Amplifying the music, books, movies and journalism that matter.
Life is complicated and busy. Did you notice? Keeping up with the music, movies and books that fed your youthful imagination and conversations is harder than ever, but even more important. Here's the good news: there's never been more great new stuff. The challenge is to find it.
So here are my highly opinionated views on sounds, sights and words that will help you keep it fresh and real, and links to the veins where the richest motherlodes can be found.
Deep winter is a time for crackling fires, rich food, and red wine. For me, the ideal musical accompaniment are songs that weave a spell with a narrative or mood that commands attention. Like these four new tracks.
Anderson.Paak - Am I Wrong - Because Mardi Gras is coming and your Stevie Wonder albums are all scratchy and stuff.
Raury, Friends - An irresistible hook and a stutter straight from "m-m-m-my generation."
Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Can't Keep Checking My Phone - Someone you care about needs to hear this beat and this advice.
In a year of some strikingly original music, the choices seemed somehow easier this year. My musical DNA is on display in all these albums: the long shadow of Prince and Sly; the pulse of early electronic sounds by Kraftwerk and Eno; the pounding noise of the Clash and the Ramones; and the California pop of the Beach Boys and mid-period Fleetwood Mac. It's all in the mix, made endlessly new to make the world understandable -- and danceable.
In no particular order:
Tame Impala, Currents - An irresistible blend of R&B and electronica proving once again that we're all from somewhere else originally.
Deerhunter, Fading Frontier - The perfect melancholy of the Beach Boys "In My Room," except that now there's weed and the internet in the room.
Sleater-Kinney, No Cities to Love - Hunger makes them modern girls.
Bob Moses, Days Gone By - Like floating on a raft in a swimming pool, McCarron Pool in Brooklyn that is.
Father John Misty, I Love You Honeybear - If this generation has a James Taylor, it might be him.
Lizz Wright, Freedom and Surrender - If this generation has a Roberta Flack, it might be her.
Thundercat, The Beyond/Where the Giants Roam - Sixteen minutes of perfect trip-hop, from the Flying Lotus branch of the tree.
D'Angelo and the Vanguard, Black Messiah - Searing and salving, D'Angelo came blazing back.
Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit - Because the best rock has a sense of humor.
Jaime XX, Colours - The DJ/producer/percussionist as auteur, visionary as Jimi Hendrix at his peak. No shit, really.
After it won the National Book Award in November, it can't be news to you that Coates has written a sobering book about what it means to be a Black American in 2015. It's time to read it.
I devoured it in August in a five hour fever dream and was at a loss. It's a complex work full of anger and pessimism, a tale of promising lives cut short even when you play by the rules. Composed as a letter to his 15 year old son, there's not much light and even less hope. What could I do with this? "Live with it," turned about to be the answer.
Now with campuses across the country having a noisy conversation about race, Coates' missive offers some much needed perspective about the institutionalized inequality we have yet to address. Don't be making that face. Listen for a minute.
December. Can it be? Before the songs of Christmas both ancient and new start to fill your ears, here's one more dose of the Zeitgeist -- new sounds full of the confusion and promise of 2015. No Adele here folks; you get enough of that in your spin class.
Blood Orange, Sandra's Smile - Dev Hynes just keeps topping himself and "The Gloved One."
El Vy, Return to the Moon - C'mon, you always wondered what The National would sound like on anti-depressants.
Beirut, Gibraltar - Best handclaps of 2015.
Janet Jackson, No Sleep - She's back, all slinky and fly like it's 1999.
Ryan Adams, Bad Blood - Covering all of Taylor Swift's 1989 seemed like a stunt, but damn if he doesn't pull it off.
Son Little, Lay Down - Slow cooking on the back porch, with a dash of Bill Withers and Michael Kiwanuka.
Tame Impala first came my way with their 2011 single, "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards," a swirly ballad full of synthesizers that could have come straight off John Lennon's Mind Games in 1973. It was at once a big wet kiss to psychedelia and at the same time a brilliant re-imagination of the genre. The album was Lonerism. Critics swooned. Early '70's psychedelia was back from the dead.
Cut to 2015 and pivot: TI frontman Kevin Parker surprises us again with a fresh take on another old-school sound. The synth-y wash is still present, as is the moody obsessiveness. But this time it's R&B that gets a re-boot. Not the gritty, Stax soul that Elvis Costello repurposed so memorably on Get Happy. What Parker has in his mind is R&B as the lovechild of the Chi-lites and the Electric Light Orchestra. Todd Rundgren tried this kind of mash-up years ago but nobody paid much attention. But when you hear "Yes, I'm Changing," you will take some serious notice:
Then there's the finger-popping, blue-eyed soul of "The Less I Know the Better." Operator, get me Hall & Oates:
But the piece de resistance here is, "Cause I"m A Man," with Parker channeling Michael Jackson. Hoo-rah.
This post-millennial time warp can be so confusing, but so much fun.
In the classic 60's soul era, you could hear the sound of gospel music in most every R&B hit: the note-bending vocals, the call and response, and the longing for transcendent love: think Aretha, Wilson, Otis, Marvin, Sam, Solomon, Mavis.
But as the R&B form aged, the church influences waned and its own secular traditions -- first funk, then disco and later hip-hop -- exerted a more powerful gravitational pull.
Lizz Wright comes from that earlier church-y place but with a distinctive jazz style. On Freedom and Surrender, she brings a gospel foundation to a repertoire that runs from Nick Drake to the brothers Gibb to contemporary neo-soul. With a voice recalling Paula Cole, phrasing to rival Cassandra Wilson, and a glossy production matching Joni Mitchell's classic, Court and Spark, she has produced the year's best grownup album of vocal performance.
Here's her take on the Bee Gee's nearly forgotten, "To Love Somebody," which her aching longing rescues from cheesiness forever:
"The New Game," shows she can bring us out into the aisles, too.
