On (compilation), by Poorly Drawn House

Dust comes from our skin, and the yellowed dishes in the sink are dead and never coming back. We have to leave and there’s nowhere to be. Separately, we mumble to the floorboard next to the mattress. No words, just pieces of words. The ones that slip out between eyes and eyelids. The floor can cave any minute, and that’s just how it goes.

In October, we, separately, walked through the ditch by the railroad tracks and the abandoned gas station. The childlike graffiti under the overpass shows how you, separately, cannot stop changing. But will not grow.

The empty bus floats us, separately, back across town, back to the poorly drawn house where we gulp the stale air, sprawled like stains.

And like a ship it drags over you, scoring your body, a fish under the dock, swimming in place.

Infinite lull.

Anchored to the basement by the issues you allow to eat. Blending into the beige walls. This is it. Every day, we, separately, sit on the rug next to the dead flies. This time we follow them, heaving, together.

jacob: drums (track #6) paulina: piano (track #1)

The 50 Best Albums of 2019

In 2019, memes ruled music. TikTok earworms, unlikely collabs, and saturated cyber-hits dominated the top of the charts, while the underground responded to ultra-pop the way it always does: with neo-traditionalism. Instead of adapting to its changing surroundings, trap stayed stagnant, and declined in general popularity–rather than increased–for the first time this decade. While up-and-comers offered mutated sub-genres, such as bubblegum bass and yeet music, stalwarts nestled further into their personal styles. Entering the 2020s, music is punchy, jagged, frantic, and a little numb–a clear reflection of life in 2019.

Here are the 50 best albums of 2019, according to me.

50. Solange - When I Get Home

49. Slowthai - Nothing Great About Britain

48. Dorian Electra - Flamboyant

47. Deb Never - House on Wheels

46. Earl Sweatshirt - Feet of Clay

45. Clairo - Immunity

44. Zelooperz - Dyn-O-Mite

43. Burna Boy - African Giant

42. Gangstarr - One of the Best Yet

41. Roddy Ricch - Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial

40. Courtney Barnett - MTV Unplugged Live in Melbourne

39. American Pleasure Club - Fucking Bliss

38. 420 Unlovable - 420 Unlovable Vol. 2

37. 10bands tiffany - RIP LIL CAT (Texas Love, Texas Hate)

36. Action Bronson & The Alchemist - Lamb Over Rice

35. JPEGMAFIA - All My Heroes Are Cornballs

34. MIKE - Tears of Joy

33. Danny Brown - uknowhatimsayin¿

32. Anna Wise - As if it Were Forever

31. Little Simz - Grey Area

30. Mustard - Perfect Ten

29. Lucki - Freewave 3

28. Lucki - Days b4 III

27. Toro Y Moi - Soul Trash

26. Cold Hart - Good Morning Cruel World

25. Maxo - Lil Big Man

24. Ecco2k - E

23. Adé Hakim - Happiest People In The World Wide Web

22. Wiki - Oofie

21. Greaf - River City Wizard

20. surrenderdorothy - justwhatthedoctorordered

19. Bones - IFeelLikeDirt

18. Daniel Caesar - Case Study 01

17. Lil Tracy - Anarchy

16. 10bands tiffany - Bramhall Pub

15. Germ - GERM HAS A DEATHWISH

14. Drain Gang - Trash Island

13. Deadmall - Bunny Rabbit

12. 100 gecs - 1000 gecs

11. Dijon - Sci Fi 1

10. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib - Bandana

Gritty street tales meet inimitable sampling wizardry. The long-awaited, often doubted sequel to Piñata, Bandana delivers on its promise of timeless, thorough, heartfelt gangsta rap. Madlib’s guidance and production prods at Freddie’s soft side, forcing him to examine any misguided platitudes that may dictate his life now, as well as in the past. `Lib massages Freddie into a 2Pac type character–an introspective gangster whose soft side reveals truths about his toughness. As the album goes on, the portrait of Freddie Gibbs becomes more colorful, more textured, more scarred, and more sincere.  

9. Honeyfitz - I Don’t Need Tennis Lessons I Need a Therapist

There are four different types of summer albums: the one for the beach, the one for the party, the one for falling in love, and the one for breaking up. Honeyfitz–Western Massachusetts’ oddball sweetheart–found a way to tick all four boxes at once with Tennis Lessons, his debut album. On it, Honeyfitz confesses his deepest insecurities and innermost devotions, in present tense, as if he’s opening up to his lover in couple’s therapy, and we’re sitting in on the session. The darkest points–like “Wake Up,” the perfect song for crying in your car–make the brightest moments–like “Leaning In” and “Concrete”–extra impactful.  Honeyfitz swoops up his listeners and takes them on a ride through the challenges and rewards of love and becoming an adult. Overall, Tennis Lessons is the most versatile, addictive, and cathartic indie-pop album of 2019.

8. Bladee - Icedancer

Mixtapes are meant to be sloppy. Ever since Gucci Mane’s first tape, rappers have been throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. Most times, the best you can hope for is a few catchy hooks and a couple of good beats. With Icedancer, Swedish internet-rap’s cult favorite Bladee throws a whole lot of shit at the wall - and all of it stuck. Ripsquad’s executive production pulls from early 2000s ringtones and pop hits, and Bladee embraces his role as the unlikely frontman of these ensembles. He’s pouty, hard on himself, tender, lovable, and oh so based. Even when Bladee barely tries, he cannot help but succeed. 

7. Your Old Droog - Transportation

The heart of hip hop lives in Transportation, the fourth full-length album from New York rapper Your Old Droog. With the storytelling (and voice, weirdly) of Nas, the poise of Dr. Dre, and the charm of MF DOOM, YOD provides a riveting ride through 15 transportation-related cuts. “Train Love”–the best storytelling song of the year–tells a story of Droog falling in love with a stranger he sees on the train, being too shy to talk to her, missing his opportunity, and taking the same train at the same time every day for ten years in hopes to see her again. He never runs into her again, and while he’s searching, he reflects about the whims of love and the color that desire brings to mundane life. To tell this story, Droog uses countless clever train-related double entendres. On “Monthly,” Droog details a fling he has under a peculiar, yet classically New York arrangement: he has sex with a woman he doesn’t really want to have sex with, in exchange for a monthly MTA pass. Through lyricism, originality, rawness, curiosity, style, and charisma, Your Old Droog delivers the best traditional hip hop album of 2019. 

6. jonatan leandoer127 - Nectar

People say he can’t rap, people say he can’t sing, people say he’s out of touch, people say he’s stupid. Many of his fans are afraid to admit they like him. One would assume this hate hits hard for Jonatan Leandoer Hastad a.k.a. Yung Lean a.k.a. jonatan leandoer127, a vulnerable artist who puts his whole heart in everything he does. One would be wrong. As is proven on Nectar, his latest album, Leandoer couldn’t give a fuck what people think even if his life depended on it. Over nine tracks of art-rock, folk, brit-pop, and experimental instrumentation, jonatan leandoer127 flatly sings and orates bizarre, slam-poetry-inspired stories from an alternate universe, one he calls home. There’s nothing like Nectar and I haven’t been able to stop listening to it all year. 

5. Future - Save Me

Save Me, Future’s only flawless album, features the tightest execution, rawest feelings, and catchiest ideas he’s ever laid on wax. Since this record dropped after a solid decade of trap trailblazing, that should really say something. Each of Save Me’s seven songs displays a different side of Future, each more fine-tuned, self-aware, and raw than ever before.

4. Slauson Malone - A Quiet Farwell, TWENTY SIXTEEN TO TWENTY EIGHTEEN

The most evocative and poetic embodiment of modern life at the edge of an environmental apocalypse. Slauson Malone pulls from nearly everything sonic that has happened until this point to assemble a tellingly numb album where the pain of the biggest loss imaginable, the death of the Earth, pounds just below the surface. A Quiet Farwell’s sloppiness bolsters its narrative, rather than detracts from it; Malone doesn’t go back to fix errors he made along the way (including the spelling of the album title) as if to say nothing matters anymore, we’re all doomed. Oof. 

3. (Sandy) Alex G - House of Sugar

Light, solid, loose, rich, smart, reckless. On his eighth full-length studio album, (Sandy) Alex G offers his most listenable project to date. He casually balances country twang and electronic pixelation over a backbone of rock ‘n’ roll topics and folksy charm. His guitar playing teeters between gritty and soaring, and this album’s detours always lead somewhere interesting. The sequencing on House of Sugar is almost too perfect. From the first second of the album to the last, the listener is snatched from their life into the world of House of Sugar, Alex G’s iteration of the folk tale “Hansel and Gretel.” If you shuffle the album, the inconceivable ease with which he strings together one-of-a-kind ideas stares you in the face. While this album’s primary feat is emotional, the display of technical virtuosity is jaw dropping. The degree of balance, catchiness, innovation, lyricism, creativity, and replay-ability make House of Sugar the best rock album of 2019. 

2. Wicca Phase Springs Eternal - Suffer On

In 2011, Adam McIlwee, a then-member of pop-punk band Tigers Jaw, started a side project: Wicca Phase Springs Eternal. Over instrumentals from Greaf, Jayyeah, and Horse Head, McIlwee sang the somber lyrics he’d wail in Tigers Jaw, but over trap beats. Nothing like this had ever been done before. Since then, emo rap has risen and fallen, and Wicca Phase has taken various excursions along the way–some abrasive, some clean, some auto-tuned, and some acoustic. On Suffer On, Wicca Phase fuses the richest moments from each point in his career into a tight, groomed, cohesive, and dangerously replay-able album, a bookend of emo rap, and a masterwork of Wicca Phase Springs Eternal. 

1. surrenderdorothy - julyrent

Everything to ever exist is made of combinations of a set amount of elements on the periodic table. It’s the foundation of everything we know and can imagine. julyrent feels as if it’s made from a new element, one that doesn’t exist anywhere else, and can never be reused. The world created from this element is one of utmost instability, but also smoothness. surrenderdorothy–a project of Greaf and Bones–has you right where they want you: unsure of what to believe but overcome by emotion. 

As a subtle nod to longtime fans, they weave a hilarious and impossibly clever skit throughout the album, where (someone likely pretending to be) a landlord leaves Greaf voicemails threatening to reveal Greaf’s deliberately hidden identity if he doesn’t pay his rent. As the project progresses, the landlord waffles on his threat, and reveals he’s a big Greaf fan, so much that he can’t bring himself to actually evict his tenant. The landlord continues to offer extraneous solutions to the problem, mirroring things Greaf fans do and say, so that if the right self-aware fan listens extremely close, they’ll get it. In typical fashion, these jokes are so niche that once they click, they seem too witty to be intentional, and the listener has to question if they’re overthinking the music. 

Not a second of julyrent is wasted and not a day goes by where I don’t listen to it. And when I’m not listening to it, I’m thinking about it, trying to understand the methods of the bizarre world they’ve created. I don’t think I’ll ever fully get it, but I know that in life, the hardest things to pin down allow for the most meaning and the most growth. Thank you, surrenderdorothy. Now back to the top. ◊

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Bonus: The 10 Best Songs of 2019

1. Future - Xanax Damage

2. Gabe Gill - Beachtowel

3. Your Old Droog - Train Love

4. Bones & Eddy Baker - (BONUS) KeepItInTheFamily

5. (Sandy) Alex G - Gretel

6. surrenderdorothy - whydoyoustillcrossmymind

7. Bladee - Trash Star

8. Kim Petras & Lil Aaron - Anymore (Laura Les Remix)

9. jonatan leandoer127 - Wooden Girl

10. Dijon - Crybaby

Concert Review: Freddie Gibbs & Madlib "Bandana" Release Show

A piñata’s no fun without a bandana. Take the blindfold off and we know exactly what’s going to happen — thwap, hooray, yum, stomach ache. You might as well just go to the store and buy some candy straight up. But, you see, a piñata isn’t about the candy – it’s about the experience. It’s about the risk. It’s about the absurdity. It’s about the stories. It’s about the choice to keep your bandana on when you could just take it off and see. 

Madlib threw on the instrumental for buoyant comeback single “Crime Pays” and Freddie Gibbs immediately stopped him. “Pause that shit, hold on, I gotta tell these motherfuckers a story.” He recounts a moment when his baby mama grilled him for selling drugs and hitting licks. His response? “Crime pays, crime pays.”

Gangsta Gibbs went on to rap the first verse acapella while The Beat Konducta scratched in zany chops and the crowd blurted out crux words. The three voices intertwined tightly without collision, conversing, communicating, alive.

The essence of Bandana lies within this simple observation: Freddie calls Madlib “Otis” — not “‘Lib,” not “Quas,” not “The Loop Digga,” and not once “Madlib.” Instead, he says “Otis” and enunciates every letter like a frustrated parent addressing their misbehaving child.

Let’s say Freddie Gibbs was a lo-fi hip hop head. It’s hard to picture, I know, but bear with me. He’s got an SP-404 tucked under his arm, every edition of Knxwledge’s Wrap Tapes in his Bandcamp library, and an unknowing resentment toward Chester Watson for taking all of the best lo-fi beats. Fuck it, he’s got cargo shorts on too, why not. Lo-fi Freddie praises Madlib for the expansive technical and stylistic innovations he’s bestowed upon the art-rap landscape. ‘Lib is a god to him and his peers.

But Gangsta Gibbs isn’t interested in lo-fi micro-nuances. Gangsta Gibbs likes energy. Gangsta Gibbs like attitude. Gangsta Gibbs likes havoc. If lo-fi Freddie made an album with Madlib, it would be predictable – hiss, crackle, boom, bap, and on to the next. But Gangsta Gibbs is a loose cannon – you don’t know what to expect. If he misses the piñata and whacks a spectator, so be it, it’ll make for a wild story. And when he does hit the piñata, that shit is going to be crazy. 

Watercolorsunshine Releases Banjo Cover of Autotuned Bladee Song.

Watercolorsunshine is a Folk musician with a knack for radical reinvention. Recently, he released a heart-wrenching banjo cover of Swedish Promcore artist Bladee’s tumultuous autotune banger, “Destroy Me.” 

The original song is cloaked in rumbling 808s and lined with snappy trap percussion. Bladee’s vocals are doused in autotune and reverb. His music is entirely one of a kind, but if there is a trace to any influences, my guess would be glitzy Dance music from the early 2000’s.

Watercolorsunshine’s cover of “Destroy Me” is fundamentally dissimilar to the original, but both songs radiate deep longing and are beautiful in their own ways. Instead of high-pitched autotuned wailing, you find a rich and delicate delivery, and instead of sub-bass, you find melancholic harmonica. The leading banjo performance is pendulous and gentle. Overall, Watercolorsunshine made a heartfelt, rustic, and momentous ballad out of, well, a Bladee song.

a https://soundcloud.com/bladee1000 cover

(prod Ripsquadd) @BladeeCity @7evaa

Album Review: Makeup Girl - Something New (EP)

If the indie genre was a supermarket, Makeup Girl would be the off-brand cereal that expired two years ago. Yes, Frosted Fakes may be cheaper than the real deal, but people trust their Frosted Flakes and are happy to pay twenty cents more for quality that they can count on. Plus, those Frosted Fakes have been sitting on that shelf for way too long to still be edible - they don’t have a chance. And if mom or dad comes home with a big box of Frosted Fakes, little Jimmy is going to be pissed. He wants his name brand Frosted Flakes and will accept nothing less. He’s not going to waste his one sugary breakfast for the week on an inferior product. 

What can make knockoff items appealing, though, is when they are offer something different than the original. Just making a watered-down version of something successful is never a marvel or a feat; and that’s exactly what Makeup Girl does. 

On their recent Something New EP, the Washington D.C. natives reel out predictable song structures, basic chord loops, and cliched lyrics. Makeup Girl is the Frosted Fakes and Mac Demarco and Homeshake are the Frosted Flakes. The wailing, nasal vocals on tracks 3 though 5 blatantly mimic Demarco’s signature inflection. But Makeup Girl’s vocalist lacks the personality that Mac Demarco radiates. Similarly, tracks 1 and 2 copy Homeshake’s simple and clean production method with smooth chords and drums that sound like they were syncopated automatically from a GarageBand stock setting. Very few musicians can pull this off. One thing that makes a successful attempt at incorporating ironically crappy drums is when the other instruments shine effervescently, making it clear that the percussion is intentional. With Makeup Girl, I can’t tell if the drums are ironic or not because the other instruments’ performances are just as dull. For their next project, I hope the band develops more of an identity, takes more risks, and creates a sound of their own.

Recorded by Makeup Girl at Cave Studios.