2019 Album Highlights & Shows # 805 & 806

Instead of doing a top twenty or top ten album list year on Revolution Rock, Dave and Adam decided to just play a collection of albums over two episodes and not list any specific number ranking for them. What you will find here are six write-ups from some albums that were released in 2019, three written by Dave and three written by Adam. Following these words are playlists and download links to two episodes featuring music released in 2019.

2019 Album Highlights:
Written by Dave Konstantino

Fontaines D.C. - Dogrel

Dogrel is the debut full-length album by Fontaines D.C. from Dublin, Ireland. The band features Grian Chatten (vocals), Conor Curley (guitar), Carlos O’Connell (guitar), Conor Deegan (bass) and Tom Coll on drums. The band members met while at school in Dublin and bonded over their love of poetry. They collectively released two collections of poetry Vroom inspired by Beat poetry (such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg) and Winding, which was inspired by Irish poets Patrick Kavanagh, James Joyce and W.B. Yeats. The music that they create is labeled as post punk, however, it pulls in influences from other areas such as fellow Irish band Girl Band, The Fall, Brit pop, a bit of garage and lyrically, Fontaines D.C. utilize their love of poetry.

“Big” starts off Dogrel with a bass and drum intro before garage and post punk guitars intermingle with Chatten’s vocals. This short opening song builds a picturesque image despite its length. With potent words “Dublin in the rain is mine/A pregnant city with a catholic mind” and a chorus of “My childhood was small/But I’m going to be big” that is weighed down by a history, which also blends with a duality of greed and ambitious overtones. There is a working class outlook throughout this album and it is tied in with Irish class economics and an overlooking worldview.

“Too Real” starts off with an intense guitar part before the bass, drums and vocals swoop in with a wave of emotion. Guitar slides bounce back and forth in the your speakers (apparently played with a beer bottle) as drums and bass add depth to the centre. Chatten’s vocals evoke a disdain and urgency at the same time as lyrics such as “None can revolution lead with selfish needs aside/As I cried, I'm about to make a lot of money” that brings forth images of working class Dublin, amongst the chaos of every day life. The Yeats and Joyce influence characterizes this song with little details as the chorus “Is it to real for ya?” is repeated over and over demanding an openness and honesty that also projects a cutting worldview. “Hurricane Laughter” rumbles and attacks in an ebb and flow. Clocking in at around four minutes and fifty seconds, the stream of consciousness lyrics combine a joycean/Lou Reed aesthetic that twists and bends with intensity, as lyrics such as “Hurricane laughter/Tearing down the plaster”, and “There is no connection available”, show a disconnect in the world of complexities that we get sucked into.

“The Boys In The Better Land” is an anthem of sorts that has been described as a British Invasion styled rave up. Inspired by an encounter with an Anglophobic cab driver in Dublin, “The Boys In The Better Land” draws on political themes, but also celebrates independent thought. “Dublin City Sky” ends Dogrel. This poignant album closer evokes a Shane MacGowan/Pogues aesthetic as lyrically this song reads like a love song, but it is a love song to a city that builds on something bigger. Throughout this album, Fontaines D.C. draw on poetry, embracing their Irish identities, but at the same time build on something from what has come before them. James Joyce once said that if Dublin disappeared his book Ulysses could be used to rebuild the city. While Dogrel isn’t a complex mind bending narrative, it does build on something. It uses the complexities and details of our modern times to search for identity and build meaning. There can also be comparison made to Dogrel with this quote that was once said: “Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”


Fruit Tones - Natural Selection

Natural Selection is the debut album by Manchester band Fruit Tones. The music that Fruit Tones play is no nonsense. There are no gimmicks here. It is just raw, primal and rough around the edges garage rock with pop sensibilities. This album follows a series of releases from Fruit Tones. The trio consists of Tom Walmsley (guitar/vocals), Tom Harrison (drums) and Chris Wood on bass. Dominic Oliver played on bass on the record. Recorded over three freezing cold days in December 2018 with Samuel Stacpool (Holiday Ghosts/The Black Tambourines), Natural Selection was released via Greenway Records in January 2019.

"I Know Where Love Comes From” opens Natural Selection. The song is a rush of grittiness ala the New York Dolls and The Stooges with dashes of 60s pop. As the song reaches the halfway point it attacks with its menacing guitar solo and stop and start build up. Released as the first single for Natural Selection with a video by Chris Wood featuring animations from Dominic Oliver, it isn’t hard to see how this fizzy garage punk track wins over listeners. “Invisible Ink” is a slow surf inflected number that also recalls an early Beatles/beat music influence. It tells the conflicted story a lovesick character that exits a relationship by leaving behind a note written in invisible ink. The song carries with it a certain mysteriousness with the lack of answers it provides. After hearing the song, we are left with a juxtaposition of invisible answers and complicated feelings. “Drunk At The Zoo” builds up with a loose, off kilter groove that gnaws and claws its way throughout the track. The song features rambunctious characters behaving badly while being drunk at various locations at the zoo.

On Natural Selection, Fruit Tones deliver an album that is ripe with multiple meanings about adjusting and surviving in the environments of our modern times despite the negative outliers that are all around us. With “the sass of The Dolls, the fizz of Four Loco, the Stones-esque looseness, juiced into 14 tracks”, on Natural Selection, Fruit Tones evoke a garage punk aesthetic with surf and 60s pop influences that evolves with the uncontrollable urge to have a good time.

Bloodshot Bill - Come Get Your Love Right Now

Released in February 2019, Come Get Your Love Right Now is the latest album by Montreal musician Bloodshot Bill. Although he has had over 35 releases on a variety of labels such as Norton Records, this album marks the first from Bloodshot Bill to be released via Goner Records. Last year saw the release of This Is It! an album featuring Bloodshot Bill and The Hick-Ups. Also in 2019, Bloodshot Bill put out a seven inch entitled My Little Muck Muck with legendary Japanese trio The 5.6.7.8.’s, a new single Temple of Boom by The Tandoori Knights (with King Khan), and a surf EP called Hang Ten with Bloodshot Bill. Come Get Your Love Right Now follows the 2017 release Guitar Boy.

The album’s opening and title track, “Come Get Your Love Right Now” channels an early Sun Records aesthetic. With its acoustic guitar, reverb filled vocals, and guitar slides, this song sets the mood for the rest of the songs to come. “Take Me For A Ride” is a song that is part Trashmen vocals and propelling rockabilly rhythms. The catchy rockabilly riff of “Know Myself” hits the listener on another level. While not all of Bloodshot Bill’s vocals are clearly heard due to his use of reverb, this song, like many of Bloodshot Bill’s songs puts the listener into a certain state to feel the music rather than overthink it. “Hook Me" shuffles with an old fashioned R&B groove, while “Do What You Do” jumps and moves with an unmistakable early rock n’ roll feeling. “Just Because” slows the pace down a bit as it blends early blues, country and rockabilly.

Come Get Your Love Right Now ends with three songs. “I Don’t Mind At All” is a song that showcases 50’s rock and roll with its staccato guitar stabs, and more guitar riffs inspired by a rebellious rock n roll spirit, “One At A Time”, is a mid-tempo track that floats with surf inspired guitar riffs while “Honey Dolling” ends the album. With its early R&B rhythms and trademark Bloodshot Bill vocals, it ends the album after 35 minutes with sixteen songs, leaving the listener with a desire for more. With a multitude of releases under his belt, this album may be one of the strongest collections of material released by Bloodshot Bill. With Come Get Your Love Right Now, Bloodshot Bill strikes a chord with a certain immediacy as it mixes a selection of ballads and up-tempo rockabilly inspired tracks. Bloodshot Bill evokes a renegade spirit with a side of sophistication as he once again taps into a primitive rock and roll feeling.

More 2019 Album Highlights:
Written by Adam Peltier

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Ghosteen

It's odd featuring an album that is so antithetical to the tropes of rock music on a show called Revolution Rock, but there is no denying the pull of the enveloping world Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have crafted with Ghosteen. First, there is a certain audacity about the album that is truly amazing. One can look at the Jehovah's Witness brochure like painting for the album's (misleadingly) utopic cover art, the ambitious length of the album, but the most audacious element is the bareness of the record itself. After the stripped back recordings of Nick Cave's last release, the melancholic Skeleton Tree, it seemed like the Bad Seeds would not be able to reduce their sound to anything more fundamental, with only flowing synths, Warren Ellis's barely present loops and piano keeping the mournful affair afloat. With Ghosteen, the band proved just how much more there was to extract from their sound. The whole affair is an impressionist swath of synths and viola, without hardly any noticeable beats and no guitar (!) throughout the record's near 70 minute run time. Like I said, not much of a rock record at all.

Yet it works. The entirety of the album meshes together in a captivating way, coming across more as a series of musical landscapes and sonic poems than anything else. Indeed, Ghosteen's greatest comparison points are to Eno's ambient recordings, the celestial gothic orchestras of “This Mortal Coil”, and the brooding atmospheres of “Current 93”. Yet even these references are hardly representative of the overall mood and feeling evoked by Ghosteen. The ethereal nature of this sonic world has few concrete predecessors, and the entire affair is elevated by Nick Cave's soaring baritone vocals. It should be stated Cave has never sounded better as a singer than on this record: the ranges his voice crosses, the highs he reaches (just listen to the plaintive “Spinning Song” as an example) is unaccounted for in his preceding discography. Long gone is the vocalist many called a demonic Elvis, screeching and caterwauling post-punk laments of sex and violence. Instead, Cave here is mature and reflective, closer to vocalists like Scott Walker, Stuart Staples, or even Tim Buckley.

While the general misconception of Skeleton Tree was that the album was a response to the death of Cave's 15-year-old son Arthur, the majority of that record was written and recorded prior to this tragic event. Ghosteen is truly the first record fully written and completed after Arthur's passing, and this event seems to haunt every lyric, passage, and note of these compositions. The lyrics deal with death, loss, and the sobering acceptance of the world's indifference to our personal grief. On “Bright Horses,” the titular equines are initially presented as mythic animals, their manes “full of fire” which burn down the cities they run through. By the song's end the “horses are just horses” and the dynamic and dangerous beauty they once imbued to the city is replaced by the harsh realty in which “everyone is hidden, and everyone is cruel.”

Ghosteen is also, surprisingly, the Bad Seeds album most imbued with hope and empathy. Rather than the nihilism of Cave's earlier work, this album posits meaning in connection with other humans, such as a spiralling cascade of spirits in the title track, a torrent of lost souls Cave seeks to commune with. The album's most striking moment is saved for the end, the epic 14 minute closer “Hollywood.” During the final coda of the song, Cave recounts the Buddhist parable of Kisa Gotami who despaired after the illness and death of her child. Evoking the words of Buddha, Cave instructs Kisa to "Go to each house and collect a mustard seed/But only from a house where no one's died." When Kisa is unable to locate any household unaffected by the loss of someone, Cave reflects sagely, “Everybody's losing someone/It's a long way to find peace of mind, peace of mind.” This is an obvious reflection of a man who experienced his own loss of a young child, and may be the most exposed and honest we have heard the singer yet. As the song ends with Cave intoning, “I'm just waiting now for peace to come,” one can only hope he finds the solace and closure he seeks after such a tragic and personal loss.

Ghosteen may not exactly be a rock record, but it doesn't need to be. It is an arresting, powerful, and emotional journey through one man's (and in essence, everybody's) search for peace after facing life's cascade of losses and grief. It is the most potent and important reflection on grief that 21st century music has yet produced, and one of the Bad Seed's greatest records to date.

Purple Mountains - Purple Mountains

It seems we are enmeshed in an ever increasing age of cynicism. Detachment and disillusion are presented as social norms, the only available mechanisms to operate within the political and cultural tumult of daily life. Notions of empathy, vulnerability, and honesty are scoffed at in favour of ironic distance. Despite the apparent coldness of the world we inhabit, people still seek connection and understanding. Its our species' greatest paradox: the drive to be unaffected by the world around us, while also wanting human contact, to connect and compassion. Perhaps that is why audiences find themselves in awe when an artist refuses to play into the cold critical paradigm of ironic-detachment, and create work that (for lack of better words) allows us to “feel.”

Throughout his career David Berman has maintained an emotional immediateness in his art, whether it be his poetry or his work with longtime band the Silver Jews. After an extended period away from songwriting, Berman returned in 2019 with a new band, Purple Mountains, and his first collection of songs in over a decade. Prompted by the death of his mother and the separation from his wife of twenty years, it’s easy to see why the resulting album is so emotionally vulnerable.

There are no filters on Purple Mountains. Backed by members of the Ohio folk band Woods, Berman plunged headfirst into subject matter most people actively try to avoid dealing with: battles with depression, suicidal ideation, insecurity, and the pain of a parent's death. The album lays out its tone on the very first track, “That's Just the Way that I Feel.” The misleadingly jaunty instrumentation juxtaposes Berman's musing over the impermanence of security and love, finally intoning: “The end of all wanting is all I've been wanting.” This mood is echoed in the self-explanatory “All My Happiness is Gone” and “Darkness and Cold.” Hearing Berman croon on the latter track that “The light of my life is going out tonight and she don't look too depressed,” becomes a spine-tingling confession of the indifference of others to his (and really, every individual's) personal pain.

Other tracks point to more specific instances of heartbreak and ennui. There is the poignant “I Miss Being My Mother's Son,” Berman's heartbreaking declaration of sorrow over the loss of his mother. “She's Making Friends, I'm Turning Stranger” reflects on the separation from his wife, the singer lamenting his insecurities and seeming inability to connect with others, stating: “I want to be a warm and friendly person, but I don't know how to do it.” Then there is “Margaritas at the Mall,” the closest the album concedes to offering a pop song, but one which explores society's obsession with commerce. By the song's end people are seen as no more than reflections of the products they purchase, their individuality sapped by their obsession with material goods.

Purple Mountains is not a light listen. Its honest exploration of pain and anxiety, made all the more heartrending by Berman's suicide weeks after the album's release. Lyrics like “The dead know what they're doing when they leave this world behind,” offer few comforts to those seeking solace from this record. Purple Mountains is one of the most profound and heartbreaking albums of the artist's career, and a clear indication that the greatest of art is not that which is suffused by irony and detachment, but that which engages with honesty and emotion.

Big Thief - UFOF and Two Hands

Like winter and summer, day and night, earth and sky, this pair of albums provides a mirrored offering of Big Thief's sound, both complimentary and distinct from one another. The ethereal UFOF contrasts to the grounded earthiness of Two Hands. The summery plucked strings of “Cattails” and late-afternoon haze of “Jenni” contrasts to the electric feedback of “Not” and the rocky buildup of “Shoulders.” It's fitting that both albums were released this year, as the records offer a surprising unity despite their opposing sounds, like opposite sides of the same coin.

Propelled by Adrianne Lenker's distinct high register croon and Buck Meek's shimmering guitar work, what both albums offer is a sense of longing, like the drive to recapture a barely recalled memory. In fact, the most recurring lyrical theme between UFOF and Two Hands is the recollection of long ago love. The confessional “Orange” ends with the recounting of a long passed partner: “Crying little rivers in her forearm/Fragile is that I mourn her death/As our limbs are twisting in her bedroom.” On “Forgotten Eyes” Lenker recalls being “Hollow-eyed on Eddie Street, no sirens to hear/Just trash and soiled needles clawing the veneer,” ending the song with the mantra that the “forgotten tongue is the language of love.” Both albums are beautiful, boldly elliptical, and eerily moving. Rooted in grandstanding powerful folk rock, much in the vein of Bill Callahan or Wilco, Big Thief offer a twin-set of incredible records that not so much stay with the listener, but carry them away into another world.


Show 806 (Originally Aired ON December 21st, 2019)(Albums of 2019 Part Two):

1. Shotgun Jimmie - Ablutions (Transistor Sister 2 - You've Changed Records - 2019)
2. Shotgun Jimmie - Fountain (Transistor Sister 2 - You've Changed Records - 2019)
3. Orville Peck - Dead of Night (Pony - Sub Pop - 2019)
4. Bloodshot Bill - Only Girl (Come Get Your Love Right Now - Goner Records - 2019)
5. (Sandy) Alex G – In My Arms (House of Sugar - Domino Recording Co Ltd. - 2019)
6. Big Thief – UFOF (UFOF - 4AD - 2019)
7. Big Thief – Forgotten Eyes (Two Hands - 4AD - 2019)
8. Feet – Outer Rim (What's Inside is More than Just Ham - Clapped Records - 2019)
9. Dumb - Club Nites (Club Nites - Mint Records - 2019)
10. Julia Jacklin – Pressure to Party (Crushing - Polyvinyl Record Co - 2019)
11. Angel Olsen – What It Is (All Mirrors - Jagjaguwar - 2019)
12. Sharon Van Etten – Seventeen (Remind Me Tomorrow - Jagjaguwar - 2019)
13. Brittany Howard – He Loves Me (Jaime - ATO Records - 2019)
14. Fontaines DC - Hurricane Laughter (Dogrel - Partisan Records - 2019)
15. Fruit Tones - Igloo (Natural Selection - Greenway Records - 2019)
16. Pottery - Spell (No.1 - Partisan Records - 2019)
17. Psychic Void - Alley Dweller (Skeleton Paradise - Vanilla Box Records - 2019)
18. Otaboki Beaver – Datsu.Hikage no onna (Itekoma Hits - Damnably - 2019)
19. Shana Cleveland - Night of the Worm Moon (Night of the Worm Moon - Hardly Art - 2019)
20. Bill Callahan – Angela (Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest - Drag City - 2019)
21. Leonard Cohen – Torn (Thanks for the Dance - Columbia Legacy - 2019)
22. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Fireflies (Ghosteen - Bad Seed Ltd - 2019)
23. Mount Eerie & Julie Dorian – Real Lost Wisdom (Lost Wisdom Pt. 2 - P.W. Elverum & Sun - 2019)
24. Priests - Control Freak (The Seduction of Kansas - Sister Polygon - 2019)
25. Light Bulb Alley - Problems (Lights And Shades - Self Released - 2019)
26. Necking - Spare Me (Cut Your Teeth - Mint Records - 2019)
27. Mannequin Pussy – Cream (Patience - Epitaph Records - 2019)
28. LTD - Spicy Chicken (Stop Und Fick Dich - In The Red Recordings - 2019)
29. Cellos - Head to Stone (Cellos/Not of Split EP - No List Records/Harbour House - 2019)
30. Purple Mountains – Margaritas At The Mall (Purple Mountains - Drag City - 2019)

To download this weeks program, visit CJAM's schedule page for Revolution Rock and download the file for December 21.

Show 805 (Originally Aired On December 14th, 2019)(Albums of 2019 Part One):

1. Iggy Pop - Loves Missing (Free - Caroline International/Loma Vista Recordings - 2019)
2. BA Johnston - Discount Bacon (The Skid is Hot Tonight - Transistor 66 - 2019)
3. Foggy Tapes - Fly In My Head (Cogito Ergo Fog - Howlin' Banana Records - 2019)
4. The Jackets - Be Myself (Queen of the Pill - Voodoo Rhythm Records - 2019)
5. Electric Cows – Stampede! (Wheatfield Fuzz - Dub Ditch Panic - 2019)
6. Vivian Girls – Something to Do (Memory - Polyvinyl Record Co. - 2019)
7. Jose Contreras - At 45 (At The Slaughterhouse - Headless Owl Records - 2019)
8. Bonnie Prince Billy – Squid Eye (I Made a Place - Domino Recording Company - 2019)
9. Cass McCombs – Estrella (Tip of the Sphere - ANTI- 2019)
10. Smokey & The Feeelings - Fields of Bored (Smokey & The Feeelings - Mangled Tapes - 2019)
11. Middle Sister - Ballad For A Broken Engine (The Hot And Hungry Reaches of the Sun - Self Released - 2019)
12. Sprinters - Missing (Struck Gold - Meritorio Records - 2019)
13. Deerhunter – What Happens to People? (Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared? - 4AD - 2019)
14. Cate le Bon – Mother's Mother's Magazines (Reward - Mexican Summer - 2019)
15. Black Midi – Reggae (Schagenheim - Rough Trade - 2019)
16. Old Time Relijun – I Know I'm Alive (See Now and Know - K Records - 2019)
17. 3ft – Evening Song (21st Century Drone - Naive Sound - 2019)
18. White Fence - Neighbourhood Light (I Have To Feed Larry’s Hawk  - Drag City - 2019)
19. Ty Segall - Taste (First Taste - Drag City - 2019)
20. Mike Krol - Nothing To Yell About (Power Chords - Merge Records - 2019)
21. Wolfmanhattan Project - Smells Like You (Blue Gene Stew - In The Red Recordings - 2019)
22. Feels – Car (Post Earth - Wichita Recordings - 2019)
23. Skye Wallace – Coal in Your Window (Skye Wallace - Kingfisher Bluez - 2019)
24. Kiwi Jr – Salary Man (Football Money - Mint Records - 2019)
25. Guided by Voices – Street Party (Sweating The Plague - GBV Inc. - 2019)
26. Pixies – St. Nazaire (Beneath the Eyrie - BMG/Infectious - 2019)
27. Les Robots - The Remote Control Stomp (The Fascinating World of - Spazz Records - 2019)
28. Kim Gray - Handful Of Problems (Plastic Memory - Buzz Records - 2019)

To download this weeks program, visit CJAM's schedule page for Revolution Rock and download the file for December 14.