Deep Album Cuts Vol. 372: Marianne Faithfull

Friday, January 31, 2025

 




I've had an empty playlist labeled 'Marianne Faithfull deep album cuts' on my Spotify account for years that I've meant to fill. Since Faithfull died on Thursday at 78 years old, I finally got around to working on it. 

Marianne Faithfull deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. What Have I Done Wrong
2. Summer Nights
3. Tomorrow's Calling
4. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
5. Why'd Ya Do It
6. Guilt
7. Witches' Song
8. Eye Communication
9. Times Square
10. Strange Weather
11. She
12. Pride
13. For Wanting You
14. Sliding Through Life On Charm (with Pulp)
15. Crazy Love
16. Down From Dover
17. Prussian Blue
18. Give My Love To London
19. They Come At Night
20. To The Moon (with Warren Ellis)

Track 1 from Marianne Faithfull (1965)
Track 2 from Go Away From My World (1965)
Track 3 from Love In A Mist (1967)
Tracks 5, 6 and 7 and from Broken English (1979)
Track 8 from Dangerous Acquaintances (1981)
Track 9 from A Child's Adventure (1983)
Track 4 from Rich Kid Blues (1985)
Track 10 from Strange Weather (1987)
Track 11 from A Secret Life (1995)
Track 12 from The Seven Deadly Sins (1998)
Track 13 from Vagabond Ways (1999)
Track 14 from Kissin Time (2002)
Track 15 from Before The Poison (2002)
Track 16 from Easy Come, Easy Go (2008)
Track 17 from Horses And High Heels (2011)
Track 18 from Give My Love To London (2014)
Track 19 from Negative Capability (2018)
Track 20 from She Walks In Beauty with Warren Ellis (2021)

Marianne Faithfull had an unusual career in which she was a pop star in the '60s, with a string of top 10 hits in the UK and Hot 100 hits in America, but she's better remembered for her later work as more of a cult artist. Faithfull released several albums from 1965 to 1967, none of which are currently available on streaming services in their entirety, at least not in America. Some deep cuts from those albums are on Spotify on compilations, though, so I was able to represent that era with the first four tracks on the playlist, so you can hear what Faithfull's voice sounded like when she was younger and the kind of folk pop that she became famous with. 

Faithfull was discovered by Rolling Stones manager/producer Andrew Loog Oldham, and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote her debut single, 1964's "As Tears Go By." Faithfull was a pretty big star in her own right when she and Jagger began a relationship in 1966, and for a few years they were probably UK pop's power couple. Faithfull also co-wrote "Sister Morphine" with Jagger and Richards, and released her version a couple years before the Stones recorded it for Sticky Fingers. 

Marianne Faithfull didn't release any albums for nearly a decade after 1967, at first pivoting to acting and starring in a few films. After breaking up with Jagger in 1970, Faithfull went through a dark period, addicted to heroin and sometimes homeless. When she staged a comeback with the 1979 classic Broken English, her voice was completely different, with less range but much more character, and she'd developed into a great songwriter (she released another, less successful before that, 1976's Dreamin' My Dreams, which is also missing from Spotify). 

Faithfull also recorded a "lost album" in 1971 with several Bob Dylan covers that was to be called Masques that remained unreleased until 1985, when it was released as Rich Kid Blues. Today, Rich Kid Blues is Faithfull's most streamed album, largely because of a cover of Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." I'm not sure exactly how that track became so popular, but a YouTube fan edit of it paired with clips from one of her most famous film role, 1968's The Girl on a Motorcycle, has millions of views. Faithfull also re-recorded "Baby Blue" in 2018. 

I remember seeing Marianne Faithfull for the first time in her 1968 performance of "Something Better" in the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus when the long shelved BBC special was finally released on home video in 1996. A year later, Faithfull made a somewhat surprising guest appearance on "The Memory Remains," the lead single from Metallica's Reload, which is probably her most famous song in America. 

My favorite Marianne Faithfull song, at least outside Broken English, is "Times Square," the opening track from 1985's A Child's Adventure. Carla Bozulich released a cover of it about 20 years ago that I was absolutely obsessed with it for a long time, both Faithfull and Bozulich's versions give me chills every time. That single bar in 7/8 in the verses? What a brilliant little detail. I also think Faithfull did an amazing version of Dolly Parton's most important deep cut, "Down From Dover." 

In the last few decades Faithfull remained prolific, and some major artists wrote songs for her or with her. Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan wrote the title track for Faithfull's 1987 album Strange Weather, and Waits performed the song a year later in his film Big Time. Hal Willner produced several of her later albums, and she also worked with Angelo Badalamenti ("She"), Elton John and Bernie Taupin ("For Wanting You"), Nick Cave ("Crazy Love"), Steve Earle ("Give My Love To London"), Mark Lanegan ("They Come At Night"), Warren Ellis ("To The Moon"), among many others. I was particularly delighted delighted to discover "Sliding Through Life On Charm," which was one of the last things Pulp did before they disbanded. 

10:50 AM

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

 





As I do every year, I participated in the latest Uproxx Music Critics Poll. Here's my ballot, and here's the full unabridged lists of my favorite albums and singles of 2024. 

11:26 AM

TV Diary

Monday, January 27, 2025

 






a) "Prime Target"
This Apple TV+ thriller series is about a brilliant mathematician who finds himself embroiled in a conspiracy plot. It's alright, some moderately clever plotting. I thought Leo Woodall was good in "One Day" last year but he's not entirely convincing as a math genius here, just feels like a guy saying lines. 

b) "Black Doves"
I love watching Ben Wishaw, voice of Paddington Bear, in dark live action stuff, he shoots someone in the head and I'm like "fuck, Paddington just shot someone in the head!" This British spy series is pretty good, inevitably it's gotten compared a lot to "Slow Horses" but I think it's both better and a little more exciting and tonally different. I wish there was a bit more Sarah Lancashire, who I now adore because of her performance in "Julia." 

c) "The Agency"
Another espionage thriller! There was an article about how "The Agency" represented Showtime's effort to be "cool again," and how casting Richard Gere in a supporting role was a big power play they were really proud of. "The Agency" is pretty good and does have an impressive cast, including Michael Fassbender and Jeffrey Wright, but I feel like we're over a decade past movie stars being a cheat code to a popular series, and I barely have seen anybody acknowledge this show's existence since it premiered two months ago. 

d) "American Primeval"
I had high hopes for "American Primeval," which covers a fascinating chapter of American history, the Utah War of 1857, and has a great cast including Betty Gilpin and Shea Whigham (Saura Lightfoot-Leon, who's in both "The Agency" and "American Primeval," is also really pretty). I real don't care much for Peter Berg as a director, though, I feel like he has a very dated early 2000s visual style that's heavy on Dutch angles and an orange and teal color scheme. There are some exciting action scenes, but overall I didn't feel like the actors got a lot to work with, and it kind of felt monotonous and miserable beyond the general dark, violent nature of the story. 

This came out in December and was I think the last new show I added to my list of favorite shows of 2024. "No Good Deed" is a dark comedy full of tragedy and secrets, much like Liz Feldman's previous show "Dead To Me," but that show ultimately felt like a heartwarming story about friendship and "No Good Deed" is a little more bleak to the core. Pretty good, though, excellent cast. I remember I was watching the first episode, and there was this very tense scene of Denis Leary blackmailing and threatening Ray Romano, and my wife said "is that Manny and Diego?" and it took me several seconds to realize she was referring to the woolly mammoth and saber-toothed tiger from the Ice Age movies. 

f) "Laid" 
Stephanie Hsu was the one Oscar-nominated actor in Everything Everywhere All The Time who didn't win, and really probably should have. And she's really great in this very funny Peacock adaptation of an Australian sitcom that was developed by Nahnatchka Khan ("Don't Trust The B----," "Fresh Off The Boat"). The premise is pretty odd (a woman realizes that every person she's ever had sex with is dying, in the order she slept with them), but they just kinda go for it. 

g) "On Call"
In a new twist in the ongoing war over "The Bear" and whether every 30-minute show is a comedy and every 60-minute show is a drama, Dick Wolf has created his first 30-minute series for Amazon Prime. And it's very much a drama, but it works in shorter episodes, especially since Wolf's network shows are usually really about 43 minutes with commercials anyway, so it's not a huge difference. It's also slightly grittier and more action-packed than the average Dick Wolf cop show, Troian Bellisario leads a pretty strong cast. 

h) "Lockerbie: A Search For Truth"
I've never really heard much about the Pan Am flight that was bombed in 1988, so the story is pretty much new to me in this series where Colin Firth plays the father of one of the victims. Pretty good so far, and the scene of the actual explosion and crash is really terrifying and impressive, although most of the series is slower and more character-driven, obviously that's the only big moment like that. I feel like the name of the show feels like a book title, though, just "Lockerbie" would suffice as a name for the series (it's not even the actual name of the book the series is based on, The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father's Search for Justice). 

Apparently Canada has an enormous strategic reserve of maple syrup in Quebec, and millions of gallons of syrup were stolen in a 2011 heist, which provided the inspiration for this Amazon Prime series. I love the premise and that it stars Margo Martindale, but I don't feel like it really lived up to its potential, it was just okay. 

In between Colman Domingo's back-to-back Oscar nominations, he starred in this Netflix miniseries that I really think should've gotten more attention. He's wrongfully accused of a murder and is trying to find out who really did it but it's more of a noir thing than a "The Fugitive" knockoff, Domingo is great as always and so is the beautiful Tamsin Topolski, never seen her in any significant roles before.

This Amazon Prime anthology series has a cool concept, each episode is basically a different filmmaker and cast doing some kind of take off on a video game (or board game/tabletop game). It really falls short of its potential, though, at least in the handful of episodes I've watched. I'm not much of a gamer so I've never played or even heard of a lot of the games that episodes are based on, but I will say that the Dungeons & Dragons episode was pretty underwhelming and the Pac-Man episode was ridiculously stupid. 

A pretty promising crime thriller with Natalie Dormer from "Game of Thrones" that takes place in South Africa, I need to watch more episodes at some point. 

It's pretty funny that Olympus Has Fallen has spawned an entire Has Fallen cinematic universe with multiple sequels and now a TV spinoff, but hey, it's a good excuse for some big dumb thrilling action sequences, and this show seems to be up to the same standard as the movies. 

In theory, a more family-friendly Star Wars series with a quartet of children as the main protagonists is not a bad idea, but I really found "Skeleton Crew" irritating and charmless, with Jude Law kind of saddled with the role of an amateur Jedi babysitter. 

Netflix has a billion shows created by the mystery novelist Harlan Coben and this has been one of the more compelling ones I've seen, starts with a detective finding her fiance who'd disappeared a decade ago when he pops up on a dating app. 

This Netflix series based on the Alex Cross novels stars Aldis Hodge and is definitely a big improvement on the movie where Tyler Perry played Cross. 

I've never seen British actress Tamara Lawrance in anything before, apparently she's done a lot of theater, mostly Shakespeare, but she's great in this series about a UK detective who goes back to Jamaica, where she was born. 

I'm a fan of James Gunn's more overtly comedic DC stuff like "Peacemaker" and The Suicide Squad, but this animated series is a little underwhelming, I just haven't clicked with it. Also it's so ridiculous and off-putting the way an animated Gunn appears in the opening credits, like, get over yourself, dude. 

Pretty good recent animated series on Netflix, Bowen Yang is definitely a natural for cartoon voice acting. 

t) "Castlevania: Nocturne"
I generally don't like this "Castlevania" spinoff as much as the original series, but it's alright. 

This Japanese series is probably the best foreign language show I've seen on Netflix in a while, sharp dialogue and compelling, well rounded characters. It takes place in 1979, and apparently it's adapted from a show that originally aired in Japan in '79. 

One of Apple TV+'s better imports, a German show about a family looking for their missing daughter that has an odd, quirky black comedy tone. 

This docuseries is pretty enjoyable, instead of the usual "SNL" retrospective, they zero in on a very specific topic (cast member auditions, the writing staff, the "more cowbell sketch," the 1985-86 season) for each episode. If anything I honestly wish there were more than four episodes, because there are so many other stories from the past 50 years, they're only scratching the surface. But, like, even as someone who's never been a huge fan of "more cowbell" and rolls my eyes when people reference it (as a drummer I feel like it's taken away a fun instrument I'd use more if it wasn't such a running joke), it was interesting to see the whole thing broken down for an hour. They even talked to Blue Oyster Cult and their producers (nobody can agree whether the drummer or one of the producers played the cowbell on "Don't Fear The Reaper," or even if it was actually a woodblock). And the one person they didn't talk to is Christopher Walken, who apparently regards the sketch as an albatross. 

"Human vs Hamster," hosted by Sarah Sherman, joins "Is It Cake?" in the pantheon of real game shows hosted by "Saturday Night Live" cast members that feel like they should be "SNL" game show sketches. It's really pretty entertaining to watch people try to do the same things hamsters do, and Sherman is a great choice to host something this absurd. 

Another game show with a host from "SNL," Colin Jost. I'm much more well versed in pop culture trivia than the kind of general knowledge that regular "Jeopardy!" centers on, so I watch it like "Finally, a version of this show where I know almost every answer and can easily imagine myself winning!" I don't like that they have three teams of three competing instead of three individuals, though, that's a really unnecessary change.  

A pretty stupid little quiz show based on the contestants' knowledge of the show "Friends." Another one where I can play along at home and get most of the questions right, at least when they pertain to the first few years, I didn't really watch the later seasons. 

10:52 AM

Monthly Report: January 2025 Singles

Friday, January 24, 2025

 





1. Tucker Wetmore - "Wind Up Missin' You"
I had a good chuckle at Tucker Wetmore's name the first time I saw it on a Billboard chart last year, but he's growing on me, especially "Wind Up Missin' You," his first top 10 on country radio. He's from Washington state, and there's not a lot of country stars from the Pacific Northwest, probably should be more. I think my next favorite song from his album is "When I'm Not Lookin'," which has a similar vibe, wouldn't mind if it gets released as a single too. Here's my new 2025 singles Spotify playlist that I'll be adding 10 songs to every month for the rest of the year. 

2. Tate McRae - "2 Hands"
I'm kind of indifferent to Tate McRae's current hit "It's OK I'm OK," but I absolutely love the second single from her forthcoming album and really hope it gets a radio run -- my local Top 40 station has been playing "2 Hands" more than "It's OK," but that appears to be unusual based on national radio charts. Amy Allen has been on an insane run writing hits lately, and the drums on this song are crazy. 

3. BigXthaPlug - "The Largest"
I don't know of anyone else who had BigXthaPlug in their top 10 albums of 2024 but I really became a big fan of his last year and this is definitely one of his best songs, I love the way BandPlay chopped that War sample. 

4. Kendrick Lamar f/ Lefty Gunplay - "TV Off" 
DJ Mustard sampled different songs from the same 1968 album by saxophonist Monk Higgins for both "Not Like Us" and "TV Off," which makes me wonder if the latter was deliberately made as something of a sequel to the former, or if Mustard made them in the same batch of tracks and Kendrick just happened to pick both beats. In either case, it doesn't surprise me that "TV Off" has quickly taken off and eclipsed another very good song from GNX, "Squabble Up," which had a video and became the song from the album that debuted at #1. Of course, a big reason that "TV Off" is popular is that hilarious, instantly viral moment where Kendrick yells "MUSTAAAAAAAAARD." 

5. Sam Fender - "People Watching" 
I'm excited for Sam Fender's new album next month. I was initially a little underwhelmed that the lead single and title track isn't an absolute anthem like "Seventeen Going Under," but I like "People Watching" a little more every time I hear it. 

6. Bishop Briggs - "My Serotonin"
I loved "River," the first and by far biggest Bishop Briggs single, but that was, wow, almost 9 years ago, time flies. And most of her output since then has been kind of underwhelming, but "My Serotonin" is a little more of an uptempo rock thing and, as weary of as I am of people using words like serotonin in pop songs, it has a pretty great chorus. 

7. Kiana Lede - "Natural"
Cut Ties was one of my favorite R&B albums of 2024, and I wrote that it's "almost entirely slow jams, some of them breakup songs and some of them sex songs (more the latter than the former)." "Natural" is one of the sex songs, glad to see it getting some radio airplay. 

8. Gelo - "Tweaker"
You gotta hand it to LaVar Ball, he spent years telling the world to expect big things from his sons, and right now two of them are in the NBA, while the other son whose basketball career had kinda stalled came out of nowhere with a Hot 100 hit. For the first couple weeks that "Tweaker" was going viral, I only heard people refer to LiAngelo Ball by his full name, so I was surprised to see that the song is credited to 'G3 GELO' on Spotify, and simply 'Gelo' on Billboard, I feel like people are probably embarrassed to call him that. A lot of the hype about "Tweaker" is at least a little ironic, or at least performatively amused about who made the song and its vaguely nostalgic early 2000s vibe, but it's undeniably a catchy song, I'm curious to see where this whole thing ends up, if he actually has a career beyond this song or if Def Jam is just insane throwing millions at the kid. 

9. Q Parker - "Beg"
Slim was always the member of 112 with the most distinctive voice and the biggest solo hit, and Daron Jones had the most writing and producing credits on the group's albums. But Q Parker, who left 112 in 2018, has been getting some R&B radio spins with an independent single, and as a 112 fan I'm happy to see that, it's a good song, sort of a tribute to R&B's "beggin' song" tradition.

10. Chayce Beckham - "Everything I Need"
"23" took a long journey to reach #1 on country radio nearly three years after its release, and Chayce Beckham's follow-up single didn't do nearly as well, which is a shame because "Everything I Need" is really good too, with a totally different vibe.  

The Worst Single of the Month: Akon - "Akon's Beautiful Day"
There's an argument to be made that Akon is one of the most consequential figures in popular music in the last 20 years -- he signed T-Pain and Lady Gaga, and was the biggest global star to come out of Africa before the recent breakthrough of Afrobeats. But Akon only really made some pretty good music for a couple years, and it's been a lot of garbage since then, including his recent pop radio comeback. 

6:00 AM

Wednesday, January 22, 2025










Complex ran a list of the most anticipated albums of 2025 and I wrote a bunch of the blurbs. 

11:13 PM

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

 



I ranked every Fleetwood Mac album and every Michael Jackson album for Spin. 

11:12 PM

Movie Diary

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

 







a) Conclave
I was really impressed by Edward Berger's All Quiet on the Western Front and particularly Volker Bertelmann's Oscar-winning score, and I'm pleased that they've both followed it up with something possibly even better. The twist at the end, I don't know, it's fine, I guess, it makes the right people mad, But I mostly enjoyed the journey to get there and the great performances, particularly Tucci and Lithgow and Rossellini. 

b) Emilia Perez
There's a lot going on in this movie, I like that it leans hard into these very big tonal shifts between whimsical musical passages and some very earnest drama. But I think a lot of the criticisms it's gotten have been valid, especially after reading about the development of the movie and how the director's original idea was just a cartel boss transitioning to escape arrest, not because they actually wanted to transition. And there's a whole stretch of the movie that is basically Mrs. Doubtfire. 

c) Juror #2
There was a lot of handwringing that Clint Eastwood's latest movie wasn't released in theaters, maybe partly because ol' Clint wouldn't know how to play the movie on a streaming service, but a movie like this would need actually star power to justify wide release. And I don't say that as a slight to Nicholas Hoult, who I love (more when he's playing an evil weirdo than in leading man mode) but isn't really at that level of fame. Really I thought the whole cast was great, although the movie can't help but lose some momentum after the really enjoyable J.K. Simmons section of the movie ends, and by the time the whole thing wrapped up the story just felt overly contrived and not as elegantly put together as it thought it was. 

I love Wallace & Gromit so much, it blows my mind to realize that the classic this is sort of a sequel to, The Wrong Trousers, is over 30 years old now. I didn't think there'd be another Wallace & Gromit movie after Peter Sallis died, and I'm glad I was wrong, Ben Whitehead does a perfect job with the voice, I never thought about it being a different actor as I watched it. I wish my dad was alive to watch it with him, he loved Wallace & Gromit too. 

It's funny that neither of my kids has ever played a Sonic game, but they've watched every movie and multiple TV shows in the franchise. This was a fun excuse to take the kids to the theater over winter break, I didn't really think Jim Carrey was that good in the first two but he had a lot of fun with the dual roles in this one. 

My family has watched Moana more than maybe any other movie over the last decade, so it was exciting to go see the sequel together even if it was just okay and never really shook off its obvious origins as a TV series. It made so much money that maybe they'll get Lin-Manuel Miranda back for a third movie, though, I'd give it a shot. 

g) Nightbitch
I wanted to love this just on the strength of the title, and Marielle Heller's last couple movies were very good, but I don't know, this fell very flat. I hate when movies feel too obviously adapted from a novel and there's a bunch of interior monologue voiceover and daydream/fantasy sequence stuff that's much easier to make compelling on paper than on film. 

h) Speak No Evil
I've been told the Danish original version is much better and had a different, dark ending, but I dunno, I wanted to see the American remake with the mini "Halt And Catch Fire" cast reunion. A handful of really good tense moments and strong performances but a lot of clumsy over-the-top stuff too. 

i) Don't Move
A moderately good thriller with a couple strong sequences and one memorably gorey death scene, but too reliant on the gimmicky concept in a way that made me imagine a version with more charismatic actors or a little self-aware humor. 

j) Cunk On Life
Diane Morgan as Philomena Cunk is such a brilliant comedic creation, the way she delivers the most ridiculous lines always gets me. I kind of wish this broken up into a series instead of a movie, because it doesn't really depart from the series format in any meaningful way, but either way I enjoyed it a lot. 

I wasn't the biggest Fury Road fan but I'll admit it was much better than I gave it credit for at the time. Furiosa does not have the juice, though, people overrated out of franchise loyalty like a bunch of Marvel fanboys. 

l) Twisters
My wife and I usually stay home and drink and watch a movie on new year's eve, and Twisters was what we decided to ring in 2025 with, even though I've never really watched the first Twister, I've just seen bits of it on cable. Moderately fun, I guess. I'm pro-Glen Powell and she's ambivalent, but Twisters didn't really give him an opportunity to be funny like in Hit Man and Anyone But You, very generic role. 

m) Luther: Never Too Much
I really loved this doc, a great tribute to Luther Vandross's incredible talent and his unique journey from backing singer to solo star, the interviews with friends and collaborators really brought his story to life and gave some interesting insight into his life. I also loved the studio footage of Vandross and Bowie in the Young American sessions, I had no idea video like that existed. Colin Firth's apparently got a production company that's moved heavily into music documentaries, respect to him for helping this get made. 

n) Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary
My dad loved Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, so I grew up on a lot of the music that's been jokingly retroactively categorized as 'yacht rock,' and this doc does a good job of engaging with the silliness of that phenomenon while also paying respect to what these guys did as musicians, putting it in context, and letting guys like Michael McDonald and Christopher Cross comment on this weird wrinkle in their legacies. 

o) Return of the King: The Fall and Rise of Elvis Presley
"Singer Presents... Elvis," the TV special that had such a transformative effect on Elvis Presley's career that it's now almost universally known as 'The '68 Comeback Special,' is pretty well-trodden ground now. But this doc is worth watching because of the great interviews with Bruce Springsteen, Conan O'Brien, Priscilla Presley, and the late Robbie Robertson.

p) Norman's Rare Guitars Documentary
Another recent doc with interviews from Robbie Robertson from before he passed, nice to see him pop up in these things. The story of a legendary L.A. guitar store is not incredibly gripping stuff and they kind of prop up the movie with a parade of celebrities, almost as many guitar-playing actors as actual rock stars, but it's amiable and entertaining and I loved when they reached back and explained the early evolution of the store. 

q) Music By John Williams
I take film scoring for granted sometimes, I mean it's kind of by design that you can just get swept up in how it serves the story and the atmosphere even when you're not actively paying attention to it. So this movie gave me a greater appreciation for it as an artform, and just how massive Williams's place in the profession is, like every five minutes they're telling another story about an iconic piece of music that's just tattooed on your brain for life. I especially loved the stories about Jaws and just how many leitmotifs he's made for the Star Wars universe. 

r) The Honorable Shyne
An okay documentary, my favorite stuff was the beginning, getting into how Shyne got signed and that whole late '90s New York scene when guys could inspire a bidding war just off freestyling in front of the right people, such an incredible time in hip hop. 

6:00 AM

Monthly Report: December 2024 Albums

Monday, January 13, 2025


 






















1. White Denim - 12
December used to be a big album release month thanks to the Christmas retail boost to CD sales, but now it's really started to become a ghost town of deluxe editions and live albums and stuff like that, I feel like it's a good opportunity for me to take more time to check out artists I haven't listened to before. And I'm really glad I checked out the Austin band White Denim's latest album. The opening track "Light On" is partly in the 5/4 time signature and the lead singer recorded a Little Feat cover a couple years ago, so immediately I was like oh, these guys are right up my alley, some psychedelic southern rock with really creative arrangements. I've started to check out some of their earlier stuff but so far 12 is what I've enjoyed the most. I posted my top 50 albums of 2024 already before I really listened to any December releases, otherwise this would've been on it. 

2. Lauren Mayberry - Vicious Creature
I've never really paid much attention to the Scottish band Chvrches but have enjoyed the occasional single from them. Frontwoman Lauren Mayberry apparently just did a solo album as a creative outlet outside Chvrches and the band is staying together, but I like Vicious Creature, it's pretty good. Hitmaker types like Matthew Koma and Greg Kurstin worked on some tracks, but it's not too different from the Chvrches stuff I've heard, maybe a little quieter and more singer-songwriter at times. 

3. BossMan Dlow - Dlow Curry
BossMan Dlow has a formula that he doesn't deviate from too much -- you can see it right in the tracklist of this album, which includes the titles "Dlow Curry," "Dlow Flintstone," and "Dlow Gucci." It's a strong formula, though, and there's some nice variation in the beats, I love the horn loop on "Like Dat." This stuff might get old if he's still doing the exact same thing in a year or two, but for now it's still hitting. 

4. Mario - Glad You Came
I included this in my Baltimore Banner list of the best Baltimore albums of 2024, I've always been a big fan of Mario's voice and it's cool that he finally got a songwriter of James Fauntleroy's caliber in his corner to make an album that really holds together with a unified aesthetic. Fauntleroy has a penchant for cheesy bedroom wordplay that makes me roll my eyes sometimes, but it's R&B, it is what it is. "Love Ain't Perfect" is one of my favorite tracks. 

5. Day Gone - At The Movies
Robbie Liberati, one half of the Baltimore duo Day Gone, worked as an engineer on one of my records once and he's a talented guy, I like their stuff. I didn't realize Day Gone had released a few records since the last one I heard, I need to catch up. But At The Movies is really beautiful and atmospheric, kind of eases into the songs with vocals in between these eerily beautiful instrumental passages. 

6. Redman - Muddy Waters Too
I kind of roll my eyes when aging rappers do "sequels" to one of their best early albums. But Redman is so consistent, most of this album sounds like it could've been made at almost any point in his career. It's 81 minutes long and a little meandering at times, but his ear for beats and his goofball charisma have held up really well. There's a pretty stupid narrative track involving Barack Obama and Donald Trump but it's buried in the back half of the album so it doesn't really spoil the vibe too much. 

7. Snoop Dogg - Missionary
I have to admit, Snoop and Dr. Dre reuniting for a Doggystyle sequel called Missionary is clever as hell, I love that. Most of the stuff Dre has produced in recent years has felt really sterile and charmless to me, I particularly disliked that recent Marsha Ambrosius album that people raved about. Missionary sounds good, though, maybe it's all the co-producers or maybe it really is that old Death Row era chemistry. 

8. Rosé - Rosie
I have pretty mixed feelings about K-pop, and sometimes the English-language stuff more explicitly aimed at the U.S. market has such an unpleasant uncanny valley quality to it, like "that's what you think we like, that's what you think American pop sounds like?" is what I think when I hear some of this stuff. I really liked Rosé from Blackpink's 2021 debut solo single "On the Ground," though, and while I'm kind of on the fence about "APT." with Bruno Mars, her first album is really just stacked with enjoyable songs from some of U.S. pop's best producers and songwriters. Rosé's voice has really grown on me, too, though, it reminds me a little of early Demi Lovato. "Drinks Or Coffee" is probably my favorite song so far. 

9. Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross - Queer (Original Score)
I love that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have become not just extremely prolific film score composers but also an extremely versatile team that tailors their work to each project. I thought maybe since Queer is a period piece they might go heavy on acoustic instruments like the great Mank score, but Queer is a little more of a hybrid where there's a lot strings but also some more noisy digital Nine Inch Nails-ish stuff. It always feels funny to listen to soundtrack albums months before I'll get around to watching the movie, but it sounds good without the cinematic context. 

10. Zach Bryan - 24 (Live)
A concert with a really amped up crowd can be amazing, but sometimes I get weary of audiences that sing a long with every word at the top of their lungs, almost drowning out the singer onstage. Maybe it's a quirk of the mixing on Zach Bryan's second live album, but the audience is so loud it irritates me a little. Still, I like hearing how his band pulls this material off onstage, and I'm glad they captured good live recordings of Bryan doing his collaborations with Kacey Musgraves and Maggie Rogers. 

The Worst Album of the Month: Fat Joe - The World Changed On Me
Fat Joe's always proudly said the n-word, something that's gotten more and more negative attention in recent years, so I happily added fuel to the fire a couple weeks ago when I tweeted the ridiculous shit Chris Rock says on Joe's new album. For about 20 years Fat Joe made better albums than most people gave him credit for, but he really just sounds hoarse and depleted now, probably should've retired when he said he was going to a few years ago, or at least switched up from these stale Cool & Dre beats. 

6:00 AM