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| Dana Yurcisin |
Top Albums of 2019
By Dana Yurcisin
[The members of Grasser are really providing us with some A-plus content this week. Today, we have the Top Albums of 2019 from Dana Yurcisin. In addition to being a member of Grasser and Static Sex, Dana is also a filmmaker and photographer. You may be familiar with the clip for Dentist's "The Latter" that he directed for the band.
Once again, we have a a list that's given me a lot of new things to check out. Hopefully, this does the same for you.
Thanks, Dana.]
I'm Dana Yurcisin, Asbury Park-based musician (Grasser, Static Sex), filmmaker & photographer (IG: @danayurcisin). We're currently starting work on Grasser's first LP. I'm finishing two solo LPs, and will have multiple music videos and short films (including a documentary on the making of Earth Telephone's debut LP) all coming out in 2020.
11. Liturgy, H.A.Q.Q.I'm playing catch-up on Liturgy. They're one of those bands that sits on your radar for years before you decide one day to actually listen to them. That day came, and I started with their newest release. It didn't take long before I was swept up by their all-encompassing mass of sound: Battering blast beats, tremolo picked guitars, choral chants, pretty bells -- they throw the entire fucking kitchen sink at us; but it creates a listening experience unlike any other. Like sitting in the center of a category five hurricane, surrounded by destruction but presented with a gorgeous view, these nine tracks combine devastation and beauty in such a way that you can only respond with awe… at least after the ringing in your ears has ceased.
"Real" black metal fans hate liturgy for mixing traditional black metal sounds with anything but (and for not wearing corpse paint, but we can have an entire discussion on that alone elsewhere), but genre-agnostics will find that very element the most enticing and rewarding. If you've a taste for the brash & the heavy, but bore quickly of things played too straight, Liturgy just might be what the doctor ordered.
I'll admit that I came to this one way late, too. My first listen was last week, since I had seen a live video of the band earlier in the year and singer Geordie Greep's voice turned me off like a goddamn light switch. Boom. I was over them before even starting… Or was I? I had to know what the fuss was all about, so I threw on the record and let it play all the way through. Now, I'll maintain that I kind of wish Matt Kelvin was their only singer here; but at the same time, these dudes haven't even hit 21 yet and I expect them to develop more over time. And the music? Jesus christ… the music.
Having listened to god knows how many guitar rock records over my 31 years, this was like hearing the guitar for the first time all over again. What IS that sound? What is THAT sound?! Schlagenheim is a record that is simultaneously all over the place and singular in its vision. It sounds like fifty things at once, but no other band sounds like *these* fifty things. The riffs are heavy, the shifts are swift, and the band's electrifying energy is ever-present. Let your guard down and open yourself to the future of guitar music.
Shoegaze isn't dead, and it never will be if bands like DIIV have anything to say about it. There's a holy, cleansing power to the genre-specific sound of layered, reverb'd guitars cranked up to eleven, which makes it all the more fitting a platform for singer Zachary Cole-Smith to write about kicking a heroin addiction. If DIIV's last record, Is The Is Are, was a bit of a false narrative on that front, this time, he means it. "I can help you / It's how I help myself," goes one line from "Skin Game," succinctly summing up how the road to recovery is never a solo effort. In the same vein, shoegaze all but requires a surrender of individual sound in favor of a unified mass, and when they kick on the fuzz, these guys meld into a transcendent whole. Listen to the ways the interweaving guitar lines of "Blankenship"'s wordless chorus work together to create one earworm of a riff, or how the fuzzed-out chords of "Horsehead"'s final stretch layer on top of one another until they threaten to swallow Smith's voice entirely, and you'll understand the power of a unified front.
Intellectual essays aren't known to be "fun" reads. After all, critical thinking typically requires a sort of clear-headed sobriety, and neither "clear-headed" nor "sobriety" are terms often associated with a good time. Peaer strap a firecracker to that idea and blow it to bits. Each of the songs on A Healthy Earth could serve as the genesis for a collegiate thesis, examining the myriad ways our existence is threatened by both the minutiae of our day-to-day and society at large: That shampoo you use is killing you. Common decency seems to be lacking entirely from all those in power. Romantic relationships are nearly impossible to maintain on a molecular level. Why can't we just be dogs instead? All of these ideas are explored with music of matching curiosity and dynamism, from the quietest of whispers and barely-there drums to the frenzied thrash of a fuzz-fucked freakout. If the unexamined life is not worth living, Peaer's greatest gift to us is its very existence.
Okay obviously cheating a bit, but I don't care. Sometimes a band comes along whose members counterbalance and complement each other so well it seems the gods have deemed their meeting necessary. Big Thief released UFOF earlier this year to widespread critical acclaim for its mystical lyrical impressionism, celestial soundscapes and tight band dynamics; and they could've easily coasted for two to three years off its success. But why stop there when you're so tuned in to the same elevated frequency as these four musicians? With no decent answer to that question, they quickly hit a Texas studio to record the terrestrial counterpart to UFOF, Two Hands. What it lacks in experimental sonics and texture, it more than makes up for with warmth and raw, visceral power.
"Forgotten Eyes" has the pleasing sway and familiarity of a song you've known forever and never tire of. "The Toy" has a vocal line that worms its way into your head in seconds. And "Not" quite possibly deserves a spot in the canon of Greatest Rock Songs Ever, Adrianne Lenker’s spit speckling the mic as she shouts about all of the things it is not before erupting with an explosive and chaotic guitar solo. The gods look down and can't help but smile.
I'm just going to come out and say it: Earl Sweatshirt is the best natural rapper alive. Like his Odd Future brethren Tyler, The Creator, Thebe Kgositsile continues to mature and leave his early roots of shock-baiting horrorcore in the rearview. Though unlike Tyler, whose sound has blossomed outward to grand new heights, Earl pushes his music in a more insular direction, like inviting listeners directly into the crevices of his fragmented and busy brain. His beats force us to reckon with what we consider the very definition of a "beat" -- slowed, chopped, garbled to shit, the samples are all but unrecognizable in his hands, and it's mesmerizing. His flow & wordplay are unfuckwithable. Lyrics like "Sellin' kids culture with death, circlin' like carrion / The more the merrier, phone got you livin' vicarious" and "Somebody tooted in the student commons / The bell rang, he went home to argue in the comments / I watched the doppler move / I watched a child get introduced to violence" allude to stories so much larger than their songs' runtimes that they can be infinitely pored over and studied, yielding new meaning and insight each time out. Since last year's Some Rap Songs, he's perfected this sort of micro yet deeply layered storytelling, and I can't wait to hear where he takes it next.
One of indie-rock's most dependable and under-appreciated songwriters returns with his dance-punk outfit Operators to throw one last strobe-lit party for the end times. Dan Boeckner, Devojka, and Sam Brown paint a picture of apocalyptic oblivion in neon brushstrokes -- Springsteenian major-chord progressions are soaked in swaths of vintage analogue synths and glued together by Brown's motorik rhythms. It's as danceable as it is devastating in its indictments of late-capitalism and rising fascism, but -- especially when experienced live -- you can't help but feel thrillingly alive once submitted to its pulse-pounding trance, even as the bombs fall.
Following the huge stylistic shift in 22, A Million -- an album I respected more than I enjoyed -- Justin Vernon and friends return with perhaps their most powerful statement yet. The experimentations that defined the previous record are refined to a perfectionist's pitch on i, i, producing a more positive and uplifting listening experience that seems to echo Vernon's newfound mental peace in the face of life-altering fame. Songs melt in and out of focus, a sound collage of dozens of musical ideas and collaborators with seemingly no single point of origin that could only be created by a group wholly committed to the idea of the obliteration of self. Of course, none of this would be relevant if the songs weren't good, but try listening to a track like "Hey, Ma" or "U (Man Like)" and not finding yourself absentmindedly humming the chorus moments later. You can't, and you won’t mind.
Studio-magician and songwriter (Sandy) Alex G has a knack for creating mysterious and occasionally inscrutable musical worlds that defy categorization. Instead of simply skating by on familiar folk and Elliot Smith-isms (which, he could -- his songwriting is that good), he takes his obvious stylistic inspirations and infuses them with helpings of electronica, vaporwave, noise and experimental abstraction. This indelible tinkerer's spirit rewards more of the brain's pleasure centers than your typical singer-songwriter and is honed further on House of Sugar, resulting in his most sonically pristine and rich -- yet no less idiosyncratic -- album to date.
Beloved Boston post-hardcore band Pile aren't fans of repetition. Having recently relocated to Nashville, songwriter Rick Maguire set out to make a kinetic, high-energy record, partially in response to 2017's more meditative A Hairshirt of Purpose, and boy, did he and his pals deliver. This ferocious and fiery set of tracks tackles everything from the solitary day-to-day, to art-as-occupation, to the general shittiness of one Stephen Miller with a verve only a band of this technical prowess could muster. Hairpin turns and dynamic shifts abound. This record is best experienced fully submitted to, open to wherever the pummeling drums, intertwining thrash-folk guitar lines and guttural bass care to take you. Above all, experience it live, if you can, for one of the tightest, most visceral performances I've ever experienced.
No record following Remind Me Tomorrow, released not even three weeks into 2019, managed to combine diaristic personal detail, powerhouse vocal performances, atmospheric production and songwriting chops as artfully or cohesively as Van Etten. Armed with a new, synth-fueled sound, courtesy of collaborating producer John Congleton, Van Etten crafts tales of near-death experiences, love lost and found, aging and past selves as haunting as they are catchy. And the song "Seventeen," in addition to quite possibly being the best song of the year, will have you mindlessly hitting 95 mph on the highway, white-knuckled and heart racing, as it reaches its final, elated chorus. So hop in that little red car that don't belong to you, turn this record up loud, and click Remind Me Tomorrow on whatever ails you.
Honorable Mentions:
Tyler, The Creator, IGOR
Danny Brown, uknowhatimsayin¿
Diat, Positive Disintegration
Brittany Howard, Jaime
Purple Mountains, S/T
Bruce Springsteen, Western Stars
Grasser, Later, Registration (yeah, I know this is my own band, but it rips)
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