Favourite thing I heard in August 2018

Albums
1. Thank You For Today - Death Cab for Cutie

2. Bloom - Troye Sivan
3. Sweetener - Ariana Grande
4. Big Red Machine - Big Red Machine
5. RIP Indo Hisashi - No Rome

6. Swimming - Mac Miller
7. Cheyenne - Conner Youngblood
8. Orpheus vs. the Sirens - Hermit and the Recluse
9. The Bluest Star - Free Cake for Every Creature
10. Love Yourself 'Answer' - BTS

Songs
1. "Ladders" - Swimming - Mac Miller
2. "60 and Punk" - Thank You For Today - Death Cab for Cutie
3. "R.E.M" - Sweetener - Ariana Grande
4. "Loud" feat. GoldLink and Desiigner - Single - Silk City
5. "Gratitude" - Big Red Machine - Big Red Machine
6. "Gone Away" feat. Leon Bridges and Gary Clark Jr. - Return of the Trill - Bun B
7.  "Haha No One Can Hear You" - Single - Gallant

8. "Chewing Gum" feat. A$AP Rocky and Project Pat - Negro Swan - Blood Orange
9. "Bloom" - Bloom - Troye Sivan
10. "R.I.P. SCREW" - ASTROWORLD - Travis Scott

Best music of 2015...so far

We're six months into 2015, and it is already shaping up to be one of the best.years. ever. for music. Classic albums in almost every genre are being released on the regular, and even the quiet weeks present some great music for our pleasure.

There have been so many solid releases in just half-a-year, I don't know how the second half can match it, but there are already signs that it could happen – Kanye! Frank Ocean! Tame Impala! Titus Andronicus! Carly Rae Jepsen! Disclosure!

I didn't think it would be this difficult to narrow down my list of the best albums thus far to 25, but that's a great reflection of the year we've had. Here's hoping the rest of the year keeps the streak alive.

Best albums so far (arranged alphabetically)

1. At.Long.Last.A$AP – A$AP Rocky

Rocky gets woozy and weird, and even sings to great effect on "L$D."

2. Coming Home – Leon Bridges

Click here to read my full review. 

3. Kintsugi – Death Cab for Cutie

Click here to read my full review. 

4. What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World – The Decemberists

Click here to read my full review. 

5. Surf – Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment

Click here to read my full review. 

6. If You're Reading This It's Too Late – Drake

Click here to read my full review. 

7. I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside – Earl Sweatshirt

Easily my favorite album name of the year, if not ever. A lonely, dark and engaging listen. 

8. I Love You, Honeybear – Father John Misty

Click here to read my full review. 

9. Tetsuo & Youth – Lupe Fiasco

Lupe's best album in a long while, it shows his lyrical dexterity and sonic risk-taking. 

10. Goon – Tobias Jesso Jr. 

Click here to read my full review. 

11. To Pimp A Butterfly – Kendrick Lamar

Click here to read my full review. 

12. Strange Trails – Lord Huron

Absolutely lovely apocalyptic folk music, with a serious undercurrent of early rock. 

13. Dreams Worth More than Money – Meek Mill

The most cinematic and escapist hip-hop album of 2015 so far. It also benefits greatly from being buckets of fun.  

14. Wildheart – Miguel

Miguel injects psychedelia into his baby-making soul, and comes up with his most adventurous album yet.  

15. Pageant Material – Kacey Musgraves

Musgraves' second album is quieter than her debut, but no less stellar. Probably the loveliest album of the year. 

16. The Waterfall – My Morning Jacket

Click here to read my full review. 

17. QUARTERBACKS – QUARTERBACKS

Twee-punk done right. An album about love that gets under your skin in 22 minutes flat.

18. Uptown Special – Mark Ronson

My favorite album of the year for night driving. Sounds great with city lights flying by the window. 

19. Ratchet – Shamir

Click here to read my full review. 

20. Summertime '06 – Vince Staples

Click here to read my full review. 

21. Traveler – Chris Stapleton

Could well be the best country album of the year. This guy has a voice that'll just rock you back. 

22. The Epic – Kamasi Washington

The best jazz album I've heard in years. A three-disc monster that fully lives up to the name. 

23. Ivy Tripp – Waxahatchee

Click here to read my full review. 

24. In Colour – Jamie xx

Click here to read my full review. 

25. Second Hand Heart – Dwight Yoakam

Click here to read my full review.

Album of the Week: Death Cab for Cutie Kintsugi

There are artists you're able to connect with on an intellectual level – artists whose work you can appreciate for both their technical and lyrical skill, for the way they push the boundaries of their genre and the new surprises they consistently devise.

Then there are artists who you connect to on an emotional level. These artists are certainly capable of pulling all the aforementioned achievements off, but it hardly matters if they do or not. What matters is the way they transport you to a certain headspace every time you listen to them.

Death Cab for Cutie is one of those bands for me.

Listening any of their albums (and I should, in the interest of full disclosure say, I've yet to find a Death Cab album I don't like) takes me a road trip though memories: discovering them on an exploratory trip to Seattle with a dear friend; driving to all of their concerts in Colorado since 2004 with my brother and another longtime companion; bonding with a new friend half a country away in Florida via AOL Instant Messenger over their music. As time has gone on, I don't see any of these people as much as I'd like, and it can be a melancholy affair to reflect on the distance between us.

Death Cab lives in that space between people, and has created some of its best songs – "Transatlanticism," "Brothers on a Hotel Bed," "Cath…" – out of the desire to bridge the gap that separates us from the people we care about.

Separation is clearly on lead singer/songwriter Ben Gibbard's mind on their new album, Kintsugi, and it's easy to see why. Founding member/guitarist/producer Chris Walla left the group (though he did stay around to finish recording the album), and he went through a pretty public divorce. The subjects can be heard, both overtly and subtly, in his writing (nothing new there – this stuff is Gibbard's bread and butter), and he tackles the topics with his usual wit and earnestness.

What is surprising about Kintsugi is how overflowing with hooks it is. Death Cab has proved ably capable of writing enormously catchy songs when they feel like it (I'm looking at you "The Sound of Settling" and "I Will Possess Your Heart"), but I had no idea they were capable of writing hooks on hooks on hooks like they do here.

Take album opener "No Room In Frame," which features Gibbard singing about the paradigm shifts that accompany an ending relationship over an electronic drum beat – courtesy of Jason McGerr – and a deceptively infectious guitar line. When he sings, "And I guess it's not a failure we could help/And we will both go on to get lonely with someone else," at the song's end, the words are instantly familiar to anyone still grieving a breakup.

The catchiest (and poppiest) song here is "Good Help (is So Hard to Find)." It's like the band took the lessons from "You're a Tourist" (the previous claimant to their catchiest work) and upped it another level or three. The chorus is almost guaranteed to get in your head and set up permanent camp there – prepare yourself.

Kintsugi might be the most similar album to Death Cab's earlier work, and sounds like the album the group would have made next if they had skipped the pianos and synths that largely drove Plans, Narrow Stairs and Codes and Keys, and stuck with guitar rock. It's interesting to hear the guitars so prominent on the album (It's not until seven songs in that the guitar receives any kind of challenge from another instrument. Spoiler – the guitar wins.) and Gibbard only does his piano-ballad thing on closer, "Binary Sea." Perhaps this is a way of saying goodbye to Walla and his guitar stylings, or it could just be the sonic landscape the band found the most appealing this time around – whatever the case, it sounds good on them.

This is the first Death Cab album Walla hasn't produced, and it's startling just how clear every note sounds. This is truly, truly a beautifully recorded album and I suppose some longtime fans may miss the slightly grungier tones of earlier albums, but let's face it, Death Cab albums have always been impeccably recorded. It doesn't surprise me the trend continues, even without Walla's fingerprints all over the production.

While Death Cab doesn't exactly go in for new sounds on Kintsugi, there are some lovely call-backs to earlier works sprinkled throughout. "Hold No Guns" is a simple, solo-acoustic number that can comfortably stand next to "I Will Follow You into the Dark" in its arresting, luminous simplicity. "The Ghosts of Beverly Drive" is the upbeat, rocky story of a traveler that could easily be imagined ending with him staring down over "Bixby Canyon Bridge" from Narrow Stairs.

The best song here may well be "Little Wanderer" (it's certainly is in Gibbard'sopinion) and it shows the group's continuously expanding knack for taking a tired cliché and giving it a new perspective. The song tells the story of a traveling musician from the eyes of the person left behind, with all the missed connections and hiccups that accompany communication in the modern age. The methods of communication will continue to change, but that doesn't matter, because the song is really just a plea for connection – a plea Death Cab for Cutie has made many times before. And I'll be damned if it doesn't work every time.

Kintsugi is out on Atlantic.

Album of the Week: Tobias Jesso Jr. Goon

You don't hear piano as the lead instrument much these days.

For a while there, Coldplay and Keane were the lead ambassadors of the notion that the piano is still a viable rock instrument, but Coldplay transitioned to the guitar and string sounds championed by U2, and Keane…well, I'm not sure what happened to Keane.

There was a time in the 50s and 60s when the piano was the primary songwriting instrument (hell, it might still be, I'm no musician) for some truly, truly classic songs.

Tobias Jesso Jr. would have fit right in during that era, but on his debut album, Goon, he manages to create music that feels both of its time, and timeless.

Jesso channels a variety of classic rock songwriters on Goon, from Carole King and Harry Nilsson to Jackson Browne and Randy Newman – all writers who were able to produce shimmeringly lovely music from a simple palette. On all but two of the 12 songs on the album, the piano and Jesso's boy-next-door voice are front and center, and he sings with an untrained earnestness that marked so much of the aforementioned artists' best work.

Jesso knows how to push his voice when he wants to – check out the way his comes this close to breaking near the end of "How Could You Babe" as he pleads for understanding from a former flame.

The man is staggeringly capable of writing a hook – "Can We Still Be Friends" has a King piano line that is immediately accessible and infectious, and Jesso pairs it with his best young Paul McCartney plea. "Leaving LA" is another impossibly catchy piano-driven number that quietly builds to a gorgeous choral climax.

"The Wait" and album closer "Tell The Truth" prove that Jesso is as skilled on the guitar as he is on the piano - both are incredibly catchy finger-picked acoustic numbers that sound like they could've come from either Browne or James Taylor in their heydays.

Jesso isn't a complete throwback artist, however, and while he certainly embraces the pop stylings from the 60s, he isn't afraid to bring his own flourishes to the songs.

On "Hollywood" Jesso manages to channel both Newman and Death Cab for Cutie's "Why You'd Want to Live Here" without any of the expected bitterness. It's just him and his piano, singing like he's the only guy in some dive bar on the strip, about to give up on Los Angeles and crawl away. When he brings the horns in at the end of the song, they bleat and blare like they're the first line is his shambling pity parade. There's a little bit of Radiohead in the way the horns cut across Jesso's piano – it's wildly emotive without using any words.

"Crocodile Tears" is hilarious, tongue-in-cheek ode to a ball-breaker who leaves him in ruins that features the best Elton John piano-work this side of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and the electric guitars are straight out of a George Harrison solo – a little strange at first, but it completely fits the song.

Looking back at what I've written so far, you've probably noticed how much I'm referencing other artists in this piece. This could lead you to think if you're already fans of the source material, there's no need to sample Goon. And that's wrong.

Perhaps the most impressive feat on this simple gem of an album is the way Jesso manages to funnel all these influences through his lovesick worldview. He sounds like the young man he is, wiser than his years, but still dumb enough to keep falling in love with the wrong people. In time – one hopes – he'll learn wisdom, but as Goon ably proves, he's further ahead than most.

Goon is out on True Panther Sounds.