What’s This Playlist All About? The lead singer of influential alt-rockers The Jesus and Mary Chain takes a quick break from his band’s tour with Nine Inch Nails to put together a mix of his personal favorites.What You Get: A mix full of hidden gems from underrated cult heroes, alongside the best of the best (i.e. John Lennon, Neil Young, The Kinks, Nirvana). Find some of the snottiest old-school punk from The Snivelling Shits, the most transcendent folk from Vashti Bunyan, the creepiest post-punk from Cabaret Voltaire, and the most poignant beauty from Lennon’s solo material.Greatest Discovery: Fellow Scottish noise-pop band Honeyblood and their infectious “Babes Never Die.”How Does This Playlist Stack Up Against Psychocandy? Even with the likes of Lou Reed, Sinatra, and The Beatles, we’d still argue Psychocandy reigns superior—if you’re going for overall ambience and flow, that is.
What’s This Playlist All About? The soul man and living EGOT legend (i.e Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony winner) does a little self-promotion on behalf of multinational coffee chain Starbucks in an effort to get us all in the Christmas spirit—and plenty caffeinated.What You Get: A whopping nine-plus hours of Christmas magic from Legend himself (who, coincidentally, released his own festive album, A Legendary Christmas, in October), as well as Yuletide essentials from The Jackson 5, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, and Mariah Carey. Charles Brown, Charlie Brown, and James Brown all make an appearance, too, but this mostly leans on more modern holiday pop nuggets from Sia, Gwen Stefani, Ariana Grande, She & Him, and Jessie J.Best Picks: Cocteau Twins’ misty and magical spin on “Frosty the Snowman,” Run-D.M.C.’s sampling holiday spectacular “Christmas in Hollis,” and The Raveonettes’ fantastically fuzzy “The Christmas Song.”What Song Goes Best With That Frappuccino? Crank up The Kinks’ snarky punk zinger “Father Christmas” and feel that caffeine and sugar kick right in.
Whats This Playlist All About? In preparation for the release of their fifth studio album, 2018s All Nerve, Breeders boss Kim Deal schools us on her influential bands most influential tracks.What Do You Get? Before 90 alt-rock essential "Cannonball," Deal deals us a trio of newbies from All Nerve, including the grit-and-syrup-flavored single "Wait in the Car." Elsewhere, you’ll find the bands moodier escapes in "Off You" and "Night of Joy," noisier dalliances in "Roi" and “Glorious," and, of course, their woozy, punky rendition of "Happiness is a Warm Gun."What Did She Forget? In favor of the new stuff, Deal omits some quality gems from their 1990 debut, Pod, like the loose, wild, fiercely feminine "Iris."Should This Be Required Listening for All High-School Students? Yes. Every teen needs this kind of cathartic noise in their life.
It’s becoming increasingly common practice for an artist to post an original playlist to their Spotify page in the run-up to a new album. It’s a canny strategy: Throw a few tracks together then sit back as the mix gains followers, who then become a readymade audience when the record comes out. The original-playlist promotional gambit is just the latest new marketing tactic in an industry defined by them: Last week’s record club becomes this week’s free mp3 download becomes next week’s Twitter Takeover, and so on. Thus, for every three perfunctory artist playlists that show up on Spotify pages these days, there’s one stand-out entry, a mix put together with extra TLC that both stands on its own and complements the album being released. Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile’s “Lotta Duets” playlist is just such a mix. Honestly, this thing rules. Compiled to accompany the duo’s debut collaborative full-length, Lotta Sea Lice, “Lotta Duets” is a who’s-who of classic pairings: George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin. The mix spans genres and eras. Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers’ “Islands in the Stream,” as virtuosic an example of streamlined ‘80s pop as any that exists (it was written by the Bee Gees, btw), is flanked by the gentle folk of “Early Morning Rain,” by Canadian duo Ian & Sylvia, and “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me),” a collaboration between George Michael and Aretha Franklin. While the indulgent production of the latter track bears little resemblance to anything on Lotta Sea Lice, its inclusion feels consistent with Vile and Barnett’s penchant for winking references. Many of the tracks on the playlist are more obviously influential, as in the fuzzed-out indie pop of The Vaselines’ “Son Of A Gun,” the saccharine crunch of Iggy Pop’s “Candy” (featuring Kate Pierson of The B-52s), the snarling grooves of “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” by Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty. If you were to melt all these tracks down, what you’d have is a winsome, sturdy, occasionally nostalgic, occasionally cheeky rock sound anchored in the past but with some modern flourishes—in other words, exactly the sound of Lotta Sea Lice. That’s a pretty neat trick.
What’s This Playlist All About? The finest rocker out of Philly gives a shout-out to 10 of his friends with this top 10 list for 2018.What You Get: A fun peek into Vile’s musical universe, including past collaborators like Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, John Prine, Yo La Tengo, and Steve Gunn, as well as good pal and duet partner Courtney Barnett. This means a lot of great guitar work and plenty of profound wordplay, all caught in a dreamy, melancholic haze.Best Pick: Tour partner Jessica Pratt’s hushed, ethereal acoustic beauty “This Time Around,” the first single from her upcoming 2019 album, Quiet Signs.Does Vile Have Good Taste? We’ll admit his mix isn’t too terribly out of his indie/folk/rock domain (though the haunting experiments of Grouper add a nice cosmic touch), but it does make for a solid glimpse into 2018’s more understated and underappreciated sounds.
What’s This Playlist All About? Smooth pop crooners Lauv and Troye Sivan have just released their first collaboration with the breezy, love-song-lamenting “i’m so tired...” To go along with it, the duo has also compiled this somnolent list of their “favorite sleep songs.”What You Get: After the twosome’s own sweet (but not-so-sleepy) groove, comes Aphex Twin’s lovely, twinkling “Avril 14th.” Following are airy, fragile mood pieces from singer-songwriters like Bon Iver, Lucy Rose, and SOAK, plus a few melancholic ‘90s reveries from Portishead and Mazzy Star. They also seem especially fond of the warm ambient melodies of Geotic, featured here four times. Our only criticisms: the Ella Fitzgerald pick seems a little too fierce for bedtime, and they’ve seemed to miss one obvious selection—The Beatles’ “I’m So Tired.”Greatest Discovery: The lush keyboard musings of electro producer Christian Loffler, whose way-too-short “Alpine Sketch” closes out the mix and makes us crave more of its dreaminess.Is This an Appropriate Mix for Insomniacs? It’s a pretty great chill mix, but drowsy as its flow and beats may be, the songs are just too good to want to zonk out to.
What’s This Playlist All About? The White Stripe, Raconteur, Third Man, and all-around rock savior gives it up for one of his biggest influences with a top 10 list of his favorite Led Zeppelin songs. The mix comes on the cusp of the 50th anniversary of the band’s second album, Led Zeppelin II, and White accompanies it with this direct disclaimer: “Led Zeppelin are an immovable force in music… I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t like them.” Amen. (Note: You can also find similar lists by artists like Royal Blood and Maná.)What You Get: A Jimmy Page–heavy beast of muddy, bluesy, blustery rock brilliance. White opens the mix with the swampy “The Rover,” featuring some of Jimmy Page’s greatest riffs. You can also hear the exact source of White’s shouty vocal inflections more than ever. Elsewhere, he includes the bluesy meanderings of “How Many More Times” and “Since I’ve Been Loving You,” some memorable BBC Session cuts, and the hot-blooded early instrumental “Moby Dick.”Most Interesting Pick: Most of White’s picks are fairly deep cuts, including the rough mix of another heavy grooving instrumental, “St. Tristan’s Sword,” an outtake from the Led Zeppelin III sessions that offers more proof of Page’s fretwork wizardry.What Other Playlist Would We Love to See Jack Make? Maybe one of his own music? Like, how does he rank The White Stripes over, say, The Dead Weather? Or maybe we should just have him crank out a mix of The Black Keys (ha).
Alex curates an excellent look back at the last decade or so of instrumental hip-hop, using Dillas Donuts release as a milestone in the genre. The selections range from Dilla-inspired global hip-hop psych such as Onra to the trap clatter of 808 Mafia, and a lot in between. Its an exhaustive look that includes some excellent rarities.Note: We were unable to find the specific Blue Sky Death track that Alex lists, so we made a substitution.
For fans of R&B ballads, the supersized emotions, frequent vocal gymnastics, and production maximalism can seem to be the most direct window to the artists’ inner life, revealing some deeper vulnerability or emotional longings that the more uptempo tracks generally ignore. Beyoncé, being Beyoncé, does this better than most. This Spotify playlist, from KH Bionic Chiu, is one in a series of pop star ballad playlists. The track selection is solid, even if there’s very real rhythm to the selections and the inclusion of the Luther Vandross so close to the top of the list is a curveball. Usually these type of playlist front-load the hits and get around to the collaborations, and, here, a track like “Best Thing I Never Had” doesn’t appear until we’re over a dozen tracks into the playlist. -- Sam Chennault
What’s This Playlist All About? While the playlist itself comes with no context, we can only assume it represents the tastes and sounds of spicy pop quartet Little Mix and Sharaya J, the Hawaiian rapper and Missy Elliott protege featured on the group’s new single “Strip” from their fifth studio album LM5.What You Get: Just like the material on LM5, expect plenty of female fierceness, starting with the album’s first single, “Woman Like Me,” featuring the omnipresent Nicki Minaj, then a few of Sharaya J’s recent singles, including the brazen and totally badass “Say Less.” They sit alongside an impressive list of cuts from iconic ladies like Ms. Lauryn Hill, TLC, Janet, Sheila E., and Salt-N-Pepa, who come strutting in with the playlist’s most defining track—the empowering “Independent.”Best Surprise: Sharaya J’s killer cover of “Mama Said Knock You Out,” which she effortlessly performed on the reality show The Four: Battle for Stardom. Seriously, this has got even LL shakin’ in his boots.What’s This Playlist Missing? With all those female warriors represented, we’re wondering where Missy is?!
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.
