Long Island indie-rock hero Jeff Rosenstock kicked off 2018 in the most awesome way possible: With a surprise album, POST-, released on January 1 to Bandcamp through his own Quote Unquote label. (Polyvinyl Records followed the next day with a widespread digital release before issuing it on vinyl in March.) The new record sees Rosenstock pushing his patented shout-along underdog-punk anthems to thrilling new levels of emotional intensity and instrumental extravagance. (Seriously, "USA" should be Americas new national anthem.) And after dropping the first great album of 2018, he gives us the first great playlist!
"Hey you over there! Its Jeff Rosenstock over here! I didnt go super high-concept with my playlist like 10 Songs To Break Up With Your Lover Over Lunch To or make, like, a playlist with songs from animated movies that would be great to listen to on a long drive and call it Car Tunes. I tried to just make a playlist like I would have made a mix tape or CD when I was a kid——just as many songs I like that could fit onto a CD-R."—Jeff Rosenstock
1. PARQUET COURTS, "SUNBATHING ANIMAL": Parquet Courts are one of my favorite bands, and this song is SO FUCKIN SICK! Just listen to it!
2. CYNDI LAUPER, "MONEY CHANGES EVERYTHING": Not that long ago, I found out that Cyndi Laupers Shes So Unusual was a record stacked with great pop jams. It plays like a greatest hits record, not a debut album.
3. BLACK SABBATH, "SYMPTOM OF THE UNIVERSE (REMASTERED VERSION)": Wow! Remastered for my listening pleasure! Thanks, someone! I like playing this riff at soundcheck cause its so thiiiiick and I can think of Beavis and Butthead singing it. Also the shift in the middle of this song is a good example of later-Ozzy-era Black Sabbath taking weird risks! The four records they did after Paranoid are epic and amazing, check em out.
4. ALVVAYS, "THE AGENCY GROUP": You know that guy at the party who is drunk and talking too loud about some band that youve heard of and havent heard and you just want him to go away? Well, that is me any time anyone brings up Alvvays, cause I cannot stop listening to their records. I picked this song because its fun to sing at soundcheck, and a love song titled after a booking agency is good bit.
5. LIL MAMA, "LIP GLOSS": This song is the banger to end all bangers, and I think we can all get behind the universal truth that Lil Mamas lip gloss is poppin.
6. CAKE, "ROCK N ROLL LIFESTYLE": Haaaaaaaa... I heard this song on the radio the other day and thought it was funny. Cake is a cool band, but I dont know much about em.
7. CHAI, "SOUND & STOMACH": Heard this band at a listening station in the Shibuya Tower Records. I really like J-Pop, J-Rock, whatever this is. I kinda thought, "Whoa, I discovered a new hip underground band!" and then I saw ads for their new album lining the streets later on. Im down with any song that has speak-sing rapping a la "There Was a Door" by Crying.
8. LABRADORS, "ALL I HAVE IS MY HEART": We played with the Labradors when we were on tour in Italy and they were so good. I had this song stuck in my head for months after we returned and it always makes me think of good times in Italy.
9. ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA, "ACROSS THE BORDER": Okay, so if you like ELO, but you only know the hits, Im here to give you a HARD 10/10 RECOMMENDATION to check out their albums from Eldorado up until Discovery. They are great! Maybe start with A New World Record or Discovery. Anyway, this songs not on either of those two records.
10. SCARED OF CHAKA, "WHY ARE YOU WEIRD?": I have woken up with this song stuck in my head for the last 15 years.
11. P.O.S, "PUREXED": Ive known Stef for a while and its been really fun to watch him turn into such a great creative rapper. This song is next level and totally caught me off guard the first time I heard it.
12. SONIC YOUTH, "BULL IN THE HEATHER": I just basically always want to listen to this song. Theres also a sick Go! Team cover of this
13. KENDRICK LAMAR, "FEAR.": I really liked this record, every song is a jam, and it was hard to choose. I picked this one because I love the verses which, from what I read somewhere, are from the perspective of him as at ages seven, 17, and 27. Kendrick Lamar makes cool shit, have you heard of him?
14. THE VANDALS, "I HAVE A DATE": I heard this song late at night on the radio when I was like 13 or 14 and scrambled to find a blank tape and record as much of it as possible to listen to over and over. Warren Fitzgerald has been a guitar hero of mine forever. He doesnt do any wild n crazy shit on this one, but he does sing on it and its a lot of fun.
15. SCATMAN JOHN, "SCATMANS WORLD": Oh man, have you heard this song? Have you seen this video? Have you looked into the history of Scatman John, who started scatting to embrace a stutter that he was always self-conscious about? BA BO BAYY BO BOPPITY.
16. THE THERMALS, "HEY YOU": Im guessing you like The Thermals, but maybe you forgot that they put out a great record in 2016 that had this perfect pop-punk song on it.
17. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE, "SURVIVAL CAR": I never really liked the song "Stacys Mom" and assumed this band would be annoying until my wife played me this perfect power-pop record. It was hard to pick a song on it, but this song is just such a feel-good classic. Roll the windows down! Do the thingy with your hand and the wind! Oh no, roll the window back up, its freezing!
18. KIM MITCHELL, "GO FOR A SODA": This past summer, we had the pleasure of having Zack Mykula of PUP play drums for us in Canada, and his partner Julia rode with us for a few days as well. We made a playlist of Canadian songs we knew and they were like, "yo, you dont know shit about Canada" and we were like "fair enough." They introduced us to a LOT of pub-rock anthems, but this one just takes the cake. "Might as well go for a soda/ Nobody hurts/ And nobody cries" over arena-rock drums? Its so fun to me finding out about a big hit song in another country that just never made it over to me. Anyway, thats what I have to say about Kim Mitchell. Also, if you wanna listen to more, I suggest checking out "I Am A Wild Party"——theres only a live version and its an insane song.
19. SHIT PRESENT, "SHIT TALK": I love Ionas songs and I love Shit Present. I saw her play this on her own the last time we were in the UK and it made me very happy. Its no "My Fruit Bowl" but I cant find that one on Spotify.
20. SQUEEZE, "ANOTHER NAIL IN MY HEART": Squeeze is another band, like ELO, that I think people have heard are good, but might only know "Tempted" and been like, "Yeah, I guess theyre okay." Well, guess what: Squeeze rocks! Fast, wordy power-pop. I listen to Squeeze all the damn time. Also, "Tempted" is sick too, back off!
21. THE SIDEKICKS, "DAISY": If listening to The Sidekicks is not part of your life, NOW IS THE TIME TO GET IN. This record is a great place to start, and then youll get stoked cause their next record is going to be amazing, and then youre gonna go back to Runners and Weight of Air and be like, "Wow, these are great too, how is this band so good?" And then youll be like me every time I see The Sidekicks. BE LIKE ME only this one time.
The ’90s have never sounded better than they do right now—especially for modern-day indie rockers. There’s no shortage of bands banging around these days whose sound suggests formative phases spent soaking up vintage ’90s indie rock. Not that the neo-’90s sound is itself a new thing. As soon as the era was far enough away in the rearview mirror to allow for nostalgia to set in (i.e., the second half of the 2000s), there were already some young artists out there onboarding ’90s alt-rock influences. But more recently, there’s been a bumper crop of bands that betray a soft spot for a time when MTV still played music videos and streaming was just something that happened in a restroom. In this context, the literate, lo-fi approach of Pavement has emerged as a particularly strong strand of the ’90s indie tapestry, and it isn’t hard to hear echoes of their sound in the work of more recent arrivals like Kiwi jr. or Teenage Cool Kids. Cherry Glazerr frontwoman Clementine Creevy seems to have a feeling for the kind of big, dirty guitar riffs that made Pacific Northwestern bands the kings of the alt-rock heap once upon a time. The world-weary, wise-guy angularity of Car Seat Headrest can bring to mind the lurching, loose-limbed attack of Railroad Jerk. And laconic, storytelling types like Nap Eyes stand to prove that there’s still a bright future ahead for those who mourn the passing of Silver Jews main man David Berman. But perhaps the best thing about a face-off between the modern indie bands evoking ’90s forebears and the old-school artists themselves is the fact that in this kind of competition, everybody wins.
It may be that 2019 was the best year for ’90s metal since, well, 1999. Bands from the decade of Judgment Night re-emerged with new creative twists and tweaks: Tool stretched out into polyrhythmic madness, Korn bludgeoned with more extreme and raw despair, Slipknot added a new drummer (Max Weinberg’s kid!) who gave them a new groove, and Rammstein wrote an anti-fascism anthem that caused controversy in Germany (and hit No. 1 there too). Elsewhere, icons of the era returned in unique ways: Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor scored a superhero TV series, Primus’ Les Claypool teamed up with Sean Lennon for some quirky psych rock, and Faith No More’s Mike Patton made an avant-decadent LP with ’70s soundtrack king Jean-Claude Vannier. Finally, the soaring voice of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington returned for a moment thanks to Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton, who released a song they recorded together in 2017.
Taking a look at the playlists for my show on Boston’s WZBC might give the more seasoned college-radio listener a bit of déjà vu: They’re filled with bands like Versus, Team Dresch, and Sleater-Kinney, who were at the top of the CMJ charts back in the ’90s. But the records they released in 2019 turned out to be some of the year’s best rock. Versus, whose Ex Nihilo EP and Ex Voto full-length were part of a creative run for leader Richard Baluyut that also included a tour by his pre-Versus outfit Flower and his 2000s band +/-, put out a lot of beautifully thrashy rock; Team Dresch returned with all cylinders blazing and singers Jody Bleyle and Kaia Wilson wailing their hearts out on “Your Hands My Pockets”; and Sleater-Kinney confronted middle age head-on with their examination of finding one’s footing, The Center Won’t Hold.
Italian guitar heroes Uzeda—who have been putting out proggy, riff-heavy music for three-plus decades—released their first record in 13 years, the blistering Quocumque jerceris stabit; Imperial Teen, led by Faith No More multi-instrumentalist Roddy Bottum, kept the weird hooks coming with Now We Are Timeless; and high-concept Californians That Dog capped off a year of reissues with Old LP, their first album since 1997. Juliana Hatfield continued the creative tear she’s been on this decade with two albums: Weird, a collection of hooky, twisty songs that tackle alienation with searing wit, and Juliana Hatfield Sings the Police, her tribute record to the dubby New Wave chart heroes (in the spirit of the salute to Olivia Newton-John she released in 2018). And our playlist finishes with Mary Timony, formerly of the gnarled rockers Helium and currently part of the power trio Ex Hex, paying tribute to her former Autoclave bandmate Christina Billotte via an Ex Hex take on “What Kind of Monster Are You?,” one of the signature songs by Billotte’s ’90s triple threat Slant 6.
