Impossible to Verify: The 2015 Top 8

About this time last year, struggling amid a what-to-play-next crisis, I impulsively embarked on a plan to solve that issue by streaming every album on WXPN's "Top 885" all-time countdown, bottom to top. With the exception of a few handfuls of unavailable titles, and granting myself the option to play live albums, I tackled more than 400 of them this year, and I'm somewhere in the mid-300s now.

Given the scope of the project -- and the fact that the list itself was published in 2005 and so by definition pinned me back a full decade at least -- I didn't leave my ears a whole lot of time for new music discovery in 2015, and find myself even less familiar than usual with the contemporary year-end lists you see this time of year.

With a couple of exceptions I was tempted to listen to new stuff mainly in cases where I had at least some familiarity with the artist going in, and so as I review my favorites they're about as Dad Rock as ever. As I can't recommend 10, please enjoy selections from my top eight 2015 releases.

Robert Foster SONGS TO PLAY
The elderly singer of the 80s band the Go-Betweens comes off as an elegant Aussie Lou Reed jangle-rocker. Can't find an embeddable version of "Learn to Burn" but that's worth a listen too.



Frank Turner: POSITIVE SONGS FOR NEGATIVE PEOPLE
There's no denying Frank Turner knows how to write a rousing song, and this collection of 'em is an improvement on his last one but its getting to the point that I don't get what he's so stirred up about anymore. The weather? It's about half the record.

I detect Frank's "core" punk fanbase is dismayed at his increasingly listenable output -- writing lyrics to a song called "Get Better" all over his old album covers I think sends a message too -- but I'm looking forward to the day he's ready to truly abandon his roots, fuse that fist-pumping energy with some soul; swap out the barrelhouse pianny for a hammond organ, mandolins for horns, etc. etc. Still, this one fires you up!



The Front Bottoms: BACK ON TOP
Low-fi, funny-sad garage band with an incredibly expressive singer who manages to strain against the hopelessness at the heart of one catchy tune after another.



Franz Ferdinand Sparks: FFS
Churning out underappreciated, theatrical weirdness for 40 years, Sparks gets a jolt of new energy from younger collaborator Franz Ferdinand, themselves a bit of a quirky outfit I also like. A "pick any song" kinda record.



Joe Jackson: FAST FORWARD
Joe's first "new" record in seven years is actually a double-album recorded with four different bands in four different cities. So it's literally all over the place, but as well executed, well arranged, and well played as ever, and several are lyrically interesting particularly on the ruminative title track. I particularly the New York and New Orleans sides, the latter producing the Beethoven-inspired selection below. I'm ready to start a campaign to get Joe into the rock Hall of Fame.




Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds: CHASING YESTERDAY
I admire the way the classic-rock ripoffs on this album are so plainly in sight. The very first song begins "There's something in the way she moves," while the one below borrows the melody and a lyric from David Essex's "Rock On." Other song titles include "In the Heat of the Moment" and "When the Song Remains the Same." About half of this album is great, and the other half isn't, but  that was enough for me this year.




J.D. McPherson: LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL
This is the only guy on this list who was completely new to me this year, and I don't remember how I first encountered him, but this is fun stuff, 50s roots rock and a great singer with a dirty -- but not filthy -- edge.


Josh Ritter: SERMON ON THE ROCKS
Reflective, wordy, literate and sometimes funny, Josh Ritter captures both the golden light and chilling shadows of Autumn. There's some fire-and-brimstone -- opener "Birds of the Meadow" is creepy and "Henrietta, Indiana" is bleak -- but the same themes of religion and small-town folk are tackled joyously on "Getting Ready to Get Down," and "Cumberland" later on in the record, and all of it is interesting, listenable and evocative.

Here's a little more:

A Little Rockin' Record I Want My Jockey to Play

While lots of my childhood friends intended to be musicians, some even succeeded, my secret desire was to DJ. Pat St. John, who worked afternoons on my beloved WPLJ, was about as cool as they came: Great voice, with what I realized later was a Michigan accent, and even within the tight confines of PLJ's "AOR" format, he always made you feel as though you were hearing just what he wanted to play.

The WPLJ I knew and loved has been dead for more than 30 years but I was pleasantly surprised to come across Pat doing weekend shifts on CBS-FM, the erstwhile "oldies" station.

That gig too ended just recently, as word came that St. John was headed to California to be a full-time grandfather -- and continue a part-time satellite radio show from a home studio. So while most of New York is (rightly) mourning the end of Vin Scelsa's career, here's a little shout-out to Pat St. John.

St. John's departure by the way accompanied an estate sale I didn't attend, perhaps luckily, because I probably would have bid my retirement account for the Joe Jackson gold record pictured here. Pat's final show on CBS, which I also missed, was said to have concluded with the extended version of his clever WPLJ "montages" which used bits of songs to tell a musical story and promote the station and its jocks. I loved to hear these come around as much as any single song, and in their own way taught me how much fun music can be. If these don't make you smile I don't know what will (the below two hosted by Pat's colleague Carol Miller, whom I wrote about here).

Thanks a lot, Pat. You were great.

You Can Only Hope to Hear Me

Joe Jackson's A CURE FOR GRAVITY ends where the musician's career begins: Having established an aggressive-but-accessible new wave sound and a snotty persona to accompany it. The year was 1979.

Though I might not have been able to express it this way at the time, it was clear that the attitude even then was thick with bluster and irony. Joe Jackson didn't really look sharp: He was a skinny, balding geek desperate to convince himself of his sharpness. You gotta look sharp, he said, as though looking in a mirror. The same sentiment is more directly confessed --  "I wash my hair and kid myself I look real smooth" -- in the snarky "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" from the same album.

As a pissed-off, pimply 13-year-old it resonated deeply. Here was a loser I could get behind. Tight, tuneful, energetic. Sharp.

A CURE FOR GRAVITY -- the book is 15 years old, but I read it only recently -- documents how Joe got there, from piano lessons as a sickly child in the rugged port city of Portsmouth to his pursuit of a degree (in percussion) at the Royal Academy of Music in London where his classmates included a young Annie Lennox. In between, Joe (then an aspiring composer going by his given name of David) performed in a variety of styles, from piano bars to lounge acts, school jazz bands, a fringe theater group, and a struggling rock band, Edward Bear, which given the right breaks just might have consigned the artist to a career like Greg Hawkes of the Cars: the quirky, odd-looking keyboard player and nobody's idea of a front man.

This eclectic education helps to explain the frequent shifts in styles Joe would pursue following establishment of the "Look Sharp" sound of his beloved first two-and-a-half records (film scores, baroque pop, Latin, swing, jazz etc). At the time of this book he was pushing SYMPHONY No. 1, which I still haven't gotten around to yet but in my opinion most of what Joe has tried he's succeeded at: And not entirely because he's a pissed off guy determined to prove it but because he deeply believes in the power of music. The book is very candid and at times quite funny: Joe doesn't pull a lot of punches and writes eloquently, whether he's debating performance vs. art, recalling the random violence of the 70s club scene in depressed England, or discussing doomed relationships including a nightmarish first marriage.

I checked a box on the bucket list when Joe Jackson came to New York a few years back to support his recent collection of Duke Ellington interpretations. Longtime bassman Graham Maby was not there (dervishy percussionist Sue Hadjoupos from the NIGHT AND DAY group was) but the band otherwise was outstanding, highlighting Joe's skill as an arranger. The below video (from Paris about a month later) was about the same show we got. Dig the tuba-banjo-accordion reworking of "Is She Really Going Out With Him" at 1:34ish but really the whole show is great if you got the (1-2-3-4!) time.