My top 5 albums of 2019:
5. David Gray - Gold in a Brass Age
In June, I went to see David Gray. I hadn’t even known he was touring, I didn’t know he had a new album out. I just happened to see an ad and it seemed like the thing to do. I only own a couple of his records and I’d never seem him live. This is how he started the show - this song I’d never heard, from a album I didn’t know existed. “This is about stepping off into the unknown,” he said, and behind him was a drawing of a doorway with an EXIT sign over it. By the end of the song, I had chills from head to toe. I didn’t listen to anything in my car but Gold in a Brass Age for at least a month.
4. Coldplay - Everyday Life
I need more time to delve deeper into this one because it’s pretty new (and The Who album stole me away), but after losing interest in Coldplay after 2003, I am pretty impressed. In terms of subject matter, they really Went There, and the music itself is a departure from their poppy flavour of recent years. “Guns” was a fast favourite for me:
3. Bon Iver - i,i
Bon Iver is another artist who’s moved in and out of my awareness over the years. Sometimes I fall into spells of listening to live versions of “Heavenly Father” on YouTube on repeat while I work, and I think the new songs simply popped up as suggestions. Cue obsessive listening for weeks to come, including on the flight the entire way to New Zealand.
2. The Who - WHO
The Who have been a big part of my life since childhood, but it wasn’t until I was in my mid-20s that I entered the Obsession Zone. I never realised Pete Townshend was a guitarist who was the main songwriter for his band until the exact time I was being challenged into that role with EXIT. His outspokenness around his childhood abuse and the way he’s turned that pain into art makes him — if I have one, and if they are a such a thing to have — my one true hero. I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting much from the new album, and I’m not sure why. This song stopped me in my tracks. It’s an instant hit of dopamine to my brain. There are other seriously great tunes (“Ball and Chain,” “Break the News,” “I’ll Be Back,” to name a few), but this is The One for me.
1. Glen Hansard - This Wild Willing
Glen Hansard’s latest saw me through the roughest part of my retinal surgery recovery. In just the way The Frames’ music arrested me since I first heard it in 2003, this album wove its tendrils around me, forming a safe cocoon. At the end of "Fool’s Game," a spellbinding observation of the heart, a blast of instruments erupts out of near silence. It is full of angst, of yearning, but also of complete acceptance and abandon — a release of everything you’ve ever held too tightly. This musician, under whatever moniker he chooses, has always offered this precise medicine.