Top albums

Dad’s Top Discs of 2022

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

December 14, 2022

I’m not sure if there has been a musical theme this year. I’ve spent a lot of the year listening to Polish and Ukrainian music during and following my trip into the war zone. Replaying “Szal Niebieskich Cial” by Maanam in my Krakow hotel room, waiting for my ride to Auschwitz, or blasting “Бабушка” by the Russian rap artist L-Jane as we sped towards Lviv with the smoke from Russian rocket attacks in front us will always be powerful musical memories.

The best concert of the year was easily the DhakaBrakha show in Beaverton on September 30. The Ukrainian band enchanted us and compelled us to act. Their other-worldly sounds had Andi squeezing my arm and me in tears thinking of the people I left behind there. The images behind the quartet conveyed that this was more than just a concert. It was a desperate plea for global action. In Beaverton.

Like last year, I was devoted to making endless playlists on Spotify. This included 35 playlists for Andi while she was living in her apartment, with titles like, “Tied to the Whipping Post” and “So It’s Come to This, Barry Manilow.” Andi’s back home but we’re still not back together, so I will step up my playlist game in 2023.

As part of my Spotify playlist obsession, at the end of each month, I listened to at least one song of the 100 to 200 albums that were released that month (thanks to Wikipedia), making a playlist representing that month’s music. So I have quite literally listened to at least one song from each major release in 2022. That’s a lot of K-Pop and death metal. But it gave me a good overview of the year and lots of new discoveries, like Norway’s Blood Command. While I was looking for love lost songs, I found plenty of punk and metal albums that gave me the energy to swim forward.

So here is my annual “Top 20” list. Maybe not the twenty best albums, but the albums I enjoyed the most this year. The top three reflect the diversity on the list. Wet Leg’s debut album brought me back to the clever wordplay that I loved in 80s new wave music. The Smile’s A Light for Attraction Attention is essentially a Radiohead album and it transported me the to the ambient beep bop boop that helped be drift off on those endlessly lonely nights. At the top of the pile is the New Jersey punk band, Titus Andronicus. Their sweeping opus, The Will to Live, was joyous, earnest, and empowering. I played “I’m Screwed” a thousand times, always at full volume. It’s exactly what I needed to survive 2022.

The rest of the list has some old friends, like Harry Styles and Miranda Lambert, and releases I just lost myself in, like Soli’s beautiful tribute to Miriam Makeba. Giles Martin’s remix of The Beatles’ Revolver was orgasmic, especially when experienced with a gummy or two. I’m sure 2023 will have some favorite artists I don’t yet know exist. No doubt I will be listening to more music with my daughter who will turn nine in nine months. But here’s my soundtrack this year that has been like no other.

1. Titus Andronicus – The Will to Live

2. The Smile – A Light for Attraction Attention

3. Wet Leg – Wet Leg

4.  Blood Command  – Praise Armageddonism

5. Harry Styles – Harry’s House

6. The Linda Lindas – Growing Up

7. Somi – Zenzile: The Reimagination of Miriam Makeba

8. The Beatles – Revolver Super Deluxe Edition

9. Adrian Quesada – Jaguar Sound

10. Todd Rundgren – Down with the Ship

11. Viagra Boys – Cave World

12. Rosalía – Motomami

13. Natalia Lafourcade – De Todas las Flores

14. Drive-By-Truckers – Welcome to Club XIII

15. Miranda Labert – Palomino

16. Bebehoven – Light Moving Time

17. Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You

18. Beyoncé – Renaissance

19. Father John Misty – Chloe and the Next 20th Century

20. Various Artists – Elvis (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Dad’s Top 20 Discs of 2020

~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

December 28, 2020

My joke about this year has been that 2020 will make 1968 look like 1954, but without the soundtrack. That’s not quite true. There has been a lot of great music this year, including full albums recorded while on lockdown (or “rockdown,” as Paul McCartney called it). Unfortunately, a lot of us where not in the mood to search out new music this year, especially when all live shows were cancelled. I found my muse in creating numerous Spotify playlists, like chronologies of Prince and The Kinks. My music highlight of the year was Beyoncé’s musical film, Black is King, released during the summer. Visually stunning and perfectly timely as the streets were filled with Black Lives Matter protestors.

The truth is that my most listened to album in 2020 was released in the summer of 2019. Lana del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell was on repeat play through the year. It’s 67 and a half minutes of epic soundscape offered endless layers of discovery. Like an arthouse film that reveals a different interpretation with each viewing, Norman Fucking Rockwell was an expansive chasm of wordplay and music pulled from the dreamworld.

Similarly, some of my favorite albums of 2020 came out at the very end of 2019 (Harry Styles, The Who).  Others were the casualties of COVID (Toots Hibbert, RIP) or commenting on the meaning of it (Bob Dylan’s sweeping tome). The death of George Floyd gave us the most clear musical moment, including powerful releases from Run the Jewels and Black Thought. But nothing sounded more like 2020 than the third album by the British band Sault. Untitled (Black Is) brought the themes of being locked down and tearing down racism into a hypnotic swirl that was both backward and forward looking. I didn’t quite get the Taylor Swift album but the Sault album seemed to be the right album at the right time.

Flipping back through the new music I dug in 2020, here’s my top 20 albums of the year. I expect that, with massive vaccinations, 2021 will kick off our swinging ‘20s.

1. Sault – Untitled (Black Is)

2. Bob Dylan – Rough and Rowdy Ways

3. Harry Styles – Fine Line

4. Black Thought – Streams of Thought, Vol. 3: Cane & Able

5. Drive-by Truckers – The Unraveling

6. The Who – Who

7. Paul McCartney – McCartney III

8. Shelby Lynne – Shelby Lynne

9. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit – Reunions

10. Fiona Apple – Fetch the Bolt Cutters 

11. Bruce Springsteen – Letter to You

12. Paul Weller – On Sunset

13. Run the Jewels – RTJ4

14. Toots and the Maytals – Got to Be Tough

15. Lido Pimienta  – Miss Columbia

16. Various Artists – PDX Pop Now Vol.  17

17. Pearl Jam – Gigaton

18.  Haim – Women in Music Pt. III

19. Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud 

20. Neil Young – Homegrown

And a special mention of The Chicks “March, March” single, which gave us the most needed video of the year, and Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage,” which the girls in the neighborhood mimed endlessly this summer.