The Best of November 2019 & Monthly Playlist
Posted: by The Editor
THE BEST MUSIC OF NOVEMBER 2019
It’s no secret that everybody (yes, literally everybody) at the Alt loves Origami Angel. They started off the year strong with Holy Split in January, a short split with Commander Salamander and then dropped the wonderful Pokemon-inspired Gen 3 EP back in May. So it should come as no surprise that their new LP Somewhere City delivers on all fronts. The album is without a doubt one of the best capital-E emo records to come out in a long time, the kind of album that feels destined to inspire a new generation of kids to pick up instruments and start a band of their own.
Earl Sweatshirt has had one of the most interesting trajectories of any rapper this decade, from a potty-mouthed teenager whose lyrical content got him sent to boarding school in Samoa to the insular, guiding force behind a new wave of rap weirdos. FEET OF CLAY picks up where last years Some Rap Songs left off, with Earl creating another hazy, avant-garde masterpiece entirely on his own terms.
Los Angeles rapper 03 Greedo is currently behind bars serving a 20 year prison sentence, but he spent spent his final days of freedom recording as much music as humanly possible. This summer he dropped Still Summer in the Projects, his collaboration with Mustard, and now we’ve got Netflix & Deal, his long-awaited collaborative album with super producer Kenny Beats. The album has features from Freddie Gibbs, Maxo Kream, Vince Staples, and a handful of other rappers that compliment Greedo’s west coast flair.
We also got a couple of AOTY contenders from Greet Death and Macseal, you can head on over to the site and check out our reviews of those if you haven’t already. And I also highly recommend checking out our interview with Yeah Is What We Have, whose power-pop opus Through the Window is one of the most underrated records of the year full stop.
I’ve been hearing people talk about how amazing the new Dogleg record was for months, and after listening to “Fox” I can confirm that this band really is something special. The track flies by in under three minutes with blistering rhythms, passionate vocals, and roaring guitars. “Fox” is the sonic equivalent of a can of Four Loko doing a backflip on a motorcycle, it’s that good.
It’s been two years since Ratboys have released a full-length, luckily for us they just dropped “Alien With a Sleep Mask On”, the lead single from their forthcoming album Printer’s Devil. Ratboys music still sounds as effortless as ever, with the bands trademark alt-country sway gently drifting beneath Julia Steiner’s intoxicating vocals. Printer’s Devil is without a doubt one of my most highly anticipated records of the coming year, I’m eagerly counting down the days until I can get some more Ratboys in my life.
If you happen to be into the Yeah Is What We Have record I mentioned earlier in the post, then you need to have Mo Troper on your radar. The Portland singer-songwriter announced a new album titled Natural Beauty and shared “Jas From Australia”, the records infectious lead single. The track is a short and sweet power-pop gem, the kind of song that Mo Troper can write in his sleep.
Post Animal are one of a handful of bands that rose to the top of Chicago’s tight-knit music scene, their debut album from 2018 was a scrappy collection of classic rock pastiche that was catchy as hell. The band is gearing up to release a new album next year and lead single “Schedule” finds the band experimenting with an entirely new palette of sounds. There are still traces of hazy psychedelia to be found, but “Schedule” is an indie-pop odyssey unlike anything else the band has done before.
THE PLAYLIST
Writeup and Playlist by Michael Brooks // @nomichaelbrooks
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