The thin line between subtlety and impenetrability is explored to great effect on The Green Child’s Shimmering Basset. It’s the second album for the duo of Raven Mahon and Mikey Young, who keep a very low profile: no social media, very little promotion, and their music is in a quiet, beguiling psychedelic style that doesn’t necessarily grab attention, but leaves listeners with plenty to think about and few sure answers. All I really know about this album’s background is that Mahon moved to Australia to live with Young, and they recorded Shimmering Basset together in a new home studio, which might be why it feels a little more focused and cohesive than their initial long-distance collaborations. The retro-futuristic sound they explored on their debut, with the 80s synths and 60s guitars, is still on display, but it’s honed into concise pop gems that are simultaneously challenging and pleasant to listen to.
Mahon’s big move drives a lot of these songs thematically, rooting Shimmering Basset in a more domestic form of psychedelia that they also showed on their single earlier this year, “New Dungeon.” While it is hard to understand a lot of her lyrics, the sound tells the story, and every moment on the album is underpinned with a sense of wonder from someone who is in a new place and is noticing all of these little differences around her. Songs like “Low Desk/High Shelf” and “The Installation” give the feeling of someone in a new home, spotting all of the odd quirks of its décor and falling into a daydream while staring at them. The genius of The Green Child’s music is in its ability to turn something like a bland household item into a portal through time.
In the same way Mahon finds wonder in these familiar items, the duo takes sounds everyone has heard before and turns them into something that feels new and remarkably evocative. “Fashion Light” opens the album with a first half that is somewhat traditional synth pop, but it grows into a stirring conclusion featuring a twinkling synth part, Mahon’s saxophone, and the refrain of “I’ll try to know it” — a good proxy for the experience of listening to this album and trying to figure it out. “Tony Bandana” is the band’s version of an up-tempo rock song, with a twangy guitar part that could have been on album by the Byrds and an earwormy chorus. The woozy instrumental second half of “Health Farm” transports the listener with an eerie synth solo, and it’s another case of the band creating as much intrigue as possible out of simple parts.
Shimmering Basset is about the closest a band has come to replicating what made me so obsessed with Trish Keenan and Broadcast. These are unassuming songs with simple, vague lyrics, but when the quirky sounds are combined with Mahon’s voice, they open up a whole world that is fun and addictive to explore. This album is also an antidote to so much music that is performatively sad and depressing. There is a real sense of joy and imagination in these songs, which feel like the product of two people who have chemistry and enjoy making art together while discovering new sounds and ideas. That part is clear to me, even if everything else on Shimmering Basset is a hazy mystery.
Now that we’re months into this pandemic debacle, some of the first songs written during and about the experience are starting to surface. The Mexican Summer label has an ongoing singles compilation called Looking Glass that is focused on “the human condition as reflected through remote connection” and it includes this song called “New Dungeon” by The Green Child, a collaboration between Raven Mahon and Mikey Young that I raved about when their self-titled album was released back in 2018.
This song captures what I’m starting to think of as the mundane psychedelia of these times. I am living through what genuinely is one of the craziest things that has ever happened, but on a day-to-day basis the experience is surreally boring. Furloughed from my job and with my life basically on pause, there is plenty of time for the mind to wander while stuck indoors doing my various introvert hobbies like listening to music, writing, and watching old movies and crappy empty arena wrestling. With a certain level of privilege also comes guilt — as someone used to the shut-in life, this all feels like it’s easier than it should be. The titular image of the “new dungeon” summarizes this experience, as everyone is in this shared uncharted territory that feels like a prison for the mind. The song also gives the listener the key to escape it.
Like their cousin Cold Beat (another band formed from the ashes of Grass Widow with Mikey Young contributions), The Green Child’s music is subtle, maybe to a fault in terms of connecting with a wide audience or exciting most music hype people. But the quiet, reflective psychedelia of this track is exactly what I’ve been feeling lately. Singing over a repetitive taut synth part, Mahon’s lyrics (at least the ones I can make out) describe fairly dull experiences about exploring a new space, which take on a psychedelic tinge due to the sound and her distant delivery. She says it was inspired by moving into a new jam room in their house in Australia, when “self-isolation was exciting before it got weird.” This made me realize that pre-weirdness is kind of The Green Child’s thing. Their songs are psychedelic and strange, yet never quite tip over into the realm of being completely bizarre and incomprehensible.
That mix of weirdness and normalcy is at the heart of the current quarantine experience, as are the feelings of living in a world that feels like it’s about to change substantially in ways that aren’t really known yet. I’ve always valued psychedelic music that can take me somewhere else while also capturing feelings I have in a more abstract, intangible way. “New Dungeon” is the epitome of that, and it’s quietly one of the more powerful songs of the year so far.
It’s December, which means it’s year-end list season and a reminder that music (and art in general) is a bloodthirsty competition. All year long, musicians put themselves out there, presenting the public with their latest work — not in hopes of expressing themselves or articulating insights about the human condition, but because they want to make it to the top and be the best. That distinction is administered upon them by bloggers and critics like myself, who understand the art form in a way that average people can’t even fathom. While artists everywhere dream of having that “1” or even “8” next to their name at the end of the year, the reality is that only a select few can make it into this privileged group. To the artists who weren’t chosen: I’m sorry that your work was an abject failure, but hopefully it can be used as motivation to be less bad next year.
The following were the only good albums of 2018. Any album not on this list is not worth listening to.
15. Tender Age – Becoming Real Forever
There is a national surplus of lo-fi, noisy rock bands out there, and Tender Age don’t necessarily distinguish themselves on the surface.This is where I’m supposed to explain why they’re different, but they really aren’t. I just really like these songs, which find the right balance of heaviness, chaos, and light, plus some Sonic Youth attitude in the vocals.
14. Peel Dream Magazine – Modern Meta Physic
If nothing else, Modern Meta Physic proves the value in stealing from the right artists. Joe Stevens’ band is very up front about how it is borrowing from past bands like Stereolab, who themselves were up front about borrowing from groups like Neu, and so on. Rather than try to reinvent the wheel, Peel Dream Magazine put themselves in that lineage, and this album plays as an earnest and thoughtfully crafted homage to the history of gentle psychedelic music.
13. Meg Baird and Mary Lattimore – Ghost Forests
By some margin the prettiest music I heard this year, this collaboration between the two folk artists conjures up woodsy, psychedelic imagery with Baird’s guitar, Lattimore’s harp, and ethereal vocals. The lengthy, spacious compositions function as their own little worlds that prove how two artists can strengthen each other’s sound through collaboration.
12. Julia Holter – Aviary
With its 90-minute run time and gloriously excessive, lush arrangements, Aviary functions as something like a meta-critique of the music listening process. While not necessarily an album I looked forward to listening to start to finish, I really enjoyed exploring all of its nooks and crannies and trying to figure it out. I’ll be honest: I still don’t know if I actually like it, and maybe I never will. But Holter’s project is a work of great purposeful ambition that raises more questions than it answers, and listening to it was a very different experience than any other album I heard this year.
11. Afrirampo – Afriverse
After eight years apart, Afrirampo picked up where they left off with Afriverse, providing an alternate vision of rock music where spontaneity, chaos, and fun take precedent over brooding and tired societal commentary. While their music undeniably seems random, there is real craft in its pacing and the use of dynamics, not to mention the technical ability of Oni and Pika, who both rip on their respective instruments. Sometimes music doesn’t need to be more than two talented people making a lot of noise.
10. Infinite Void – EndlessWaves
Endless Waves is one of those albums that never really got a chance, given it was released by a band from Australia that already broke up. The world missed out, as it usually does. This is post-punk songwriting done at a high level with fantastic rhythms and dark imagery. I love music that sounds forceful but dreamy at the same time, and Endless Waves pulls that off.
9. U.S. Girls – In a Poem Unlimited
In a Poem Unlimited was my favorite topical album of the year because it didn’t seem intended to be. While many artists pander to critics and listeners with lyrics that resemble Facebook posts, Meghan Remy grounds her arguments in storytelling while not shying away from hard truths. Her album outlines the feelings of distrust and abuse people face in different situations and puts these complex narratives in the shell of catchy, noisy pop that has a punk edge.
8. Nun – The Dome
Nun has a sound that, for lack of a better term, is very cool. The throbbing synth sounds create a dystopian atmosphere of dread typified by the album’s title, which is married with legitimate pop hooks. Meanwhile, Jenny Branagan’s half-spoken singing style puts them more in the punk realm and makes this a band that doesn’t really sound like anyone else.
7. Beach House – 7
A few years ago, I thought Beach House were stuck in a rut where they were repeating themselves too much and had nowhere else to go. Sometimes it’s a pleasure to be proven wrong. On their last two albums, they have evolved while maintaining a sound that is uniquely theirs, with a layer of darkness and introspection that wasn’t there before. I wasn’t as obsessed with 7 as Thank Your Lucky Stars, but it’s another gorgeous album by a band that feels revitalized.
6. Wax Idols – Happy Ending
The fittingly titled Happy Ending brings an end (hopefully a happy one) to a strong run from Hether Fortune’s band, which again showed its knack for goth-rock songwriting that gets into heavy, emotional material while being very listenable. This one focuses on death and loss, but as was typical with this band’s work, it’s not content to just wallow in misery. It finds nuance and catharsis in life’s darkest moments.
5. Marie Davidson – Working Class Woman
Abrasive in both its sound and the personality of its protagonist, Working Class Woman is a darkly comic trip into the mind of Marie Davidson or possibly a character resembling Marie Davidson. Her deadpan singing and ironic lyrics make it hard to tell what is serious and what is a joke on the album, which takes no prisoners in mocking herself and the perceptions other people have of her as a woman in the male-dominated club scene. Its sound varies between subversive club jams like “Work It” and the pure industrial-noise terror of “The Tunnel,” with the unifying link being Davidson’s relentless, refreshing honesty.
4. Free Cake for Every Creature – The Bluest Star
A throwback in the best sense, Katie Bennett’s band plays music that is in the true original spirit of indie pop, with an honesty and authenticity that eludes many more widely acclaimed artists. On The Bluest Star, the band’s scrappy, winning appeal is combined with something resembling ambition, resulting in a sprawling showcase of heartfelt songwriting and detailed character-driven storytelling. The sheer likability of Bennett goes a long way: she doesn’t need much more than some reverbed guitar and her near-whispered lyrics to connect with any listener.
3. The Green Child – The Green Child
This collaboration by Mikey Young and Raven Mahon arrived in January to little fanfare and set a bar for 2018 that only a couple artists matched for me. While not outwardly ambitious, The Green Child taps into all of the best parts of psychedelic music, with introspective retro-futuristic arrangements, ambiguous, thought-provoking lyrics, and Mahon’s understated vocals. It also boasts the song of the year in “Her Majesty II,” a dazzling, timeless mix of swirling synths, harmonies and guitar with lyrics that reflect on current events with a welcome touch of subtlety.
2. Melody’s Echo Chamber – Bon Voyage
The world of shoegaze and dream pop is full of artists trying to sound like their heroes from the past. Bon Voyage shows the power of sounding like no one, as well as the risk. Full of bizarre tempo changes and quirky diversions, Melody Prochet’s album is intentionally alienating and strange, the product of an artist with too many ideas and arguably not enough editing instinct. But the flaws of Bon Voyage end up being its great strength — its overstuffed aesthetic represents genuine unfiltered imagination, the kind rarely heard in music.
1. Emma Ruth Rundle – On Dark Horses
Emma Ruth Rundle is making music I always wanted to hear: something that has the massive sound of metal, the intimacy of folk, and the hooks of straight-up rock. On Dark Horses continues her evolution into a genreless force who can make relatively simple quiet-loud alt rock songs sound unlike anything else. Her 2016 album, Marked for Death, was a breakthrough; the sound, the confidence, and the emotional conviction of On Dark Horses cement her as an artist who has no peers.
The Noise Made By People 