I don't know if the pandemic is officially over, but 2022 was the first year since 2019 in which music concerts were back in (almost as) usual business. Personally, there wasn't much music released this year that excited me as much as the previous two years. So, I'll just briefly go through a bunch of stuff I've listened to. But first...
Albums I loved
There were only two albums that I enjoyed listening to and which gave me a feeling of fulfilment throughout. The first one marked my spring, as I had it on repeat for a couple of months. I first heard Tears for Fears when I was much younger, and I caught the video for Shout on TV. Their music had a distinct sound, very definitely '80s, coupled with the mullets and, oh! those sweaters! that instantly got me.
The Tipping Point, their first album in 18 years, was a pleasant surprise. The music is just as thrilling, a neon-pop-rock kind of sound, that's just as catchy as it is introspective and rebellious. What striked me the most was just how well the two sing. Roland Orzabal's voice ranges from harsh and rugged to harmonious, while Curt Smith takes care of the mellow parts in an amazingly sweet and soothing tone. The album is very personal, some of the songs stem from Orzabal's loss of his wife, but there is an optimistic feeling seeping through the sadness. Other songs are more energetic and catchier, while conveying a certain air of criticism.
The second album I loved comes from a Romanian band, which I didn't expect. I've been a huge fan of Trooper, ever since I discovered them one day in a bar in Vama Veche in my student years. Their previous album, about Stephen the Great, didn't thrill me much, and have not listened to it more than a few times. I think Atmosfera was their best output to date, capturing the essence of their musical journey, but X, their tenth studio album, has surpassed that by far. I was a bit sceptic, but the first listen got my attention, while the second one got me hooked. The accumulated years of musical experience come to fruition in this anniversary album. It's the perfect sort of album, in which each song is unique, there is great diversity, and the mood and feelings transmitted by the lyrics blend in with the composition.
We start with a classic hard-rock opener before we get swept into a post-apocalyptic soundscape, a warning message of what the world can become if humanity is not careful. An 18-minute epic serves as a veritable PhD thesis on traditional Romanian folk music, which will be hard to be surpassed by any contemporary artists. There's also a track that takes the well-known Iron Maiden vocabulary and uses it to paint a slightly different image of the classic Fear of the Dark / Number of the Beast / Dance of Death story, by replacing the supernatural with something just as haunting, yet more real, albeit still untouchable, the fears of the mind - anxiety and depression. The ending is also a unique piece - just vocals backed by piano, a very theatrical performance, strengthened by the imagery depicted in the lyrics. If you can read Romanian, I've written an extensive review of the whole album, which has captivated me a lot.
Albums I was very thrilled by
Ugly Kid Joe are a one-hit-and-a-cover wonder from the good ol' nineties. Not grunge and not that heavy, they like to name their albums using puns, and make songs that are sometimes plain fun, sometimes really serious. They've had a hiatus from the late '90s until the early 2010s and have since only released an album in 2015. I was made aware that they would release an album in 2022 by my father, of all people. He posts an almost daily top 3 of music he listens to, which these days includes things people post on Facebook music groups. So, I guess he saw the video for Kill the Pain there, because I doubt he's heard of UKJ before.
Anyway, I loved that song immediately. It speaks about drug addiction, and it sounds simply great. That guitar riff gets you instantly, and if not, the build-up surely will. Most of the songs on Rad Wings of Destiny are more or less like that. As my older cousin put it - it's "feel good music", but it's the kind that also makes you think and reflect at the same time. Even a fun tune like Dead Friends Play, which is a tribute to the musical legends that we've lost along the years, still makes you contemplate death and the legacy of the music that shapes us. Most of the songs seem to focus on a philosophy of life: don't waste your time in an unfulfilling routine 'cause That Ain't Livin', Everything's Changing "but it's all the same, and under this waterfall we're drowning", and don't stop to fret about every inconvenience, because it's a Long Road, so just go for it and enjoy it. They've also Cats-in-the-Cradle-d Lola by the Kinks. If this were still the '90s, that would be on heavy rotation on MTV for sure.
Another album I was thrilled by came quite late in the year, and it's another Romanian entry. Descântec is the debut album for Dora Gaitanovici. She became known from her collaborations with Implant pentru Refuz, then she came in second in The Voice of Romania in 2018 (I can't imagine how she didn't win), and more recently she was in the final stage of the national Eurovision qualifying show, but she didn't make it.
Anyway, Dora has an amazing and delightful voice - one of the best I've heard, and unlike other women with such a gift, she doesn't just throw it all over the place, but uses it with grace and skill, to convey emotion and to grip you on the musical story that she is telling. Descântec is a personal passion project, which she's hoped of fulfilling since a young age. The album takes the well-known Romanian myths and a few fairy-tale characters and gives them voice. Each song centres on a certain character and evokes their feelings regarding their story, taking these age-old psychological traits of a nation and presenting them from a contemporary lens. Basically, what some people have been trying for 60 years to do, Dora has accomplished at just 21 years of age. She's also helped by a talented group of young musicians, which produce a cohesive ethno-prog-metal sound, with an eerie mystical atmosphere to it. It's enough to listen to the first 30 seconds of Miorița to understand what I'm talking about. A riveting violin riff, that ends with a shivering crescendo, just as Dora's divine voice comes in with a take on the well-known opening verses of the poem with the same name.
Dora could have easily been on the radio in hyper-produced cotton-candy music, outshining any other female voice out there. I'm glad she didn't choose that path but decided to keep it honest and authentic. And given her already gained fame and established relations in the music industry, it might just be that this sort of good music reaches a larger audience, that people who wouldn't listen to metal, would listen to this kind of music because of Dora, and people who wouldn't listen to Dora, would listen to this album because it's metal.
Fruits of the pandemic
It's well known that musicians had a lot of free time during the pandemic, and they mostly used it to produce more music. Some of that output came to light in 2021, but it seems to me, that the bulk of this productivity climaxed in 2022, because there are many albums on this year's list, from bands that have also had albums released in 2021. This is a mixed bag. Usually, a good album needs some time to marinate. There are a couple of exceptions.
One is Black Midi. Their new album, Hellfire, was released in summer, but it didn't pique my interest until I started listening to it more closely a few months later. In fact, I like it even more than the previous year's Cavalcade. It feels like if I were to drop in the middle of any song of the album, the music would instantly grab me and take me away. The style is still the same, a mishmash of dissonant melodies that somehow make sense when put together. The difference is that Hellfire seems more cohesive than the band's previous material. It has a '20s-'30s jazz-noir atmosphere throughout, and themes and characters re-appear in the various songs, which invoke imagery such as: a boxing match, army life, gangsters, murder, the occult, Wacky Races (yes, really!), venereal diseases. Once again, Black Midi have proved themselves to be the most exciting band I've heard in recent years.
Weezer have been quite the hard workers in the past few years. If in 2021 they released two albums, in 2022 they embarked on a project called SZNZ that involved four mini-albums. Each album was dedicated to each of the four seasons (a la Vivaldi), and they were released on the respective equinoxes and solstices. This means, it was just before Christmas that I could actually listen to the whole thing. It's crazily ambitious, and I think they've done it. Sure, it's quite a lot of music, and some of the songs get lost in the bag, but there's a couple of great ones on each release. The sound and themes are related to each of the season. On Spring, the tracks are light-hearted, on Summer they are scorching and heavier-sounding, Autumn brings in the melancholy, while Winter sets in contemplation. In the usual Weezer style, some songs are for fun, while others seem fun, but in reality delve into some serious topic. Even a song like Records, comes from a very personal point of view, and I Want a Dog seems like the kind of song you would share with friends for a laugh, but it actually deals with the feeling of loneliness caused by the intricacies of human relations. I can only applaud Weezer for this achievement, which is at the same time fun and insightful, while it dabs its feet the elite of music and literature.
There two albums released in 2021 that I really liked. Thunder's All the Right Noises was followed this year by Dopamine, a double album consisting of songs which were composed during this period of lockdown, some of which also reflect on it, without it being the central subject. There are quite a few great songs, but the length of the whole album makes it harder to be as gripping as All the Right Noises. Once again, the band produces solid rock tunes and pairs them up with brilliant lyrics. The Western Sky is an energizing road trip kind of track, One Day We'll Be Free Again is inspiring, as is Even If It Takes a Lifetime, which tells us that we need to have hope and that some changes do take a lifetime, if we don't give up. Unravelling sounds like a classic ballad, and it's a beautiful song about facing loss. I Don't Believe the World is a fun one, as the lyrics are the voice of a conspiracy theory adept, who doesn't believe anybody. Is Anybody Out There? is another ballad, a very emotional one, a cry for help from a lonely person who as isolated himself, asking for a sliver of affection from anybody who is willing to give him a second chance. Add in a couple of fun, rocking songs like Across the Nation and Dancing in the Sunshine, and you would have a great album. But that is just half of Dopamine.
I absolutely loved One Shot from Ronnie Atkins and was surprised to see a follow-up so soon. And unfortunately, Make It Count didn't stir me up as much. It still has some good songs, but it doesn't feel as solid, it doesn't have the same punch.
A list
There are some bands that are great when you first listen to them, but the next albums don't catch your attention as much. So here is a list of bands that released music in 2022, but which I didn't find the urge to give more than a few listens to: Ghost, Grave Digger, Powerwolf, Amon Amarth, Alestorm (However, I have to point out this hilarious pirate anthem dedicated to Hungary, sung in perfect Hungarian) . Blind Guardian caught my attention with Secrets of the American Gods, and a few other songs, but I don't think I'll ever feel like I want to listen to the whole album. Megadeth put out a good album, but I don't like it as much as Dystopia. Mission to Mars is a cool track, though! The Art of Survival from Bush I tried harder to listen to and I'll probably listen to it more in the future. There are some songs that I really liked, but none that I got attached to as compared to The Kingdom. Avantasia's A Paranormal Evening with the Moonflower Society is kind of a letdown, especially since I got excited seeing how Tobi kept saying this is by far the best material he has ever created. Yet, for me, it feels like it doesn't have the same charm as older material. The highlight of Avantasia was how Tobias Sammet could take all these great voices and make then shine in various ways. That doesn't happen as much anymore. Rammstein's Zeit is probably just as good as the previous album, but I think it came too soon after.
Zeal & Ardor, on the other hand released a great album, which sounds darker and harsher, and the gospel part is less a gimmick and more an artistic choice. It features great and unique songs like Run, Death to the Holy or Church Burns, and the usual electronic experiments that make this music intriguing and exciting.
Because I went to see Red Hot Chili Peppers live, I also listened to Unlimited Love. I liked it, all of them are brilliant musicians and you can have a sense of how much fun they're having while recording these songs, but, as Edward Norton in the role of Miles Bron put it: "AK and Flea get all the credit, but Frusciante really is the heart of the Chili Peppers." They released a second album later in the year, but I didn't listen to it.
The epitome of a generation
I recommend anyone who's into music and going to concerts to watch the Netflix documentary Trainwreck, about Woodstock '99. Having developed my music tastes in late '90s on MTV, I was vaguely familiar about what went down at this 30th anniversary of the festival that celebrate peace and love. I knew that Limp Bizkit got a bashing from the media, but it only helped make them more famous, and I also remember seeing big fires being lit up in the audience during the Red Hot Chili Peppers set at the end of the festival. But I had no idea to what levels the craziness reached. The '94 edition was a lot of fun, with people playing in the mud caused by the heavy rain, but five years later it was quite the opposite. Scorching summer heat in a former military airbase, with consumerist greed at peak levels. Sellers at the festival charged outrageous prices even for a much-wanted bottle of water. The organizers cut budgets left and right, focusing only on having the best line-up possible and maximum profit, resulting in being gravely unprepared for such a huge event, with an audience of over 200 000 people. Mix in an entertainment culture that was all about rage and violence and outrageousness, and you get what is a real-life Lord of the Flies scenario. It's simply crazy, but at the same time a perfect image of the late '90s. And just like the people who were there as teenagers, and despite all the mayhem, they still enjoyed it, I also feel like those were much simpler times.
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