I get to take a break from Music Discourse this week as it is September roundup time! Which is good, because it was quite the slog in the long hangover of Ella Langley chart discourse. I think I said most of what I wanted to last week, but I will quickly say that on the one chart that I watch most closely—the GXU (Global 200 Excluding US—Langley has probably peaked: she fell back down to #39 this week after hitting a high of #33. I will feature the current #1 in the lead mix spot this week! For what it’s worth, Andrew Unterberger wrote the most comprehensive piece to date on the basics of the “Choosin’ Texas” popularity cascade—what I referred to last week as a “clinically descriptive account of popularity.”
Here’s September’s best ‘n’ rest!
11 Songs I Heard in September (unranked)
Masha Kondratenko: Tip z Reitarskai (Guy from Reitarska)
10 Albums I Heard in September (lightly ranked)
300SkullsAndCounting & Jenny Sparks: THIS IS SPA TOWN!
Holly Boson says “It sounds like BrokeNCYDE, feels like Licensed To Ill, and is shaping up to be my album of the year sorry” (she also mentioned The Streets). The only question is whether I count this as a proper album or put it on the EPs list—it does not meet the Beatles Second Album rule (10 tracks in 26 minutes—it’s 9 in 22, with two skits). I like the way it looks amidst the EPs; maybe I’ll give it the silver medal to North West’s so far unchallenged gold.
Malcriada: Teoría de Conspiración EP
I guess being on the EP list is an honor—this year I think my EPs list is more interesting than my albums list (most of the EPs would be circa third place on my albums list). Have flirted with just combining the two, but prefer to have two different ways to think about albums. This one is admittedly a little slight and “proof of concept,” from the producers who gave the Dr. Frankenstein lightning jolt to Niños Gôticos’ “Six Seven” earlier this year. Here they use the electricity in a less, er, striking way, like a Van de Graaff generator.
Cain Culto: Culto
A tour de force that mixes folk and country with Culto’s rapid-fire rapping—sumptuous, fun, bilingual, gay, could have galvanized Discourse by calling itself COWBOY CULTO. Should get all available hype allotted to a post-A-pop global event that the whole office can, if not agree on, at least at some point all wonder who the hell that guy at the Super Bowl was.Haku.: 世界が変わる時 [Sekai ga Kawaru Toki / When the World Changes]
Debut album from Japanese rock group that gets consistent thumbs up from Mark Sinker. The official album-length big thumbs up from me, rock album of the year easy.
Gilla Band: Pugnello
No shame in being the second-best (non-Japanese) rock album of the year, I guess. The Irish noisy-not-noise band blew me away on first listen but sort of mellowed afterward, very similar to what I experienced with Squid a few years ago.
Tinashe: Popstar
Can’t tell how much I like this one, it works qua album in a way that surprised me, until I remembered that’s exactly what I thought about 333 in 2021 and Aquarius in 2014. I’d say I’ve been a day one Tinashe fan, but it goes back further than I thought—this week I learned that Tinashe is the singer in Bob Dylan’s movie Masked & Anonymous who served as the highlight of Roger Ebert’s famously nasty half-star review (“If I had been asked to serve as consultant on this picture, my advice would have amounted to three words: more Tinashe Kachingwe”).
AKRIILA: lucy miró al mundo y notó que está girando
Another week, another polite mid-7 score in Pitchfork for avant Latin pop—third-best non-Japanese alt-rock album of the year, maybe? I couldn’t disagree more with this bit from the Pitchfork review, though: “AKRIILA’s copious Auto-Tune use starts to feel emotionally limiting and exhausted by the album’s end.” Skill issue!
Baby Queen: I Hope You Don’t Remember Me
“What if Taylor Swift could write songs that were not Taylor Swift songs” is something you could probably throw at any non-Taylor Swift singer-songwriter, which is to say hundreds if not thousands of artists, but the constantly “bubbling over”—never actually bubbling over—Baby Queen brings it to mind more than most, is writerly within a narrow range and ingenious about the limitations in a similar way but without obsessively tracing the same melodic ruts. She keeps the sounds pristine and interesting, and seems to care a lot about not boring us by forgoing a chorus. Also: a guitar solo after the bridge in opener “Abigail”!
Kurena Ishikawa: Garden
Look, I don’t know what to tell you, sometimes I just want some smooth vocal jazz (not Smooth Jazz with vocals).
Kea Mandela: s/t EP
South African rapper with gqom leanings just pips the “firecracker EP of the month” slot from Brazilian funk Esperanza Spalding STER, whose Prelúdio is very good but also a few tracks shorter. South Africa and Brazil continue their war for the plurality of my regional attention, even with their under-the-radar crossover attempts.
1. Karol G, Judeline, rusowsky
Colombia/Spain
So hey, number one song in the world! You didn’t think I was actually going to say very much about it, did you? It’s good. And it’s even gotten inside the top ten in the US, which is no mean feat for a global Spanish-language smash not by Bad Bunny.
2. CHAII: Call Me on My Cellular
Iran-New Zealand
3. Manaka: Ba Ba Ba
Japan
Bum ba-da bum’s and ba ba ba’s from New Zealand and Japan, respectively, the percussive bounce of the nonsense syllables being the highlight of the first track and more integrated into Manaka’s relentless, recessive rapping.
4. Rambo Goyard: B.M.S. (By My Side)
France
More bouyon speed-up in French pop, works nicely against minimal R&B vocal drone. No one tell Drake about this.
5. GAZAL: Eat D!rt
Lebanon-Australia
A command to eat dirt that overshoots braggadocio and hits pica.
6. HL NO BEAT, MC Felipiin 011, Mc Chavão do Pira: Mtg da Galinha
Brazil
You think I won’t put a just OK funk track on a mix only because it has cartoon chicken sounds for hard clave? It’s like you don’t know me at all.
7. Vera Fischer Era Clubber: Buceta Gay
Brazil
Cheap electro snark from a Brazilian indie outfit with genderqueer electroclash sloganeering and plenty of sprechgesang, which it turns out I can stand better in Portuguese (though not for a whole album).
8. India Shawn: ‘Til Infinity
US
Pleasant pop shuffle that sounds a bit out of step with the current trend toward softer hooks and more opaque easy listening surroundings, could have been a bigger hit a decade ago.
9. Can Demir: Sama Sama
Turkey-US
10. Haifa Wehbe: Seebo Seebo
Lebanon
Couldn’t resist putting two MENAT pop songs with repetitive names back to back, though the first one is listed as both “Sama Sama” and just “Sama” on YouTube. Latin-inflected Lebanese pop song “Seebo Seebo” is more forceful with its echo.
11. Candura: Você
Brazil-Norway
12. Flavia Coelho, Slân Pottok: En Equilibre
Brazil-France/DRC-US-France
Two Brazilian-informed cosmo-pop songs, smooth tropicalia from Norway and a good marimba (maybe kalimba?) driven chorus from France.
13. Yukimi f. Dina Ögon: Vann du livet?
Sweden
Yukimi from Little Dragon teams up with Swedish band Dina Ögon, whose pretty album I unceremoniously shoved down into my B-list section of my yearly albums, and reminds me that she is Swedish, a fact I constantly forget.
14. Caroline Rose: Calm
US
15. Hannah Cole: MMA
US
16. Molly Payton: Subaru
Australia
Three songs to fill the Anglo indie quota for the month. My favorite is Caroline Rose’s “Calm,” where she anxiously asserts how calm she is, lying on the couch in a way that sounds twitchy. “MMA” is equally gauzy and sludgy, post-windowpane indie emerging from what until recently might have been mush. Molly Payton uses the sort of affected vocal warble that I actually quite liked in Alyssa Grace’s much-maligned “Bloodstream”—a song that, like Katseye’s “Internet Girl,” I’ve heard a lot this year and might make my song lists without ever appearing on a mix.
17. Florence Sinclair: Habitual Line Stepper and the Golden Dawn
UK
Butterfly meme for whether this is hauntology for millennial teenpop, “Genie in a Bottle” piano figure made into a watery little loop.
18. Djknator, Mastende Landlord, Afrika.ww, Priddy DJ: Woza Maw’funa
South Africa
A gqom number that doesn’t go fully pop amalgam but does have some notably bright vocals.
19. Àbáse, Kacsó Hanga: Búsulni Nem Tudtam / Learning Sorrow
Hungary
No idea why it took me so many years to start including Hungarian pop in my weekly testing, but this song led to a few new playlists, including a weekly curated one that’s been around for a decade. Not sure how closely pop music follows the cultural ebb of fascism, but if that is the case, maybe there will be a flood of good Hungarian pop in the next few years.
20. Angelica: Ahi, che giornata!
Italy
Light ABBA-esque disco pop from Italy.
21. Marit Larsen: At the End of Every Story
Norway
A lovely song in English from Marit Larsen, who has mostly been making Norwegian music in the past few years, but on this one returns to a sound similar to her sunny, quiet second album, The Chase.
That’s it! Until next time, definitely listen to Marit Larsen’s first album if you haven’t (Under the Surface), but if you have time, try the second one.
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from Caroline Rose: Calm