Best of 2018 Playlist
The annual playlist for 
bookherd of my favorite songs from 2018, or 2017 but I didn't discover them until 2018 because I'm not hip at all
"Golden Goat" by Chimney Swift- The accordionist from the band is a CTY friend- this song was on repeat in my car for about a month after their album came out. So catchy.
"We Are Gonna Be Okay" by Dan Whitener- The singer is also a CTY friend, though somebody I haven't been in touch with since a year or two after we left CTY. Apparently this is a year of my CTY friends putting out awesome music.
"Ben Franklin's Song" by the Decemberists- from the Hamildrops, with lyrics by Lin Manuel Miranda. Unused lyric from Hamilton set to music and sung by Colin Meloy. I love this in general as a history song, as it gives Franklin such a wonderful edge, but I particularly love it as a potential Walter Bishop vidsong.
"My Queen Is Ada Eastman" by Sons of Kemet - is by far not the first time I have placed a band with Seb Rochford drumming on a playlist, and I'm sure it will not be the last. But actually the most important driver of this album is bandleader Shabaka Hutchings on saxophone, not Rochford. This whole album is great, Afro-Caribbean jazz you can dance to, and I want everyone to listen to it and if I'd had my jazz panel at VVC this year instead of last, it's entirely possible the whole panel would've consisted of me playing "Your Queen is a Reptile" start to finish and then shouting "VID THIS MUSIC". I particularly want all the Black Panther vids to this album. [It was also the subject of a terrible NYTimes article about how surprisingly black people are making jazz music. Because the NYTimes is terrible.]
"Hurricane Birds by the Bad Plus -Jury's still out on the new Iverson-less version of the Bad Plus. I have mixed but mostly positive feelings about their 2018 album, which feels like a very conscious renegotiation of the band's identity. But I'm seeing them at LPR in a month and I am so excited. "Hurricane Birds" opens that new album and it starts with several bars of just Anderson and King before Orrin Davis joins in, and it feels very much like Anderson and King have to work to open up a space to let Davis in, but it's neat to listen to that musical conversation because all three are so open to experiencing the struggle.
"Reactor" by GoGo Penguin- A sort of smoother version of the Bad Plus, jazz meets rock meets Philip Glassian minimalism. A lot of the reviews of it talk about the ways in which the band is consciously trying to do an acoustic version of electronica idiom, but I don't know enough about EDM to recognize it.
"DNA' by Kendrick Lamar- Yes, I'm sorry, I didn't listen to Kendrick until 2018. I already mentioned that I'm not hip at all. This is exactly as brilliant as everyone said it would be. I had a couple week period in the spring where this album was almost the only thing I listened to in the car. Man, the poetry of his verse...
"Hi" composed by Caroline Shaw as performed on Mozart in the Jungle- I already wrote about this when the episode of "Mozart in the Jungle" it was written for aired.
"The Old Favorite/ Dweller on the Threshold" by Countercurrent- Mashup of an Irish jig and a Van Morrison classic that seems to make both parts of the mashup better
"You Are Searching in Vain for a Bright-Line Solution" by Patrice Michaels & Kuang-Hao Huang (composed by Derrick Wang) - new recording of this aria from "Scalia/Ginsburg", from an album of songs about RBG. Have I mentioned lately how psyched I am to finally see "Scalia/Ginsburg" next year? I AM VERY PSYCHED
Download link here:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1YUTpNUB-zQdo2drEmY1qVh3dzYuB-IFd
This entry was originally posted at https://seekingferret.dreamwidth.org/263978.html. Please comment there using OpenID. There are
comments.
bookherd of my favorite songs from 2018, or 2017 but I didn't discover them until 2018 because I'm not hip at all
"Golden Goat" by Chimney Swift- The accordionist from the band is a CTY friend- this song was on repeat in my car for about a month after their album came out. So catchy.
"We Are Gonna Be Okay" by Dan Whitener- The singer is also a CTY friend, though somebody I haven't been in touch with since a year or two after we left CTY. Apparently this is a year of my CTY friends putting out awesome music.
"Ben Franklin's Song" by the Decemberists- from the Hamildrops, with lyrics by Lin Manuel Miranda. Unused lyric from Hamilton set to music and sung by Colin Meloy. I love this in general as a history song, as it gives Franklin such a wonderful edge, but I particularly love it as a potential Walter Bishop vidsong.
"My Queen Is Ada Eastman" by Sons of Kemet - is by far not the first time I have placed a band with Seb Rochford drumming on a playlist, and I'm sure it will not be the last. But actually the most important driver of this album is bandleader Shabaka Hutchings on saxophone, not Rochford. This whole album is great, Afro-Caribbean jazz you can dance to, and I want everyone to listen to it and if I'd had my jazz panel at VVC this year instead of last, it's entirely possible the whole panel would've consisted of me playing "Your Queen is a Reptile" start to finish and then shouting "VID THIS MUSIC". I particularly want all the Black Panther vids to this album. [It was also the subject of a terrible NYTimes article about how surprisingly black people are making jazz music. Because the NYTimes is terrible.]
"Hurricane Birds by the Bad Plus -Jury's still out on the new Iverson-less version of the Bad Plus. I have mixed but mostly positive feelings about their 2018 album, which feels like a very conscious renegotiation of the band's identity. But I'm seeing them at LPR in a month and I am so excited. "Hurricane Birds" opens that new album and it starts with several bars of just Anderson and King before Orrin Davis joins in, and it feels very much like Anderson and King have to work to open up a space to let Davis in, but it's neat to listen to that musical conversation because all three are so open to experiencing the struggle.
"Reactor" by GoGo Penguin- A sort of smoother version of the Bad Plus, jazz meets rock meets Philip Glassian minimalism. A lot of the reviews of it talk about the ways in which the band is consciously trying to do an acoustic version of electronica idiom, but I don't know enough about EDM to recognize it.
"DNA' by Kendrick Lamar- Yes, I'm sorry, I didn't listen to Kendrick until 2018. I already mentioned that I'm not hip at all. This is exactly as brilliant as everyone said it would be. I had a couple week period in the spring where this album was almost the only thing I listened to in the car. Man, the poetry of his verse...
"Hi" composed by Caroline Shaw as performed on Mozart in the Jungle- I already wrote about this when the episode of "Mozart in the Jungle" it was written for aired.
"The Old Favorite/ Dweller on the Threshold" by Countercurrent- Mashup of an Irish jig and a Van Morrison classic that seems to make both parts of the mashup better
"You Are Searching in Vain for a Bright-Line Solution" by Patrice Michaels & Kuang-Hao Huang (composed by Derrick Wang) - new recording of this aria from "Scalia/Ginsburg", from an album of songs about RBG. Have I mentioned lately how psyched I am to finally see "Scalia/Ginsburg" next year? I AM VERY PSYCHED
Download link here:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1YUTpNUB-zQdo2drEmY1qVh3dzYuB-IFd
This entry was originally posted at https://seekingferret.dreamwidth.org/263978.html. Please comment there using OpenID. There are
comments.