The Bestest 2019: Filmmage

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2019 was a dark year for the human race. Politics, fires, floods, war, anger, and sadness were rampant. I haven’t ever seen so many incredible films that were so consistently bleak yet compelling. It’s hard to imagine that we fix many of these problems during this new decade, but at least we are chronicling modern times with a heavy dose of cinematic creativity. Many of the films on this list will be unwatchable for people that just want to be entertained. But if you want a break from the banality of social media and depressing stories on the news, here is a welcome dose of darkeness.

1.     Uncut Gems – Dir. Benny & Josh Safdie (Adam Sandler, Kevin Garnett) 

This is the most frenetic and relentlessly edgy film of the year. If you love sports gambling and the gangsters behind it, the Safdie brothers go deep into the belly of the beast. Set in the diamond district just off of Times Square, this film is about money and our endless preoccupation and addiction to it. Not unlike the brother’s prior full-length film “Good Time,” there is very little levity and joy, instead it is a relentless journey into madness. 

Although it is deeply dark, it moves so lightly through the slow-motion implosion of its star Adam Sandler, in very a welcome off character role. With small contributions from Judd Hirsch and Eric Bogosian, this is Sandler’s film, and he runs wild and loose trying to keep the wheels on the car, even though he seems to know he’s at the end of the line. Nothing goes where you think it will which is why it’s such a gem.

 2.     1917 – Dir. Sam Mendes (George MacKay, Dean Charles Chapman)

Like the opening sequence of “Citizen Kane” on hyperdrive, “1917” rolls along in one seemingly endless shot. The transitions are so seamless that you have to pay very close attention to even detect them as the camera never stops following the journey through the relentless and often gruesome journey through the burned-out wasteland of Germany and France at the end of WW1.

With a largely fresh faced and a sublimely costumed cast of soldiers, Mendes captures the kind of rugged and noble bonds of the last almost civil seeming war. After WW1, each war seemed to became even more barbaric and political, as the boundaries of the world became more rigid while starting to become more homogenous. Like “Dunkirk” before it, just when you thought there couldn’t be another great war film, “1917” is one of the very best ever.  

3. Parasite – Dir. Bong Joon Ho (Song Kang Ho, Jang Hye Jin)

It’s rare for a film that is filled with such scorching social commentary to exist as a comedy, a long con, a thriller, and a blood fest so comfortably. The inequality gap, as seen through the lens of two Korean families, is so shockingly universal, shining a bright light on the struggle and ingenuity of the poor, and the superfluous “problems” of the rich.

Bong is both a master storyteller, and a stylistic genius. Each character is just deep enough to understand fully, but not so deep that anyone steals too much of the oxygen. As the film shifts from light to dark, the camera finds every rich detail effortlessly. There wasn’t a more creative film this year.

4.     The Nightingale – Dir. Jennifer Kent (Aisling Franciosi, Baykali Ganambarr)

This starkly beautiful, infuriatingly bleak, and relentlessly morbid romp through Australia during the 1850’s is as unsettling a film as you are likely to see at the theater these days. It is by no means a mainstream work of art, but it’s oddly watchable, and intensely compelling once you tip-toe through a few gruesome scenes.

Early on in the film a young Irish servant watches as her family is brutalized, while the balance focuses on her unstoppable thirst for revenge. Despite being set halfway around the globe, 175 years ago, all of the themes seem strikingly similar. Her friendship with the marginalized aboriginal guide, echo’s the race relations we still struggle with today. The abuse she suffers from the powerful people around her also seem chillingly familiar. In the end we are all just animals.

5.     Marriage Story – Dir. Noah Baumbach (Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson)

Divorce isn’t rational. It’s isn’t fair to anyone. It’s people at their worst with collateral damage to boot. For anyone with a generally happy marriage this film might feel like unnecessary and unbelievable drivel. But the story is largely inspired by director Noah Baumbach’s own messy divorce to his ex-Jennifer Jason Lee so there is little speculation, mostly just experience.

Scarlett Johansson plays the unappreciated Nicole, who is largely stripped of makeup and glamour, and is an understated powerhouse, while Adam Driver’s self-absorbed Charlie is filled with a kind of clueless but arrogant intensity. The thing about divorce is that at some point, for outsiders anyway, things can’t get any worse. Rip the band-aid, make the leap, no one is guilty sometimes … Baumbach understands all this.   

 6.     Once Upon A Time In Hollywood – Dir. Quentin Tarantino (Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio) 

The first two hours of “Once Upon A Time” flow like a laid-back old Hollywood honey, slowly at first until it explodes with that classic Tarantino adrenaline shot to the heart. More “Jackie Brown” than “Pulp Fiction,” Pitt and DeCaprio seem to be having as much fun as we do watching them muddle through their own mid-life malaise.

Part fact, or at least embellished details, part extrapolated fiction (inspired in part by Burt Reynolds and his stuntman) in some ways you know where things are going but really can’t ever be sure about how it will all play out. How do the Manson killings intersect with a washed up actor and stunt man, in Tarantino’s hands you just roll with it enjoying every nuanced twist.

7.     Midsommar – Dir. Ari Aster (Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor)

“Midsommar” is one of the slickest most creative horror films I can remember. For starters it takes place in Sweden at a bucolic community and almost entirely during daylight. All three of these aspects create strange textures and scenarios that disorient the viewer who is expecting merely “horror.”

The plot is simple, a bunch of beautiful college students go traveling during summer break and end up at a cult where human sacrifice is still part of the program. That is as much as director Ari Aster needs to build one of the nastiest but most compelling films of the year.

 8.     The Farewell – Dir. Lulu Wang (Awkwafina, Tzi Ma, Diana Lin)

Of all the quirky, politically correct seeming movies that somehow managed to claw its way above the fray, without a free Netflix or Amazon boost, this innocent family reunion seems like an odd one to take off. Supercharged by its star, Awkwafina, fresh off “Crazy Rich Asians” is a quirky force of nature, but the film is a calm mediation on life, family and the inevitability of death.

For a largely subtitled film, this is a surprisingly easy film to follow. Given the subject matter, a terminal lung cancer diagnosis, it is genuinely upbeat throughout. Even though the cast is aligned around trying to do the right thing, the film makes you second guess whether good intentions can actually justify a lie. Good question.

9.     Joker – Dir.Todd Phillips (Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro)

Frighteningly “The Joker” wasn’t even in my top three darkest films of the year. It’s portrait of 1981 Gotham is a starkly apocalyptic nightmare of a city, making it easy to understand how a character like the Joker could come to be. A comic book film in name only, Joaquin Phoenix disappears into the black soul transforming his emaciated body into a fragile shell of horror.

More than just a tragic character study or a plot driven thriller, seeing De Niro in the film makes you a consider the similarities with his own minor masterpiece “King of Comedy” set in NYC and following a delusional unfunny comedian. Although there is no redemption, no soul, and no light, this is  a film that will be remembered and although not “enjoyed”, I think will be appreciated for a very long time.

10.  The Dead Don’t Die – Dir. Jim Jarmousch (Bill Murray, Adam Driver) 

In some ways this might be the most straightforward, and just plain funny Jarmoush film in a long and darkly funny career. For Zombie fans perhaps this will seem too flat and tame, but for those of us that just don’t dig the Zombie, this kind of understated meander is just what the doctor ordered.

Bill Murray and Adam Driver play two small time cops who end up having to save the world, or at least their town from the living dead. They are as dead pan much of the time as the lifeless Zombies who can only be killed by blowing up their heads. Like all Jarmousch films, there is a rather relaxed sense of cool that moves this film effortlessly through its strange landscape.

11.  The Irishman – Dir. Martin Scorsese (Al Pacino, Robert De Niro)

If this film clocked in at 2.5 hours, most people would be calling it a classic up there with “Goodfellas” and “Casino.” It would be easy just to love it just for the beautiful nostalgia of seeing the cast and director reunited one last time, but despite its heft it is a killer story impeccably made.

That is was largely made to be seen in you’re living room, made it easier for Scorsesee to get lazy about editing, because like most serialized TV, you could easily break it into four easy sections. But that is why a great film is great, and great TV is another thing all together. In the end who doesn’t love a mob film, and who doesn’t miss Keitel, Pesci, Pacino and De Niro?

12.   Jojo Rabbit – Dir. Taika Waititi (Roman Davis, Scarlett Johansson)

This film is a surreal daydream of one of the most despicable horror shows of all time. Seen through the eyes of a young Nazi in training, the world looks more like something out of a Wes Anderson film than “Schindler’s List.” There is a lightness and innocence that saturates every scene in the film as the magnitude of the crime gets lost in the soul of a child.

Roman Davis is a star, wise behind his years, understanding both the rich material and the mindset of his character in way most child actors never even get close to. Taika Waititi again proves that he is an underrated genius, telling a story so bizarre with such a deft touch you almost forget we are watching a film about the Holocaust.

13.  Ad Astra – Dir. James Gray (Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones)

Like” Gravity,” and to a lesser degree “Inception” before it, this film has a kind of hazy flow about it and is as much of a modern age space film finally accurately managing to capture movement without gravity. This time this ambiguous motion tends to mirror the broader questions of the film: is there intelligent life beyond earth, is our profession more important than family and the tangible pleasures of the world.

In some ways Brad Pitt is even better here than in “Hollywood,” always cool as glass but this time a bit more distant and meditative, searching for scientific answers that seem to outweigh those of the people in his world. The cinematography is breathtaking, while the story meanders through time and space at a most comfortable pace. There is a quiet distant magic at work throughout.

14.   Her Smell – Dir. Alex Ross Perry (Elizabeth Moss, Cara Delevigne)

This is a legitimate classic punk rock masterpiece. Like “Sid & Nancy” before it, Elizabeth Moss becomes a Courtney Love-esque character (the singer for the fictional band Something She), a riot girl messiah imploding in an infuriating brilliance right before our eyes. Like so many of our idles who flame out young (Elliot Smith, Kurt Cobain, Janis, Hendrix) it is so often that it is real psychic pain that births great art.

The pace and chaos of the direction and cinematography so perfectly matches the psychosis of the character that you find yourself woozy and right there in the journey. The first half finds Moss in the midst of a drug and alcohol fueled madness, but the second half is a calmer sadder reconciliation as she works through her recovery trying desperately to live. It is two very different movies, but both are bold and beautiful.

15.   David Crosby: Remember My Name – Dir. Cameron Crowe

Our idles are dying quietly and often expectedly. But in David Crosby we get to relive a career and a life filled with massive highs and lows. He is a living legend finally at peace with his journey. For all the beautiful music he made along the way, behind the scenes there was a restlessness and an anger that drove him off the rails for large swatths of time.   

Cameron Crowe has always loved music and musicians more than just about any journalist in the modern age. His soft touch allows the camera to give Crosby the freedom to try to understand and make peace with all of the troubles and heartbreak in the past. Fame and ambition is a dangerous drug, and when combined with the drugs that are so often used to soften the pressure, you end up detached, a shell of the person you were meant to be. It’s never too late to make amends.

A few more that are very worthy …

 16.     Dolemite is My Name – Dir. Craig Brewer (Eddie Murphy, Craig Robinson) It is so nice to see Eddie Murphy again, dominating every scene in this wickedly funny biopic about one of the best comedians you’ve probably never heard of.  

17.      Harriet – Dir. Kasi Lemmons (Cynthia Erivo, Janelle Monae) Although this accounting of the Harriet Tubman’s extraordinary freedom fighter watches more like an adventure film than another bleak film about slavery, it makes this hard road watchable. 

18.      The Confession Killer – Dir. Robert Kenner, Taki Oldham (Henry Lee Lucas) In this fascinating documentary about a long forgotten serial killer hoax where the filmmakers uncover one of the strangest accounts of our broken criminal justice system ever

19.      The Last Black Man In San Francisco – Dir. Joe Talbot (Jimmie Falls,  Jonathan Majors) The San Francisco in this surreal indie places a dagger in the heart of the post Internet city of our Utopian future, only it is a sour place filled with haves and have nots, and although there are not real answers the questions are profound. 

20.      Booksmart – Dir. Olivia Wilde (Kaitlyn Dever, Beanie Feldstein) The hilarious directorial debut from Olivia Wilde is a pitch perfect accounting of the what it’s like to be an overachieving high-schooler in 2019. 

 21.     Tell Me Who I Am – Dir. Ed Perkins (Alex and Marcus Lewis) This is a heartbreaking and truly remarkable story about two brothers piecing together two childhoods that are remembered very differently.

22.      The Peanut Butter Falcon – Dir. Tyler Nilson (Shia LaBeouf, Dakota Johnson) This is a beautiful little film about second chances, never giving up on dreams, and the power of just being good. The rustic setting and naturalistic tones make this an absolute delight.

23.      Bombshell – Dir. Jay Roach (Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman) The perfect companion to the “Loudest Voice In The Room,” this is a an acting tour de force about one of the most insidious conceptions in the history of media.

24.      The Inventor: Out For Blood in Silicon Valley – Dir. Alex Gibney (Elizabeth Holmes) The finest documentarian of the modern age tackles one of the most spectacular corporate crimes of the past decade in a mind bending film about one of the most intriguing scams in technology.

25.      American Factory – Dir. Stephen Bogner & Julia Reichert. We are where we are in the world today largely because globalization has created an interconnected set of overlapping values and traditions. No film has found an anecdote as clear as this to demonstrate our current world.  

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The last year of the decade was every bit as solid as each of the preceding years. Counter to popular belief, I still tend to think that real artists make albums. Maybe songs turn slowly into albums, but thematically the 32 releases I fell in love with this year were complete works of art birthed usually from a central theme (love, loss, anxiety, hope, politics, etc.). In years past I tended to have more electronic leaning favorites, but this time around I am back to guitars, acoustic meditations and genre-bending creativity that defies most comparisons. In many ways 2019 was a personal roller coaster, so I am incredibly grateful for all of the music that helped me fill the holes that opened and closed along the way. I hope everybody spends some time with these artists independent of your mood.

1. Michael Kiwanuka  – Kiwanuka (Polydor)

There was no record that mined the history of music from rock to soul to R&B quite as thoroughly as Michael Kiwanuka’s brilliant third full length album. It has a sound that is both undeniably modern yet also unidentifiable as an artifact of any specific era. Produced in part by the incomparable Danger Mouse, Kiwanuka channels politics and passion in a way that is long dormant since Marvin Gaye or the solo era of Paul Weller. Sadly not much has changed since then, the world is still broken, race relations are at a boiling point and hate seems to dominate the news.

Kiwanuka, a Ugandan Brit, has emerged a freedom fighter much the way Marley did in the 70’s, and as a defender of a better future. He opens with an infectious groove on “You Ain’t the Problem” where he sings “Love makes you blind / I hope to find / Who I believe in / Get back in line.” On almost every song he manages to lay down some heavy soul, taking you on a journey to some place that feels familiar, letting it all wash over you like a warm shower. Pure genius.

2.        Sharon Van Etten – Remind Me Tomorrow (Jagjaguar)

 It seems like an eternity since this brilliant collection was released (very early in 2019) and had I been listening to it on vinyl the grooves would be worn thin. I’ve been fanatical about her deeply personal and gracefully maturing music for almost a decade now. From the fragile and dark folk of her early work, to this more fully realized effort with songs that encroach on pop, Sharon has arrived in a very real way.

From the infectious, “Seventeen” where she wails “I used to be free, I used to be Seventeen,” to the raucus “Comeback Kid,” and the brooding “Jupiter 4” there is a kind of raw power, reminiscent of the early PJ Harvey, but more polished and melodic. In a world filled with pre-packaged starlets who neither write their own music nor play the music, Sharon Van Etten is a bright light looking back and forward. “Remind Me Tomorrow” touches something close to perfection from the first note to the last. 

3.         Purple Mountains – Purple Mountains (Drag City)

David Berman, AKA Silver Jews, and most recently Purple Mountains, was always more of a poet than a rock star. A long-suffering conjurer of a dark artistic melancholy, Berman left us with one last tragically comic meditation on modern life, depression and laughter. A few nights before embarking on his first tour in a decade, he quietly ended his life knowing that he had given us one last gift.

In a career’s worth of near perfect rock songs, perhaps “All My Happiness is Gone” might be his sadly foreshadowing best. In it he warbles in that familiar baritone “Ten thousand afternoons ago / My happiness just overflowed / That was life at first and goal to go … All our hardships were just yardsticks, then you know.” Great often comes from incredible sorrow, and Berman mined his soul for us.

4.              Jose Gonzalez & String Theory– Live In Europe (Mute) 

Jose Gonzalez has one of the most mesmerizing voices in music, and has penned some of the most hypnotic songs of the past 15 years. When performing solo, he accompanies himself on an intricately strummed acoustic guitar channeling Nick Drake and letting vocals and guitars just melt into each other sublimely. But in this expansive career retrospective performed throughout Europe, he engages the German avant-garde String Theory to build one of the most important fusions of classical music and folk ever recorded. I was lucky enough to have seen it performed three times in 2019, but this recording captures all of the transcendent joy emotion of the real thing. In a career of starkly beautiful songs, many of his best are present, including “Heartbeats,” Crosses,” Let It Carry You,” and “Down The Line.” Undeniable magic.

5.              Angel Olson – All Mirrors (Jagjaguar)

There has always been a darkness at the center of Angel Olson’s music, but not until now has it been so drenched in such traditional gothiness. “All Mirrors” is a sprawling album filled with lush orchestral accompaniments that create an even deeper exploration of the mind and soul. The song of the same name will likely go down as one of the best of the decade building slowly into a black rainbow of emotion. 

This is a breakup record, but adorned in something more regal. On “Lark” she sings “To forget you is to hide / There? is still so much left to recover / If? only we could start again / Pretending we don’t know each other.” In a year filled with incredibly strong female vocalists, Angel Olson has emerged as a the Queen if darkness. 

6.              Hannah Cohen – Welcome Home (Bella Union)

2019 featured so many extraordinary young female voices, but this lush waking dream of an album works as a kind of hypnotic charm. Recorded in Woodstock, there is a rustic dreaminess that haunts each of the 10 songs on “Welcome Home.” A mixture of folk and spare electro-pop, it is as much the effortlessness of her music as the effort that makes such an impactful cohesive work.

On the blissed-out contemplative opener “This Is Our Life” where she croons “This is your life / Don’t let it happen to you / What is your move / The deal’s on the table in clear view” she clearly emerges eons wiser than her years. This is an album meant to be savored from opening chord to closing verse.

7.               Andrew Bird – My Finest Work Yet (Loma Vista)

25 years into a wildly eclectic jaunt through the wilds of indie rock from the Squirrel Nut Zippers, and almost 20 years of solo efforts, this appropriately named release might just be his finest work. For fans of Father John Misty, this is spot on, but for those who find Father just a bit too much, “My Finest Work Yet” is the album you’ve been hoping he’d get around to making. 

Bird is a Chicago born virtuoso violinist and arranger with a voice from a hard to place era. The 13 songs here are jazzy, loungey and bluesy, but injected with a Laurel Canyon looseness (perhaps reflecting his recent move to LA). Any Bird song worth it’s salt features a heavy dose of violin, whistling and lyrics filled not with self-reflective emotion but with an incredible literary journey to places you’ve never even considered. This is truly a special work of art.

8.              Jamilla Woods– Legacy (Jagjaguar)

 Chicagoan and Brown educated Jamilla Woods is a poet, historian, singer and interpreter of the modern world who combines activism with hip hop lyricism into one of the most unique albums of the year. There is both 90’s acid jazz and 50’s cabaret. Like a modern amalgam of Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston and every other African American change maker, she pulls both directly from their words and imagines the ones they never wrote.

On “Giovanni,” inspired by a Nikki Giovanni poem entitled “Ego Tripping”, she sings “Any minute now you get the message / Eenie meenie miney pick an apt description / I’m impressive, you can check my chart for reference.” This is history similar to Hamilton is in some ways. On the banger “Zora” she merely sings it like it is “None of us are free but some of us are brave / I dare you to shrink my wave, I’m on a new plane.” This is an easy listen but a heavy dose of our often-shameful history. 

9.           Aldous Harding – Designer (4AD)

There is something so seductive and beguiling about the third album by the Kiwi songstress Aldous Harding, that you find yourself getting lost in some kind of enchanted forest, shrouded in fog but filled with odd Tolkienesque characters merging from the darkness nonchalantly. Her lyrical gymnastics and breathy vocals work together in some sort of perfect balance.

On “Fixture Picture” she croons “Fixture picture / I’ve got it, I’m on it / You’re in it, I’m honored” which serves as a kind of adieu to an ex which just calmly drifts into the future. But it’s the stand out “The Barrel” where she continues to mine the strange corners of her soul, but does so unlike anyone “The wave of love is a transient hurt / Water’s the shell and we are the knot / But I saw a hand arch out of the barrel.” This is a waking dream of an album. 

10.        Better Oblivion Community Center – Better Oblivion Community Center (Dead Oceans)

Supergroups are usually more pure novelty than anything likely to be permanent. But Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers seem to have created a band with more staying power. Hopefully. The folky rock that both artists have made a career out of as soloists, extends so seamlessly to this near perfect collaboration of lyrics and sentiment.

 The band channels a rootsy Americana vibe that feels more 70’s than today, but tends to lean towards something more literary than just SoCal beaches and Laurel Canyon. On “My City”  they lament “This town is a monolith / This town is a crowded movie / This town is a depot, I come and go / This town is my city.” Just let the music play, but pay attention to the little moments.

11.           Lana Del Rey – Norman Fucking Rockwell (Polydor)

Somewhere between too much hype and not enough time, Lana has flirted with real lasting career potential for almost a decade. She always towed the line between sugar and serene, but this time around she has created a masterpiece of patience and ethereal beauty. This one is a gently rolling stream of conscious and emotion. Her vocals are both fragile yet self-confident, adorned with acoustic guitars, piano, and a kind of lazily seductive hypnotism.

The nearly ten minute “Venice Bitch” is the kind of epic that will never find the radio or even that popular indie playlist, but seems to signal her ambition while drawing directly from the pop culture of her youth: “You’re in the yard, I light the fire / And as the summer fades away / Nothing gold can stay.” She is both an Outsider, but also someone perfectly in tune with the modern age.

12.         Big Thief – Two Hands & U.F.O.F (4AD) 

Releasing one brilliant record in a year is a remarkable feat, but two is almost unheard of in an era where the idea of a double album has been dead for twenty-years. There is no big thematic shift in the two albums, more just twins born a few months apart. The band is bursting with the prolific creativity of a band playing both with a sense of urgency combined and with a kind of calming mysticism.

Although the band was formed in and lives in Brooklyn, the music is born and recorded in rustic locales which explains the raw earthiness of each of the songs. The fragile vocals of singer Adrianne Lenker, creates a kind of intimacy that gives the band raw texture. On the standout “Not” we hear her sing “It’s not the energy reeling / Nor the lines in your face /Nor the clouds on the ceiling / Nor the clouds in space.” The band is a bit reminiscent of The Band – richly talented group of players on a voyage with no particular destination.   

 13.  Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Ghosteen (Ghoesteen Ltd.)

 Nick Cave’s music has never been anything other than an unfiltered dose of whatever he’s navigating through. On “Ghosteen” he confronts the death of his son who died tragically a few years back. There is no holding back on the raw emotion that comes with unexpected grief, and as such the album is beautiful but a heavy ride.

 As with most Cave efforts, there are huge soundscapes painted with odd sounds and instruments, accompanying his deep distinctive vocals. For 35 years he has been able to nuance both a dark and foreboding persona but also the world around him. “Ghosteen” is a sublime and tranquil coming to terms with one of life’s most tragic events. I thank him for sharing.  

 14.  Vagabon – Vagabon (Nonesuch)

Laetitia Tamko’s second album as Vagabon, the self-titled work of the same name, allowed her to quit her engineering job and travel the world playing her own brand of indie folk with the odd dash of pop splashed in. Her silky vocals do most of the work on “Vagabon” which is often accompanied by sparse instrumental accompaniments.

It is hard to place any specific point of influence, but this time out she wrote, produced and played most of what we hear. On the standout “Water Me Down” there is bright electronic energy as her lilting vocals just spill out so perfectly: “Never meant to be you / Never meant to be me / Never meant to be us / Never meant for?all?of this.” This is a special wonder.

 15. Local Natives –Violet Street  (Loma Vista)

Local Natives have been evolving their soaring three-part vocal harmonizing for almost a decade now. They construct songs that build slowly into towering rock pop anthems, flying dangerously close to the sun before transforming into something magical. Although they will never make a record as perfect as their debut “Gorilla Manor”, “Violet Street” is an inspired and welcome comeback. 

 There is something brighter and more relaxed here than the past few releases. Big polished singles like “When Am I Gonna Lose You” leverage all three vocalists who take turns moving us towards some glorious sunsetting relationships. There is always an optimism lurking behind the curtains of a Local Natives song. On “Café Amarillo” they put it all in context “I don’t want to die before I learn to live / Looking for my exits / Still so bad at making plans I plan to keep / How long has it been?” Indeed. 

A bunch of other stuff that you must hear …

16.     Whitney – Forever Turned Around (Secretly Canadian) The most relaxed, lushly produced and upbeat album of the year for me was the blissful second album from this quickly maturing dynamic duo. Put the top down and press play.  

17.     FONTAINES D.C. – Dogrel (Partisan Records) These young Irish punks rock hard and fast and with that accent and attitude that remind me of a lot of bands I used love when my tastes we a lot harder.  

18.       Weyes Blood– Titanic Rising (SubPop) Of all the old-fashioned Karen Carpenter meets Carly Simon influenced albums that have emerged in their wake, Natalie Mering’s SubPop debut is a marvel of patience and control and unlike anything I have heard in decades. 

19.       Tycho – Weather (Mom + Pop) Adding vocalist Saint Sinner to the band, Tycho expands well beyond their signature icy spacey instrumentalism into something far more reminiscent and inclusive of Everything But The Girl or Zero 7 era musicality.  

20.        Elbow – Giants of All Sizes (Polydor) Elbow continues to be the most underappreciated British rock band I can think of. Guy Garvey’s vocals always seem lifted from high above while the band builds him a magic carpet for him to croon from.

21.       Bon Iver – i, i (Jagjaguar) Justin Vernon is as brilliant as he is frustrating, daring to stretch out into brave new directions even though you know he’s capable of something so much more accessible and iconic. If you’re not moving forward, you’re not really moving.

22.       FKA Twigs – Magdalene (Young Turks) It is rare to find music this sparse yet so full of emotion and understated energy and creativity. “Magdalene” isn’t an always record, but it is a definitely sometimes.

23.        Amo Amo  – Amo Amo (Amo Amo) LA’s hippie dippy trippy, lazy hazy brilliant throwback California jam band channel’s the freedom of the 60’s with a Jim James produced polish, weaving some kind of misplaced gold.

24.        Yola – Walk Through Fire (East Eye Sound) Like Dusty Springfield before her, Yola’s exquisite brand of country soul (from Britain) is a sultry joy produced by the incomparable Dan Auerbach.

25.         Nilufer Yanya – Miss Universe (ATO Records) On this impeccable debut, British born indie pop goddess has made album that graphs the past and the present into something totally new.

26.        Vampire Weekend – Father of the Bride (Columbia) In the six years since their last album, many of the Vampires became producers and soloists, but Ezra recruited some new members and released this expansive masterwork filled with a handful of celebrity guests. 

27.        Orville Peck – Pony (SubPop) On this extraordinary debut a gay, oddly masked, Canadian indie-country singer, who sounds like cross between Wall of Voodoo and Bryan Ferry takes us on a trip down the dusty roads of our collective souls. 

28.       Mannequin Pussy – Patience (Epitaph) Philly’s reigning and most melodic pop-punk band, whose music seems ripped straight from the 90’s, has delivered a banging bump of nostalgia.  

29.       Cass McCombs – Tip of The Sphere (Anti-) This sprawling genre defying further cements the legacy of one of the most versatile singer-songwriters of our time blending folk, rock and psychedelia into a warm blanket sound words.  

30.       Karen O and Danger Mouse – Lux Prima (Lux Prima/BMG) There was no doubt that a combination like this could be anything other than dreamy and delicious. Two great tastes that taste great together. 

31.       Helado Negro – This Is How You Smile (RVNG) Florida born, Ecudorian Roberto Lange spins gentle cross-cultural gold alternating between electro-pop and Latin jazz on this gentle excursion.  

32.       Soak – Grim Town (Rough Trade) Irish phenom Soak started releasing music and got a Mercury nomination as a teenager, and eventually released this melodic masterpiece which captures both the spirit of innocence with the pressure of maturity.

To listen to the Bestest of the Bestest 2019 listen here: