In my head, Jenny Lewis and I have a special connection. Rilo Kiley was one of those bands that made my life a lot more tolerable as a teenager, and I deeply related to the songs about dreading the monotony of adulthood Lewis wrote with Blake Sennett, undoubtedly the best songwriting partner she’s had. As her solo music has become further removed from the band’s sound, I’ve struggled to keep finding emotional common ground with it. For better or worse, that’s usually my first and strongest entrypoint into music, so if it doesn’t make me feel anything on a primal level, it’s usually not a good sign. After my first couple listens failed to click, I shelved On the Line… until now. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been revisiting the album, and it’s better than I initially thought. Lewis is a different songwriter now with different worries keeping her up at night, but that’s to be expected. After all, she’s no longer the young indie it girl of the moment. Now, with an entire lifetime of experience behind her, she’s writing alternative country-rock songs, many of which have the sound of possible future classics. Two standout moments before I have to wrap this up: the chorus of “Heads Gonna Roll,” where she gravely sings, “After all is said and done, we’ll all be skulls,” which is the sort of wry observation I’ve always loved her for, and the entirety of “Dogwood,” a simultaneously heartbreaking and sultry ballad about the difficulty of giving up on a doomed relationship that I think could be one of the best things she’s ever written.


“That’s right, I’m back on my bullshit/You’ll wear my footprints on your back,” Kitty sings brazenly on Rose Gold highlight “B.O.M.B. (Peter),” and it’s the sort of no holds barred declaration that characterizes the entire album. After years of being treated as a joke for the Tumblr rap songs she released as a teenager, Kitty has no fucks left to give. Rose Gold is entirely self-produced, refining the chilled-out synth pop sound of 2017’s Miami Garden Club. Even if Kitty has matured, that doesn’t mean she’s averse to tossing out absurd one-liners with a careless shoulder shrug. “Look Demure,” one of the album’s most inspired songs from a production standpoint, also has its most memorable opening line: “They say to treat my body like a temple/But I’m a sinner and I can’t relate.” But, a minute or two later, the same song finds Kitty shouting about being “Sookie when [she’s] sucking your blood,” a corny True Blood reference that shatters all illusions of cool. But Kitty isn’t about being cool, she’s about being real, which means she drinks vodka Red Bulls, gets shitty tattoos, and sees herself in the protagonist of a corny HBO adaptation of a soapy vampire romance, and there’s something appealingly relatable about that.

[The video below contains flashing images/lights.]


I listened to What Chaos Is Imaginary a lot at the beginning of the year, partly because it was one of the first 2019 releases that grabbed me and partly because I was so impressed by the title track, which sounded so unlike what I remembered as Girlpool’s usual sound. They’d always been a touch too close to twee for my taste, but “What Chaos Is Imaginary” showcases some remarkably nuanced songwriting. Its billowy, languorous layers evoke a hazy watercolor landscape, but these pastel tones hide the darkness beneath. Harmony Tividad sings lines like “I loved him and his violence for the pretty view” so placidly they’re likely to breeze right past you at first. There aren’t any other songs on the album that quite match it. “Minute in Your Mind” comes the closest atmospherically but feels far less substantial. Mostly, it’s surrounded by more straightforward indie folk, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Elliott Smith-inspired “Hire” finds Avery Tucker taking vocal lead and rocks out in a pleasantly mellow way, and Tividad’s buoyant delivery is a perfect fit for lo-fi pop song “Pretty.” Taken as a whole, though, What Chaos Is Imaginary feels somewhat one-note. For that reason, it kept falling further down my list as the year progressed. But its frequent small pockets of loveliness still make it worth mentioning.


After upping her game with 2016’s excellent My Woman, Angel Olsen needed to return with a bang - and she did exactly that on “All Mirrors,” a gothic behemoth of a track that recalls the grandiosity of artists like Scott Walker and Kate Bush in its teetering-on-the-edge-of-falling-over bombast. It would be pure cacophony if Olsen’s commanding warble weren’t there, a guiding beacon in the midst of a stormy descent into madness. Tracks like “Lark” and “Impasse” follow a similarly epic trajectory, but most of the album’s deep cuts are more restrained. On “Spring,” the lackadaisical melody and sleepy vocal delivery work to great effect, while a song like “Tonight” is aesthetically gorgeous but feels a bit distanced. In these songs, Olsen transforms herself into a pouty torch singer shrouded in reverb and syrupy strings, which is a pleasure for the ears but, at least for me, fails to truly reach the heart or the gut. There’s nothing as immediately punchy as “Shut Up Kiss Me” or effortlessly poignant as “Sister,” songs that led me to name My Woman my favorite album of the year in 2016. In a nutshell, while All Mirrors showcases some excellent musicianship, it never really grabs me by the throat and refuses to let go. That being said, I enjoy the album a lot when considering it on its own merit, which is why it deserves a spot here.


Perhaps my greatest musical accomplishment last year was belatedly jumping on the Emotion bandwagon; ever since, I’ve been a true believer in the magic of Carly Rae Jepsen, which turned out to be perfect timing for the rollout of her hotly-anticipated follow-up. While I don’t think Dedicated is the saving grace of pop music we all expected, that doesn’t mean it’s not formidable in its own right. Although it does contain a few attempts to replicate the Emotion formula (like cutting room floor survivor “Now That I Found You” and somewhat tepid first single “Party for One”), it largely attempts to find a more sustainable sound, one that can carry Jepsen forward in a lasting career rather than leave her languishing as a flavor of the moment. In doing so, it gives us delicious morsels like exuberant throwback electro-popper “Want You in My Room,” mature and reflective synth ballad “Too Much,” and sensual slow-build “No Drug Like Me.” For me, the album’s most infectious track is “Real Love,” which has the sort of supersized hook we’ve come to expect from Jepsen, one that sounds so natural it may as well have dropped from the sky fully-formed, but also maintains a small-scale intimacy in its lyrics. Final verdict? It’s no Emotion, but it’s no slouch either.