Monthly Report: September 2022 Albums
1. Ashley McBryde - Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville
Ashley McBryde's last record Never Will was my album of the year in 2020, and I was looking forward to hear what she'd do next. But it was a bit of a surprise last week when my friend Tom Breihan wrote a rave review of McBryde's new album that was about to released with no advance single or promo. It turns out that McBryde has two albums in the can, one a proper follow-up to Never Will, and one a riskier concept album, Lindeville. A while back I went down a rabbit hole reading about Dennis Linde, a Nashville songwriter who penned hits for everyone from Elvis Presley to Garth Brooks -- he populated his songs with recurring characters, and his attempt to kill off one character, "Goodbye Earl," only gave Earl immortality when the song was covered by the (fka Dixie) Chicks. Lindeville is McBryde and producer John Osborne of the Osborne Brothers and a bunch of other Nashville types creating a whole town with a cast of characters in the spirit of Linde, and it's incredibly ambitious for a compact little 33-minute record that's full of bawdy humor and goofy little The Who Sells Out-style fake radio jingles.
2. Jon Pardi - Mr. Saturday Night
"Yeah, they call me Mr. Saturday Night," Jon Pardi sings on his 4th album's great opening title track. "I smoke and drink, smile and wink, and make 'em think I'm fine/ They don't know how much I missed her Saturday night." I'm a sucker for that quintessential country combination of wordplay and emotion. Jon Pardi is from northern California, but at a time when country radio is light on pedal steel and fiddle, he's the guy who always puts those instruments front and center, and recently got his fifth #1 with the least single "Last Night Lonely." Pardi co-wrote 5 of these 14 songs, but he and his collaborators have such a strong and assured sense of what his sound and persona is that there's not a single misstep on the album (well, I'm not crazy about the sad ballad called "Reverse Cowgirl," but I'm kind of impressed he pulled it off).
3. Ari Lennox - Age/Sex/Location
Shea Butter Baby established Ari Lennox's sound and persona really well but Age/Sex/Location's lead single "Pressure," her first Hot 100 hit, really felt like it crystallized everything perfectly into a more concise package. And the album follows through on that well, "Waste My Time" and "Outside" are standouts. And with so women in R&B making radio hits these day swith their albums staying in limbo for what seems like forever (SZA, Normani, Chloe), I'm just glad this finally came out.
4. Timothy Bailey & The Humans - Timothy Bailey & The Humans
Chad Clark from Beauty Pill/Smart Went Crazy co-produced the debut album from this Richmond, Virginia band, and it's a really unique, charming record. Timothy Bailey has a voice with a pleasant slight rasp and a lot of character, and it plays nicely against these beautiful arrangements full of viola and flugelhorn and vibraphone. "Weird Animal" and "Ellington Bride" are the standouts from my early listens to the album.
5. Bjork - Fossora
Making my Bjork deep cuts playlist a couple weeks ago really left me with a renewed appreciation for just how unique and consistently excellent her catalog is. I definitely prefer the bigger beats of her '90s work to the later stuff, but there's gorgeous ear candy and poignant songwriting on all of her albums and Fossora is no exception. I like the combination of woodwinds and harsh electronic drums on songs like "Fungal City" and "Victimhood" and "Atopos," it gives the album a very distinctive palette. And there are other sounds on the album that sound great alongside them, like the glitchy a cappella piece "Mycelia."
6. Prodigy - The Hegelian Dialectic 2: The Book of Heroine
The album Prodigy released 5 months before his death, Hegelian Dialectic (The Book of Revelation), was really good and I think kind of slept on because it wasn't Mobb Deep or produced by The Alchemist or whatever. And when posthumous albums don't come out in the first year or two after a rapper dies, I kind of assume they didn't leave much in the vault, so I'm pretty happy that 5 years later we've got an excellent sequel to that album that doesn't sound unfinished or like people had to do too much to complete it. Obviously, Prodigy suffered from sickle cell disease his whole life, but I do wonder if he knew how close he was to the end of his life on this album, because it's kind of reflective in a different way from his other records.
7. Baby Tate - Mani/Pedi
Seeing Baby Tate release her first major label project after the great independent releases Girls and After The Rain is awesome. Her rap stuff like "Pedi" and "Slut Him Out Again" is really playful and funny, but she can make great R&B songs like "Do Better," not sure which lane I'd rather see her make hits in.
8. EST Gee - I Never Felt Nun
I kind of like that every time it feels like mainstream rap has finally gotten so streamlined and radio-friendly that nothing really dark and bleak will break through at the major label level, a new crop of popular rappers will disrupt all that. And lately. it feels like EST Gee and Pooh Shiesty and Nardo Wick are those guys.
9. YG - I Got Issues
YG has become sort of a rare dependable mid-level rap star that I feel like people take for granted, but he's yet to drop a bad album, this one's not his best but there's some great tracks on here, even a YG/Nas collaboration turns out better than I'd expect it to.
10. Death Cab For Cutie - Asphalt Meadows
I've always been a pretty casual Death Cab fan who liked The Photo Album best and would intermittently enjoy other songs or albums here and there. But there seems to be some consensus emerging that Asphalt Meadows is their best in a while, and it does sound pretty good, particularly the quiet/loud opener "I Don't Know How I Survive.
The Worst Album of the Month: Bladee - Spiderr
I've been kind of baffled by people's love of the Swedish rapper Yung Lean for over a decade, so I guess I figured it was time to check out his most popular contemporary and be baffled by people's love of Bladee too. I guess people like the sleepy expressionless voices? I dunno, not my vibe, obviously.
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