The best pop albums of 2018: women take command!

Next month the U.S. House of Representatives will seat 125 women, a new record. Not surprisingly, an overwhelming number of them are progressive Democrats. If you needed further proof that the national zeitgeist is pointing in the direction of women empowerment and elevating them to greater heights of national recognition, there are dozens of top ten lists this year to confirm it.

Cardi B., Mitski, Robyn, Lucy Dacus, Camila Cabelo, Kali Uchis, Neko Case, Brandi Carlile, and Lindsay Jordan (aka Snail Mail) all landed on multiple top twenty lists. A number of  other women front bands who also received critical acclaim including Florence and the Machine
and Christine and the Queens. All ruled the pop/rock download charts and became darlings of the taste makers. None of them made my own top ten, but that doesn't mean they didn't catch my ear.  There was so much good music being produced by women this year that it was impossible to ignore the trend. Several of the ones who made my list have been personal favorites for many years. But any of the other names at the top of this paragraph are likely to be here in the future.

1. Dirty Computer. Janelle Monae (Bad Boy).  Her 2018 album reminded me a lot of her first full-length album, ArchAndroid, which landed on my end of the year list in 2010.  Like that one, this year's model is a concept album that bristles with confidence and skips a delicate dance between classic soul and politically edged hip hop. The Electric Lady (2013) was dance pop of the highest order. Computer is more thoughtfully developed, a dystopian fantasy which starts out with Monae's persona, Jane58621, having her memory "cleaned" at a facility run by a totalitarian government. Don't let this creepy premise keep you from enjoying an American singer/actress who is approaching iconic status. In the year of the woman, she's pop's high priestess.

2. Tell Me How You Really Feel. Courtney Barnett. (Mom and Pop).  For the third time in four years, Ms. Barnett has landed in my top three. Last year, her slacker mandate, a collaboration with Philly rocker Kurt Vile (see also below) was in the three spot. In 2015, her witty classic Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit was my favorite record of the year.  If you love rock and roll sung with passion and driven by smart, snarky observations and snarling guitar licks, it's time to give her your undivided attention. Listen with an open mind to "Need a Little Time" and see if you can keep from becoming a bigger fanboy than I am.

3. Hope Downs. Rolling Blackout Coastal Fever. (Sub Pop).  I guess there must be something in the drinking water of Melbourne that makes its local musicians play inspired rock n' roll. Courtney Barnett hails from Melbourne and so does this kick ass quintet, whose act I caught this summer at Johnny Brenda's. They follow the same rock template of their alt-rock Aussie ancestors, the Hoodoo Gurus: a blending of ringing guitar runs, melodies that stick in your brain and harmonies sung in that fetching Aussie accent. "Talking Straight", "Sister's Jeans" and "An Air-Conditioned Man" are the album's highlights. This album proves that indie rock is still relevant, not just in Melbourne.

4. Golden Hour. Kasey Musgraves (MCA). Musgraves is a veteran of the alt-country scene whose  first four or five albums skewed more to country than alternative. This one adopts a wider variety of genres, including dance pop ("High Horse") and the kind of airy art house pillowy vibe that Sufjan Stevens perfected (in the title track). But at its heart it still shares the sincerity and simplicity that makes country music so easy to connect with. This one is easy to like, even if country is not your bag. Crossover done right.

5. Whack World. Tierra Whack. (Interscope).  Philadelphia's hip hop artist to watch and the first of three local artists/bands worth checking out on this list. Whack turned her ADHD issues into a 15-minute EP masterpiece. The concept was simple:each song lasts just 60 seconds. Each is accompanied by a 60-second video. Fifteen songs in 15 minutes. I know from sharing classroom time with students in their late teens and from my own daughter's impatience with music that doesn't make a point by the chorus: this concept is a sonic solution to attention deficit issues. The surprises never end on Whack World but the biggest surprise is that the whole thing works as a great creative statement of purpose.

6. Bottle It In. Kurt Vile (Matador). Vile's "Loading Zones" has become one of my favorite songs of the year, a shambling head trip  through the streets of South Philly, loopy and eccentric and utterly charming. Don't miss the video version. Vile's songs are keenly observed, never feel frantic, and grow more likable with each listen. "Rolling With the Flow" and "Bassackwards" are two stoner classics in league with "Zones." You need not smoke a bowl to enjoy this one, but if you do, you'll feel the loopy glory of Bottle It In a lot more clearly.

7. Bark Your Head Off, Dog. Hop Along. (Saddle Creek Records).  Bark Your Head Off is the third album from another Philly indie rock band and easily their most accessible. Like Vile, Frances Quinlan's eye for telling detail is part of the charm of her best songs. Download "Not Abel" or "The Fox in Motion" to experience a songwriter working at the top of her game.

8. 13 Rivers. Richard Thompson (New West Records). It's hard to imagine a guy his age (he'll turn 70 in April) can make music as visceral and exciting as this. Among his peers, only Van Morrison seems as eager to add to his recorded legacy as British guitarist Thompson. If you count yourself as a fan but haven't purchased anything in recent years, this is the one that will make you remember why he matters and why you loved him. "The Storm Won't Come" (which kicks off an album full of terrific songs) may eventually rank as one of his very best.

9. Dying Star. Ruston Kelly (Rounder).  My friend Pat Feeney gets a big shout out for suggesting I give this one a try. Feeney owns Main Street Music, a record store in the Manayunk section of Philly where I frequently hear new music and find vinyl gems. He claims Dying Star is his favorite album of the past  five years. For a guy who listens to new music as much as Feeney, that's high praise. Its charms are evident on the first listen. Paste magazine compared Kelly to Ryan Adams' first band, Whiskeytown. I also hear a lot of the young Jackson Brown in his vocal presentation. "Mockingbird" and "Blackout" are standouts. Ironically, from my viewpoint, as good as it is, it's not the best new album in his own house. He's married to Kasey Musgrave, whose Golden Hour ranks at number 4.

10. El  Mal Querer (Bad Love). Rosalia. This 25-year old Spanish singer  released my favorite world music album of the year, a stunning update to the flamenco traditions of her native country. Repetitive phrases, augmented by percussive hand claps, keyboards and acoustic guitars, make for an irresistible treat. "Di Mi Nombre" is probably the place to start, but the whole enchilada is worth tasting. Mesmerizing.

In alphabetical order, these albums flesh out my favorite 20 albums of 2018: Brandi Carlile, By the Way, I Forgive You;  Neko Case, Hell On; Christine and the Queens, Chris; Lucy Dacus, Historian; Father John Misty, God's Favorite Customer; Ariana Grande, Sweetener; Kendrick Lamar, Black Panther (soundtrack); Mitski, Be the Cowboy; Robyn, Honey. Kamasi Washington, Heaven and Earth. 

mid-year pop music report: it's a Whacky World

When my son and daughter stopped by last weekend to top off Father's day with dinner at my place, Lili turned on her cell phone while we ate dessert. She and Luke soon engaged in a discussion about a local artist from North Philly they had both recently discovered named Tierra Whack, whose new "media project" had dropped two weeks earlier. I soon joined in: "What is this?" 

When I first heard it, it sounded like a clever advertisment for a fully developed album: 15 short pieces, each one only 60 seconds.  Each song was chock full of hooks and thought-provoking lyrics. In every case, the ear was begging for a taste of more candy. Was that it? The whole thing? An entire album of songs in just 15 minutes? Couldn't be: who would do such an audacious thing...play with the conventions of the timing of pop songs?

"Alot of my friends only listen to a song for 30 or 45 seconds," Lili told us. "They listen to the opening beats and the first verse and if they like what they hear, they'll listen to the chorus. But that's about it. That's as much as they want to hear." Luke then suggested that was exactly what Whack intended to do, construct an artistic "statement" that appealed to listeners close to Lili's and Whack's own age, 22.

It is music specifically intended to reach millennial pleasure seekers and media shifters who hopscotch from one engaging moment to the next on their electronic devices and whose attention is hard to hold for more than 30 seconds. This music is designed just for them and this moment and this album may well presage a new age of pop music for the latest generation of listeners. In interviews I have read with the artist since, Whack admits she made the record for people, like her, with attention deficit issues.

Whack told N.Y. Times reporter Joe Coscarelli "I have so much built up inside. To be able to put what I say into real life is just an amazing thing." Her definition of Whack World? "It's down, then up, down, then up. It's scary, it feels good, it doesn't. It's crazy, it's calm. That's exactly me. Like I was just washing dishes, eating grapes, now I'm about to go to the bathroom then I'm going to wash some clothes. Yeah. It's like a roller-coaster ride. My mom says I have - what is it, ADD. Can't sit still.....

"And my age, my generation, we get bored so easily. I know how I am - I'll listen to a new song and I only want to hear 30 seconds of it before I tell you, 'nope - trash.' I have a really short attention span, but I have so much to offer. I wanted to put all these ideas into one universe, one world. I'm giving you a trip through my mind."

The more we listened to it (three times through the entire project in 45 minutes), the more sense it made and the more I came to admire what Whack had accomplished. The Ramones created a paradigm shift in popular music in 1976 with their first, self-titled album: 12 songs in less than 30 minutes, some as short as 93 seconds. Whack's debut cut that time in half and adds three songs.

Once the entire project is viewed on YouTube, the genius of her plan becomes evident. As alluring as the song snippets are, the videos are also as eye-popping and engaging. Dan DeLuca's review of the album in this week's Philadelphia Inquirer put it succinctly: "Whack is getting attention not just because she's good. It's also because Whack World  is so weirdly and wonderfully short. The entire 15-song, 15-minute album takes the all-killer, no filler concept to an extreme."   

In the weeks since it dropped, "Whack World" has garnered high praise from a variety of newspaper critics and media bloggers, including rave reviews in the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Pitchfork. Some critics are already hailing it as the "album of the year". In the sense that it may change the way a new generation of media consumers listens to music, they may be right.

Whack World is, bar none, the most fascinating new development in the world of media entertainment in 2018.  See it in its entirety here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOTebhPy04g

The second best feel good music and media happening of the first half of 2018 was comedian James Cordon's drive through Liverpool with Sir Paul McCartney, doing one of his most amusing and emotionally uplifting carpool karaoke routines for the Late, Late Show with James Cordon. Cordon's hilarious everyman caraciture of a music fan singing along to drive-time oldies with a famous "passenger" has been a winning concept from the very beginning. Most of the videos clock in under 15 minutes and feature stars like Adele, Bruno Mars, Miley Cyrus or Stevie Wonder singing their own songs.

The latest one with McCartney takes the concept one step further. It starts with the pair on a tour of Penny Lane in Liverpool with impromptu visits along the way to places the song made famous, such as Tony Slavin's barbershop where the Beatles got their hair trimmed. Cordon and McCartney, singing the song while traversing the neighborhood, give the video a sentimental yet life-affirming performance. Viewers then watch McCartney escort Cordon through the home he grew up in and reminisce about moments in his life that lead him to write the songs the world knows by heart.  

When McCartney and Cordon exit the house, it seems as if the entire neighborhood has gathered on the sidewalk to catch a glimpse of their most famous neighbor. McCartney's generous greetings of the folks in his hometown is hard not to admire. One of the most famous men in the world is as human and likeable as he has always been. 

The locals get "the surprise of their lives" when McCartney and his band perform an impromptu mash up of several of their songs "chosen" by patrons on the pub's jukebox.

The Late, Late Night segment is 23 minutes long, but worth every second. See it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjvzCTqkBDQ

Besides Tierra Whack's Whack World, these following CDs (listed alphabetically, not based on merit or a personal ranking) are worth hearing and represent a sampling of the music I've been drawn to so far this year.

Tell Me How You Really Feel - Courtney Barnett  (Mom & Pop)

Black Panter (soundtrack) -- Kendrick Lamar (Top Dawg / Interscope)

By the Way, I Forgive You - Brandi Carlile  (Elektra)

Hell-On - Neko Case (Anti)

God's Favorite Customer - Father John Misty (Subpop)

Bark Your Head Off , Dog-- Hopalong (Saddle Creek)

Dirty Computer - Janelle Monae (Bad Boy / Atlantic)

Golden Hour,  Kasey Musgraves. (MCA Nashville)

Hope Downs,  Rolling Black Outs Coastal Fever -- (SubPop)

Streams of Thought, Vol. 1 (EP) -- Tariq Trotter, a.k.a. Black Thought of the Roots 

In defense of John Lennon's "Imagine"

By Chuck Bauerlein 

This week a good friend of mine (Matt Stromberg, a pastor at St. George’s Episcopal Church in upstate New York) started a discussion on Facebook about his dislike of John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

He wrote: “John Lennon's ‘Imagine’ is an awful song. Lennon is an amazing performer, but whenever I hear anyone else sing the song, the spell is completely broken. If I have to hear one more rich pop-star dufus croon, ‘Imagine no possessions’ I am going to gag. When I first heard the song as a kid it seemed dangerous and deep, but as an adult it just seems vacuous and inane. The lyrics sound like they were written by some teenager from the suburbs who just discovered Marx."

I was surprised to hear this but interested to read his post because I always admired the song and I knew Matt was a huge Beatles’ and Lennon fan. He wrote: "I love the Beatles, love nearly everything from Lennon, but (although I love the album) I am not really crazy about the song... the vision of this song is neither romantic or passionate. It is a world without transcendent values. A life where there is nothing worth living either. He seems to mistake peace for the absence of conflict....That kind of passivity doesn't seem like Lennon's style. I much prefer the Lennon who hovers on the edge of zealotry in 'Revolution' who can't help but whisper 'in' under his breath." 

I was surprised at the number of Matt's Facebook friends who agreed with him on his thread. Among the comments were these: that after Lennon was murdered “he found out there really was a god and a heaven that maybe he didn’t get into.” And that "it smacks of the belief so prevalent among Boomers of 'If there were no religion, we would have so many less wars'. Which is just not true, especially not in this century. I agree, it's thinking peace is the absence of conflict." And this: “Imagine that Nietzsche was right.” These comments seem to suggest Lennon's song as an attack on Christian faith. I don’t see it that way. I see it as a question thrown into the cosmos, a kind of quest to understand the divine consciousness of God more profoundly.

Surely there is obvious hypocrisy when a rock star as wealthy as John Lennon asks his listeners to imagine a world without earthly possessions. But that is precisely what makes the suggestion so powerful. It’s easy for a Woody Guthrie to make this kind of suggestion, someone who struggled all his life to feed his family while channeling his muse to change the way people think about poverty and wealth and to teach people lessons of building community.

Lennon certainly knew this sentiment would make him an easy target but he wrote it anyway. I humbly suggest to my friend that this was Lennon’s way of working out his own immense (and possibly lucky or “undeserved”) wealth and that the words of Jesus that Lennon heard at services he attended with his Aunt Mimi at St. Peter’s Anglican Church in South Liverpool had touched him. In “Imagine”, his lyric echoes one of the Christ’s most famous injunctions.

When I Googled “What does the Bible say about earthly possessions?” I came upon this link, which shows 99 Biblical verses (many in Jesus’s own words) on the idea of repudiating wealth:

https://www.openbible.info/topics/earthly_possessions

To me, “Imagine” is not a song “against” religion, (although I suspect Lennon knew it might be taken that way), it is a song against religious dogmatism. I believe he was suggesting there are many paths to an understanding of the divine and that not every faith adopts a belief in life hereafter. Maybe he was influenced by his wife, who grew up practicing both Buddhism and Christianity? Or maybe he just saw the hypocrisy evident in earnest God-fearing churchgoers who believe God “loves everyone” but who openly suggest their rigid belief is the only path to an eternity in the presence of the Lord. Imagining “there is no heaven” does not necessarily mean Lennon imagines there is no God. I do not see the song (as many critics do) as an atheist manifesto.

As a number of Matt's pro-Lennon Facebook friends suggested in their comments, “Imagine” came out in September, 1971, as the war in Vietnam was beginning to wind down and when more than 50,000 American lives already had been lost. It was designed to spark consideration and discussion of the U.S. involvement in war and it asked of its listeners to imagine an alternative to global military conflict. That’s putting a lot of burden on one 3-minute pop song and asking an awful lot from his audience. The fact we are having this debate on Facebook suggests “Imagine” achieved its intended goal: it made people think.

In 2004, WXPN, the University of Pennsylvania’s public radio station (which caters to music aficionados and alternative music lovers) asked their listeners to submit a list of their five favorite songs. “Imagine” came in at number 2, behind “Thunder Road”. (Philadelphia is notoriously famous for its unbridled support of Bruce Springsteen.) Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” came in third. In 2014, when XPN again asked listeners to list their favorite songs, “Thunder Road” maintained the top spot, Dylan’s song had surpassed Lennon’s, and "Imagine" finished in third place.

This anecdotal evidence does not prove anything about the song except it is popular among listeners of a certain age who find the kind of choices on XPN to be of their liking. But I would argue the song has enduring power and justifiably is revered for reasons that go far beyond its alluring melody. I first heard “Imagine” I was just 20 years old and struggling with the inflexible dogma of my own Roman Catholic faith. Lennon’s invocation to “imagine there is no heaven” alarmed me because I was raised in the firm belief that heaven is a real place and the alternative seemed unthinkable to me. And yes, it did feel then as if Lennon was suggesting that without heaven, could there really be a God?

I am no longer certain of that equivalency: that because God exists, there must be a heaven too. None of us know for certain what awaits us in death. Many of us have a faith that something great awaits us. My own particular faith has shifted over the years away from hell as a pit of eternal flames, into a belief that hell is the absence of divine grace and God’s presence. I also believe, perhaps naively, that there are many different and legitimate paths to an understanding of divine grace and that no one religion has any “true” claim to God. I mean no offense to any reader who is certain his or her faith will bring enlightenment or salvation.

Lennon’s song led me into a much different search for God than my parents were on and that the Roman Catholic Church dictated to me. I owe a lot to that song. And I do believe Lennon was onto something: the world would be a safer, better, holier place if we listened to our neighbors who practice faith differently than we do and if we try to see the common bonds we share in our search for divine meaning. “Imagine” made me hunger for that kind of world. Yes, I am willing to admit: I am a dreamer, too.

This was Matt’s response to my blog, which I appreciate very much:

Chuck,

I respect your defense and certainly don’t have a problem with you sharing it.

I intentionally didn’t focus my critique on Lennon’s song as an attack on Christianity. Some of the commentators went that way. That being said, do I think the song is friendly or compatible with a Christian world-view? Of course not. The song is not “spiritual” unless you mean in a humanistic or naturalistic way. I believe the vision of this song is a world without transcendent values. What does that mean? Lennon writes,

Imagine there's no heaven

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today

If I had to paraphrase what he was saying I would put it this way,

Imagine this world, what can be seen with eyes, is all that there is. There is no God, no invisible guiding principle to the world, just you and me. Nothing higher.  The idea of good and evil, heaven and hell, is an illusion. Good behavior is not rewarded in some after-life nor is bad behavior punished. All we have is the here and now. That is a good thing because it means we are not oppressed by controlling religious dogma and moralism. We are not placated with the hope of heaven or terrified with the threat of hell. Instead we live for this world and this moment. We are free to live our lives as we choose without the constraints of the imaginary projections of “good and evil” as defined by our leaders.

Is the song moral? Not in a traditional sense, although I don’t doubt that Lennon motivated by his own moral sense. In this view, morality is something we choose. It doesn’t exist above or below us. That is what I mean by transcendent values. Presumably that is also what Dr. Witt meant when he said, “Imagine Nietzsche was right.”

It seems Lennon believes that it is our belief that our own convictions and values exists outside of ourselves—in other words that they are universally valid—which ultimately leads to conflict, division, and war.  But why is peace preferable to war? Isn’t Lennon’s own longing for harmony and goodness transcendent? I believe without transcendent values all that is left is the will to power. Neitzsche admitted this and even celebrated it. In that world, the vulnerable are just food for the Morlocks.

Lennon’s next stanza builds on his belief that it is the imposition of our own values upon others in the form of transcendent values that is ultimately the source of all violence and conflict:

Imagine there’s no countries

It isn’t hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion, too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace

Like I said, this strikes me as odd. Are there not things worth dying for? Granted, violence is always a regrettable failure of humanity to realize its goodness, but in the face of evil surely there are things worth defending. I don’t want to kill anyone, but if it meant defending my family—my children—I would do what was necessary.  I am not much of a hawk, but I don’t see the desire to defend the true and the good as necessarily evil. The suggestion seems to be that it is our valuing of one thing good above another, our moral convictions, that leads to violence. I am all for peace, but this is an extremely misguided critique.

No, this has little to do with what Jesus taught. It does share a common conviction of the value of peace, brotherhood, and love but that only proves my point! These things are good in themselves and everybody knows them to be so. In other words, they are transcendent values!  

Probably the verse that I object to the least is the one about possessions. There is something to be said about “sharing all the world.” The Apostles were said to hold all things in common. My main objection here is that it rings somewhat hollow coming from a guy who lived in the Dakota. He wasn’t exactly Saint Francis! Which begs the question, is he terribly wrong? Should he have renounced his worldly goods and lived as a wander on the earth? Is there not a moral and an immoral use of wealth and possessions? That is a question much debated by the Church Fathers. We don’t need to get into it here.

In sum, my main contention is that a world of transcendent value is preferable to a world without them! It isn’t our belief in transcendent values that is the problem but our failure to live according to them.