And here I would have thought you were looking for cross dressers from that handle!
I guess be careful about which corners of IG you hang out in? (If that's not what you're looking for. IDK. Perhaps your handle contains multitudes.)
Love the full band live version of that song that was captured on the live part of To Venus and Back too.
Also, probably my two favorite Tori b-sides are from this era:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__i-CccPdmk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2qzZPqlTZ4
Oh man, Tori. What an insanely talented, special, and fascinating songwriter, musician, and person... and Little Earthquakes is an insanely special album.
I'm down with calling it one of the greatest debut albums, and the end of the album...? How the title track, and the bridge near the end of the title track, hits after "Me and a Gun," and after the rest of the album, just... fuck. I'm hard pressed to think of a more powerful musical moment of the entire 90s.
My Tori Top 5, more or less:
1. Little Earthquakes
2. from the choirgirl hotel
3. Scarlet's Walk
4. Boys for Pele
5. Under the Pink
(Honorable mention to To Venus and Back, which is uneven, but so wonderfully weird, and one of the last gasps of the fire that animated her music in the 90s so.)
Was wondering if one of the performances with Julianna Barwick was going to make the music site rounds. Their rendition of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" was lovely too.
Also, if anyone wants a performance of that version of "Close Encounters" to keep, she did it for another livestream as well, and then later put up on Bandcamp: https://batforlashes.bandcamp.com/album/livestream-at-home-los-angeles-2021
Yeah, I wouldn't expect "Measure of a Man" to be indicative of where she's going next... and I was interpreting her talking about "the beginning" when teasing the drop of "Tears in the Club" to mean that this is the first single off of a new album, but IDK, you may be right, and that might not be what she meant.
Yeah, I was surprised to see twigs in the 60s too. I hope that is not one of the rankings based off of the Sgum staff having heard things we haven't heard.
MAGDALENE was such an impressive record, I have been wondering where she can go after that... at least if she continues her streak where each new release shows such palpable songwriting growth. As much as I would love to hear the studio versions of those OPN collab songs she was performing in 2016, after MAGDALENE it seemed like they would probably feel a bit like a regression. Though, given her more recent stuff, maybe those would sound really good right now.
If nothing else, I hope Sky has at least kept the other track that Tamaryn and (IIRC) Jorge Elbrecht wrote with her for Masochism, since "Downhill Lullaby" fucks, and well, just about anything Tamaryn does fucks, really.
Yep, it's my favorite album of the year. :)
I can see that! I had only been listening to her stuff that was on Spotify, so "Fire Kites" was the best surprise to me when the album dropped.
It looks like SSION may have a new one out in 2022 as well (perhaps in the spring, according to his comment here):
https://twitter.com/SSION/status/1466492615059066880?s=20
Some since-deleted IG posts from this summer showed him working with Nick Weiss from Teengirl Fantasy (and from the last SSION album), and from that Twitter post, I'm wondering if Cecile is Cecile Believe and Samantha is Samantha Urbani. Also, it looks like Rostam is on board too.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8e/91/5e/8e915ebeee6769fa88bbc838d015742e.gif
Andy Stott represent!
Glad to see Hildegard getting some love on these lists, that album has some good tunes. ("Jour 1" is the one that gets stuck in my head the most.)
And yeah, my inability to connect with a lot of the newer albums this year wound up meaning that I took a lot of deep dives into older material, typically old loves who I haven't given as much play to these days (granted, in PJ Harvey's case, this was aided by the release of all the demos from past albums), and maybe some whose work I didn't know quite as thoroughly.
Here's my top however-many. Beach House and Sleigh Bells have my definite #1 and #2 songs, everything else is loosely ordered.
Beach House - "Once Twice Melody"
Sleigh Bells - "Locust Laced"
Andy Stott - "Don't know how" / "The beginning" (both feat. Alison Skidmore)
Jessie Ware - "Hot N Heavy"
Yves Tumor - "Jackie"
Arca - "Born Yesterday" (feat. Sia) / "Prada"
Noga Erez - "Fire Kites"
Magdalena Bay - "Secrets (Your Fire)"
Shygirl - "BDE"
JPEGMAFIA - "ARE YOU HAPPY?" / "REBOUND!" (feat. DATPIFFMAFIA)
For Noga Erez, I'm personally not counting the songs from her album that came out before hand, since most of them came out last year and I listened to them a bunch then. And then it would be too hard to choose. KIDS is full of bangers y'all.
So little love here for "Locust Laced," and I think that song GOOOOOOOOES. Easily their best/most fun song since "Comeback Kid," IMHO--it's just 2 min and 30 seconds of pure party.
Now do Matthew Tavares!
(jk, kinda... 2020 was probably a slightly more prolific year for him in terms of co-writing credits and miscellaneous releases under his own projects.)
I feel like I hear traces of "Marin's Dreams" in some of the Once Twice Melody songs... part of my brain keeps thinking "Marin's Dreams" was a precursor to their current era, just because of the release order, though apparently they've been working on the new album since 2018, so I guess it's more that they are of the same cloth.
SOTY: Beach House - "Once Twice Melody"
AOTY: Noga Erez - KIDS
Surprised no one has mentioned Beach House yet! (And here I thought their only obstacle in the Gummy's Top 10 song list would be lack of a clear consensus pick.)
Wasn't sure for a hot minute if I was still too much in the honeymoon phase to bestow "Once Twice Melody" my personal SOTY crown, but actually, nah, I'm good with it. (Sorry "Locust Laced!")
That Yves Tumor EP is a no-brainer, so good.
I also really liked Cakes Da Killa's & Proper Villain's Muvaland Vol 2, and would like to give an honorable mention to Lynks' Smash Hits Vol. 2. (...guess there's a little bit of a theme going here.)
I dunno, I feel like whether or not to include EPs in your own AOTY list is a personal decision. (Like, for my end of the '10s album list, I included FKA twig's M3ll155X EP, because her evolution happened just as much in her EPs as in her LPs, and it didn't feel right to ignore the bodes of work that still really had an impact on me just because they were shorter.)
And hells yeah, that Yves Tumor EP is great.
Yeah, it is pretty fun having a couple releases to look forward to, and to be able to give more attention to the songs when they come out.
The only thing I don't love is how they keep using the white and gold version of the album cover for promo and press releases when that isn't the regular version. It's so pretty! The regular version really doesn't stack up in comparison. I mean, I don't really fuck with the whole vinyl thing, but that cover has me tempted to pick up the limited edition vinyl version of the album just to get that cover.
In that guy's defense, What's Your Pleasure is solid enough to where I personally would almost allow it. (...and no, I was not the caller.)
I attempted to join the Callin thing yesterday on an old iPhone I have access to (an iPhone 6 as well, which apparently somehow is still getting iOS updates? Whatev, I'll take it), but the Callin room was nooooooot working for me at all. Guess I'm stuck waiting for that Android support.
(I'd say come over to the Android side--we have freaking aux cords!--but I don't know how frequently that's true anymore.)
So Arca dominated the new releases this week for me, but the EERA album snuck up out of left field and kinda clobbered me halfway through the day. Definitely worth a listen, y'all: https://eeramusic.bandcamp.com/album/speak
Was also intrigued to see that Bekah CC has an EP out today... not sure how I feel about it as a whole yet (and not sure why "SIGH" was left off, that song bangs), but last time I checked she only had two or so songs out, and this slice of fantastically creepy rap definitely left me wanting more:
https://youtu.be/2UkelIlMKkc
Oh, this one is just lovely.
It's Arca's queer psychosexual flaming egg-pooping, Digimon-vibing, two-headed skeleton slave dominating, Prometheus Engineer-life force sucking, floating hip skeleton crown wearing uncanny valley world, and we are just lucky to live in it.
Oh shit, I didn't know about the fifth kick...! That makes me wonder a little bit if that would be the piano and voice one she mentioned last year, though IDK, I can see something like that getting dropped or morphing a lot between then and now.
Hmmm, perhaps! I was wondering if label fuckery was behind this, since I wasn't really expecting so much time to elapse between KiCk i and subsequent KICKs, which could explain Arca wanting to move on if you're right.
IDK, I'm pretty amped for KICK ii based off of what we've heard, and feel like it could live up to i. Not sure iii will be as much my tea, and haven't formed as much an opinion on iiii yet, but I am still expecting to be shook.
I guess that's true. I was excited for two albums in one day, but I think 3 albums in one day is a bit much (and finding out that the KICK series is now concluding so soon feels almost like a premature climax)... but yours is a better way of looking at it.
Also... Shirley Mansion! Super curious to hear that collab.
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