The Fashionably Late Top 125 of 2019: L'Epee

Another rough year corresponded to another bumper crop of excellent music. Once again, my list is huge, because I fell in love with each of these 125 records and found it impossible to not include all of them in my fashionably late list.

I'm choosing to post my favorites in alpha order from A-Z again this year. You'll probably find some records that everyone and their fifth cousin raved about, but I hope you'll also find a few records that might be new to you, and that you'll fall in love with them as much as I have.

My thanks, as always, to the artists who created these records.

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Who: L'Epee

What: Diabolique

When: September 2019

Where: a Records

Why: Anton Newcombe, that incomparable sonic alchemist, struck gold once again with L'Epee. Joining forces with Emmanuelle Seigner and Marie and Lionel Limiñana, Newcombe is in fine form. Diabolique has plenty of the heady, colossal waves of sound so typical of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, with the added benefit, a crowning glory if you will, of chanteuse Seigner's husky purr. Several songs call to mind Newcombe's work on the last Limiñanas record (the divine "Istanbul is Sleepy"), with jangle and dirge swirling like tendrils of smoke, adding to the album's hypnotic sensation. Diabolique is a lush, tangled web - one I'm happy to be stuck in.

[posted 3.29.20]