Top 25 Albums of 2019

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My favorite albums of 2019 are here! As happened with the Top 100 Songs of 2019, there really wasn’t a clear cut winner for me. I almost wanted to give it to Vampire Weekend for being so damn consistent, but their album was too long with a few weak tracks that kept them out of the #1 ranking.

After some debate, I realized the album that I enjoyed the most was PUP’s Morbid Stuff. It’s one of those great rock albums, and PUP is such a fun and loud band that loves being loud. They’re the musical man child of Japandroids and New Found Glory. Their live shows must be nuts.

As for the remainder of albums, there’s a number of notables, including my favorite newcomer (for me), Rex Orange County, a singer/songwriter without a great voice or much notable traits that I can point to other than the fact that he sounds like his own. It’s not always about some amazing voice or guitar licks, sometimes it’s just being yourself that makes music so great.

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Monday Mixtape, Vol. 144

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I got to see John Mayer last Monday at the Chase Center, the third concert ever there (Metallica was the first obviously), and despite the terrible seats - they were second to last row in the whole building and in the complete corner of the arena, we could barely see anything - the sound was phenomenal, and John Mayer straight shredded the guitar, AND his voice sounded the best I’ve ever heard it live

I’ve seen Mayer three times since he released one of my favorite live albums ever, Where the Light Is, and this performance was far away the best of the three and had some very cool similarities to his live album. (It didn’t hurt that he played for three hours either! There was no opener, Mayer played form 7:45 - 10:45, pretty awesome.)

If you notice on Where the Light Is, Mayer changes his vocal cadences (he sings in different rhythms than his cadences on the songs on his studio albums) on a number of lines in different songs, and he did that with a lot of his new material from his latest album, The Search for Everything. It’s those subtle changes I find interesting, ways to tweak things here and there VERY FEW artists do to their vocals when performing.

He also had these awesome segways into songs. For example, take “I Don’t Trust Myself” on the live album:

This intro up until 1:57 is a segway into what then becomes the album version of “I Don’t Trust Myself.” He did this with a ton of his new songs, and as a listener (or as a guitar player myself), you’re trying to find the key or the chord that this “intro” is in so you can identify the song he’s going to go into - sometimes Mayer (and his amazing band) completely surprised me as I had no idea where they were going, and then they smoothly segued into “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room” or a handful of other songs. I would just sit back and go, “Wow.” Mind blown.

I was trying to provide some context to friends at this show with how amazing his guitar playing was, and one way I tried to explain his ability and the level of difficulty was in explaining all the ways he bends his strings to hit a perfect sound EVERY TIME. When you bend a guitar string, it makes the note either higher (bend string up) or lower (bend string down), and I said that imagine each string can be bent 1 inch, and there are 10 different notes you can hit as you bend (one each 0.1 of an inch bent up or down), he’s able to hit the same note, at say 0.6 inch of a bend up, OVER and OVER again, always knowing PRECISELY how much to bend the string. And in his solos in one show, he’s bending the strings hundred and hundreds of times, hitting the right notes every single time. No joke, I’ve listened to Where the Light Is hundreds of times, and I CANNOT hear him hit one wrong note on his guitar or his vocals.

It’s truly amazing, I think he’s the best guitarist alive (not including all the 1960s dudes still alive but not exactly in their prime, like Eric Clapton), I just don’t know who compares to him right now.

ANYWAYS, I put John Mayer’s newest song to start this week’s playlist, a song that has no room for solos, and is just a very mellow track that really grew on me. Can’t get enough of it now.

As for other great artists on the mix, check out Jay Som’s new album, it’s very good and definitely making my Top 25. I still need to give the solo album of Alabama Shakes’ lead singer, Brittany Howard, more time to marinate, but I like this track. And some more Ghostface Killah for you cuz the dude knows jazz.

Have a great week!

Monday Mixtape, Vol. 70

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It's been quite the weekend - I just got back from the Oregon vs. Rhode Island NCAA March Madness game in Sacramento. What an unbelievable game. Oregon had absolutely no reason winning. They were outplayed in pretty much every facet of the game, but they continued to hang in there as the 11th seeded Rhode Island team smacked them around - at one point during the game RI went 17 of 21 in shots. ON FIRE!

Rhode Island was playing with nothing to lose and Oregon had all the pressure on them and were clearly faltering under it. It is remarkable to witness the psychological warfare that goes on at a live event like that. Oregon fans were losing their minds and SO negative the entire game. These are just KIDS that these people are screaming at. The players had to have felt the negative energy.

Meanwhile, the Rhode Island fans were going nuts and the players were playing with utter abandon and joy to be in the tourney with the opportunity to knockout such a huge team like Oregon.

Once the game got really tight in the last two minutes, it was Rhode Island's turn to feel the pressure. What once felt like walking on water, they now had saw the possibility of letting the game slip away. The pressure was too much for them to handle. In the end, Oregon pulled off the win with a ridiculously clutch three from G Tyler Dorsey. And the crowd went crazy.

Kudos to both teams. That was probably the best college basketball game I've ever attended, and the first March Madness game of my life. I recommend it to all. You can only hope for a crazy game like that. 

Now listen to some music!