Released in 1983, Fuuyuu Kuukan is an album ahead of its time. Yes, it’s got its moments of era-appropriate city pop, but other times, it sounds like it could have been made in 2024.
Chappell Roan, The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess
The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess was released in September 2023, but it didn’t really take off till 2024. Part of me really wants to include this album in the Favorite Edition 2024 list, but I will abide by the letter of the law and call it one of the best catalog finds of the year.
Onitsuka Chihiro, UN AMNESIAC GIRL -First Code 2000-2003-
The music in this boxed set is thoroughly vetted, and I’ve even come around to THIS ARMOR, which I didn’t actually like at the time of release.
John Zorn, Simulacrum
John Zorn doesn’t usually talk to the press, but he did speak to Rolling Stone years back about how his ensembles have influenced heavy metal and vice versa. Zorn pushes his collaborators to do things they can’t picture themselves doing, and the resulting performances brim with nervous energy that always sounds confident. All that is on display with Simulacrum.
Yellow Magic Orchestra, Naughty Boys
The path from Kraftwerk and Roxy Music to the Human League and Duran Duran runs through Yellow Magic Orchestra.
Princess Goes, Come of Age
Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum has truncated their name, and on this second album, the songwriting has gotten tighter. The band’s debut THANKS FOR COMING felt a bit scattered, but on this outing, they’ve created an album that holds together from start to finish.
SZA, CTRL
Yes, yes, I’m a late-comer to SZA, which all you all have known about for the past seven years. (I gave SOS a shot on the streaming services, but I never gave it a second listen. Maybe I should.) The remarkable thing here is that I bought a used copy of the vinyl record. It’s harder to find recent hit albums like this one as used CDs.
Shannon, Let the Music Play
The title track of this album is a classic, but it cast such a long shadow that the album from which it came gets overlooked. No, the remaining tracks aren’t as strong as “Let the Music Play,” but they aren’t complete filler either.
Xenakis Minor, XM1
There is some ferocious piano playing on this sprawling three-track EP, which clocks in at 41 minutes. (I’m not making the rules here. That’s what they call it.) And it’s prog rock. Actually prog rock on a piano, no guitars. Sit with that for a while.
Chappell Roan, The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess
She won me over on “Femininomenon,” when she asked: “Um, can you play a song with a fucking beat?”
Charli XCX, brat
I admit that I actually didn’t like brat on my first few listens. It didn’t have the same ebb and flow as The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess, which is probably not a fair comparison. It just felt limited.
Which is exactly the point. And it took a version of the album redone in Mario Paint Composer to confirm these limitations and also transcend them.
brat succeeds because it spins an epic out of the barest of material.
sungazer, Against the Darkness of Night
I could make a joke that sungazer is what happens when music theory becomes a real boy, but Adam Neely and Shawn Crowder are too good at what they do to make that snark stick. In a video preceding the album’s release, Neely pointed out that Perihelion, the band’s first full-length album, didn’t translate as well in a live setting. So for this second album, they set out to make music to get people moving. Of course, they couldn’t just leave a 4/4 time signature well enough alone. All the rhythmic sorcery of the first album returns, but mission accomplished, guys — this album moves.
SYML, LIVE AT HANGAR 30
I just like hearing Brian Fennell sing.
Johnny Blue Skies, Passage du Desir
Sturgill Simpson the person killed Sturgill Simpson the brand, so to continue making music, Johnny Blue Skies was born. In yet another shift, Simpson has entered his Gram Parsons era, lacking only Emmylou Harris to complement this set of 70s-influenced country rock.
Boredoms, Chocolate Synthesizer
Yamantaka Eye is so tightly coupled with Naked City in my mind that I almost thought this album would sound just like Naked City. Nope. There’s still a lot of noise-making, but it actually feels less chaotic than Naked City.
Material Issue, International Pop Overthrow
I remember seeing this album all over the place in my early college days, but I didn’t feel compelled to check it out. But somehow, it’s managed to exist in the periphery, showing up regularly in thrift shops and used CD bins as years wore on. Curiosity finally got the best of me, and yeah, younger me was a dolt for not following up way back in the early 1990s. But then I wouldn’t have avoided news of singer Jim Ellison’s death by the decade’s midpoint.
Death Waits, Burn Everything Xenakis Minor, XM1
Meta launched Threads in 2023 to fill a void left by the site formerly known as Twitter, and early adopters of the service quickly formed a tight-knit group of independent musicians. Followers of the Music Threads tag will probably encounter posts by Xenakis Minor (@xenakisminor) and Death Waits (@666death_waits666) at some point.
Death Waits is a raucous band that could easily fill the void departed by Torche. Burn Everything, in fact, reminds me a lot of Torche’s final album Restarter. Xenakis Minor, on the other hand, proposes a reality where piano, not guitar, is the main driver for prog rock. XM1 is billed as an EP, but with a running time of 41 minutes over the course of three tracks, that’s just trolling.
![[Onitsuka Chihiro - UN AMNESIAC GIRL -First Code 2000-2003-]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/UnAmnesiacGirlFir324874_f.jpg)
![[Chappell Roan - The Rise and Fall of a Midwestern Princess]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/ChapellRoanTheRiseandFa335317_f.jpg)
![[Arvo Pärt - Tabula Rasa]](https://musicwhore.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/ArvoPrtTabulaRasa201093302_f.jpg)
