Albums Etc of 2019

[adevyish]

Several albums I wanted to listen to this year all came out in December, which was stressful! I was already behind as I wasn’t as much into music this year; the only two albums I listened to on release day were Sakanaction and Harry Styles.

I think this is the first year I’ve managed four languages on my albums list.

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Honourable Mentions

Close cuts and fun albums, in alphabetical order.

9m88 — Pingyong Zhi Shang / Beyond Mediocrity

I found 9m88 through the absurd and amazing music video for “Zuìgāo Pǐnzhí Jìng Qiāoqiāo” (Airplane Mode, feat. Leo Wang), which I watched five times in less than half a week and is musically reminiscent of Nujabes. The album is mostly chill jazz, chill hop, and R&B, plus one out-and-out city pop song “Aìqíng Yǔ” for the streaming numbers.

AAAMYYY — BODY

Lots of Western synthpop influences here; without “Ai no Tame” and the Bonnie Pink–esque “EYES” (feat. CONYPLANKTON) this might as well have been a Western album completely. Where Aaamyyy really shines is on the more introspective tracks, especially the meditative and otherworldly “All by Myself” (feat. JIL) and “Shibakane wo Koete Yuke” (Over My Dead Body).

dj newtown — WEST MEMBERS

dj newtown reimagines some of his songs released under the much more well-known moniker tofubeats. It’s outrageously fun, tripping over its own beats, with the netlabel sound that’s mostly missing in his output as tofubeats. Check out: “POS”.

Hoshimiya Toto + TEMPLIME — pureness (EP)

“Junsui” is a fun indie j-pop romp with lots of neat instrumental details; its upbeat VIP version is even better. “Take Me Out” is a glitchy soft indie j-pop song layering 8-bit-inspired sounds with cut up sax runs and hip hop dance beats.

Layla — goodbye. (EP)

Noisy well-trodden shoegaze. Songs, laden in nostalgia, get lost within themselves. Check out: “Ongaku no Aru Fuukei”.

Spangle call Lilli line — Dreams Never End

Dreamy alt-rock-meets-pop numbers, most downtempo like the waves on a beach. A pretty album with a lot of great details, but the production removes too much of the emotion. Check out: “mio”.

Tempalay — 21-seiki yori Ai wo Komete
— With Love from the 21st Century

The songs on this album veer between genres and moods without giving a single fuck yet managing to work somehow. There are parts of this album—“Datsui Maajan” in particular—that are outright dissonant, impossible chords and it stays coherent somehow.

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Top 10

10. Snail’s House — Alien Pop III (EP)

J-electropop at its most fun. “Invader” sounds like it could be a Triangle-era Perfume song and I mean this in the best way.

9. For Tracy Hyde — New Young City

Pure J-pop melodies meet dream pop production and retro guitars. “Haru, Yoru, Meguru.” is an exemplar track.

8. Nagagutsu wo Haita Neko — Doukoku suru Yoru no Soko de (mini)
Puss In Boots —

A post-punk exploration, excepting of “Ten Mangetsu” which is very much a j-pop-rock end-of-summer archetype. “52Hz no Kujira” stands out by veering between quiet interludes, math rock, and sheer emotional release.

7. Hitsujibungaku — Kirameki (EP)

There’s lots of retro influence on this EP, with just taste of math rock to be a bit more modern. “Romance” is a fun romp of early 70s surf rock and post-punk; “Soda-Sui” is more introspective, a chatmonchy-style melody layered with shoegaze guitar and light vocalizations.

6. Sawa Angstrom — Of Food (EP)

This is one of three Sawa Angstrom EPs this year, and they’re all good if you like glitchy aural breakdowns. “Thunderbolt” would not be out of place on the Katamari Damacy soundtrack; “Sweet Impact” has the heady chaos of a matsuri; and “Break Peanuts” is pure glitch electronica.

5. CHAI — PUNK

It’s been a banner year for CHAI on the back of this album. Unabashedly pop and unabashedly punk but definitely not pop punk. “Choose Go!” reminds me of One Direction’s Take Me Home era and it’s not just down to the music video. “Great Job” has the repetitive catchiness and industrial disintegrations of Devo—and the evil shoujo laugh after the line “Housework is a great job” is utter perfection.

“Fashionista” is a great dance punk track. There’s some obvious J-pop influences as well: “I’m Me” is all retro J-pop with some great guitar and bass work, and “Wintime” and “Feel the Beat” pair feel-good J-pop with sparkly surf rock.

4. Gozensanji to Taikutsu — Shijousha no Kaigi (EP)

[Annoyingly, this is available for streaming but not digital purchase in Canada.]

Shijousha no Kaigi is a return to form for the quartet; reneging on the lighter sounds of their last couple releases to go dark and dissonant. It’s not quite their early cali≠gari or Sheena Ringo–esque sound, but it’s from the same school of thought. The band broke up shortly after the release of this EP.

“Cleopatra”’s intro is pure MUCC in its insistent discordance, and also finds the band playing with synthesized sounds that they usually avoid (with the exception of 2016’s “Tokyo Dreamland”). “Kami-sama” is more in line with their 2017–2018 output, a typically plaintive stripped back folk melody building in choral and over-filtered guitar waves.

3. Sakanaction — 834.194

Sakanaction’s last proper album came out in 2013, so there’s singles from 2014 on here. Not that it’s much of a complaint, as “Sayonara wa Emotion” happens to be my favourite song of theirs. Sakanaction have loosened up on the heavy dance production that they put on initially to gain mainstream recognition, and it’s given an extra depth to their music. You could say they’re settling into their fame; conversely you could say they’re getting closer to a mainstream j-pop-rock sound.

2. Yu Pei-Jen — Jen Jen

The debut album from Yu Pei-Jen. The pairing of Hokkien with Taiwanese and western folk sounds and a breathy vocal brings an incredible intimacy. There’s a lot of western indie and alt-pop influence as well.

“Yuán-lái Wǒ Yòng Cuò le Fāng-shì Shuō Wǒ Ài Nǐ” (Gotta Be the Wrong Way to Love You) has so many beautiful details, guitar riffs in quiet spaces. Its chorus has a Kate Bush Hounds of Love quality to its eulogic brass and marching drums. Other highlights include the dreamy alt-rock “Apollo 11”, the stripped back melancholy of “Ting-iú-liân Tsiann--gue̍h Lī-tsa̍p-it” (In Retrospect: Lunar Calendar 2017.1.21), and the meditative miasma of “DaDaDa”.

1. Harry Styles — Fine Line

After his self-titled debut album, I thought at best his sophomore album would barely clear my top 10. Instead he’s put out my favourite album of the year.

The songs on this album can be divided by era, with the majority more recent. “Golden”, “To Be So Lonely”, and “Fine Line” are late noughties indie pop; “Falling” is late noughties pop pop; “She” sounds like a Prince song; and “Sunflower Vol 6”, “Canyon Moon”, and “Treat People With Kindness” sound like lost tracks from the flower power era. So, naturally it makes sense to write my review by era too.

Current era — “Lights Up” and “Adore You” both sound like Years & Years songs but with analog production. (Even the music videos of the two songs remind me of Y&Y; for “Lights Up” it’s the colouring and claustrophobia, and for “Adore You” the world-building.) “Lights Up” has interesting production in its deliberate rhythmic stumbling and absences of sound. “Watermelon Sugar” and “Adore You” are unfortunately too straightforward, and sound much better live with a bit of room to breath.

Early 2010s — “Golden” layers a lot of things on top of an insistent instrumental and a quiet breakdown middle eight. It’s a bop reminscent of Lupercalia-era Patrick Wolf, but I wish it were a little more experimental. “To Be So Lonely” is a standard folk song with some neat discordant violins near the end. “Fine Line” sounds somewhere between (again) Patrick Wolf and Set Yourself on Fire–era Stars and obviously it is my favourite song on the album.

Late 1960s, early 1970s — “Sunflower Vol. 6” is very fun and the noises at the end hew close to its era. Similarly “Canyon Moon” and “Treat People With Kindness” are very on-the-nose references.

(My theory of Fine Line is that each song’s era represents its chronological order vis à vis the story the album is trying to tell, except for “Golden” and “Fine Line”, the bookends with which the narrator begins and ends their tale. Hence: honeymoon, breakup, and tentatively getting back together. The title of Harry’s longest profile this year, by Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone, was a reference to “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, and the progression of musical eras on this album is in reverse.)