Great Albums from 2019 You Might Have Missed

Despite any of Billboard’s claims to the contrary, it is nearly impossible to say who defined the past year (let alone the decade) in music. Between Lil Nas X, Billie Eilish, Weyes Blood, and Tyler, the Creator, 2019’s pop music gave space to increasingly varied, increasingly weird musical acts. Of course, it would be a Herculean task to address all of this music in depth, so we have instead opted to write about some of the releases that haven’t received quite the same coverage as those mentioned above. These are all fantastic albums released by fantastic-but-largely-unheralded artists, but please don’t expect us to rank them.

The Callous Daoboys – Die On Mars

It is hard to, as a band playing “heavy” music, recognize the silliness inherent to playing “heavy” music. Spitting and screaming into the mic, bashing drums and mangling guitars until they squeak: the elements of “heavy” music that give it appeal over, say, smooth jazz are the same elements that require the suspension of gallons of disbelief. Mathcore especially, with its circuitous rhythms and vacillations between sweet singsong and spittle-spewing shrieks, is one of the silliest genres of them all. Instead of trying to hide this absurdity behind aggression and technicality, The Callous Daoboys embrace it wholeheartedly.

Die On Mars begins with a huge intake of breath before vocalist Carson Pace unloads: “Could it be any more obvious? / I’m digging at wounds, stretching at seams,” revealing the entire album’s pretext: self-aware self-flagellation that seemingly makes space for the entire range of human emotion. At the album’s end, “Die on Mars (Sunspot)” reworks bitterness (“I used to think I would hate myself enough to write something memorable”) to make space for gratitude (“You make me feel like I could love myself / You could give me the whole world tomorrow / I never said you were required to / I never wanted to take up all your time”), unveiling a world of fervor in the meantime.

The Callous Daoboys play with a shocking combination of passion and precision that matches and amplifies Carson Pace’s incisive vocals (not that you’d get that impression from “You know we’ll never headline a show you go to” from “Contrail Crucifix”), but they usually let the calamity of their music speak for itself.

-Lucas Heinzerling

Charles Wesley Godwin – Seneca

The history of West Virginia is unfortunately a history of loss—union members gunned down by government forces, miners killed in underground explosions, countless young men taken from us too early in the line of duty. Seneca is a sparce country album steeped in this history of loss, with Charles Wesley Godwin as its haunting narrator. His voice is perfect for the role; it's midway between a howl at the moon and a dead man's moan, tailor-made for a song like "Coal Country," a song that'll make anyone from the "Wild and Wonderful" state weep. It cuts at the tragedy of the West Virgina in blunt detail: "It put a roof over my head / And the armor on the tanks in Normandy" and "Now we don't need tokens to a company store / That's what government stamps and codeine's for." This kind of raw honesty turns sweet when he writes about the love his grandfather has for his now-deceased wife in "Seneca Creek," or from the perspective of a miner's ghost singing to his widow on "Sorry for the Wait." But the purpose of this album is not to wallow in a nostalgic malaise, drinking oneself into a stupor at the Wheeling Island Casino—Godwin has far too much respect and genuine love for the land and the people of West Virginia to write something like that. "Here in Eden" the Dylan-esque album closer, remains hopeful and defiant: "I don't mind placing bets / On the dirt beneath my feet," and later, "I'm building here in Eden."

-Collin Spangler

Daisy The Great – I’m Not Getting Any Taller

Daisy The Great traffic in affability. I’m Not Getting Any Taller, the duo’s debut LP, presents Kelley Nicole Dugan and Mina Walker in all their openness and subtlety. Nothing here is exceedingly unexpected, but every note is steeped in a sweetness that often belies—or emphasizes—the biting irony and humor of the lyrics. Daisy The Great lay out their mission statement clearly enough on the opener, “IDKW” (which stands for I don’t know why, as in “I don’t know why I kissed you in the first place”), a bite-sized tirade against a former partner’s many failings that never lets its regret cloud the duo’s humor (nor their knack for melody). From there, the album runs through 30 minutes of infatuation, resentment, and open heartedness whose delicacy is matched only by its awareness. “Dips” wades in the impermanence and beauty of a new love while “Take My Time” hones the bite of “IDKW”; “Seasoned” and “Tired of Me” approach self-effacement with startling lucidity. None of these topics are new ground for pop music, but I can think of few artists approaching those topics with the clarity, wit, and finesse that Daisy The Great seem to dole out effortlessly.

-Lucas Heinzerling

Jambinai – ONDA

JAMBINAI’s music doesn’t quite sound like anything else out there, and that isn’t just because of their incorporation of traditional Korean folk instruments. The strings and woodwinds that take part in each track’s unfolding don’t simply add another layer atop post-metal arrangements; the arrangements themselves are visceral and exciting and different. JAMBINAI tiptoe with ease between the aggressive and the delicate, somehow maintaining the jolt of every chugging guitar line and the beauty of every one of singer Bomi Kim’s melodies. “Square Wave,” for example, relies on intricate interplay among electrical and folk instruments, continually cresting and falling just like its titular wave; Kim’s vocals repeat like a mantra over just about every combination of instruments imaginable in a metal song, losing none of their power in the process. On “Sun. Tears. Red.”, gorgeously haunting harmonies give way to explosions of haegeum and distortion—as the band alternates between the two, the result feels seamless, but never mindless. Where post-rock often unfurls and crescendos at the price of imaginative and exciting songwriting, it is refreshing to hear a band so wholly invested in the process of that unwinding rather than simply trying to achieve that generic trope. The songs on ONDA are so consistently unexpected, powerful, and dazzling that the result feels like a well-earned reward rather than a tiresome tedium.

-Lucas Heinzerling

KOKOKO! – Fongola

On Fongola, KOKOKO! bring the beautiful and the abrasive into constant conversation with each other. Synths wash over staccato guitars and chimes as pots and engine parts become essential components of the Congolese collective’s house music.  These songs constantly deconstruct themselves, warping and shifting without ever losing sight of their propulsive and often-infectious rhythms. Early highlight “Buka Dansa,” for example, wraps its simple, wavelike synths around pressing pulses and frenetic vocals, making room for a guitar (or something that sounds like a guitar) to take center stage—an act of openness in the hope of getting the entire room to move. Later, on “Kitoko,” KOKOKO! reach a perfect harmony between Makara Bianko’s assertive vocals and the band’s repetitive, almost hypnotizing instrumentals. The song itself feels like a dialogue, representing the best parts of Fongola in its constantly evolving ensemble of xylophones and drums and synths and whatever else KOKOKO! decide to throw into the mix.

Fongola creates plenty of space for KOKOKO! to wander, but they somehow never stray. “It does not escape the notice of the Congolese people,” the band’s website reads, “that the very resources which have fueled much of the most prosperous countries’ industrial and technological progress…are the root cause of their own country’s suffering.” Repurposing the technology surrounding them to create deeply moving (in all senses of the word) music, KOKOKO! start a conversation that begs to be continued.

-Lucas Heinzerling

SOUL GLO – THE N***A IN ME IS ME

THE N***A IN ME IS ME is political music, but reducing the album to its politics would rob it of so much of its value. The nine songs here careen along genre lines and sandwich heart-wrenching poetry between whiplash-inducing breakdowns; SOUL GLO’s vocalist Pierce Jordan seemingly crams a million syllables into each of their sentences and still manages to make every word so urgent, so gripping that it would be more painful to turn away than it is to listen. SOUL GLO’s world is collapsing around them—in Jordan’s own words, “the name of who murdered Korryn Gaines still hasn’t seemed to make it out” (from “21”); “But when will you look up from your feet as you’re crossing the street / Into oncoming traffic just to keep from passing me?” (from “32)—and their music turns this collapse into a brilliant and terrifying document of human pain, protest, and persistence. An unrelenting polemic against an America that packages and sells trauma for the profit of billionaires, THE N***A IN ME IS ME feels at once painstaking and automatic, meticulous in its critiques as it is pressing in its delivery. This is quite possibly the most vital hardcore ever recorded—wounds, poetry, and all.

-Lucas Heinzerling

Tami T – High Pitched and Moist

High Pitched and Moist moves the interiority of bedroom pop and the inwardness of life as a trans woman to the exterior of the dance floor. Nowhere else will you find a life-affirming club anthem like "Princess," a self-aware song that declares "I'm allowed to define what a princess is." However, just like the work of many trans artists, Tami T's debut album is far from a one-note celebration. Moments like "So Afraid," the song immediately following “Princess,” where Tami sings of her fear of being "beat up again" by cis men, and "Stay Where You Are," a song about Tami and a group of friends coming to comfort a friend who just ended a queer relationship that turned abusive ("Try to remember how she treated you bad / And that violence is not exclusive to straight relationships") help to ground High Pitched and Moist in a complicated and therefore true depiction of humanity and queerness. Tami T suggests we push through this complication by wearing our inner tiara proudly, crying on the dance floor, and embracing our queer friends. Here, she makes an excellent case.

-Collin Spangler