Hiroshi Yoshimura - Wave Notation 1: Music for Nine Post Cards (1982)
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Minimal new-age ambient keyboards. Soft, tender, sweet, and melodic.
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Frances Quinlan's lyrics are what makes this one of the best indie-rock albums ever. Not just because her lyrics are brilliant, which they are, but also because her poems are written first and the band crafts its music and melodies around them. It gives their songs such a unique structure and personal feel.
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Jeffrey Lewis's brand of anti-folk is significantly elevated with a full band behind him. And his lyrics and songwriting are razor-sharp as ever on this release, if not sharper.
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Justin Broadrick is more known for his industrial metal band Godflesh, whose album Streetcleaner is maybe the heaviest metal album I've ever heard. This project is the lighter, prettier side of that same coin. The metal is replaced with warm shoegaze and post-rock but the robotic, mechanical elements driving Streetcleaner are driving this too.
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Joanna Newsome's first album sounds so light and silly, with its jaunty harps, harpsichords, Wurlitzer organs and with her cartoonish voice that it's easy to miss the depth and darkness that's present throughout. She has no contemporaries, but this album is somehow even more unique than her others.
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John Prine's illustrious folk/country career is bookended by a perfect debut and a perfect finale. I went with the finale because it has all the tenderness and humor of the debut but with 47 extra years of wisdom.
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Ambient from the lead singer and guitarist of Sigur Rós and his film-scorer partner. Keeps the ethereal, child-like vibes of Sigur Rós and adds warm drones and modern classical strings.
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Powerful singer-songwriter/slowcore with the timbre of Christian worship music and lyrics about substance abuse, depression, and mental illness. It feels inappropriate to call this the apex of all emo music but that's what I want to call it.
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Keith Jarrett completely improvised this entire live performance, while sleep-deprived and wearing a back brace, on a broken rehearsal piano after a concert-booking went comically wrong.
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Massive, ambitious, eclectic hip-hop with consistent funk influence. Kendrick can definitely be criticized for his hypocrisy and his savior complex stuff but all the self-doubt and anxiety expressed here feels really genuine. And his talent and versatility is just undeniable.
