Top Albums and Songs of 2022

A couple of years ago, I was accepted into a Facebook Group called “Village Voice Pazz & Jop Rip-Off Poll,” which for someone like me – a guy who dreamed at age 15 of becoming the record reviews editor of Rolling Stone magazine – was like a dream come true.  For the uninitiated, Pazz & Jop was begun by Robert Christgau in 1971, took a couple of years off, and then ran in the Voice annually from 1974 through the late 2010s, whenever it was that the once-great periodical finally bit the dust for good.  An indispensable archive of poll results can be found on Christgau’s website.

The way that P&J worked, each participant had 100 points to distribute to 10 albums, with a maximum per-album allocation of 30 and a minimum of five.  During the time that Greil Marcus participated in the poll , he was always open about the fact that he’d award 30 points to an album (for example, Bryan Ferry’s 1978 The Bride Stripped Bare) just to give it a boost in the final rankings.  Others took the “10 albums, 10 points each” approach, and a third group would painstakingly attempt to assign the exactly appropriate number of points to each of the albums on their list.  People who know me well will not be surprised to hear that I fall into the third group.

This year was really hard.  In 2021, I had difficulty coming up with 10 albums that truly fit the definition of what I would normally call a Top Ten candidate, but this year there were probably two dozen albums that fit the bill.  Complicating matters, SZA had to go and release one of the year’s best records A WEEK AGO, which required some additional thought on my part.  But without further ado, presenting my Top Ten Albums of 2022:

Beyoncé, RENAISSANCE – 20 points

Mountain Goats, Bleed Out – 17

Amanda Shires, Take It Like a Man – 12

Lizzo, Special – 11

SZA, SOS – 10

Wet Leg, S/T – 8

Drive-By Truckers, Welcome to Club XIII – 7

Kendrick Lamar, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers – 5

Miranda Lambert, Palomino – 5

The Paranoid Style, For Executive Meeting – 5

Random thoughts on the Top Ten:

·         From the very first time I listened to the new Beyoncé, I suspected that it would be my #1 – but I didn’t realize how close an album would come to pushing it out of the top spot, which Bleed Out nearly did.

·         Mountain Goats, like Drive-By Truckers before them, is a band to which I’m a late convert, but now I realize that I’ve really given them short shrift over the years.

·         Amanda Shires has been great for a while, but she really took a quantum leap forward on the new album.

·         It is nearly impossible to resist the overall positivity of the Lizzo experience, and in doing so one can have a few laughs along the way.

·         Wet Leg and The Paranoid Style both made me feel like I was back in Cheney Hall at UC Berkeley (Spoiler Alert: it was a long time ago).

·         Miranda Lambert continued the groundbreaking (and I’d argue under-noticed) work she’s been doing for well more than a decade now.

·         DBT had scored in recent years with a series of acutely political albums, and it was a bit of a relief to hear them take the foot off that gas pedal for a bit.

·         And, last but certainly not least – I don’t know I’ve spoken to or read anyone who thinks Mr. Morale is Kendrick Lamar’s best album, but the highs are incredibly high (see below for evidence of that).

The next ten, which in another year might have easily cracked my Top Ten:

Willie Nelson – A Beautiful Time

Bruce Springsteen – Only the Strong Survive

Maren Morris – Humble Quest

Beach Bunny – Emotional Creature

Taylor Swift – Midnights

Danielle Ponder – Some of Us Are Brave

Laura Benitez and the Heartache – California Centuries

Soccer Mommy – Sometimes Forever

Arcade Fire – WE

Sunny Sweeney – Married Alone

And some honorable mentions, in no particular order:

Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain

The Black Keys – Dropout Boogie

Harry Styles – Harry’s House

Jack White – Entering Heaven Alive

Dylan Triplett – Who is He?

The Vandoliers – S/T

Loudon Wainwright III – Lifetime Achievement

Chris Canterbury – Quaalude Lullabies

Courtney Marie Andrews – Loose Future

Ashley MacBryde Presents: Lindeville

Plains – I Walked With You a Way

Carly Rae Jepsen – The Loneliest Time

Angel Olsen – Big Time

Chris Isaak – Everybody Knows It’s Christmas

 

Since I’m on a roll, my Top Ten Songs of 2022:

Kendrick Lamar (feat. Beth Gibbons) – Mother I Sober.  Triumphant transformation.

Taylor Swift – Anti-Hero.  The earworm and catch phrases of the year.

Lizzo – About Damn Time.  Out on the dance floor – now!

Wet Leg – Chaise Longue.  “Would you like us to assign someone to worry your mother?” was the line of the year.

Laura Benitez and the California Heartache – Plaid Shirt.  Just your everyday instant classic country breakup song.

Beyoncé – Virgo’s Groove.  NSFW, and I learned that the hard way.

Drive-By Truckers – The Driver.  In seven minutes, a distillation of everything they do best.

Bruce Springsteen – Night Shift.  How had I forgotten what a great song this is?

Angel Olsen – All the Good Times.  Dusty Springfield, meet Tammy Wynette.

SZA – Blind.  Also NSFW, but quite likely the best verbal interplay of the year.

 

And what the heck, since I never got around to posting it this year, here’s my Top Ten of 2021:

1. James McMurtry, The Horses and the Hounds

2. Liz Phair, Soberish

3. Alison Krauss & Robert Plant, Raise the Roof

4. Aimee Mann, Queens of the Summer Hotel

5. Lana Del Rey, Blue Banisters

6. Sleater-Kinney, Path of Wellness

7. Courtney Barnett, Things Take Time, Take Time

8. Hayes Carll, You Get It All

9. Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, Georgia Blue

10. Mickey Guyton, Remember Her Name

Rock on!  See you in 2023.

The Duke

It's been a long time since I've gone down the Duke Ellington rabbit hole.  Last week, what sent me down was a tweet (a retweet, actually) from a music writer whose name I can't even recall off the top of my head, with his list of the 30 Greatest Big Band Jazz Albums of all time.  I figured there had to be a Duke album on the list, and the writer did not disappoint.  The album in the photo at left was not the album on the list, but we'll come back to that in a moment.  

I knew who Duke Ellington was from an early age, but my first real exposure to his music came in the late 1970s.  My then-girlfriend's father was a jazz fan, and he owned the indispensable collection, The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz.  My own tastes in music were starting to expand around that time, and he was kind enough to loan me the album, which I promptly recorded on cassette.  I still have one of the tapes, Memorex no less, but its useful, listenable life is long past.

I don't know that the Smithsonian Collection remains available today, but it has been re-created on Spotify by enterprising listeners, and the same is probably true for the other major streaming services.  It's a treasure trove, and particularly useful in helping to determine exactly what types of jazz music are palatable to a listener's ears.  For me, the two major discoveries were Ellington and Charlie Parker.  Going back through the Spotify playlist, it is striking how well the curators did with their selections of Ellington tunes for the collection:

East St. Louis Toodle-Oo (two versions, and yes, the Steely Dan version of the song was the first I'd heard)

Creole Rhapsody

Harlem Air Shaft

Concerto for Cootie

Cotton Tail

In a Mellotone

Ko-Ko

Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue

Blue Serge

Brilliant songs all, and brilliant selections, considering there are better known tunes in the Ellington pantheon.

Back to the album pictured above - also a Smithsonian collection, a Christmas gift in 1980 from the same then-girlfriend.  However, by then I had gone to school in Berkeley and she had gone to UCLA, where she met her husband-to-be the first week she was there.  The gift exchange at Christmas might have been a bit awkward - I don't remember what I bought for her, but I'm quite confident it wasn't as nice as what she gave me.

The 1940 version of the Ellington Big Band is remembered today as the absolute pinnacle of his career.  It's come to be known as the "Blanton-Webster" version of the band, after the brilliant young bassist Jimmy Blanton (who would tragically succumb to tuberculosis at age 23) and the equally great tenor saxophonist Ben Webster.  Six of the ten songs listed above were recorded by the Blanton-Webster band, and there are at least a dozen others on the two-record set that are equally good.  It's that good.

Fortunately, the songs all exist today - the album to seek out on your streaming service is Never No Lament - The Blanton-Webster band, which collects all of the tunes the band recorded together.  Listening to it today, it's obvious why Ellington is considered one of the great musical artists in American history.  A rabbit hole well worth going down.  Besides, it's cooler down there.

"Maus" and Why It Matters

 

The first political science course I took in college (at American River College, here in the Sacramento area) was taught by a gentleman who had lived in Tennessee until he graduated college, after which he and his wife moved to California.  During his lectures, he frequently referred, in a sarcastic manner,  to his birth state as "enlightened Tennessee."

Dr. Striplin is no longer with us, but "enlightened Tennessee" has been all over the headlines this month, courtesy of the decision by the McMinn County Board of Education to remove "Maus" from the curriculum.  In a statement released on Thursday, the Board said that it voted to remove the graphic memoir from the county's schools "because of its unnecessary use of profanity and nudity and its depiction of violence and suicide."  The statement goes on to note that school administrators have been asked to "find other works that accomplish the same educational goals in a more age-appropriate fashion."

The question that comes to my mind is this: what could be more age-appropriate for young learners than an historically accurate, well-written depiction of the Holocaust in the graphic format?  Yes, it is a book filled with pain and suffering - how could it not be? -  as well as one that demonstrates in stark fashion how the impact of the Holocaust crossed entire generations.  But what are we afraid of here, exactly?  And how about we show a little respect for those young learners, who I can't help but think have a greater capacity to understand challenging topics than is assumed by the McMinn board of education.

In the face of this nonsense, of course I had to re-read the book.  The first part of Spiegelman's story was released in 1986 (on the left in the above photo), and though the exact circumstances of my first encounter with it are lost to the mists of time, I'm guessing that it was the Village Voice that alerted me to its existence.  

The genius of Maus is in the way that author Art Spiegelman makes the modern-day story of learning from his father just as compelling as the horrifying tale that his father is telling.  Spiegelman is brutally honest, even painfully so, about his father Vladek.  Vladek's experiences during the Holocaust were incredible, without question.  As Art himself comments in one scene depicted in the book, Vladek's ability to survive the horrors of that time was due in large part to luck, but also to his father's remarkable resourcefulness and present-mindedness.  That comes through powerfully throughout.  But while Vladek survived, something of his humanity did not.  The older Vladek is petty, often irrational, and as depicted in a memorable scene when Art's wife Francoise picks up an African-American hitchhiker with Vladek also in the car, is quite the racist.  

For me, Maus is a landmark book.  And while I've seen some write that it is inaccurate to say the book is being "banned," for me "removing from the curriculum" is at the top of the slippery slope that leads to banning.  It seems unlikely to happen, but here's hoping that the McMinn County Board reconsiders their decision.

Notable Albums of 2021 (Memorializing)

 Not a bad year at all.

• Lana Del Rey - Chemtrails Over The Country Club
• Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi - They're Calling Me Home
• Eric Church - Heart
• Eric Church - Soul
• Tom Jones - Surrounded by Time
• The Black Keys - Delta Kream
• Chrissie Hynde - Standing in the Doorway: Chrissie Hynde Sings Bob Dylan
• Leftover Feelings - John Hiatt
• Lula Wiles - Shame and Sedition
• Liz Phair - Soberish
• Sleater-Kinney - Path of Wellness
• Lucy Dacus - Home Video
• Allison Russell - Outside Child
• Leon Bridges - Gold-Diggers Sound
• Jackson Browne - Downhill from Everywhere
• Rodney Crowell - Triage
• David Crosby - For Free
• Sarah Jarosz - Blue Heron Suite
• Cassandra Jenkins - An Overview on Phenomenal Nature
• Los Lobos - Native Sons
• Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever
• Yola - Stand For Myself
• Emily Duff - Razor Blade Smile
• Jade Bird - Different Kinds of Light
• Kalie Shorr - I Got Here By Accident
• James McMurtry - The Horses and the Hounds
• Sturgill Simpson - The Ballad of Dood & Juanita
• Lorde - Solar Power
• Madi Diaz - History of a Feeling
• Kacey Musgraves - star-crossed
• The Felice Brothers - From Dreams to Dust
• Mickey Guyton - Remember Her Name
• Brandi Carlile - In These Silent Days
• Natalie Hemby - Pins and Needles
• Carolyn Wonderland - Tempting Fate
• Lilly Hiatt - Lately
• Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit - Georgia Blue
• Lana Del Rey - Blue Banisters
• Hayes Carll - You Get It All
• The War on Drugs - I Don't Live Here Anymore
• Pistol Annies - Hell of a Holiday
• Snail Mail - Valentine
• Aimee Mann - Queens of the Summer Hotel
• Amanda Shires - For Christmas
• Courtney Barnett - Things Take Time, Take Time
• Taylor Swift - Red (Taylor's Version)

Songs of the Year, 2021: A Little Soon To Say, Jackson Browne

Jackson Browne earned his spot in the Hall of Fame a long time ago, so it's OK that his late-career albums fall short of the standards he set early on.  None of them have been bad, don't get me wrong.  But you can always be sure you will get 1-2 political songs that are just a little too obvious (and probably a verse or two too long), and a couple of rockers that sound (more or less) like an old guy trying a little too hard to recapture his youth. 

But you can also count on 3-4 songs that can stand right up there as part of Browne's pantheon.  "A Little Soon to Say" is one of those songs, and with this one I'd go a bit further - this is one of the best songs he's ever written, one that perfectly captures the tone of our times. 

I wanna see you holding out your light
I wanna see you light the way
Beyond the sirens in the broken night
Beyond the sickness of our day
And after all we've come to live with
I wanna know if you're ok
I wanna think it's gonna be alright
It's just a little soon to say

It's distressing - amazing, really - that this is where we find ourselves at this point in our history, but this is where we are.  I too wanna think it's gonna be alright.  Only time will tell.