2020 in Review

In this strange year without much live music, my writing here has obviously suffered. I still saw a few shows early in the year, and one during the early autumn lull, but nothing big. Last year was a record number of concerts and reviews for me, and I had no hope of matching that this year. However, I released my first solo song in 9 years and an album from my old band in Austin, and I’m about to release some more music, too. But like any other year, I’ve spent a ton of time listening to music, and like I did last year, I’ll share a few of my favorite releases from 2020.

Here they are, in alphabetical order:

• The Asteroid No.4 - Northern Songs - The obvious Beatles references are well-done, but so are the Isn’t Anything-era My Bloody Valentine bits. This is a wonderful psych rock adventure.
• Cremant Ding Dong - assorted singles - Great lyrics, great videos, great music, prominent cute cat. Hard to beat that.
• Cup Collector - Cordum Hominum Renovatio and Morning Cofee and Tea - The former might be CC’s best electric guitar-based drone yet, and the latter is a successful experiment with layers of nylon-string guitar. I hope it’s not absurd to say that Cup Collector has become my favorite artist to listen to while doing lockdown yoga.
• Elephant Stone - Hollow - Is this an album about the end of the world released before the pandemic reached full fury? Doesn’t matter, the music is rich and the storytelling is prescient. This is my favorite Elephant Stone album yet. The more explicitly pandemic-related “American Dream” single is also good, albeit a bit precious.
• Holy Wave - Interloper - Their live shows were always great, and now they finally have an album that equals them. They’ve grown far from their garage roots and have embraced a wealth of new sounds, naturally mostly psychedelic in nature. The lyrics are a huge leap, too: “Maybe Then I Can Cry” hit me hard.
• Hum - Inlet - Is this another album about the world ending, again presumably written and recorded before the pandemic? This album sounds huge and simultaneously vibrant. It’s their best yet.
• Ian Fisher - American Standards - This adopted Austrian sure seems enamored with Nashville, but the music is tellingly much wider in scope than mainstream country or even the classic 70s pop hinted at in “AAA Station”. The lyrics are even more powerful and self-aware than Ian’s already-high standard. I can read the excellent title track five or six different ways, and I love that I don’t know which is right.
• Melange & Jacco Gardner - “Ashokh” - It’s such a shame they only recorded this one song and that the band broke up. It’s a superb, spritely, groovy jam on par with their wondrous Viento Bravo from 2017.
• Monta at Odds - Zen Diagram and A Great Conjunction EPs - Both are majestic kosmische space rock from my hometown of Kansas City, and the former successfully covers a great Tones on Tail song.
• Nation of Language - Introduction, Presence - Is this pure 80s nostalgia? Yes, probably. But is it a crime to want to sound like Simple Minds or OMD? Certainly not!
• Pia Fraus - Empty Parks - This sounds like an Estonian blend of Slowdive (especially their self-titled album from 2017), Stereolab, and Loveless, and obviously I rather enjoy it. I wish it was a bit punchier, but sometimes soft and warm is nice, too.

A few additional honorable mentions:

• Khruangbin - Mordechai - Khruangbin seem incapable of making bad music, but this album is merely pleasant. It actually sounds more derivative than their previous albums, and some parts are a touch too silly. Their collaborative Texas Sun EP with Leon Bridges from earlier in the year was also an interesting aside, but where Bridges’ vocals shone, the lyrics didn’t.
• Mietminderung - Tatsächliche Verhältnisse EP - Their tagline of “rock music in bureaucratically-inflected German generally about interpersonal relationships” really undersells them, but it hits a certain type of dry German humor on the head. The vocals are indeed a bit stiff, but the music is more adventurous. This is the last and best of the three EPs they’ve released this year.
• Neil Young - Homegrown - The Archives Volume II collection is almost too big to handle, but this forgotten record is a condensed version of the best of the unreleased content. It’s not exactly great and I understand why he shelved it. Then again, it’s also idiosyncratic and emotionally complex, so it’s a shame that it took 46 years to release it. (I’m almost considering buying the box set anyway just for the wonderful CSNY versions of “Human Highway”, though.)
• Perlee - Slow Creature EP - It starts slow and doesn’t really pick up much at all, but “Charlie’s Song” is quite good. The early-era Beach House vibes are heavy, but the harmonies are a nice extra touch.

And while I don’t like being rude, there were a few high-ish profile releases that I have to admit I was a bit disappointed by. Here are those:

• Einstürzende Neubauten - Alles in Allem - I love Neubauten, but not this album. It lacks the creative energy and unpredictable spark of their finest works. It’s weirdly restrained and dour. I like the requiem for Rosa Luxemburg, though.
• Sufjan Stevens - The Ascension - This seems like a retread of The Age of Adz, but with less variation. Some of the lyrics are nice, but I don’t really get it.
• Other Lives - For Their Love - I really like the idea of this band, and I still think Tamer Animals is excellent, but this one sounds a bit stale. Much like Rituals from 2015, it sounds huge and cavernous, yet lacks anything memorable.

Lastly, there were again some excellent albums from (relatively) recent years that I missed before but picked up this year. Here are some of the best:

• Lush - Blind Spot EP (2016) - Their only new music after reuniting, and it matches their classic sound in all the right ways.
• Monta at Odds - Argentum Dreams (2018) - More great space rock with lovely 80s synth sounds, but also featuring Lawrence artist Your Friend!
• Tocotronic - K.O.O.K. (1999) - Tocotronic took a while to grow on me. The lyrics are subtle and yet evocative. Musically, I think this is their album that’s most closely tuned to my tastes.

With any luck, live music will be a viable option again at some point in 2021!

South by Southwest Music Festival 2017, Day 6 (Saturday)

Event: South by Southwest Music Festival, Day 6 (Saturday)
Location: Austin, Texas
Date: 18 March 2017

I've heard about the free day parties at Hotel San José on South Congress for years now, which they amusingly call "South by San José". They usually manage to get most of the best bands every year to play there, and this year was no exception. However, since I live north of downtown, it's always seemed like too much of an ordeal to prioritize the extra distance to get there. This year, despite how sore my legs were, I made it happen and rode my bike there.

My goal was Khruangbin, an East Texas band claiming influence from 60s Thai funk. It seems bizarre or ridiculous, and it kind of is, but when I listened to the band in advance, I liked them so much that I immediately bought their album. You can argue about cultural appropriation, but the only real questionable element is their name. The music itself is complicated, since it's not like the original Thai funk musicians existed in a vacuum. Besides, the supposed influence is somewhat tenuous: this is decidedly Khruangbin's own style.

The trio is smooth, relaxed, and chill, but always tight. The grooves were infectious and their lyrics were infrequent and simple. They played just as much as necessary and not much more. The guitarist was the nominal lead player, but his style was not overwhelmingly flashy. Meanwhile, the bassist was studied but casual and the drummer precise but uncomplicated. (When asked to solo by the guitarist, he just stopped playing for a measure.) There's a lightness or breeziness to the band that risks seeming pedestrian, but they reach a good balance. The guitarist did most of the talking, and he was a bit over the top, but even that was forgivable. The only other downside was that the bass was overwhelming at first and it seemed there was some sort of low-frequency hum or feedback that was interfering with their sound.

[Khruangbin at Hotel San José.]

On my way back downtown, I made a slight detour to visit a friend at Threadgill's, where Ray Wylie Hubbard was performing acoustic guitar country blues with his son on lead electric guitar and a drummer. The guitarwork was superb, although I wished that Ray would've taken more leads instead of leaving most of them to his son, whose style was more conventional.

I headed back to Red River Street to see Survive (which they often annoyingly stylize as S U R V I V E) at the Sound on Sound + Brooklyn Vegan day party at Cheer Up Charlie's. Unlike Thursday night, I actually saw most of their set, and they performed somewhat longer than anticipated. The band is just four men operating synthesizers without any hint of interaction with the audience. They sound cinematic, spatial, and (dare I say) epic, much in the vein of Tangerine Dream's sequencer heyday. They've been on my radar for a while, since they are based in Austin and play the festivals here frequently, but it seems they've recently simultaneously increased their recognition and improved their abilities.

After a stop at the Peruvian food truck, I went to Latitude 30 to see Anna Meredith, an English composer. She performed keyboards, vocals, clarinet, percussion, and glockenspiel and was accompanied by tuba, drums, electric guitar, and cello. Most songs were instrumental, but all five musicians sang, usually together. The sound was underpinned by electronics, but existed in a strange semi-classic continuum that certainly isn't rock but also isn't really what people think of when they hear "classical". Even "art rock" and "prog rock" aren't appropriate, but if the terms hadn't already been co-opted, they might have worked. At any rate, the music was energetic and unconventional. It was a bit hard to tell what was what, as some instruments were occasionally apparently inaudible, but at other times were effected to such an extent as to sound synthetic. The guitarist would do these crazy runs that recalled speed metal, but the tone was usually more like a buoyant synthesizer.

[Anna Meredith at Latitude 30.]

Next was The Living Hour from Winnipeg at Esther's Follies. I enjoyed their warm dream pop sound on record, but on stage, it didn't quite come together. They just sounded like a slow indie rock quintet without much energy or groove. It didn't help that there was interfering noise coming from neighboring venues. The highlight was that the singer occasionally wielded a trombone. She wasn't even exceptionally skilled with the instrument, but that extra element entirely improved the texture of their sound. Even more rarely, the drummer picked up a trumpet, which also helped. Otherwise, there were good parts here and there, such as some atmospheric guitar and rousing crescendos, but none of their songs were particularly notable.

[The Living Hour at Esther's Follies. Note the trombone and trumpet.]

I was at a loss for what to see next, as there weren't a lot of bands that I hadn't already seen left on the schedule that interested me. After another break for more food, a friend and I decided to take a chance on the young Polish electropo duo The Dumplings on the patio of Swan Dive. They started out fairly conventionally and unconvincingly, but they gradually picked up energy and improved their performance as they went along. The singer's vocals became more impassioned and impressive as she started singing more songs in Polish. I also appreciated the other member's use of drum pads and live bass guitar.

[The Dumplings at Swan Dive Patio.]

At that point, I was tired and ready to be done. There were still a couple hours left of the festival, but nothing called out to me enough to make the detour worthwhile.

Scores:

Khruangbin: B+

Survive: B

Anna Meredith: B+

The Living Hour: C

The Dumplings: B