The Best Songs of 2019 So Far
ISSUE #62
Here are my twenty favorite songs of the year so far, in reverse order to build suspense. Hold on tight!
20. THE COMET IS COMING | Blood of the Past
This is heavy metal with saxophones. It's like if King Crimson got into The Fly's teleport pod, but Kamasi snuck in at the last minute and their cells slowly started fusing together, and then Kate Tempest narrated the whole thing. It's rad!
19. GIRLPOOL | Hire
This is as good as anything off Elliott Smith's XO; better, if only for it's lyrical vitality in 2019. It's nice to hear his spirit live on, and to watch Girlpool add another entry to their streak of great records.
18. TYLER, THE CREATOR | WHAT'S GOOD
Maybe the best album of the year so far, picking a track that represents the breadth of the record is tough. This one rules because it connects the go-hard of early Tyler and the more recent Flower Boy sounds.
17. MAGGIE ROGERS | On + Off
This wunderkind of 2019 put out an album that's tough to deny, and I hear nonstop from everyone I love. It's an album where the favorite track depends on the day, but I love this one now for the lurch in background, the car-door-open synths and the offset rhythm that keeps you off your dominant foot.
16. LITTLE SIMZ | Offence
The straight drum-track and synth are a brilliant backdrop for the flute flourishes and cartoon effects. Simz stays level and energetic, and when the literal chorus comes in, it's a wake-up call.
15. JESSIE WARE | Adore You
It feels like the blinking of stoplights, or 450 lumens of streetlights floating over snow. A beautiful love song in a year where there seems to be nothing but platitudes or scorn wherever you look.
14. ZSELA | Noise
The change in the chorus is the kind that helps you endure, a gulping breath when you reach the surface.
13. THE NATIONAL | Dust Swirls in Strange Light
This is a new poetic form, a formal exercise, like a sestina, a poetic form, matched by the structure of the rhythm section and the piano when the chorus of voices finally breaks down.
12. FIELD MEDIC | henna tattoo
There are a lot of cheating break-up songs, but this one is special in it's subtlety, and in its lack of blame.
11. OPERATORS | Faithless
Relentless, and full of pure joy. It captures the simplicity of the early future, what tech should have become, before Orwell was ever proven a prophet. These are past sounds of a future we'll never get to live, one that we veered violently away from. For fans of Stranger Things, and dancing in warehouses.
10. PUP | Scorpion Hill
More viscera from PUP lyrics. This is a sea shanty for the new millennium — a call to our fellow sailors and a prayer for the wind not to dash us on the rocks.
9. CARLY RAE JEPSEN | Too Much
She came back with a bang. This embodies the wooziness of dealing with a crush that could love you back at any minute, the fear that you'll put all your eggs in one basket and then hand it to a ghost. Jepsen's best at clear-eyed pop that doesn't trip the cynics; at this point, I think she's for real.
8. FAYE WEBSTER | Room Temperature
Nobody writes in a slide guitar anymore. Her album is a new obsession, but nothing captures her breezy ease and light touch better than the opener. You think something's gonna come next after the first two lines of the chorus, but instead she brings it down a step, and repeats the sentiment. It's hard to get out more in Atlanta; if the sun doesn't cook you, the traffic will. Faye gets the push-and-pull.
7. CHARLY BLISS | Capacity
Written like a Death Cab song but drenched in the full-spectrum excess of Motion City Soundtrack, this year Charly Bliss blasts forward in the impressive tradition of Paramore's After Laughter. And that bridge hook, you could hang me from it.
6. BETTER OBLIVION COMMUNITY CENTER | Dylan Thomas
Oberst and Bridgers — name a more powerful duo. Prince of Darkness and Queen of Malaise. With this and boygenius, Bridgers is currently the world's greatest collaborator. With these two in particular, the pieces fit perfectly, and no corner is too dark to explore.
5. JULIA JACKLIN | Pressure to Party
Kudos to Jacklin for absorbing the essence of what I've felt every weekend my whole life and trapping it in the perfect poem. She became a hero when she slapped that jumpy guitar on it and wrote the year's most energetic hook.
4. BON IVER | Hey Ma
Vernon landed back on earth after the galactic explorations of 22, A Million, but he brought something back with him. His new tech and penchant for saxophones is now just better blended to his old sound, the end result of a dialectic between his last album and his self-titled five years prior. His patented vocoder effect is the closest any artist has gotten to speaking with ghosts. It still sounds like nothing else, but this one is a little more familiar.
3. LAURA STEVENSON | Living Room, NY
Laura Stevenson has been getting the slept on every year since her undeniable classic debut in 2010. This new album is her best, and also just as great as the rest — a ranking of her work could be a straight line, set in the upper regions of the atmosphere. I hope this one gets her some nice press and a bump in numbers. This song is one of her best.
2. SHARON VAN ETTEN | Hands
Sharon is a true rockstar, maybe one of our last. This song is a Kansas squall, full of all her fire and grace she gave to 2014's Are We There, only this time it could shake a stadium. It's a real monster, all teeth and undeniable claws.
1. WEYES BLOOD | Movies
A devastating takedown, written for me by the other half of me. Weyes Blood ruined movies for me in just one song, laid all my worst fears right before me: the meaning of life just doesn't shine like that screen.
Thanks for listening! Please send me your lists too if you feel inclined to make them.
Technically, halfway through the year is next Monday, July 1st. This is a leap year, after all. They’re the only years where there’s an even split in days; the only times the divide falls at midnight, not noon.