The Washington Post's Top 10 Albums of 2019

Part of the fun of listening to Lana Del Rey’s ethereal lullabies is the sly sense of humor that brings them back down to earth. Tucked inside her dreamscapes about Hollywood and the Hamptons are reminders—and celebrations—of just how empty these places can be. Here, on her sixth album, she fixes her gaze on another place primed for exploration: the art world. Winking and vivid, *Norman F\*\*\*\*\*g Rockwell!* is a conceptual riff on the rules that govern integrity and authenticity from an artist who has made a career out of breaking them. In a 2018 interview with Apple Music\'s Zane Lowe, Del Rey said working with songwriter Jack Antonoff (who produced the album along with Rick Nowels and Andrew Watt) put her in a lighter mood: “He was so *funny*,” she said. Their partnership—as seen on the title track, a study of inflated egos—allowed her to take her subjects less seriously. \"It\'s about this guy who is such a genius artist, but he thinks he’s the shit and he knows it,” she said. \"So often I end up with these creative types. They just go on and on about themselves and I\'m like, \'Yeah, yeah.\' But there’s merit to it also—they are so good.” This paradox becomes a theme on *Rockwell*, a canvas upon which she paints with sincerity and satire and challenges you to spot the difference. (On “The Next Best American Record,” she sings, “We were so obsessed with writing the next best American record/’Cause we were just that good/It was just that good.”) Whether she’s wistfully nostalgic or jaded and detached is up for interpretation—really, everything is. The album’s finale, “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have - but I have it,” is packaged like a confessional—first-person, reflective, sung over simple piano chords—but it’s also flamboyantly cinematic, interweaving references to Sylvia Plath and Slim Aarons with anecdotes from Del Rey\'s own life to make us question, again, what\'s real. When she repeats the phrase “a woman like me,” it feels like a taunt; she’s spent the last decade mixing personas—outcast and pop idol, debutante and witch, pinup girl and poet, sinner and saint—ostensibly in an effort to render them all moot. Here, she suggests something even bolder: that the only thing more dangerous than a complicated woman is one who refuses to give up.

Composer, clarinetist, singer & spiritual jazz soothsayer Angel Bat Dawid descended on Chicago's jazz & improvised music scene just a few years ago. In very short time, the potency, prowess, spirit & charisma of her cosmic musical proselytizing has taken her from relatively unknown improviser to borderline ubiquitous performer in Chicago's avant-garde. On any given night you can find Angel adding aura to ensembles led by Ben LaMar Gay, or Damon Locks, or Jaimie Branch, or Matthew Lux, or even, on a Summer night in 2018, onstage doing a woodwind duo with Roscoe Mitchell. For her recorded debut on International Anthem, The Oracle, we've chosen to release a batch of tracks that Angel created entirely alone – performing, overdubbing & mixing all instruments & voices by her self – recorded using only her cell phone in various locations, from London UK to Cape Town RSA, but primarily from her residency in the attic of the historic Radcliffe Hunter mansion in Bronzeville, Southside, Chicago.

Few songwriters have Bill Callahan’s eye for wry detail: “Like motel curtains, we never really met,” the singer-songwriter declares on “Angela,” using his weather-worn baritone. On his first studio album in five years—an unusually long gap for Callahan—one of the enduring voices in alternative music continues to pare back the extraneous in his sound. A noise musician and mighty mumbler when he broke through under the moniker of Smog in the early 1990s, Callahan now favors minimal indie-folk brushstrokes such as a guitar strum, a sighing pedal steel guitar, or simply barely audible room ambience. The 20 songs here insinuate themselves with bittersweet melodies and a conversational tone, and they’re a strong reminder of Callahan\'s dry sense of humor: “The panic room is now a nursery,” the recently married new father sings on “Son of the Sea.” But if he’s comparatively settled in life, Callahan still knows how to hit an unnerving note with a matter-of-fact ease.

The voice murmuring in our ear, with shaggy-dog and other kinds of stories, is an old friend we're so glad to hear again. Bill’s gentle, spacey take on folk and roots music is like no other; scraps of imagery, melody and instrumentation tumble suddenly together in moments of true human encounters.

The third album from the LA-based master of timeless acoustic folk is an exercise in restraint. Yet despite its minimalism, there\'s emotional heft: While her 2015 album *On Your Own Love Again* followed the passing of her mother, the end of a relationship, and her upheaval from San Francisco to LA, these songs deal with her putting off a return to San Francisco after falling in love with musician Matthew McDermott (who plays piano on the opener here). The nine songs are compact and rooted in Pratt\'s voice, evoking 1960s French yé-yé singers or Nico, as the chamber pop of short numbers like “Fare Thee Well” and “As The World Turns” lulls with gentle flutes and soft strings. It\'s an intimacy that\'s distinct from any of her singer-songwriter peers, veiled behind a sense of old-fashioned mystique.

For her third album Quiet Signs, Jessica Pratt offers up nine spare, beautiful & mysterious songs that feel like the culmination of her work to date. "Fare Thee Well" and "Poly Blue" retain glimmers of On Your Own Love Again's hazy day spells, but delicate arrangements for piano, flute, organ and strings instill a lush, chamber pop vim. The record's B-side, meanwhile, glows with an arresting late-night clarity; the first single, "This Time Around," pairs the Los Angeles artist's intimate vulnerability with a newfound resolve. Ultimately, this confidence is what sets Quiet Signs apart from Pratt's previous work, the journey of an artist stepping out of the darkened wings to take her place as one of this generation's preeminent songwriters.

On April 14, 2018, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter etched her name even deeper into the history books with a transcendent, career-spanning Coachella performance. The show was the first of two headlining sets—the second taking place the following weekend—with Bey making it a point to call out the fact that she was the festival\'s first-ever Black female headliner. The whole thing, in fact, was a year behind schedule: Beyoncé was originally slated to headline in 2017 in the wake of her ultra-personal *Lemonade*, but postponed after announcing she was pregnant. So in 2018, some 10 months after delivering Sir and Rumi, Beyoncé got up on one of the biggest stages in the world, in front of millions collectively freaking out during the livestream, and delivered one of the most memorable live performances in the history of that festival or any other. Her set—presented in full on *HOMECOMING: THE LIVE ALBUM*—which included highlights from the whole of her catalog dating back to her Destiny’s Child days, spoke directly to her moment as historymaker, synthesizing generations (and regions) of Black musicality through the filter of an HBCU-style marching band (members of DrumLine Live, performing here as Queen Bey’s “The Bzzzz”). In the American college tradition, she called the performance “Homecoming,” packing it over the course of nearly 40 songs with the sounds of brass-heavy New Orleans second-line bands (“Single Ladies \[Put a Ring on It\]”); reggaetón (“Mi Gente”); bounce music (“Formation”); Washington, DC’s go-go (“Love On Top”); her native Houston’s chopped and screwed music (“I Been On”); dancehall reggae (“Baby Boy”); and the Dirty South hip-hop she grew up on (“Crazy In Love,” “Diva”). For good measure, there\'s also a duet with her husband (“Deja Vu”), a Destiny\'s Child reunion (“Say My Name,” “Soldier”), and as an added bonus at the end of the album, a backyard-barbecue-ready studio rendition of Maze featuring Frankie Beverly’s “Before I Let Go” that also interpolates Cameo’s “Candy.” You can hear the voice of Malcolm X on “Don\'t Hurt Yourself,” and there\'s an a cappella version of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” known colloquially as the “Black National Anthem”—beyond blockbuster production values and expert musicianship, it remains an earnest tribute to her experience as a young Black woman working to contribute to the rich musical legacy that inspires her. And according to her mother, this was the plan from the beginning: In an Instagram post the week of the first Coachella performance, Tina Knowles wrote that her daughter told her, “I have worked very hard to get to the point where I have a true voice. And at this point in my life and my career I have a responsibility to do what\'s best for the world and not what is most popular.” But the two are far from mutually exclusive, and that performance—and this vital document of it—is proof.

Since his 2013 mixtape *100% Galcher*, Cleveland-born, New York City-based DJ and producer Galcher Lustwerk has been honing a unique strain of hip-house that combines luxurious electro-inspired beats and stream-of-consciousness spoken-word narratives. Like the protagonist in a noirish detective novel, Lustwerk is a guide through this smoky world of hedonistic dance floors and late-night drives. On the bouncy “Cig Angel,” he details an encounter with a potential lover who could “hit the club and go to work in the same clothes.” Tracks like “I See a Dime” and “Another Story” are packed with hypnotic hooks, but the key here is mood, whether Lustwerk is drawing on influences from techno and house past or on jazz and quiet storm R&B.

First, the intel: since the emergence of 100% GALCHER, his first mixtape in 2013, Cleveland-raised, New York-based producer and DJ Galcher Lustwerk has operated in his own lane of low-key hip-house music. Deep, smooth, psychedelic, equally cut for the club, after-hours, night drives, and headphones. The sound was set from the start: a smokey stream-of-consciousness baritone shadow-boxing with beats, informed by funk, rap, rhythm and blues. He runs the label Lustwerk Music, an underground home to friends' work and several of his releases including the collaborative project Studio OST. In 2017 he issued his debut album, Dark Bliss, via White Material, and the following year shared a 20-track sprawl, 200% GALCHER, sharpening his craft. Now, the Information: Galcher Lustwerk’s Ghostly International debut is a clandestine rendezvous of half-dreamt nightlifes and smudged club dossiers, redacted like faded memories. Free associations on life as a recurring visitor, a deep house cover agent swaggering on and off the beat from city to city. As with most sleuthing, there are dead ends, transient (dis)engagements, faked documents, puzzles, and half-truths illuminated by strobe lights and cell phones. As he fills the file on Information, evidence suggests that Lustwerk is a singular and savvy logician. Stylistically, the tracks on Information are certainly in the same realm as Galcher Lustwerk’s previous output, but a noted inclusion of more live drums and jazz saxophone create a new dynamic. As does a pivot in mindset, he explains: “Being from the midwest and with Ghostly putting it out, I think it’s fitting to cull together my most midwest-minded, ‘hookier’ tracks. I wanted to capture a bittersweet quality that I hear in a lot of other Cleveland producers.” “Cig Angel” bubbles to life after dark, with a skipped out drum break bouncing through signature murky melodies and a hazy incognito narrative; the gumshoe ricochets late after a chance encounter, bailing to dust for prints at the penthouse. Similarly, on “Another Story,” a tight drum groove with reverberated claps pace through hovering clusters of major/minor synth structures. Every P.I. is due their own diligence, and here we see Galcher Lustwerk fronting lyrically, casting off idiosyncratic crows as he glides through the shimmering gutters of the city at night. “I See a Dime” bounds off at a chase sequence pace, with bongos and tightly wound high hats, syncopated lyrics and scratchy voicemail memos glinting in an out of focus, synth saws and clipped house melodies casting the sequence in hard lighting and deep shadows. One thing is clear, straight from the man himself, “Information doesn’t equal knowledge, though we may be getting facts, the truth may not be clear.” He isn’t as interested in decoding reality as he is playing with it, letting fragmented memories inform his fiction, fusing the exaggeration of rap with the suspended belief of dance music. Any uncertainty aside, on Information, Galcher Lustwerk is characteristically and conspicuously on point.

Vinyl, CD, and cassette available at mizmor(dot)bigcartel(dot)com (link in side panel). -------------------------- "Cairn" is an emotional exploration of the absurdity of life - man's constant search for meaning in a chaotic universe devoid of an ultimate purpose. This absurd premise prompts the individual to choose between a leap of faith into an ultimate purpose, suicide, or acceptance of reality. "Cairn" asserts that there is but one viable option, acceptance, and that one must build monuments to the other two as guide posts forbidding return. It declares that one must revolt and live in the present face of this absurdity and create in enjoyment the meaning necessary for life. From A.L.N.: ""Cairn" clocks in at just under one hour of new original music. I recorded the album over the course of three months in my home studio. I took the long way, sparing no expense or detail in my recording. I sought to take the project to a new territory tonally, starting with my education. I won't get into too much detail lest I bore the majority of you, so I will leave it simple: this is the highest resolution recording of the most thoroughly written and rehearsed Mizmor material there's ever been. I was purposefully the pickiest I've ever been with myself at all stages of this album's production and coming through the other side, I'm extremely happy with the result. I'm incredibly honored and thrilled to again have worked with Sonny DiPerri and Adam Gonsalves). Together, the three of us crafted the sound of "Yodh" and have now taken "Cairn" well beyond the prior's sonic limits. I am also floored by the final product of the extremely personal commissioned painting by Mariusz Lewandowski. Continuing in the vein of the polish surrealist master, Beksinski, Lewandowski has beautifully interpreted the theme's of "Cairn" into his painting "Time Immemorial," which sprawls to grace both covers of the album."