10 Favorite Albums of 2023

January 8, 2024 — Leave a comment

As always, there is way more music being released than I can keep up with, and this list probably looks different if written next month (or even tomorrow), but here are 10 albums from 2023 that left big impressions. Honorable mentions are also included at the jump.

To a happy 2024, and free Young Thug!!!

10. Danny Brown – Quaranta

Danny Brown has never used so little of what I call his “crazy voice” as on Quaranta, and the result is his most pleasantly surprising and vulnerable work. He brilliantly flips a classic Geto Boys line into the chorus of “Down Wit Me”, a stark breakup song that leaves him sounding emotionally drained. Yet he is quick to bounce back on “Celibate” with the help of an excellent verse from MIKE. “Hanami” is a meditation on the passage of time(!) and “Bass Jam” is just full-stop beautiful. Though Quaranta was announced years ago (Brown turned 42 months before its release), it turned out to be well worth the wait.

9. Ken Carson – A Great Chaos

The state of rap is messy right now, and a lot of new releases leave me underwhelmed. But listening to Destroy Lonely’s “if looks could kill” in 2023 really scratched my itch for some youthful, Carti-like music, and coming from a guy I had never even heard of made it that much more impressive. Ken Carson does the same thing on A Great Chaos, which has 3 Destroy Lonely features but mostly finds Carson talking shit in his muddle-mouthed drawl over candy-coated beats.

8. PinkPantheress – Heaven Knows

After coming out strong in 2021 with the outstanding 18 minute to hell with it, PinkPantheress leveled up this year. The Ice Spice-assisted “Boy’s a liar pt. 2” was an absolute smash, and Pink followed it up with as great of an album as we could have expected. Full of bops and perfectly placed features, Heaven knows makes the 22-year-old star impossible to count out.

7. Drake – For All the Dogs

I don’t blame anyone who despises Drake at this point in his career: his wealth and influence is superfluous, and over a decade and a half his rap persona has morphed from an energized young upstart to a rich horny guy who abuses similes and kinda just says cringey shit. Nevertheless, I listened to songs from For All the Dogs as much as anything else in 2023’s final quarter. Like most big-name streaming era albums, it’s bloated, but there are still plenty of great songs. Chief Keef blesses “All the Parties” with a blink-of-an-eye verse that Drake riffs on, “8AM in Charlotte” finds Drizzy blacking out over a Conductor(!) beat, “Rich Baby Daddy” has SZA sliding over “My Boo” type production (not to mention the incredible chorus), “Away From Home” is surprisingly reflective etc. The Scary Hours edition released in November adds 6 mostly great songs that remind me of why I’ve been listening to this guy now for most of my life.

6. Yo La Tengo – This Stupid World

The evergreen talents of Yo La Tengo, going strong in their 5th decade, did it again on This Stupid World. “Sinatra Drive Breakdown” is their heaviest opener since 2006’s “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind”. A pure jammer, it sets the tone for an exploratory yet succint 9-track album. Elsewhere, “Aselestine” provides the sweetness that both longtime fans and newcomers should love.

5. Maxo – Debbie’s Son

Maxo blew me away in 2019 with his Def Jam debut Lil Big Man, a tight and mellow collection of raps. It took 4 years for Def Jam to eke out the follow-up, 2023’s Even God Has a Sense of Humor. Though a good release, that album represents the closing of a tie with a label that seemingly offered little promotion or support. Released independently, Debbie’s Son is both the more experimental and more personal Maxo album of 2023. Featuring only Zelooperz is a bold choice that pays off early, and the jazzy bent of “#3” and “Boomerang” will please any listener who seeks something beyond the current status quo of rap music.

4. Jess Williamson – Time Ain’t Accidental

When I met Jess Williamson after her show in Healdsburg in 2023, I complimented her choice of walk-out music: “Only Time” by Enya. She noted that since her album’s called Time Ain’t Accidental, “Only Time” made sense, which I hadn’t even considered. A music lover at her core, it only makes sense that Williamson is having her moment now as an outstanding new voice in country amidst a blockbuster time for country music in general. Seeing her perform these songs in a small venue was an absolute treat, and highlighted the pure excellence in her songwriting that stands out on tracks like “Roads” and “God in Everything”. That, and the drum machines in the title track and “Topanga Two Step” are perfect.

3. Animal Collective – Isn’t It Now?

Having listened to live versions of these songs for almost 4 years, Isn’t It Now felt wonderfully familiar to me the first time I pressed play. As a longstanding Animal Collective stan who gushed over 2022’s Time Skiffs, getting the counterpart album (songs from both albums were written around the same time) a year later was like receiving a big hug.

2. Dougie Poole – The Rainbow Wheel of Death

The more I play these tunes, the more they feel like permanent parts of my brain. “Worried Man Blues 2” is coming out the speaker while I’m driving, “Beth David Cemetery” is coming out my mouth while I’m working. The pedal steel cries, the guitar strums on, another day goes by and these songs live rent-free in my head. “I Lived My Whole Life Last Night” is perfect – a funny, scary, just plain brilliant riff on mortality. Destined to become a classic, I would recommend The Rainbow Wheel of Death to anyone who loves good songs.

1. Nourished by Time – Erotic Probiotic 2

Since 2019, Marcus Brown has been releasing singles and EPs as Nourished by Time (including the two-track Erotic Probiotic), in total about an album’s worth of material strong enough to rival that of most contemporary R&B/pop artists. That is until Erotic Probiotic 2, which lapped his previous output and finally gave the artist some deserved love: Oneohtrix Point Never recently described Nourished By Time as the “only new music I absolutely swear is next level”, and this coming from an artist as consistently on the vanguard of both the experimental and pop worlds as OPN is high praise. But Erotic Probiotic 2 warrants this claim.

A one-man production, Nourished By Time’s music averts current pop’s too-many-cooks syndrome, while still containing songs as catchy and hummable as any pop artist. Opener “Quantum Suicide” itself is a revelation, a banger and a prayer: “The journey, the pain / May it all be the same,” he belts (and there is a lot of fantastic belting on here). Initially I felt the album was front-loaded, but then it became man, I love these last 3, 4, 5 tracks on a 9-track album. After the delightfully busy productions of “Rain Water Promise” and “Soap Party”, the relatively sparse “Workers Interlude” allows NBT to bare his soul (“Now people pass me by / And all I ask is why?“) before “Unbreak My Love” provides the closing catharsis to put a bow on it all. Erotic Probiotic 2 is a watershed moment for Nourished by Time, and almost certainly a harbinger of more next-level shit.

Honorable Mentions:

André 3000 – New Blue Sun

Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily – Love In Exile

Bad Bunny – Nadie sabe lo que va a pasar mañana

bar italia – Tracey Denim

Earl Sweatshirt & The Alchemist – Voir Dire

George Clanton – Ooh Rap I Ya

Ice Spice – Like..?

Jessy Lanza – Love Hallucination

jonatan leandoer96 – Sugar World

Kali Uchis – Red Moon in Venus

Karina Rykman – Joyride

Lana Del Rey – Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd

Laura Groves – Radio Red

Lil Yachty – Let’s Start Here.

Mac DeMarco – Five Easy Hot Dogs

MIKE – Burning Desire

Natural Wonder Beauty Concept – Natural Wonder Beauty Concept

Pink Siifu & Turich Benjy – It’s Too Quiet..’!!

Sampha – Lahai

Titanic – Vidrio

6LACK – Since I Have a Lover

Album of the Week – Michael Naura’s Vanessa (1975)

December 11, 2023 — Leave a comment

Recently I discovered Michael Naura Quartet’s Call (1973) and fell in love. Born in Lithuania, the pianist Naura moved to Germany and released music on the German label MPS. Call featured longtime bandmates Wolfgang Schlüter on vibraphone and Joe Nay on drums, as well as upright bass extraordinaire Eberhard Weber. For Vanessa, his ECM debut, Naura’s band is augmented to a quintet with a bassoonist in Klaus Thunemann.

As Naura notes on the album’s back cover, he had by 1975 been playing jazz with Wolfgang Schlüter for two decades, and listening to several of their albums it is hard to understate the presence of Schlüter’s vibes, which seem to highlight Naura’s recordings more than even Naura’s own instrument. Still, Naura’s writing, presence as bandleader, and ability to establish the mood of his tracks is palpable. It is the element of this core duo, with Naura’s calm rhythms and Schlüter’s colorful leads, that makes Naura’s albums so compelling. Weber, the biggest name in the group, and Joe Nay, who according to Naura’s liner notes “[once] sold his mother’s carpet in order to be able to afford his first drum-kit,” fill out the rhythm section.

All that said, the first thing you really notice on Vanessa is a bassoon. Klaus Thunemann was a classical soloist and a Vivaldi specialist who really knew his way around the woodwind (and still does, I’m sure). His bassoon vamp over a murky groove on “Salvatore” makes the song a level-up from the band’s (bassoon-less) sound on Call. Around 8 minutes in, the drums drop out, and then Thunemann plays notes that sound like feedback. It’s amazing! After this nearly 12-minute opener, Weber, himself an ECM mainstay, spends most of the brief “Hills” just absolutely getting it in. “Vanessa” itself is a beautiful track – consisting mostly of just piano and vibraphone, it’s a reverie. Naura and Schlüter’s dynamic partnership is especially present on “Listen to Me”, where they really push each other. Thunemann’s track, the closer “Black Pigeon”, finds him rounding out the last 2 minutes of the record with eye-popping skill.

I believe this is the only recording of Naura or Schlüter with Thunemann, which is a shame, because he added another dimension to Naura’s band that makes Vanessa really superb. You can find some of Thunemann’s classical work here, and I also recommend the Naura Quartet’s spacier outing Rainbow Runner (1972).

Listen to Vanessa here.

Album of the Week: Roberta Flack’s Chapter Two (1970)

November 27, 2023 — Leave a comment

An artist must be relaxed and free of tension in order to record properly. -Roberta Flack, back cover of Chapter Two

My first ever AOTW post (over three years ago now) covered Flack’s Feel Like Makin’ Love, a 1975 album that diverted from her earlier piano ballad style in favor of keyboards. But on Chapter Two, her sound was still relatively spare. Though not as popular as her debut First Take, Chapter Two is far from a sophomore slump.

We begin with “Reverend Lee”, a great tale of lust and faith. “Do What You Gotta Do” will sound familiar to fans of Kanye’s “Famous”, in which Rihanna sings the vocal part (West originally sampled Nina Simone’s version). “Let It Be Me” is so tender, it’s like The Everly Brothers’ version in slo-mo.

T.I.’s mammoth single “What You Know” samples this version of “Gone Away”, and listening to this album illustrates how brilliant Toomp’s sample is: he turned something wistful, almost mournful into an absolutely triumphant beat. Flack’s track itself wows in its graceful, beautiful buildup and release. The album should seemingly end with the climactic “The Impossible Dream”, but instead it finishes with the ominous war commentary “Business Goes on as Usual”. “Business Goes on as Usual” reminds me of Nico’s best work: its military march has an unsettling quality to it, and the spare arrangement allows the voice to take center stage. You can hear Flack breathing.

Chapter Two is ultimately a great showcase in Flack’s taste and form. She takes pop and folk songs (boy, Dylan was everywhere at this time) and makes them her own.

Listen to Chapter Two here.

Album of the Week: Boyz II Men’s Cooleyhighharmony (1991)

November 13, 2023 — Leave a comment

Boyz II Men, ABC, BBD – the East Coast fam

So I knew the “BBD” was for Bell Biv Devoe (“Poison”), but I learned today that “ABC” stands for Another Bad Creation, a kid R&B group which I think I came across while practically studying Immature. I got this CD at some point in high school and it lived in the Honda Pilot. I also made “screwed” versions of “Please Don’t Go” and “Your Love”, both of which I jammed a lot.

Though not as consistent as its forebear Heart Break by New Edition (featuring “Boys to Men”, the song B2M named themselves after) or TLC’s CrazySexyCool (a spiritual successor by way of title if nothing else), there are some classic tracks here. They would go on to work with my R&B MVP Babyface later, but the Boyz peaked here on their debut with producer Dallas Austin at the helm. In 2016, Austin would tell Waxpoetics, “I went to Philadelphia with them to record “Motownphilly” and “Sympin’,” and they were the only two tracks I was going to produce for their album. When I got there, I clicked with the guys, they asked, ‘Why can’t you do our whole album?’ Then, they asked me, ‘Can you do ballads?’ So I went and bought some Babyface records to listen to them, and I figured out how to do ballads. I ended up doing their whole album.” So even though Babyface didn’t work on the album, his influence looms!

Working with Dallas Austin was a good idea! Opener “Please Don’t Go”, while never a big hit, is one of those songs I never tire of. Awash in 90s synth and robo-harpsichord, it’s sleeker than New Edition and a far cry from the textbook New Jack Swing of “Poison”. Saccharine, sure, but to me it’s perfect: the voiceover intro, the orchestra hits, and the harmonies that they’d come to be known for are all amazing. Then you have another sad song in “Lonely Heart” and two sexx jams in “This Is My Heart” and “Uhh Ahh” – which went number one! A pretty minimal, weird track to go number one, the production of which sounds really dated now (that makes it even cooler!).

This is the canonical version of “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday”, which is either wistful or devastating depending on the context you use it in. Another strange hit! Almost acapella, and it went to number two on the charts. What can be said about “Motownphilly”: it’s a Motown classic, a Philly classic, a grocery store classic… just a banger.

There are some B-side gems in “Little Things”, where the production reminds me of the James Ferraro I was listening to in the early 2010s, and the fantastic, cloying closer “Your Love”. As opposed to Austin and the rest of the band, these were both written by Troy Taylor (who would later work with Trey Songz) and made by his production duo The Characters. But they fit right in. Also, “UR LOVE IS 2 HYPE” would be a good tattoo or bumper sticker I think.

Listen to Cooleyhighharmony here.

Album of the Week: Hatfield and the North’s The Rotters’ Club (1975)

November 6, 2023 — Leave a comment

rotter:

noun [ C ]

mainly UK old-fashioned

US  /ˈrɑː.t̬ɚ/ UK  /ˈrɒt.ər/

someone who is very unpleasant or does very unpleasant things

Synonyms

lowlife (informal disapproving)

stinker (old-fashioned informal)

-Cambridge Dictionary

A regular lot of rotters, these Brits! Hatfield and the North, hailing from Canterbury, were a sort of supergroup that released only two albums before disbanding. This one is a banger which I’ve been digging for a while, kind of a mix of British rock and jazzy prog. This release features Dave Stewart, who played organ on Arzachel (1969), which has one of my favorite songs ever, the organ-heavy “Queen St. Gang”. Various other members played in groups such as Caravan, Gong and Matching Mole (the outfit for drummer Pip Pyle, who wrote the two deep 7-minute pieces on side A of The Rotters’ Club).

The cover of Hatfield & The North, the band’s debut, depicts a serene photograph of Reykjavik, Iceland merged with a fresco of Dante’s Inferno. The implied combination of serenity and chaos is a good indicator of the band’s music, which will usually either stay light or else go in unpredictable directions. “Share It” provides an easy start to The Rotters’ Club with a nice pop vocal melody. Phil Miller flexes his muscle on the instrumental “Lounging There Trying” before the album really takes off. At about 2 minutes into “The Yes No Interlude” we get a gnarly Miller solo, the guitarist cleaning house before a quieter, spacey middle section. This space is mined even deeper towards the end of “Fitter Stoke Has a Bath”, a wacky venture.

The 22-minute suite “Mumps” accounts for the back half of this album, and it’s a deliciously jammy venture. At around 5 minutes the instruments meld together in a harmonious, guitar-led mix that, dare I say it, anticipates Phish by a decade or two. Then, the “Northettes” add some wordless vocals, before Stewart goes hardcore on his Minimoog, Miller providing some tasty psychedelic guitar licks. Sinclair’s vocal section is searching and a bit melancholy. There’s even some flute toward the end of this magnificent track, which finishes in triumph.

The back cover of The Rotters’ Club thanks “Heinz and The Tornados – For Musical Inspiration”. The Tornados’ output is certainly inspiring, as no instrumental group atop of the Billboard charts sounded quite like them then (check out 1962’s “Telstar”) or has since. Some 30 years after The Rotters’ Club, the Tornados’ music would also inspire Panda Bear, who sampled them on Person Pitch.

The reissue/streaming version of this album contains about 13 minutes of bonus material (including 2 live tracks!) that is worth your time. Put it up there with your favorite Soft Machine venture, it’s that good!

Listen to The Rotters Club here.

Album of the Week: Dom Kennedy’s Los Angeles Is Not For Sale, Vol. 1 (2016)

October 30, 2023 — Leave a comment

I’m not sure if Dom Kennedy would appeal to a hip-hop outsider: his flows are a little off-kilter; his rhymes often slow. But a couple of key early 2010s hip-hop moments helped me really appreciate this dude. The first is “Real Estates” from Curren$y’s Pilot Talk 2 (2010), an album that is (along with the preceding Pilot Talk) a benchmark for the kind of stoner rap music that doesn’t really exist anymore. “The game don’t get any realer” chirped Dom on his knot-tight “Real Estates” verse. Then 2012’s “Grooveline” (Schoolboy Q , 2012) verse showcased his relaxed playboy style, ending hilariously with a “Dom Kennedy” drop that sounds like a producer tag.

I never followed him enough to track a new release, but when Frank Ocean included “T P O” on his blonded radio it seemed like a good idea to check out this album. “T P O” is a mellow slap, immediately memorable for the beat’s harpsichord melody, but it’s also funny: “I was young, but I went to the Grand Canyon once / Now I’m at a stripper house makin’ tacos, rollin’ blunts.” The song exemplifies this album as a whole, which is Dom Kennedy at his best: a realist who is cool, confident and relatable, with fantastic production choices. Clearly following the mold of 90s LA g-funk, “Dominic, Pt. 2” updates the style with fantastic synth notes.

In college I fantasized about living in California and listening to “California”, and now I can finally do it. Something about the drums on this one… I would play this over and over again on my little wired earbuds walking around in the cold Pennsylvania winter daydreaming about life in Cali. “Wake up at 1:30, In-N-Out ‘fore it close / Catch me in the drive-thru, then spin out on these hoes.” Sounds like a good time, man… my plays of “California” dwarf the rest of the album.

I think sometimes Dom Kennedy is unintentionally funny or irreverent. Like, “Since We’re Telling the Truth” is ostensibly a love song, but the chorus ends with “I could have a statue downtown.” The lyrics “Even if I was starvin’ / I’m the type to pass on baloney / Walkman by Sony / I’m big as Tony, Toni, Tone,” read like Riff Raff bars, but they’re delivered earnestly over the heavenly beat of “When I’m Missin’ U”. Maybe it’s just the nostalgia, but I see these as pluses.

This album was not received well. You have to really dig Dom as a kind of normal-guy-who-likes-hanging-out if you want to sit through this whole record, which could be 3-4 tracks shorter. But revisiting it today it still strikes me as underrated.

Listen to Los Angeles Is Not For Sale, Vol.1 here.

Album of the Week: Mirrorring’s Foreign Body (2012)

October 23, 2023 — Leave a comment

In reviewing Grouper’s split release with Roy Montgomery from 2009 I described her “hazy, delicate and touching” sound, one that would carry into the 2010s successfully – including on this sole album from Mirrorring, the duo of Liz (Grouper) and Jesy (Tiny Vipers). This is, I believe, Grouper’s first release for Kranky (unless you count the digital premiere of “Fell Sound” a month earlier). At the time of its release Grouper’s output seemed like an embarrassment of riches (the double album AIA and the astounding “Water People” / “Moving Machine” 12″ had both been out less than a year) and I didn’t think too much of Foreign Body. Now I approach it like a Champion Sound of the contemporary ambient or folk scene: two greats in collaboration, switching off on lead vocals.

Truly, the Internet has broken my brain because the first word that comes to mind with this album is “goated”. I’ve yet to listen to it on good speakers, but I fear my mind and body might be transported to some far-away desert dimension and never return. In my taste for music that is unhurried, it seems the collaboration of Grouper and Tiny Vipers is the perfect recipe. Heavenly to start, Grouper takes vocals over a massive expanse of drone. It’s a bit surprising, though, that this was released as the album’s advance track and not “Silent From Above”. This is not a judgement of value, but Jesy’s vocals are far less murky than Liz’s, and her words much easier to parse. This suits the tighter “Silent From Above”, its bittersweet and blue guitars and vocals sounding like they were recorded outside by the campfire. “Cliffs”, the longest track here, is also the sleepiest, but it picks up a bit past the 5-minute mark.

Later, “Mine” proves the album’s climax – a huge drone with Jesy’s strong, melodic vocals. Boy if this doesn’t make you feel something. Towards the end the track appears to be eating itself, but then the monster reverb itself fades out, leaving little but space, with “Mirror of Our Sleeping” as a post-script.

Grouper followed Mirrorring with the Dragging a Dead Deer-era compilation The Man Who Died in His Boat (2013) and the sparse Ruins (2014). Tiny Vipers would later release an album of ambient excursions, Laughter, in 2017, which I find under-rated and is for some reason not on streaming services.

Listen to Foreign Body here.

Album of the Week: John Coltrane’s My Favorite Things: Coltrane at Newport (2007)

October 16, 2023 — Leave a comment

My latest musical obsession is John Coltrane playing “My Favorite Things”, something he did fairly often from the recording of the My Favorite Things album in 1960 up until his death in 1967. Coltrane breathed new life into the Sound of Music classic every time he touched it. This Public Radio Broadcast from 2010 outlines the history of Coltrane and “My Favorite Things” – in 1960 someone in a Lower East Side club gave Coltrane sheet music for the song (The Sound of Music was a hit Broadway play at the time and the movie version would not appear until 1965), and he brought it to his band. There are at least 18 commercially released versions of Coltrane playing the song, from the roughly 3-minute single to the mammoth 34+ minute recording on The Olatunji Concert: The Last Live Recording.

My *ahem* favorite version so far comes from the Newport Jazz Festival in 1963, one of two Newport sets (the other from ’65) featured on this album. A compilation of sorts, this particular disc features tracks that were largely previously released. Whether that picture of Coltrane ripping soprano sax on the cover is from one of these dates or not, it gives you a pretty good idea of what’s inside. The 1963 set eases in with Eckstine’s “I Want to Talk About You”. Expressive and warm, McCoy Tyner plays the perfect piano accompaniment to Coltrane, who solos with great confidence in the back half of the track. Then “My Favorite Things” clocks in around 17 minutes. Coltrane just punches the shit out of this thing. He’s fluttering, carrying the melody to new heights and pulverizing the theme. Around 16 minutes the exploration resolves into the theme in a turn that’s as brilliant as that of any jam band (I’m thinking of 2 in particular) might play decades later.

In some ways the gem of this disc is the inspired 23-minute “Impressions” following the title track, having only been previously released at a truncated 15 minutes. This track was good enough to warrant its own Coltrane album while he lived, and this take features a riled-up Roy Haynes on drums and cooks hard enough to earn its runtime.

You can tell, at the end of the 1965 take on “My Favorite Things”, that the crowd is loving it and has to be reminded of curfew by the announcer, who notes that “it’s the witching hour and time for all of you to go home” (maybe the band was cutoff?). I don’t think this version is quite as great, though it may at times stretch out a little further. To me it just doesn’t match the strength and aplomb of the 1963 version. Still, it’s one of the Greats doing what he does best, and tracking down Coltrane’s takes on this song is proving to be a rewarding past-time.

Listen to My Favorite Things here.

Album of the Week: Karin Krog’s We Could Be Flying (1974)

October 9, 2023 — Leave a comment

Oslo’s Karin Krog studied singing under Anne Brown, an American expat for whom George Gershwin wrote the music of Bess in Porgy and Bess. In 1964 she released her debut By Myself, which is the first female Norwegian vocal jazz record. Krog’s singing is lounge in presentation, but she has a masterful control of voice. When she really opens up two-and-a-half minutes into We Could Be Flying, you start to get a feel for her strength. And this is immediately followed by an instrumental vamp which speaks to the collaborative effort of this album.

Steve Kuhn, the American pianist who appeared on Pete La Roca’s classic Blue Note album Basra (1965), was living in Sweden at the time of this recording. He joins Krog here along with bassist Steve Swallow (also featured on Basra) and drummer Jon Christensen, who frequently recorded for the ECM label. Christensen really shines on “The Meaning of Love”, an early standout. This track has all the right kinds of space to it. Once again, Krog takes some pauses between her lines and the rest of the band stretches out.

The band does justice to Joni Mitchell’s “All I Want”, Krog’s delivery with more of a sly grin than Joni’s cracking despair. “Sing Me Softly of the Blues” (co-written by Carla Bley) has that old rainy Sunday in NYC vibe, mellow and jazzy – just the way I like it! The album closes with two Kuhn originals, the bass-driven “Hold Out Your Hand” and “Time to Go”.

Also, in 2017, a library in Oslo played the album on audiophile equipment and Krog and Christensen were present to take audience questions. I wonder how that went! See the program flyer below – you may note that Knutsen & Ludvigsen’s Juba Juba (1983) was presented in this format 2 weeks later.

Listen to We Could Be Flying here.

Album of the Week: The Sea and Cake’s The Biz (1995)

September 25, 2023 — Leave a comment

Is Chicago underrated? Reading The Adventures of Augie March and listening to The Biz has me missing the Windy City, a feeling that was only amplified by a recent conversation I had with a gray-haired hipster dude at a Spellling show in Oakland. The guy was from Chicago and mentioned that Jeff Parker from Tortoise used to DJ some of the clubs he went to. Cue nostalgia for an era I never experienced!

Hipster mecca as it is (the home of Pitchfork!), Chicago in the early 90s found singer/guitarist Sam Prekop fronting the indie band Shrimp Boat. This great Pitchfork article notes that at the venue Lounge Ax in Lincoln Park, “Shrimp Boat played, according to [Doug] McCombs [of Tortoise], ‘this totally skronky, weird, idiosyncratic music with pop songs on top of it. They probably played like two shows a week and it felt like they were doing a completely new set of material each time they played.'”

When Shrimp Boat dissolved, Sam Prekop and SB bassist Eric Claridge formed The Sea and Cake with Tortoise’s John McEntire on drums and Archer Prewitt on guitar. Prekop hopped back into the local live circuit with the new band and they recorded and released three albums in the span of two years, The Biz being the third. Of the album, Prekop later said, “This one was recorded live, and I think we had worked out most of the tunes to play live, and that makes it different. We’d done shows with those songs before we’d put them on the record…and I think that’s the last time we worked that way… The way the songs arrived at that point was totally mysterious. Especially the song, ‘The Biz’… I still marvel at the bizarre chord progressions.”

Live and mysterious, yes, The Biz has that charming bookish 90s indie band style going for it from the jump. I’m surprised at how long it took for me to listen to The Sea and Cake given that I like them more than some of their contemporaries, other bands that are too dense/noisy or have bad vocals. Since you could apply the adjectives “chill” and “jammy” to a bunch of this, it makes perfect sense that I enjoy it. But I do think TSaC have an appeal broader than their popularity reflects, especially today when all their albums are available at the touch of a button. You could put on “Station in the Valley” at a laidback outdoor function and no one would bat an eye. And “The Transaction” resounds with the kind of sunny chords that populate some of the bigger Alex G songs.

That live recording/feeling Prekop mentioned translates here and the band sounds really tight. They’re also using EML-101 and ARP 2600 synths for an added dimension of sound. The band’s been labeled post-rock, but what they’re doing here doesn’t feel overly complicated or even dramatic. It’s not like it’s one-note either: “Darkest Night” is quite relaxing and “Escort”, two tracks later, is angular and noisy. File The Biz in with your overlooked indie rock records, and jam out.

Listen to The Biz here.