Keepers 2022

What a weird year for music. I can’t even joke about the lack of Mark Lanegan albums this year – it’s just too soon. Guided by Voices continued to pump out records without concern for quality. I enjoyed the new record from The Weeknd, but will I revisit it as much as After Hours (that it was popular could not make me enjoy it less). If the list is short, I did not branch out much. Less than ever really. But I found comfort in the familiar, which can be difficult with the inundation of so much music. 

Tears for Fears, The Tipping Point
A band’s first album in 19 years has no right sounds this great. But Tears for Fears nail The Tipping Point, and I find myself returning to the songs repeatedly through the year. Maybe more bands should take a generation break from new albums, although we’ll hope Tears for Fears chooses otherwise. The music might be different than Songs from the Big Chair, but it still 40 years on this group still resonates. 

Jerry Cantrell, Brighten
Let’s keep with the 19-year gap in album theme. In October 2021, Jerry Cantrell dropped his first solo record since 2002. I might fall in the minority, but I have always liked Jerry Cantrell’s voice. It was a bigger element in Alice in Chains’ music than credited, as those harmonies melded effortlessly with Layne Staley’s leads. The twangy sludge of tracks like Atone pulls me into the song every time. It sounds a like a tune that could have been written for Staley, but Cantrell’s voice handles just fine. Before you realize it, Cantrell is singing through Elton John cover Goodbye (from Madman Across the Water, Cantrell’s favorite EJ album and mine as well). Cantrell does not overstay his welcome, but he makes the listener glad he struck out on his own again. 

The Smile, A Light for Attracting Attention 
With another Radiohead album unlikely, The Smile more than fills the void. Don’t call it a Radiohead album, even with Thom York and Johnny Greenwood as the principals. Sounds of it might sounds suspiciously close to Radiohead, but somehow it never really feels like Radiohead to me. 

Angel Olson, Big Time
Many favorite artists recorded country albums this year. But only Olsen hits the mark. This work bridges the folk of her early material and her more recent experiments. I liked All Mirrors and My Girl but this album seems more my speed in 2022. 

Crate finds 

Various artists, Big Night Soundtrack 
This Record Store Day exclusive vinyl brought the soundtrack to the cult foodie film’s deep Italian cuts out once again. There’s plenty of Louis Prima and other Italian tracks from the era in which the film is set. It was worth hunting down on Record Store Day and worth having for cooking accompaniment. 

Pearl Jam, Live on Two Legs
Another Record Store Day reissue, this remains a good collection for the casual PJ fan that might want a single vinyl record in their collection. Live on Two Legs compiles tunes from a solid tour followingthe release of Yield, so essentially all the tracks are prime-era Pearl Jam. 

Bill Withers, Still Bill
Of course I love Withers. Just as I Am was a 2021 highlight, but Still Bill improves on the formula, while also delivering an all-time classic (Lean on Me). I lean toward the taut Who is He (and What is He to You). Somehow I found a copy at a shop in Pueblo that was shrink-wrapped back in the 1970s. Easily worth the $30 to tear off that shrink wrap. 

Harry Nilsson, Aerial Ballet
I have listened to I Said Goodbye to Me religiously all year. It’s a magnetic song. Only in December did I stumble upon its original long-player, Aerial Ballet, which includes Everybody’s Talkin’ that found a place in Midnight Cowboy) and One (Three Dog Night recorded it, but its writer did it better). You see why the Beatles liked Nilsson so much. He was still very much himself and growing as a musician. 

Reissues 

The Cure, Wish (30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)
Boy, Robert Smith sure took his time with this one, essentially remastering the rest of the catalogue before returning to Wish. But hell, it was worth the wait. One of my last essential records that cost a fortune on vinyl, I can finally own a reasonably priced version. No other band could write a track like Edge of the Deep Green Sea. This band never did again, as their albums became sporadic and spotty. But 30 years on, Wish remains a triumph, an artistic right turn after a major success (Disintegration). The extras are solid, including some instrumental tracks from a fan club-only cassette and numerous alternative cuts that reveal the album's development and how different it could have sounded. 

The Kinks, Muswell Hillbillies (50th anniversary reissue)
This marks the last Kinks record I needed on LP. I found a used one in questionable condition last year and could not pull the trigger (the shop still has that copy). The nice 2022 reissue to go next to the recent reissue of Village Green Preservation Society feels the better choice. The Davies brothers return to the theme of a disappearing England, this time in north London’s Muswell Hill neighborhood where they grew up. The Kinks at times sound like the tightest bar band in the world, which befits the album’s working-class focus. The narrator of 20th Century Man feels trapped, but by the time they finish with the title track, being a Muswell Hillbilly is almost a rallying cry. Alcohol sounds like the ancestor of Radiohead’s Life in a Glass House, lurching around on barroom pianos and primitive horn arrangements.