In a banner year of explosive music, these are the gems we couldn’t get out of our heads—the ones that brought us happiness, punched us in the guts, lit our fires and kept them blazing. As they say, this is what it’s all about.
We hope this list—which runs the gamut from newgrass to avant jazz to fiery blues to acoustic singer/songwriters to every color of rock’s ever-changing rainbow—brings on a few discoveries for those listening. Please let us know in the comments what your picks of the year are, and don’t be shy to tell us what we missed … because sharing is caring!
As we bask in reflection and head chin-up toward 2020, we wish you an illuminating year ahead, full of all the things you love, which most surely includes, since you’re reading this, plenty of musical delights and revelries.
ANDY ELLIS — SENIOR EDITOR
Home
I can’t get this guy out of my head. Fortunately, Billy’s feral flatpicking, emotive voice, and extraordinary (and often unsettlingly autobiographical) originals are welcome ricocheting around in there. The album’s foundation is 100-percent bluegrass: High, lonesome vocal harmonies hover over virtuosic banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and upright bass. Yet Billy is obviously from another planet. His tones run the gamut from shimmering acoustic to stone psychedelic amped-up flattop, and he plays with the intensity of a man possessed. Bluegrass from Mars? I’ll take it.
Songs for Groovy Children: The Fillmore East Concerts
When Band of Gypsys was released in March 1970, the U.S. was in turmoil. Cities were literally burning. Tear gas was in the air. At Kent State, student protesters were shot dead by the National Guard. There was a growing generational clash between kids my age and the establishment: Civil rights, women’s rights, and, of course, the Vietnam War were driving seismic societal change, and it wasn’t pretty. Fronting his new trio, Hendrix captured the zeitgeist with songs like “Machine Gun,” “Changes,” and “Power of Soul,” and in a real way—at least to this guitarist—the music heralded the end of the flower-power era. Band of Gypsys was culled from four shows recorded on New Year’s Eve 1969 and the following night. With Songs for Groovy Children, we can now hear all four sets Hendrix and his bandmates Billy Cox and Buddy Miles performed over the course of 48 hours. It’s fascinating to hear Jimi tackle his new material—including the epic “Who Knows” and “Message to Love”—multiple times, giving each version a cosmic twist. The music sounded amazing then and feels equally relevant today.
Most-anticipated 2020 releases: Ben Harper, oud wizards Trio Joubran, and Jerry Douglas.
CHARLES SAUFLEY — GEAR EDITOR
Water Weird
Few artists conjure the spirit of gentle, benevolent anarchy quite like Vermont’s foremost homebrew psychedelicist, Matt Valentine. His recent records with MV & EE and as a solo artist are dreamy, hazy artifacts that simultaneously let mind and body wander while thrillingly asserting psychedelic music’s folk-art origins and potency. Here, on Wet Tuna’s second LP outing, he rejoins fellow New England sojourner and Tower Recordings collaborator Pat Gubler (aka P.G. Six) for a joyful, irreverent exercise in space-rock deconstruction that ultimately coalesces into an enveloping, intimate whole as warm and welcoming as firelight on a cold New England night.
Everybody Split
Grafting a sprawling “Like a Hurricane” solo to a Flying Nun-style Oz/Kiwi-jangle nugget? Sounds like perfection—or heaven—to me. And Melbourne, Australia’s Possible Humans gave us this very gift in the form of “Born Stoned,” an 11-minute centerpiece on a slab otherwise peppered with three-minute jangle-pop gems.
Jason Shadrick — ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Love Hurts
Over his last three solo albums, Julian Lage has started to cement his place as your favorite guitarist’s favorite guitarist. His great Tele experiment was born on Arclight, matured with Modern Lore, and reached peak melodicism with this collection of mostly covers. Even through the prism of tunes by Roy Orbison, Nazareth (!), Keith Jarrett, and Ornette Coleman, Lage’s otherworldly command of melody, touch, and dynamics is astounding. Big shout out to bassist Jorge Roeder and drummer Dave King for pushing and pulling the music in all the right places.
Magic: Live From the USA
This album totally caught me by surprise. I wasn’t familiar with Ben’s music at all until I heard him on the supremely excellent podcast Sterloid Talks. Not only are the tunes a collection of finely crafted sing-alongs (imagine a millennial Billy Joel fronting a synth-rock quartet), but the musicianship is outstanding. The rhythmic push and pull on “Old Friends” and the long-jam version of “Loving You Is Easy” are standouts.
Live in the U.K.
This was the year when musos made their mark. Vulfpeck guitarist Cory Wong dropped three live albums and a studio album in 2019, but this U.K. recording stands out for me. The monologue Wong drops in the opening track, “Lunchtime,” is a how-to guide on how to spot the musicians in the crowd. “You ready to hear some diminished chords?” His tight-as-hell band rips through 20 tracks and sound like they just downed a sixer of Four Loko on “Encore Jam/I’ve Lost My Chops.”
Most-anticipated 2020 releases: Pat Metheny’s From This Place, Sierra Hull, Martin Sexton, and I'm still waiting for one last great Clapton electric blues album.
Rich Osweiler — ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Acoustic Foolish
Full disclosure: I’ve been a Superchunk fan for, gulp, close to three decades now. They were a huge influence on my music writing and leanings towards power-pop-punk band scenarios in the ’90s. No Pocky for Kitty and Foolish were in my cassette deck or microwave-sized CD player almost always. So, when I first learned about an acoustic rework of Foolish, I was for sure curious, but didn’t have huge expectations. I just figured it would be a made-for-MTV Unplugged scenario or frontman Mac McCaughan strumming my favorite old tunes on an acoustic. I was wrong. Sure, it’s got the trip-down-memory lane aspect to it, but I wasn’t prepared for how well these newly arranged tunes—with piano and strings no less—come together. Few bands, in my opinion, have been able to create such memorable power-pop hooks and structures. The energy and angst in the adrenaline-infused tracks on Foolish lured me in 25 years ago, and the stripped-down Acoustic Foolish is further testament to the strength behind the songwriting. Bravo, Superchunk!
And Now for the Whatchamacallit
When this record arrived in my inbox this past spring, the band and album names demanded I listen to it right away. How could I not? Whatchamacallit was my favorite candy bar as a teen, and like the teen-pimple-producing treat, I’ve been overconsuming And Now for the Whatchamacallit since the first spin. Hailing from the hallowed psych-rock grounds of Perth, there’s almost a Beatles-esque musicality about these lads. (No, they don’t sound like the Beatles.) I’m huge into psych rock, but I often find some others going too far with noise and effects just for the sake of noise and effects—with little substance underneath. The Crumpets are fun, straight-up, dirt-laden goodness with big nods to mushroom-washed and fierce classic-glam rock to hard rock, and with a lot of great melodic songwriting sandwiched in. On a side note, “Hymn for a Droid” and “Keen for Kick Ons?” have been added to my very selective playlist for the Squaw Valley parking lot this season.
Most-anticipated 2020 releases: Green Day, Cornershop, Greta Van Fleet, My Bloody Valentine, Lady Gaga
shawn hammond — Chief Content Officer
Window Rock
It can feel crazy-weird how much Micah Nelson’s voice sounds like his dad, country legend Willie Nelson, on the sophomore effort from his Particle Kid project—particularly when it’s emanating from thudding drum crescendos full of fuzzed-out, feeding-back guitars, and bookended by keyboards that sound like retro video games or laser vortexes being sucked into oblivion. But it never comes across as bullshit aping for nepotistic gain. In fact, one needs no inclination whatsoever toward the elder Nelson’s music to enjoy Particle Kid’s glorious crunch, bristling grooves, and casually hooky melodies. The main musical DNA they share is a laidback ease and soulfulness that transcends genres.
Recôncavo
With its cascading arpeggios, lilting slide melodies, lo-fi feel, and plentiful room ambience, this solo acoustic outing carries heavy, welcome whiffs of John Fahey, the more baroque tendencies of John Renbourn and Stefan Grossman, and perhaps a bit of the haunted musing in Sir Richard Bishop’s work. If you crave engrossing, pensive, adventurous flattop playing with an old soul, the work of this 30-something Southerner who moved to New York to escape his musical past—only to fall in love with it and merge it with his experimental side—then Recôncavo is definitely worth a spin.
Honorable mentions: Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, the Yawpers’ Human Question, Chai’s PUNK
Most-anticipated 2020 releases: Come on, Division of Laura Lee—please!?
Ted Drozdowski — Senior Editor
Anthropocosmic Nest
Instrumental music really grabbed my ear in 2019, and none harder than the Messthetics’. Why? Anthony Pirog is the most exciting, accomplished, and eclectic guitar virtuoso I’ve encountered in years. And the ex-Fugazi rhythm section of Brendan Canty and Joe Lally can knock down houses or build cathedrals. These 11 tunes are a starry night in sound—full of wonder and delight, whether improvised, composed, or both, and always revealing more with further investigation. And their concerts are equally stellar … or interstellar. But what’s especially hip is how their deep rock roots underline (nearly) all their work with beatific accessibility.
Five Times Surprise
What? Pirog again? Yes, but also improvising guitar guru Henry Kaiser, bass great Andy West, violin superhero Tracy Silverman, and drummer supreme Jeff Sipe—all serving the inspiration of the Mahavishnu Orchestra. If you dig the original Mahavishnu, Miles’ wildest electric music, and other playing with a fat melodic backbone and an unbridled sense of adventure, you’ll love this. Their take on Mahavishnu’s “You Know You Know,” with Silverman breathing fire, is magnificent and worthy of holding the torch high. Plus, originals like the opener “Haboob” and the 40-minute improv “Twilight of the Space Gods” are flamethrowers. And hearing Kaiser and Pirog lord over the tonal landscape is a constant delight!
Kill or Be Kind
The rising blues star becomes a nova with her eighth album, illuminating a new level of artistry in her songwriting and guitar playing. The set is packed with spanky slide and growling leads, wild bends, and even a few dabs of atonality, reverse delay, and other sounds that typically make the genre’s purists dyspeptic. (Go, Samantha!) And she wields a mean cigar box. The songs break through the blues envelope to embrace roots rock, soul, and funk, too, without waddling in cliché, as the genre so often does. And she’s singing better than ever. The mainstream awaits!
Most-anticipated 2020 releases: The Slo Beats’ (Kenny Vaughan and Dave Roe) debut, Wire’s Mind Hive.
Wish list: After years of begging, the new Tool album arrived (my fourth favorite of 2019), but I’m still waiting for Tom Waits to throw us a bone, please. And Nashville legend Stan Lasstier needs to make an album with his scalding new trio, Madmuse.
Tessa Jeffers — Managing Editor
Ever Since I Lost My Mind
I played this record while writing my year-end reflection on music and found myself singing along to every song. I knew so many of the words, I could slay some karaoke. Simultaneously, memories floated into my mind from that time early in the year when I first discovered Ever Since I Lost My Mind. What are the best albums if not the literal soundtracks to your life? Susto’s third album benefitted definitely from having Ian Fitchuk (who won a Grammy for Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour last year) at the helm, but these songs stand just as strong with only an acoustic guitar and frontman Justin Osborne’s masterful storytelling. I was lucky to see both a stripped-down version and the full band treatment live this year. Both approaches worked equally well because Osborne’s narrative and melodies have that sticking power: I believe what he’s saying comes from a place of truth.
Help Us Stranger
This is the album I listened to on a sunset drive after a long day, window rolled down, blasting my favorite song of 2019, “Help Me Stranger,” so I could feel alive in modern times where we’re glued to devices for most of our waking days. My albums of the year are ones that I actually listened to from beginning to end, in my personal time, because they excited me, brought me in, and kept me coming back for more. This rare, unadulterated rock gave me a shit-eating grin when I first heard it. Jack White slapped me upside the head with inventive, bull-in-a-China-shop riffs and Brendon Benson held me close with a keen sense of melody. Pretty incredible for an album that came more than a decade after their last to miss no beats. It’s constant motion, formidable swing with impeccable timing and phrasing, light-dark storytelling, and an intangible quality that shows up when groups have unflappable chemistry, like … dare I say—the Beatles. It’s an instant, timeless classic that I’ll listen to 20 years from now. In our PG interview, Jack White said: “When you write or record or produce something, your hope is that you’ll be able to change somebody’s mood when they’re listening to it.” Well Jack, there you have it. The mood I got was: Let’s RAGE!
Honorable mentions: Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell!, Orville Peck’s Pony, Liam Gallagher’s Why Me? Why Not., Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s Colorado
Most-anticipated 2020 releases: Red Hot Chili Peppers with John Frusciante, Kasabian, Alanis Morissette’s Such Pretty Forks in the Road, The 1975’s Notes on a Conditional Form
There is something endearing about the way J. Micah Nelson talks about his acoustic guitar, describing it in ways that are far from geeky. He says his Martin, whose model number he doesn’t know, is “three-quarters size,” with “a lot of frets on it” and that it’s made from “kind of a darker wood.” An internet search reveals that the Martin is in fact the full-size 000-15M, with the standard 14th-fret neck junction and mahogany soundboard, back, and sides.
Given the sharp songcraft and uncanny guitar moves on Nelson’s latest album, Window Rock, which he recorded under the name Particle Kid, it’s clear that the singer-songwriter places far more importance on his musical vision than the technical specifics of his instruments. And the depth of Nelson’s music makes sense when you consider where he came from.
Micah, who is 29, is the youngest son of Willie Nelson, and he and his older brother Lukas pretty much grew up on their father’s tour bus. Micah made his live debut at the age of 3, when he joined the elder Nelson onstage, playing the harmonica. He has since pursued a musical life that, while for the most part is outside of the outlaw country tradition that his father helped establish, shares an iconoclastic edge.
Some of Micah Nelson’s earliest recordings were with the experimental Los Angeles-area band Insects Vs Robots. He’s also teamed forces with Lukas Nelson in the band Promise of the Real and has toured and recorded with Neil Young, who has acted as a mentor to both brothers. But at the moment, Particle Kid is Micah’s main project.
While Particle Kid’s previous albums had a sort of bedroom-recording feeling with their sonic collages, Window Rock has more of a live-band feel, as Nelson’s Insect Vs Robots colleagues Jeff Smith and Tony Peluso handle bass and drum duties, respectively. The album’s psychedelic vibe is enhanced by nonstandard guitar tunings, some choice effects pedals, and the occasional sounds of overdubbed cassettes.
During a recent European tour, Nelson connected via Skype to talk about the lessons he’s learned from his father and from Neil Young, his growing collection of EarthQuaker stompboxes, and the musical applications of frog calls.
What has your father taught you about playing guitar?
When it came to guitar, one thing that we both really connected on is Django Reinhardt. My dad worshiped Django Reinhardt, and his whole guitar sound was modeled after Django’s—those Gypsy jazz scales, those kind of weird jazzy Django chords, and these different songs, “Nuages,” “I Never Cared for You”… my dad taught me how to play those songs, and that kind of feel has definitely influenced everything I’ve done.
So that had a big influence on my playing, and that kind of thinking-outside-the-box approach that Django had, my dad has. I play in his band sometimes, and I just start laughing, listening to his playing. It’s so ridiculous. He’s like the Jackson Pollock of guitar. He’s just flying around like you never know. It doesn’t make any sense what he’s doing, but it works somehow. It’s really kind of punk rock, actually, the way he plays, which I love.
Window Rock has so many compelling guitar sounds, both acoustic and electric. What instruments did you use to record it?
The acoustic I played is a Martin. It’s made in Nazareth. Honestly, I don’t even know what model it is. It’s three-quarters size, it’s got a lot of frets on it, and it’s kind of a darker wood. What happened is my brother has one, and I was hanging out in the back of the tour bus one night and just started playing it. And I was like, man, this feels so good. I got to get one of these. And I went into Truetone Music in Santa Monica to get something completely different, and I saw one on the wall, and I was like, “Oh, yeah.” And I picked it up and I played a song that I had just written and realized that there was nothing resisting anything to me. It just felt so effortless, and the feel of the neck, and the action, and the amount of frets on it. It was exactly what I needed, because I’d been playing this Taylor GS Mini for years, and I just felt like I was at a point where I needed to get a somewhat normal-sized guitar. And I got this Seymour Duncan pickup, and it’s the one that has the blend between the condenser mic and the pickup. And it’s one of those guitars where I have to try to make it feed back, which is rare for me.
The electric guitars I used are Gandalf the Grey, which is a Gibson Melody Maker, with those P-90s in it. It’s not a really old guitar—I think it’s probably from 1990—it’s just been through a lot ever since I got a hold of it. A former girlfriend of mine got it from her sister, whose friend won it on a TV show, or something. She was trying to sell it on Craigslist, because she needed some money. And she said, “Hey, could you pose with this guitar? I’ll take a picture for a Craigslist ad.” And I was sitting there noodling on it, and I just looked up at her. I was like, “How much do you want for this thing?”
Both that one and my Telecaster, Sister, had this stupid piss-yellow color, and I ended up painting both of them and staining them myself. And on the Gibson, on Gandalf the Grey, I put this [Seymour Duncan] Antiquity [II] Firebird bridge humbucker in the neck. I also took out the tone knob, and so it’s just a toggle switch and a volume knob. It’s really simple. There’s not a lot to think about, and it’s super light—it feels like a piece of balsa wood or something. But it’s sturdy.
Then Sister Lou is the Telecaster that Neil [Young] got me in France a few years ago, because I needed a backup guitar, as I was always breaking strings onstage. It’s such a great guitar, but I didn’t really play it for a long time. It was just sitting there in the studio. And when I started doing a lot of these alternate tunings in my show, I was like, “Well, I need an extra guitar that’s already in this tuning. Oh, yeah, I have that Telecaster.” And this is a guitar Nash makes—it’s a ’54 Tele relic with Lollars and this really fat C neck. I have these long, spindly, kind of old man fingers, and it’s really comfortable, that fat neck. Because if the neck’s too thin, I feel like I’m cramping up, or I get arthritis, or something. It actually has become my main guitar, whether I play with Neil or my band, and it’s all over this record. And it’s such a bright, clear, crisp tone. I’m doing a lot of fuzzed-out, kind of grungy-textured, psychedelic stuff. And even through all the dirt and fuzz, there’s clarity to it, which I really like.
TIDBIT: Micah Nelson’s previous Particle Kid releases were largely self-contained albums, solely arranged by Nelson. Window Rock represents the sound of Nelson’s touring trio, which is Nelson on vocals and guitar, Jeff Smith on bass, and Tony Peluso on drums.
And I think that’s all the guitars on the record. There might be moments of this PRS McCarty model. It’s a semi-hollowbody electric guitar that my friend gave me. I started the record on that guitar, and then kind of halfway through, I switched over to Gandalf the Grey. I think the solo on “Radio Flyer” is on the PRS.
What about amps and pedals?
On this album, I’m playing either a ’63 Princeton or a Magnatone Twilighter Stereo, one of those newer Magnatones. As far as pedals, for drive, I’ve been using the ZVEX Box of Rock. It’s a preamp boost and then it’s also got a button that’s straight-up distortion, like a Marshall cranked up to 10, and you can modulate it with a knob. I’ve recently been using stuff by EarthQuaker. I have the Pyramids, which is a flanger. You can get not only a classic flange but all kinds of laser-blast, sort of Star Wars video-game sounds. And I have the Bit Commander, which is a monophonic synth. It’s like an Atari video game on steroids and acid, and then it’s also a fuzz and an octave divider in one. And it’s got a sub-octave—everything. That one’s really fun, it breaks up in this 8-bit Nintendo sort of way.
And the Rainbow Machine, another EarthQuaker one, is a polyphonic synth delay that’s like this ridiculous madness, nonsense machine. If you just turned it on it’s like this delay and pitch modulator, but then if you hit this magic button, the second signal feeds back in on itself, and you can modulate the volume of each signal. So it does this crazy feedback and you can make it modulate up or down ... it’s totally absurd. That’s like the end-of-the-world-kind-of-trembling-away pedal.
I’ve also got the Strymon El Capistan, which is basically a space-echo kind of sound. It’s in this tiny pedal and you can make it sound like warbly tape, or a little cleaner, and then you can make it really get spacey or make it kind of a tight slapback. But it sounds really more tape-y, which I like. And sometimes I just leave it on, depending on the acoustics of the room.
Oh! I also have the Electro-Harmonix Mel9, which basically emulates a Mellotron. You’ve got a knob which lets you choose between different choirs and a cello, flute, brass, and an orchestra, and you can blend it with your guitar sound and modulate how long you want it to decay and sustain and everything. That’s a fun one. And then I have a Cry Baby wah and a TC Electronic Ditto X2 looper, which I occasionally use.