Midyear Music Musings
Hello! It’s been slow going on this Twilight thing I’m writing, so here’s some mid-year (late August still counts) music writing instead.
Despite the pivot to poetry, if you’ve known me long enough and known me for writing, it’s probably about music. I ran a hobby music blog through the entirety of college and then less consistently but no less enthusiastically as my twenties continued. It’s a form of writing I haven’t done a ton of On Here. Today, I thought I would change that by running through some albums that have stuck with me over the first chunk of this year. We’ll do some quick-hit superlatives and a top 5, m’kay?
Favorite Gym Album of the Year (so far): Model/Actriz - Pirouette
This album rocks. Model/Actriz fall into the trap where I don’t readily know how I’d describe their sound to laypeople; kind of an arty, gritty punk thing with a lot of guitar noise and empty space over baritone vocals, like if Brat’s oversharing diva GBF showed up with a clove cig, an Incubus croppy, and liquid liner. It rules generally, and it rules when you need to get one foot in front of the other or push/pull the heavy thing one more time while mouthing along to “I’m such a fucking biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitch/Girl, you don’t even know”.
First Favorite Album of the Year: Miya Folick - Erotica Veronica
The run of “gay girl singer-songwriters” was always bound to taper back toward the average after running the start of the decade, but still: damn, did that Lucy Dacus album come and go. The start of the year was a rough go for the NPR banner indie crowd as a whole, with Japanese Breakfast, PUP, and Bartees Strange also contributing records that didn’t stick like I wanted them to.
Instead, Miya Folick’s sturdy and tuneful Erotica Veronica stayed in rotation long after its February release date. The record checks plenty of boxes–study on evolving queerness within a heteronormative relationship, indie world pedigree, confessional revelations of the self, etc. etc.--and just has plain great songs. “Alaska” glides, “Fist” howls, “Erotica”’s still in my head after dozens of listens, and “Love Wants Me Dead” is a favorite of the year. Erotica Veronica lags a touch in the middle and won’t make a year-end, but it’s the kind of thing you listen to way more than all the homework-y “important” stuff. Take your first listen at your leisure.
These Would Probably Make the List If I Spent More Time With Them: Greet Death - Die in Love AND Maria Somerville - Luster
Do you like your shoegaze all-enveloping and heavy or echoing and airy? Either way, this year has you covered! Not much else to say, the unfamiliarity is the point for this entry lol
Water Balloon (disappeared on impact) Album of the Year (so far): The Weeknd - Hurry Up Tomorrow
When all’s said and done, The Weeknd will have plenty of decade-defining accolades to his name and the ability to sell out shows based on nothing but his back catalogue. For those shows, he probably won’t be playing anything from the glitz pop/R&B, profundity-aspiring, half-as-long-twice-as-good record Hurry Up Tomorrow. Nice features, though.
Favorite Music Writing of the Year: This Meaghan Garvey writeup centered on the Skrillex record got me to listen to the new Skrillex record.
Favorite Pop Album of the Year (sf): Lady Gaga - MAYHEM
Predecessor Chromatica was a smidge too much of a pleaser to be the bounce back it wanted to be, but it cleared the runway for MAYHEM, which may legitimately be one of Lady Gaga’s best albums to date. Certainly, it’s enough for “best since Born This Way” conversations. Like that record, MAYHEM’s maximalism soars instead of sinks; the tunes are good enough to cash the checks written with its camp. Gaga’s found this kind of slash and burn intensity that goes crazy here, and if you didn’t hear “Abracabara” during June, I don’t think you went outside. Go ahead and call it a comeback.
And now for the top 5.
5. PinkPantheress - Fancy that
PinkPantheress might be my favorite new pop artist of the ‘20s. To hell with it, Heaven knows, and now Fancy That are all loaded with replayable, catchy pop songs that surprise me with how fresh they sound while cobbling together a distinct sound out of a hodgepodge of ‘00s tones. Fancy That is a more assured and refined take on the marginal expansions and added gleam of Heaven knows. What I like about Pantheress is that despite being one of the “Tiktok artists” afraid of a three minute song, her work always sounds fully formed. Tracks here like “Girl Like Me,” “Tonight,” and “Stateside” deploy their thrills with a bit more nuance and runway poise. To hell with it is probably still the best entry point, but the songs here are incredibly strong.
4. Turnstile - NEVER ENOUGH
Aka, the “when you aint got a bitch in your ear” album of the year (sorry, the “‘when you aint got a bitch in your ear’ album of the year [so far]”). Look, it’s Turnstile making rock music that sounds primed for actual arenas and like it was made by a capital B Band. That’s literally all I need to say here. I don’t need to preamble and hand wring over what it all means for Turnstile to be a hardcore punk act for a few hundred words while I give newsletter space to shoegaze dudes who still piss and moan about the transphobia they enabled; do I look like Eli Enis to you? Let’s just put on “I Care” and call it a day.
3. Yeule - Evangelical Girl is a Gun
Yeule’s most recent album surprised me twice. The run of prerelease singles in advance of Evangelical Girl is a Gun had me ready to call it a presumptive favorite somewhere after the release of “Dudu,” but I was initially taken aback when I didn’t dig the album as a whole. I thought it couldn’t hang with Yeule’s previous record softscars because the gap between the singles and album tracks was too great this time around. I still think softscars is better–I actually think it’s one of my favorites of the decade–but I was surprised when I’d put Evangelical… on for “What3ver” and “The Girl Who Sold Her Face” in addition to “Eko” and the title track. The whole of it has worked its way into my listening rotation with its goth glam stomp and cybernetic obsessions, and I keep coming back to it.
2. Jane Remover - Revengeseekerz
Revengeseekerz is the perfect contrast to Evangelical Girl is a Gun: here’s an album that blew my fucking head off on the first listen. I can dip into and even vibe with digicore/glitchcore, but Revengeseekerz is probably the first whole album of the subgenre that’s captured my attention from end to end (brakence’s hypochondriac is in a close second). It has all the usual overstimulation born of mashing EDM, scene music, rage rap, and pop-punk cut with a healthy dose of alternative rock gauze on top of it, all shot through with a super strong knack for melody and dynamics among the noise. While I tend to think of this stuff as candylike with how overloaded and dopamine-seeking it is, Revengeseekerz is like the best bag of Skittles I’ve ever had.
1. Home is Where - Hunting Season
Logline of the year with this one: Hunting Season’s thirteen songs are the final thoughts of thirteen Elvis impersonators who all die in the same car crash.The bleary-eyed travelog of “Milk & Diesel”? Dead Elvis. “Bike Week,” which posits “What if The Lonesome Crowded West-era Issac Brock was a trans woman from Florida?”? Another dead Elvis. Emo-meets-alt-country ripper "Artificial Grass,” with lyrics like “Sometimes it’s easy to forget I’m me/and the King is dead/and every king’s a thief” and “Fifty million Elvis impersonators can’t be wrong”? Also a dead Elvis, but that one’s a gimme. The record doesn’t belabor the whole “dead Elvis” thing, but it’s fun as a North Star.
In truth, the record Hunting Season reminds me of most is Titus Andronicus’s landmark The Monitor: a sprawling, expansive, and highly quotable punk singer-songwriter album with spoken-word interludes in freaked out songs that zigzags between Americana, pop culture, and personal narratives, supposing they’re all telling the same story (weirdly enough, Larry Fitzmaurice of The Last Donut on the Left also made this comp while interviewing Bea MacDonald; she says The Monitor wasn’t on her mind). While The Monitor was mine and most of the world’s introduction to Titus Andronicus, Hunting Season delights because as Home Is Where’s third record, it trades some of the band’s early volatility for a steadier, more sustainable hand without losing any of their spark. The country influences tucked into the corners of The Whaler bear fruit on this album, which, for me at least, unlocks the allure of indie’s current alt-country boom with how it colors songs like “Stand-Up Special” and “Everyone Won the Lotto.” Despite whatever emo wave was supposed to pop in the late ‘10s/early ‘20s has confirmed its failure to launch, Hunting Season still feels like a signature statement from an act with still more to say. Home Is Where Forever, indeed.
