Debating the Best Albums of the Year: Charli! Mk.gee! MJ!
Update: 2024-12-25
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A conversation about how peak pop stars are thinking of LPs in an increasingly singles-driven landscape. Guests: Jon Pareles and Lindsay Zoladz.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything
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00:00:00
- Hey, it's John Chase.
00:00:01
- And Mari Uihara.
00:00:03
- From Wirecutter, the product recommendation service from the New York Times.
00:00:06
Mari, it is gift giving time.
00:00:08
What's an easy gift for someone like under 50 bucks?
00:00:11
- In our gifts under 50 list, I really love this watercolor set from Japan.
00:00:16
These beautiful, beautiful colors.
00:00:18
It's something that kids can do, adults can do.
00:00:22
- I love that.
00:00:22
For all of Wirecutter's gift ideas and recommendations, head to nytimes.com/holidayguide.
00:00:28
One of the New York Times pop-cats, your newest, blueest son of music, music, and criticism.
00:00:38
I'm your host, John Caramannica.
00:00:43
So many things are confusing and also girl, so confusing.
00:00:57
It's Charlie XX, it's Brat, it's Brat and it's completely different, but it's also still Brat.
00:01:03
TBD.
00:01:04
That is John Prellis's number one album of the year.
00:01:07
We are gathered here today.
00:01:10
John Prellis checking in from the remote location, welcome, Lindsey Zollaz here in the room, John Caramannica here in the room, the critics roundtable, albums of the year in which we tussle.
00:01:21
There's going to be some tussling this year, I think.
00:01:23
Some years there's less tussling than others, but I feel like this might be a tussling year.
00:01:28
And we're going to start by going around the horn, talking about our number one albums of the year.
00:01:33
I also would like to honestly, Lindsey, can I shake your hand?
00:01:37
J.P., I'm shaking your hand virtually.
00:01:39
Do you know why I'm shaking your hand?
00:01:40
No, and I should have asked for a bad practice to shake someone's hand before you know why.
00:01:46
So I take it back.
00:01:47
Okay, but you might re-gift it.
00:01:48
All right, I'm tentatively holding out my hand.
00:01:50
Okay, here's the thing, for many years, I may have lists and I would say my number one blank is actually three different things or five different things.
00:02:01
And there are a few specific people on Twitter who are like, tuss, tuss, tuss.
00:02:05
That's not how lists work.
00:02:08
Just know that I've seen all your tweets and I reject them.
00:02:11
And also this year, Lindsey's OLS had rejected them.
00:02:14
John Prelas has rejected them.
00:02:16
John Prelas, your number one album is actually two albums.
00:02:18
Lindsey, you more on the songs list, but welcome to the dark side.
00:02:23
Now can I shake your hand and the shaking hand?
00:02:26
And this is a, you might shake my hand again for this, but this is the first year that I've followed the John's method of not having any overlap on my albums and singles list,
00:02:39
which we discussed last year.
00:02:41
My outlier status there and I gave it a try and you know what, you can live with it.
00:02:47
I can live with it.
00:02:48
It allowed for more room, there were pieces in which it was hard to figure out which one went where.
00:02:54
I think if it's unclear, which list it's a song, then that's the, that's my, that's how I do it.
00:03:02
Yeah.
00:03:03
So I keep a running list or to the best of my abilities and then I add things towards the end of the voting period.
00:03:10
And if I listen to it and I'm like, only three of these songs are good, I just like plunge it.
00:03:15
And if I'm just straight up not sure, just punt it to songs because if I can't get through to track seven, then that's not going to be on the album list.
00:03:24
JP, talk to me about Charlie XC X and do it in a way that my, my tiny smooth brain can understand because to me,
00:03:34
as I have made clear on this podcast multiple times, this album, this performer is not Brad, but JP, you have it as your number one.
00:03:44
So I would like the robust defense on offense of Charlie XC X in 2024.
00:03:52
First of all, it was inescapable.
00:03:53
You had to react to it somehow like COVID.
00:03:58
There is that.
00:03:59
But also I think she did some major conceptual leverage here.
00:04:04
The reason I put both the albums on was because who does this?
00:04:07
Who puts out an album sort of tentatively, writing about how she's a star, but not really a star.
00:04:14
And maybe she doesn't want to be a star.
00:04:16
And maybe she really wants to be a star and maybe she wants to have a kid instead who puts out this album.
00:04:21
And then three months later is a star and has everybody in Los Angeles and points around the world clamoring to do tracks with her.
00:04:31
So the Brad album and the completely different album, to me, are one big mind trick, as we will say, that there were definitely a trick.
00:04:42
So the other thing is I've always been a fan of AG Cook, PC music, Sophie, and I really think that PC music's aesthetic of total artificiality,
00:04:52
total malleability, total plasticity banging up against Charlie XC X's appearance and serity really made a great combination.
00:05:02
And these things lip and squeak and bang in very interesting ways.
00:05:07
Elsie, where are you on XC X?
00:05:09
That is my number three.
00:05:11
I'm also, I must say that J.P.
00:05:13
is Brad.
00:05:14
Yes.
00:05:15
Of all of us.
00:05:16
Because out of the way.
00:05:17
Yeah.
00:05:18
Of the three of us.
00:05:19
Indubitably.
00:05:20
I hope that's a good one.
00:05:21
Yes.
00:05:22
Oh, it's a great thing.
00:05:23
You were Brad before it got whack.
00:05:25
Yes.
00:05:26
Before it got rinsed.
00:05:27
You're Brad from then.
00:05:28
Yes.
00:05:29
You're so Julia.
00:05:30
Yes.
00:05:31
If I may.
00:05:32
That is true.
00:05:33
And as someone who's met Julia, I can confirm J.P.
00:05:34
is so Julia.
00:05:35
Yeah.
00:05:36
That's the name drafting.
00:05:37
Sorry.
00:05:38
You're Brad.
00:05:39
That is true.
00:05:40
Well, you just did pretty Brad.
00:05:42
Big facts.
00:05:43
I leaving it open.
00:05:44
The Brad Talley at the end of the episode.
00:05:46
I love this record musically.
00:05:49
As you know, a music critic for the New York Times loves Brad musically.
00:05:54
But I think what J.P.
00:05:56
points out is an interesting distinction that there's a whole meta-existence of this album that has blessed to do with the actual sounds on the record than the larger narrative and the story playing out,
00:06:10
which is really fascinating.
00:06:12
And this kind of meta commentary on pop stardom and how and fame in 2024, how it works and how it functions.
00:06:19
And there was the thrill of getting to watch in real time as a.p.
00:06:24
very eloquently put it really making this album about being a quote unquote mid level pop star who's not that famous.
00:06:32
Yeah.
00:06:33
It's probably becoming a part of the a list that she's always clamored in some way to be a part of.
00:06:40
And then getting people on this remix album that I don't think she would have had access to without the success of the first part of Brad.
00:06:49
Something that's really fascinating to me about the remix album is I want to know the date that all of these songs were recorded because we get the first remix from this song.
00:06:58
And it's like young lean is on it, which respect talent, but not yes.
00:07:03
Not Billie Eilish, not Ariana Grande, not these names that, you know, as a someone who's followed Harley's queer for a long time.
00:07:10
If you would have told me last year, she's going to have Billie Eilish wanting to be on her song Ariana Grande gearing up to be in the biggest movie of the year and wanting to do a guest spot on a Charlie remix,
00:07:22
like that was unfathomable.
00:07:24
So I think you have to respect what she pulled off.
00:07:27
But doesn't that just tell you that pop is rinsed and there's nowhere for pop stars to go?
00:07:33
Maybe this is the place for pop stars to go.
00:07:36
Maybe she did.
00:07:37
I think there's just to go back to what JP was saying, there's so much there.
00:07:42
There's so much to react against to have your lover hate reaction.
00:07:47
And I love most of this record.
00:07:50
I love most of the remix album.
00:07:52
I like the remix album less than the original rap, which I think we diverged on that opinion.
00:08:00
And we can talk more about why you have the opposite opinion.
00:08:03
But I just as someone who has been writing for Charlie on this podcast for a while, I have to say.
00:08:10
It's really XX Correspondent.
00:08:11
Yes.
00:08:12
President in House Angel.
00:08:15
I really think this is a great collection of Harley songs, not my favorite collection of Harley songs.
00:08:21
But pushed her own artistry forward enough that it didn't just feel like a safe bet to become super famous and successful.
00:08:31
It's still a really weird record.
00:08:34
And it feels like something that was honest and true and just got through in a way that no one really could have predicted.
00:08:40
Okay.
00:08:41
In deference to my critical colleagues, I will not spend a lot of time counter arguing on this.
00:08:49
The remix album, I put it on my sort of honorable mention longer album list, but I put it on mostly because I think the people who sound best on Charlie XX songs are not Charlie XX.
00:09:00
Now if I had written a notebook about this year, which I, but if I, I would have said that all of these pop stars gravitationally pulled towards Charlie XCX, what she is doing,
00:09:10
what she's doing is she's releasing some kind of dare I say, that more established pop stars are not allowed or encouraged to access.
00:09:20
And in my mind, they can safely hop on, it's like hopping on a sexy red song or something.
00:09:26
It's like you get away with something that maybe you couldn't get away with on your own record, right?
00:09:31
I think the Billy remix is a great example of the act, and I don't know.
00:09:35
Did you go to the Billy for I did not, so like I reported on the opening of the Billy tour, and that she played like her verse of that of the Charlie remix of guess,
00:09:45
and it hit so hard live, like every Billy Irish fan who every word of that verse.
00:09:51
And it was, it felt just a dropping in from like an alternate universe where, and then it's okay, back to the more refined Billy Irish album.
00:09:58
I think that's right.
00:09:59
That verse would have felt a place on an actual Billy record, but it's the way for someone like that to let loose a little bit to something a little more risque, a little more just like out there, but it hit often when I'm writing about hip-hop records and guest appearances on hip-hop records,
00:10:14
what I find myself paying close attention to is how hard did the guest work?
00:10:19
Because that tells me how much they respect the person that the album or the song it belongs to.
00:10:26
Plenty of people phoning guest appearances for some like Moldovan house song and no shots to the Moldovan house community.
00:10:32
I'm sure the minimal techno there is incredible as well.
00:10:35
But you could tell like people want to rise to the occasion.
00:10:39
And I think what you saw on the remix album is all of these artists really delivering, which tells me what they think, whatever I think, they think that there is value in delivering this kind of like alternative,
00:10:52
rescuing version of their own artistry.
00:10:55
They think this is a worthwhile home and deserving up.
00:10:58
>> Yeah, I think it's a great point.
00:10:59
I think Lord set the tone for that too, like that Lord definitely brought her A game to that verse.
00:11:05
And then just get these ear from there to get other big names to sign on.
00:11:10
But yeah, I think even just going back to the idea of Metacommentarian, I was just re-listing actually to the Charlie's interview on Howard Stern, fascinating in a lot of ways.
00:11:21
Good interview, I recommend it.
00:11:22
But she talked about like a warholy and approach to fame.
00:11:26
She was like name dropping Andy Warhol and talking about her love of Lou Reed, which is one of my favorite Stan artist standums is Harley Stan's Lou Reed, the greatest mission of all time.
00:11:37
She actually said on Howard Stern.
00:11:38
And that's why her album sounds like metal machine music.
00:11:41
>> Ooh.
00:11:42
>> Ayo.
00:11:43
>> Great album.
00:11:44
>> Great album.
00:11:45
Yeah, fine.
00:11:46
Lindsay Zola's your number one album of 2024, MJ Lenderman, Manning Fireworks.
00:11:51
What should we listen to off of this young string bean boy's album?
00:11:56
>> Let's listen to this on Joker Lips.
00:11:58
>> And you know I love my TV,
00:12:08
but all I really want to see, I see you need me.
00:12:17
>> Are you calling him a noodle boy?
00:12:19
>> Yeah, that's apparently those numbers on that article going crazy.
00:12:22
Okay.
00:12:23
Who is the MJ Lenderman bro?
00:12:26
And how is the MJ Lenderman bro different from prior generations of indie rock groups?
00:12:32
>> I am the MJ Lenderman bro.
00:12:34
>> Yes, no, I know.
00:12:35
That was a setup.
00:12:36
>> Yeah.
00:12:37
>> Let me just say first to the uninitiated who MJ Lenderman is and a bit about why his album Manning Fireworks was my favorite album here.
00:12:46
MJ Lenderman is a guitarist in the band Wednesday, who put out a very good album last year.
00:12:54
He's got a lot of gear in lists.
00:12:56
He also made an appearance.
00:12:58
He plays guitar and most of the walk that had to be record.
00:13:00
Tiger's blood that came out also on my list.
00:13:03
But he's also a really wonderful singer-songwriter who like just letting some sick riffs rip and cranking out like a pretty gnarly guitar solo and I can appreciate that.
00:13:17
My sort of explanation of the appeal of MJ Lenderman and it was something that I tweeted a version of this immediately after writing a whole newsletter about him.
00:13:27
And then I was like, oh, the tweet should have, but then what was the tweet?
00:13:33
>> The tweet was that he sings like someone who does not care and writes like someone who really does.
00:13:39
And that the tension of he sings like a slacker.
00:13:42
He sounds stoned from the time.
00:13:45
And then he has these super sharp, really precisely observant lyrics that just feel honed in the way that like a great opening line of a short story is honed.
00:13:57
And you're like, no, this guy's paying attention and he's crafting this.
00:14:01
But it only sounds shrugged off in this way.
00:14:04
And that's part of the whole presentation and like the lineage of slacker rock.
00:14:09
>> Talk to me about one or two folks, older generation that this brought to mind for you.
00:14:16
>> I think a big part of I was going through a huge Neil Young phase this year.
00:14:21
And I think that's like a big part of why the circuit really spoke to me at that time.
00:14:24
I got to be Neil Young in Crazy Horse for the first time this live this spring.
00:14:30
And that was a very cherished memory of my year.
00:14:32
And I read the Neil Young biography Shakey for the first time.
00:14:36
It's been on my shelf for years and it's just like, this is the year I'm doing it.
00:14:39
So I was already in the perfect head space to become an MJ Lenderman bro because Neil Young definitely had that tone.
00:14:45
>> Lender bro.
00:14:46
A Lender bro.
00:14:47
Sorry.
00:14:48
I can't believe I didn't come up with that.
00:14:49
>> I've been saying I've been Lender build.
00:14:52
I'm a Lender maniac.
00:14:53
>> We're collectively the Lender Ody.
00:14:54
>> We can do that.
00:14:56
Yeah, we want.
00:14:57
>> Oh, excuse you, sounds like an MJ Lenderman lurked to me.
00:15:01
One thing that I do like about how MJ Lenderman sings and I think the contrast that you point out is totally right.
00:15:07
But to me, and I feel like we just comes up a lot and I don't know if it means anything of this point, but he's singing like he speaks.
00:15:15
Like it is very spoken cadence wise.
00:15:17
>> Yeah.
00:15:18
>> Also, I feel like in the structure of the lyrics, there are some people who will make some kind of like sense compromise in order to fit a melody and I don't think he's doing that at all.
00:15:30
>> No, no.
00:15:31
>> He's just like, no, these are the words I wrote.
00:15:33
>> Yeah.
00:15:34
>> I wrote these words.
00:15:35
And now I'm going to sing these words.
00:15:36
>> Exactly.
00:15:37
>> Can I wrote them?
00:15:38
>> Using that to go back to the other touchstones too.
00:15:40
So there's, you get this sort of Neil Young 70s country rock vibes, but then he's definitely a student of literate 90s indie rock too, like these sort of,
00:15:51
he- >> PAPENTY type stuff for- >> More, so Will Hermes wrote a great profile of him for the times where he was talking about being obsessed with this one record by Bill Callahan's old project mom,
00:16:03
which also, again, like he's really, he's speaking my language, but smog and then I hear a little bit of David Berman, put that silver juice in his sort of,
00:16:13
his really slanted sort of skewed poetic lyricism.
00:16:17
>> Sure.
00:16:18
>> There's something that feels on the page like it could be poetry, but then read by this guy in a stoner's drawer, there's, that's the appeal of the record to me.
00:16:27
It's one where you could listen and have it on in the background and not think the lyric are sharp as they are and then you really tune in and you're like, oh, damn, like he's painting really vivid pictures and writing a lot about sort of modern masculinity in this way that is both sad and funny at the same time.
00:16:47
He's really funny and can hit you right in the gut with a, a gut punch of a lyric too and that's a really hard thing to do.
00:16:56
Like I think that's something that David Berman was great at and that's why I sort of make that connect in between their, their reasons, but like he will throw in,
00:17:07
he's, I think 25 years old too, even though he sounds like a guy raised on Neil Young and like other.
00:17:14
>> Yeah.
00:17:15
>> Like he was hanging out at high five bar in '06.
00:17:16
>> Sure.
00:17:17
It could have been from any generation where a dude had a guitar, which is evergreen, but then he has a lyric about lightning McQueen.
00:17:25
He has, he's talking about playing "Bark at the Moon" on guitar hero instead.
00:17:31
There's a, I lived in quality to the lyrics, like you said, that the highbrow and the lowbrow all kind of mingle together in this way that I find really appealing.
00:17:40
And he's just a great writer, like I think a lot of my favorite lyric of the year were on this record and he'll, yeah, he'll break your heart and then we can crack up within the same outlet.
00:17:54
>> Possibly.
00:17:55
>> Yeah.
00:17:56
I don't want to inspire that as a personal choice, but.
00:18:00
>> I have to say Lindsay, you're standing for him, convinced me after a while because my first reaction was slack or Neil Young, I've heard this before.
00:18:12
And then your continued advocacy, the fact that stood out in front of my, stood out in front of my house.
00:18:20
Those Kamala texts.
00:18:21
They just kept coming.
00:18:22
>> Yeah.
00:18:23
>> I just stand on the street corner and I hand out literature about MJ Linderman.
00:18:28
>> You were holding that beatbox under my window for so long.
00:18:31
>> True.
00:18:32
I did that too.
00:18:33
>> But when you go back and listen and you hear the contrasts and the contrasts between the nonchalance and the really knife-like observation, it all makes sense.
00:18:44
So thank you for convincing me.
00:18:46
>> Oh, I'm so glad I did.
00:18:47
>> MJ Linderman is good.
00:18:48
He didn't, I didn't even make my list, but he's good.
00:18:51
>> All right.
00:18:52
>> A rare thing we can all agree on.
00:18:53
>> Yes.
00:18:54
Okay, my number one album of the year, Two Star in the Dream Police by McGee.
00:18:58
Let's listen to the hit, Question Mark, are you looking up?
00:19:02
Let's let's tap it on that.
00:19:04
>> New York Times cooking is great for when I have something in my refrigerator and I don't know what to do with it.
00:19:35
I love sheep pan, beef and bob.
00:19:37
It's said 35 minutes, it was 35 minutes, a week night dinner for us.
00:19:40
>> I love the chicken coconut curry, it's a really easy meal, it's super versatile.
00:19:44
I can make it a fully vegetarian dish.
00:19:46
>> This turkey chili has over 17,000 five star ratings.
00:19:50
So easy, so delicious.
00:19:52
>> Doing everything in one pot, even like agreeing with the chicken, with the vegetable helps the flavors, makes the cleanup easier because it's only one pot.
00:20:00
>> The cucumber salad that's soy, ginger and garlic.
00:20:03
Oh my god, that is just to die for it.
00:20:05
>> If I want to go easy, I can find something easy.
00:20:06
If I want to go a little more complex, I can go there as well.
00:20:10
>> The instructions are so clear, so simple, and it just works.
00:20:14
>> Recipes from New York Times cooking are more reliable and more delicious, really.
00:20:20
>> Hey, it's Eric Kim from New York Times cooking.
00:20:23
Come cook with us.
00:20:24
Go to nydcooking.com.
00:20:26
>> The best piece of dough on earth.
00:20:31
I do want to point out another thing that all of our lists have in common, which is all of our number ones are grammatically challenged in some way.
00:20:39
MJ could use a couple of periods in the MJ XeX.
00:20:43
I don't know what that is.
00:20:44
I guess through a manual.
00:20:45
Is it early 9010?
00:20:47
>> It's Charlie this.
00:20:49
It was her MSN screen name.
00:20:51
Real angels know.
00:20:52
>> Great, great, grammatical problem.
00:20:54
McGee.
00:20:55
I don't very famously on the first episode that we talked about McGee on podcast deluxe.
00:20:59
The show mispronounced it, and then we had to all think about it the following week.
00:21:03
>> Yeah.
00:21:04
>> It's a big problem.
00:21:05
Anyway, McGee, two stars in Dream Police.
00:21:06
This album to me, I almost came from the live shows back to the album.
00:21:10
I enjoyed the album and I first listened to it, and now I've seen McGee twice.
00:21:14
And the first show that I saw was at Irving Plaza.
00:21:16
You guys know me well enough to know that if I am going to a guitar based show, the odds that I'm going to be like that ripped or pretty low, they're pretty low.
00:21:26
I have my, look, I have my sweet spots, various waves of emo, certain channels of country.
00:21:31
But like, someone who's like a guitar hero, make like, and we malmsteen.
00:21:37
What do we do?
00:21:38
>> What do we do in there?
00:21:39
>> But I have to be honest and say that the Irving Plaza McGee show that I saw this year was, apart from the Missy Elliott tour, the best live show that I've seen that I saw this year.
00:21:49
I was blown away by the use of pacing, the use of space and volume.
00:21:54
The sat forgive me, but the sound skipping of, it almost felt like different parts of the room were receiving different codes at the same time.
00:22:04
And underneath all of that oddity and unusualness, I was like, these melodies are incredible.
00:22:11
There's so much sweetness underneath this and I was really, really blown away.
00:22:16
And then when I went back to the album, I felt like I was able to hear it freshly and take it in at a higher level.
00:22:22
That is my number one is it's, it's subliminally, it's also the shows.
00:22:26
But I think if these are the songs that create the context, where shows like that can happen, that to me feels like a win.
00:22:33
Our colleague, Jocoscarelli, Profile McGee this year, he said he's working with Bieber, can only imagine what might come from that, can only imagine.
00:22:41
But I am curious to know what a taught version of this sound might sound like and how a vocalist who's like more vocal front and McGee things,
00:22:53
but who's more vocals in the front could interact with it.
00:22:57
Yeah.
00:22:58
Did this album hit either of y'all?
00:22:59
I think I'm the only one that has on the list.
00:23:01
I think I need to see him live from what you're saying, because I haven't spent a ton of time in this record.
00:23:06
I like what I've heard.
00:23:07
I like what's the song that you meant.
00:23:09
Are you looking at?
00:23:10
Yeah.
00:23:11
I think that's the one that really stood out to me.
00:23:13
I, you know, what you're saying about a more taught sort of pop-friendly version of this is also appealing to me, because I listened a few times and okay, but where's like the song?
00:23:22
Where's the song?
00:23:23
Oh, what you don't like?
00:23:24
Jam's Lindsay?
00:23:25
Oh, okay.
00:23:26
You know how I feel about guitar bass music now.
00:23:29
But no, I think I like that atmosphere of it.
00:23:32
I love that he's from South Jersey.
00:23:34
I, I, I, South Jersey excellence.
00:23:36
Honestly, yeah.
00:23:37
Got to represent so that we need more musical heroes.
00:23:40
I hope that you and he are inducted into the South Jersey Hall of Fame in the same year.
00:23:45
I hope they create a Hall of Fame just to put me and make me and then no one else.
00:23:52
Yeah.
00:23:53
I, what you're saying about the live show is definitely appealing because yeah, it can feel a little amorphous to me just as a full record, but you're right that the, there are melodies that pop out that kind of catch my attention,
00:24:05
but I think I need to go a little deeper and experience it in a different context.
00:24:09
JP, what I like to do next is do you want to just tell us what your top 10 is?
00:24:14
Run down so that everybody can hear it in case obviously these are real one and why times dot com on the internet and and in the newspaper last week and on a Spotify playlist if you just want to run through.
00:24:25
Oh, that's true.
00:24:26
There's a playlist.
00:24:27
Shout out to Karen, making the playlist.
00:24:28
I made one of them.
00:24:29
Did you?
00:24:30
Yeah.
00:24:31
Wow.
00:24:32
Shout out to LZ JP.
00:24:33
You want to run down just your top 10 and then we'll each do that and then we'll dig deep into some other picks.
00:24:38
Sure.
00:24:39
Next, the X on top next was Britney Howard's what now the most turbulent break up out move the year.
00:24:45
Vampire weekend.
00:24:46
Only God was above us in which vampire weekend discovered noise and chaos.
00:24:51
Billy Eilish hit me hard and soft, which does mostly soft a, nothing but net, JP, nothing but net.
00:25:00
Callie, you just or the day asks, which is the plush furniture that you want to sink into and never come out of willows willow ceremonial counterfact,
00:25:10
formally and pathogen deluxe, which is math R and B with big feelings, Beth Gibbons, lives outgrown, mopey grownup music, elicits revelator,
00:25:21
which is really smart hip-hop that batches you over the head with live drums and loud guitars, the cures songs of a lost world, which is a stubborn 90s rock band thinking about entropy and Nellis and F Rose and listness,
00:25:36
which is jazz chill out ambient cyclical minimalistic, beautiful music.
00:25:41
Elzie, wanna run it down?
00:25:43
All right.
00:25:44
We got MJ Lenderman.
00:25:45
Sure do.
00:25:46
One.
00:25:47
Number two for me is the pass is still alive by hooray for the riffraff, beautiful record that really stayed with me all throughout the year.
00:25:56
Number three is Brad.
00:25:58
In this episode forward, Pedro, every time someone says Brad from this episode forward, bleep.
00:26:04
Okay.
00:26:05
Well, let you get away with it from now until the end of the episode, but on any future episodes.
00:26:08
I'm going to sneak it in.
00:26:09
I love being bleeped.
00:26:10
It's a thrill for me.
00:26:11
Okay.
00:26:12
Number four is an album you cannot find on both streaming services and will not be on any of the playlist that Karen and I so laboriously made.
00:26:22
It's Cindy Lee's Diamond Jubilee.
00:26:24
Why isn't Cindy Lee thinking of the playlist makers?
00:26:27
Oh, Cindy Lee is fundamentally not thinking of the playlist makers and I respect that very much.
00:26:35
Number five.
00:26:36
Laura Marling Patterns interview a beautiful folk record about motherhood and family.
00:26:41
I saw her perform it live recently too and it was great.
00:26:45
Number six, Mount Eerie's very sprawling and totally extra night palace.
00:26:52
A lot of long albums on my list, I'm realizing as I go through number seven, the Lado Negro's phaser.
00:27:00
Just a really lovely record with a lot of big ideas that finds a way to make them go down very smooth.
00:27:08
Number eight is Kim Gordon's Playwork Party album, The Collective.
00:27:13
I also wrote a lot about this record this year as I got to interview Kim from time with her and-- In the booth.
00:27:21
Freestyle.
00:27:22
Yeah.
00:27:23
Oh, I wish.
00:27:24
But I-- It was described to me enough that I felt that I was there.
00:27:28
The record is bold and uncompromising and just to be like a photo-jaw-dropper.
00:27:35
That's the Andre 3000 flute albums of 90s Indira female icons.
00:27:41
Sure.
00:27:42
You know that?
00:27:43
Sure.
00:27:44
I honestly, they are being incredible double review, speaking of like the Naya Tangle, of the Triangling Dolly Neu, of his album.
00:27:53
Or maybe Kim Gordon does folk inward over his flute style.
00:27:55
Can you-- I bet it keeps-- That would rule.
00:27:58
I bet if you played them one over the other, I bet they would probably make sense.
00:27:59
Yeah.
00:28:00
I'll try that one.
00:28:01
Oh, but they can't please you to row like Matt or Nant, I know.
00:28:03
They can't just be silence.
00:28:04
It's possible.
00:28:05
Number nine, another record with MJ Lenderman on it.
00:28:08
It is Waxa Hatchee's Tiger's Blood.
00:28:11
And then number 10, a little old album called "Taboy Carter" by one fiancé.
00:28:16
No more chance.
00:28:17
Number ten.
00:28:18
I'm going to run down mine as well.
00:28:21
Number one, McGee number two, an album that I'm frankly surprised I did not see in the All's List.
00:28:26
Sabrina Carp, your short and sweet, just a bon bon of an album.
00:28:30
Candy, it's inside you.
00:28:31
Just what an absolute incredible hardcore record.
00:28:35
Just here I am, it's the middle-aged guy putting hardcore albums on my ear and list.
00:28:39
Wow.
00:28:40
I just want to cliche.
00:28:41
Bleep.
00:28:42
What?
00:28:43
Incredible.
00:28:44
Yeah, this candy album, I came to it very late in the year.
00:28:46
I did not know about it when it came out.
00:28:47
I came to it very late in the year and I was just startled by how fresh it sounded.
00:28:52
And I was going on a kick, or I was listening to a lot of hardcore albums during a few-day period.
00:28:58
And it just was so clearly head and shoulders above all the others.
00:29:02
Number four, "Ella Langley" hungover.
00:29:04
This is "Ella Langley" is a country singer with a whole lot of sadness and a voice.
00:29:09
This is a very sad album.
00:29:11
This is my number five, which is "Mirata" by Ivan Corniejo, who's a Mexican-American singer, who's 19 or 20 years old.
00:29:19
Just this kid getting his heart broken constantly, or just once and just staying in that moment.
00:29:25
Absolutely traumatic listening.
00:29:27
This album, maybe my favorite song, "Album of the Year."
00:29:31
Number six, "Future and Metro Woman."
00:29:33
We don't trust you.
00:29:34
Most people will remember this as the album that started the Kendrick and Drake beef with Kendrick verse on, like that, which is unfortunate because really it should be remembered as the album where "Metro Woman" reminded "Future" had a rap well.
00:29:45
So great, we'll take that.
00:29:48
Number seven, "Zack Top Cold Beer" and "Country Music."
00:29:50
This is real, revival, country, 80s style, early George Strey, Lil' Alan Jackson.
00:29:57
Guys looking really good in a nice firm stiff cowboy hat.
00:30:01
Plays with the tropes, but also is in thrall to the tropes.
00:30:04
Number eight, man.
00:30:05
This is a crazy list this year.
00:30:06
Geez.
00:30:07
I haven't looked at it in a few days.
00:30:09
And the crazy list, young lean.
00:30:13
Speaking of the talented young lean, who we mentioned earlier, young lean blade collaboration album, Psycho's also a very set, was I having a rough November December or October?
00:30:22
What a sad album this is, a very, very pop structure and just a tremendous amount of depressing lyrics from young lean blade who have never made a collaborative album,
00:30:32
but who have both put Swedish, quasi-gothic, sad boy pop-y-pop on people's radars in the last few years.
00:30:39
Number nine, Boss Man Deloets, Mr.
00:30:41
Beat the Road.
00:30:42
There really weren't a lot of great rap albums this year and there weren't mainstream rap albums.
00:30:47
There weren't a lot of great mainstream rap albums by rappers who are really funny and have a novel personality.
00:30:52
Boss Man Delo is genuinely hilarious and I feel like he raps almost as if he's rapping a boast and also looking at himself rapping in the boast and laughing at the same time.
00:31:03
It's like a very neat trick.
00:31:04
I really enjoy listening to him.
00:31:05
Number 10, it's Access All Areas by Flow, which is basically Destiny's Child, but current and British.
00:31:12
Effectionally, no shots, a very meticulously produced album.
00:31:15
This is, I feel like maybe we've all forgotten what super precise pop sounds like, Sabrina's doing it, but mostly other contemporary pop stars are maybe not as precise.
00:31:25
This is a precise, it's like a military, it's like a CIA operation, it's a very precise album.
00:31:31
Number 10, maybe from here, maybe let's each of us ask the other two about one album, so we'll each get to speak about two other albums.
00:31:40
And then we'll each pick one album at the end that we haven't spoken about, though we'd like to highlight.
00:31:44
Sound good?
00:31:45
Does that go from the top end?
00:31:47
No, it could be any of them, any of them.
00:31:49
Yep.
00:31:50
JP, let's start with you.
00:31:51
Can I ask you to go deeper on something?
00:31:54
Sure.
00:31:55
Can you talk about the Nallus and Nefero record?
00:31:57
And the reason I'm asking is because it's also on my sort of like long list.
00:32:00
I actually, it was right at the cost of the shorter list and the longer list, and I listened to it a bunch of times.
00:32:07
And at a certain point, I was like, I don't want to ruin this thing with words.
00:32:10
I just, what am I going to say?
00:32:11
It's so beautiful, but I saw you put it on there, which I was happy about.
00:32:15
Can you tell me a little bit more about this album?
00:32:18
And maybe let's play a song from it.
00:32:19
What should we hear from it?
00:32:20
Continue on one or continue on two?
00:32:22
Yeah, let's do continue on one.
00:32:23
Okay.
00:32:24
So you want me to ruin it with words, right?
00:32:26
I'm sorry.
00:32:27
Rather, they were ruined with your words than mine.
00:32:30
Nallus and Nefero is Belgian.
00:32:33
She works in London.
00:32:34
She plays the harp.
00:32:35
She's a composer.
00:32:36
She bases each of these tracks on an arpeggio that runs all the way through it.
00:32:40
Very minimalistic, very drony.
00:32:42
But then she brings in British jazz musicians, Nubia Garcia on saxophone, Morgan Simpson from Black Mitty on drums.
00:32:49
So you have the meditation and restfulness of minimalism, but you also have jazz improvisation going on.
00:32:56
And somehow she achieves this wonderful balance of stasis and activity.
00:33:02
It's an album you can put on in the background.
00:33:04
It's an album you can also sit and listen to it.
00:33:07
It doesn't fade away into the background, like some ambient music does.
00:33:10
There's a lot going on, but it's all in beautiful proportion.
00:33:13
It's a really incredible record.
00:33:15
So it's so good, so good.
00:33:17
Lindsay, can I ask you about something?
00:33:19
Will you talk to me about Cindy Lee?
00:33:20
I thought that was the one.
00:33:21
I would like, I think we should talk about Cindy Lee.
00:33:23
This is also, I fell out of love with this album over the course of the year, but it's very strong and fascinating album and talk through more than music, because obviously the circumstances are peculiar.
00:33:34
Yeah.
00:33:35
There's a lot of this album I have to say.
00:33:37
This album is more than a handful.
00:33:39
This album was just an on-it album.
00:33:41
It was like a three-jake album.
00:33:42
So I think someone, I someone posted this somewhere that it's almost to the minute, the same duration as tortured post department.
00:33:52
The Taylor Swift album.
00:33:53
Right.
00:33:54
It's like the thing where if you like sync up dark, and if you sync up dark side of the moon with the Wizard of Oz or something.
00:34:01
Yeah.
00:34:02
For Tim Gordon with under 30,000.
00:34:03
Yeah.
00:34:04
No, it's the same length.
00:34:07
I believe it's an hour and 57 minute long.
00:34:11
So it's tortured post department plus 13 or what, the one with all the bonus track, etc.
00:34:18
More tortured.
00:34:19
More tortured.
00:34:20
More tortured.
00:34:21
More tortured.
00:34:22
Right.
00:34:23
Diamond Jubilee.
00:34:24
A hard to access album.
00:34:25
Literally.
00:34:26
What should we listen to?
00:34:27
Listen to all I want is you.
00:34:28
Oh, I want to go home.
00:34:33
It's the truth.
00:34:35
Oh, I want to go home.
00:34:40
It's the truth.
00:34:44
I'll preface this by saying I was a huge fan of Patrick Legel's earlier band Women who burned right and fast,
00:35:01
burned out.
00:35:02
I got to see them live in 2010, a couple of days before they broke up on stage on a tour that was like famously contentious,
00:35:12
but they were a band that I loved and I loved particularly for Patrick Legel's guitar playing and voice.
00:35:19
It's this combination of this really intricate, beautiful, very spidery guitar playing and then these kind of deadpan almost disaffected vocals and there's just,
00:35:31
there's a real nice tension between those two elements.
00:35:35
And I really missed the band Women Patrick has released other albums part of this as Cindy Lee, which is their drag persona.
00:35:43
So there's a lot going on there as well, but this album, which is just so sprawling and such an embarrassment of riches in terms of melody and ideas and just different tempos,
00:35:57
different vibes, different feels it feels like this lost artifact from a David Lynch movie.
00:36:02
Like hearing a girl group you've never heard before on the radio late at night and you're like, did I hallucinate this song?
00:36:09
Is it really happening?
00:36:10
That's the vibe of this album, very submerged all like it's all, it's like the music's happening like over there.
00:36:17
Yeah.
00:36:18
It's not here.
00:36:19
It's there.
00:36:20
And but so there's this tossed off almost like mid 90s guided by voices just I have so many hosts that I'm just like tossing them out there and not even bothering to report it in a really fancy polished way,
00:36:32
but anchored by this really beautifully precise and fluid guitar playing underneath these very wheat and melancholic pop ponds.
00:36:42
And as I'm saying this, I'm realizing like a lot this is this my McGee really like I think a lot of what I'm saying could apply to that record except the runtime.
00:36:53
Everyone gets the McGee that they deserve.
00:36:55
That's true.
00:36:56
Yeah.
00:36:57
And mine minus Cindy Lee.
00:36:58
So yeah, that's just like a connection that I had not made of just this virtuosic guitar playing, bundled through a lot of gauze and a lot of different vibes and stuff, definitely different deals of the record of these two records and exist in a really different or different context.
00:37:13
What we should also say about Simon Jubilee, the Cindy Lee record is that like all made it available on band camp or a download that you could purchase or put it up on YouTube.
00:37:25
This is one single two hour track, which is how a lot of people encountered it first, but did not put it on Spotify, on Apple music, any of the sort of big dreaming services and was very specific about not wanting to support those companies and has even as the record has found like a pretty fervent audience.
00:37:45
It was the number one album of the year on pitchfork, which was the left field thing.
00:37:50
Old pitch for Lindsay, even pre Lindsay pitchfork, dare I say, like that kind of energy.
00:37:56
That feels very like what year did you start a pitchfork or starting early?
00:38:01
2011.
00:38:02
Yeah, I would say there's almost pre is almost like nine or eight o'clock, let's be weird pitchfork.
00:38:07
Sure.
00:38:08
So there was a, there's definitely a throwback appeal to the sort of adoration around this record that it feels like something you just found on the weird corner of the internet and you're like,
00:38:20
Oh, this is brilliant.
00:38:21
And no one knows what it is.
00:38:22
And of course, the more people talked about it and the more people passed it around, it did not become this thing.
00:38:27
And like Diamond Jubilee became this quasi underground borderline mainstream sensation at that point.
00:38:34
And we should say too that flagal was on for for it and very briefly.
00:38:39
And then past, I don't know why and I don't want to speculate why, but there was suddenly a lot of attention on this record that had just been a very small independent release thrown out there.
00:38:49
And then suddenly this kind of spotlight is on it, you got clapped your hands say yet.
00:38:55
I don't know.
00:38:56
But yeah.
00:38:57
So there's this whole sort of meta story as well about I think this craving for a type of indie music before the algorithm takes over before that get this sort of passive listening that streaming really brings into play.
00:39:14
And I think people have a certain nostalgia for that definitely help the mystique of this record.
00:39:19
At it more, I think it's just a really beautiful collection of songs and just on a personal level for me, like a band that I really loved and an artist that I was wanting to hear more from and wanting them to make another really big statement like this.
00:39:35
So that was satisfying for me and apparently for a lot of other people too.
00:39:39
David, do you want to interrogate me about something on my list?
00:39:43
Yes.
00:39:44
And a little further than the top ten on your list, number 13, sentiment by Claire Rusey.
00:39:49
Tell me about that.
00:39:50
Oh, yeah.
00:39:51
Let's go.
00:39:52
Okay.
00:39:53
So look, let's play something from this album before I get into it.
00:39:57
Let's listen to head.
00:40:00
This is also an album that kind of is word resistant,
00:40:29
which maybe maybe the maybe this is just a indication I should start looking for other work.
00:40:35
Yeah.
00:40:36
So maybe it's that.
00:40:37
Okay.
00:40:38
Claire Rusey sentiment is the most tuneful album by an artist who has historically worked in these kind of fragmented, found sound recordings.
00:40:48
And there was a tremendous amount of conversation on the internet about this album for like a two week period, maybe in the summer or in the spring, whenever it came out.
00:40:58
And on my first approach to it, I could not, I could not square the intensity of the discourse around this record with the quite fragile simplicity and smallness like a tiny bird of this album.
00:41:12
But the more I listen to it, the more I realize why people were, is there a good word for incensed but happy, but positively incensed?
00:41:20
People were like really in their feelings about this record.
00:41:23
I understood because it almost sidles from broken glass to broken like every, there's a number of broken things and it's just like slowly sidles from one to the next.
00:41:36
It really feels like an album that moves at the pace of slow breathing.
00:41:42
And there are vocals and there are found sounds and found vocal parts and they are not thrust upon you.
00:41:50
They are not forced out of the mix.
00:41:53
They don't delineate the structures of the songs.
00:41:57
What they do is they are these like tiny little beacons of hope or optimism or fear and it's like they come and go in this very dreamlike way.
00:42:08
And it's an incredibly enveloping record if you allow yourself the time to give to it.
00:42:13
And you'll get almost like lulled into some sense of, what can I say, it's almost like amniotic in a way and then every now and again, this something will like just gurgle up from the bottom and force you into an incredibly deep feeling that you thought that you've been like soothed out of.
00:42:31
JP, you want to ask Lindsay about something on her list?
00:42:34
Yeah, Lindsay had designs on this album myself and decided against it for purely arbitrary reasons.
00:42:42
But a lot of negro, phasor, can you expound on that?
00:42:46
This is another one that came up pretty early in the year and I felt like just really stuck with me.
00:42:52
It was something I found myself putting on a lot throughout the year and sometimes it's as simple as that.
00:42:56
I'm just recounting my listening of the year.
00:42:58
But this is one of quite a few albums on my list to where it an artist who's been added for a while is quite a few records deep in their catalog at this point and has just refined the thing that they're doing so well that however many years deep into their career they're making,
00:43:16
I think some of the strongest of their careers, Roberto Lang records this Elado Negro and this album phasor.
00:43:23
What I like about it is I hinted at this when we were going down the list that there's some really heady ideas and sort of experimental concepts and names and references that he's throwing out on this album.
00:43:37
But it just all feels so light and effervescent and just something really soothing that you can have inhabiting your space as you're listening to it.
00:43:48
It's something, it's one of those records that you can tune in on a deeper level and find a lot going on.
00:43:54
But it's also just like a lovely record to have on in your living room and to enjoy the vibe.
00:44:01
So you're bragging about having a living room.
00:44:02
Yeah.
00:44:03
One bedroom, baby.
00:44:04
You're on a struggling right there.
00:44:06
You have a living room.
00:44:08
It's also in my office.
00:44:09
Yes.
00:44:10
I can relate.
00:44:11
Anyway.
00:44:12
Yeah, I just I there's a lot of he's again that I think the lightness with which he's pulling in a lot of different reference points from jazz and experimental music.
00:44:23
And I think this is another one that's very resistant to language, actually.
00:44:27
That's we're all quitting.
00:44:28
Yeah.
00:44:29
Yeah.
00:44:30
But a lovely, lovely record that I just found myself coming back to over and over again as you went on.
00:44:36
Lindsay, you want to ask JP about something on his list?
00:44:39
JP, I would love to talk about Philly eyelashes, get me hard and soft.
00:44:44
We all should.
00:44:45
It's on both of your lists and one that I record I like a lot, but that I held up for my single list.
00:44:53
This was one where it was hard for me to make the choice.
00:44:56
But I just I love Birds of a Feather so much and that just felt like a defining song of the year to me.
00:45:01
So I held that were a high spot on my single list, but I would maybe I'd love to hear why this album resonated with you.
00:45:07
That's not to like beautiful voice, smart songs, a lot of fascinating stuff going on below the beautiful surface.
00:45:15
I do think that she's phasing out of being a weird teenager, a weird incredibly talented teenager to being a pop lifer.
00:45:27
And this album she tries to write and succeeds at writing love songs that are for everybody that aren't just for the gothic teenager pondering in her bedroom with her brother ought to make strangest songs possible.
00:45:40
And this album she becomes a pop crafts person and takes that challenge to make a song that resonates with a lot of people, but is still really strange inside.
00:45:51
There are a lot of odd murky sounds on this album buried below this completely elegant surface.
00:45:58
Also just 10 songs, which is relieved.
00:46:01
It's not the endless playlist.
00:46:03
It's got some selectivity to it.
00:46:05
And not only is it only 10 songs, but the last song sums up all the others.
00:46:10
So it's an album in the very old school tradition of being a collection of songs it is supposed to hang together.
00:46:17
My note on this Billy Eilish album is I think something that happens with a pop star who gets very famous, very young, but stays at a high level is there sometimes will end up being like a homogeneity to the sound.
00:46:31
And at a certain point, you're not making new kinds of sounds.
00:46:34
You're making new versions of your old sound.
00:46:37
And I think for a while leading up to this album, there was Billy Eilish was making Billy Eilish music and you could draw a straight line from the earliest sound cloud releases like up until the biggest hits of four years ago or three years ago.
00:46:50
And this is the first album and I had that thing where I'm like, oh, Billy Eilish is Tony Bennett.
00:46:55
Like, it's, she's like classically structured.
00:46:57
She sings in an old fashioned way.
00:47:00
And there have been moments where she leans into it, the James Bond song and what not.
00:47:03
But what I was really struck by on this album was from a vocal and subject matter perspective.
00:47:09
It feels like a clear leap in sophistication.
00:47:11
And from a production perspective, shout out, Phineas, from a production perspective, it's the first Billy Eilish album that I thought sounded novel related to in relation to prior Billy Eilish music.
00:47:24
And maybe these are not radical gestures.
00:47:26
Maybe these are not overwhelming gestures.
00:47:29
But I thought, oh, she's ready to get mixing.
00:47:32
That's unusual.
00:47:33
And I connect that back to the Charlie X X thing.
00:47:36
It's almost like this was the year that Billy Eilish Eilish, it's almost like this was the year that Billy Eilish got the license to ill.
00:47:43
Sorry, forgive me, anyway, Elza, what do you got for me?
00:47:47
Speaking of my difficulty in deciding whether something was going to go on my song list or my album's list, I want to ask you, John, about Sabrina Carpenter's short and sweet.
00:48:00
That's not what you thought.
00:48:01
No.
00:48:02
What did you think I was?
00:48:03
Taylor.
00:48:04
So just a side note, I was saying to Karen for months, I was like, I just know John is going to put her to her post department as his number one album just to control all of us.
00:48:15
And I have to commend you for not doing that.
00:48:17
You put it, I think at number 17, which I would like to hear more about your art in coming to embrace that.
00:48:24
But maybe that's the whole nother podcast, because what I would prefer to hear you talk about is why Sabrina Carpenter's short and sweet work for you as an album because I think for me felt like the singles were a much stronger distillation of who she was.
00:48:40
I have what makes her unique.
00:48:42
I think the album has, dare I say, a little more filler, a few more songs where I'm like, I could hear Ariana Grande here.
00:48:49
I hear this fitting with another pop star and not being so Sabrina specific, but I think for me a song like Please is so idiosyncratic and weird by being such a banger of a pop song.
00:49:03
That feels like a song to me that despite like Sabrina Carpenter not having as many hit that are established her sound as this very specific thing, that song feels like a Sabrina Carpenter song,
00:49:13
whereas there are songs on this album that almost have the remnants of this feels like someone else could do it too.
00:49:19
And I look forward to many of the songs.
00:49:22
So tell me why this is an album for you and not a singles collection.
00:49:26
How about this?
00:49:27
An album is a collection of songs as I put in my intro for the list.
00:49:31
And I have often said, I maybe don't think about albums exactly the way you or JP think about albums.
00:49:37
I'm a little bit more cynical at years of mixtape releases in hip hop and poorly sequenced pop albums have sourd me on the idea that like the album is some like impregnable creative work that like,
00:49:50
oh, it's got to start this place and then go there and then go here and then it's hugging you and then it's petting you and then it's dog walking you and then it's hugging you again, and then it's sending you a solution on the paper boat.
00:50:02
Like I don't, to me, I don't, that's, I'm not anything like that.
00:50:06
I'm exactly like that.
00:50:07
I don't know.
00:50:08
Sorry.
00:50:09
Exactly.
00:50:10
Every, my whole journey, every time I listen to an album.
00:50:12
So I see this as a collection of songs that I would actually agree do not work by that metric that I just described.
00:50:22
This album to me is half excellent and half reminds me of excellence.
00:50:28
I think in a better year for albums, this wouldn't have been this high up.
00:50:33
This feels no disrespect to Sabrina Carpenter who I think is talented.
00:50:38
This feels like a number eight album in a dry year.
00:50:41
Now it's number two, but it feels like spiritually it feels like a number eight to me.
00:50:45
What I like about this album, obviously her song, please, and taste all of those singles are unimpeachable.
00:50:52
But the more I listen to them, they almost became fuzzy to me.
00:50:56
They don't feel like quite as crisp as they did when I first encountered them.
00:50:59
When I heard them all in the broader context from listening to this album from top to bottom, I started to feel like I saw the math.
00:51:06
I saw the matrix thing.
00:51:08
I felt like I understood that yes, she's borrowing from Ariana.
00:51:12
Yes, she's borrowing, but yes, she's borrowing from Taylor.
00:51:16
Yes, she's barred.
00:51:17
But unlike say Camila Cabello, when she does all those things brings nothing new to it, what Sabrina has done is overlay a really well-formed personality,
00:51:29
a sense of cheek, a sense of friskyness, a close attention to lyrics.
00:51:35
To me, the initial pushback like the Dupel Lippa moment or whatever, like the initial thing is like, oh, this kind of sounds like this other thing.
00:51:43
But the closer I listened, I was like, it's something like smart juice was injected into the thing.
00:51:49
And so even if it's notionally sounded like another thing, what she was doing was using that other thing as a vehicle for a much, much more pocket approach to songwriting and a full character development.
00:52:02
The Sabrina Carpenter on this album is a fully formed character.
00:52:06
That's what carries the album to me.
00:52:08
Not dissimilar to how the first Olivia Rodrigo album was apart from that like one weird song.
00:52:14
That was like about, I'm not doing charity or something, but it's like the character is fully formed.
00:52:19
Yeah.
00:52:20
And so that was why I placed it this high up.
00:52:24
Let's listen to Taste.
00:52:26
Well, I heard you're back together and if that's true, you'll just have to taste me when he's kissing you.
00:52:36
If you want forever, have it, you did know you'll taste me through my taste.
00:52:44
JP, we're going to go out with a quick round of, now you just tell us about one album that we haven't spoken about on your list that you want to make sure people know about.
00:52:54
Let me speak up for Willow, who I think has had to struggle against being the ultimate NEPO baby, but she's really good.
00:53:02
Her album Ceremony of Contraffect is basically Math R&B.
00:53:07
It's got crazy time signatures.
00:53:10
It's got weird jazz chords.
00:53:12
The key would like to play on it.
00:53:14
I bet.
00:53:15
She's got a lovely voice and a way of connecting personal turbulence to legends and archetypes.
00:53:24
And I just really like listening to it.
00:53:25
It's like going through a playground at top speed, Lindsay.
00:53:29
I would love to just get one more plug-in for the Hurray for the riff-raff album The Past is Still Alive, a really stunning record that is sort of a musical memoir in a way.
00:53:40
It's Alinda Sigara, who records this ray for the riff-raff.
00:53:44
This is their sort of memoir of their young years as a teenager riding the rails and living this nomadic lifestyle and just being transient across the country.
00:53:58
And it's really plain-spoken compared to some of the more epic, previous stuff that they've done that's more about character building and world building and all this stuff.
00:54:10
It feels like a really strong songwriter just saying, "I'm going to wipe away all the metaphors and everything extra.
00:54:18
And I'm just going to tell you how it is and how I remember it."
00:54:21
And there's such a power to that.
00:54:24
It's a really beautiful sort of travelogue of an album.
00:54:28
So that was another one that just really stuck with me and has as much potency for me today when I listened to it as it did the first time I heard it, so it's a...
00:54:38
A banger.
00:54:39
It's a banger.
00:54:40
It's a banger.
00:54:41
For me, I'm going to talk about candy.
00:54:43
So it's inside you, okay, when I first read this album, one of the first things I thought about was like a YouTube video I had once seen of a limp biscuit life performance.
00:54:54
And I was like, "Oh, it's go time.
00:54:56
It's go time."
00:54:57
Give me something to break.
00:54:58
Yeah.
00:54:59
I don't know if that was...
00:55:00
That's what was in candy's mind.
00:55:01
There's a lot of competing reference points on this album and hardcore blogs and podcasts are going to debate like, "Is it too crossover, is it too turn style, is it trashed?"
00:55:12
I'm like, "I don't look.
00:55:13
I'm not here to litigate those debates.
00:55:15
I left those debates in the '90s where everybody should have left them.
00:55:19
How I feel."
00:55:20
But this album is genuinely and truly face-melting.
00:55:24
It is...
00:55:25
If you drink Celsius, this is like 10 Celsius.
00:55:28
10 Celsius, 10 Celsius.
00:55:32
This album, it reminded me of when Theo Vaughn was interviewing Donald Trump and telling him about cocaine and he was like, "It'll have you on your damp porch.
00:55:41
It'll turn you into an owl homie or something like that.
00:55:45
You can do that or you can listen to this album.
00:55:47
That's...
00:55:48
I think you should listen to this album instead."
00:55:49
That's right.
00:55:50
That's...
00:55:51
Jesus.
00:55:52
No!
00:55:53
Ah!
00:55:54
You're bumping that.
00:55:55
No.
00:55:56
You're saying.
00:55:57
No.
00:55:58
Dice.
00:55:59
That's our show.
00:56:00
That's the campily.
00:56:01
That's the campily.
00:56:02
I feel like I got iced.
00:56:05
That's...
00:56:06
I literally...
00:56:07
Oh my God.
00:56:08
Damn, Lindsay.
00:56:09
John Prelous-Lindsey's all-ads.
00:56:10
I am so embarrassed to have just gotten...
00:56:12
Brad...
00:56:13
Yeah, Brad.
00:56:14
It's nice.
00:56:15
Bye, all.
00:56:16
See you next year.
00:56:17
Oh, geez.
00:56:18
That is our show.
00:56:19
Every podcast ever is at nytimes.com/popcast.
00:56:20
You can find us on YouTube.
00:56:21
You can find us on TikTok.
00:56:25
You can find us on Instagram.
00:56:27
You can find us in your hearts where I know we all live.
00:56:30
It has been an incredible 2024.
00:56:32
I think this lasts up to the year.
00:56:34
Maybe there's one more.
00:56:35
Who can say, really?
00:56:37
We have big and bigger things coming in 2025.
00:56:40
What a pleasure to be able to share them with you.
00:56:42
In the room, we got Nick Pippen on the boards at home.
00:56:45
It's Pedro's out of that step for media.
00:56:47
We are gonna go out and blow the hair off your heads.
00:56:52
This is existence.
00:56:53
I can.
00:56:54
[MUSIC PLAYING], I'm gonna go out and blow the hair off your head.
00:57:13
[MUSIC PLAYING]
00:57:17
