Here are the highlights from my year in music, in vaguely chronological order.<\/p>\n
Sleater-Kinney<\/strong> Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit (Mom + Pop Music)<\/strong> Kamasi Washington, The Epic (Brainfeeder)<\/strong> Freddie Gibbs at Pitchfork Music Festival<\/strong> Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment, Surf (self-released)<\/strong> Four Tet, Morning\/Evening (Text Records)<\/strong> Thundercat<\/strong> Floating Points, Elaenia (Luaka Bop)<\/strong> Patti Smith at M Train Book Tour in Ann Arbor, Michigan<\/strong> Hamilton: Original Broadway Cast Recording (Atlantic Records)<\/strong> Joanna Newsom, Divers (Drag City Records)<\/strong> Kneebody and Daedelus, Kneedelus (Brainfeeder)<\/strong> Aesop Rock & Homeboy Sandman, Lice EP (Stones Throw Records)<\/strong> John Williams\u2019 Score for Star Wars: The Force Awakens<\/strong> Here are the highlights from my year in music, in vaguely chronological order. Sleater-Kinney My whole year revolved around Sleater-Kinney\u2019s words and guitars. It started in late 2014, as their joyously designed vinyl boxset, Start Together, waited on the porch for me to return from vacation. That box contained a lot of surprises, none more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2479],"tags":[1522,1099,1525,1529,1526,1528,457,1512,1523,1386,1521,1524,874,1056,1527],"class_list":["post-4165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-best-of-the-year","tag-aesop-rock","tag-courtney-barnett","tag-daedelus","tag-donnie-trumpet-the-social-experiment","tag-floating-points","tag-four-tet","tag-freddie-gibbs","tag-hamilton","tag-homeboy-sandman","tag-joanna-newsom","tag-john-williams","tag-kneebody","tag-patti-smith","tag-sleater-kinney","tag-thundercat"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nMy whole year revolved around Sleater-Kinney\u2019s words and guitars. It started in late 2014, as their joyously designed vinyl boxset, Start Together<\/i>, waited on the porch for me to return from vacation. That box contained a lot of surprises, none more exciting than the unlabeled 7-inch which turned out to be a Sleater-Kinney song I\u2019d never heard before. (I had been in Yosemite, with no access to the internet, so I was spoiler-free.) Two months later there was an incredible new Sleater-Kinney record on my turntable, and three months later I saw the band in person for the first time in almost 15 years and the first of three times in 2015. Those live shows were incredible for a lot of reasons, but I have to single out Corin Tucker\u2019s voice as the most compelling part of their charisma. Each show recalled one of my favorite lyrics from No Cities to Love<\/i> (from \u201cNew Wave\u201d): \u201cLet\u2019s destroy a room with this love.\u201d If you haven\u2019t been bulldozed by Sleater-Kinney in person, you haven\u2019t fully experienced this band\u2019s destructive power. Meanwhile, Carrie Brownstein released Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl<\/i>, her memoir, which contains some of the best sentences I read this year and reveals a lot about the philosophy at the heart of the band\u2019s integrity. They\u2019ve never been afraid of \u201ctaking perfectly normal songs and making them hard to listen to.\u201d Or rather, they were scared, but they did it anyway.<\/p>\n
\nLou Reed is back and he\u2019s a 28-year-old from Australia with a wicked sense of humor and a killer back-up group.<\/p>\n
\nIt\u2019s almost unfair; this is a triple<\/i> album of jazz augmented by a blistering imagination. The first track is called \u201cChange of the Guard\u201d and that\u2019s what this is. Whatever modern jazz you\u2019ve been listening to for the last 10 years, forget it. This is a line in the sand and Kamasi has left everyone in the dust.<\/p>\n
\nYears ago, Gibbs stormed the Pitchfork Festival side-stage with a chip on his shoulder and something to prove. This time, a couple thousand 17-year-old white kids were chanting his name as he took to the main stage, backed by the legendary Madlib. Before he even started, he did something he never would have the first time around: he smiled.<\/p>\n
\nIt\u2019s kinda-sorta the new Chance the Rapper album, but he\u2019s just part of the band. This is optimistic, hip-hop-funk-gospel-new-jack-southside experimentation, and celebration music. The band closed out the Pitchfork Music Festival this year and it was nothing short of awe-inspiring.<\/p>\n
\nTwo tracks: \u201cMorning Side\u201d and \u201cEvening Side.\u201d This is useful music. The “Morning Side,\u201d with its earthy Indian vocals, is invigorating, maintaining a gentle optimism throughout, just right for coffee and yoga to start the day. The \u201cEvening Side\u201d embraces dark blue tones and sharp-edged sounds, suitable mainly for an evening of deep reading, alone at home or maybe dining at a trendy sushi joint. Closer listening reveals the technical brilliance of Hebdan\u2019s looping manipulations, but there\u2019s just as much pleasure to be yielded by simply using the album as directed.<\/p>\n
\nThundercat (Stephen Bruner) hasn\u2019t been everywhere, but he\u2019s certainly been in a few of the most significant sessions of the past two years, sharing the studio with Erykah Badu, Flying Lotus, Herbie Hancock, Kamasi Washington, and, most importantly, with Kendrick Lamar for To Pimp a Butterfly<\/i>. Thundercat’s signature sound is part of the DNA of that album, but it\u2019s his sensibility that transformed it. Do a little Googling and you can read about Thundercat blowing Kendrick’s mind with 1970s Miles Davis records. Most every track on Cat\u2019s last LP, Apocalypse<\/i>, seemed ready for a verse from Kendrick, but that would have absurd before To Pimp a Butterfly<\/i> was released. Being a part of that album was such huge moment that it\u2019s hard to tell if it brought more attention to Thundercat\u2019s own release or if it completely overshadowed it. Either way, it\u2019s mesmerizing to hear what a song can be when it completely adheres to Bruner\u2019s vision. On the EP Beyond\/Where the Giants Roam<\/i>, Bruner again demonstrates his ability to blend unmatched technical ability with an organic, lived-in feel. Every melody is unexpected and every groove is deeply satisfying. And yes, some of those famous friends (FlyLo, Hancock, Washington) return the favor and make an appearance or two. It\u2019s a bold move halfway through \u201cLone Wolf and Cub,\u201d the track featuring the most guests, when he decides to fly solo. This time, Thundercat knows whose show it is.<\/p>\n
\nThis is the kind of record for which new genres are named. Right now we\u2019re just calling artists like this \u201cproducers,\u201d since pure sonic manipulation is as much (or more) a part of their work as rhythm, melody, and harmony. I don\u2019t actually know what Sam Shepherd’s influences are, but here are a few things I hear in this instrumental album: Steve Reich, Aphex Twin, Pink Floyd, and In a Silent Way<\/i>. I also hear Kieran Hebdan (a.k.a. Four Tet), and that\u2019s who first turned me onto the album (through his Instagram posts about it).<\/p>\n
\nAt the Michigan stop of her M Train<\/i> book tour, Patti Smith gave fans what they expected, chiding fans for their terrible questions and being generally cranky about the whole thing. But when she brought out her kids, the punk rock matron turned into any other Midwestern mother who just wants a hug from her 20-something daughter.<\/p>\n
\nYes, it\u2019s the hip-hop-and-history musical that Mom and Dad know about from 60 Minutes<\/i>. That fact that it exists is no surprise to those paying attention to such things. The fact that it\u2019s taken the world by storm like no Broadway show since Rent<\/i> is astonishing. But don\u2019t be a snob about it; the music is fantastic, and the concepts it\u2019s bringing to the mainstream are even more significant. You can\u2019t afford to see it, so get the record and rap along until it tours the world.<\/p>\n
\nDivers<\/i> is the densest work Newsom has yet released. The album comes with a packet of photographs backed with the lyrics, but the images are little help. Digging through this collection of artifacts is made more mysterious by all the new sounds she\u2019s added to her palette. You could just sit back and listen, but as always her tender voice begs for care. It’s not easy listening, it\u2019s archaeology.<\/p>\n
\nBrainfeeder, known largely for the genre-bending exercises of Flying Lotus and Thundercat, got a lot of attention for their jazz releases this year. Kamasi Washington grabbed the well-deserved spotlight, but this late-November collaboration between DJ\/producer\/inventor Daedelus and eclectic L.A. jazz band Kneebody deserves its own list of accolades. It showcases the range of everyone involved, layering skittering drum machines under wild sax solos, blending Eastern chord changes with cool jazz trumpet lines, and adding atmosphere to everything. The record never sounds like just a collection of tunes, there\u2019s always something more peculiar at work. I think we might call it fusion. Do we still hate that word?<\/p>\n
\nNothing like old friends to bring out the best in someone. Aesop Rock and his new buddy Homeboy Sandman revealed this online EP via Twitter in November. It\u2019s hot. The Sandman has always been a guy who seems like he needs to have more fun, and as Ace Rock has taken on more of the producing of his own albums, his rapping has felt more and more constrained. For these five short tracks, though, both dudes let loose. \u201cKatz\u201d is a classic list-diss, packed full of ridiculous thoughts. (\u201cKatzhad better save me a jelly-filled. Katz had better greet me with the theme song from Benny Hill.\u201d \u201cEnvironmental Studies\u201d suits both lyricists\u2019 styles perfectly. Aesop sounds especially relaxed, probably thanks to the production of Blockhead, one of his longtime collaborators. It\u2019s not the best work either of these high-vocab rappers have recently produced, but those two tracks are among the most immediately satisfying music we\u2019ve heard from them in the last five years.<\/p>\n
\nWilliams outdid himself, and listening to the score, you can tell he<\/i> liked this one better, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"