The Greatest Albums of 2008

Let’s tackle a surprisingly prophetic year of music and my recent excursion to Manchester, TN for the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in the longest post of Found or Forgotten history.

Against my better judgment, I’m undertaking a project to determine my top 10 albums of every year since 1960. Instead of just picking my favorite stuff out of my collection, I intend to explore, re-visit and discover. While I can’t promise to leave no stone un-turned, I am going to go deeper than I ever have before. Why would I partake in a journey that will inevitably take many years and that I ultimately may never finish? Most importantly, to uncover great music that I’ve never heard before. Second, to boost my knowledge of music history and get a sense of what was happening at a macro scale in a snapshot of time. Finally, I want to share my passion for music with you and, fingers crossed, generate a dialogue down in the comments. So without further ado, here is #37 in the series. My random number generator tells me that our next year to explore is 1998.

Check out my previous entries here.

The Greatest Albums of 2008

It took a mere three cycles before my ambitious plans to knock out a post every two months came crashing down around me. I blame Bonnaroo. I attended the festival for the first time this year, spending nearly a week on the Manchester, TN farm enduring the oppressive heat and listening to oodles of great music. It isn’t so much the week away that sunk me, though, but the weeks of preparation and backlog of work and familial duties that accrued while I was prepping and attending the festival. Before I left, I had written my intro to this post and nothing else, and yet here I sit on June 26th scrapping said intro and starting over, staring at a July 1st deadline that is simply not going to happen. You didn’t miss out on anything, by the way, my old intro was pretty half-baked as I struggled, as usual, to craft anything cogent to say about the state of American popular music in the decade of the aughts. As penance for the disruption to my schedule, and simply because I am much more motivated to write about it, I’m going to weave in some Bonnaroo stories and impressions throughout my exploration of 2008. In fact, I’m going to cut my intro short and focus on the list-making aspect of this blog by including a different Bonnaroo-inspired list at the end of each entry into my top 10! That’s ten extra lists! And I’m only going to charge you for five of them! (Checks calculator, confirming that 5 x $0 = $0… shit). Enjoy all your extra lists for nothing you freeloaders.

1. Watershed – Opeth

I have strong opinions about the heavy metal of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. About which albums are better than others, where specific bands rank in my own personal cannon, even about the particular merits of the major movements in the genre across those thirty years. As I’ve mentioned before, however, my metal fandom went dormant around the turn of the century, and I probably didn’t listen to a new metal album until the “best of the decade” lists started coming out ten years later. Really, I didn’t explore the modern metal scene in earnest until I started this blog in 2016. As a result, I don’t yet have a good sense for the evolution of the genre in the past quarter century. I don’t have a favorite modern metal act, although there are several I enjoy: I love the technicality and brutality of Gojira, I appreciate the focus on classic grooves that The Sword brings to the table, and I feel similarly about Mastodon, who probably hits higher highs but is ultimately less consistent than The Sword. I dig Kylesa and Khemmis and Creeper and Gatecreeper, and on and on. Opeth sits near the top of that list, for sure, but I’m not prepared to declare them my favorite metal act of the century. They explore similar boundaries in most of their work – extreme death metal on one end, delicate folk music on the other, some classic rock elements to bridge the gap – and sometimes they simply get the chemistry wrong. There are plenty of Opeth albums where it generally works, but just as many where you feel like you are waiting through the slow parts to get to the goods. All of that to say, while I still have a lot to experience about the heavy metal of the recent past, and while my favorite acts are kind of in a big jumble instead of a fastidiously compiled list like I would obviously prefer, I am ready to make at least one solid proclamation about the genre in the post-2000 time frame: Watershed is my favorite metal album of the past 24 years.

With Watershed, Opeth does not depart from their signature sound, but rather perfects it. Each element is performed so well that it is able to stand on its own, but also impeccably balanced together so that you never find yourself waiting for the next transition to come. You can simply let the music wash over you. When it is heavy, like the opening of “Heir Apparent” or the second half of “Hessian Peel”, it is punishingly visceral. That helps the softer parts when they come in, because you feel like you want a reprieve. Of course, those reprieves in turn make the heavy parts feel that much more impactful by their proximity to the deft, melodic guitar plucking and gentle singing in the other sections. The folk-influenced parts offer more than just interesting juxtaposition, though. This album, more than any other by the band, features non-metal elements that completely stand on their own. Whether it’s the atmospheric and euphonious duet, “Coil”, that opens the album or the stunning, David Gilmour-inspired guitar work on “Burden”, you don’t listen to these parts simply waiting for the blistering guitar riffs and demonic growls to drop in, you stay invested in what is happening the entire time. New guitarist Fredrick Akkesson and new drummer Martin Axenrot seem to have reinvigorated the band, and the musicianship is stellar across the entire album. They are able to weave in prog and psychedelic rock elements among the dark folk and death metal, but bring it all together in a way that never sounds strained or jarring.

I first encountered Watershed when it popped up on one of those “best of decade” lists I referenced above. As I recall, it was a list from the AV Club, back when that was an online publication of merit featuring some of the best pop culture writers in the world. They also hipped me to Mastodon, and Skeletonwitch, and the very unfortunately named Isis in that same article. Honestly, it’s writing like that which ultimately inspired me to embark on this whole ridiculous journey of Found or Forgotten. My delusions of grandeur are not so vast that I expect to galvanize a new generation of online music writers, but I’ll settle for getting a few people to check out an awesome album that they have never heard before. Maybe Watershed is that album for you.

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Bonus List – The Best Sets I Saw at Bonnaroo 2024: 10-7

#9 (tie) – T-Pain & Thundercat

When the schedule dropped for Bonnaroo, I experienced my first pangs of anxiety over the whole endeavor. First of all, I only knew a few of the acts on the massive bill, and the schedule-makers had the gall to program them opposite each other on multiple occasions!  How dare they not recognize the inherent overlap in fandoms between Jason Isbell and Joey Bada$$! Secondly, many of these artists were scheduled to perform PAST MY BEDTIME! Any set that was destined to cross the 1am threshold, I immediately wrote off as unattainable. Sure enough, on night one I was in bed by midnight. Night two, I broke my rule to check out Gwar’s 1am set, and then went to bed around 2:30am. On night three, as I watched the end of Post Malone’s headlining set from the comfort of my campsite, my evening was just beginning. The most confounding conflict of the week occurred in the first wave of artists after Postie – T-Pain, Thundercat, and the Mars Volta were all playing competing sets at the same time. The general consensus of my group was that T-Pain was the desirable choice, so despite him being the one artist out of those three that I don’t actually listen to recreationally, we headed to What Stage to check him out. He is a great performer, and on a lineup that was both jam band and EDM-heavy, it was refreshing to hear some proper pop music with big hooks that were instantly recognizable. In addition to hip hop crowd pleasers like “Good Life” and “Black and Yellow”, he hit us with renditions of “Tennessee Whisky” and “Don’t Stop Believing”! It was a full on party atmosphere, and came across as a type of curated playlist rather than a retrospective of T-Pain’s discography. Yet, it didn’t stop a couple of us from jetting over to That Tent to check out the end of avant garde bassist, Thundercat’s set. How to describe Thundercat’s music? Wikipedia sure as shit doesn’t have it figured out:

Do you like your Progressive R&B with moderate Crossover Thrash elements and Astral Jazz accents, or the other way around? Either way, he’s very cool, and sort of represents the opposite of T-Pain’s mass appeal artistry. Thundercat produces incredibly fluid and intricate sounds from his electric bass, and the smaller stage led to a more intimate setting for true space funk aficionados. Also yacht rock and electronica, I guess? All I know is that I got to watch him play “Dragonball Durag”, my personal favorite of his, and despite missing the hyper-anxious prog metal of Mars Volta, I feel like we made the most of the 12:30-2:00am time slot on Friday night.

#8 – Brittany Howard

The greatest antagonist at Bonnaroo, more so than sketchy security guards or malfunctioning toilets or rampaging wooks* kicking up clouds of dust in their bare feet, was the sun. The hours of 10am-5pm most days were brutally unrelenting in terms of temperature. You could typically manage to still enjoy yourself between the misting tents, the handful of covered stages like This Tent and That Tent, or the occasional shady wooded areas spread around Outeroo (the areas surrounding Centeroo, the main festival section with most of the stages). Sometimes, though, you had to brave the elements to witness one of the acts fortunate enough to be on a main stage, but unfortunate enough to be there during daylight. Brittany Howard was one of those for me. If you are going to put yourself in direct path of the sun’s fury, you want to be entertained, and Howard was thankfully up to the task. If you aren’t familiar, she formerly fronted the Alabama Shakes, but her solo work is quite different from them – a sort of R&B, electronic, funk hybrid. Honestly, I’ve been somewhat ambivalent about her most recent solo effort, What Now, spinning it several times before deciding to buy it, largely because the odd confluence of influences make the material hard to pin down. I feel like listening to the material in a live context brought it together for me in a way that was never going to happen otherwise, and her set makes me excited for where she’s going as an artist. Brittany vs the sun: 1-0-0.

* A term that I have only encountered in the discourse around Bonnaroo (and heard in the wild several times throughout the week). Urban Dictionary defines it as such: Wook – The dirty, vagranty variety of hippy. Almost always unemployed, following around jambands or festivals, and ripping people off.

#7 – Mdou Moctar

See the next bonus list for more details.

1. Dear Science – TV on the Radio

How do you describe the music of TV on the Radio? They are a rock band, or at least that’s how I instinctually classify them, but that hardly does the trick. Going back to Wikipedia, as obtuse as it was at labeling Thundercat’s music, you come up with indie rock, art rock, funk, soul and post-punk. Not much to quibble with there, honestly, but still doesn’t paint a clear picture. A friend that I introduced them to at one point said he didn’t understand their music at all until he started thinking of them like Duran Duran, and I never fully understood what he meant, but it’s probably another piece of the puzzle. Ultimately, TV on the Radio are a little bit unclassifiable, particularly starting with Dear Science where they exponentially expanded their sound beyond the hazy indie rock of 2006’s Return to Cookie Mountain. So what does it sound like? To start, there is a foundation of great songs. The base elements (verse, chorus, bridge, etc.) are terrifically well written and provide a sturdy backbone for all of the various sonic elements that adorn them. One issue I have with indie rock bands who deploy unorthodox instruments and tons of sonic layers (think Animal Collective or Polyphonic Spree), is that they skip the song-writing part and all of that sound and fury is treated as an end unto itself. TVotR certainly layer on the sonic elements, but you could absolutely enjoy this collection of songs if it were performed by a standard rock combo with only guitar, bass, and drums. The singing and lyrics of Tunde Adebimpe are a consistent highlight as well. You don’t always get the point of his writing on first listen, but it is very evocative, and turns of phrase like “Hey jackboot, fuck your war, ‘cause I’m  fat and in love“ or “I see you figured in your action pose, foam-injected Axl Rose” stick with you whether you take the time to sort out the meanings or not. To continue that first quote, it goes on like so “and no bombs are falling on me for sure, but I’m scared to death I’m living a life not worth dying for.” That’s good writing, any way you slice it, even if the first instinct you get from the music is to dance. Most of the tracks I would classify as EDM and funk influenced pop/rock, and they definitely make you groove in your seat when you listen to them. “Dancing Choose” is a perfect example of the more electronic influence with its throbbing beat and precise yet complex drum work, but I’m confounded yet again because even saying “EDM-adjacent dance-pop” is such a pale description for a song that simultaneously flashes Radiohead and Rage Against the Machine and Pretty Lights and Fela Kuti. “Red Dress” offers an example more on the funk side of things, giving Red Hot Chili Peppers and Tower of Power and early Police. Elsewhere, the band peppers in sweeping ballads, like “Family Tree” and “Stork & Owl”, with beautiful string arrangements and Adebimpe showing off the more melodic side of his singing. Yet despite how harrowing it can be to describe what this wild mélange of styles sounds like, it all coalesces into an album that highlights how much it clearly belongs together. Dear Science is far more than a collection of crazy influences, it’s a powerful statement and one of the best rock(ish) records of the era.

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Bonus List – Sweetest Guitar Playing I Witnessed at Bonnaroo 2024

Honorable Mentions – Brittany Howard, Eliza Petrosyan, Liv Slingerland, Kylie Miller

The conversation around the electric guitar has historically been one that is male-dominated. For years, one needed only to toss off a token mention of Bonnie Raitt to satisfy the idea of inclusion, and go on talking about the masculine fret gods that made up our collective pantheon of shredders. This top five list is no different, sadly, but I wanted to acknowledge the relatively high amount of women I witnessed kicking ass on guitar during the festival. Keep on rocking, ladies.

#5 – John Frusciante, Red Hot Chili Peppers

The Chili Peppers set was slanted towards their more contemporary work, which fit into the psychedelic vibes of the festival and also allowed Frusciante to shine as lead instrumentalist compared to the funk/punk music of their 80’s and 90’s catalog, which would have placed bassist Flea front and center. Frusciante is typically awesome, and he was awesome here.

#4 – Mark Speer, Khruangbin

Pure, gossamer, psychedelic bliss. I wasn’t on hallucinogens, but I could see the trails, duuude…

#3 – Balsac the Jaws of Death, GWAR

A GWAR show is about camp, and theater, and sophomoric humor, and politics, and buckets of bodily fluids before its about music, and they have struggled across their illustrious career to truly transcend the mediocre when it comes to their song-craft, but my man Balsac can shred. Vladimir Putin or Benjamin Netanyahu might have been center stage getting their limbs chopped off, but Balsac would be stage right, in his ginormous bear trap helmet, keeping everything on the rails with his rhythm playing and epic solos.

#2 – Jason Isbell and Sadler Vaden, Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit

Isbell’s set was about equal parts country and rock, so while there were the quietly emotional moments I’ll touch on below that called for very little in the way of pyrotechnics, there were plenty of opportunities for these two guys to show off, individually or together in the vein of Dickie Betts and Duane Allman. They did not disappoint.

#1 – Mdou Moctar

Watching Moctar feels like what it must have felt like to watch a young Jimi Hendrix. I know that’s astronomically high praise, but it’s really what’s on my heart as I sit down to try and describe his playing. It isn’t just his technical ability, which is off the charts, but it’s his physical charisma as he plays. At one point he was absolutely destroying a solo while at the same time doing this cool slow motion anti-gravity walk yet staying in the same place… hard to describe, but impossible to forget. His playing is also just so effortless and unorthodox, the result of an innately talented artist who put in his 10,000 hours on the guitar he built himself out of spare bike parts as a boy. His songs are not catchy in the traditional (read: American) sense, so they operate more as a pure vehicle to deliver his incendiary playing. Thankfully, that playing stands on its own.

1. Rising Down – The Roots

The Roots have never shied away from darker material. They didn’t come up embracing the nihilism or gun worship that was stock and trade of the prevailing gangster rap in the nineties, but they have always been at home tackling societal ills and bending their sound towards something more sinister. In 2006, they dove further than ever down that well of darkness on their phenomenal album, Game Theory, inspired in part by the death of their friend and collaborator, Jay Dilla. On Rising Down, they found the bottom of the well. Things kick off with “The Pow Wow”, which is an edited copy of a phone conversation between Black Thought, Questlove and the group’s management during a period of extreme disillusionment for the artists. “Conversation” is not quite the right descriptor, but rather confrontation or shouting match. It is quite the ominous start to the proceedings, leading directly into the distorted, discordant rumble of the title track. That commitment to darkness is the first thing that becomes apparent, in case the album cover hadn’t already tipped you off. The sound is so raw and grimy and aggressive, it’s an immediate signal that we are a long ways away from “What They Do” or “You Got Me”. The next track, “Get Busy”, doubles down on the intensity, and outdoes the abrasiveness of what had been the band’s most gnarly track to date. The next thing that you notice is that this album may feature the most assistance that Black Thought has ever had carrying the load from a rapping perspective. Not just in volume of guest rappers (four across the first two tracks, and a whopping eleven over the whole album), but in the quality of the verses. When Thought teamed up with Danger Mouse a couple of years ago to record the excellent Cheat Codes, you could tell that all of the guest emcees brought their A-game in order to try and keep up with one of our most preeminent lyricists. That’s the feeling you get on Rising Down, as well, and Mos Def sets the tone with an outstanding opening verse that is highlighted by the beat dropping for the line “bone gristle popping from continuous grinding”, with added distortion on the last two words for maximum impact. Long-time Roots collaborator, Dice Raw, carries the best verse on “Get Busy”. A signature Black Thought trick is to say he’s the cross between two disparate but awesome things. Early on this very track, in fact, he claims he is both half-Mandrill and half-Mandela, but also part Melle Mel and part Van Halen. And he rhymes it… it’s great. Yet, Dice Raw manages to top it in his verse, stating that he’s W.E.B. Dubois meets Heavy D & The Boys (“smooth as a Rolls Royce; built like a tank, smokin’ on dank; walkin’ through the Guggenheim, raw life, black ink!”) Super dope.

Lest we forget who Black Thought is, however, we then get a clip of him freestyling at fifteen years old, already sounding sicker than anybody in the past five XXL Freshman Cyphers, before dropping into “75 Bars” which is, you guessed it, 75 straight bars of Tariq in absolute savage mode. It’s a scary, stripped down battle rap that sounds perfectly at home in the pitch black of the album’s palette. The record proceeds from there with more solid support from the likes of Talib Kweli, Common and Malik B, bemoaning the state of the world along the dimensions of economic struggles, race relations and climate change, among others. The thing keeping Rising Down from the S-Tier of Roots albums, so to speak, is not just its unrelenting gloominess, but a back half that suffers from the same type of slightly awkward choruses that has plagued the band since The Tipping Point. If I could have wished for one outcome of the Roots tenure with the Jay Z-helmed version of Def Jam in the 2000’s, it would be that Jay’s unparalleled ear for hooks could have rubbed off on them a little more. Finally, after running the gauntlet with all of this heavy material, the Phillie boys offer us a reprieve in the form of “Rising Up”, a feel-good anthem with a killer hook (there it is!) sung by Chrisette Michelle, and Wale continuing the great run of guest rappers with a bouncy, effervescent flow and the album’s best punchline: “Some good rappers ain’t eatin, they Olsen twinning”. The track plays the same function of “We Can’t Stand the Strain” on Funkadelic’s Cosmic Slop, a final sigh of relief at the end of a harrowing experience, or perhaps the very concept of “hope” escaping Pandora’s Box after all of the ills of the world were first unleashed. It is not the album I would start with if I had not heard the Roots before, but it is one of their most uncompromising efforts in a discography with a notorious lack of compromise.

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Bonus List – Bonnaroo Stages, Ranked

#9 – Who Stage

This smaller stage is nice because it is under a tent, but it doesn’t have much personality. It is also kind of tucked away in a corner and easy to forget about, which is probably why nobody I’ve ever heard of played on it and I never saw more than a hundred people watching a show there despite the rumored 80k in attendance.

#8 – How Stage

Pretty similar to Who Stage, just smaller. It gets the nod because you would completely forget it exists and then turn a corner on your way to hit the restroom or grab a cold brew coffee, and hey, there’s a group of tweens playing Led Zeppelin covers!

#7 – Which Stage

Basically the de facto #2 stage in terms of billing. I saw some great music on Which Stage, but I also suffered the most exposure to the sun at this one. It is a good stage, but feels like a replica of the biggest stage minus 20% and positioned so that the cross-contamination of sound from other sets was always present.

#6 – Galactic Giddy Up

One of the Outeroo stages, it gets the benefit of existing beyond the reach of security, so you could roll up with a six pack or a whole pizza or any other vice you could think of without fear of reprimand. Basically a little shack in the woods with a coffee bar at the back, you couldn’t fit even a moderately popular act here, but I appreciated the skew towards smaller folk and country leaning artists. As a bonus, just outside the shack was a delightfully shaded cluster of trees with countless hammocks arrayed throughout. Would be awesome if those damn hammocks weren’t always 100% occupied.

#5 – The Other Stage

Basically the dedicated EDM stage for Centeroo. Not typically my scene, but Other was situated in between a huge water slide and a giant ferris wheel, which is pretty cool. It also has the best set up for visual elements of a performance, with a huge array of screens at the main stage and on pillars that spread out from the stage into the audience. Finally, tucked out of the way from the other stages so your untz untz untzes are uncompromised by competing sounds.

#3 (tie) – This Tent & That Tent

The presence of moderately sized tents with huge ceiling fans allowed me to see much more music than I would have managed if these were just regular outdoor stages. I saw acts that I loved at these two tents, both during the day and at night, but it was the fact that these were among the most comfortable places to be on the entire farm from the hours of 10am-5pm that land them so high on the list.

#2 – What Stage

This is the headliner stage, with its own dedicated section of Centeroo. It is big, with big video screens all around it, and a big, useless set of bleacher seating in the field in front of it. Despite being the most populous part of the festival most nights, my group was actually able to consistently score prime positioning right up front, slightly off-center, for every set that we wanted. Even better, you could mostly see and fully hear every set at What Stage from our campsite. I spent most evenings checking out the headliner from the comfort of my camp chair, enjoying a chilled glass of rosè from a bag, and resting my very tired feet before heading back into the breach for the late night sets.

#1 – Where in the Woods

Imagine wandering through the woods. Not randomly, you are clearly being channeled along a set path towards a destination. Along the way, you might encounter an odd free-standing structure with neon lights, or a food stand selling bomb-ass tacos, or an impromptu stripper performance, pole and all. You’ve been at a music festival all day, with fun, hippie vibes, but now the vibes have shifted a little – still fun, but more unpredictable and electric. Eventually, you spot a huge video screen, where you presume an artist will be performing. Except there is not a stage accompanying the screen as you have become accustomed to. Then, you notice a tower in front of the screen with a UFO perched atop. Shit’s about to get a little weird. This is Where in the Woods, a DJ-only venue that exists to occupy the hardcore EDM crowd all night, and occupy anyone who isn’t ready to sleep once Centeroo winds down between 2 and 3am. The final night of the festival, when all the other stages wrapped up by 1am, this is where all of Bonnaroo convened for a final after-party and expression of joy at the shared experience of the previous week of extreme heat and clouds of dust and incredible music and fun conversations and high fives and various levels of intoxication. For everything I experienced there, visiting Where in the Woods on my first night, and on my longest night, and for that final DJ set are the things that I remember most vividly. This single frame of a girl with a bubble gun on someone’s shoulders is the best representation I can bring back with me to the real world.

1. New Amerykah: Part One (4th World War) – Erykah Badu

If I’m honest with you, I really didn’t know what to do with New Amerykah when it came out. On its face, this is an album that should have appealed to me specifically. It is inspired by 70’s P-Funk and a blaxploitation aesthetic and features loads of beat switches and off-kilter flights of fancy. By this point, I trusted Badu completely, as she had never let me down before. Yet, I had a hard time making it all click back in 2008. On the website RateYourMusic, where I cut my teeth writing album reviews, I had this to say about it:  “Y’know, as much as I like listening to it, sometimes I think Erykah may be full of shit on this one.” Kind of harsh, I know, but I wound up scoring it 4.5 out of 5 stars anyway, so I knew it was likely a “me” problem and not a “her” problem. The album is disorienting, veering suddenly from style to style, often on the same track. The song “Me” starts in a very familiar style for Erykah, with breezy, Roy Hargrove*-type jazz before transitioning into an odd outro featuring Badu singing, off-key at times, accompanied by a single horn that is mirroring her precise cadence. It might be the strangest couple of minutes in her entire discography, and let me tell you, that’s saying something. The album then flows into the next track, a pseudo-cover of Eddie Kendricks’ “My People” that finds Erykah intoning the only lyrics over and over (“My people; Hold on”) overtop of a spooky Madlib beat. A couple of tracks later, “The Cell” is an uncomfortably jittery blast of prog-funk which also features minimal lyrics repeated in mantra-like fashion. And so on. The album is not structured like a pop or R&B album at all, and seems to favor texture and feeling over everything else. I wasn’t ready for it in 2008 because nothing at the time sounded like this. Looking back now, though, from a post To Pimp a Butterfly world where Kaytranada and Thundercat and NxWorries are releasing albums, New Amerykah is remarkably prophetic. She even tapped into the then unknown Thundercat before Kendrick did on Butterfly, and no wonder that bassline on “The Cell” is so mesmerizingly agitating. One track that I did not have trouble connecting to in the moment was “Hip Hop/The Healer”, another Madlib production. Erykah is not a hip hop artist in the strictest sense, but she is certainly hip hop adjacent. She collabed with the Roots and dated Common and conceived a child that I have to assume will become the greatest musical genius of its generation with Andre 3000. There was a whole lot of “Hip hop is dead” talk around this time (Nas even dropped an album with that title in 2006), and Badu sets out to resurrect it with “Hip Hop/The Healer”, less a song than a voodoo ritual. It might be my favorite thing she ever produced, and let me tell you, that’s also saying something. Revisiting the album in full for the first time in many years, I’m realizing that all of the tracks have something to offer that are nearly on par with that favorite. The only straight-forward neo-soul jam, lead single “Honey”, actually closes the album after the outro, which would indicate that it was not a part of what Erykah was trying to accomplish with the darker shades and wild experimentation of the record. I honestly might be underrating it at #4 at this point. This isn’t a casual listen, or even what I necessarily look to Badu for as an artist, but it is a highly complex and heartfelt piece of art that may be uniquely positioned as a reference point for the experimental soul and funk of the modern day.

* I’ll have you know I typed the phrase “Roy Hargrove-type jazz” before checking the personnel on Wikipedia and discovering that it was actually Roy himself providing the horn work on the track! Let me know if I need to fill out a form with my address or whatever in order to receive my Pulitzer.

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Bonus List – 5 Times I Felt My Age at Bonnaroo

One of the few concerns I had going into the festival was how I would feel as a 45-year old mixing it up with a group of 80k kids that probably had a median age in their mid-twenties. For an overwhelming majority of the time it was a non-issue, and the live-and-let-live, relaxed philosophy of Roo was exactly as advertised. That said, those thoughts did bubble up on occasion, and I’ll share a few of them, from the least (#5) to most (#1) pleasant.

#5 – The David Kushner Set

So, I was flying high after watching Mdou Moctar’s face melting guitar work in the relative comfort of That Tent, consulting with my cadre of middle-aged friends on what was next. People started showing up for the subsequent act, and we got confirmation from a couple of young women in front of us that said act was really good, so what the hell? We didn’t have anywhere else to be and there were few places we even could be that would trump a shaded tent with huge fans circulating the air. By the time Mr. Kushner hit the stage, the average age under the tent had dropped from 25 to somewhere closer to 17, and it became clear that this was an artist who appealed primarily to teenage girls. Now, I have no problem with that, and he actually sounded pretty good in an emo-folkish sort of way, but I had a sudden rush of discomfort from occupying a prime, third-row spot for this performance. Surely, we should cede this space to a high school student sporting braces and a “Sweet Oblivion” t-shirt? A couple of knowing glances and head-nods later, we jetted out there before we were added to some sort of Federal registry.

#4 – The first night in Where in the Woods

It was Wednesday, the day we arrived, and Centeroo wasn’t even open yet. We spent the afternoon exploring Outeroo and catching a couple acts. We eventually made our way to the coolest stage at the festival and found ourselves listening to DJ among the trees and the young hot people who were not yet caked in several layers of dirt and sweat. I think the combination of the new surroundings, listening to music that I do not typically listen to, and my own lizard brain led to some mild self-consciousness. That said, it was fleeting, and honestly probably less than I would have experienced if I had attended the festival when I was actually in my twenties.

#3 – Chatting about Woodstock ‘99

I was ordering some empanadas for dinner, as one does, and the girl working the booth was making pleasant small talk, asking who I was excited for that night. I went with the easy answer of the headliner, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which led to a follow up question about whether I had ever seen them before. I told her that I actually saw them at the last music festival I attended, which happened to be Woodstock ‘99, a proclamation that completely transformed the tenor of our conversation. Her eyes got big, and she became visibly more invested in what I was saying. Now, following the recent spurt of attention that ill-fated festival has received and the multiple, highly negative documentaries about it, I usually feel like I have to follow any admission that I attended Woodstock ‘99 with caveats that I didn’t assault anyone, or set anything on fire, or wallow around in literal human feces. In this instance, though, this young woman was just clearly so fascinated to get a few morsels about what that experience was like, its like she all of a sudden found out I was in the fucking Chili Peppers, not that I had watched them 25 years ago at a repurposed air force base in Rome, NY. Anyway, definitely reminded me of my age, but was not unpleasant at all. 

#2 – Getting Labeled

One big social aspect of Bonnaroo is people giving things away. Little trinkets, bracelets, tiny plastic ducks, etc. I was aware of this going in, but did not participate because I’m old, it might be weird, blah blah blah. You get it by now. On Thursday night, day one of the festival proper, I was enjoying the headliner, Pretty Lights, from a respectable remove from the main stage (although they played forever, so I would experience their set(s) from multiple different vantage points… see below) when a man sauntered up and stuck a sticker on my chest at roughly name-badge position. I thanked him following a half-second pause to register what was happening, and, seemingly satisfied, he danced off through the crowd, selectively labeling occasional audience members. After he left, I looked down and realized that the sticker said “HOT”. It was clearly the type of sticker meant for a deli or supermarket, in order to delineate the temperature of some food item, but in this context, it seemed to mean what you would think: This person is hot. Now, I have the physique and beard of a man who a Starbucks barista once described as “a younger, good-looking Santa Claus”, so I do not conform to the current cultural standard of “HOT”, especially on a relative basis at a festival like Bonnaroo. It has occurred to me that this might very much be an ironic labeling. And that’s ok, honestly, I still appreciate being included, y’know? But also, much like that barista handing me my grande Nitro cold brew at the Starbucks drive through, who I feel confident was 100% sincere in his “compliment”, this label came from a young, openly gay man. And frankly, if a 22-year-old gay man attending Bonnaroo can’t be trusted as an arbiter of what’s hot, then who in the world can we trust?

#1 – The Chappell Roan Set

See the next bonus list for more details.

1. 808s and Heartbreak – Kanye West

Oh boy. Let’s attempt to tackle two of the most controversial topics in music: Auto-tune and Kanye West. One of these topics I’ve turned around, not 180, but at least 90 degrees on. The other, I will only begin to suss out my thoughts by writing the next couple of paragraphs.

I used to despise auto-tune. It was the refuge of the untalented, an obvious subterfuge that somehow bamboozled people into liking songs from people who didn’t actually sound like that. I’m onto you Cher, that’s not your real voice! My righteous indignation over the use of auto-tune, much like my righteous indignation over a lot of things that have challenged my mercurial perception of what is “authentic” in popular music, has, upon closer inspection, been poorly placed. The fact of the matter is, no one who uses auto-tune thinks they are putting one over on us. No one who has ever listened to a singer using auto-tune has failed to register that they are using auto-tune. It is an aesthetic choice, ultimately, like a vocoder or an overdrive pedal for an electric guitar, not some scam to dupe us into believing in life after love… sorry, I mean dupe us into believing that a singer sounds different than they actually do. (Pitch correction, on the other hand, is insidious and is certainly intended to sell us a false bill of goods. Which… that’s not even the part to be mad about, honestly, but rather that pitch correction flattens out all of the soul, the humanity, from a vocal performance. Do you know what Otis Redding would sound like if you applied pitch correction? Me either! I’m sure I could find it somewhere on the internet, but I would never subject myself to that just like I don’t look up pictures of scat porn or construction accidents.)

Anyway, on the topic of auto-tune, I mentioned above that I saw T-Pain at Bonnaroo, and that he was great. He didn’t use a single vocal effect in his show, despite being perhaps the artist most closely associated with auto-tune since its inception. You know what? He sounded good! He’s a legitimately good singer! Would he be performing on one of the main stages of Bonnaroo in 2024 if he had never used auto-tune and just let his natural talent shine? Probably not! T-Pain was able to take auto-tune, a musical tool, and extract as much utility out of it as anyone who ever used it. That led to a successful music career, and a handful of fun tunes, and good on him. Kanye West is an artist who wanted to make an electro-R&B record, but couldn’t sing, which is kind of important in R&B. Auto-tune made his goal achievable. And good on him. Should any schmuck with a lousy voice make an electro-R&B record? They are welcome to, although I typically wouldn’t have much interest… but Kanye is not any schmuck. Kanye is king schmuck. Kanye is an impetuous asshole for the ages. Kanye is a person who suffers from one-to-many destructive mental disorders, yet has the money and influence to surround himself with people who will not insist that he seeks help to deal with said mental disorders. Kanye is also a musical genius, and probably the single greatest hip hop producer of all time. If he wants to make an electro-R&B album, I’m glad there is a tool that lets him fake his way through the singing part, because the more avenues for him to channel his genius into music, the better for the rest of us.

When 808’s and Heartbreak dropped, I took it as my opportunity to jump off the Kanye bandwagon forever. I had enjoyed his first three albums, but each one less than the last. As I’ve outlined, auto-tune was at one time a hard line in my musical fandom, so the idea that he would release this record was enough to push me away. Of course, with the massive, well deserved hype over My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy a couple of years later, I was wedging my younger, good-looking Santa Claus-sized butt back on the bandwagon and only hopped off again a few years ago when his latest creative dip coincided with some pro-nazi, sort-of-pro-slavery comments. The album is, as I’ve pointed out, an R&B record featuring Kanye’s heavily doctored singing. The music is minimalistic and synthesized, the polar opposite of the organic, soulful production he displayed on The College Dropout or Common’s Be. It sounds like frozen concrete bathed in blue light, or maybe the movie poster for Metropolis. I’ve no experience with either, but it sounds like what I imagine snorting a rail of cocaine chased by a rail of ketamine would make you feel like. Yet, miraculously, the robotic sheen to the album does not rob it of any of its capacity for emotion. The fact that Kanye cannot sing doesn’t rob it of any of its capacity to be an excellent R&B record. It is a gorgeous album, and Ye is a far more believable protagonist for his tales of heartache than the Ushers and Ne-Yos who were tearing up the charts at the time. My favorite tracks are “Love Lockdown”, “Heartless” (of course), “Paranoid”, and “See You In My Nightmares” which features the bizarre joy of Lil Wayne rap-singing his verse in the same auto-tune drenched fashion as the rest of the album. The fact that Ye could pivot from hip hop to such a self-assured and forward-looking project in an adjacent but entirely different genre is a testament to what a special talent he really is.

The influence of 808s and Heartbreak is massive, and for someone with my tastes, unfortunate. For the past decade-plus, Travis Scott and Drake have been the most popular acts in hip hop by a pretty wide margin. Like, everyone appreciates Kendrick, and he may have just effectively ended Drake with one of the most thorough and sociopathic diss track campaigns we’ve ever seen, but he’s not driving the mainstream direction of the genre. Drake (1986-2024) was never really an innovator, so its hard to assess his impact on the culture so close to his untimely death. Scott, on the other hand, is the force who has most directly shaped what is popular in today’s hip hop, whether we like it or not (I don’t particularly). Listening to 808’s, its impossible not to spot the heavy influence it must have had on Scott and his contemporaries. I happen to think it is done in a far more appealing and creative fashion on Kanye’s album, but it would be hard to overstate how much of its DNA is coursing through the veins of modern psychedelic trap music, up to and including, of course, the prominent use of auto-tune. The thing about Kanye, ultimately, which no amount of self-destructive toxicity can strip away, is that he is one of music’s most creative and influential artists, full stop. At the risk of really pissing some people off, some of whom I personally know are going to read this, I honestly think his best corollary is Miles Davis. Kanye’s catalog, both as a featured artist and as a producer, features constant evolution, and each evolution seems to be at the forefront of some larger movement that springs forward from there. He’s even a legendary asshole, as was Davis. If The College Dropout is Kanye’s Birth of the Cool, then 808’s and Heartbreak is probably his Bitches Brew, a hard left turn that changed the game but took some idiots like me way too long to appreciate.

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Bonus List – The Best Sets I Saw at Bonnaroo 2024: 6-4

#6 – Chappell Roan

Chappel Roan was probably the most buzzed about set at the festival. I had never heard of her before, but the rumbling was that she was originally booked for one of the tents, except her fan base was so rabid and vocal that they persistently demanded she be promoted to one of the festival’s main stages. Alternately, her popularity by metrics that would be visible to Bonnaroo’s organizers (streams, views, concert attendance) had spiked in the time since she was first booked and they needed to pivot. Likely both occurred, actually, but all eyes were on Roan and whether she and her fans would justify the change to the larger venue. Sunday afternoon, one of our party was interested in checking her out (his daughters are fans) and the meta story of her performance was enough to spark my interest, so we all set out to Which stage in the blazing afternoon sun to check her out, me still with not the vaguest idea of what it was that she was all about. In a parallel to the David Kushner set, it was immediately obvious that her demographic was young and female. She was pure pop and pure camp, with a heavy slant towards a queer point of view. Sample song titles include “Femininominon”, “Red Wine Supernova”, and “HOT TO GO!” which has a nifty, “YMCA”-style crowd participation gesticulation to go along with it. She does not make music for me, in other words, and it would stand to reason that the level of discomfort I felt watching Kushner would be amplified in the bigger crowd. Maybe because it was Sunday, and I had been put through the Bonnaroo paces already, but I felt completely comfortable watching this set. I felt elated, really, despite the fact that I’ll likely never spin a Chappel Roan record in my free time. As a friend of mine put it, we were basically attending someone else’s dream concert, and the idea that anyone there gave even the most fleeting attention to us or the concept of whether we belonged there or not was patently absurd, as their hero was on stage entertaining their asses off and demanding all of their attention. 

For what it’s worth, there is zero doubt that she deserved that spot on the bigger stage. You could probably argue that she deserved an even better time slot, in fact, and I wouldn’t be shocked to see her announced as a headliner next year. Roan is a tremendous show-woman, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching her perform. Beyond all of that, though, the experience was as great as it was because of the joy just radiating off of her fans at the opportunity to see Roan during her ascendence. It felt like a capital-m “Moment”, and I can’t imagine how curmudgeonly one would have to be to miss the enjoyment in all of that.

#5 – Khruangbin

At the outset of the festival, I was perhaps most excited to see Khruangbin live. I don’t listen to them that often, honestly, but their psychedelic, jammy vibe seemed like the perfect fit for a festival like Bonnaroo, and their song “Evan Finds the Third Room” had been a sleeper hit on my summer playlists for a couple of years. If you are unfamiliar with the group, they are an art rock trio that plays largely instrumental, heavily groovy tunes. Their live show leans into an acid-washed seventies aesthetic, with guitarist Mark Speer and bassist Laura Lee Ochoa slinking around stage in long black wigs and tight white leisure suits while drummer DJ Johnson plays away in the background. The video projections of their performance is heavily filtered, adding to the druggy feel of the whole thing, and their songs sort of flow together from one to another in a wash of reverb hookah smoke. I shouted out Speer above in the guitar list, but Ochoa was my favorite member of the band, both to watch from a stage presence perspective, and with her funky basslines that don’t always translate as well on their records. I adored their set from the costumes to the stage dressing to the continuous stream of fly grooves – but I could see how not everyone would be as enamored. The lack of lyrics, the lack of hooks, the general same-iness of their presentation only works for an hour plus if you are fully all in on that presentation to begin with. A member of our party, who clearly enjoyed himself but was still processing the experience was commiserating with me “that was really different. They had one song where she just sang ‘YES!’ over and over again like a hundred times…”, and I’m like “I know, that’s their best one!”

#4 – Say She She

One of my biggest revelations of the festival, both listening to the artists during the lead-up and witnessing them live, is that disco is back. Khruangbin had elements of it, Roisin Murphy had elements of it, Carly Rae Jepson had elements of it, and so on. Only one artist that I saw could I actually classify as a disco act, however, and that artist is Say She She. Fronted by three female vocalists whose harmonies and dance moves are equally on point, their set was a non-stop dance party. Their songs are really strong, with great hooks and some really dynamic vocal interplay, and I feel like you could distinguish the personality of each front-woman throughout their performance. They happened to be the first set that I went to see on purpose, and it turned out to be the perfect way to kick off the festival proper, a purely joyful and carefree show that translated throughout the entire audience. At this point, they are my most listened to act that I discovered at the festival, and I encourage anyone to check out their latest album, Silver, to get a sense for their vibe. One of the few bummers of the Bonnaroo experience was the lack of artist merch – granted you could pick from a dozen Post Malone or RCHP shirts – because I would be happily rocking a Say She She logo on my back if I had had the opportunity.

1. The Odd Couple – Gnarls Barkley

CeeLo Green and Danger Mouse, the two members of Gnarls Barkley, were two of the most important musical figures of the 2000’s. That hasn’t necessarily translated beyond the aughts, particularly for CeeLo, but it would be hard to overstate how important they were as creative figures at the time. CeeLo had been active as far back as the early nineties with the hip hop collective, Goodie Mob, and providing clutch support to artists like Outkast, Common and MF Doom. He released a couple of wildly inventive and chaotic solo albums and penned a handful of pop hits for other artists before linking up with Danger Mouse for the first Gnarls Barkley album in 2006. In 2010, he dropped The Lady Killer, a slightly more traditional but still excellent R&B record, and rose to greater mainstream prominence as an original coach on The Voice. Since then, however, he has not put out much, if any, music worthy of his legacy, seemingly outed himself as a sex pest on Twitter, and mostly faded from the spotlight. Danger Mouse has not had a drop off nearly as dramatic, and indeed has stayed very active working on solid-to-great projects. As I mentioned earlier, he teamed up with Black Thought for Cheat Codes a couple of years ago, which is an excellent album, one of my favorites of 2022, but not necessarily in any surprising way. That’s really the only knock I have against DM’s trajectory, his work has become a bit predictable. Really though, it’s tough to hold him accountable for that. If Nas dropped Illmatic in 2024, we would all love it because its excellence is intrinsic enough to be divorced from a specific time period, but it would no longer be in the conversation as the greatest hip hop album of all time. The fact is, we’ve heard Nas, and we’ve heard all the people that Nas has influenced, and his debut couldn’t by definition have the same impact with all of that additional history behind us. So, I don’t mean to denigrate Danger Mouse, but if you were in the mid-2000’s and you had just heard Ghetto Pop Life, and The Gray Album, and The Mouse and the Mask, and Demon Days, you would be forgiven for assuming that he was an inexhaustible font of inspiration that would never settle into a comfortable, predictable lane as a producer. 

Like the rest of the albums on the list so far, Gnarls Barkley is attempting something completely novel with The Odd Couple. There is a clear precedent, of course, in their 2006 record, St. Elsewhere, but they are successful in cultivating their own sound here even if they share many common elements with other acts on the list. Like TV on the Radio, for example, Gnarls Barkley trades in electro-funk, rock, soul, and a bit of hip hop. Yet, it would be hard to consider the two acts particularly analogous when you listen to them. I consider TVotR a rock and roll band, at least as their primary designation, but I would not say the same for Barkley. They are a little more difficult to pin down, more R&B than TVotR, but not nearly as much as Erykah Badu, who is also ultimately painting with the same set of brushes on her 2008 release. Album opener, “Charity Case” is a paradox, both futuristic and a throwback, featuring cutting edge production techniques and a modern sound, but still conjuring images of day-glo, mid sixties, televised music showcases with women in polka-dotted mod dresses dancing the monkey on elevated platforms in the background. That juxtaposition carries over to “Whatever” and “Going On”, which also features a spaghetti-western inspired chorus, drum loops, and synthetic hand claps. It’s an uninhibited blend of styles that Danger Mouse balances to perfection across the album’s thirteen tracks. CeeLo provides excellent vocals, matching the energy of the peppier dance numbers with suave crooning and leaning into more power and darkness on the tracks that call for it, like “Would Be Killer”, “Who’s Going to Save My Soul”, and “Run (I’m a Natural Disaster)”. I suppose you could bucket all of this under the vast and indiscriminate banner of pop music if you were so inclined, but I think labeling it at all is sort of missing the point. As much as genre labels help with the sometimes challenging process of describing sounds with words, we have largely reached a point among even the most mainstream artists where those labels hold little purpose. In 2024, Beyonce, an artist that was once relegated to a very narrow lane, can release an album that touches country, gospel, R&B, EDM, pop, psychedelic rock, and hip hop, and have it be the clubhouse leader for the album of the year Grammy. Childish Gambino can create a soundtrack that touches on trap music, folk, post-grunge and soul, to similar (if somewhat muted) acclaim. That’s what the front-runners of 2008 have taught me, that a year of music which felt aimless at the time was actually a harbinger of where we were going as a culture, and only through time are such things revealed. And if all of that seems overwrought or pretentious, you can still enjoy The Odd Couple as the easy-to-listen-to, psychedelic pop classic that it is.

(link)

Bonus List – Top four sets where it was hardest to “Radiate Positivity” at Bonnaroo

The Bonnaroo catchphrase is “Radiate Positivity”, and the festival’s organizers and participants truly do try to cultivate an environment where everyone assumes positive intent, takes care of each other, and maintains a high morale throughout the inevitable challenges that come with just surviving a multi-day camping festival. My Gen X skepticism of that catchphrase going in (recall, I was at Woodstock ‘99) was ultimately washed away throughout my time there, to the point where I wouldn’t entertain the idea of going to a different festival in the future unless the lineup was simply too unbelievable to pass up. Bonnaroo will most likely be the next festival I attend, and it may be the only one I ever attend from this point on. So in the spirit of radiating positivity, I’m going to share one positive thing about my least favorite sets of the show.

#4 – Dominic Fike

As with many of the younger artists at the festival, I had never heard of Dominic Fike before. From what I gather, he got his start on Soundcloud, which does not bode well for my enjoyment given the connotation that “Soundcloud rapper” has to someone of my tastes. I never would have even checked him out, to be honest, but he happened to be playing What Stage during some chill time at the tent. After hearing much of his set, I still don’t have a good impression of his music, but I can confidently declare it is not for me. Beyond that, he spent a lot of time on some of the most awkward stage banter I’ve ever heard, which was worse than the mediocre pop he was playing. But… I was listening to live music while taking some much-needed time off of my feet, in the shade, in my comfortable rocking camp chair, sipping on a delectable beverage (most likely either a Coors Banquet, a splash of Michter’s US 1 American Whiskey, or a solo cup of boxed rosè – refreshing choices one and all), so how much can I complain?  Thank you Dominic Fike, for providing a weird soundtrack to this little moment of zen amidst the normal festival chaos.

#3 – Post Malone

I have a pretty neutral feeling towards Post Malone. I’m aware of him, obviously, and recognize a couple songs, but I have always had a hard time getting a bead on his appeal. I’d be hard pressed to even describe what type of music he makes – not a thing that would be difficult for other massively popular acts that I’m ambivalent towards (e.g. Taylor Swift, Drake (r.i.p.), Charlie xcx). So I was actually looking forward to his headlining set. Here would be an opportunity to get wrapped up in the hype and see what the big deal is. Except, I checked out the set, and I still don’t know what the big deal is. It wasn’t bad, per say, it just sort of rolled over me and washed away without making a single impression. I can picture what “Better Now” sounds like in my mind (a song he played), and I can picture “Sunflower” (a song he didn’t, I don’t believe), but I can not for the life of me conjure another single sonic impression of this global superstar’s music. But… His fans seemed cool and were good sports about Khruangbin playing ahead of his set despite very much not getting it at all. One woman I was chatting with during Khruangbin politely said “I think I just like music that is more like… songs?” Suit yourself, sister!

“YES!”

#2 – mike.

Ahead of watching experimental hip hop duo, Armand Hammer, we were chatting with a couple of dudes about who had seen what so far, and the topic of the Mikes came up. Bonnaroo 2024 had a couple of instances where two acts were named nearly precisely the same thing. You had Neil Frances and Neal Francis’ Francis Comes Alive, no relation. You also had mike. and MIKE, no relation. To make things more confusing, the Mikes are both underground hip hop acts. I had caught some of mike.’s set the prior day, and one of the guys I was talking to had to clarify – “wait, Mike, or white Mike?” It was white Mike. It was also clear by this dude’s tone, that I would have been much better off with, uh, not-white Mike. To be clear, this is not really a race thing, everybody involved in this exchange was white, it was just the most convenient way to differentiate these identically named artists. When I saw mike., though, I felt a palpable dislike for his music. There is a very popular trend in recent hip hop which combines rap with elements I would typically ascribe to emo, a combination that I can’t help but reject at the very core of my being. I’m not saying I’m right, a lot of younger people really connect with this type of hip hop on a deep level, but I simply cannot stomach it. I don’t know for sure if mike. would consider himself a member of this movement, or thinks of his music in those terms, but I had the exact same reaction to his set. It was, to that point, my least favorite musical moment at the entire festival. But… He paused the performance at one point to take a shot with one of his fans, and while this occurred the DJ played “Ride with Me” by Nelly. I’m not a Nelly fan, honestly, and I have probably at one point in my life been a Nelly hater, but holy shit does that song slap. At first I just thought I was enjoying it because it was so much better than mike.’s music, but I’ve since dropped it on my Summer Jams ‘24 playlist, and I can confirm that it goes hard in any setting. Thanks, mike., for reintroducing me to a new favorite that I didn’t give a chance the first time around.

#1 – Irreversible Entanglements

Armand Hammer was cool, by the way. Their set was interesting and challenging, and felt a bit like an art exhibition more than a hype concert, but I really like Billy Woods (one half of the duo) and there was a relative dearth of hip hop at the festival so I was happy enough to be there. Woods encouraged the (very small) crowd to stick around for the next act, Irreversible Entanglements, and we didn’t have anywhere else to be, so why not? The band came out and proceeded to launch into the most unlistenable, avant garde jazz you have ever heard. They made Armand Hammer sound like Nelly rocking “Ride with Me” by comparison. Needless to say, we didn’t make it past the second song, abandoning the relative comfort of This Tent to wander out into the wasteland and see if we could come across something more appealing. But… If you go to a massive music festival built on jam band culture and you don’t see a pretentious free jazz act playing to a couple dozen people, were you really even there? It feels like the center of the Bonnaroo Bingo card, and I’m glad I got my stamp.

1. Acid Tongue – Jenny Lewis

It’s time to veer away from the prescient experimentation at the start of this list, into the sturdy, singer-songwriter vibes provided by former Rilo Kiley frontwoman, Jenny Lewis. The name Rilo Kiley triggers the faintest spark of recognition in the recesses of my brain, but it’s fair to call Acid Tongue my introduction to Lewis. My first instinct when reacting to a new artist is to compartmentalize them relative to other artists that I’m more familiar with, which doesn’t necessarily give them their just due, but holy shit I’m already over 11k words in to this freaking post indulge me this shortcut for the love of God… Anyway: Neko Case. Actually: Bob Dylan, then Neko Case. I’m forty-five years and seven thousand posts into this series* and I still haven’t written about Bob Dylan yet. That’s wild. I am not obsessed with Bob the way that a lot of people legitimately are and have been (Hendrix comes to mind), but I probably like him more than most and he is undeniably the type of musician that deserves his share of love in this type of setting. And his number will come up, certainly, it’s just jarring to spend so much energy talking about the music of the past several decades without bringing up the trunk of the singer-songwriter tree.** One of my favorite branches of said tree is Neko Case. As with Bob, the capricious nature of my randomizer has relegated Case to yet-unwritten lists, although that isn’t quite as surprising given that her truly transcendent work is pretty much limited to a three-album run starting with 2006’s Fox Confessor Brings the Flood.*** Lewis, who dropped this album amidst that Case run of brilliance, reminds me of her in a lot of ways. Case is more poetically adventurous, and also with song structure, but the approach is very similar between their work. Lewis’ song-writing is at times more evocative than coherent, but it is never perfunctory or surface-level. She is also capable of really trenchant, moving writing, and uses that talent to explore familial relationships on Acid Tongue, especially those between parents and children. Take this devastating verse from “Bad Man’s World” for example:

I will never forgive you

For what you put us kids through

Remember that night

You tried to take your own life?

When I found you

You were a shade of blue

And success is a state of mind

With a little bit of follow through

And then you failed at that too

Musically, Lewis has that contemporary, neo-folk style but also shares a fair bit of DNA with the Baez’s and Karen Carpenters and even Emmylou Harrises of the world. In that way, I can see her as a potential influence on rising folk-inspired artists of her era like Margo Price and Brandi Carlisle. That combination of styles also allows her to explore some dynamic territory with her songs, something that I find sorely lacking in a lot of the recent, critically acclaimed singer-songwriter albums. The title track has a timeless melody and some lovely harmonizing on the chorus, and conjures images of being played and sang around a campfire one melancholy evening. “See Fernando” provides an interesting juxtaposition as the next track, with a vaguely Latin pop-rock vibe. “Trying My Best to Love You” could almost be an early sixties soul ballad with its dramatically building chorus, bouncy piano bridge, and sweetly placed accompaniment by a string section. The variety continues on “Jack Killed Mom”, which has a sardonic country-rock vibe. Yet none of those tracks feel disconnected from each other, relying on Lewis’ gentle voice and gift for melody to bind them together into a very listenable and self-assured solo debut.

* Data is approximate.

** The roots of said tree would be people like Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, and probably some of Bob’s contemporaries/girlfriends like Joan Baez.

*** Huh, I’ve already referenced three incredible albums from 2006 on this list – might turn out to be a sleeper year for great music when we get to it.

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Bonus List – Top 5 Sets I Wish I Saw at Bonnaroo 2024

We don’t say “FOMO” anymore, right? Given my tenuous connection with modern cultural currency, we probably stopped saying it by the first time I had heard it. The concept of FOMO (the fear of missing out) is still as real as its ever been, though. A big part of enjoying a festival like Bonnaroo is getting comfortable with all the stuff you will inevitably miss out on, because it conflicts with something that would aggrieve you even more to miss, or because you didn’t realize it was something not to be missed at the time, or simply because you have to sleep at some point over the five days that you are there. Here are my five biggest regrets.

#5 – Aeon:Mode

I’ve referenced EDM a bunch of times in this post already, but I don’t know how widely that term is known. Electronic Dance Music (EDM) is the umbrella term used to capture the branch of music that was colloquially referred to as “techno” when I was younger. Historically, I don’t like techno. I’ve had plenty of exposure to it, particularly at college, but it has never resonated with me on an emotional level. As you’ve probably surmised at this point, EDM is a very well-represented genre at Bonnaroo, with two full stages pretty much dedicated to it. Knowing this going in, and attending with a couple of very EDM-savvy friends, I was hopeful that I could gain some traction on my understanding and appreciation of the artform. My first step towards that occurred the very first night we were there. Hanging out at Where in the Woods, I was absorbing the DJ set that brought us up to midnight, and it was going well enough. I wasn’t antsy or annoyed or anything, although I wouldn’t say that my overall feelings had shifted. One of my tent-mates and I planned to head back to call it a night, right when the next DJ entered the UFO, and we only caught 2-3 short songs out of his set as we said our goodbyes and walked out of the woods. Immediately, I could tell that the quality of the performance, by Aeon:Mode, was of a much higher caliber than the previous one. It was high energy and constantly evolving, the antithesis of riding the same tedious beat ad nauseum that I picture in my EDM-related nightmares. I almost turned around and decided to stick it out for another hour or so, but decided against it after two long days of travel, so I missed what the rest of our group confirmed was a killer set the next morning. This probably marks the first time that I could really appreciate a difference in quality between two EDM artists, and it set the stage for me to discover more about the music across my time on the farm.

#4 – Megan Thee Stallion

Watching Megan was never in the cards for me, because the second half of her set overlapped with the first half Jason Isbell’s. If I was going to miss one of my all time favorite artists, it was going to be to watch Joey Bada$$, who also played in the same timeframe and who is someone I actively listen to and enjoy. Megan is certainly someone whom I am aware of and whose songs I have some familiarity with, but she is not in the rotation of music I actually listen to. That said, I caught bits and pieces of her set from my tent and also as I was walking in to get a spot for Isbell, and it looked and sounded great. She brought a specific sort of charisma and energy that was largely not in the wheelhouse of the vast majority of acts at the festival, and it would have been a lot of fun to tap into that on my last night there.

#3 – Roisin Murphy

Roisin Murphy was not an artist on my radar until my friend texted me picture of her set, saying it was great and also (perhaps in spite of the fact) she was making weirdly aggressive faces at the audience on the giant video screen the whole time. I assumed at the time that she was an EDM artist, and in any case I was already settling into my cot following the Gwar show and had no intentions of going to check it out in the middle of the night. However, when we tossed her latest album on during the drive back, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was basically a disco album. And a good one. Not only does that bolster my growing roster of neo-disco music from recent years, but it provides additional support for my thesis that the secret ingredient to Bonnaroo was a healthy heaping of disco.

#2 – Pretty Lights (sunrise set)

Nobody contributed more content to Bonnaroo than EDM/live band hybrid, Pretty Lights. We’ll get to their double headlining set in due time, but they also returned a couple of days later for a sunrise set, starting at 3:30am and wrapping up around 5:30am. I actually went to bed at midnight, with my alarm set to roll out of bed and stroll into Centeroo for this performance. They kicked off their Thursday night set during sunset with a track that interpolated many of my favorite artists: Pink Floyd, Willie Nelson, but most importantly David Bowie’s “Memory of a Free Festival”, where he sings “The sun machine is going down, and we’re gonna have a party!” It was my favorite part of a performance that I consider to be in the top three of the whole festival. I just knew that they were going to circle back around and close out their sunrise set with some version of this song (“Blue Skies“), and I was stoked to experience that moment of callback and connectivity. Of course my alarm did not wake me up, and even if it had I was probably too ambitious to think I would actually follow through on my plan. That said, when I woke up to pee, I discovered that the performance was being broadcast throughout the festival speakers and I got to catch that very moment I had predicted as I made my way to the bathrooms. Still, wish I could have been there front and center.

#1 – Vandelux

Despite the talk of FOMO at that start of this list, I honestly haven’t lost sleep over any of the missed acts that I have covered so far. In many cases, I gained sleep by missing them! The one real dagger in my heart, though, is missing the Vandelux set. Who is Vandelux? I don’t know! Wikipedia says… nothing. He doesn’t have his own entry. I may never know what Vandelux sounds like. It may be best that I never know what Vandelux sounds like. For context, I was happily watching Brittany Howard, who, as I’ve already outlined, put on a very good show. A couple of my friends were elsewhere checking this guy out, and chiding me that I was missing out. Well guess what, suckers, you were missing out, too! I was unbothered by the whole thing, but then this exchange happened:

From that point on, Ms. Howard never had my full attention again. Don’t get me wrong, I was still digging her music, but that picture was a constant distraction in my mind. Did I make a bad choice? Again, I like Howard, I listen to her music, her performance was great… but just look at this thing of beauty:

How could it be the right choice to not be there?

Ultimately, I have come to terms with my decision. I have no idea what this sounded like, but there is no way it sounded as amazing as I think it sounded like when I stare at this picture. Right? It’s fine. I’m fine. This will probably not haunt me for the rest of my life.

1. Heart On – Eagles of Death Metal

I don’t know if I had ever heard Eagles of Death Metal before preparing for this post. I mean, I might have, I was aware of their existence and it is certainly the type of thing I would typically have checked out at some point in a world of limitless streaming music. Yet, I can’t remember specifically hearing them, and I’m pretty sure I had them conflated with the band Queens of the Stone Age which is an act that I have sampled and not enjoyed, so who knows? To be honest, if I had sampled them on a crankier or less patient day, they might not have made the cut this time, either. Much like former NWA United States champion, Greg “the Hammer” Valentine, Heart On takes a little while to warm up before it makes an impact. (That’s a killer analogy for like three people who read this, by the way, the rest of you will have to take my word for it.) It isn’t that the first half of the album is bad by any stretch, either, it’s just that post-White Stripes 2000’s rock and roll is a big blind spot for me, and it takes some time to acclimate. It doesn’t help that there seems to be a dense web of irony to navigate here, with performances attributed to band members named things like Boots Electric and Baby Duck, and song titles that go full-AC/DC dumb/sexual (“I Used to Couldn’t Dance (Tight Pants)”, “I’m Your Torpedo”). By the time the Stones-influenced guitar licks that kick off “Cheap Thrills” hit at what would be the start to Side B if this album came out during a less anachronistic time period, the pump has been primed and its easy to buy all the way in. The band barrels through the rest of the album by drawing on a load of rock influences and an almost Prince-like swagger, although they certainly sound more modern than their obvious influences. After giving Heart On a fair number of spins, I no longer suffer the slow walk into the pool, I’m able to just dive in. “Anything ‘cept the Truth” immediately conjures the feeling of a Replacements or Big Star album kicking off, and the flavors of Roxy Music, the Runaways, and ZZ Top are more distinguishable amongst the elements that sound apropos for an album released in the same year as the rest of my top 10.

Years ago in this space, while writing about Billy Idol, I mentioned that I was working on a theory that irony killed rock and roll. Well, I haven’t made any progress on that theory, and albums like this one are a big reason why. Jesse Hughes (Boots) and Josh Homme (Duck) are very obviously operating with a sense of irony here – the lyrics, the attitude, the homage to the past all make that undeniable – but that doesn’t sap their music of the ability to delight just as much as their more earnest forbears. I actually don’t think it is possible to make an album of dumb, fun rock music absent of irony in the current era, and probably hasn’t been since grunge music earnested hair metal into oblivion thirty years ago. Regardless, having that type of music around is always going to be worth it, no matter how many layers of irony are applied.

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Bonus List – The Best Sets I Saw at Bonnaroo 2024: 3-2

#3 – Pretty Lights

Aeon:Mode may have helped me start to differentiate between electronic music sets, but Pretty Lights was the act destined to blow open my perception of what electronic music could be. I knew coming in, thanks to various community-compiled playlists of the scheduled artists, that I enjoyed Pretty Lights’ music. It is heavily soul and hip hop influenced, which makes it an easy entry point for someone with my tastes. I anticipated that the act would be worth checking out, but I didn’t necessarily expect them to put on such a great show. I say “them”, although the name Pretty Lights is typically ascribed to producer Derek Vincent Smith. This iteration of the act was comprised of five men playing drums, keys, guitar, bass, turntables and manning various electronic panels that I couldn’t begin to guess about. It’s impossible to know how much of the resulting music is live versus canned, but this absolutely felt like a live performance, and an crackling one at that. On top of the group’s great energy and solid grooves, they had a stellar light show that rounded out the experience. My one beef with the set is that it was actually two sets, including an intermission in the middle, and they were clearly pacing themselves. I never felt like the group was phoning it in, mind you, but every tune was at least ten minutes long, and it was a lot for three+ hours of music. That said, you truly couldn’t orchestrate a more fitting artist to get me to invest in electronic music, and the fact it happened during the first official night of the festival was perfect. I will remember moments from this set for a long time, and I would love to see Pretty Lights again, but it was not my favorite electronic set that I would see.

#2 – Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit

See below.

(I really stretched the concept of “bonus list” this time, didn’t I? Oh whatever, you’re like an hour into this post already, leave me alone.)

1. Modern Guilt – Beck

Modern Guilt is, by a pretty wide margin, my favorite Beck album. That is not necessarily a common sentiment from what I understand, so why does this dude’s eleventh album happen to be the one that does it for me? For starters, I’m not nearly as enamored with Beck’s nineties output as many of my generation seem to be. Remember the irony chat we were having about 500 words ago? Beck’s early years fell on the wrong side of that topic for me. I’d hear “Get crazy with the cheese whiz” or watch his awkward MTV Music Video Awards appearance alongside Chris Rock where he kept referencing “slow jams” and I’d wonder what are we doing here? I am supposed to take you seriously? Do you take yourself seriously? If I took you seriously, would you think I’m an asshole? It was hard to know where he stood and what he was trying to accomplish with his music, so I kept it at arms length. Over time, he matured and I softened to his music, but it took a particular collaboration to finally put an album of his into heavy rotation for me. That collaborator? Oh, you guessed it, my man Danger Mouse.* On Modern Guilt, Beck takes the hard-won perspective he brought to bear on an album like Sea Change and pairs it with the most prolific and creative producer of the era, and the results are terrific. One outcome of the partnership is a super tight package of ten tracks clocking in at a mere 34 minutes. By focusing on shorter, punchier compositions, Beck quelled some of his worst instincts as a song-writer and delivered a collection of tunes that never overstay their welcome. Despite the variety of artists that DM worked with, he does have a bit of a signature sound, and that sound compliments Beck very well. Some tracks, like “Gamma Ray”, wouldn’t sound out of place on The Odd Couple, but Beck and CeeLo are such different singers that it never comes off as derivative. “Replica” (not a Fear Factory cover, sadly) feels like King of Limbs-era Radiohead, with it’s skittering, trip hop beat and swirl of sci-fi computer noises. The best songs, however, are actually the slower ballads like “Walls” and album-closer “Volcano”, where Danger Mouse lays out a bit and Beck’s vulnerability shines through. That may be the best reason for him to peel back some of those layers of irony – when he sings plainly and sincerely, Beck has a natural relatability and charisma that was too often hidden in the past.

* Will Danger Mouse be the ultimate Found or Forgotten MVP? So far, I have him logging top ten production duties across nine albums, starting in 2004. By the time the project is finished, I anticipate that number to swell into a dozen or more. This is the third year in which his music is featured twice. I think he will likely hold the title, and the closest contender will possibly be Questlove, with a healthy serving of the Roots in addition to Soulquarian-featuring albums like Badu’s Mama’s Gun and D’Angelo’s Voodoo.

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Bonus List – The Top 5 Times I Cried at Jason Isbell’s Bonnaroo Set

#5 – During “24 Frames”

“24 Frames” is a smartly written song about a broken relationship upending someone’s whole world, set against a mid-90’s country-rock aesthetic, but I don’t find it particularly sad. Jokes on you, suckers, I didn’t cry at this one at all! What do you think I am, a whiny little diaper baby?

#4 – During “Cover Me Up”

Psyche! Got you again! I of course cried at Isbell performing his most romantic and heartfelt song when I saw him in Richmond, singing it directly to Amanda Shires, his wife and fiddle player and the woman who inspired him to write the song, on the last night she was going to be touring with him, but I didn’t shed a single tear this time. I’m a freaking rock. I’m Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, baby, only if he were doped up on Thorazine and numb to the world.

#3 – During “Traveling Alone”

Look, I might have misted up a bit at “Traveling Alone”, early on in the set, as I realized simultaneously that I was witnessing one of my most cherished musical artists perform a classic track off of his best album, and also that this entire magical experience was less than six hours from ending. I was, understandably, overcome with emotions for a moment, but there was barely a crack in my rugged exterior, I assure you.

#2 – During “Cast Iron Skillet”

Did I openly cry at “Cast Iron Skillet”? Yes, I did. It’s a song about a father who disowns his daughter because she’s dating a black man, featuring lyrics like this:

Jamie found a boyfriend With smiling eyes and dark skin And her daddy never spoke another word to her again He treats her like a queen But you don’t know ’cause you ain’t seen It’s hard to go through life without your daddy by your side

Then the bastard had the nerve to dedicate it to Father’s Day, which it in fact happened to be during that moment. You would have cried too, especially if you were a dad to two daughters.

#1 – During “If We Were Vampires”

Of course I cried during Jason’s performance of “If We Were Vampires”. I’ve listened to that song dozens of times, in a myriad of headspaces, and I tear up every time. I’m tearing up writing this right now just thinking about it. What do you want from me? Even the Rock is going to cry at this century’s greatest love song.

1. Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes

If my memory serves me, this was the consensus album of the year for most music critics in 2008. Its commercial performance didn’t quite match the critical hype, selling roughly half a million copies in the U.S.. That may sound impressive in today’s landscape, and it is certainly a success for a straight folk album, but for context, Lil’ Wayne, Coldplay, Taylor Swift and Kid Rock all topped 2MM units the same year. I think the purity of Fleet Foxes is the cause for that disparity. Folk is simply not a genre that has had a lot of mainstream clout since the early seventies. Even for my own tastes, the folk-adjacent artists that I tend to gravitate towards (Bon Iver, Brandi Carlisle, Band of Horses) leaven the recipe with a little rock or country or some other ingredient. Fleet Foxes play it completely straight, and while I dig artists like Nike Drake and Simon & Garfunkel and pre-’65 Bobby D, mainline folk music is never going to be my favorite thing in the world. Hence, why the consensus #1 is my #10. Yet, let me be clear, this is an excellent folk record. It is bright and vibrant and modern (for the time) sounding, and delivers really well written tunes played with passion and precision. The lyrics are both poetic and esoteric, the type of lines that stick with you even if you never fully grasp them. There are really no weaknesses to be found, but if I had to isolate the album’s greatest strengths, it would be the arrangements and the singing. Folk has always allowed a little more freedom from the verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus structure of rock, pop and soul music, and Fleet Foxes takes full advantage of that freedom in the same way that an artist like Neko Case does. The sense of unpredictability that focused creativity provides really bouys an album that is lacking in any real edge or darkness. Lead singer Robin Pecknold has a strong, clear voice, and his isolated vocals serve as a real highlight. It is the angelic harmonies of the entire band that truly put the music over the top for me, though. Whether the harmonies drive the verses like on “Sun It Rises” and “White Winter Hymnal”, or simply provide backing accompaniment like the ethereal close of “Your Protector”, they wind up being the element that stick with me long after the album is over. As a full package, Fleet Foxes is one of the most self-assured and consistent debut albums of all time.

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Bonus List – The Best Sets I Saw at Bonnaroo 2024: 1

#1 – Whyte Fang

So here we are, my favorite performance at Bonnaroo, and it was an EDM act. Not even a pseudo-EDM, gussied up with live instruments performance like Pretty Lights – a real DJ set, with pulsing beats and flashing lights and bass drops. It was completely electric, and completely unpredictable, and made me feel the most excited to be watching it out of what had to be close to forty hours of music across those five days in June. Look, I’ve seen the memes about “live” DJ performances, where someone shows up and presses play on an iPad, but there is no question that this was more than that. Now, I don’t know how much she (Whyte Fang, a.k.a. Alison Wonderland, a.k.a. the DJ I mentioned earlier that rocked the closing Where in the Woods set) technically had to be there in order to execute what we heard and saw. Given the extraordinarily synched up light show that accompanied each track, its possible this all could have been accomplished by the equivalent of her hitting play on her iPad. I don’t care. I was still thoroughly entertained and delighted by what was going on. Even if the “live” aspect of the live performance wasn’t paramount, there was a staggering amount of effort put into the individual songs, how they flowed into one another, and how they combined with the stunning visual display across all of Other’s many video screens and light fixtures. It was an onslaught of creativity, and even when the techno was a bit too techno for me, there would quickly be a new element introduced that recontextualized what I was hearing or a sudden left turn into another sound entirely. Whyte Fang’s ear for crafting unique beats and transitioning between them led to some breathtaking moments. It also helps that she has an affinity for hip hop, and between the hip hop influence on her beats and the rapping that accompanied some of the tracks, I felt more grounded in the set than I otherwise would have. A contender for my favorite moment of the festival was when she dropped into Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” and absolutely lit the crowd on fire. I was joking (sort of) about the iPad thing too. She was dancing and hyping the audience and I even saw her drumming at some point, all of which was incorporated into the visual effects, so it would not have been the same without her. And you know what truly brought the whole thing full circle? Towards the end of the set, when it was perhaps the last thing I would have expected her to do, she spun the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” to legitimately euphoric effect. Disco’s back baby!

Honorable Mentions

Rock: Evil Urges – My Morning Jacket; Attack & Release – The Black Keys; Chinese Democracy – Guns N’ Roses

Hip Hop/Electronic: The Renaissance – Q-Tip; The Carter III – Lil’ Wayne; Feed the Animals – Girl Talk; Rebirth of the Cool – DJ Cam

Soul: The Way I See It – Raphael Saadiq; Evolver – John Legend; Metropolis: The Chase Suite – Janelle Monae

Country/Folk/Bluegrass: House with No Home – Horse Feathers; Punch – Punch Brothers; Randy Rogers Band – Randy Rogers Band; The Foundation – Zac Brown Band; The Steeldrivers – The Steeldrivers

Metal: The Formation of Damnation – Testament; The Bedlam in Goliath – The Mars Volta; The White – Agalloch; Twilight of the Thunder God – Amon Amarth

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