OSHKOSH - Tim Franz was putting ceramic tile down on his kitchen floor when he got the call. He was six months into his job as Oshkosh fire chief, and a boxcar loaded with over 140,000 pounds of sodium hydrosulfite had caught fire. Soon he was helping to facilitate the evacuation of a large swatch of Oshkosh south of 20th Avenue,an area which included his own home.
The year is wrapping up, and you know what that means — eggnog, fireworks and an insane amount of year-end retrospectives on everything including movies, music and books. 2017 saw an insane amount of music released from everyone — up-and-comer Lil Yachty, groundbreaking hits from Taylor Swift (although the jury is still out on that one) and Nashville juggernaut Chris Stapleton (who actually released two).
Miguel's newest album might have the most on-the-nose title possible. War & Leisure, the singer's fourth album, is, at its core, a straight R&B record — sex and desire run throughout. The album's title is telling, however, in that the lust in the album's core is tempered by anxiety and a sense of doom.
2017 is a good year for country music. Releases from Jason Isbell, Margo Price and others have continued the push toward a more "authentic" country music by shunning the CMT sound of Bud Light commercials and NASCAR tracks. Country giant Chris Stapleton made waves earlier this year with From a Room: Volume 1, the follow-up to his debut Traveller and a stellar album in its own right.
Sleigh Bells is a band defined, at its best, by noise. If the group's debut, Treats, was even slightly more loud and dissonant, it would have likely been forced to shed any pretense at pop. How it ended up, however, was sweetly cacophonous, a blending of what sounded like guitar strings going through a blender and Alexis Krauss' manic chants.
Taylor Swift exists at the crossroads of pop culture. New tracks climb the charts so fast they leave skid marks, but her personal life has been the focus of continued scrutiny, unwarranted besides the fact that Swift positions it at the forefront of her musical career. She's America's sweetheart, and a lot of people hate her.
Ty Dolla $ign has fallen into the trap that many hip-hop artists have fallen into. His singles, such as “Love U Better” and “Blasé,” are much more intriguing than the full projects surrounding them. The crooner’s first full album, Free TC, was kind of weak, kind of fun and definitely not enough to break out of the barrage of hip-hop that listeners get on a daily basis.
There’s no real way to write this review without sounding like that old guy who lives down the street and won’t consider anything post-Little Feat, so let’s just get to it: The new Weezer album is so polished and poppy that it is ultimately impossible to give it a good or bad rating. Pacific Daydream exists not in an aggressive way, not in a violent way, but in a way that eye floaters exist: unnoticed until it pops up in your periphery.
It's always a treat when an artist can combine old-school style with new-school content. This year has been pretty good for it too — Pokey LaFarge dropped Manic Revelations with its Ferguson-influenced single "Riot in the Streets," and Hurray for the Riff Raff polished its Americana style to deliver The Navigator, a stirring concept-album about a Puerto Rican street kid.
Many albums and artists tackle the problems of the world head-on, creating lyrical rages against societal injustices and cultural problems. Others channel the darkness they feel in the outside world into their music's aesthetic, creating a overarching vibe influenced by what they see as a world gone rotten.
If Tom Waits had started making music in the early 2010s — with the pool of influences that would come with the extra decades — he'd likely sound a bit like King Krule. a.k.a Zoo Kid, real name Archy Marshall — is a wiry London-based singer-songwriter with the voice of a boozy lounge singer. His career, launched when he was a teenager, has long been considered solid by both critics and fellow musicians.
Guitar idol and indie darling St. Vincent has long reigned supreme in her field — that of powerful indie rock 'n' roll with a hint of aloofness. With 2014's St. Vincent, she rocketed to underground superstar status. The album was met with overwhelming success, and when St. Vincent, real name Annie Clark, announced the development of a new record in Guitar World at the end of 2016, fans took notice.
I'm a little in awe of how thoroughly Miley Cyrus disregarded the image that made her famous. Sure, there was Hannah Montana, but look at me with a straight face and tell me twerking on eternal creep Robin Thicke didn't do just as much for her notoriety as that show's four seasons. It's jarring. Younger Now is supposed to be her return to form, an "adult" album after 2013's Bangerz, the musical manifestation of a suburban white girl's first toke.
The Killers have, perhaps, the weirdest position in pop music. 2004's biggest band is now a perpetual touring giant, churning out albums at a respectable but restrained rate. Its newest album, Wonderful Wonderful, is more personal than previous efforts — frontman Brandon Flowers wrote many of the songs about familial troubles and his wife's experience with depression.
The band, a musical channel for founder MC Taylor, is prolific. This is its seventh album in a decade (depending on how you count Vestapol) and the second in a year. Although it doesn't top 2016's Heart like a Levee, it is bittersweet, haunting and lovely. The album (and the band, by extension) exists primarily as a throwback to the 1970s-white-guy, kind-of-rock, kind-of-country tradition by The Eagles, Jackson Browne and Van Morrison.
The current soul revival is — hot take incoming — one of the best things that has happened to music in the last decade. Musicians such as Leon Bridges, St. Paul and the Broken Bones and BJ the Chicago Kid have revitalized the genre, pumping new blood into a scene that desperately needed it while honoring those who came before.
