DJ Shadow
10. Junun by Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood & The Rajasthan Express
11. The Hope Six Demolition Project by PJ Harvey
12. Amen & Goodbye by Yeasayer
13. Sea of Noise by St. Paul & The Broken Bones
14. You Want It Darker by Leonard Cohen
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

Father John Misty — The Night Josh Tillman Came To Our Apartment

September 23, 2015 by Royal Stuart

Nobody does tongue-in-cheek snark quite like Josh Tillman. It starts with his stage name, Father John Misty, which everyone can agree is so ridiculous it’s funny. His live show is 100% camp, strutting around the stage like an over-acted lounge singer, full of swoon-inducing goading and exaggerated emotion. And then there’s his songs. Musically, they’re fairly straightforward indie-folk-rock standards. But once you start hearing the lyrics, the snark comes out. He has a general hatred for anything and everything around him. He doesn’t pull any punches, and that’s a lot of the reason why I like him so much.

For instance, yesterday, with Ryan Adams’s attention-grabbing release of his cover of Taylor Swift’s 1989, Tillman took Adams to task, releasing a couple of covers of Taylor Swift himself, billed as covers of Ryan Adams’s covers, but resembling nothing of the Ryan Adams versions, and everything of what it would sound like if Lou Reed had covered Taylor Swift. Confused yet? You can listen here, even though Tillman himself has removed his covers from where he originally posted them.

Now that you‘ve got the back story, listen to the song above, “The Night Josh Tillman Came To Our Apartment,” from Tillman’s February 2015 album I Love You, Honeybear. The album is pretty great all around, as good as 2012’s Fear Fun. The lyrices of this song are particularly snarky, and my favorite line on the entire album comes 30 seconds into the song, when Tillman sings

She says, like literally, music is the air she breathes
And the malaprops make me want to fucking scream
I wonder if she even knows what that word means
Well, it's literally not that

The of the song is full of gems just like that. Give it a listen, then buy the album. You won’t regret it.