High Five Tuesday - 1/7/20 - Top 5 Albums of 2019 (Patreon)

I hope your 2020 is doing well. I am bouncing back from a tough holiday but getting excited about all the great projects ahead. The variety show in December was incredible. It was the best party we've ever thrown. Thanks to everyone who came out to make it a big success. We are going to be hitting the road again in just a few months so I plan on soaking up the downtime right now. I hope you will join along as we continue to spread this mess across the US. These are the albums that I enjoyed the most last year.

• Pony by Orville Peck - I found out about Orville from Tom Sexton of The Trillbillies. When we pulled into Raleigh on the Hellfire tour it was the first night the Sam's were staying with us. As soon as we unpacked I busted out the dab rig and got all the tokers ripped. We were all thoroughly obliterated, and laying around on the sofas like we'd been shot, quietly staring at phones, and Tom puts on "Dead Of Night". It sounded slower than it ever has since, just hanging in the air, and now I've started doing a vinyasa flow yoga routine to stretch after the car ride. Bryan, who went for a walk when we arrived, returns to the house, surveys the room, and says, "It looks like a fucking opium den in here."
  
  That's how I found out about Orville. Ever since I've been hooked and our whole family loves him. We sprinted through Zilker Park in Austin to catch his performance at ACL in time. He was larger than life and a real card, a true entertainer. The songs are about love, sin, loss, and all the other things that make country music great. His voice is an instant classic and a joy to sing along with. Highly recommend the whole album.
  

• Ho99o9 - Cyber Warfare - Everything about this project is incredible. The visuals, the mash-up of hardcore, horror, rap, and nu-metal. It's a great album for doing battle. I love all the energy and excitement packed into every moment of every song. It's a brutal analog assault with the most advanced digital weaponry.

• Anak Ko - Jay Som - If you saw us live late in the year you probably saw me in my Anak Ko sweatshirt. It was purchased when I pre-ordered the album because I consider her to be a master of chillness. She is also an artist that I am dying to see live, so I was listening to this before it was on streaming. My family loves to couch surf all day or lazy all morning long, and this album is the perfect background to whipping up leftovers to take back to bed. There are some great singalong choruses, killer riffs, and some haunting tunes as well. Overall it's a brilliant album that you can play on shuffle without skipping. 

• Denzel Curry - Zuu - Miami has such an incredibly rich history in hip-hop, but like the South in general, it mostly gets brushed over for the coasts when it comes to telling the history. If you haven't heard the podcast series Mogul, they did an incredibly good job telling some of the 2 Live Crew story. In my opinion, Zuu as an album is as big for Miami as Astroworld is to Houston. They're both unique collection of songs that sound like a mashup of the last few decades of the musical history of their city. The name drops in Zuu are legends in Miami, and the guest's spots are people from there. It's a big statement of loudness and love for a place that I can feel in these songs. 

• Titanic Rising by Weyes Blood - Incredible lyricism and a wondrous voice.  I can't believe it took this long for me to find out about Weyes Blood. This might be my favorite album of the year. It's truly marvelous. The songs are so expansive, they fill up the whole room with intensity and peace. Lyrics like "No one's ever gonna give you a trophy // For all the pain and the things you've been through // No one knows but you" from the song Mirror Forever are sung in a way that rides the line of sardonic and loving. It's forgiving the other person for making mistakes because we are all doing it, and ultimately we must forgive ourselves as well. There is a lot of time on this album spent cleansing the past of negative feelings while also offering a feeling of comfort about anything that comes your way in the future. Great for getting lost in.

If you like what you read here and you haven’t seen all of my High Five posts they can be found here.

Peace,

Brett