The Fashionably Late Top 125 of 2019: LIFE

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.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Who: LIFE

What: A Picture of Good Health

When: September 2019

Where: Afghan Moon/[PIAS]

Why: Caustic, sarcastic, urgent. "I don't care for niceties" - LIFE's scrappy, witty post-punk feels especially necessary in these darkest days, the serrated-edge guitars and just-this-side-of-unhinged vocals a soothing balm in the face of the societal wolves at the door. LIFE careens diabolically across a sonic spectrum of shambolic, strutting, sneering, and shimmying, a mix that works like a charm. "I was thinking about sex/I was thinking about food." That humor can be a weapon hasn't escaped LIFE, either. Any hype you've seen is well-justified - A Picture of Good Health is a picture of a band that could/should eventually have the music world eating out of its collective hand.

[posted 3.29.20]