The Best Albums of 2019
Anxious Sound
10
Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?
Deerhunter
10-Song LP
Released January 18 on 4AD
Favorite tracks: Death in Midsummer, What Happens to People?, Detournement, Tarnung, Plains, Nocturne
09
I Have to Feed Larry’s Hawk
Tim Presley’s White Fence
14-Song 2xLP
Released January 25 on Drag City
Favorite tracks: I Have to Feed Larry's Hawk, Phone, I Love You, Lorelei, I Can Dream You, I Saw Snow Today, Indisposed
08
No Passion All Technique
Protomartyr
17-Song LP Reissue
Released May 3 on Domino
Favorite tracks: In My Sphere, Hot Wheel City, 3 Swallows, Ypsilanti, How He Lived After He Died, Wine of Ape
07
The Smithsonian Folkways Collection
Pete Seeger
137-Song Collection
Released May 3 on Smithsonian Folkways
Favorite tracks: Down in the Valley, Joe Hill, Blue Mountain Lake, Shenandoah, Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream, The Water is Wide
06
Reward
Cate Le Bon
10-Song LP
Released May 24 on Mexican Summer
Favorite tracks: Miami, Daylight Matters, Home to You, Magnificent Gestures, Meet the Man
05
Here It Comes Again
Cate Le Bon & Group Listening
5-Song EP
Released November 11 on Mexican Summer
Favorite tracks: The Light, Here It Comes Again (feat. Ed Dowie), Sad Nudes, Miami, Magnificent Gestures (feat. Ed Dowie)
04
Drone Studies
Clarice Jensen
2-Song EP
Released September 6 on Geographic North
Favorite tracks: The Organ That Made You Bleed, One Bee
02
1982
The Fall
72-Song Collection
Released October 25 on Cherry Red
Favorite tracks: Fortress/Deer Park, Winter (Hostel-Maxi), Winter 2, Iceland, Impression of J. Temperance (Live, Mainstreet, Auckland, New Zealand, 21 August 1982), Hip Priest (Live, Mainstreet, Auckland, New Zealand, 21 August 1982), English Scheme (Live, Mainstreet, Auckland, New Zealand, 21 August 1982)
01
Giving Birth to Thunder
Indian Summer
10-Song LP
Released September 13 on Numero Group
Favorite tracks: Aren't You, Angel?, mm., Woolworm, Reflections on Milkweed, Truman, Orchard
Indian Summer was a punk/hardcore band from Oakland, California, composed of brothers Adam Nanaa (guitar, vocals) and Seth Nanaa (bass, vocals), Eyad Kaileh (drums), and Marc Bianchi (guitar). The quartet was active for only one year, between 1993 and 1994; a brief existence, indeed, but enough time for the band to create some of the most original and influential music of its time to emerge from the DIY community.
Independent archivists Numero Group were hip to this, and in 2019, they released Giving Birth To Thunder, an LP version of the band's ten-song discography. The collection reintroduces listeners to the band's impassioned slow-burn sound, cultivated in the early-90s Bay Area DIY scene but also uniquely jazz-oriented. (Seth went on to play in a free-jazz outfit influenced by John Coltrane's improvisational 1966 record Meditations.)
I was lucky to pick up a copy of the band's self-titled 7", of which only a few hundred copies were pressed, at a show in 1994. The music on that piece of vinyl was unforgettable from the first spin. Not only was it the first time I heard Bessie Smith — whose brokenhearted pleadings, sampled from an old, crackling recording, aptly prefix the record's first and third songs, “Aren't You, Angel?” and “Angry Son” (titled “Woolworm” on Giving Birth To Thunder) — it also forever broadened the scope of what music could express and changed my perception of what punk and hardcore music could sound like.
Attempting to characterize the music he made with Indian Summer for episode 101 of the Washed Up Emo podcast, Seth Nanaa remarked, "We didn't sound like anybody." A quarter-century later, and after countless attempts by lesser indie bands to emulate their formula, Giving Birth To Thunder proves they still don't.
