We’re into the top 20 albums from the year that I heard and reviewed. Let’s do this.
#20 – Blackwater Holylight – Veils of Winter
Blending goth, psychedelia, and doom, Blackwater Holylight crafted one of the coolest and creepiest records of the year. Witches coven vocal harmonies and cosmic horror synths roll along like fog across a moor and draw you into what at first sounds like the end of your mortal coil but turns out to be a pretty neat party.
#19 – Khruangbin – Hasta El Cielo
Khruangbin’s Con Todo El Mundowas already amazing, but then they released this dub version of it, and it’s just as good. It’s richly layered and probably the best chill-out record of 2019.
#18 – Comacozer – Mydriasis
Be sure to check out these guys if you’re a fan of dwarf star matter-heavy stoner metal. Comacozer’s Mydriasis consists of only four tracks, but they add up to enough time for a full album. They take delight in exploring long jams, cosmic highways, and hanging out with ancient gods.
#17 – King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Infest the Rats’ Nest
Speaking of heavy, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard decided to release two albums this year. The first was Fishing for Fishies (#26 on this list), and the second was this thrash metal album. Like “Fishies,” it’s also heavy on environmental themes and even heavier on shredding. They pretty much did it as a lark and it ended up being one of the best metal albums of the year.
#16 – Chromatics – Closer to Gray
Everyone was expecting the long-awaited (and long since destroyed) Dear Tommy, but we got Closer to Grayinstead. It’s pretty much a giallo film soundtrack with plenty of sexy synthwave, Ruth Radelet’s haunting vocals, and a stunning cover of “The Sounds of Silence.”
The top 15 are coming up later today. Stick around!
Here we are at the end of 2019. As always, there’s too much good music released every year for anyone to hear all of it, but here are my top 30 albums of 2019 (of 60 that I reviewed) this year.
#30 – Vapors of Morphine – Lyons, Colley, Dupree Live at the Lizard Lounge 5/25/2007
This is a recording of a 2007 show that was the beginnings of what would become Vapors of Morphine. It’s a great recording of jazz, low rock, delta blues, and a bit of psychedelia and was a welcome gift for this lover of Morphine.
#29 – Black Midi – Schlagenheim
This album is difficult to describe. Is it prog-rock? Post-punk? Both? Neither? I think it’s neither. I do know that it’s a wild mix of crazy guitar riffs, epic drumming, and bizarre, frantic lyrics. It’s unlike anything you’ll hear, and I fully expect (and the band has pretty much said) that the next Black Midi album will be completely different.
#28 – BODEGA – Shiny New Model
BODEGA can pretty much do no wrong in my eyes and ears, and Shiny New Modelwas another sharp, witty post-punk record from these New Yorkers. BODEGA capture existential ennui, technology paranoia, and the annoyance of the daily grind better than most.
#27 – Cosmonauts – Star 69
I knew as soon as I heard the single “Seven Sisters” for the first time that Star 69 would be in the top half of this list. Sure enough, the entire album is a shoegaze wallop with their heavy wall of distorted guitars and California sunshine (intentionally mixed with a bit of smog, let’s be honest). Sharp lyrics about being tired of parties and sick of hipsters are an added bonus.
#26 – King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Fishing for Fishies
Never ones to fear experimenting with multiple genres, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard decided to make a blues record and mix it with synthwave. It works. They’re probably one of the few bands who could do it, let alone make it a concept record about environmental issues and the constant creep of more technology into our lives.
Who’s in the top 25? Come back tomorrow to find out!
We’ve reached the top 10 concerts I saw this year. Read on!
#10 – Priests – Lincoln Hall – Chicago, IL – April 22nd
This was my first time seeing Priests in a small venue. The first time I saw them was at the 2017 Pitchfork Music Festival. Priests had just released their great (and, sadly, final for now) album The Seduction of Kansas and all of the songs sounded great live, and downright threatening at some points.
#9 – New Bomb Turks – House of Blues – Chicago, IL – November 28th
I hadn’t seen New Bomb Turks in well over a decade, and they still sounded as raw and feisty as ever. They were a wild punk rock injection to the Reverend Horton Heat’s “Holiday Hayride” show. I was thrown back in time and in the small mosh pit for the entire set, even jumping on stage during “Let’s Dress Up the Naked Truth” and having my mouth violated by lead singer Eric Davidson’s microphone.
#8 – King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Aragon Ballroom – Chicago, IL – August 24th
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard never disappoint, and I attended this show after going to a memorial service for a cousin who loved live music. I thought of her multiple times during this show, which featured a wild set that mixed psychedelia, thrash metal, electro, and blues and two mosh pits happening at the same time in different parts of the ballroom.
#7 – Bayonne – 191 Toole – Tucson, AZ – May 10th
For anyone who missed this show, let me express my condolences. It was the last show of Bayonne‘s spring tour. It was in a small Tucson venue and I think fewer than thirty people were there. He could’ve just phoned it in and did the bare minimum to get by and then motor home to Austin, Texas, but he didn’t. He slayed that stage. I knew halfway through his set that it was going to be among my top ten shows of the year.
#6 – The Black Keys – United Center – Chicago, IL – September 27th
Seeing the Black Keys live had been on my bucket list for years, so I jumped at the chance to see them in Chicago. I didn’t know how their raw blues rock would sound in such a big venue, but my apprehension was short-lived. They filled the United Center with powerful sound and clarity, mixing old tracks with new ones and thrilling the crowd.
We’re almost to number one. Who will take the crown? Tune in later today to find out!
Apparently not needing sleep like other human beings, Australian psychedelic juggernauts King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have announced spring 2020 tour dates through the U.S. and Canada. Tickets are already on sale. As you can see from the poster, these shows include three three-hour marathon sets – two in Colorado (one of which is already sold out) and one in California. Don’t miss your chance to see them live. KGATLW never disappoint.
I once read a comment on a YouTube video of “Planet B,” a track from King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard‘s newest album, Infest the Rats’ Nest, that said the following:
“Interviewer: What genre do you play? / King Gizzard: Yes.”
That comment refers to how the Australian psych-rockers went from releasing a blues boogie / synthwave record, Fishing for Fishies, earlier this year to Infest the Rats’ Nest – one of the best thrash metal albums of the year. They’ll play whatever they feel like playing.
The album is a companion piece of sorts to Fishing for Fishies in its environmental message. The first half of Infest the Rats’ Nest is all warnings about how we’re trashing the Earth and the second half is a story of people trying to flee our dying planet but being stonewalled by rich elitists.
“Planet B” gets the album off to a crunchy, angry start with fierce double drumming and dire warning vocals like “Paralyzation, scarification, population exodus…There is no planet B! Open your eyes and see!” “Mars for the Rich” has a cool groove to it (wicked bass licks, Grateful Dead-like drumming), showing that KGATLW didn’t want to completely abandon their psychedelic roots. Lead singer Stuart Mackenzie sings the tale of a child seeing images of Mars on television and wishing he could go there to escape the poisoned Earth, but knowing only the rich will escape environmental doom.
“Organ Farmer” is bonkers. You can barely keep up with the energy of it. It’s all runaway train guitars and drums that sound like they’re about to collapse. “Superbug” switches to stoner metal jams reminiscent of Sleep while Mackenzie sings about a super virus sweeping across the planet.
“Venusian I” has epic shredding behind a tale of trying to flee to Venus because the Earth is doomed. “Space is the place for the new human race,” Mackenzie sings at the beginning of “Perihelion” – a space rock with crushing drums. He and the rest of KGATLW want to escape the Earth, but will their efforts to reach Venus be successful? “Venusian 2” hits you like a spaceship trying to survive re-entry burn as it blazes across the Venusian sky, so it’s difficult to say if the trip is a safe one.
The mosh-inducing “Self-Immolate” is as fiery as its name would imply. The whole band sizzles across it while the lyrics tell a tale of blazing heat on Venus and the agony of leaving one dying planet for another that’s a perpetual inferno. The album ends, fittingly, with “Hell.” Mackenzie, now dead, is terrified as “Satan points me to the rats’ nest.” and everything, like Earth and Venus, is burning all around him.
Heavy stuff, but it’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, so don’t worry. KGATLW made Infest the Rats’ Nest to not only warn us of the effects of climate change, but also to salute their appreciation of thrash metal and have some fun playing stuff that they have admitted is hard to play. As a result, they put out a thrash metal record that can hold its own with heavyweights in the genre.
Keep your mind open.
[You should probably subscribe before you head off to Venus.]
For their first album of 2019, Fishing for Fishies, prolific and unpredictable psych-rockers King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard wrote a blues record and an album promoting environmentalism.
The title track instantly puts down a happy grove while the lyrics suggest that our oceans need rescued and maybe we should lay off fishing for a while. The album’s cover features a robot (Han-Tyumi from Murder of the Universe?) casting a burning fishing line into a fiery lake that might be covered in a blazing oil spill. Stu Mackenzie and Ambrose Kenny-Smith sing about the cruelty of commercial fishing and how it would be better to just let the fishies swim.
“Boogieman Sam” has a heavier groove that gets your head bobbing and toes tapping. It also lets Kenny-Smith cut loose with his harmonica, as do many of the tracks on this record. It’s fun to hear his playing in the forefront. The jazz swing of the back-to-nature ode “The Bird Song” (which gets into existential philosophy – “To a bird what’s a plane?…To a tree what’s a house?”) is great. It’s like a Steely Dan or Doobie Brothers track.
“Plastic Boogie” is another solid groove cut with Mackenzie and Kenny-Smith sharing lead vocals throughout it as KGATLW discuss how space age polymers are ruining our oceans and polluting everything in sight. “The Cruel Millenial” has Kenny-Smith singing lead while the rest of the Wizards sound like they’re having a blast playing behind him with pub-rock beats and riffs. “Real’s Not Real” bring back that cool 1970’s jazz-rock swing thing that is hard to describe, but recognizable once you hear it. They add some psych-fuzz and blues harmonica to it, which makes it even better.
Speaking of blues harmonica, it’s front and center on the sweet rocker “This Thing” (which also has a fine bass line from Lucas Skinner). “Acarine” brings in a touch of the Middle Eastern rhythms found on their album Flying Microtonal Banana as it floats along in a bit of a psychedelic haze and discusses how even the smallest of creatures are worth saving. The song slides into synthwave sounds and beats that flow well into the closing track – “Cyboogie” – which blends synthwave pulses, robotic (Han-Tyumi again?) vocals, and boogie jams.
It’s a fun record, one of KGATLW‘s most accessible in a while for listeners who haven’t heard their stuff before, and a great set up for their second album of the year – Infest the Rats’ Nest (review coming soon) – which continues the environmental themes of this one.
Keep your mind open.
[Why fish for music news and reviews when you can subscribe and have them delivered to you?]
I’d read that the King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard / ORB / Stonefield show at Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom was on the verge of selling out. I’m pretty sure it did, judging by the line to get into the venue.
The line was so long that the Aragon had to put an employee (guy in white shirt behind car) in a parking lot two blocks away to manage it.People were laughing in disbelief when they reached this corner and saw the line went on for another block and a half.
The top photo there is from the back of the line, which was over two blocks from the Aragon’s front door. The second photo shows the line along the Red Line El track wall on the west side of the Aragon. I’ve never seen a line this long to get into the Aragon. As one guy put it as he walked past me to get to the end of the line, “Take that all of you who say ‘Who?’ whenever I mention this band!”
The line was so long that, unfortunately, I missed Stonefield’s set. They were so loud, however, that you could hear them outside the venue when a Red Line train wasn’t passing by. I might get to see Stonefield at this year’s Levitation Austin festival, so it could still work out okay for me.
ORB, who have added a guitarist since I last saw them, put on a solid set of stoner-psych that included a lot of fuzz, metal riffs, and avalanche drumming.
ORB
I knew King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s set was going to be nuts when people were already chanting, clapping, and cheering during the soundcheck. Plus, KGATLW’s new album, Infest the Rat’s Nest, is a thrash metal record, and I was sure songs from it were going to cause a frenzied mosh pit.
Sure enough, they opened with “Self Immolate” and “Mars for the Rich” off the new record and the crowd immediately compressed by about thirty percent as two pits broke out – one on each side of the stage. I figured they wouldn’t play too much off the new record, as thrash metal is hard to play and they had an entire show to do that would probably cover everything from psychedelic hippie music to blues.
They proved me right by following the metal with the swing of “Plastic Boogie” off the first album they released this year, Fishing for Fishies, which is a blues record. Three cuts off Polygondwanaland followed – “Inner Cell,” “Loyalty,” and “Horology.”
KGATLW
“We’re gonna play an old one,” lead singer Stu Mackenzie said. “How old?” said the guy behind me. “Old for them is like an album from last year.” True, considering KGATLW put out five albums in 2018. The “oldies” turned out to be “I’m in Your Mind” and “I’m Not in Your Mind” from 2014’s I’m in Your Mind Fuzz. “The Balrog” from Murder of the Universe got everyone jumping again, and I was in the pit by the time they got to “Evil Death Roll” from Nonagon Infinity. The whole crowd was jumping during “Rattlesnake,” which lead to other cuts from Flying Microtonal Banana including “Sleep Drifter” and “Billabong Valley.”
Nonagon Infinity opens the door for infinite lizards.
They swung back into a boogie set with more cuts off Fishing for Fishies and even threw in their synth-single “Cyboogie” before ending the night with a wall of death-inducing “Planet B” and “Hell” from Infest the Rat’s Nest. They began the night with metal and ended the night with metal, leaving everyone sweaty and giddy.
“Cyboogie”
“Thanks for coming. Thanks for getting crazy. You guys are fucking crazy. It’s great,” Mackenzie said at one point. It was a crazy crowd, probably the craziest I’ve been in since I saw Thee Oh Sees in Austin last year. The mosh pit was friendly, too. Twice the pit I was in stopped so people could turn on cell phone lights to look for, find, and hold up dropped stuff like someone’s glasses and a wallet. A woman walked by me wearing a shirt that read, “They only walls be build are walls of death.” on the back.
That’s metal, all right, as was this show.
Keep your mind open.
[Boogie on over to the subscription box while you’re here.]
Never ones to rest on their laurels, Australian psych rockers King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have announced their fourteenth album (in less than seven years, by the way), Fishing for Fishies, will be released on April 26th.
According to lead singer Stu Mackenzie, “We tried to make a blues record. A blues-boogie-shuffle-kinda-thing, but the songs kept fighting it – or maybe it was us fighting them. Ultimately though we let the songs guide us this time; we let them have their own personalities and forge their own path. Paths of light, paths of darkness. This is a collection of songs that went on wild journeys of transformation.”
You can pre-order Fishing for Fishies at Flightless Records, and the band is about to embark on yet another massive tour across the globe. Catch them if you can. They never disappoint.
We’e halfway through the list now. Who made it? Read on and find out, my friend.
#15: Public Practice at Chicago’s Hideout – This was probably the closest I’ll get to seeing WALL live, and it was well worth the trip and risking the snowstorm on the ride home. Public Practice played their entire debut EP, Distance Is a Mirror, and sounded like they’d been playing together for years.
#14: MIEN at Levitation Austin – This was the first live show of the psychedelic supergroup, and bass / sitar player Rishi Dhir told my wife and I earlier in the day that they were nervous about premiering the material from their debut record. He had nothing to worry about, because they nailed it. Their set was one of the highlights of the festival for us.
#12: Radar Men from the Moon at Levitation France – This was the last set we saw in Angers, and it was a solid set of psychedelic electro from a band that normally plays guitars and drums. We weren’t sure what to expect from them, and they about floored us.
#11: Flamingods at Levitation France – These guys swapped instruments so many times on stage that we lost track of what normally played what. They unloaded a fierce, funky set of Middle Eastern-twinged psychedelia that was top-notch.
Up next, the top 10!
Keep your mind open.
[Zip over to the subscription box before you head out, please.]
“Intense,” “hot,” and “fucked up” were all phrases I heard used to describe the sold-out King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizardshow in Chicago on June 10th. Fans were lined up down the block in hopes to get early access to the Riviera Theatre’s general admission area for the best spots to watch the show or be in the mosh pit.
It was a cool yet humid afternoon and evening. Fog was high and thick in the city. You couldn’t see the tops of most buildings. It was a bit of a surreal image perfect for a psychedelic rock show. I felt bad for a group of four guys who were asking one of the bouncers for any unclaimed tickets. They’d driven all the way from Ohio and didn’t know the show was sold out until they arrived.
Unfortunately, I missed Amyl and the Sniffers, as my friend attending with the show with me had a late appointment, but we got in after she went through a near TSA-level search at the door. We immediately noticed the heat in the place. A lot of bodies were in there, and the humidity crept in from the streets and into the theatre. Security was already hauling a sweat-soaked woman who could barely walk out of the stage area as we walked down the foyer.
The mosh pit started quick. I didn’t get into this one. There were so many people there that moving from our spot (between the downstairs bar and the sound booth) to the main floor and pit was nearly impossible. My friend told me that a lot of the people already looked dehydrated and / or drunk and / or high, and she then remembered that the Spring Awakening electronic music festival had been happening in the city all weekend. Many had decided to wrap up their weekend with Australian psychedelia after going crazy with dubstep and trance for three days.
King Gizzard ripped through “Lord of Lightning” and got a big reaction for “Rattlesnake”. One of the high spots of the night for me was hearing a slightly aggressive version of “Sleep Drifter.” It had an edge to it that you won’t hear on Flying Microtonal Banana.
“Rattlesnake” gets everyone jumping.
The three tracks from Nonagon Infinity got a great response from the crowd, of course. My friend was describing the show as “intense” by now. She went to the restroom at one point and came back to tell me, “The real show’s out there (in the foyer). Some girl is fucked up out there and they’re dragging her and other people outside.” I made a break for the restroom at one point and discovered the humidity had turned the foyer floor and stairs down to the restroom into a Slip and Slide. I made it there and back without falling, but I’m not sure others were so lucky.
Nonagon infinity opens the door.
I was happy to see the four Ohio guys walk by me with drinks in their hands. I clapped one on the shoulder and told him I was happy they made it into the show. The whole crowd was buzzing, both naturally and through chemical means. My friend was a bit freaked out by part of King Gizzard‘s projections that included a cartoon crocodile flying a biplane. King Gizzard shows are always wild, and this one was no exception.
