MUSIC
The Year in Music: 2019
The best albums include striking work from LGBTQ artists
BY STEV ERICKSON
My list of the top 10 albums
of the year is as
follows:
1. FKA Twigs:
“Magdalene” (Young Turks): In a
year when most of the creative energy
that would’ve livened up indie
rock a decade ago went into indie
pop instead, “Magdalene” brought
FKA Twigs to a new level of ambition.
She pushed her voice to new
highs, summoning the spirit of
‘80s Kate Bush with production
full of glitchy electronics. The album
makes one misstep with the
trap-oriented “Holy Terrain” (which
sounds like a response to her label’s
request for a potential hit single);
but it puts her recent experience
living in the public eye (on “Cellophane,”
she sings “They wanna
see us, wanna see us apart… And
I don’t want to have to share our
love”) and suffering intense pain
from fi broids into a context informed
by perceptions of religious
fi gures like Mary Magdalene. You
don’t need to have dated a movie
star to feel her ache.
2. Polo G: “Die a Legend” (Columbia):
Mainstream hip-hop with
substance coming from a rapper
in their early 20s is a rarity these
days, especially from an artist
who blew up thanks to a viral hit
(“Pop Out”) promoted by teenagers’
memes on TikTok and YouTube.
But Polo G masters an intense,
rapid-fi re fl ow and melodic singing
equally well, backed by minimal
production that makes something
beautiful out of fi ve notes on a piano
or chimes. Finding a halfway
point between Chicago’s dual traditions
of conscious rap and bleak
drill music, he movingly describes
a life of witnessing and committing
violence, numbing himself with ecstasy
and Percocet, and a tentative
hope that his current fame will
permanently transform his life.
3. Weyes Blood: “Titanic Rising”
(Sub Pop): Nostalgia for ‘70s
soft rock is in the air these days,
but one-woman band Natalie Mering
Dorian Electra’s “Flamboyant” achieves a conceptual brilliance, with witty, campy lyrics.
puts it to her own use. “Titanic
Rising” makes great use of the
larger budget she received from
signing with Sub Pop, working with
string and horn arrangements for
the fi rst time to fl esh out her vision.
The results suggest a Karen
Carpenter solo album where the
singer was fully in control of her
music and life. “Movies” is a mission
statement about turning from
spectator to artist.
4. Big Thief: “Two Hands” and
“U.F.O.F.” (4AD): Rooted in folk
music and the singer/ songwriter
tradition, the two albums released
by Big Thief this year chafe
at the notion that this limits the
band. The hazy, mostly acoustic
“U.F.O.F.” uses the studio to create
an eerie gloss on singer/ guitarist
Adrianne Lenker’s songs. (Without
making any public declarations
about her sexuality, she writes love
songs to both men and women.)
“Two Hands,” recorded live in the
studio in two days, has a rough,
volatile feel that seems like it could
go off the rails at any minute, while
still maintaining the same level of
COURTESY OF DORIAN ELECTRA
craft. The astonishingly passionate
“Not” is as good as rock music
gets in 2019, especially when Lenker’s
guitar solo takes fl ight in the
song’s last few minutes.
5. Jenny Lewis: “On the Line”
(Warner Bros.): The soundtrack
for driving drunk through Southern
California wildfi res. (Lana
Del Rey’s “The Greatest” is more
subdued but basically shares the
same spirit.)
6. Dorian Electra: “Flamboyant”
(self-released): Launching
themselves early this decade as
a libertarian novelty pop singer
with songs like “I’m In Love With
Friedrich Hayek,” non-binary,
queer artist Dorian Electra has
moved to the left politically and
embarked on a genre-bending aesthetic.
“Flamboyant” achieves a
conceptual brilliance, with witty,
campy lyrics. “Career Boy” doubles
as a satire of yuppie life and description
of the grind necessary to
get attention as an indie musician.
Electra uses Autotune to distort
their voice to make gender impossible
to pin down.
7. Various Artists: “Queen
& Slim: The Soundtrack” (Motown):
The movie is fi ne, but critic
Hannah Giorgis was right when
she wrote that this soundtrack
album expresses its themes better.
It emphasizes slow jams, with
lesbian singer Syd’s “Getting Late,”
Vince Staples, 6LACK & Mereba’s
“Yo Love,” and Tiana Major9 &
Earthgang’s “Collide” all exuding
a sultry tenderness missing from
the actual fi lm. Kicking off with
Megan Thee Stallion’s ferocious
“Ride Or Die,” it ends in a far more
ambiguous place with “I’m not
gay, but I’m not straight” producer
Blood Orange’s fi nal song, which
repeats “can’t keep running away”
as its sole lyric.
8. Orville Peck: “Pony” (Sub
Pop): I initially dismissed Peck, a
gay Canadian country singer who
uses a pseudonym and performs
behind a mask, as a gimmick.
But once I sat down and listened
to “Pony” all the way through, the
strength of his vocals (a baritone
evoking Roy Orbison and Johnny
Cash) and songwriting are undeniable.
Working behind an overt persona
allows Peck to put the drama
in his music upfront; the cowboys
and drag queens who populate his
lyrics become mythic fi gures beside
the heterosexual men and women
trapped in repressive small towns
in Bruce Springsteen songs.
9. Sharon Van Etten: “Remind
Me Tomorrow” (Jagjaguwar): On
her fi fth album, singer/ songwriter
Van Etten went in a new direction.
“Remind Me Tomorrow” weds electronics
— she named a song after
the Jupiter 4 analog synthesizer —
to slick production inspired by ‘80s
arena-rock. “Seventeen” achieves
sublime melodrama, with Van
Etten looking back on her teenage
self and the changes in New York
since her youth and wondering, “
I used to feel free, or was it just a
dream?”
➤ BEST MUSIC OF 2019, continued on p.35
December 19, 2019 - January 1, 2 34 020 | GayCityNews.com
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