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Craig Reptile writesCHIRP Radio’s Best of 2024: Craig Reptile
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First, my methodology, in an attempt to improve my recollective abilities since trying to assemble my “best of” for 2023: This year, beginning in November, I went through all the LPs and EPs that CHIRP had added to our on-air new music “Rotation,” beginning in January 2024. I assembled a playlist of 1-15 tracks per album (depending on if I had all of the songs, or just a sampling of two or three tracks). I originally had a playlist that was well over two thousand songs and about seven days’ worth of material. As of 12/28/2024, I had cut it down to (or expanded, depending on what I had also stumbled upon since) to 1,846 songs and just under a length of five days. I sorted this playlist alphabetically by artist (in the hopes (soon dashed) that no artist had two releases in 2024). I then started listening to all of the songs, deleting the songs from albums that I knew would not make the cut. Two days before the deadline, I was still deep in the weeds in the letter C. Only 23 more letters to go, yay! If there’s some bizarre focus on acts that begin with the letters A, B, or C, blame the alphabet, and not me. My rules for inclusion: no tributes, no greatest hits, no reissues, no records I didn't at hear all the way through at least once (which means a lot got left behind-- sorry). |
This House Is Creaking by This House Is Creaking (THiC(ness))
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To All Trains by Shellac (Touch & Go)
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I don't care what comes next by Sunshy (Longinus Recordings)
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Poetry by DEHD (Fat Possum)
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The Woman I Would Be by Emily Haden Lee (Self-Released)
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Our Brand Could Be Your Life by BODEGA (Chrysalis)
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Asylum Harbour by Tombstones In Their Eyes (Kitten Robot)
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End Comes Too Soon by Big'n (Computer Students)
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Conversance by Chris Greene Quartet (Pravda)
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Drones, Songs and Fairy Dust by Robert Poss (Trace Elements)
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Honorable Mentions(in no particular order): Guided By Voices -- Strut of Kings (GBV Inc.), Oh, Rose -- Dorothy (Antiquated Future), Ronnie Baker Brooks -- Blues in My DNA (Alligator), Beats y Bateria – Migratum (Stolen Mask), Nicole Mitchell & Ballake Sissoko-- Bamako*Chicago Sound System (FPE), Shemekia Copeland – Blame It On Eve (Alligator), Willie Nelson – The Border (Legacy), Black Nite Crash -- Signal to Noise (Neon Sigh) |
Throughout December, 
Chicago's This House Is Creaking sound more like this house is experiencing a full collapse, possibly after being drugged with something psychedelic.
The late great local “recording engineer” Steve Albini may not have intended this Shellac record to be his swan song, but it’s still an eerily fitting tribute. Acid laconic static echoes through this terminal.
If you’re looking for proof that the world might still be survivable, I recommend ducking for cover with Chicago’s Sunshy. This is the record for those of us who are too impatient for the next My Bloody Valentine release, who don’t even have the attention span to focus until Panda Riot drops their next record, who need to melt into whammy bar and effects pedal wooziness until the pain oozes away. Don’t believe me? See them at Sleeping Village on Wednesday, January 15th – you must embrace that big lizard in our backyard, even if you don’t want to feed him no more.
As I wrote in Newcity, when previewing the Chicago trio's three sold out shows at Thalia Hall in November, "When I write about a record, I typically listen to it so much that I get sick of it. But with Dehd’s latest, and best (?), I don’t think that’s possible." I also wrote a whole bunch of other things about them, but the upshot was that their songs are boss, especially on Poetry, their fifth full-length. [url=https://music.newcity.com/2024/11/07/seeing-dehd-alive-and-kicking-in-chicago-again-at-thalia-hall/]https://music.newcity.com/2024/11/07/seeing-dehd-alive-and-kicking-in-chicago-again-at-thalia-hall/[/url]
If there was such a thing, this would have / should have been 2024’s best folk album, and the fact that it came from Chicago is just the proverbial icing on the cake. This fall, she dropped this debut record she’d been working on for over ten years, in collaboration with her husband, and then, shortly after, she dropped a baby she’d been working on for nine months, also in collaboration with her husband. The album chronicles Haden Lee’s navigation through grief (including the passing of her father and brother), relationships, self-reflection and new beginnings – not for nothing is the record described as “a therapeutic labor of love.” Co-produced by her husband, Alex Lee, and local music veteran Steve Dawson (of Frisbie and First Time Three fame, who released his own stellar solo record in 2024).
The phrases “impossibly good” and “wildly creative” pop into my head while listening to this record. A record so good you want to burst into tears and embrace it, exclaiming, “Where have you been all my life?” Or at least, all of 2024. Clever multi-tiered lyrics brilliantly perched atop winning, hook-propelled melodies constructed with a Frankenstein’s monster construction of post-punk, new wave, jangle pop, dream pop, pop art, and op art. If The Beatles were the Fab Four and The Monkees were the prefab four, then this NYC band are the post-fab four.
If you’ve been following this Los Angeles sextet since their formation a decade ago, waiting for them to achieve perfection in what they do (fuzzy, electric guitar-based psych-rock (psychgaze?)), then that wait is over. Highlights include the surprisingly sad but incredibly melodic “The Sky Is Blue” and the riveting and rhythmic early single “Sweet As Pie” with echoing and harmonic vocals from bandmember Courtney Davies (in addition to Kitten Robot’s Paul Roessler, who also provides keyboards (and produced Asylum Harbour (so named for a maritime safe haven, symbolizing “resurfacing from the darkness of 2022-2023 and the pandemic”))). If you’re less into melody and hooks and just want a raging, droning, banger, look no farther than “I Like To Feel Good” or for a slower, more plaintive, and sparer arrangement, try on “Gimme Some Pain” this one doesn’t have to fight through the fuzzy guitar squall like the others. Although comparatively bouncy in tempo (and punctuated by tambourine), lyrically, it doesn’t get much grimmer than the concluding cut, “I Am Cold.” Almost as good as the aforementioned: “In Your Eyes,” which simmers and includes a gnarly, spacey guitar solo, TITE take a hard look in the “Mirror” and find a river driving a swerving current of fuzz, with cymbals splashing as their rubber raft hits the rapids, and on “I’m Not Like That,” they see Pink Floyd looking back. Recommended if you like The Besnard Lakes, Black Angels, and Catherine Wheel
Possibly for people that found The Jesus Lizard too high-brow and the Amphetamine Reptile catalog too warm and cozy, brutal noise rockers Big’n formed in 1990 in the Chicago suburb Joliet. The foursome now consists of drummer Brian Wnukowski, guitarist Todd Johnson, bassist Fred Popolo, and “vocalist” William Akins. The intention of Big’n was to be "loud and tight like a semi-well-oiled machine," according to Wnukowski, because "well-oiled machines are too quiet." Reaching peak mutual hatred, they dissolved in 1997, but reformed in September 2001 at Todd Johnson’s wedding; even so, they’ve only produced a few EPs since then—this is their first album in 28 years. It’s appropriate it was recorded at Electrical Audio, the late Steve Albini’s studio (finished just a month before his death), as you’ll find their punishing sound and anger adjacent to his work (Shellac, Big Black, etc.). Akins’s vocal growlings approximate a combo of current David Yow and later Alain Jourgensen (or less charitably, Bobcat Goldthwaite and Henry Rollins), thundering drums propel each cut, undergirded by a massive bass sound, and knifing guitar shards target your eardrums perfectly. The songs are interspersed with clever interludes alluding to this release being a “Twilight Zone” of noise. "End Comes Too Soon" overflows with stellar examples of Big’n’s relentless noise brutality.
I don’t know if Chris Greene is the best saxophonist in Chicago (he definitely is in Evanston), but he’s gotta be near the top, at least in technical ability. His award-winning trad-jazz combo, together since 2005, is not too shabby as a whole either. Throughout these eight lengthy sashays of instrumental sax-led jazz, Greene’s virtuosity is uncontested, but he also wisely gives his bandmates space to exhibit prowess on their instruments. That includes solo moments from keyboardist Damian Espinosa and bassist Marc Piane; although he should have given the drummer some re: solos, Steve Corley provides stellar drumming and percussion work throughout, propelling and punctuating these educated and at times intricate compositions. Opener “Gentlemen's Breakfast” sets the table with Greene’s mellifluous runs—if you dare to admit this earworm, enjoy the ending—as it fades out, the tempo also slows; a masterful touch. Greene almost gets skronky on “Thumper," but thankfully pulls back from the edge. Even a number as inoffensive as “The Emperor Strikes Back” features a riveting rhythm and such a compelling pace that it stays out of “hotel lobby” territory. Chicagoan Chris Paquette provides additional percussion on "You Don't Know What Love Is (Give Me Your Love)." Produced by Greene and Piane (who also mixed), this is the first ever jazz release for Chicago's longest-running indie rock label, Pravda.
Do you still like electric guitar music? Are you okay with absent or buried, possibly inconsequential vocals? You have come to the right record. The title of this album wins the award for 2024’s most apt album title. There’s an abundance of both drones and songs across these sixteen tracks, and sufficient fairy dust as well. It’s the latest solo effort from Robert Poss, founding member of “the acclaimed wall-of-guitars group Band Of Susans” (description via Bandcamp), whose last record was 1995's ironically entitled Here Comes Success, preceded by 1994’s “greatest hits” compilation Wired For Sound (which devoted one disc to songs with vocals and another to instrumentals). BOS came of age in the same “No Wave NYC” milieu as acts like Sonic Youth, Live Skull, Swans, Suicide, Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham and such. As Poss’s press says, this record is an “eclectic collection” continuing his “obsession with the electric guitar, drones, textures and sonic architecture. The album ranges across disparate styles and genres, from ambient, meditative and experimental instrumental works to Band Of Susans-esque rockers with vocals.” My favorites include the kick-off rocker, “Secrets, Chapter and Verse,” the epic, amorphous, shape-shifting instrumental “Out of the Fairy Dust,” and the drone excursions “Skibbereen Drive” and “Into the Fairy Dust,” the former being more muscular and the latter featuring a subtle drum part. A record that rewards repeated listens.Next entry: CHIRP Radio’s Best of 2024: Peter Buckshot
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