1. Ariana Grande - Thank U, Next
I haven't been 100% on board with the run-up to the album, exciting as it is for a pop singer to kind of toss out of the Top 40 promo cycle rulebook and follow up a successful album 6 months later with an even more successful album. But I wound up pretty happy with the resulting record, since the two #1 singles are probably the weakest ones on a very good album, in my view. It's better than Sweetener, but that's almost a given since she didn't let Pharrell torpedo half the album this time around. But what surprised me is how relaxed, playful, and often romantic the album is, given that it was partly spurred by a broken engagement and some other heavy stuff. Grande has always been an impressive vocalist, stacking harmonies and hitting high notes, but I think she's really fully found her voice as a songwriter on "Needy" and "Fake Smile." Here's the 2019 albums playlist that I've filled with all the records I've been listening to. 

2. Our Native Daughters - Songs Of Our Native Daughters
I really enjoyed Rhiannon Giddens's 2017 album Freedom Highway, and this group feels like a bigger, more ambitious piece of the same project of kind of reclaiming American folk music for black women, with a supergroup with 3 other women who play banjo and guitar. But really this stuff just feels very alive and in the moment considering that it's released by Smithsonian Folkways and includes a lot of songs that are decades old, "Polly Ann's Hammer" is a clever and kind of profound twist on the John Henry story with a focus on his wife, and "Mama's Cryin' Long" has an outrageously cool handclap/stomp rhythm in a 9/8 time signature.

3. Kehlani - While We Wait
It's been 2 years since Kehlani's big debut album and she released this little 9-song stopgap mixtape during her pregnancy. But honestly, I like this more than the album, it just feels a little more intimate and charmingly low key. Also I'm glad that she didn't clear a song with a TLC sample for this project, because SweetSexySavage leaned on the '90s R&B samples and interpolations way too much anyway, but the Musiq Soulchild duet is surprisingly a good fit.

4. Julia Jacklin - Crushing
Eleni Mandell hasn't released an album in a few years so it's nice that this Australian singer/songwriter Julia Jacklin is scratching a similar itch for me with her new record. She's got a great withering sense of humor on "Convention" in particular.

5. Yung Baby Tate - Girls
Atlanta's Yung Baby Tate is more a singer than a rapper but kind of both, this follow-up to 2018's Boys is pretty enjoyable, this bright melodic neon celebration of femininity where every song title is "Bad Girl" or "Wild Girl" or "Flower Girl" and so on. She produces her own stuff and some of these tracks are really impressive.

6. Chaka Khan - Hello Happiness
I think I already lost the war as far as Kanye's run of 7-song 20-something minute records being classified as albums and not EPs, but Chaka Khan's first record in over a decade is that length and it really works so well and feels so complete unto itself that I'm cool with considering it an album. Switch puts a little of a modern electronic sheen on the production but it's very much derived from the funk and disco era she came out of, it's a good mesh of styles.

7. Rustin Man - Drift Code
By coincidence, Talk Talk frontman Mark Hollis died last week within a month of the release of the first album by any member of Talk Talk in over a decade, bassist Paul Webb's second album as Rustin Man. Even though Webb left Talk Talk between Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, this album feels to me very much of a piece with the band's later stuff, with lots of spare arrangements and interesting textures, I went back to this album for a second listen after making my Talk Talk playlist and it appealed to me even more than the first time. Some more time signature nerdiness: there's a great 5/4 rhythm on "Our Tomorrows."

8. Gary Clark Jr. - This Land
I've never really paid close attention to Gary Clark Jr. because maybe he struck me as a little too old-fashioned to be interesting, but there's a nice sharp modern edge to this record that hits me better than the other stuff he's done, the falsetto power ballad of "Pearl Cadillac" is especially nice. The title track is a little heavy handed for my taste as a Defiant Trump Era Anthem but honestly it's hard for everyone to not be constantly writing songs like that at this point.

9. Mercury Rev - Bobbie Gentry's The Delta Sweete Revisited
Back in 1968, The Delta Sweete was a crushing sophomore slump -- Bobbie Gentry's debut Ode To Billie Joe had topped the album chart and its title track had topped the singles chart, but the follow-up concept album and its lead single got to #132 and #52 on the charts, respectively. Half a century later, The Delta Sweete has grown in statue to the point that Mercury Rev has covered the whole thing with an assortment of guests vocalists including Norah Jones, Hope Sandoval, and Beth Orton. It's largely a faithful recreation of the album, but it's a great record and it's fun to hear some other vocalists take a swing at Gentry's distinctive vocal style.

10. Gunna - Drip Or Drown 2
My theory now is that Gunna sounds like if Young Thug only exhaled while rapping and Lil Baby sounds like if Young Thug only inhaled while rapping. But it's interesting to me that while Drip Harder was Gunna's first really high charting album, and Drip Or Drown 2's first week was about as good, he feels very much like Lil Baby's sidekick now, just a lot less visible, all the songs he started to have on the charts a few months ago besides "Drip Too Hard" never got far on the radio, even the Travis Scott song (meanwhile one of Lil Baby's solo tracks from Drip Harder is blowing up). Gunna isn't exactly charismatic but he has a good ear for beats and this record is growing on me.

The World Album of the Month: Avril Lavigne - Head Above Water
I think those early Avril hits have aged well, but she really just sounds lost now, the Nicki Minaj feature and the Chad Kroeger kind of sit at opposite ends as different kind of bad ideas on this album, but the whole thing is just kind of awkward and full of notably annoying songs like "Souvenir" and "Bigger Wow."

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 05, 2019 at 1:18 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.