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| Mitski - "Nobody" |
Greetings, Musical Monday time.
Today's musical mix comes from Kieron Gillen, a British writer of some renown, whom I rather fancy.
I just shared quite a bit of his content and links to his newsletter and other instances on Thursday:
https://sensedoubt.blogspot.com/2019/02/hey-mom-talking-to-my-mother-1448.html
Annually, he does a best of the previous year's music. I am a bit faster getting this posted this year than last year. I posted his best of 2017 on September 17th last year. I liked his Best of 2016 best of all. I am sure he did ones in previous years, but I just started following him and his newsletter since 2016 or 2017-ish.
So, here's his top 39 (huh?). I always add one song to round up to a top 40, as it puzzles me that Kieron does a top 39 and not a top 40. In 2016, this was a Moby song. And in 2017, he listed 40, so problem solved.
This year it's "The Last of Goodbyes (Criminal Solace Remix)," which Moby released on Christmas Day, December 25th, 2018.
I will let his text carry this content, but I did compile the track list along with the URL link and You Tube Video Pod Player link to my assembling of this mix on You Tube.
There's good stuff here. I like this better than 2017 but not better than 2016.
Enjoy!!
Kieron Gillen's Best of Music 2018
40) The Last of Goodbyes (Criminal Solace Remix) - Moby
39) List of Demands (Reparations) -The Kills
38) Fight or Flight Club - Madge
37) Cockcrow - Aidan Moffat
36) Chequeless Reckless - FONTAINES D.C.
35) Die Young - Sylvan Esso
34) Boys - Lizzo
33) There's a Honey - Pale Waves
32) Dark Shadows - EMA
31) Oom Sha La La - Haley Heynderickx
30) Stupid Things - Girl Ray
29) You're So Cool - Jonathan Bree
28) I Love My Boyfriend - Princess Chelsea
27) thank u, next - Ariana Grande
26) Charcoal Baby - Blood Orange
25) Immaterial - SOPHIE
24) It's Not Just Me - Let's Eat Grandma
23) Don't You Know I'm In a Band - Confidence Man
22) Sanctify - Years & Years
21) Ricochet – ANOHNI
20) Honey – Robyn
19) Music Is Worth Living For - Andrew W.K.
18) Party For One - Carly Rae Jepsen
17) Cicada - La Luz
16) Physical - Juliana Hatfield
15) Tumast – Imarhan
14) Middle America - Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
13) In My View - Young Fathers
12) BB - Daphne & Celeste
11) Don’t Delete the Kisses - Charli XCX x Post Precious Remix Wolf Alice
10) The South Will Never Rise Again - Des Demonas
9) Rhesus Negative - Blanck Mass
8) This Is America - Childish Gambino
7) All The Stars - Kendrick Lamar (with SZA)
6) I/m Not Here [Missing Face] - The Twilight Sad
5) Make Me Feel - Janelle Monáe
4) Suck the Blood from My Wound - Ezra Furman
3) Girlfriend (feat. Dâm-Funk) - Christine and the Queens
2) Samaritans - IDLES
1) Nobody – Mitski
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| Black Panther soundtrack - Kendrick Lamar - SZA - "All the Stars" |
GILLEN'S TEXT.............
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I've been compiling my tracks of the years since the early 00s. It started in my journalist days, as a chunk of gleeful content for my readers. It became a key point of my ending a year. It also got a bit too big in my head, to the point where doing it well became paralysing. While there was one year in the mid-00s I didn't do it until Glastonbury, in the 10s it was becoming harder to find the time to do it well.
A couple of years ago, I forgave myself. I would make no pretence of it being correct. I'll just pull together a quick list of stuff, write some brief notes in a set time, and then post whatever I've got along with the playlist. Hell, it wouldn't even have to be the traditional 40. It was never definitive anyway. It was just a quick pen portrait of what's been moving me.
The rules remain the same – tracks released this year, unless I can work out a figleaf of an excuse why ("Single re-release" always worked. "Album release" was another.) I have frankly worried about this less this year. There's at least one I haven't even tried. One track per artist. If an artist did a lot of things I like, the single entry gets boosted in position.
My methodology is basically keeping a scratchlist of stuff which I bookmark to explore further. I did less of this than normal – there's stuff in the list I haven't given nearly enough time. I've just been playing it as writing this, before going into actually organising them in a list.
Which makes it sound like I've had a year when I've not been interested in music. That's not true – the Top 20 and Top 10 are songs I've obsessed over as much as any year, if not more so. I can't think of a year where a couple of songs have so tightly defined the two parts of me since 2002-3's Solider Girl/Pretty Like Drugs.
Anyway. Playlist is here. In ascending if entirely arbitrary and underthought order of merit. I'm literally arranging this by cutting and pasting stuff, and throwing it up and down on vague vibe.
Right – I've got 40 minutes to write stuff in here and then I have to go and do other stuff. Let's see what sort of commentary we can slice in.
40) If You Want Twee (You Got It) - Keith Top Of The Pops & His Minor UK Indie Celebrity All-Star Backing Band
The sing along climax of this is something that all pub-going comics creators in London can empathise with.
The sing along climax of this is something that all pub-going comics creators in London can empathise with.
39) List of Demands (Reparations) -The Kills
38) Fight or Flight Club - Madge
37) Cockcrow - Aidan Moffat
36) Chequeless Reckless - FONTAINES D.C.
35) Die Young - Sylvan Esso
34) Boys - Lizzo
33) There's a Honey - Pale Waves
32) Dark Shadows - EMA
31) Oom Sha La La - Haley Heynderickx
30) Stupid Things - Girl Ray
29) You're So Cool - Jonathan Bree
28) I Love My Boyfriend - Princess Chelsea
27) thank u, next - Ariana Grande
26) Charcoal Baby - Blood Orange
25) Immaterial - SOPHIE
24) It's Not Just Me Let's Eat Grandma
23) Don't You Know I'm In a Band Confidence Man
22) Sanctify - Years & Years
Tweeted at me by a friend with a "You'll like this" and she was right. It's very WicDiv, in the positive way.
21) Ricochet – ANOHNI
Conversely, I found this by following the artist, and it's very WicDiv in the most apocalyptic way possible.
20) Honey – Robyn
Robyn had her Random Access Memories year, being a returning, hugely influential dance legend. But rather than going full Imperial Phase, Honey is a little bit of a retreat, a repositioning. It's softer, kinder and its primary aim seems to mean less to those who love it. I mean that in a positive way. Carrying that kind of belief becomes a burden, and traps you. Honey sounds like Robyn setting herself free from that – however, does mean I'm more excited by what (if anything) she chooses to do next than it itself.
19) Music Is Worth Living For - Andrew W.K.
That Article, am I right?
18) Party For One - Carly Rae Jepsen
I didn't listen to this properly until the week of my oddly regular DJ slot at Marioke in December. And then I listened to it, all week. The perfectly melodramatic pain flattened to a sugary coating over pop chocolate. No-one crushes like Carly Rae and no-one crushes on her.
17) Cicada - La Luz
I think seeing the all-girl surf-band was the only gig I went to this year. If you want to know where I am right now, you can tell some things by literally where I'm not. This is as effortlessly cool to make you hope Tarantino decides to get around to making a good movie again to use it.
16) Physical - Juliana Hatfield
Oh me, oh my. Juliana Hatfield (an artist who I have held no special interest or affection for) drops a album of covers of Olivia Newton-John (an artist who I have held no special interest or affection for) songs. And I'm all over it. This (and Xanadu) hits me exactly in the part of me which wanted to get an I, TONYA tattoo.
(I've been engaging with early childhood material this year, partially through the explorations of the POP MUSIC podcast and partially because I became so obsessed by Laura Branigan's Gloria post-I, Tonya.)
15) Tumast – Imarhan
Pure Radio 6 discovery which had me dancing around my house exactly the moment the drums come in, and we go full groove.
14) Middle America - Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
I'm listening to this as I head off a train in Sheffield and thinking about the quiet pleasure of Malkmus' songwriting, and the limited array of adjectives you have to talk about it (I've deleted "lackadaisical" three times while writing this blurb) and then I he sings the line "Men are scum, I won't deny"in a way that I'm scrambling for my phone to ensure it's on this list.
13) In My View - Young Fathers
This is the highest rated song which I haven't thought about intensely at some point in the year. It's existed, I've loved it, and rested next to its curves and found a place in my life, and made it better. Still – it's not pop music as furniture. It's pop music as sculpture.
12) BB - Daphne & Celeste
2018 has been awful, but our mate Max Tundra and our ABSOLUTE HEROES Daphne & Celeste teamed up and do an album so at least it's got that going for it.
11) Don’t Delete the Kisses - Charli XCX x Post Precious Remix Wolf Alice
This is a huge cheat. Wolf Alice snuck onto last year's list at 40, but I hadn't quite listened to the album enough. As such, it was the remix of Don't Delete the Kisses which made me go back to Don't Delete the Kisses and, hey, Wolf Alice. Don't worry. I will never delete your kisses. Pencilcase Lipgazing ambience, and astounding.
10) The South Will Never Rise Again - Des Demonas
If it wasn't for a certain pair of hand-claps further down the list, my single musical moment of the year is towards the end of this garage anti-racism juggernaut. The song's taken over two-minutes informing us, repeatedly, that the South will never rise again, and then the Mysterians organ jumps an octive and the singer boredly barks out "Hah! Hah!" and you applaud.
9) Rhesus Negative - Blanck Mass
An even bigger cheat. Album in 2017, started obsessing over this towards the end of the year and (as useful evidence of how much I no longer follow the music press) only found out it's a Fuckbuttons solo project when someone shouted at from the audience at Eastercon to tell me. I should have guessed, as this is the black carapace-d steroidal younger brother to Surf Solar. If you threw me money to make a 40k movie, this would be my soundtrack to Tyranids tearing us all asunder.
8) This Is America - Childish Gambino
Too late to have a hot take. This is a hell of a thing.
7) All The Stars - Kendrick Lamar (with SZA)
Black Panther has many merits, but when this came on over the credits I just felt lifted up. Not superheroic, but superpowered, touched by this ineffable grace.
6) I/m Not Here [Missing Face] - The Twilight Sad
Yes, I still wear overcoats and walk through the rain, why do you ask? That said, I actually got lost in a graveyard while listening to this, which seems a little on the nose.
5) Make Me Feel - Janelle Monáe
Janelle had a huge year, and this was as a huge as it gets, and perhaps is kept from higher places due to the time I played it twice while DJing and the crowd wasn't QUITE up for it. You can see why I was so hubristic. This is both dressed up and casual bisexual anthemic glee.
4) Suck the Blood from My Wound - Ezra Furman
I actually did have tickets to see Ezra, but they cancelled, and rescheduled, and then I realised I had an RPG to run that night, so couldn't go. That I chose an RPG over Pop Music also says something about the year. But still – this was such a recorded, album experience. This opens it, with the Hefner-does-Springsteen thing, a road trip to nowhere, with anxiety in the gastank and a commitment to the story.
3) Girlfriend (feat. Dâm-Funk) - Christine and the Queens
I haven't stopped just swelling to the opening statement "Chris" of this all year, and its just my queer-pop song of choice. Hell, it wasn't until about six months of obsession that I realised abstractly it could be a song of straight-girl-singing-to-
2) Samaritans - IDLES
Comrade Jim Rossignol and I have the same take on this: I just wish it was around when I was a teenager. This is the Pretty-Like-Drugs side version of me, and I'm glad this part has moved from performative nihilism to open heart surgery in a piss-floor club. Masculinity is a hell of a drug, and this is powered about that, about that and aims to destroy that. Contradictions are what all pop is about. This feels like progress. It feels up.
1) Nobody – Mitski
This doesn't. If the aggressive side is stronger and more directed, the lighter Soldier Girl side is now nothing but precision engineered ennui. This sixties-French-film vignette of longing and loneliness, makes you suspect when the song tries to open the window to hear passersbys talk (to just hear someone talk!) it'll find the window has no latch, and they'll follow the glass upwards, realising it's curving, and then we pull back and we see it's in a glass jar.
And I fear we can all only aspire to do anything as perfect as the two hand-claps 1:42 in it.
Let's talk a bit more about that. I've obsessed over how the song unfolds in that second verse, with the most valuable player being the drummer, who lightly sets a problem and resolves a problem. I mean, it's been pointed out its similarity to the Cardigans' fun-but-lightweight Lovefool. The trick then is to see why it's not Lovefool, and much comes from the rhythm section adding complexities to the bittersweet sonically-ascending-but-
"Nothing but precision engineered ennui|" is both what I love, much of what I am, and much of what I try to create. Or, at least, that's what Mitski manages to convince me.
Playlist here.
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Playlist here.
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1902.11 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1318 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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