2019 musical recordings

Sneaks' first album is still my favorite album of the last ten years.

I hate it when artists start out with such a focused and personal sound and then feel like they have to fucking flush it out or some bullshit, those compromised follow-ups of course being the albums that people pay more attention to and praise. It happens over and over again and it ruins everything that made them special to begin with.

Her debut album was hermetic, intimate, punk AF, exactly as long as it needed to be and it wanted no part of this Grimes/MIA/hyper-marketable hip female soundtrack for car commercials idea that's been focus grouped to death and stripped of any and all actual meaning. That world and all its rewards are tantalizingly within reach and you've only got 5 years to get something out of a career like this. Her last album was hinting towards this metamorphosis so I shouldn't be surprised.

I ordered this and I'm sure I'll get pleasure out of it but I've listened to Gymnastics probably a hundred times over the last year and maybe that's too much to ask of any album so I shouldn't expect to experience that again any time soon, but damn.

Thanks for starting this thread!

I really like the new Sharon Van Etten, made it through 3 Steve Gunn tracks & have mixed feelings on Deerhunter. That’s all I’ve heard in 2019.

I'm a big fan of that Steve Gunn album - although I've liked pretty much everything he's done. You quit after 3 because not your cuppa or what?

Yea it didn’t click for me but I’ll go back to it. In hindsight I was having a shit day and nothing was going to excite me.

Looking at this new Jenny Lewis album cover and just imagining the thirsty posts we'd be seeing if SoMB was still alive.

Sometimes Robert Gordon will call out from the recesses of mind "I want to taste her" and I shudder for about fifteen minutes.

An hour after writing my original post in this thread, I found this album waiting for me in my mailbox. It's not good at all.



Sneaks did a convincing job of making both Gymnastics and IQ sound like they were being beamed straight from her sitting alone in an empty room right into my headphones. If that actually wasn't the case, then it was definitely a convincing illusion.

I haven't read the credits for this album but it sounds like a lot of people got their hands all over it. "Produced by Jacknife Lee"...why in the world would you advertise that? The bass+drum machine combo that made up most of her older stuff is completely gone. It was a unique sound and something that no one else was doing five years ago or today. It's replaced almost completely overproduced tracks built on soulless, spacey trap beats. Now she sounds like...almost everything else being made in 2018-2019. She used to do this personal, private-sounding stream of consciousness delivery with her lyrics. Now she's rapping and her voice suddenly sounds totally different. None of this feels sincere at all. It sounds like Beck or Beck trying to "do" Lorde.

RYMers are obsessed with micro-genres and they keep tagging this album with more and more of them. It's a super watered down and dull impression of all of these and gives off the vibe of someone just dabbling in a bunch of shit that they're not invested in and don't understand.


Have even more thoughts about this but don't know how to articulate them and they're the kind of thing I should probably think really fucking hard about before I say and then wish I hadn't.

Duff... wrote:Sometimes Robert Gordon will call out from the recesses of mind "I want to taste her" and I shudder for about fifteen minutes.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BtH_iAgnSIU/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

I guess I have to post this here:

really like the new deerhunter, william tyler, malibu ken, and sarah louise so far

That William Tyler album - like everything he's done, really - is gorgeous. I really just want to listen these days to music that sounds like Steve Gunn, William Tyler, and the Grateful Dead c. 69-77. Maybe that's the season...

Helado Negro, SASAMI, and the new Panda Bear record sound real good as a soundtrack to springtime in Sonoma County.

zappo wrote:

Carly Rae is a treasure and I have a big ol schoolboy crush on her and her music.
Digging this song. The video is... something.

https://www.factmag.com/2019/03/14/the-caretaker-bids-farewell/

Parts 4 and 5 were some of the most mentally disorienting music I've ever heard. I know I'm not ready for this one.

Cool to see very positive reviews this morning for These New Puritans. Their new album is by far my favorite this year!

I'm being a dork and holding off until a couple of friends come over for a 'listening party' but Field of Reeds is honestly one of my favourite albums of all time and all the new singles have been wonderful. So excited

I keep skimming through These New Puritans tracks and it sounds like theater kid trash to me. Sorry guys, 1.5/5 stars!

Ned Braden wrote:

zappo wrote:

Carly Rae is a treasure and I have a big ol schoolboy crush on her and her music.
Digging this song. The video is... something.

This style of production is... not good. 

You guys need some Hatchie in your life:

Not tryna be mean so much as remark on how different everyone's tastes are seeming in 2019!

William Tyler sounds pretty but not something I would seek out. Malibu Ken, no. Sarah Louise seems cool though a bit sleepy. Helado Negro and SASAMI are kind in my songwriter/beatmaker type of wheelhouse though neither one caught my attention immediately. I like the Panda Bear record (which I've listened to all the way through) in theory, but can't find moments where I want to put it on.

I listen to a lot of Soundcloud/mumble rap trash lol.

Feelin Hatchie but haven't gone deep.

i like her Sugar & Spice EP (not from 2019)

Yeah, that song is sick. Thanks for the rec. Now eagerly anticipating the upcoming release from this artist I only just learned about.

This is pretty good:


The singing reminds me of Depeche Mode but the music sounds like Scuba or similar dark techno.