About a year ago Brooklyn’s folk pop-rockers BIG THIEF released their 5th album,
titled Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You. An enthralling 20-track record
with Adrienne Lenker‘s angelic voice as the heroine in the middle.
The band is on tour now and as they regularly do, they try out new songs live, before
recording them in the studio. One of them is a pearl calledVAMPIRE EMPIRE which
they play for a while now on stage.
The Late Show with Colbert invited them to play that unreleased new one before their
audience. Wow! I was immediately struck by the energy and vitality of Vampire Empire
and its powerful performance. A staggering new gem by a staggering band.
They’re ready for a long 2023 tour and shared in advance this call-up
to teachers to bring their students to their show’s soundchecks to learn
them about creativity, music, playing shows, songwriting or whatever the
pupils want to discuss. Looks a good idea, but don’t send the youngsters
away like another brick in the wall, Big Thief.
I saw them myself in Belgium last August, but this version
is way better than the one I witnessed. But hey, you can’t
beat a sign-along audience of 70.000.
Where: KNEBWORTH (UK) Liam‘s massive and biblical concert at the historic
(rock) field confirmed once more that our kid still is
the man for the masses.
20 years ago STEREOGUM was born. The American music website was named after
a lyric from the song Radio #1 by the French electronic duo Air. They call themselves
the ‘best music blog in the world’ and I (almost) agree. Now straight to their best albums
of 2022 selection.
Stereogum:“MOTOMAMI sounds like nothing else from this present moment, but it also sounds distinctly like the present: rapidly scrolling through bite-sized earworms, embodying masculine aggression simultaneously and without contradiction to high femininity, and repurposing old traditions from the last 50 years to envision the future.”
TUTV: For 24-hour flamenco party people.
A mix of hot stuff and chill-out moments.
Single: Saoko
Stream on MOTOMAMI on SPOTIFY
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Stereogum: “She’s one of one. She’s number one. She’s the only one. Beyoncé Knowles
has done a lot of amazing things in a pop career that’s stretched back a quarter-century,
but she’s never attempted anything quite like this.”
TUTV: Back to the 80s with Donna Summer tunes.
Single:Break My Soul
Stream RENAISSANCE on SPOTIFY
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4. ‘Sometimes, Forever’ by SOCCER MOMMY (Nashville, TN)
Stereogum: “She’s still making the same achingly vulnerable, heartrendingly pretty pop-rock we’ve come to expect from Soccer Mommy, but with weird, inspired twists around every corner.”
TUTV: A bit too smooth for my liking.
Single:Shotgun
Stream SOMETIMES, FOREVER on SPOTIFY
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Stereogum: “There may not be a rapper on Earth who captures — or even attempts to capture — feelings of stasis so successfully as billy woods. Aethiopes, his first of two albums this year, is not only an extraordinary meditation on cannibalism and colonialism but a futureless, borderless, mapless breadth of stillness.”
No singles released.
Stream AETHIOPLES on SPOTIFY
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6. ‘God Save The Animals’ by ALEX G (Philadelphia, PA)
Stereogum: “The entire LP is layered with magical moments.
Every second breathes life, especially the twangy, hopeful closer,
“Forgive,” a perfect conclusion.”
TUTV: Unknown to my aural radar.
Single: Blessing
Stream SAVE THE ANIMALS on SPOTIFY
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7. ‘Expert In A Dying Field‘ by THE BETHS (New Zealand)
Stereogum: “Across ‘Expert In A Dying Field’, which wraps existential angst in wry lyricism and fuzzy guitar-pop hooks, the New Zealand quartet unpacks the inherent unfairness in simply being alive in 2022, when — whether due to a pandemic, technology, or the ever-worsening economy — it can feel like the goal posts are constantly moving, but you’re not.”
TUTV: Amplified and jangly dream pop vitality.
Stream EXPERT IN A DYING FIELD b on SPOTIFY
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8. ‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You’ by BIG THIEF (Brooklyn, NY)
Stereogum:“This is the release where Big Thief went big: a 20-track double album recorded across four studios in four different states. Big Thief’s philosophy is simple and down-to-earth; you find the answers when you’re chopping onions, stirring tea, driving at night.”
TUTV:
Single: Change – magical!
Stream DRAGON NEW WARM MOUNTAIN / I BELIEVE IN YOU on SPOTIFY
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9. ‘Diaspora Problems’ by SOUL GLO (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
Stereogum: “Over the course of a dozen electrifying tracks clocking in at just under
40 minutes, Philadelphia’s Soul Glo capture the experience of being Black in America.
This is the kind of rage and resistance hardcore was meant for.”
Stereogum: “The Weeknd has flirted with mortality across his catalog of noir-pop, but he really commits to the bit on his immaculately stylized fifth studio album. The notoriously hedonistic singer looks back on a presumed life of regrets alongside famous friends — from Quincy Jones recounting the lasting effects of childhood trauma to Tyler, The Creator promoting prenups.”
Influential and highly-praised American website Stereogum celebrates its 20th birthday this year. A lot of festive stuff the world’s best music blog as they claim themselves waits in the pipeline.
But first their multi-musical-genre list of the 50 best albums of 2022 so far.
Chris DeVille (Editor): “Perhaps as a result of artists sitting on new music during the pandemic’s early phases and dumping it all on us at the same time, it was unusually difficult
to pare down the list to just 50 albums this time around. Both in terms of widely acclaimed consensus favorites and personally beloved sleeper picks, there have just been so many albums to love. At the moment, the following are the ones the Stereogum staff loves the most… any album scheduled to be released by June 30 was eligible for this list, so some of these records are from the future.”
“Lamar is operating like only a few artists in pop history — a superstar at the height
of his powers confounding everyone’s expectations while trying to transcend his own.”
“Other albums of theirs might be more concise, but none is as impactful as this staggering showcase of the mystical energy that Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally have channeled since
the start of their career.”
“There are underground rap titans all over Aethiopes — El-P, Boldy James, Quelle Chris — but the real meat is in hearing woods and Preservation dig deep into a culture that’s hostile to humanity in general and to Blackness in particular.”
“MOTOMAMI represents a gear switch from arms-length storytelling to something more personal. It goes hardest when Rosalía plays with contradiction: in music, in gender, in
simply being a living human being. Metamorphosis never sounded so exciting.”
1. ‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You’ by BIG THIEF
“After their phenomenal pair of 2019 albums, it was hard to believe Big Thief had anywhere to go but down, both creatively and in terms of the frothing hype surrounding them. And yet here they are with both their most acclaimed and accomplished collection of music yet. Big Thief don’t just prove they’re actually that good. They sound like they can do anything.”
Info: “The attempt to capture something deeper, wider, and full of mystery, points
to the inherent spirit of Big Thief. Traces of this open-hearted, non-dogmatic faith
can be felt through previous albums, but here on ‘Dragon New Warm Mountain
I Believe In You’ lives the strongest testament to its existence.”
Pitchfork:“Big Thief’s ambitious yet unburdened fifth album is a 20-song epic
of kaleidoscopic invention, striking beauty, and wigged-out humor, rambling far
beyond the bounds of their previous work.” Full review here. Score: 9/10.
Turn Up The Volume: Brooklyn’s indie-folk sweethearts touch heart and soul
once more with goose-skin balladry, beauteous reveries and perk up dittie,s with Adrianne Lenker giving them all a magical vocal touch. Captivating all the way.
Info: “The attempt to capture something deeper, wider, and full of mystery, points
to the inherent spirit of Big Thief. Traces of this open-hearted, non-dogmatic faith
can be felt through previous albums, but here on ‘Dragon New Warm Mountain
I Believe In You’ lives the strongest testament to its existence.”
If your new album counts 20 tracks, you can share
a lot of them in advance, to warm the fans up while
waiting for the LP.
TURN UP THE VOLUME 