Front Burner 2019

"There just isn't any good music out there any more!"  

Whenever I hear someone say that, I picture the crabby old man in my old neighborhood that was always yelling at us kids to get off his lawn. Seriously, someone might only like the same old rotation of classic rock hits, but that doesn't mean there isn't any good music out there any more. When I hear people say that, the first thing that comes to mind is that they're not trying hard enough to find the good stuff. 

The problem is that people aren't going to find anything all that interesting if they only listen to commercial radio. It's no longer designed to expand our musical horizons; it's meant to sell us things. If they keep us content by playing all the songs we already know and love, we'll stay tuned and listen to all their advertisements. The stations playing newer music are often playing pop songs designed to "hook" us so we'll stay tuned and listen to all their advertisements. (Notice the theme? That's contemporary commercial radio's raison d'être.) The trouble with the bulk of this newer and intentionally crafted pop music is that is really isn't that good, so it leaves us pining for those classics again.  

If we want to hear interesting new music, we need to seek it out. Listen to college radio, read music blogs, listen to music podcasts, peruse music magazines, and so on. Even just a bit of that activity will reveal really good music that is in your wheelhouse. There IS good music out there, and plenty of it, regardless of what kind of music you like. All we have to do is look a little beneath the surface for it. 

I lost track of how many times I heard the lead quote here used in 2019, and yet 2019 felt chock full of really great music to me. You may not like what I like and that's okay. Feel free to check some of these titles out, though, and let me know what you think. A Spotify playlist with sample tracks is linked below. Who knows, you might hear something you love as much as I do!

My 19 Favorite Albums of 2019:

19 - Jade Bird - Jade Bird

18 - The Comet Is Coming - Trust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep Mystery

17 - New Model Army - From Here

16 - Aldous Harding - Designer

15 - Sleater-Kinney - The Center Won’t Hold

14 - Gang of Four - Happy Now 

13 - Lightning Dust - Spectre 
12 - Blood Red Shoes - Get Tragic 

11 - The Delines - The Imperial

10 - Mercury Rev - Bobbie Gentry’s The Delta Sweete Revisited 

9 - Negativland - True False 

8 - Vampire Weekend - Father of the Bride

7 - Andrew Bird - My Finest Work Yet 

6 - Portico Quartet - Memory Streams

5 - Operators - Radiant Dawn

4 - Tool - Fear Inoculum

3 - The Waterboys - Where the Action Is

2 - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Ghosteen

1 - Audra - Dear Tired Friends

My favorite album of 2019 - Not only is great to hear new music from Audra, but this stuff is fresh and alive and bubbling with the kind of energy that often fades after a band’s debut. Here they are, back with their fourth album and after a 10 year absence since their third. The passion they had to record together again is evident in every groove here. Not only is it my favorite album of 2019, but it’s also my favorite in the band’s catalog. Highly recommended! 

Check out Spotify playlist with sample tracks from these albums!

 

 

 

Check out my (shorter) list of favorite jazz albums from 2019!

Looking for more great music?

Since 2014, I have been contributing my Top 10 to Bret Helm's Life On This Planet blog. He and his partner Sarah Q do a fantastic job with it! This year, they gathered 8 more friends from around the globe to contribute their lists, and the blog post contains a link to a massive Spotify playlist that is just chock full of great music. Please visit the link below to take you over to Bret & Sarah's Best of 2019 blog post! 

Life On This Planet - The Best of 2019

Enjoy!

My Favorite Jazz of 2019

I'm not a jazz connoisseur. The lifeblood of my listening day is, without a doubt, rock and pop, with various acoustic troubadours thrown around the edges. Music with words. However, I've also always been a music-first / lyrics-second kind of guy. Meaning that the first thing to grab me about the music I hear is usually not the words but the sound of the music. Good lyrics are just icing on the cake for me, most of the time.

This means that I've always had a soft spot for genres like jazz and electronic music. I don't know if it's just because more of it was on my radar this year, but 2019 felt like a really great year for numerous cool new jazz releases. At the end of most recent years, I might have two or three jazz or electronic albums that have worked their way under my skin. This year there were more than a dozen that felt notable to me.

In an effort to both document a really great year for jazz (at least for me) as well as to share some of the cool stuff I've discovered, here is my Top 10 jazz albums list for 2019. A Spotify playlist of these albums is also included here. I hope you hear something you like and, if you've got jazz favorites from this year that aren't on this list, tell me about them in the comments! My doors are always open. 

My Top 10 Favorite Jazz Albums of 2019

10 - Ezra Collective - You Can't Steal My Joy
 9 - Allison Miller's Boom Tic Boom - Glitter Wolf
 8 - Ralph Alessi, Ravi Coltrane, et al - Imaginary Friends
 7 - GoGo Penguin - Ocean In A Drop
 6 - Jeremy Pelt - The Artist
 5 - Kris Davis - Diatom Ribbons
 4 - Theon Cross - FYAH
 3 - Antoine Berjeaut & Makaya McCraven - Moving Cities
 2 - The Comet Is Coming - Trust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep Mystery 
 1 - Portico Quartet - Memory Streams 

Check these out! The playlist includes the full albums, but I'd like to suggest that you just shuffle play. I do that from a much larger playlist to see what will stick to my ribs, and it always seems to make for an interesting listening experience.