Well, we made it, folks. Another year for the records. It felt pretty sticky there for a minute, but we pulled through as a species without dying in a nuclear fire or getting bonked by an asteroid. As is my tradition, every year, the human race survives without imploding and experiencing an extinction-level event, and I write a short list of all the albums that I enjoyed but didn't get a chance to cover in any other fashion. I call it an invitational as it's a celebration of all the weird or overlooked music that gets released every year and which I hope people spend a little time with before moving on to the next hot thing. On top of that, I hope this list inspires you in some way. I'd like you to come away from it with some new article of knowledge, insight, or creative stimulus that aids you in tackling some artistic endeavor or makes it easier to try something new. You've got a whole year ahead starting today, might as well make the most of it.
So why the fuck would I start a list of album recommendations with a dance album? What is an indie blogger doing writing about dance music in 2023? No one is going to read a BlogSpot article to learn about new grooves in the era of TikTok! You're right. Or are you? 2023 was weirder than I could have imagined, and 2024 is gearing up to be even stranger. As an outside voice in the media wilderness of the world-wide-web, I have to put my chips down on the off chance that someone might break their thumb in the hinge of a door or something, rendering them unable to doom scroll long enough to focus their attention on a single point of interest for an adequate duration of time for it to make a meaningful impact on their psyche, and double down on the off chance, that the single point in question is somehow, actually, my blog. If a Zoomer or one of their elders (face it, you're all slaves to scroll!) gleans a single jam that helps bring to life their New Year's and the days beyond for even three and a half minutes after reading this article, I can consider my work a success- not only on my behalf but the entire alternative music sphere in the aggregate. So here's my pitch: Good Luck by Debby Friday- a pervasively feminine, dark-horse beat-trap, brimming with out-sized aggression, and patterned with the smooth, leather stitching of industrial-underground electronica, pinched at the seams with a sunless ecstasy. It's a Janus face-Santigold, alternating in strobes of sequenced glimmer and glaring brushes of obsidian, dancing in heals on the heads of nails ripped from the bowls of an iron maiden. House music for a house fire, a party that pillages the heart, a pit of languid fury, and a cauldron of cacophony churned by the venom-tipped nail of a priestess who uses a rattlesnake as a cincher for her evening gown, a garment so deeply dark and mesmerizing that it appears to be have been cut clean from the looming face of the night sky. How does that grab you? Ok, let me simplify things for the tl;drs who wandered in: Shit's lit, play it! Good luck tonight.
Red Dons - Generations (Taken By Surprise)
Now this one really snuck up on me, and it surprised me to no end to learn of its existence during an unrelated tangent while researching a totally different band (in case you are curious, I was looking up background info on The Cowboys). A Giant Dog, at one point, was easily one of my favorite bands. A group that I discovered during a very strange transitionary period in my life, during which their bombastic anthems of depravity, depression, and desperation really clicked with me on multiple levels. Their material has always had an elevated sense of gravity, inevitability, and poetic irony, much like the Greek tragedies of antiquity, and I'm excited that they've taken the step of raising the stakes further and wrestled with their potential as a group on their latest album Bite- a concept album about finding love and escaping a cybernetic bastille with your horny hide (mostly) intact. The band adopts a somewhat more serious and polished aesthetic for the album, flirting with what feels like the cosmic Fleetwood Mac stage of their career (an honor few bands live long enough to attain), with luxurious shimmering grooves, breathtaking orchestral accompaniments, and a batter of beat-up bluesy callbacks. Rock bands, in general, have a dubious reputation when it comes to taking on the nightmares of neuromancery and a life moored in the meta-ether of cyberspace (see Styx's Killroy Was Here), but the band carries it off with campy bursts of alternating enthusiasm and righteous fury, much in the fashion of Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak, a reference point that suits their efforts temperamentally, as well as in style and effect. All of the group's signature piercing riffs, brilliant wrenching humor and angst, and darkly dreamy melodicism are here, in a mint coat of gold plating with freshly filed fangs. Once bitten, you may never want them to let you go.
Ana Frango Elétrico - Me Chama De Gato Que Eu Sou Sua (Mr. Bongo)
Me Chama De Gato Que Eu Sou Sua from Brazillian pop personality and producer Ana Frango Elétrico has already received significant praise elsewhere, to the point where I very nearly decided against covering it. Somewhat unexpectedly, as it's not the kind of electronic, club-oriented pop that I'm used to people sharing and squeezing into my X timeline- it has a much older profile, and that's one of the things that I find so fascinating about it. Me Chama De Gato Que Eu Sou Sua is definitely a Brazillian funk record of a certain fashion, but one where the emphasis of the songs is the tactile quality of Ana's voice as a vehicle for lyrics and melody, rather than the momentum and force of the beats and grooves. It's a brave creative choice, one that helps to emphasize the introspective nature of the songs as well as the unique textures of her voice as she sings in a plurality of languages. The accentuation of Ana's voice in the sweep of these upbeat, reflectively harmonious recitatives gives the album a chanson Française quality and a proto-rock and roll aura, almost like the singer is interpreting something that is yet to take shape, but once it does, it will sweep the world in a blithe storm. There is no barricade hearty enough to withstand the swoon of enthusiasm this record exudes.
Marnie Stern - The Comeback Kid (Joyful Noise Recordings)
I did not expect this list to be so nostalgia-driven, but that is one of the beautiful things about writing an article like this- it's often as surprising to me what ends up being included as it probably is for you. We're both flying blind, for better or worse... Speaking of surprises, a new LP from Marnie Stern was not on my 2023 BINGO card! Although, I will take it over some of the things that were (especially the spaces that I had for zombie outbreak, nuclear winter, and the government confirming that they're in active communications with extra-terrestrials- thankfully, only one of which had been previously filled). It has been 10 long years since her last album, The Chronicles of Marnia, and The Comeback Kid is an aptly titled successor to what was previously my favorite album of hers. Marnie is still one of the wildest and most uniquely talented guitarists and singers I can think of, and her latest album is another incredible display of her prowess, from the rainbow hopping, electric jelly-bean flavored jounce of her feather-light, platinum-alloy sharp guitar work, to the variegated warble of her vocal delivery- which always reminded me of what PJ Harvey might be so inspired to adopt if she had been commissioned to write a song for Adventure Time- everything I've loved about her style is present in all it brilliant, technicolored, star-smashing delirium. And what's more, it's coming at me like a county-wide hunk of space debris about to drill through the Yucatan coastline- you really can't make a more lasting impact than that, in my humble opinion.
This is a very cool and tightly performed grunge-revival record that takes a good deal of care to reify the hooky, aggressive, cross-over potential of the genre at its peak. They totally nail the vibe of those early Foo Fighters releases, zigging and then zagging between brooding, maudlin, soul-searing passages and trench-clearing, 4x4 fire-ball hook salvos, with hints of something angrier than what many of their contemporaries seem capable of mustering (ie., bands pulling off a '90s flavored brand of melodic-punk). I'd be lying if I said that this flannel shredding bray and tendency to bare their hearts as wide and ragged as the holes in their jeans wasn't a style that suited them. They're true believers in their sound and what they take from their influences, and the vindication of their sentiments is confirmed by their heavy and impassioned performance and delivery. It would be fighting words to suggest otherwise, to either me, or the band (presumably, I don't know them that well).
Frog - Grog (Self-Released)
Frog's fifth album Grog was a record that a lot of people clearly needed this year. It's tough living in an uncertain world, where isolation is ubiquitous, and truth and friendship are scarce commodities. But when this record dropped, a lot of people were excited about it and I observed people bonding over this cottage crop of alternative country curios in ways that I could not have anticipated. A simple, weird, defiant record can do that sometimes. It can break folks out of their blue streak and get them talking about something other than their miseries. It's no coincidence that Grog emerges from a place of fraternity and whimsical idiosyncrasy as the bonds of its tributaries are reflected in the uncalculating contrariness and homely elegance of its irregular but captivating gait. It's like a compass that only points upwards, or a map that you can only read in total darkness- whatever the obvious path is, they've mastered its parallel, off-road ramble. It might not break every mold, but Grog can certainly do something for the mundane funk you may find yourself in.
devəlmāˈker - The Antonym Experience (Self-Released)
When you woke up yesterday, you probably thought to yourself, "I don't have enough self-reflective, electric folk music in my life; I should get some of that today." And then you laid in bed all day watching Family Guy clips on YouTube instead. Don't blame yourself, bro. Life can be like that. Sometimes you get what you want; sometimes you settle for piecemeal hunks of Fox's Animation Domination. Well, if you've found your way here, your prayers have been answered (I hope). I don't recommend a lot of solo guitar music, but devəlmāˈker's The Antonym Experience definitely speaks to me- a contemplative reservoir of wary feedback fecund oblations that take flight and expand from a central pillar of dogged, rattled riffage, the updraft of which allows the lyrics and vocal performances to stay at eye-level with each other amongst a backscattering of beat hollow insights. Hopefully, the introspection of this record will help inspire you to make the changes that you need to make in your life. Sometimes all you need is someone dragging their battered bones up from the asphalt to show others the way.
The debut LP from post-psychedelic group Gazoota feels like it was made as part of some elaborate ritual out in the California desert. Charged with a dry storm of kineticism, its drawling, hypnotic intuition for melodicism rises like a great lantern in the night sky to illuminate the concentric caper of bodies in free, blushing motion. The group is able to transcend notional attachments of folk and mirror-ball sounds in a narcotic exchange of sense and order that awakens the cold embers of the psyche as if it were a snuff of cosmic-smelling salts. An oasis of enigmas on which to embark on a fantastic voyage through a primordial horizon of peace- the beginning of something remarkable, and yet altogether welcoming, like a door left ajar for a weary stranger.
Penguin Cafe - Rain Before Seven... (Erased Tapes)
Rob Mazurek - Exploding Star Orchestra - Lightning Dreamers (International Anthem)
Heraclitus said that no one steps in the same river twice, but can you step in two rivers at once? I don't know that Rob Mazurek's latest set of pieces for the Exploding Star Orchestra either answers this question or fully addresses the aforementioned aphorism, but it is partly inspired by the divergent axis of two great rivers in Brazil- contrastingly named, the White and the Black. His experience traversing these bodies of water impelled him to reflect on the current of time and the flow of humanity, shared pasts, and disparate futures, converging and reassembling in the folds of eternity, clinging to a spinning pin-head floating through the vapor. Even the tracks on Lightning Dreamers that don't direct the listener's attention to a stream of reflection on the simultaneous gestures of humanity and history nonetheless are possessed of a chimeric fluidity that pulses with a shameless potentiality, like water and mercury, like sand and volcanic ash, like flesh and earth, we're all dreamers and shapeshifters, becoming what we were to fashion the attire that we'll be introduced to our future selves in. Lightning Dreamers is a catcher's mitt sewn to collect a cannonball aimed at the moon.
Chicago's Sprite conjures a credible melancholic storm of thunderous, reverb-rankled jangle rock on their debut, self-titled EP. It's impressive how propulsive and, at the same time, soupy these tunes are, like you're doing donuts on an airboat in the middle of a marsh during a monsoon- drowning in a centripetal crush of passion, gaining inertia, and putrid, palustrine discharge. It's heady and hard to keep your lungs clear while wading through, but it's worth the fight as its lows produce a breathless kind of high, and its highs will leave you hanging in the air like a cloud shelf whose temper could chew the tip off a skyscraper.
Kindling the spirit of the ancient foe of the Ethiopian herdsman and his dogs, Toronto artist Leucrocuta embarks on a quest through the fractured faultlines of identity and the cracked state of our suspiciously disoriented reality on their latest record. It's not hard at all to imagine Chastity Platinum: Dead Scream as the outgrowth of a relatively benign Mononoke, a spiritual presence once dedicated to spreading disorder but which has quietly slipped into a kind of semi-retirement to contemplate its disruptive impulses and deeper existential questions of humanity's susceptibility to their malign influence. A chill, subtly anarchic record that melds a no-wave approach to funk with an ambiance of low-key Loki darkwave, idling through slippery beats and corkscrew basslines to reach a base paradigm of acerbic spiritual, serenity, if not bristled ataraxia. A beat in the dark to tune the aching pulse of your aching desire.
