1. DaBaby - Baby On Baby
One kind of Twitter meme or recurring trope of what people say about North Carolina's DaBaby is that he doesn't let the beat breathe, and it's true: where other rappers might leave at least the first couple bars of a song open as an instrumental or ad lib a bit before beginning their verse, he just hits the ground running more often than not. DaBaby's not alone among young rappers right now in favoring short 2 or 3 or even 1-minute songs, but he's one of the only guys who packs those tracks with a constant onslaught of rhymes, and only does a hook long enough for it to stick in your head. He's charismatic and insanely talented but I'm kind of pleasantly surprised at him becoming a star, he has such an unusually stripped-down no-nonsense approach to his songs and even his image that feels very out of fashion, even with his penchant for brevity. Out of southern rap contemporaries, he sometimes reminds me of a less melodic, speedier version of Rich Homie Quan (who guests on "Celebrate") but he's really just his own man. Here's the 2019 albums Spotify playlist I put all the stuff I listen to into.

2. Ex Hex - It's Real
I liked the first Ex Hex album but the second one is really hitting me harder, I might have to go back and contrast them a little to spot the difference, but Mary Timony's guitar leads are really standing out to me more, "Rainbow Shiner" and "Want It To Be True" just have the most killer riffs. The way they kinda combine '70s hard rock and '90s indie guitar swing is very close to my platonic ideal of a rock record.

3. Marvin Gaye - You're The Man
I've loved Marvin Gaye's What's Going On since I was a teenager, and I always kind of unquestioningly consumed the narrative that after Gaye fought Motown for creative control and won out with a hugely successful and acclaimed album, he was able to do whatever he wanted. So I was fascinated to learn that the unreleased album being released in 2019 was Gaye's shelved 1972 follow-up to What's Going On. He'd just signed a new million dollar contract with Motown, the biggest record deal ever for a black artist at the time, but he continued clashing with Berry Gordy over politics and the content of his lyrics, and felt the label deliberately underpromoted the "You're The Man" single (it peaked at #50 shortly after What's Going On yielded three top 10 hits -- I never even heard of it before this year, as someone who owns multiple Marvin albums). So he shelved the album rather than let the label bury it as they did with the single. 47 years later, we finally have You're The Man (the original 8-song sequence Gaye assembled, as well as 9 bonus tracks of remixes and other songs recorded during the same period), and it's remarkable and beautiful. It really does sound like the missing link between What's Going On and Trouble Man, following very much in the mindset of the former but with the sharper, funkier arrangements of the latter. The album was released in time for Gaye's 80th birthday and Motown's 60th anniversary, but it feels serendipitous to hear this record right now -- the title track is directly addressed to the Democrats who were running against Nixon in 1972. But the album is surprisingly wide ranging, less homogeneous than What's Going On, and "Piece of Clay" in particular stands out to me as just gorgeous.

4. 2 Chainz - Rap Or Go To The League
2 Chainz has consistently been one of the best rappers in the world for the last few years, but he hasn't quite been able to recapture his 2012 buzz. But 2 Chainz is nothing if not a survivor and canny self-promoter, which is how Pretty Girls Like Trap Music had a very creative and successful rollout despite none of the singles really being blockbusters. After his guest-heavy 2018 singles stiffed (one even had Drake on it!), he went back to the drawing board with a clever angle to set up Rap Or Go To The League, bringing in LeBron James to executive produce the album. Now, I have no idea if LeBron's basketball prowess translates to music savvy or if he really had that much influence on the final product, but it's a fun idea, it's good promo, it helped 2 Chainz sell an album that wasn't preceded by a radio hit. And he played the situation with "7 Rings" sounding like "Spend It" really well, getting on the remix and getting an Ariana Grande hook for what will probably end up his biggest single in a while. But beyond all that stuff, this album is a quality addition to a discography I love, "Money In The Way," "Statute of Limitations" and "I Said Me" are outstanding, top shelf 2 Chainz.

5. Maren Morris - Girl
After her debut Hero spent 3 years spinning off country radio hits and "The Middle" established her with pop audiences, I feel like the bar for success for Maren Morris's second album is really high, and I already get the sense that Girl not setting the world on fire could be written off as a sophomore slump. But honestly, this album is really fucking good, if it's not as good as Hero, the gap isn't large. Morris and Busbee still have a great sound together and adding Greg Kurstin, Brothers Osborne and Brandi Carlile to the pot just make it better. "Make Out With Me" is probably the most striking song on here, partly because it's just 2 minutes 17 seconds.

6. American Pleasure Club - Fucking Bliss
I think the first time Sam Ray talked about this record publicly was in January, shortly before it was officially announced, when he tweeted at length about how the first mastering engineer who worked on the record quit. It was an interesting story, because it really demonstrated how there are these conflicts at times where the artist wants something to sound abrasive or ugly or 'wrong' and the people mixing or mastering the record are, y'know, ultimately trying to serve the record by not letting it go too far in that direction. It's not even necessarily about things being commercial or radio-friendly sometimes as you might expect in these situations, someone can have a pretty experimental background and still try to talk you out of certain things if they think you might regret it or not really know what you're asking for. I think the second mastering engineer they hired for Fucking Bliss got it right, though, it's not an especially noisy or aggressive record, but there's a lot of dynamics and peaks and valleys in these dark, blown out sounds, it's a really uncompromising thing but it works as an immersive headphones record.

7. LÉON - LÉON
I have really enjoyed every single and EP that Swedish singer LÉON has released over the last 3 years, and I'm a little disappointed that her full-length debut has arrived without any of her songs really catching fire in America (or in her home country for that matter -- she only had one song on the singles charts in Sweden and the album debuted at #58). This is an excellent album, though, the "pop that's not popular" crowd that celebrates later Robyn and Carly Rae records should definitely give it a listen. She has this lovely voice that kind of slides between a low throaty tone and soaring high notes in a way that reminds me of Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak at times. 

8. Meat Puppets - Dusty Notes
As wonderful as it was when Cris Kirkwood got out of jail and rejoined his brother Curt in Meat Puppets in 2006, I was always a little sad that drummer Derrick Bostrom didn't also return to the band for any of its next few albumms, even though he was always really accessible to fans online and oversaw a lot of Meat Puppets website and e-mail list stuff and reissue projects. So I was pretty thrilled recently to see the news that Bostrom was back in the fold and that their new album would be the first to feature the original trio since 1995. Dusty Notes is also kind of a throwback in that it has more acoustic guitars and banjos and twangy melodies than they've had on their records in a long time, which makes it all the sweeter to hear the original band together again.

9. Angel Du$t - Pretty Buff
It's been really cool to see Baltimore's punk scene make some mainstream inroads, with Turnstile releasing an album on Roadrunner Records last year, and Angel Du$t (who have 2 members in common with Turnstile) also make their Roadrunner debut this year. Of those 2 bands, Angel Du$t is much more my speed, I love the singer's voice and the unapologetically tuneful songs, the way some zip by in under 2 minutes but still feel like fully formed pop songs. And there are some really cool arrangement ideas, like the percussion track on "Take Away The Pain" being mostly tambourine witih a sax popping up in the chorus.

10. Stephen Malkmus - Groove Denied
I'm amused and kind of surprised that Stephen Malkmus could make an album that Matador Records, a label where he's been a key part of the roster for over 25 years, didn't want to release. You'd think that at this point in his career, they'd just kind of put out whatever he wanted to make. But apparently they didn't want to released Groove Denied when he submitted it a couple years ago, and have only quietly released it now, after he released a more typical, guitar-driven record in 2018. I have to admit, though, I've always been a casual Pavement fan and tuned out Malkmus's solo career after his 2001 debut. So just the idea of Groove Denied being this lost shelved record was intriguing enough to make me tune back in, and I actually really like it, it's fun to hear Malkmus play around with synths and drum machines and kind of play with weirder voices and uglier sounds than I've heard him touch since some early Pavement stuff. Certainly a less interesting story or album than the shelved Marvin Gaye album, but I'm still always fascinated by this kind of thing.

The Worst Album of the Month: Weezer - Weezer (Black Album)
The fact that Rivers Cuomo leads off his Black Album with a song called "Can't Knock The Hustle" makes me wonder if he's trolling Jay-Z on some level. But then I always feel like Weezer is trolling everybody on some level, that they crave any kind of good or bad attention so much that even writing about their record to say it's bad is sort of taking the bait. And I'm not someone who thinks Weezer fell from some high perch -- I have a love/hate relationship with their revered '90s work and think they had their best run as a singles act in the mid-late 2000s, and have notched some good singles as recently as 2015's "Thank God For Girls." This record is pretty obnoxious and charmless, though, just so many bad ideas and garish sounds. But I'll admit that I laughed when I heard the first verse of "I'm Just Being Honest."

This entry was posted on Friday, April 05, 2019 at 2:32 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.