1. Meat Puppets • Whirlpool
2. Scritti Politti • Absolute
3. A.R. Kane • Grace
4. Chanté Moore • Wey U
5. Cocteau Twins • Tishbite
6. The Alan Parsons Project • Time
7. Debarge • Love Me in a Special Way
8. Evelyn “Champagne” King • Teenager
9. Greg Sage • Stay By Me
10. Sam Phillips • Soul Eclipse
11. Nilüfer Yanya • In Your Head
1. Joan Armatrading • Only One
2. Wild Carnation • Wings
3. Martha Wash / Black Box • Everybody Everybody
4. Tanya Donelly • Bum
5. Yoko Ono • Move On Fast
6. René & Angela • I Love You More
7. Josef K • It’s Kinda Funny
8. Luther Vandross • Don’t You Know That?
9. Air • Redhead Girl
10. Meshell Ndegeocello • Bright Shiny Morning
11. Sasami • Not The Time
A long-languishing mixtape, now collecting 18+ months of unreported listening. I had it nearly ready to go for spring, as an 80-minute disc, then realized I’d forgotten Wild Carnation and the whole thing got thrown into chaos. Should I continue wingless, or expand to two discs and include the uncompiled highlights of Older ’17, the leftovers of Crunch I, and the un-macromixed best of 2018 and (as of now) 2019, not to mention other discoveries, rediscoveries, omissions??!? You’ve already seen the answer,* above: scaled back down and split into halves. I burned these on a pair of CD-Rs for a July road trip but they have yet to grace a tape; while you wait for your order, stream here.
Notes:
1. Rob Sheffield calls it “utterly moronic” in his otherwise excellent Meat Puppets overview in the Spin Alternative Record Guide. At least he quotes the lyrics, and ascribes some intention to them. I’d go further and say that if the band’s music is a complete mythological system (it is), then “Whirlpool” is one of the songs that best explains where it came from: a belief, embedded in the notes, that every single thing is animate and soulful.
2. Green is my Timothée.
3. Another year, another newly heard A.R. Kane album to clarify my listening habits.
4. The purpose built next generation interstellar Waiting to Exhale track. (ILXors will know.)
6-7. See you at the roller rink.
8. Evelyn “Bubblegum” King. Sprinklers on a bright green lawn.
1. It took Nilüfer Yanya to help me hear that Joan Armatrading invented Britpop, though this song is not the key illustration of that.
2-3. The two joys.
3. Critical re-crediting.
7. It’s kinda funny that I only ever knew the (differently hypnotic) Confetti version; relative to the re-forgotten Josef K (post mid-00s reissues), that band never existed.
11. The four sounds strings make (distorted, shoegaze-y, strummed, synthesized) pair off in a mini-suite, just before the final chorus, that makes this the new highest-density locus of everything I love.
Other highlights, 2018/19 — Maxwell’s Embrya, Toni Braxton’s s/t, Royal Trux’s Cats and Dogs, For Against 90s reissues; new favorites by old favorites, discovered or repped during ILM polls: Björk (“Triumph of a Heart”), Tori Amos (“Cloud Riders,” “Concertina”), Belle & Sebastian (“The Rollercoaster Ride”), Beck (“Lazy Flies,” “Seventh Heaven”), The Go-Betweens (“Bye Bye Pride,” “Boundary Rider”) and, inevitably (?), Low (“Laser Beam,” “I Remember”); being the last to find out that “Slow Emotion Replay” is the The The song; the last to hear the immensity of “Star Guitar,” while gliding past a Kansas sunset; the last to be disassembled by “Children’s Story” and the art of storytelling; the wholly separate thrill of the ear-worm that ends it; similarly loop-able micro-hooks on Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde; new plateaus of affection, on encounter #837 (“It’s My Life,” “Love My Way,” “Everybody Wants To Rule The World”); the uncanny BPM of Whitney’s “Love Will Save The Day”; trying to reclaim Love & Rockets, struggling to conjure the “so” in “So Alive,” etc., but conceding the coolness of “No Big Deal” as still a minor deal. To me they’ll remain the band in my friend’s tale of a demonic b-side on a desert drive. The full story, someday.
Future highlights — Stephanie Mills, George Jones, Leonard Cohen’s “Closing Time.”
Sealed with a kiss,
G
*For a different answer, check the comments.
