Fresh from a pandemic-induced hibernation and an appearance in New York Times Magazine, Loops is back with a new edition and look. It is laid-back, imperfect, curious and constantly self-reflecting. It is here for you and anyone else who wants to see life through music.
It’s also fashionably late. What better way to return than with a year-end list? My favorite music avoided perfection. Instead, it is unedited and smeared at the edges, tense and exposed. It’s alive!
The list
Daphni — Cherry
An album whose defining trait is momentum. This is house, disco, techno, and it’s fast, stopping only for a few seconds at a time so you catch your breath. My favorite moments are when a song’s elements are about to pull apart at the seams, only to find themselves again for another spin. Fav tracks — “Cherry”, “Mona”, “Cloudy”.
Hudson Mohawke — Cry Sugar
This could’ve come out ten years ago, when TNGHT was in the spotlight and we had more goodwill to lend to colorful, explosive music like it. HudMo proves he belongs in the upper-tier of electronic producers here, displaying enough variety, samples and actual white-guy-awkward rhythm to get away with its hour-plus runtime. The highlight (for me, for sure) is “Bicstan,” a cut of happy hardcore that I probably played more than any other song this year.
Huerco S. — Plonk
A record that’s difficult and retro and alien but never cold. There is faint heat emanating from the keys, the heavy bass, the constantly repeating and shifting synths. Is it life forming or life decaying? I don’t know. It’s plonk.
Florist — Florist
The volume never rises past “casual conversation” here — even when the electric guitar shows up for a thrilling, heart wrenching solo on “43”. These are the project’s best songs, full of the life and wonder and comfort that only music and friends can bring. It’s a quiet masterpiece.
Black Country, New Road — Ants From Up There
Started the year off by having Isaac Wood yell and cry and warble all of his emotions, and mine, onto this romantic landscape. Then I realized I was aging faster than these British whippersnappers and could no longer relate to their larger-than-life feelings. Oh well. For the brief time they aligned, I thought it was one of the best albums ever made.
Vince Staples — Ramona Park Broke My Heart
May seem like an outlier, but there is a connection in the directness and vividness of Staples’ stories. There are moments of celebration and power countered by numbing loss and violence. The music also has a rich understanding of history and place, which makes it all the more real. In Staples’ world, both living and dying is worth it.
Jeff Parker — Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy
Jeff Parker and company are improvising with everything — mainly genre and time. The four players here seem to move along at different speeds. What does that mean? Lots of extended vamps, repeating guitar licks, subverted drum beats and delight in taking sounds entirely too far for too long. Like the best jazz, it’s serious fun, and it’s going to lengths and directions that little other music has gone.
Actress — Dummy Corporation EP
Actress goes long in this EP, allowing his palette of meandering synths and alien transmissions to wash into one another. Like Huerco S. and Jeff Parker, he also operates with a slower, shifting sense of time. Passages repeat and start back up again, only to end up in the same spot they were a minute ago. When a new sound emerges, you follow it to see where it goes.
MJ Lenderman — Boat Songs
God bless this album. I used to have it out for skinny whiny dudes who drank too much and whose main talent was their lack of talent. MJ Lenderman changed my mind. Here is someone who is truly broken and not shy of saying so. Beyond that, he reminded me many others are broken and just trying to make the best of it while they’re here.
And I know why we get fucked up
And I know why we get so fucked up
And I know why we get so fucked up
I do
Rosalía — MOTOMAMI
Rosalía is smarter than all of us, at least in knowing what it means to be a global popstar in our mad, weird world. It’s a world that has jazz and machine guns and reggaetón and chicken teriyaki and motorbikes and the Weekend singing bachata. It has samba, flamenco, auto-tune and Burial impersonations. It has one young, unbelievably talented singer from Spain at its center, mixing it all together for everyone else to see. It’s the kind of world I want to live in.
And some other albums I enjoyed: Animal Collective, Time Skiffs; DOMi & JD Beck, NOT TiGHT; Yaya Bey, Remember Your North Star; Alvvays, Blue Rev; Theo Parrish, DJ-Kicks; Soul Glo, Diaspora Problems; Jockstrap, I Love You Jennifer B; Whatever the Weather, Whatever the Weather; Smino, Luv 4 Rent; Babyface Ray, FACE; Burial, Antidawn EP.
Before I leave
Something happened one night early this year that gave me the confidence to turn in a freelance pitch to NPR Music. That became an essay, which then became a piece for New York Times Magazine, and then a music blurb for a new music platform. Now all I want to do is write write write. Maybe some more of it will pop your way in the future?
I compiled my favorite songs of the year in a Spotify playlist. There is mainly just one song per artist, including many who are not in this newsletter. I like it very much and would be happy if you listened.
I’m getting married to Becky Hostetler next year. She is a musician, a teacher, a painter and my best friend. I admire her so much and am so happy she is a part of my life. To her and everyone else, farewell to 2022 and a gentle start to the new year.