1. Celine Dion - Courage
Being a typical music critic, I've never listened to a lot of Celine Dion, but I have read that one book about how music critics don't like Celine Dion. But I was curious to hear Courage, her first English language album since her husband and brother died in the same week in 2016, which pairs her with a lot of contemporary hitmakers like Stargate, Greg Kurstin, Sia, Sam Smith, and David Guetta. And it's pretty damn good, the opener "Flying On My Own" is the one really bombastic dance track where she unleashes the full force of her voice but even the bittersweet midtempo stuff works pretty well. I think the trippiest thing is hearing Celine Dion sing over a faux-Prince LinnDrum pattern on "I Will Be Stronger." Here's the 2019 albums playlist I fill with all the recent records I've been listening to.

2. CUP - Spinning Creature
I've been listening to music by Nels Cline and Cibo Matto's Yuka C. Honda since the '90s, and was surprised but very happy for them when I heard that they got married in 2010. They've worked together here and there on things over the past decade, including the one-off album by the quarter Floored By Four, but their first album under the name CUP marks the first time they've really collaborated extensively as a duo. And it's fun to see them try different stuff that kind of shows off their different skill sets, it's a trip to hear Nels Cline over loops and programmed drums on "Berries." The biggest surprise is how much Cline sings on this album -- over the dozens of albums of his that I've listened to over the years, I can only remember him singing a handful of times (including just once with the ironically named instrumental trio the Nels Cline Singers), but there are a lot of vocals on this, a lot of interesting lyrics, which I'd never really known him to be a lyricist before.

3. Susan Alcorn & Phillip Greenlief - Prism Mirror Lens
Susan Alcorn is a guitarist I hold in almost as high esteem as Nels Cline, and I'm fortunate that she lives in Baltimore and performs locally regularly (although to be honest I don't go see her often enough). Prism Mirror Lens consists of four long improvisations with Alcorn on pedal steel and Phillip Greenlief on saxophone or clarinet, and it's a great example of how Alcorn can make her instrument feel like an orchestra and fill a lot of the empty space and create a bed of sound for someone else to play over, "Cloudy Blue" is especially gorgeous. It's great, buy it on Bandcamp.

4. Tinashe - Songs For You
A lot of pop and R&B starlets kind of disappear after a major label lets them go because their independent stuff just doesn't have the budget or the quality control of their previous records. That's not really a problem for Tinashe, who made good projects and created her own buzz before she was on RCA, often self-producing her early stuff. And her first post-RCA projecct is really excellent, better than the Joyride album that the label pushed back for years before its anticlimactic release last year. Multiple people told me that Hitmaka had the worst tracks on here, but I disagree, I like to
make fun of Yung Berg for always sampling the most obvious '90s R&B hits, but I was genuinely surprised by the sample of Incubus's "Dig" on "Feelings," and the beat switch on "Cash Race" is awesome.

5. Jacquees - King Of R&B
I was one of the biggest fans of Jacquees's 2018 album 4275, but I felt bad for the guy that his breakout year was derailed a little by widespread mockery of his claim to be his generations king of R&B (which is more or less foolhardy depending on whether you consider a "generation" to be less than 5 years). But after he pushed his second album Round 2 over the summer due to an underperforming single, he decided to double down on the boasting and rename the album King Of R&B, so he's decided to commit to this bit for better or worse. And opening the album with "King" featuring T.I. was a shrewd decision -- after all, T.I. wasn't at the peak of his fame when he first declared himself the king of the south, but he spent the next few years backing the claim up. I really like "Out of the Ordinary" and "Fact Or Fiction" and a few other songs, I wish the album was more undeniable so he could really shut down the jokes, but it is what it is.

6. Gang Starr - One Of The Best Yet
Going down memory lane making my Gang Starr deep cuts playlist was a good way to get in the right mindset to hear this album, it's great to hear Guru and DJ Premier together again even if I have no idea when these Guru verses were recorded or if they were all intended for Gang Starr songs. I think my favorite song is "So Many Rappers," and I love the interlude where you hear Guru's son's voice and he sounds just like his dad. One Of The Best Yet isn't as good as the last A Tribe Called Quest album, but they're smart to bring in the extended Gang Starr family (M.O.P. and Jeru and Group Home and Freddie Foxxx) to help conjure up those old feelings like Tribe had a lot of Busta and Consequence. Speaking of Tribe, one of my favorite moments on this album is Q-Tip's comically intricate gun sounds on "Hit Man." It's been a big month for posthumous material, including the final Harry Nilsson album and a new Prince reissue.

7. Pardison Fontaine - UNDER8ED
Pardison Fontaine and Flipp Dinero both released albums in November that probably should have come out 8-10 months earlier to capitalize on their big singles. After his helping hand on one of 2018's best rap albums, Cardi B's Invasion Of Privacy, it's cool to see Fontaine take a step into the spotlight and be able to sell his punchines with his own sleazy charisma. UNDER8ED is a pretty generic 2019 major label album with Vinylz and Boi 1da and Wheezy beats, but it's an enjoyable one.

8. Juliana Hatfield - Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police
I enjoyed writing my recent City Pages piece contrasting this album with a recent Tom Waits tribute album, and of those two records I dug this one more, since I listen to The Police more than Waits and felt like Hatfield picked a more interesting selection of songs. She covered some of my favorite deep cuts, including "Canary In A Coalmine" and "Next To You," as well as unexpected obscurities like "Landlord," and it just sounds like someone having fun with a 4-track in their bedroom.

9. Jeff Lynne's ELO - From Out Of Nowhere
I just revamped my Electric Light Orchestra deep cuts playlist a few months ago so I felt very primed for a new record, and this one sounds great. At 32 minutes, it's even shorter and better than the ELO comeback record from 2015, has that distinctive lush Jeff Lynne sound and some pretty snappy little songs.

10. Beck - Hyperspace
Pharrell Williams produced the majority of Hyperspace, and both he and Beck are kind of interesting hit-and-miss talents that I was curious to hear work together. And as someone who likes Beck's '90s work less than I used to and have little use for most of his work since then, I have to admit Hyperspace is pretty good. If nothing else, it feels like a real collaboration where Pharrell isn't just giving the artist the same 4 bar he loops he'd give to whatever other artist he was in the studio with that week. The weirdest part is that it's one of the songs Pharrell didn't work on, "Die Waiting," that has a subtle drum sample from Clipse's "Grindin'." And the highlight of the Pharrell tracks is "Chemical." I totally don't believe Beck's line on his current press tour that he was never a Scientologist, by the way.

The Worst Album of the Month: Highly Suspect - MCID
Highly Suspect are the token rock band on the rap-heavy 300 Entertainment roster, and they've had some of the better hard rock radio hits of the last few years. But I was mostly kidding when I wondered aloud if the vocal cadence on their 2017 single "My Name Is Human" had a 'Migos flow.' This former Cape Cod cover band goes fully rap-rock on their third album, with guest spots from Young Thug and Tee Grizzley, and generally going for a sad punk rap Lil Peep vibe, and it's really just a far cry from their good early songs like "Lydia."

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 01, 2019 at 5:47 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.