13 | February | 2015

Continuing from the last post, we are now entering top 12 territory where I will try to give a more detailed piece on each record and, of course, recommend them more persuasively (which isn’t to say that I won’t deviate from recommendation every once in a while and write an off-topic piece on anything I may think about). Another thing I failed to mention is that the entirety of this list is mine, not yours, not hers, and definitely not pitchfork’s, so voicing your disagreements with it will not only result in you embarrassing yourself but also a time wasted for everybody else. K? K.

12. Run the Jewels – Run the Jewels 2

What can I say about Run the Jewels that hasn’t already been said since they broke out last year? Countless outlets, in their own words, have described them as the group to look up to and surpass in the foreseeable future of not just hip hop but also collaborative music in general, an assessment you might find difficult to attack since both members of the group are indeed, for lack of better words, made for each other; EL-P, the master producer and lyricist whose knack for complexity has led me to rapgenius more times than I could remember and Killer Mike, the infamous southern emcee with a strong political concern who offers more personality than the average bang-bang-shoot-dem-niggas-up-cuz rapper, what? You don’t find the connection? That’s because you just gotta see it in action.

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11. BADBADNOTGOOD – III

Being born in the mid to late 90s, my early exposure to jazz was limited to occasionally hearing bits of smooth, dumbed-down saxophone pieces that were in heavy rotation at almost every bookstore within driving distance, so I don’t have the experience nor the credibility to assess this record based on how it measures against seminal musicians’ and that’s not necessarily a blasphemy unless you’re an old jazzhead whose admiration for Giant Steps or Bitches Brew borders on the obsessive, additionally, BBNG have never been one to glorify their predecessors, if anything they’re in the forefront of what I feel is the recurrence of that widely celebrated era during which the prospect of boundless innovation presided over those who embraced it and that sentiment really rings true throughout III’s solid 10 tracks as BBNG give us a glimpse at what jazz could, should, and will become.

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10. Whirr – Sway

Hard as it is to believe, nothing of monumental significance bearing the shoegaze genre has been released since that stretch between the late 80s and the early 90s where you couldn’t browse through a record store’s collection without stumbling across music that would influence so many artists down the road it’s almost preposterous to argue otherwise. Unfortunately, like many a musical movement before it, the original shoegaze scene faded into the background of time as its groups either disbanded or lost relevance to the very generation they had helped define. What came after was somewhat of a resurgence, or should I say reincarnation? Groups like A Place to Bury Strangers, Weekend, and, hold on to your hats- Whirr, take everything identifiable with shoegaze, present it in 21st century hd-glory and stuck with it, sometimes to a fault, like every concern they had going in about being labeled as unnecessary revivalist bullshit had left the room long before the first note was reverbed. In the case of Sway, this approach strangely succeeds in making it sound fresh yet nostalgic at the same time, the only analogy for it I can think of despite not having drunk a single drop of alcohol for 18 years is how the aging of a bottle of wine heightens its taste; you know it’s been around forever but that doesn’t diminish your enjoyment of it because you also know that it’s good.

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9. Ratking – So It Goes

While the theme of home is hardly a novelty in hip hop, there’s a peculiar poignancy to it, one only the best storytellers can properly convey. Wiki and Hak of Ratking may not have a wealth of hip hop experience on them like those emcees you’ve heard people call legends for years do, but when it comes to describing the grittiest, most intimate corners of modern day New York, they are second to none and coupled with the cluttered, harrowing production of elusive third member Sporting Life, they still have much to offer beyond that. The logical thing to write now would be a clichéd comparison between So It Goes and Illmatic, i.e. “Nas would be proud.”, but nah, I never really liked that record anyway.

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8. Interpol – El Pintor

Having successfully maintained a momentum of success post- Turn on the Bright Lights with 2004’s Antics, Interpol were starting to show symptoms of decline on 2007’s Our Love to Admire. A record that some (including I) thought was decent enough while others thought was just too bland to be given a second listen. Then 2010’s Interpol came along and the line separating the former from the latter was simply no more; “Well, I guess Interpol did peak at TOTBL, moving on.” Little did we know that they were on the cusp of something evolutionary when they came through with El Pintor almost four years later. Clocking at around forty minutes, it’s filled to the brim with all the great Interpol-isms we love; elegant guitar melodies, sensual basslines, intense yet subdued drumming, Paul Banks’ pained vocals and massive, m a s s i v e choruses, each feeding off of one another creating this hazy, dreamlike vibe which is where Interpol work best as has been evidenced by the glorious nocturnal murk of Turn on the Bright Lights. In fact, you could say El Pintor is its sister album and I wouldn’t correct you.

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7. Braid – No Coast

“In terms of the new album, I’m not really sure (if) we’re really striving to achieve anything other than to make the best record that Braid could make right now and to make a record that we’re capable of making.” Braid frontman / guitarist Bob Nanna said regarding No Coast, their followup to 1998’s seminal Frame & Canvas. I single that statement out because it pretty much sums up what makes No Coast such a rewarding listen. There’s an emphasis on the now that really puts things into perspective; here you have BraId who are returning to the scene they were once a part of only to find that nothing has changed except for the people and then you have this trend going on where it seems like originality is long dead and everyone’s coming to grips with it by creating a vacuum in which the past exists as much as the present, enabling Braid to talk about the same shit they were talking about sixteen years ago without sounding irrelevant, which they could’ve done on No Coast but chose not to. Instead, they highlighted this irrelevancy to tackle themes of mortality, nostalgia, contentedness and whatever else you start to view differently at 35 in a playfully bitter way that exudes a kind of wisdom only they can convey.

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6. How to Dress Well – “What is This Heart?”