Staff choices of recordings that made big impressions

Album cover for Drive-By Truckers’ "American Band"
Album cover for Drive-By Truckers’ "American Band"

Writers of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette staff share their viewpoints:

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Album cover for Leonard Cohen's "You want it Darker"

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Album cover for Brandy Clark's "Big Day in a Small Town"

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Album cover for Adia Victoria's "Beyond the Bloodhounds"

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Album cover for Lydia Loveless' "Real"

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Album cover for Sturgill Simpson's "A Sailor’s Guide to Earth"

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Democrat-Gazette file photo

Beyonce was widely acclaimed for her album Lemonade.

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Democrat-Gazette file photo

A week before his death on April 15, Prince was hospitalized in Moline, Ill., where his plane made an emergency landing to get the singer medical treatment.

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Frank Ocean

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Big Piph

PHILIP MARTIN

Let me preface this with the usual #ihatelists disclaimer -- my opinion changes minute to minute, I am easily distracted and fickle. I crave novelty and stuff that activates my imagination, though I can be blissfully lobotomized by Murray Perahia warmly tickling through Bach's French suites. But I'm not going to put that recording on my Top 10 list any more than I'm going to listen to Kanye West's not-all-bad-but-c'mon-man The Life of Pablo. I could talk myself into almost believing that the intent behind such "masterpieces" as Beyonce's Lemonade and Frank Ocean's Blonde elevated them from good and crafty pop (nothing wrong with that) to something I'll remember in five years.

But as long as we're being honest, I'm more likely to seek out the latest Kate Rusby album, Life in a Paper Boat, which is another I don't think I'd list in my Top 10 right this moment. But to quote the dearly departed Leonard Cohen -- who also misses out this year -- that don't make it junk.

Just so you understand: What follows is a spur-of-the-moment, lightly considered sampling of what I've been listening to lately -- minus the Mylene Farmer Interstellaires album, which I believe is a 2015 model and thus technically ineligible to embarrass me with by the shamers we all imagine are willing to pounce upon us for our crimes against taste. I like these records and a lot of others, but these especially. Right now. Maybe you'll like them too. Maybe not.

In no particular order:

• Robbie Fulks, Upland Stories. Fulks is one of those reliable second-tier artists. He's too hardcore for mainstream approval, too enamored of traditional virtues of songcraft, melody and musicianship to appeal to the bomb flingers. His catalog might compare pretty well with Steve Earle. Fulks has the same sort of subversive anti-Nashville credentials and banked intelligence, if not the made-for-TV personal history. He's at his best here, with an album that seems to come straight from the overlooked and dismissed middle of the country without ever flattering the wishfulness of the proudly deplorable. Every song connects; the acoustic tremors resonate like the back of a vintage 000-18.

• Monkees, Good Times! Yeah, part of me wants this on the list just to troll those who alleged that I lost my mind when I said nice things about it earlier this year. But listen with your ears, not with your dog-eared paperback copy of The Official Rolling Stone History of Rock 'n' Roll.

• Drive-By Truckers, American Band. Now is the time for this sort of recording from a bunch of middle-aged white guys from the South. It just is.

• Amanda Shires, My Piece of Land. A brief and shining moment from Jason Isbell's better half (produced by David Cobb, who also did Isbell's Something More Than Free and Chris Stapleton's Traveller) that highlights Shires' remarkably supple voice and gleaming elliptical lyrics. I came across my copy serendipitiously -- I found it among a pile of discarded discs someone had put on our office "free (for donations) table." I could understand that, given the unassuming promo cover (different from the commercial version). Anyway, it was easily the best dollar purchase I made all year.

• Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Skeleton Tree. Raw and angry and unforgiving of a world indifferent to human concern, the album was recorded shortly after (but, in the main, written before) Cave's 15-year-old son died in a fall from a cliff. Grief-stricken, Cave leaves it all on the studio floor -- all the hurt and blood and anguish and telling imperfection. This is terrible and awe-inspiring. This is how we live and die and carry on.

• Dori Freeman, Dori Freeman. A sparkling, stripped-down debut that mingles vintage jazz and girl group pop with what reads as an alt-country sensibility. "Still a Child" seems like a song for our time, a waltzing piano and steel guitar-driven takedown of an oblivious male ego: "Burn all your bridges I don't really care/Say what you want but it don't make it fair/Count all your years and the gray in your hair/But you are still a child."

• Michael Kiwanuka, Love & Hate. An audacious modern soul record by a fascinating guitarist-singer and sonic texturist who was somewhat bizarrely presented as a retro-minded singer-songwriter on his debut two years ago.

• Alejandro Escovedo, Burn Something Beautiful. On this comeback album, co-produced by former R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck and Minus 5/Fresh Young Fellows frontman Scott McCaughey, Escovedo alludes several times to the depression that had him "giving up on living/terrified of death." But the venerable (65-year-old) semi-legend emerges as a confident artist capable of packing plenty of nuance in what initially sounds like Teflon-jacketed pop rock. When he sings "I Don't Want to Play Guitar Anymore," don't believe him.

• Sturgill Simpson, A Sailor's Guide to Earth. I debated leaving this one off this list, because it's too obvious or because I imagine others will be mentioning it or because it got nominated for a Grammy or because I need to put a hip-hop record on this list or some other stupid list-compiling anxiety. But then I listened to it again and, while I might argue about whether it's Simpson's best work to date, it still comes across as tender and jagged, something ripped from the heart of a roadhouse Saturday night or from the secret notebook of Bill Withers' poetry-writing grandson.

• Lori McKenna, The Bird & The Rifle. A wry, professionally realized array of precisely calibrated character studies and short stories that crackles with the banked energy of Alice Munro short stories.

Honorable mentions: David Bowie, Blackstar; Strumbellas, Hope; Jim James, Eternally Even; Paul Simon, Stranger to Stranger; Maren Morris, Hero.

Read Philip Martin's pop culture blog at blooddirtangels.com

SEAN CLANCY

In no particular order, and acknowledging that I missed a lot of marquee releases, these are my favorites of 2016.

• Lydia Loveless, Real. Ohio's toughest singer-songwriter details the wreckage of messy relationships on her strongest and most consistent album.

• Michael Kiwanuka, Love & Hate. I first heard Kiwanuka's music on the TV show Atlanta and went scrambling for anything of his I could find. This is thoughtful, trippy, acoustic-based rock and soul that sounds fresh and modern.

• Drive-By Truckers, American Band. An album for these weird times. The venerable Truckers wrap social commentary and personal introspection into their brand of Southern rock and calloused, plain-spoken poetry.

• Big Piph and Tomorrow Maybe, I Am Not Them: The Legacy Project. Ambitious and rewarding album from the Little Rock rapper and his crew. It gets better with each listen and there's also an app with videos that is worth checking out.

• Two Cow Garage, Brand New Flag. A topical -- at times furious -- set from the Ohio-based bar band heroes (who record for Little Rock's Last Chance Records). The anthemic singalong "Let the Boys Be Girls" should be named Fight Song of the Year for misfits and those who love them.

• Beach Slang, A Loud Bash of Teenage Feelings. Fortysomething Beach Slang leader James Alex, possessed with an unrestrained empathy and blatant nostalgia for a certain kind of scraped-knee rock 'n' roll, manages to package all those teenage feelings of the title into eminently catchy, fuzzy little cherry bombs of songs.

• Mitski, Puberty 2. Disturbing but also enchanting hymns to despair and desperation. The explosive "Your Best American Girl" is a devastating take on unrequited love.

• Car Seat Headrest, Teens of Denial. Infectious, emo-indie rock with a dry humor and dark edge of melancholy and depression. Also, it may have the year's best opening line: "I'm so sick of (fill in the blank)."

• Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Skeleton Key. A haunting assembly of pulsing soundscapes and the punk legend's bloody, evocative lyric readings.

• Chris Maxwell, Arkansas Summer. A former member of Little Rock's The Gunbunnies, Maxwell's solo debut tackles family drama, nostalgia and heartache and is something akin to a good collection of short stories packaged in Southern power pop. "When the drum becomes the drummer/She beats down like an Arkansas summer," indeed.

SHEA STEWART

Minus Top 40 or today's country music (not a fan of either genre), here are my favorites in alphabetical order:

• Banks & Steelz, Anything But Words. Interpol vocalist Paul Banks and Wu-Tang Clan member RZA collaborate on a set of songs that match Banks' soaring vocals with RZA's aggressive rhymes over post-punk-meets-alternative-hip-hop beats.

• Charles Bradley, Changes. Bradley's take on the Black Sabbath ballad "Changes" is almost six minutes long. Each second is worth it, as is the rest of the album, with Bradley -- known as "The Screaming Eagle of Soul" -- owning every soul-saving minute.

• Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, Stranger Things, Vol. 1 and 2. The soundtrack -- pulsating, haunting, nostalgic synth music by Dixon and Stein of Survive -- is better than the Netflix series it scores. Seriously. Just listen to "Kids."

• Drive-By Truckers, American Band. Nearly every album from this rock 'n' roll outfit is grand (minus the first half of 2006's A Blessing and a Curse), but the band's 11th studio album is an unreserved classic, exploring the complexities of not just the Southern thing but the American thing.

• Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster, Constant Stranger. Earlier this year I caught a North Little Rock house show by this member of Mississippi rockers Water Liars (named after a Barry Hannah short story). The songs that night from Kinkel-Schuster, a Greenwood native, were achingly beautiful and literate. So is this album.

• Angel Olsen, My Woman. Olsen embraces atmospheric synth music ("Intern"), torch-song jazz ("Those Were the Days"), raving indie rock ("Shut Up Kiss Me") and other genres in creating an album of remarkable bravado.

• Anderson.Paak, Malibu. Was I familiar with this California hip-hop/R&B artist before interviewing local trumpeter Rodney Block? Not really, but Block mentioned him, I "Spotified" him, heard the disco-tinged bounce anthem of "Am I Wrong" and here we are.

• Pinegrove, Cardinal. Rock is dead? Don't tell this New Jersey band, who mix twangy Americana with effusive power pop for a 30-minute album that sparkles.

• Various Artists, Day of the Dead. This album, benefiting the Red Hot Organization, has 59 covers of Grateful Dead tunes from artists ranging from The National to Bela Fleck. The War on Drugs' take on the Dead's lone hit, "Touch of Grey," kicks off the set. What follows is often magical, sometimes puzzling but never boring.

• Warpaint, Heads Up. No one creates glossy dream pop crossed with lonely art rock better than this quartet. With tunes such as "New Song," they even make it danceable.

ELLIS WIDNER

In no particular order:

• Margo Price, Midwest Farmer's Daughter. Vivid, clear-eyed country/folk rooted in her own hard-knock life.

• Leonard Cohen, You Want It Darker. Haunting and melancholic meditations on love, death and spirituality that question God and humans and the nature of faith. The brilliant title song of one of his very best albums is an unsettling hymn of challenge, acceptance and release.

• Chelle Rose, Blue Ridge Blood. Grim, beautiful Southern Gothic country/folk/blues.

• Brandy Clark, Big Day in a Small Town. Country songs that tell real stories, brilliantly.

• Anohni, Hopelessness. Somber, soulful, beautiful electronica as unsettling protest music.

• Adia Victoria, Beyond the Bloodhounds. Bold and ferocious mix of punkish rock, blues, folk, country and R&B. Victoria assesses her upbringing and a love-hate relationship with her native South.

• Drive-By Truckers, American Band. Intelligent Southern rockers look at life and love, raising questions that don't have easy answers.

• William Bell, This Is Where I Live. Heartfelt, incisive old-school R&B.

• Sarah Jarosz, Undercurrent. A fascinating, progressive vision that fuses bluegrass, folk and more.

• Catherine Russell, Harlem on My Mind. An alluring jazz singer presents classics from Harlem's heyday.

Also appreciated: Luke Bell, Luke Bell; Lori McKenna, The Bird & the Rifle; Rhiannon Giddens, Factory Girl; Allen Toussaint, American Tunes; David Bowie, Blackstar; Eleni Karaindrou, David.

Email:

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

sclancy@arkansasonline.com

sstewart@arkansasonline.com

ewidner@arkansasonline.com

Style on 12/18/2016

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