Albums of the Half Year: 2020

Here we are in July, which seems impossible.  There are times when I can't believe we're coming up on four months since the shutdown began; other times it feels as if the time has flown by.  My hair is the longest it's been in my entire life.  We celebrated my 60th birthday in April, but needless to say the big party we were planning never quite got off the ground.  If it's possible to have a daily out-of-body experience, that's what the first six months of 2020 felt like.

That feeling could be applied to the year in music as well.  The year that is now half over has seen the biggest change in my music listening habits since the mid-1980s, when the vinyl record bins in music stores began to make way for the CD racks.  I'd already started buying a lot fewer CDs in the months leading up to 2020, for the simple reason that most of the record stores (yeah, I still call them that) in Sacramento have closed up shop.  With the exception of a handful of CDs I bought in the Fall, most of my purchases were MP3 purchases, which went straight into the hard drive and the iPod.

In February, at the urging of my sons, I finally made the leap to the streaming world, and signed up for a premium Spotify account.  The floodgates opened, and haven't closed since.  Accustomed to physical media that can be held onto, it's been strange.  On the one hand, I haven't bought a single CD since the year began.  On the other hand, I've listened to more music in the past six months than, quite possibly, any other time in my entire life.  There are times when the sheer volume of availability is overwhelming - what should be listened to today?  An old Joni Mitchell or Beach Boys album that I've never heard all the way through, or the new releases by Run the Jewels or Bob Dylan?  Or maybe the incredible quarantine playlist from Questlove, which then just sends me down another deep rabbit hole?  But if you're going to have a problem, then I suppose this is a good one to have.

By my count, I've listened, at least once, to 45 newly released albums all the way through.  Quite a few of those are records that demand greater attention, and may very well end up in a year-end Top Ten.  But for now, I've selected twelve albums that stand above the rest.  When, God willing, we look back on this time from a space of normalcy, these are the ones that I'll remember for speaking to the moment.

In alphabetical order:

Honeymoon, Beach Bunny.  Sounding like the GoGos filtered through "Rocket to Russia," this has been my go-to album when a respite from the real world was most needed.  The hook-to-minute ratio is off the charts.

how i'm feeling now, Charli XCX.  Recorded entirely in quarantine, revealing once again that with this artist, there is a lot to be found under the surface.

The Unraveling, Drive-By Truckers.  When I wrote about this album in February, I called it their bravest yet.  Little did I know how prescient it would be.  

Rough and Rowdy Ways, Bob Dylan.  His first album of original tunes since 2012, and worth the wait.  He gave us a taste in the early spring with the almost 17-minute "Murder Most Foul," a musical chameleon - it can be anything you want it to be (sort of like Dylan himself).  The rest of the album doesn't quite stand up to that lofty standard, and it will take me a while to fully figure it out, but for now I'm comfortable saying that it's somewhere between "very good" and "epic."

Walking Proof, Lilly Hiatt.  Trinity Lane, her last, was outstanding - but Walking Proof is a quantum leap above anything she's ever done.  The entire record is instilled with a sense of confidence on every song - it's probably my #1 album of the year, so far.

Reunions, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit.  He and his band just keep getting better and better.  And without question, the absolute funniest musical artist to be found on Twitter.

World on the Ground, Sarah Jarosz.  It's hard for me to describe what it is that I find so appealing about this record - there's something about the music that just feels filled with mystery.  

Future Nostalgia, Dua Lipa.  It may be going too far to call this one of the best dance records since Madonna's debut, but then again, it may not be.

Bad Luck, Sylvia Rose Novak.  Country punk?  Outlaw country?  Americana rock?  Call it what you will, but it's a great album.  

Folk 'n Roll Vol. 1, J.S. Ondara.  Armed with a great backstory, Ondara has written the diary of the first two months of the quarantine, right up until May 25.  Here's hoping that Vol. 2 deals with the aftermath of that dark day.

RTJ4, Run the Jewels. Quoting Robert Christgau here, who gave the album an A+: "Who knows whether this would feel so right absent a historical moment when trying to distinguish rage slavery from righteous anger is a waste of emotional wisdom?  With trap on its opiated treadmill, the gangsta sonics that power El-P and Killer Mike's inchoate aggressiveness will feel tonic to anyone with both an appetite for music and a political pulse."

Color Theory, Soccer Mommy.  An emotional maelstrom, from the very first chords.

And what the heck, here's a few Honorable Mentions that could find their way closer to the top before this dumpster fire of a year is over: Punisher, Phoebe Bridgers; Danzig Sings Elvis; Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Fiona Apple; Saint Cloud, Waxahatchee; Women in Music Part III, HAIM; Chromatica, Lady Gaga; Invisible People, Chicano Batman; Never Will, Ashley McBride; Homegrown, Neil Young; Lamentations, American Aquarium; Gigaton, Pearl Jam; Open Book, Kalie Shorr; Saturn Return, The Secret Sisters; We Still Go to Rodeos; Whitney Rose; Your Life is a Record; Brandy Clark; Alphabetland, X.

Happy Summer, everyone.  Here's hoping the great sounds continue.

Drive-By Truckers: Fighting the Good Fight

"The Unraveling," the twelfth studio album from Drive-By Truckers, is not a party record.  You don't really need to play it to figure that out; all you have to do is read some of the song titles: "Armageddon's Back in Town," "Heroin Again," "Babies in Cages," "Awaiting Resurrection."  None of those titles bring to mind a bunch of hoopin' and hollerin', beer or two in hand, while dancing on the top of a table all night.

The song titles are not false advertising, as evidenced by a sampling of these lyrics from "Heroin Again":

Insinuate a fever dream

Instigate a requiem

A deafening explosion of shame

An orgasm inside your brain

Silly young men

Why you using heroin

Thought you knew better than that

Or these, from "Babies in Cages":

And are we so divided

That we can't at least agree

This ain't the country that

Our granddads fought for us to be?

Babies in cages

"The Unraveling" is hardly DBT's first foray into the realm of the political.  For more than two decades, Patterson Hood has been exploring the contradictions he encountered during the course of his days growing up and becoming an adult in Alabama - a phenomenon he's often called "the duality of the Southern thing."  The difference is that in the band's earlier days, a song like "The Three Great Alabama Icons" (one of whom was George Wallace) might be bracketed by obvious party anthems like "Dead, Drunk & Naked" and "Let There Be Rock," and a song like "Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife" (about the murder of Bryan Harvey and his family) would be immediately followed by "3 Dimes Down," possibly the greatest party song that Mike Cooley ever wrote (and I'll let you look up what that one is all about).  Even the band's 2016 "American Band," which delved more deeply into current day politics than any previous DBT record, feels light as air in comparison to the new record.  

The album's centerpiece, and the song that will be talked about the most, is "Thoughts and Prayers." In this era of mass shootings in common public gathering areas, those simple words have taken on a much different meaning.  Rather than a sincere (if ultimately inadequate) expression of sympathy and sorrow, they're now viewed by many as a symbol of a generation's inability (or lack of will) to take any meaningful action to stop something that everyone agrees is a horrible societal development.  Patterson Hood leaves no doubt as to which side of the argument he is on:

When my children's eyes look at me and they ask me to explain

It hurts me that I have to look away

The powers that be are in for shame and comeuppance

When Generation Lockdown has their day

They'll throw the bums all out and drain the swamp for real

Perp walk then down the Capitol steps and show them how it feels

Tramp the dirt down, Jesus, you can pray the rod they'll spare

Stick it up your ass with your useless thoughts and prayers

It's one thing for an individual to make a statement like this.  But when an artist whose livelihood depends in large part on the support of a demographic which quite likely (and accurately) will take this song as an affront to the very existence of that demographic, that's something very different.  There's a lot at stake for a band to be writing and playing songs like this, and while DBT never has (and never likely will) reach the heights of popularity of a group like the Dixie Chicks, we all saw what happened to them when a certain line was crossed.  Even a group as popular as they were at the time saw their audience change dramatically, pre- and post-comments about George W. Bush.

The album's sound matches its material.  Having gone through numerous personnel changes over the years, since 2014 DBT's sonic approach has been focused primarily on a guitar-pronged attack (sometimes two, and sometimes three, when sometimes keyboardist Jay Gonzalez picks up his ax).  That's true here as well, but there's also the added element of the sound mix, which feels constricted throughout, and almost claustrophobic - another signal that "The Unraveling" is a very different record than those which preceded it.

"The Unraveling" is relentless and unforgiving.  Might it have benefited from a bit of lightness, amidst all the darkness?  Perhaps.  But there's no questioning that "The Unraveling" is Drive-By Truckers' bravest album.