2018 Media Roundup: Music!
Dec. 29th, 2018 06:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyI don't get how people can say there's no good music anymore. Here are some things I listened to in 2018 that give me life. Janelle Monáe, Dirty Computer Everything Janelle Monáe does is perfect and brilliant. I don't even know how to describe her music. High-concept science fiction dance music? IDK. I had only been a casual fan before though, so this release made me buy all of her other stuff as well and listen to it obsessively on repeat.
"Run To the Hills," Tanya Tagaq and Damian Abraham There was no new Tanya Tagaq album this year as I guess she was busy writing the best book of the year, but she and Fucked Up's Damian Abraham released this amazing cover of Iron Maiden's well-intentioned-but-kinda-problematic song and I love it.
"Ari Ari," Bloodywood The other new track that I had on constant repeat was this metal/Bollywood mashup with a bit of rap thrown in because why not?
Tales From the Kingdom of Fife and Space 1992: The Rise of the Chaos Wizards, Gloryhammer This is a "new to me" as opposed to a 2018 release, but I did have the SHEER DELIGHT of seeing Gloryhammer open for Alestorm this year and ended up buying all their stuff and it got me through a shitty autumn. It is relentlessly stupid fantasy-themed power metal and I cannot get enough of it. The best comment on one of their videos was "this video gave me back my virginity," Which is true.
Okay, so unlike with my previous two posts, I cannot actually pick a Best Album of 2018. It is a tie. Both are so transcendently brilliant in different ways that I can't decide. So the two best albums of 2018...
Stranger Fruit, Zeal & Ardor Zeal & Ardor are (is? it's the one guy but he needed to start a band to actually tour this) the black metal/gospel/chain gang song fusion you didn't know you needed but absolutely did. Their debut, Devil Is Fine, blew my entire mind, and this year's follow-up somehow managed to be even better. It's layers upon layers of complex, devastating music and every time I listen to it, I hear something new.
Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, Jeremy Dutcher
This won the Polaris in 2018, and deservedly so. Jeremy Dutcher's background is in opera, and he arranged traditional songs recorded by his Wolastoq ancestors a century ago into classical compositions that are like nothing I've ever heard before. The entire album is gorgeous and uplifting and rich in history. Only 100 people speak Wolastoq today, but rather than the last gasp of a dying language, this is, as Dutcher put it, the birth of an indigenous renaissance. It's some of the most powerful and innovative music I've ever heard.
"Run To the Hills," Tanya Tagaq and Damian Abraham There was no new Tanya Tagaq album this year as I guess she was busy writing the best book of the year, but she and Fucked Up's Damian Abraham released this amazing cover of Iron Maiden's well-intentioned-but-kinda-problematic song and I love it.
"Ari Ari," Bloodywood The other new track that I had on constant repeat was this metal/Bollywood mashup with a bit of rap thrown in because why not?
Tales From the Kingdom of Fife and Space 1992: The Rise of the Chaos Wizards, Gloryhammer This is a "new to me" as opposed to a 2018 release, but I did have the SHEER DELIGHT of seeing Gloryhammer open for Alestorm this year and ended up buying all their stuff and it got me through a shitty autumn. It is relentlessly stupid fantasy-themed power metal and I cannot get enough of it. The best comment on one of their videos was "this video gave me back my virginity," Which is true.
Okay, so unlike with my previous two posts, I cannot actually pick a Best Album of 2018. It is a tie. Both are so transcendently brilliant in different ways that I can't decide. So the two best albums of 2018...
Stranger Fruit, Zeal & Ardor Zeal & Ardor are (is? it's the one guy but he needed to start a band to actually tour this) the black metal/gospel/chain gang song fusion you didn't know you needed but absolutely did. Their debut, Devil Is Fine, blew my entire mind, and this year's follow-up somehow managed to be even better. It's layers upon layers of complex, devastating music and every time I listen to it, I hear something new.
Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, Jeremy Dutcher
This won the Polaris in 2018, and deservedly so. Jeremy Dutcher's background is in opera, and he arranged traditional songs recorded by his Wolastoq ancestors a century ago into classical compositions that are like nothing I've ever heard before. The entire album is gorgeous and uplifting and rich in history. Only 100 people speak Wolastoq today, but rather than the last gasp of a dying language, this is, as Dutcher put it, the birth of an indigenous renaissance. It's some of the most powerful and innovative music I've ever heard.
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Date: 2018-12-29 04:57 am (UTC)Anyway, when people say "there's no good music anymore" they're engaging in the kind of nostalgia that gives nostalgia a bad name. If I ever say that, smother me with a pillow.
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Date: 2018-12-29 07:20 am (UTC)If I ever stop liking new music, shoot me because I’m the bad clone.
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Date: 2018-12-30 04:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-30 02:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-04 09:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-04 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-05 12:49 pm (UTC)I did used to see a lot of music recs on Tumblr and that was something I'll probably miss, but oh my gosh spending less time on that site endless-scrolling through redundant crap has already lightened a load I didn't know I was carrying.
This year my coworker and I doggedly worked through every one of the Onion AV Club's "20 best albums of the year" recommendation, and it was. Well. There were two albums we both liked, and two more that one of us liked but not the other, and the rest was just... Spotify algorithm-destroying. We've been on a Motorhead cleanse for the last week. (Which is when, of course, you only listen to Motorhead.) Today we dared to branch out, and listened to Metallica "back when they were good", which probably tells you a lot about this coworker of mine. (He's in his 40s and used to play bass in a touring hardcore (metal) band.)