Are things back to normal in 2022? They are, aren’t they? Well not quite. In the past year we eased out of the pandemic, but COVID-19 is still around and still deadly to some (just look at what’s happening in China, now that their long national lockdown has lifted). The pandemic door has been left ajar, rather than fully closed. We put the chaos for the Trump administration in the rearview only for us to relive it via the very necessary January 6th Commission and the specter of the former president running again in 2024 (if he’s not barred from doing so or even in jail). And while Biden’s administration has been fairly steady and helped lead the Democrats to an unexpectedly strong showing in the midterm elections, over in the UK chaos has reigned with no less than three different prime ministers in one year (Liz Truss being the shortest serving prime ministers in British history), the death of the Queen, strikes across the country, and a recent poll having a majority of Brits admitting that Brexit was a mistake.
Those of us who grew up during the tale end of the Cold War and the beginning of perestroika have not been totally surprised that Russia has become a major adversary to the West again in the last decade, but it was still shocking when Russian President Vladimir Putin followed through with his threats to invade Ukraine. On top of the terrible toll on the Ukrainian people and its extraordinary President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the war has destabilized financial markets worldwide and helped lead to massive inflation, with all this talk from financial experts of a possible recession next year seemingly willing such a thing into existence.
After the last few years of the pandemic and all the political upheaval worldwide, the massive right and left divisions in this country and in others, it leaves one wondering if the events of every single year felt this monumental to our younger selves and to our ancestors. Certainly there have been other eras of even greater turmoil (World War II, the 1960s), but will things ever feel truly normal again?
Musicians continued to find their footing in 2022, with live shows and festivals pretty much back to normal and free of major COVID restrictions. Still, many musicians were finding it more expensive than ever to tour this year, in large part because of inflation, but also because of the unfair financial cuts some venues were taking of merchandise sales. With it being hard for indie artists to make much money from streaming or record sales in recent years, this year touring also became a less reliable source of income, with bands such as Animal Collective cancelling whole tours because they knew they’d lose money. 2022 also saw a slew of albums written and recorded during the pandemic, with some lyrics betraying their lockdown inspiration. Ben Gibbard, for example, sang about missing strangers on Death Cab For Cutie’s return-to-form, Asphalt Meadows, a lyric likely written at a time when interacting with strangers could prove deadly.
Asphalt Meadows lands at #12 on Under the Radar’s Top 100 Albums of 2022 list. Prior to June 2021, we had never even heard of the band that made it to #1 on our list, so meteoric was their rise. The rest of the list is filled with some familiar faces to be sure, but some other debut albums are peppered throughout our Top 100. To arrive at such a list, 23 of our writers and editors (including myself and my co-publisher/wife Wendy Redfern) submitted ballots of their 45 favorite albums of 2022, listed in order of preference from first to last. They were submitted via a Google Sheets spreadsheet that helped tabulate the eventual list. An album had to be picked by at least three or four writers to make the list (19 of our writers had our #1 album on their list and it was the clear winner of the vote, getting 100 more points than our #2). Then we worked out the Top 94 albums and held a separate vote to determine which albums should round out the bottom six, with our writers deciding between 21 albums that could make the bottom of the list. Some albums that almost made the list include (in no particular order) ones by GIFT, Tomberlin, Crack Cloud, Broken Bells, Skullcrusher, Sam Prekop and John McEntire, Just Mustard, Florence + The Machine, Warpaint, Cheekface, The Weeknd, Maggie Rogers, Craig Finn, The Orielles, and My Idea. Consider those honorable mentions.
As the next year dawns, I’ve already heard some January to March albums that will surely make our Top 100 Albums of 2023 list. It’s already shaping up to be another great year for new music. But it’s been exhausting living through history, so can 2023 please just be a boring year?
The summer of 2022 belonged to Kate Bush. Her unlikely but welcome return to the music world has been a meteoric rise with “Running Up That Hill” recently reaching 158 million YouTube views and taking the top spot on Billboard’s music charts. It’s been 44 years since her previous number one hit, “Wuthering Heights,” the longest wait in history. However, these milestones mean little in comparison to the new generation of music listeners discovering Bush’s music for the first time thanks in part to the song’s use in the Netflix show Stranger Things.
Many of the lists that have been made guide readers through her best songs like “Wuthering Heights,” “This Woman’s Work,” and “Babooshka,” well-known singles that have already found their audience. Because of this, Under the Radar looks back at the artist’s best hidden gems—the non-single album tracks that deserve the same recognition. To capture both the vastness and diversity of her discography, one track was chosen from each of her 10 albums. By Alex Nguyen
A definitive ranking of every Star Trek series is an impossible task. Some segments of the fandom will always disagree with the ranking. To be clear, this is my—Steve King’s definitive ranking. I’ve watched every episode of Star Trek more times than I can count. I’ve written one or two things about it, and although sci-fi fantasy fans are a persnickety bunch, I tend to take the Bradley Nowell (of Sublime) approach: “I feel like I’m stoned. I feel like watching Star Trek and eating Chinese food or something.” In other words, lighten up, nerds.
This list will fluctuate as new shows debut and others falter. But this is still Star Trek we’re talking about. It’s all excellent. It just varies in degrees. Future seasons may render some of these rankings irrelevant. But for now, it’s the way I see things and I’m kind of an expert on the subject. Prepare to be enraged or to agree with a very stable genius. By Steve King
For a select few of us who can claim to be bona fide hometown fans of the NFL’s Houston Oilers circa the 1980s into the early ’90s, there is a certain level of gluttony for punishment that goes along with that honor. Added to the indignities of many playoff appearances that never quite panned fully out, the team’s owner, Bud Adams, unceremoniously up and moved the team to Nashville, Tennessee. After a year or two operating as the Tennessee Oilers (up there with the Utah Jazz in terms of city/mascot disconnects), the team’s name changed to the Tennessee Titans with the team’s flagship player, and one of the Houston holdovers, being quarterback Steve McNair.
You may be asking what this has to do with David Berman and his musical projects, Silver Jews and Purple Mountains. But as reclusive as an artist as Berman was, including his 10-year disappearance from making music, Berman was clear in idolizing the Titans and McNair. I first became aware of Berman early on as a fan of Pavement and no doubt purchased Silver Jews’ debut album, Starlite Walker, due to Steven Malkmus’ and Bob Nastanovich’s involvement with the project. Berman’s hangdog tales were laced with pure poetry, an alt-country lean, and a laconic, lo-fi delivery that spoke to listeners in a language they didn’t know they needed to hear.
Over the course of six Silver Jews albums and the unexpected 2019 comeback via his Purple Mountains debut, Berman never disappointed. I didn’t get the opportunity to see Berman perform live, although I had tickets to a Houston show in 2008 that I was unable to travel to due to Hurricane Ike blasting through the area. Amazingly, the show did go on at the last minute at an alternate location. After Berman’s Purple Mountains reemergence, I was pressing my son to go see the planned set at Raleigh’s Hopscotch Festival (Purple Mountains, Orville Peck, Faye Webster, and Jenny Lewis were to all play that day), but Berman took his life a few days before the Purple Mountains tour was to begin.
It was almost too much to fathom that Berman could find his way back through the fog, only to be gone a few months later. Though his loss is certainly more devastating than the relocation of a favorite sports team, being shown another taste of Berman’s talents so soon before he was gone for good did leave a feeling of having been cheated out of something cherished in addition to the grief many of us who love his music felt. He also garnered the message “Nashville (and the world) will always love David Berman” on the Titan’s Jumbotron as a posthumous salute.
Fortunately, we have the legacy of Berman’s music and words, including his parting gift to us just before his passing. Here I pick 14 of my favorite Berman songs. To borrow from the Jews’ “Random Rules,” in order to be “democratic and cool,” I picked two songs apiece from each of the albums and tried to include a taste of the different approaches that Berman brought to the table—from the purely whimsical to the deeply felt. So if your favorites aren’t here, they may have well been nudged out by other songs on the same album or in favor of a different example of Berman’s talents. By Mark Moody
Wilco is an institution. “The American Radiohead.” Bigger than Jesus, etc. They would reasonably be one of the first bands inducted into the indie rock hall of fame, were it to exist. And the iconic artwork of their masterful 2001 release Yankee Hotel Foxtrot—featuring the imposing twin towers of Chicago’s Marina City—is recognized by even the vaguest of acquaintances.
Led by the husky-voiced Jeff Tweedy, and with bassist John Stirratt in the sidecar from day one, the band has released 11 studio albums, including the scruffy alt-country of their post-Uncle Tupelo debut, three collaborations with Billy Bragg, and the shiny drug pop of Summerteeth. Since 2007’s Sky Blue Sky, though, Tweedy and friends have settled into a comfortable groove, tinkering in the Wilco Loft—their accoutrement-filled Chicago HQ—and continuing to release solid though less ambitious work. Their influence on the modern potpourri of indie/alternative/folk pop is pervasive. (Courtney Barnett’s laidback witticisms and Parquet Courts’ anti-Americana are at least partially indebted.)
Wilco recently announced an exclusive series of shows to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. In honor of the album’s birthday, Under the Radar looks back at the band’s catalogue to rank the best of the best. See you on the other side, via Chicago. By Hayden Merrick
It is confounding that so many outlets insist on posting best songs of the year lists in early December (in 2021, December 6 seemed to be a popular date to post such lists, including ones by Pitchfork, Paste, and Rolling Stone, with NME’s list dropping the next day). Not only are there several more weeks left in the year, in which a number of potential great songs could be released, it also takes time to digest all the tracks released in November and earlier in the fall. We’ve obviously taken too much time.
As with our Top 100 Albums of 2021 list, we had other pressing priorities in the fall of 2021 (our 20th Anniversary Issue and Covers of Coversalbum) that delayed deciding on our favorite songs of 2021. As a base we started a nomination process with all of the songs that landed in the main rankings (usually a Top 10) of our Songs of the Week lists in 2021. We then asked our writers for additional nomination suggestions (they had to be original songs first released in 2021, no covers). Once we had the final nomination list, our writers voted. When everything was calculated it added up to 130 songs we particularly liked. While many of the songs are taken from records that landed on our Top 100 Albums of 2021 list, there are also some standalone singles, songs from 2021 full-lengths that didn’t make the albums list, and advance singles from some anticipated 2022 albums. We limited it to no more than three songs per artist, otherwise half of each album from Japanese Breakfast and Wolf Alice (our #1 and #2 albums of the year) would’ve shown up on this list. By Mark Redfern
This is part 2 of our belated Top 130 Songs of 2021 list, featuring #96-130. Check out part 1, featuring the Top 95, here. With such a long ranking as this, once you get further down the list the exact placements are somewhat arbitrary. Suffice it to say that whether a song is listed at #80 or 130, it is still a track out of the thousands we heard last year that we have deemed one of the best of 2021.
For many in America and around the world, when 2021 began they were in a state of uncertainty. The pandemic still raged and the chaotic Trump presidency was coming to an end (even if you supported the policies of the former president, it’s hard to argue that his term wasn’t turbulent). In January 2021 vaccines were on the horizon, but not widely available yet and it was unclear how and when any of us would get a shot. It was also up to speculation as to how peaceful the transition of power from President Trump to then-president-elect Biden would be, given the former’s “big lie” about a supposed stolen election. And only a few days into the new year, January 6 to be precise, it was clear that the transition would not be orderly at all, when Trump supporters stormed the capitol in a previously unthinkable display of insurrection (a term I’d in the past thought of as simply the title of one of the lesser Star Trek movies). For music fans and musicians, at the start of 2021 there was anxiety as to when live music would be able to return, with many music venues barely hanging on. It also seemed that some notable artists were holding back from releasing already completed albums until touring was a possibility again.
Alas, when 2021 ended there was still much uncertainty. While many of us did our part and got vaccinated (and even boosted). While kids as young as five could get a shot in time for Christmas. While there was a brief period where going to a concert, a movie, and the grocery store seemed safe, even without masks on perhaps. But then along came the Omicron variant of COVID-19 and, despite it sounding like the name of a friendly Transformer, the mutation spiked everyone’s pandemic anxiety again. Is it safe to send kids to school, even if they are masked and vaccinated? The Grammys have been postponed indefinitely and will major music festivals and tours be next?
The best that can be said about 2021 then is that it wasn’t as bad as 2020, which for many in the post 9/11 generation might be considered their most trying year. We were able to get vaccinated. Kids were able to go back to school (virtual learning was tough on kids, parents, and teachers). Long delayed movies came out (Daniel Craig finally got his tear-inducing Bond swansong). Some vacations were taken. Politics in Washington got somewhat boring again under Biden. The economy was doing better. But life was far from being back to normal and fear set it in that the pandemic world was going to be the new normal much longer than hoped.
2021 was at least a fruitful year for new music. Some released albums were partially or fully recorded pre-2020, others were written and recorded under lockdown. Herein is a list of the 100 new albums we most loved in 2021, records that helped get us through another tough year. We fully acknowledge that we’re late to the best-of-2021 party. We had other considerations in the last quarter of 2021, such as finishing and putting out our special double 20th Anniversary Issue and finalizing and announcing our 20th anniversary Covers of Coversalbum, both of which took precedence over working out exactly what our favorite albums of the year were. Plus, we long for the days when music websites posted albums of the year lists in late December or even early January, instead of late November/early December.
For those curious about the process: each of our writers were asked to submit a list of their Top 45 albums of 2021. They had to be new albums (not reissues) first released in 2021. Beforehand we collectively came up with a nominations list and most of their choices had to come from that list, but the writers were allowed to include some other albums too. For an album to make the Top 100 at least three different writers needed to have it on their lists. Nineteen different writers and editors voted and the number one and number two albums were each picked by 17 different writers and most of the Top 75 were picked by at least six different writers. Then via a magic of math and an Excel document, it was all calculated into the list you find now.
Here’s hoping that 2022 will a much less eventful year than the last two, boring even, but that the music is just as good.
2021 began and ended in a state of uncertainty, but was still a fruitful year for new music. Here are Under the Radar’s 100 favorite albums from the year. Here is part 2 of our Top 100 Albums of 2021, featuring #91-100 and some honorable mentions. Check out part 1 here.
Courtney Barnett, the songstress from down under, has graced us with four studio albums, an EP and several singles since 2012, and her latest ones, “Rae Street” and “Before You Gotta Go,” both precede her upcoming LP Things Take Time, Take Time(which is due out November 12 via Mom + Pop Music/Marathon Artists). The 33-year-old singer/songwriter/guitarist from Melbourne, Australia, is less about dividing her discography into songs you do and don’t like, and more about grouping them into the ones you love and the other ones you really really love. Indie folk, garage rock, stoner soul, she does it all, and these 10 picks are only a taste to get you hooked on the rest and tide you over until the new album comes out. Speaking of, we’ll start with “Rae Street,” which is not officially on this list but gives you an idea of where Barnett is at now (and was #1 on our Songs of the Week list), as well as “Before You Gotta Go,” which just came out this week. Then there’ll be an honorable mention and the full Top 10. By Lily Guthrie.
This year’s Tribeca Film Festival is one of the first American film festivals to return to a somewhat normal structure. Tribeca has a lot on offer across its in-person, distanced outdoor screenings around New York City and virtual screenings. The festival’s broad lineup includes everything from big name premieres, such as the opening night film, In The Heights, and Steven Soderbergh’s highly anticipated No Sudden Move, to a variety of much smaller films. Plus, with the 129 films of the “2020 Official Selection’’ section of the festival, the Tribeca Film Festival will be making up for both last year’s cancelled festival, and a tough year for movies in general.
Here are just 10 of the many films we can’t wait to see from the festival’s gigantic lineup, as selected by Under the Radar film critic, Kaveh Jalinous, who will be covering the fest.
For years I have stood firm that Noel Gallagher didn’t have more than two substantial Oasis albums in him: Definitely Maybe and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?. The Masterplan, a collection of B-sides and non-album singles would be the third, but Noel believed he had so many great songs, these could be relegated to the B-list.
It’s a painful stretch to cobble together a fourth album from the odd song buried here and there in the remaining five studio albums and later B-sides the iconic group released before imploding in spectacular fashion. The visceral and unifying impact of the debut album and its quick and even more impactful follow-up made the predictability and uninspired subsequent albums all that much more disappointing.
This is coming from someone who is a firm “stan.” Between Definitely Maybe and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? I lost my sister. The Oasis songs on those albums, and their B-sides made me feel supercharged. Noel’s and Liam’s mouthy confidence and swagger-filled presence made them seem immortal—something that was very attractive to me at a time when mortality was all too real. While their presence grew larger than life, the music didn’t follow suit. Still, I clung to the one or two songs per album that didn’t suck and counted on the brothers for that immortality factor, knowing it would persist, even if the music did not.
Here are the Oasis albums—studio, compilation and live—ranked in order of personal preference. Not included is the infamous interview “album,” which arguably could be considered an exceptional product from the two central figures of the band. —Lily Moayeri
It’s been nearly 40 years since writer-director Lars von Trier shook up the film world when his debut feature film The Element of Crime premiered at Cannes. In the decades since, his films have provoked walkouts, controversies, critical tantrums, and much more. Guided by what he calls “obstructions,” von Trier has always found new and experimental ways to create cinema by getting rid of elements that were once deemed necessary to create it. His films are provocative not only in content, but in form—he is almost daring you as a viewer not to have a strong reaction to what he creates.
In a recent interview with Louisiana Channel, von Trier stated, “I’m convinced that provocations are very important, particularly in a democracy.” His unique style of reactionary, transgressive cinema represents a disruption to societal normalcy, exposing truths about human nature along the way. The films he creates are deconstructions of humanity, with an almost childlike fascination for the ugliest aspects of it. Through a series of film trilogies that have made up the bulk of his filmography (“Europa,” “Golden Heart,” “America” (which was never completed), and “Depression”), von Trier has built his own idiosyncratic cinematic language; one that isn’t afraid to break the rules and make the viewer feel uncomfortable in the process.
Last December, von Trier announced that he is currently in pre-production for the third season of his acclaimed Danish TV series The Kingdom, which is expected to be released in 2022. When his most recent film, The House That Jack Built, was released in 2018, he announced that it would be his last feature film. It’s hard to tell if von Trier is telling the truth, given his adoration for provocation in public as well as within his films. Either way, he certainly left a treasure trove of films to pick apart and talk about. By Joey Arnone
At the start of the pandemic, when it seemed like everything was going to go back to normal in two weeks, when lockdown was a confusing break from real life and expectations were low, it was an opportune time to blast through some of the choices I had stacked up on “My List” on Netflix and HBO, “My Stuff” on Hulu, “Watchlist” on Prime Video and “Up Next” on Apple TV+. Binging led to more binging. Working from home meant I could have the TV on in the background in between Zooms, which led to discovering series that weren’t even on my radar.
From all this screen time, here are 30 series I discovered during pandemic that I actually like. This list doesn’t include those I was already watching and loving such as Better Things, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Better Call Saul or Good Girls. It also doesn’t include those I watched and really did not care for such as Lovecraft Country, The Queen’s Gambit, The Undoing or Bridgerton. If you’re looking for a series to get stuck into, I can recommend the following without reservation.
So, 2020 was quite an uneventful year wasn’t it? Nothing much of note happened. It was pretty boring. But at least there were some decent records to liven things up. This is the intro to our Best Albums of 2020 list I wish I could be writing. Well… who wants life to be completely boring, but living through actual future history all the time has gotten quite exhausting. Depending on your age, you may have already experienced some living history, such as 9/11, but 2020 will go down as a particularly troubling year. You don’t need me to spell out why, but the two pillars were the COVID-19 pandemic and the most divisive presidential election in our lifetime. Many were financially affected by the coronavirus and the necessary lockdown that followed, but few more so than touring musicians, as venues across the world were forced to shut down most of the year (and some will never reopen their doors). At the outset of COVID-19 several notable albums were postponed a few months in hopes that things would improve, but it quickly became clear that touring wasn’t coming back any time soon and they were released anyway. There are probably some amazing finished albums that were going to come out in 2020, but were never announced and have been shelved until live music returns (hopefully later this year, now that the vaccines are very slowly rolling out). And yet 2020 was still filled with aural delights, including some creative full-lengths written and recorded while under quarantine.
Before I present Under the Radar’s favorite albums of 2020, I will fully acknowledge that we are late to the year-end party. While I don’t totally understand why some websites insist on posting their best of the year lists prematurely in late-November or very early in December—simply to be first and get more clicks, but without being able to consider any albums that might be surprise-released later in December—I’m aware that mid-January is also a bit too tardy. We have actually been working on this list since November and had intentions of getting it up by late-December, but various factors and other projects derailed those plans. And we also take great care to get our best albums ranking right each year, so it does take a lot of time to finalize everything and get new blurbs written for each of the Top 50 albums.
For list nerds, here’s how it’s done: Each of our writers and editors are encouraged to turn in a list of their favorite 45 albums of the year. Each person’s number one album counts for 45 points, with their number two getting 44 points, and so on down to their number 45 getting one point. They are also allowed to submit up to 15 honorable mentions that count for one point each. In order for an album to make the final list it’s got to be picked by at least three different writers, to give a true consensus, and each album also gets extra points for the number of people who voted on it. Almost all of the albums in the Top 50 were picked by at least four or five people, each of the Top 10 were all picked by 12 or more people, and our number one album was chosen by 17 different contributors. Overall, 22 of our writers and editors (including myself and my Co-Publisher/wife Wendy Lynch Redfern) weighed in. Our Top 100 Albums of 2020 represents Under the Radar’s 2020 coverage very well, with many being artists we interviewed and/or reviewed favorably last year and our Top 2 being the two artists who appeared on the cover of our last print issue (it was not engineered that way, that’s just how the vote played out).
Here’s hoping that my intro to the Best Albums of 2021 list will be more mundane, although based on the political events of the last two weeks and the continued pandemic that seems unlikely.By Mark Redfern (Senior Editor/Co-Publisher of Under the Radar)
So, 2020 was quite an uneventful year wasn’t it? Nothing much of note happened. It was pretty boring. But at least there were some decent records to liven things up. This is the intro to our Best Albums of 2020 list I wish I could be writing. Well… who wants life to be completely boring, but living through actual future history all the time has gotten quite exhausting. Depending on your age, you may have already experienced some living history, such as 9/11, but 2020 will go down as a particularly troubling year. You don’t need me to spell out why, but the two pillars were the COVID-19 pandemic and the most divisive presidential election in our lifetime. Many were financially affected by the coronavirus and the necessary lockdown that followed, but few more so than touring musicians, as venues across the world were forced to shut down most of the year (and some will never reopen their doors). At the outset of COVID-19 several notable albums were postponed a few months in hopes that things would improve, but it quickly became clear that touring wasn’t coming back any time soon and they were released anyway. There are probably some amazing finished albums that were going to come out in 2020, but were never announced and have been shelved until live music returns (hopefully later this year, now that the vaccines are very slowly rolling out). And yet 2020 was still filled with aural delights, including some creative full-lengths written and recorded while under quarantine.
Before I present Under the Radar’s favorite albums of 2020, I will fully acknowledge that we are late to the year-end party. While I don’t totally understand why some websites insist on posting their best of the year lists prematurely in late-November or very early in December—simply to be first and get more clicks, but without being able to consider any albums that might be surprise-released later in December—I’m aware that mid-January is also a bit too tardy. We have actually been working on this list since November and had intentions of getting it up by late-December, but various factors and other projects derailed those plans. And we also take great care to get our best albums ranking right each year, so it does take a lot of time to finalize everything and get new blurbs written for each of the Top 50 albums.
For list nerds, here’s how it’s done: Each of our writers and editors are encouraged to turn in a list of their favorite 45 albums of the year. Each person’s number one album counts for 45 points, with their number two getting 44 points, and so on down to their number 45 getting one point. They are also allowed to submit up to 15 honorable mentions that count for one point each. In order for an album to make the final list it’s got to be picked by at least three different writers, to give a true consensus, and each album also gets extra points for the number of people who voted on it. Almost all of the albums in the Top 50 were picked by at least four or five people, each of the Top 10 were all picked by 12 or more people, and our number one album was chosen by 17 different contributors. Overall, 22 of our writers and editors (including myself and my Co-Publisher/wife Wendy Lynch Redfern) weighed in. Our Top 100 Albums of 2020 represents Under the Radar’s 2020 coverage very well, with many being artists we interviewed and/or reviewed favorably last year and our Top 2 being the two artists who appeared on the cover of our last print issue (it was not engineered that way, that’s just how the vote played out).
Here’s hoping that my intro to the Best Albums of 2021 list will be more mundane, although based on the political events of the last two weeks and the continued pandemic that seems unlikely. By Mark Redfern (Senior Editor/Co-Publisher of Under the Radar)
2020 has been a weird year for film, to say the least. It would be easy to dismiss the 2020 film slate as one that is filled with random, forgettable premium video-on-demand movies or a broad collection of average films only available on streaming services. The truth is, while 2020 has been a horrible year for most of the entertainment industry, the films have been exceptional. There’s been a mix of indie dramas, offbeat comedies, and even some Oscar-bait material along the way. It would be a shame to write this year’s films off because of the general disappointment of the year itself.
Here are my top 10 films of 2020, and while these are my favorites of the year, there are many honorable mentions including: I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Netflix), Boys State (Apple TV+), City Hall (virtual cinemas), Palm Springs (Hulu), Wolfwalkers (Apple TV+), Bad Education (HBO Max), The Vast of Night (Amazon Prime Video), Bacarau (rental on VOD services), and The Forty-Year-Old Version (Netflix). Happy viewing!
It was a strange year for movies. With cinemas opening and closing due to COVID-19 restrictions and a release schedule that kept shifting to match, it was hard to keep track of which movies actually came out this year. The good news: plenty of films did come out this year, and many of them would have been extraordinary achievements in any movie season.
If this were non-pandemic times, the film community would be abuzz with new anecdotes and reviews trickling in from the first fall film festivals: Venice, Telluride, and Toronto. Two out of three of those are happening within social distancing parameters (Telluride chose to cancel this year’s festival outright). But the spirit of a film festival is hard to recreate without a sense of community. This can feel isolating at times, but film festivals have worked hard to adapt by presenting movies in a variety of different forms, such as socially distanced in-person, drive-ins and digital screenings. This year, Film at Lincoln Center’s 58th New York Film Festival is no exception to these changes.
With a lineup of similar size to last year’s event, NYFF is utilizing drive-in theaters in the city’s boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens and a digital platform hosted by Shift72. Regardless of viewing options, this year’s film selections are nothing less than extraordinary. Whether you’re looking for a world premiere, a low-key flick, or a restoration of a classic, there is something for everyone to enjoy.
With so many new and hyped films, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by such an extensive lineup. Below are the 10 films we are most excited to see as chosen by one of UTR’s film critics, Kaveh Jalinous.
Seems like just about every studio or network has its own streaming service these days. Netflix (the OG). Amazon. HBO Go. HBO Now. HBO Max (huh?). Hulu. CBS. Disney +. Apple TV. The list goes on and on. There are so many, it becomes virtually impossible to tell which one is worth the monthly fee, which one has enough content to keep you tuning in, and which one is only as good as its one show de jour and can be canceled come the season finale.
Enter DC Universe, DC Comics’ foray into the streaming arena. DC Universe is rife with content, some classic, some of it original, and all absolutely worth the price of entry. There are movies; holy rusty rocks, Batman, are there movies. DC Universe boasts a wealth of films, from the Michael Keaton Batman films to exclusive animated features. Speaking of animated, the TV selection is a treasure chest of series, from Batman: The Animated Series and Justice League, which followed, to original live action content like Star Girl and Doom Patrol.
Unlike the aforementioned services, though, DC Universe offers its subscribers a trove of content beyond what’s streaming. DC’s bread and butter has historically always been its comics-weeklies, monthlies, limited series, and original graphic novels-and DC Universe is loaded with digital reads. Organized to entice the diehard and the newcomer alike, subscribers can search by their favorite character, seminal story arcs, or even “Get to Know” the universe one character at a time through curated selections. The site also features a fan community section, with message boards, sweepstakes, and events, an encyclopedia collecting vast histories of the DCU, and a news feed to help you keep current.
With DC Universe, there’s something for every fan of the Justice League, Legion of Doom, and every A, B, and C character that inhabits the DC multi-verse. Let’s takes a look at some of the content worth bingeing this summer while practicing social distancing.
We’re all stuck inside during the quarantine. It could last for a few more weeks, but more likely for months—whatever it takes to make sure that those most at risk in our society aren’t exposed to COVID-19. So we’re on our couch, perhaps still in our PJs, pretending to be productive. But with the weight of all that’s going on, perhaps we just want to grab the remote. But what to watch? These days we’re spoilt for choice, depending on which TV services you partake in. Some have cable plus streaming services, others are cord cutters and rely on only on Netflix and their ilk. But then there’s Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Go (and soon HBO Plus), Disney Plus, DC Universe, BritBox, CBS All Access, and others we’re no doubt forgetting. Sure, we’ve all been told to watch Tiger King, but what else?
We decided to dust off an abandoned project to help give some suggestions of recent shows to check out while you’re confined to home. Last December we had started a list of the Best TV Shows of 2019, conducting a vote with all our writers, but never finished it. Better late than never we say. So our writers finished up their blurbs on the Top 10 and we belatedly present to you a list of last year’s best shows to help you decide on what to watch until we’re allowed outside again.
There are few things worse than being quarantined for a global pandemic, but Netflix’s recommendation algorithms have to be up there. The endless deluge of bland original films and original series make it easy to forget that the service has some quality films if you’re willing to dig. Not only have we done the digging for you, we’ve paired some of the best selections into double features; everyone’s got the time and nothing makes a good movie better than another one to complement it. Here’s two dozen great flicks you may not have heard of or didn’t know were on Netflix.
The 92nd Annual Academy Awards ceremony will happen tonight, February 9th. As in years past, we’ve taken a look at this year’s short film competitions. The Academy defines a short film as an original motion picture running 40 minutes or less, and excludes all advertisments, unaired or unsold television episodes, or credit sequences from feature-length films. Our critic, Shawn Hazelett, watched and ranked all of this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts. Here, he looks at this year’s documentary category.
The 92nd Annual Academy Awards ceremony will happen tonight, February 9th. As in years past, we’ve taken a look at this year’s short film competitions. The Academy defines a short film as an original motion picture running 40 minutes or less, and excludes all advertisments, unaired or unsold television episodes, or credit sequences from feature-length films. Our critic, Shawn Hazelett, watched and ranked all of this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts. Here, he looks at this year’s animated category.
The 92nd Annual Academy Awards ceremony will happen tonight, February 9th. As in years past, we’ve taken a look at this year’s short film competitions. The Academy defines a short film as an original motion picture running 40 minutes or less, and excludes all advertisments, unaired or unsold television episodes, or credit sequences from feature-length films. Our critic, Shawn Hazelett, watched and ranked all of this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts. Here, he looks at this year’s live action category.
It’s been a decade of high highs and low lows, but one thing that the 2010s did deliver us consistently was great movies – it’s arguable that years in cinema even got better as the decade went on.
Yes, some of the best cinematic works have come from familiar auteurs – you’ll find names like the Coen Brothers, Richard Linklater, Jim Jarmusch, Todd Haynes, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Wes Anderson – but it’s also a decade that’s introduced us to exciting new filmmakers such as Sean Baker, Barry Jenkins, Greta Gerwig, Jordan Peele, the Safdie Brothers, Damien Chazelle, and David Lowery. It’s been a decade of surprises, too, especially for genre fans. Back in 2009, if we were told we’d not only have new Mad Max and Blade Runner sequels, but five more Star Wars movies, we’d have thought you were crazy.
Below you’ll find Under the Radar’s Top 50 films of the decade, as voted on by our film critics and the most dedicated cineastes amongst the larger staff. What were your favorite movies of the decade? Judging by the number of movies we loved that just missed the cut, there are far more than fifty movies that deserve Best of Decade consideration, so please let us know in the comments which ones you think we shouldn’t have left out.
2019 was a divisive and toxic year for politics on both sides of the Atlantic and elsewhere, but can we all agree that the decade’s final year was firmly a fantastic one for music? Probably not, but here at Under the Radar we certainly felt that way. So while we all stress about impeachment, never ending Brexit negotiations and the election of Boris Johnson, protests in Hong Kong and a trade war with China, immense forest fires in Australia and Brazil and the ever worrying threat of climate change-there was amazing album after fantastic album to get lost in. Whoever says full-length albums are a forgotten artform or that indie rock has been overcome by poptimism clearly hasn’t heard 2019’s best releases. Some notable artists even released two great albums this year. As you’ve probably noticed, we’ve taken our time assessing which 2019 albums are the best, posting this list on the very last day of the decade. We’re not overly concerned with being first, more with getting it right. Here we present a Top 100 Albums of 2019 list-whereas many other websites might opt for only a Top 50 or less-and our writers have done brand new write-ups on each of the Top 60 albums. Even then, there were some good albums that almost made the list, but didn’t quite get on there, including 2019 albums by These New Puritans, TOY, Priests, Iggy Pop, Hand Habits, Glen Hansard, Wand, Sudan Archives, Telekinesis, Vivian Girls, The New Pornographers, and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s Fishing for Fishies-so consider all those honorable mentions. To arrive at Under the Radar‘s Top 100, 24 of our writers and editors (including myself and my co-publisher/wife Wendy) each submitted a list of their favorite albums of the year and were encouraged to turn in at least a Top 45. All-in-all 443 different albums were submitted for the vote, but to make the Top 100 an album had to be picked by at least three or more separate writers (our #1, for example, was picked by 21 of our writers and our #2 was chosen by 18 different writers). We then did a secondary vote to determine the bottom four, from a selection of 19 different albums that almost made the Top 96. It doesn’t always shake out this way, but in 2019 my two favorite albums of the year were mirrored by the overall staff vote. So as we usher in a new year and decade, take time to reflect on 2019’s best albums below (and check out part 2, with #41-100, here). Let us know in the comments which albums were your personal favorites. By Mark Redfern
2019 was a divisive and toxic year for politics on both sides of the Atlantic and elsewhere, but can we all agree that the decade’s final year was firmly a fantastic one for music? Probably not, but here at Under the Radar we certainly felt that way. So while we all stress about impeachment, never ending Brexit negotiations and the election of Boris Johnson, protests in Hong Kong and a trade war with China, immense forest fires in Australia and Brazil and the ever worrying threat of climate change-there was amazing album after fantastic album to get lost in. Whoever says full-length albums are a forgotten artform or that indie rock has been overcome by poptimism clearly hasn’t heard 2019’s best releases. Some notable artists even released two great albums this year.
As you’ve probably noticed, we’ve taken our time assessing which 2019 albums are the best, posting this list on the very last day of the decade. We’re not overly concerned with being first, more with getting it right. Here we present a Top 100 Albums of 2019 list-whereas many other websites might opt for only a Top 50 or less-and our writers have done brand new write-ups on each of the Top 60 albums. Even then, there were some good albums that almost made the list, but didn’t quite get on there, including 2019 albums by These New Puritans, TOY, Priests, Iggy Pop, Hand Habits, Glen Hansard, Wand, Sudan Archives, Telekinesis, Vivian Girls, The New Pornographers, and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s Fishing for Fishies-so consider all those honorable mentions.
To arrive at Under the Radar‘s Top 100, 24 of our writers and editors (including myself and my co-publisher/wife Wendy) each submitted a list of their favorite albums of the year and were encouraged to turn in at least a Top 45. All-in-all 443 different albums were submitted for the vote, but to make the Top 100 an album had to be picked by at least three or more separate writers (our #1, for example, was picked by 21 of our writers and our #2 was chosen by 18 different writers). We then did a secondary vote to determine the bottom four, from a selection of 19 different albums that almost made the Top 96. It doesn’t always shake out this way, but in 2019 my two favorite albums of the year were mirrored by the overall staff vote. So as we usher in a new year and decade, take time to reflect on 2019’s best albums below (part 2, with #41-100, is below, check out part 1 with the Top 40 here). Let us know in the comments which albums were your personal favorites. By Mark Redfern
Rocketman is here. And it’s spectacular. As such, I’ve got Elton on the mind.
I didn’t go to the church of Jesus Christ when I was a kid. I went to the church of Elton John. Still do. We had portraits of Elton and his lyricist Bernie Taupin framed, matted, and hanging in the hallway as if they were fuckin’ family members. LOL. Mom took me to my first concert in 1994. I was 11. It was Elton and Ray Cooper at the Greek Theater in LA. In 7th grade, I had a picture of Elton on the front of my school folder and one of Taupin on the back. Caught a lot of shit for it too. It was middle school, it was the mid-‘90s, I was a weirdo.
So I’m a mega-fan for sure.
When people ask me where to start with Elton’s catalog, here’s what I tell ‘em: All the studio albums from the 1970 self-titled Elton John through 1976’s Blue Moves are essential. That’s 10 albums people. 10 ALBUMS IN 6 YEARS. All of them essential. And no, we’re not gonna get into anything after Blue Moves. Don’t have time. Too controversial. But do check out 1981’s The Fox and 1983’s Too Low for Zero if you have the appetite.
Those 10 studio albums aren’t just essential because of their brain-scramblingly good singles, but also because the non-single album tracks are Just. Un. Real. To celebrate all that incredible music and the release of Rocketman, I’ve compiled 25 of the very best Elton John songs I reckon you’ve never heard.
Best Documentary Short is routinely one of the strongest categories, perhaps because the natural, open-ended approach to documentary filmmaking sees incredibly ambitious projects peter out. Certainly the reverse happens, as with Hoop Dreams. Unfortunately, this year includes two entries that might technically fall within the parameters of documentary filmmaking, but are too calculated and told from the benefit of hindsight to have the typical effect of nonfiction storytelling. No, not every documentary needs to be vérité, but every documentary should create a sense of the present tense. The two that do not heavily dilute the category.
Anyone hoping the animated category provides a respite from the harming of children in Live Action Shorts will be disappointed that its theme isn’t all that uplifting: the sad passage of time. This shouldn’t necessarily be surprising. The outdated idea that animation must be lighthearted and for children dismisses the meticulous craft that goes into animated storytelling and specifically animated shorts, which are almost always the most complete stories despite shorter run-times and often no dialogue. This year is no exception.
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences are made up of thousands of individual voting members, but because categories tend to follow a specific theme—especially the short films categories—it’s often treated as a collective. As such, a fun exercise when reviewing the nominees is to try to extract a methodology. Do they represent some sort of zeitgeist in the mind of the voters, the filmmakers themselves, or do the films reflect something happening in the world? In 2017, for example, three of the five Short Documentary nominees centered around the Syrian refugee crisis. That made sense!
For this year’s Live Action Shorts—perhaps it has something to do with school shootings or the general cynicism in the air—the theme that’s a bit of a head-scratcher: child endangerment.
It was, yet again, another fantastic year for comic book readers. Whether sci-fi, horror, super hero, drama, or coming of age, this year’s best graphic novels offer something for lovers of every genre. Interestingly, though the settings of the following titles are as varied as they can possibly be, a few common themes emerge in this year’s reading. A couple of our picks for best of the year are set in a world where men no longer exist. Others explore gender and sexual identity, while yet others mine adolescence and self-discovery. Though at times, 2018 was marred by closed-mindedness, the year’s graphic novels were as progressive and inclusive as any to date. By Zach Hollwedel
And here we are, the end of another year. The last 12 months tried the patience of anyone who longed for civility in politics, with divisive policies and a president beloved by only his most ardent supporters. Both fueled a cable news cycle that’s become one long panel show with continuous “breaking news” about the latest Washington scandal and investigation, none of which are likely to end the Trump presidency much sooner than the 2020 election (if then). As Macbeth once said, it’s all “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Many would thus say that 2018’s been a bad year, and sure there is much to worry about, including the threat of authoritarian rule across the globe, escalating trade wars, continued income inequality, government shutdowns, immigrant children in detention centers, and more dire unheeded warnings about global warming. But it could also be so much worse.
What of those newspaper music critics who might have wrapped up 1929’s best albums, setting up a survey of the year’s new music by Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, and others with an intro about the recent stock market crash of October 29 and the beginning of The Great Depression? Or the critic writing about 1941’s best new music from Lead Belly and Glenn Miller only weeks after the December 7 attack on Pearl Harbor? History is littered with truly terrible years: 536, when an extreme weather event triggered by either an asteroid or an Icelandic volcano eruption led to an atmospheric dust veil that cooled the Earth and resulted in widespread famine and drought, 1347, when the Black Death pandemic hit Europe, 1914, when World War I began, 1918, when a flu pandemic began that killed 100 million people, and so on, and so on.
But was 2018 a good or bad year for music? That’s what we’re really here to talk about. If you search hard enough can’t you always find some worthy new music each year? Still, for me personally (and I’ve heard this from others too), there were a lot of albums I really liked in 2018 but few I fell head over heels for. My #1 album of 2018 could have just as easily been any of the albums in my Top 10, as I liked them all fairly equally. And if any of my second, third, fourth, or fifth favorite albums of 2017 had been released in 2018 then I think they would’ve surely topped my 2018 list as I liked them all more than any album released this year.
Under the Radar’s Top 100 Albums of 2018 list, thankfully, doesn’t just reflect my opinion; instead 27 of our writers and editors (including myself and my co-publisher/wife Wendy) each submitted a list of their favorite albums of the year and were encouraged to turn in at least a Top 45. All-in-all 473 different albums were submitted for the vote, but to make the Top 100 an album had to be picked by at least three or more separate writers (the Top 6, for example, were all picked by at least 20 or more of our writers). We then did a tiebreaker vote for our #1 album between the two at the top, to make sure we were all in agreement on our #1 (the vote was still close, so you could almost call it a tie for the top spot). Then we did another vote to determine the bottom three from a list of 17 albums that almost made the Top 100 (check out our list of Honorable Mentions for 36 albums that came close). For those of you who might complain that this is a very indie rock-centric list, well we are an indie rock-focused magazine and website after all. You wouldn’t expect a hip-hop, metal, or dance music website to include albums by Father John Misty, Beach House, and Courtney Barnett on their favorite albums of 2018 list, would you?
Barring a pandemic, world war, asteroid strike, or another disaster, hopefully 2019 will at least be another average year that’s not the worst, but one we can dream is populated with truly classic albums. We’ll have to see where we are at in December 2019. For now, here are our 100 favorite albums of 2018.
Ahead of our forthcoming Top 100 Albums of 2018 list, we present our favorite debut albums of the year. To qualify, an album simply had to be the artist’s first full-length release under their current artist name. EPs weren’t eligible, otherwise boygenius and Hatchie would’ve made the list on the strength of their excellent 2018-released debut EPs. Sometimes it gets complicated. For example, Soccer Mommy released Collection in 2017, which showcased her various singles up to that point, but Clean is her official debut album. Some have called Room 25 Noname’s sophomore album, although the rapper’s previous release, 2016’s Telefone, is considered a mixtape, making Room 25 her debut album proper.
The list includes several bands you could label as supergroups, as they feature members of other notable bands. LUMP, for example, is a new band that teams up acclaimed singer/songwriter Laura Marling with Tunng’sMike Lindsay. Loma is a trio consisting of Shearwater singer Jonathan Meiburg and the two members of Cross Record (Emily Cross and Dan Duszynski). Tracyanne & Danny is a new project from Camera Obscura frontwoman Tracyanne Campbell and Danny Coughlan (who has previously released music as Crybaby). Mastersystem was the final project for Scott Hutchison, 36-year-old frontman for Scotland’s Frightened Rabbit, who was found dead in May of apparent suicide. The band featured Hutchison alongside his brother Grant Hutchison (also Frightened Rabbit’s drummer) and brothers Justin and James Lockey of Editors and Minor Victories. Finally, Frontperson is a new duo that features Kathryn Calder of The New Pornographers (and also a solo artist and formerly of Immaculate Machine) and Mark Andrew Hamilton (who has released six albums as Woodpigeon). But regardless of the musical heritage of their members, all of those albums are true debuts. The rest of the artists are fresher faces.
With their latest album 7, Beach House has now released eight albums (seven studio albums and one rarities and B-sides release) and 83 songs. Distilling these 83 songs down to a 10 best was a daunting task but one that was met with an enthusiastic glee. Not much is better than revisiting Beach House’s entire catalog of their signature dream-pop formula of airy guitars, hushed indie-rock beats, and ethereal vocals. From their self-titled 2006 debut to the recently released 7, their sound shimmers with lush and gossamer melodies, catchy beats and softly soaring guitar riffs. Of course it proved too difficult to pick just 10 tracks, so below is list of the top 14. A 10 best and four honorable mentions.
Of course all of this is subjective, this is simply the opinion of one writer. No doubt you have your own list of favorite Beach House songs. And yes, we are aware there are no songs from the band’s first two albums, 2006’s Beach House and 2008’s Devotion; we feel they truly came into their own with their third album, 2010’s Teen Dream. By Matt the Raven
Tribeca ’18 has come to a close, and again proved to be two of the best weeks a film fan could possibly have in New York City. Personally, much more of this year’s fest was spent interviewing up-and-coming filmmakers and established film stars – but that didn’t stop me from seeing a couple dozen new movies and taking in many of the unique VR projects populating this year’s Immersive section. Here are some picks for some favorites which we couldn’t necessarily cover with interviews.
The annual Tribeca Film Festival is, hands-down, the greatest two weeks of movie-going that the Big Apple has to offer. Just as the festival has grown beyond the Tribeca area it’s named for and spills over into adjoining neighborhoods, the downtown festival celebrates more than just film, now encompassing TV, immersive works of art, and even video games. In addition to the 100+ feature-length and short films being screened there are more panels, talks, and special events than even the most dedicated cineaste could painlessly wrap their brain around. It’s impossible to take all of it in, but trust us: you’re going to want to try.
This year’s once-in-a-lifetime screenings include special reunion screenings of Schindler’s List (with Steven Spielberg, Liam Neeson, and Ben Kingsley in attendance), Scarface (with Brian De Palma, Al Pacino, and Michelle Pfeiffer), and In the Soup (with director Alexandre Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, and Jennifer Beals.) Highlights from the TV portion of the festival include Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story, produced by Jay-Z, the red carpet premiere of HBO’s Westworld, season two, and a documentary about the cult TV series Freaks and Geeks. Tribeca 2018’s gaming programming includes sneak peeks at the latest God of War and Tomb Raider games.
We’ll be covering the festival from its start on April 18th, so stay tuned for our reviews and interview coverage out of Tribeca.
If you’re heading to Tribeca but have limited time and/or budget, we’re going to attempt to help you out. Below are 20 of the movies we’re most looking forward to seeing this year, as chosen by UTR Cinema Editor Austin Trunick.
It was another grand year for comic book fans. Whether your preference is superheroes, character studies, sci-fi adventures, or memoirs, 2017 offered a plethora of amazing books and series to choose from. Jeff Lemire again proved himself one of the top talents in the field with the ongoing crime fighter series Black Hammer, while young, relative newcomers like Tillie Walden (Spinning) and Chris Gooch (Bottled) defined themselves as talents to follow faithfully.
Of course, no matter how much reading one does, there are always more (and more and more) books left atop the reading pile, and we recognize it’s inevitable there are stellar titles we didn’t get to (yet). So with that, below is the Under the Radar staff’s picks for the Top 25 Comic Books and Graphic Novels of 2017. Enjoy, and please let us know what other titles you think belong on the list by shouting out your favorites in the comments section. By Zach Hollwedel
The majority of 2017’s best debut albums came from female artists or bands fronted by women, from London-based all-female indie-pop teenaged trio Girl Ray and Syria-born singer/songwriter Bedouine (aka Azniv Korkejian) to Australian indie rocker Alex Lahey and New Zealand bedroom pop artist Fazerdaze (aka Amelia Murray). Midnight Sister, Priests, and Charly Bliss are all female-fronted bands as well, on top of other women solo artists on our Top 15 Debut Albums of 2017 list. That’s just the way it worked out this year.
This list was mainly culled from our Top 100 Albums of 2017 list, where we separated out the debut albums from that list and added two other titles to the end. Twelve of these artists were interviewed in our Pleased to Meet You section this year. There were other exciting new artists we interviewed in 2017 (including Marika Hackman and Jay Som) who actually released their sophomore albums this year and were thus ineligible for this list. Let’s hope the artists that are on here are also able to avoid the dreaded sophomore slump in years to come. By Mark Redfern
2016 was regarded as a fairly rough year by many, but 2017 was no walk in the park either. 2016 was mired by the deaths of several beloved musical icons (David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, George Michael, and Sharon Jones among them) and the disappointing and divisive Presidential election, but in 2017 we had to deal with the ramifications of said election (we’d say that roughly 95% of the musicians we interview likely don’t support many, if any, of President Trump’s policies). And while 2016 was the year your favorite artist died, 2017 might have been the year your favorite artist became dead to you, thanks to the various sexual assault allegations lobbied at high profile men in the music industry, film industry, journalism, politics, and elsewhere. But it was a damn fine year for music, which helped get us all through the anxiety of the daily news cycle. Here we present our favorite 100 albums from the tens of thousands full-lengths released in the last 12 months.
Many celebrated bands returned in 2017 after long hiatuses with new albums that nearly matched or even topped their creative peaks (we’re looking at you Grizzly Bear, Fleet Foxes, Broken Social Scene, LCD Soundsystem, and Slowdive). And in this “Me Too” era it’s encouraging that nearly half the artists in our Top 100 Albums of 2017 list are either female solo artists or bands fronted (or co-fronted) by women (which is of course how it should be). We’re looking at you Julien Baker, St. Vincent, Wolf Alice, Japanese Breakfast, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alvvays, Big Thief, Rose Elinor Dougall, Jay Som, Kelly Lee Owens, and many others. There were fruitful collaborations (Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile produced an intercontinental album that played to both their strengths, meanwhile Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner, and James McAlister all teamed up for a concept album about the planets). And some of 2017’s best albums were promising debuts (Moses Sumney, Girl Ray, Midnight Sister, Bedouine, Alex Lahey, and more). The year’s saddest album, Mount Eerie’s A Crow Looked At Me, was also one of its most compelling. And Father John Misty once again held up a slightly skewed mirror to the craziness of the modern world with Pure Comedy.
Now to the behind-the-scenes mechanics of how we put our Top 100 list together. Each of our writers was asked to submit a list of their 45 favorite albums of the year. Then their lists were all combined to make up our final master list, with their #1 album getting 45 points and so on down to their #45 album getting one point. In all 25 of our writers and editors voted, including my co-publisher/wife Wendy and myself. There were enough strong albums released this year that we certainly struggled to narrow it down to just 100, as our Honorable Mentions list featuring an additional 42 albums illustrates (check it out here). It also wasn’t easy this year to determine our #1 album of the year. Really any of the Top 5 could have been our #1, so we had a second vote to determine which of the Top 5 should be our #1. When that proved inconclusive we narrowed it down to The War on Drugs’ A Deeper Understanding and Julien Baker’s Turn Out the Lights. A further tiebreaker vote ended in a… tie. Since it was higher on the personal lists of both Wendy and myself, and also because it charted slightly better in the initial vote, we went with A Deeper Understanding. But you could almost say we have a joint #1 this year (or even a five-way tie between The War on Drugs, Julien Baker, St. Vincent, Slowdive, and Wolf Alice). We also had a separate vote to work out our #99 and 100 albums, from the list of honorable mentions.
2017 is going to be a tough act to follow, musically speaking. With so many notable artists releasing new albums this year, who’s left to wow us in 2018? Luckily we’ve already heard some impressive albums from the first quarter of 2018 and no doubt come next December we’ll once again be left fretting over how we could possibly narrow down the list of great LPs to only 100. Let’s just hope that 2018 is a brighter year. That President Tweet settles down and no more of our favorite musicians and actors are revealed to be scumbags who can’t keep it in their pants. But until the next year comes into full view, here are 100 albums worth discovering, digesting, and revisiting. By Mark Redfern
Looking back at 2017 in film, it’s clear that we’ve had a more divisive year than most. Reviews, as a whole, have been more split than ever before on many of the big movies, and there have been films–such as A Ghost Story, Dunkirk, and The Last Jedi–that were absolutely loved by some members of our staff, while loathed by others. While there haven’t been as many universally loved movies this year as in year’s past, there were movies that our writers were passionate about, and things that have appealed to each one’s individual tastes.
Below, you’ll find Under the Radar’s Top 25 films of 2017, as voted on by our film staff. The biggest downside to year-end lists is that they need to be compiled before the year’s actually ended. With the film release calendar so back-loaded with Awards season contenders, it’s an especially big issue for movie lists. And thus, there are many great 2017 films (Phantom Thread, Disaster Artist, and more) that are probably underrepresented on this list, simply because not all of our staffers have had the chance to see them yet.
The 2017 Tribeca Film Festival is now in the books, and this year’s fest was a true blast. Always a showcase for new and rising film talents, this year’s festival also provided attendees a chance to sneak peeks at new TV shows, interact with virtual reality shorts and installations on an entire floor dedicated to immersive entertainment, listen to respected video game makers dish on their design secrets, and hear some old filmmaking heavyweights discuss their classic movies. (I was lucky enough to be in the audience at this year’s Reservoir Dogs 25 Anniversary reunion, where Quentin Tarantino and his old castmates – Buscemi, Keitel Madsen, and Roth – looked back at the film, and even detailed Tom Waits’ failed audition for the movie.) When you’ve seen dozens of movies in such a short period of time, it can be tough to pick favorites, but we’re going ahead and trying. Here are our five top films of this year’s Tribeca festival, plus a few more noteworthy mentions.
Since its inception in 2002, the Tribeca Film Festival has striven to redefine the festival experience and provide a platform for the international film community to spotlight many of its most promising new movies. In addition to the more than 100 features, shorts, and documentaries making their debut there, Tribeca ’17 features several special, once-in-a-lifetime screenings, including a back-to-back showing of The Godfather I & II followed by a Q&A with Francis Ford Coppola, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and other members of the cast, and a 25th anniversary screening of Reservoir Dogs, after which Quentin Tarantino and others will be present to reflect on the making of their movie. This is also the inaugural year for Tribeca Games, a weekend-long festival celebrating video games and featuring keynote talks with creators such as Hideo Kojima and Ken Levine.
Our coverage of the festival will begin on April 20th, and we’ll be bringing you regular updates on what we’ve seen, who we’ve talked to, and what we’ve experienced at the downtown film fest. With 30 sceenings on our schedule and many more we’re desperately hoping to squeeze in, Tribeca is shaping up to be our year’s busiest and most exciting 10 days for movie-going.
Without further buildup, here are ten films our Cinema Editor, Austin Trunick, is particularly looking forward to at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
With 2016 now well in the rearview mirror, it is high time to revisit the plethora of music-related books that were released last year. Below you will find a Top 21, with three additional special mentions. It is not meant to be exhaustive. Rather, it is an idiosyncratic list based on books this Book Editor read during 2016. I attempted to read as many of the relevant titles as possible (as well as many of the less relevant ones), but even so, I’m sure there are some glaring omissions. So, while you may take issue with titles left off this list, know it was not an intentional slight, rather more of a casualty of time. Should you read on, view this as something of a personal Best Of list, as extensive as possible with weaknesses understood. Now I best start playing catch up on 2017. By Frank Valish (Under the Radar’s Book Reviews Editor)
The 89th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will happen on Sunday, February 26th. As in years past, we’ve taken a look at this year’s short film competitions. The Academy defines a short film as an original motion picture running 40 minutes or less, and excludes all advertisments, unaired or unsold television episodes, or credit sequences from feature-length films. Our critic, Shawn Hazelett, watched and ranked all of this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts. Today, he looks at this year’s live action category.
The 89th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will happen on Sunday, February 26th. As in years past, we’ve taken a look at this year’s short film competitions. The Academy defines a short film as an original motion picture running 40 minutes or less, and excludes all advertisments, unaired or unsold television episodes, or credit sequences from feature-length films. Our critic, Shawn Hazelett, watched and ranked all of this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts. Today, he looks at this year’s animated category.
The 89th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will happen on Sunday, February 26th. As in years past, we’ve taken a look at this year’s short film competitions. The Academy defines a short film as an original motion picture running 40 minutes or less, and excludes all advertisments, unaired or unsold television episodes, or credit sequences from feature-length films. Our critic, Shawn Hazelett, watched and ranked all of this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts. Today, he looks at this year’s documentary category.
2016 was a fairly brutal year, what with the highly contentious and divisive election, the Brexit vote, and the deaths of various important musical and acting icons, among many other trying things. So it’s little surprise that many of the year’s best TV shows offered either immersive escapism or true laughs. A dive into Under the Radar‘s Top 10 TV shows of 2016 list illustrates this. Stranger Things offered a journey to a 1980s sci-fi/horror world, with a darker take on The Goonies, E.T., and other childhood classics of the era. Westworld presented the ultimate theme park, a video game come to life but with much more complex characters and a topnotch cast. Perhaps befitting the times, The Walking Dead shared its most unforgiving episode to date, with a shocking and powerful season premiere that challenged even the most gore-loving viewer. For those looking for laughs, there was the absurdity of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and The Last Man on Earth, whereas Love and You’re the Worst presented the two most realistic and modern TV portrayals of love and romance in recent memory. 2016 had it all: superheroes galore, lots of time travel, pointed political commentary, a highly compelling drama based on the real life O.J. Simpson murder trial (The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story), and some highly silly parodies of real life documentaries (Documentary Now!). Once again, those who proclaimed, “I don’t watch TV,” were missing another year in the golden age. This list may be way past-due, but that’s only because there are so many shows on so many channels (and streaming services) that it took us awhile to digest it all and poll our writers for the below Top 50 TV Shows of 2016 (plus honorable mentions).
Even if it goes down as a pretty wretched year for other reasons, 2016 was a phenomenal year for comics and graphic novels. Not only were books overwhelmingly stellar, but they were also tremendously diverse. From disquietingly violent thrillers (Kill or Be Killed, The Violent, and Deadly Class), to eminently engaging historical accounts (March and Tetris), to a surprising number of impressively introspective superhero sagas (Superman: American Alien and The Legend of Wonder Woman Volume 1: Origins), 2016 had it all.
As ranked by Under the Radar‘s core comic book contributors, our Best Comic Books and Graphic Novels of 2016 highlights nearly 40 gorgeous, powerful, and supremely notable books and series from over a half dozen publishers. Every single title, whether number one, number 25, or one of the many truly fantastic honorable mentions, deserves a read. By Zach Hollwedel
Once the dust settles and we’re finally able to look at 2016 in our rear view mirrors, we’ll hopefully view this doozy of a year for at least being a good one when it came to films. This year’s top 30 movies list—as voted on by Under the Radar‘s film staff—features indies and blockbusters of many genres, from dramas to comedies to science fiction to horror; foreign language films, documentaries, and even an animated kids’ movie. Not only were great films being made and released, but great films of many varieties. It’s a promising sign for 2017, and one reason to hold out hope in the months to come. If you’re looking for a way to get through these dreary winter months, you could do far worse than catch up on the fantastic flicks below.
Everybody knows the dice were loaded in 2016. Everybody knows the election was fixed, everybody knows the good gal lost. Everybody knows, that’s how it goes, in 2016. Everybody’s got this broken feeling, like too many legends just died and we got a future president who lied and lied. Everybody knows Brexit caused woes. The poor stay poor, the rich get rich, that’s just how it goes.
Ashes to ashes, funk to funky, David Bowie went to heaven, joined by Prince, Leonard Cohen, and Ms. Sharon Jones. We lost some great ones in 2016, and not just musicians, there was the dad from Growing Pains and the mom from The Brady Bunch, the first American to orbit the Earth, and the most inspiring boxer of all time. Maybe we lost a bit of democracy too. The most divisive and toxic U.S. election in recent memory culminated with a result few in the artistic community wanted to accept, foreshadowing an uncertain 2017. The popular vote meant little, perhaps thanks to the meddling of state sponsored foreign hackers. You wanted it darker baby, well 2016 left us all black and blue, but as usual, there was a plethora of worthy music to distract us from the doom and gloom.
In this day and age there seems to be more and more music fighting for our attention at the click of a mouse or smart-phone screen. Music fans are often living on fast food sound snacks, quickly disposed of in favor of the next nibble. But there were many musical main courses worth considering in 2016. We’ve narrowed it down to 100. They include aforementioned musical icons issuing their final albums at death’s door, a sophomore album 16 years in the making, a concept record about a grieving bride, and even one EP, by reunited shoegazing legends who broke up again soon after its release.
So how did we arrive at such a menu? Twenty-one of our writers and editors (including myself and my co-publisher/wife Wendy) each submitted their personal Top 45 albums of 2016 lists and then those were all combined and calculated together to form this master list. For an album to make the list it had to be picked by at least three writers, but most were picked by more than that. Our #1 album was the runaway winner, with all but two of those who voted having it on their list somewhere. Each of the rest of Top 10 were picked by anywhere from 11 to 16 of our writers, so it was a true consensus. There are tens of thousands of albums released each year and there are some good ones that almost made our list, check out our forthcoming honorable mentions list for some of those.
So everybody may know that 2016 wasn’t the greatest year for many (but there have been worse). Leonard Cohen may have called it back in 1988, the dice are loaded in many ways. But dearly beloved, in 2017 let’s roll them anyway, and let’s dance and let’s go crazy, despite the rough times the next four to eight years may bring. It’s what David, Prince, Leonard, and Sharon would’ve wanted. By Mark Redfern
With the 41st Toronto International Film Festival around the corner, the list of films set to be playing cover so many styles and genres that there truly is something for every taste. TIFF is about variety and access. It is friendly to the public and is far from being an exclusive affair. It is a celebration of film, filmmakers and film lovers. That said, deciding on what movies to target is a tall order with such a massive slate.
I’ll be covering TIFF for Under the Radar this year. The festival runs from September 8 – 18. The following are 10 movies I’m especially interested in seeing with a little rundown on why I’m looking forward to them. After this, I’ll have a second 15 titles I’m also interested in. This is only scratches the surface of the total list. If your most anticipated is missing, feel free to pop on down in the comments section and make a case for it. Depending on the schedule, I likely won’t be able to see all of these movies during the festival. It’s 10 days of running around to various venues and still finding the time to eat, sleep and write. Onto the list!
The 88th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will happen on Sunday, February 28th. As in years past, we’ve taken a look at this year’s short film competitions. The Academy defines a short film as an original motion picture running 40 minutes or less, and excludes all advertisments, unaired or unsold television episodes, or credit sequences from feature-length films. Our critic, Shawn Hazelett, watched and ranked all of this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts. Today, he looks at this year’s animated category.
The 88th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will happen on Sunday, February 28th. This week we’ve taken a look at this year’s short film competitions. The Academy defines a short film as an original motion picture running 40 minutes or less, and excludes all advertisments, unaired or unsold television episodes, or credit sequences from feature-length films. Our critic, Shawn Hazelett, watched and ranked all of this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts. In this first installment, he’ll look at this year’s live action category.
Okay, we know we’re late on this one. It’s the end of January 2016 and we’re only now just posting our best TV shows of 2015 list. But in our defense, there is a lot of TV to get through these days, on a lot of different platforms. The golden age of TV just keeps glowing and growing. Every week it seems as though there’s another new show we’re supposed to check out or another 13 episodes we’re suddenly expected to binge watch on Netflix. So it took us awhile to work our way through 2015’s best shows and compile this list and there were so many good shows we settled on a Top 75.
These days, any snobby faux intellectual that tells you at a party, “I don’t watch TV, I read books,” doesn’t know what they’re talking about (although reading books is good too). 2015 saw the continued dominance of streaming services (especially Netflix) and cable TV, although there’s room on our list for network TV shows too, but only one network show made our Top 10 (FOX’s The Last Man on Earth). This year there were two radically different new female superhero shows, the more traditional but still fun Supergirl and the much darker but still fun Jessica Jones. Fargo‘s second season gamely traveled back to the ‘70s. The dead still walked in Alexandria (while another zombie solved crimes in Seattle). A comedy tackled depression in a very real way. And it turns out we lost World War II. Meanwhile Mr. Robot blew our mind with all its twists and turns. But it was a new show from a standup comic and former network sitcom supporting player that took our top spot. Aziz Ansari boldly stepped out on his own to create, write, and star in Master of None, a new Netflix comedy that expertly and hilariously tackles the ins and outs of modern life from the perspective of a struggling Indian American actor fighting against racial stereotypes.
Without further ado, finally here’s our best TV shows of 2015 list to help you plan your next binge watching marathon. Happy viewing! By Mark Redfern
Comic books just keep getting better and better, and 2015 was a glorious year for the medium. From trades (hard- or paperback editions that typically collect five or six issues of an on-going series) to original graphic novels to single monthly issues, the year was rife with magnificent, deep, multi-layered storytelling that offered something to virtually everyone. (Image Comics, one of the largest and only creator-owned publishers in the industry, dominates the list with our picks for both first and second best comic of 2015, as well as a handful of others. DC, Top Shelf, Fantagraphics, and First Second also appear frequently.)
As always, you have your capes and tights-superhero books are as strong as ever and comprise a substantial part of our Top 10 best of the year. Yet, comic book newcomers who look down upon the medium as exclusively a home for masked crime-fighters are liable to be surprised by what else the medium offers (and that’s saying nothing about the detailed and deeply moving story arcs prevalent in superhero titles these days). From Scott McCloud’s masterful The Sculptor to Mike’s Place, which chronicles the days leading up to and after a real life suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, modern comics and graphic novels eschew the “funny-pages” of yesteryear, replacing them with intensely emotional, relatable, fully developed characters and stories that delve into the human experience in ways that rival any movie, book, or other art form.
Americana is a beguiling genre, as vast and wide ranging as the landscape from which it takes its name. Everything from the blues to bluegrass can be incorporated, leaving fans debating for hours on end-over endless sips of whiskey no doubt-about which records count. Compiling a Top 10 list of such works is an equally ramshackle endeavor, especially in 2015, one of the genre’s strongest and most diverse years in recent memory. This best-of certainly may not be definitive, but it covers a broad swath of promising unknowns, long heralded up-and-comers coming into their own, and a few time-honored legends who are by no means fully grown. All that and more is explored below in Under the Radar‘s 2015 Americana Top 10. By Kyle Mullin
Unorthodox movies ruled the year in 2015. Our Top Films this year include one shot entirely on iPhones and another shot entirely with puppets; one movie-length car chase and one movie-length interview; another movie set primarily in a tiny room, and one set almost entirely in a little girl’s head. The below list was calculated from personal top film ballots submitted byUnder the Radar’sfilm staff. The titles with the most frequent—and highest-placed—appearances on those ballots were tallied and ranked as our Top Films of the year. Scroll down to see our picks and read our reasoning behind them.
Hip-hop heads will be talking about 2015 for a generation. It was a growth spurt year for the still somewhat young genre. Many of its long held views about race relations, social injustice, and poverty were deepened and nuanced as a response to a seemingly endless parade of police brutality. Meanwhile, the genre’s styles and conventions were vaulted forward like never before. Leading the way were a half dozen youngsters who came into their own. But rap’s elders also put forth thrillingly laudable efforts-from Ghostface Killah to Cannibal Ox and even the all-but-forgotten Dr. Dre, the latter of whom unfortunately didn’t make the cut on this list. Numerous other LPs were also nearly included, from a shocking ante upping by the once irrelevant The Game, to a bitterly underrated turn by perpetual burgeoning MC Mac Miller. Hell, Ghostface alone released a trio of sterling LPs in the past 12 months. This all proves the richness of rap’s current state, making it impossible to limit our favorites to a Top 10. Instead, esteemed critics Jim Scott, Marty Hill, Scott Dransfield, and myself present 2015’s Top 15 hip-hop releases. Feel free to beef with us about those choices in the comments section below. By Kyle Mullin
We’re not sure how most music publications can cap their Albums of the Year lists at 50, there are too many worthy albums most years to leave it at that. Last year Under the Radar published a Top 140 Albums of 2014 list and in 2013 it was 125. This year we calmed down a little and settled on an easy Top 100. Even then there were about five or so albums I regret us leaving off the list (but a Top 105 just doesn’t have quite the right ring to it).
Here’s how it went down. Twenty-eight of our writers and editors (including our two publishers) each submitted their personal Top 45 albums of 2015 lists and then those were all combined and calculated together to form this master list. For an album to make the list it had to be picked by at least three writers, but most were picked by more writers than that. Our #1 album was the runaway winner, with all but five of those who voted having it on their list somewhere. Each album in our Top 10 was picked by an average at least 20 of our writers.
While certainly many albums on our Top 100 have also shown up on other critics’ Best Albums of 2015 lists, each year we are confounded by the multitude of great releases that don’t find themselves on many other lists besides our own. But one of the chief joys of doing Under the Radar is championing worthy artists and albums that are shut out of the cycle of hype and thus neglected. Our partial and simple hope with this list is that you’ll discover a new favorite that you may have missed in 2015. Finally, be sure to pick our Best of 2015 print issue, due out soon. It features new interviews with around 25 of the artists featured on this list, including five of the artists in our Top 10.
So read on to see how Father John tamed Wolf Alice in a beach house with a deer hunter and an Indian that was neon, while evading a sex witch and a priest from LA. It’s a trip to the fading frontier with Carrie and Lowell, but make sure every eye is open as you brave the currents and return to the moon or you might meet the grim reaper and get to heaven. By Mark Redfern
Let me make something crystal clear before the diehards start in on me: Neither myself nor anyone at Under the Radar is saying that “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” is the best Simple Minds song (everyone knows that’s “Someone Somewhere In Summertime”) or that “If You Leave” is OMD’s finest moment. That’s not what this little write-up is about (see: title of article). But since we’re on the subject, both songs are killer. Yea, yea, yea-we know Simple Minds didn’t write their biggest, most popular, and most recognizable single. Not sure why that matters or takes away from its greatness. And as for “If You Leave,” OMD are proud of it. Paul Humphreys told me himself when I interviewed him in 2013. SO BACK OFF.
Anyway, I realize that nearly a third of this list is made up of soundtrack moments from Planes, Trains & Automobiles. I’m not saying that’s the best John Hughes movie, though I could easily be convinced. Just saying it has some of the best soundtrack moments. That scene near the end when Steve Martin is on the train reflecting on the week he’s had with John Candy? And thinking about his wife and kids? And that Dream Academy song is playing? SHEESH. Note: I’ve included the vocal version of The Dream Academy’s “Power to Believe”; the film uses the instrumental version, which until last year had never been officially released.
Also, some of these tracks were in the movies, but never made it to the official soundtracks. Licensing shit I imagine. But that doesn’t matter anymore, because the Internet and stuff!
I’ve done my best to dig up the actual clips on YouTube, though not every clip is available. Per usual, I’ve also dumped the tunes into a Spotify playlist for ya (except for “Twist & Shout” because there’s no love between The Beatles and Spotify), so between the two formats, we’ve got ya covered.
What are your favorite John Hughes soundtrack moments? We wanna know. Sound off in the comments!
An Introductory Guide To Björk’s Strange and Beautiful Career
Björk is Iceland’s most celebrated musical export. She’s been singing since childhood, and gained prominence in the ‘80s as frontwoman for The Sugarcubes. She left that band in the early ‘90s to pursue a solo career, driven mostly by her unparalleled creative output. Björk is known for pushing boundaries both sonically and visually, leaving a trail of strange and beautiful works throughout her long and impressive career.
Her latest album, Vulnicura, is but another milestone for Björk. As with anyone who’s been around so long and made such an impact, diving headfirst into her back-catalog is a little daunting. Björk’s work is ethereal, modern, abstract, and whimsical. In another word, intimidating.
Björk’s work isn’t all oblique and avant garde. At the very core of her discography is an inventive pop performer, and her music is always centered on the sheer power and versatility of her voice. It is impossible to rank her albums on quality alone, since they rarely deviate from a standard her fans expect. Instead, this list will serve as more of a guide for those who know they need to listen to Björk, but have put it off too long and don’t know where to begin. I will attempt to set out a path that will ease the listener into Björk’s world, starting with her most accessible record, leading into her more challenging work. I stuck to her adult studio albums (so no self-titled 1977 album recorded when she was 11) and didn’t include her two soundtracks (2000’s Selmasongs and 2005’s Drawing Restraint 9). Here we go. By Cody Ray Shafer
A year ago, when The Walking Dead returned for its season four mid-season premier, there was nothing but questions. Did Judith survive the zombie horde? When would Carol return? Would Lizzie freak out and kill everyone? This time around, the show is as close to a reset point as it has been since walkers overran Hershel’s farm and forced the group into exile at the end of season two. With no antagonists left to fight and no clear destination point on the horizon, the show’s characters are left with the same questions they faced three seasons ago: Where are they going? How are they going to survive? And, in a world where there is nothing but moral shades of gray, what kind of people will they be? The answers to those questions will determine the trajectory of the show for the next eight episodes. By Matt Fink
Better late than never. While most of our Best of 2014 lists were posted to our website back in December, it’s taken us awhile to get our Top 100 Songs of 2014 one done. Compiling and deciding upon the very best songs of any given year is a daunting task, there are thousands upon thousands of tracks to choose from and while it’s often easy to agree to the year’s best albums there are a multitude of opinions on which songs from those albums are the highlights. Because we didn’t want the list to just be a repeat of all the same artists that were on our Top 140 Albums of 2014 list, we limited it to only one song per artist (two tops). Otherwise there would have been as many as four songs each by The War on Drugs and St. Vincent on this list, for example. Many of the songs that otherwise would have made this list had we not instituted that rule are included in our extensive honorable mentions list at the end.
Our writers each submitted a list of their 50 favorite songs of the year and those all combined to form this master list. We tried to keep it to songs first released in 2014, but some songs originally released in 2013 or earlier but featured on 2014-released albums may have snuck through. Conversely some songs featured on 2015 albums, but released as singles in 2014, are included. There are Youtube embeds for each song, so hopefully you’re find a previously undiscovered gem.
For me personally, 2014 was a bit of a tough year, but the three songs that most helped me get through it were The War on Drugs’ “Under the Pressure,” Real Estate’s “Primitive,” and The Horrors’ “I See You,” although many of the songs on this list were also important tools in helping me control my frustrations and maintain my sanity. Which songs meant the most to you in 2014? By Mark Redfern
Comic books are increasingly becoming a widely accepted, mainstream art form. The days when comics were for niche consumers-guilty pleasure reads for all but the most hardcore fanboys and girls-are rapidly receding into the past. And as the medium gains momentum, the output gets better and better. Publishers still print superhero titles on a weekly basis, many of which go on to become summer blockbusters or to inspire television shows. Increasingly, though, comics and graphic novels diverge from the traditional cape and tight stories the medium is primarily associated with, and the results are often some of the most impressive, exciting, and moving stories told all year.
No Best of 2014 recap would be complete without a look at the year’s comic book standouts. Under the Radar‘s picks for Top 25 Comic Books of 2014 Is below, as selected by the comic book staff. Though recognizable DC and Marvel characters are indeed represented on the list, a significant number of the titles were released by smaller publishers and have nothing to do with superheroes. Read below to find out why certain titles made our Top 10, and continue scrolling to see the 15 other titles we think deserve recognition. By Zach Hollwedel
Our Best TV Shows of 2014 list was once again dominated by cable shows. No broadcast show made our Top 10, with CBS’ The Good Wife coming close at #11. Almost twice as many cable shows made this list as broadcast shows. And cable channels HBO and FX were nearly tied for the most shows per channel (10 HBO shows and nine FX shows made our list). Of the big four broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC), NBC did the best with eight shows on the list and, despite The Good Wife, CBS faired the worst with only two shows.
Those Under the Radar writers and editors who felt they had watched enough TV in 2014 to weigh in on the year’s best TV submitted a list of their Top 20 favorite TV shows of 2014 and those lists were all combined and calculated into this master list. Our #1 show, The Walking Dead, has long been a favorite of our writers. We devoted a whole week of coverage to the show in October, so it’s no wonder it took the top spot. It was our #1 in 2012, but #2 in 2013 (Breaking Bad‘s final seasontopped our list then). But two freshman shows (The Leftovers and Fargo) came in at #2 and #3 and quite a few new programs made the list (including True Detective, Missing, Silicon Valley, The Flash, You’re the Worst, Penny Dreadful, Gotham, Constantine, Selfie, Marry Me,and others).
There are some critically acclaimed new shows that don’t appear on the list (Transparent, The Affair, Jane the Virgin, Black-ish, The Honorable Woman, Mozart in the Jungle, The Roosevelts, How to Get Away with Murder, The Normal Heart, Broad City), as none of our writers had them on their personal lists. That may be because they simply didn’t watch any of them (we are a music magazine/website mainly and they are mostly music critics, not TV critics—how many TV critics listened to all of 2014’s best albums?) or perhaps because they didn’t rate them as highly as other critics did. There’s simply so much good TV out there these days that it’s impossible to keep up with every single show, but here are the 60 best shows we did watch in 2014. By Mark Redfern
This passing year yielded ridiculous riches in genre filmmaking, with half of Under the Radar’s favorite films falling into science fiction, horror, or another recognizable cinematic niche. Mix in a number of highly ambitious auteur projects and close-up character portraits and you have Under the Radar’s Top 20 Films of 2014.
The below list was calculated from personal top film ballots submitted by Under the Radar’s film staff. The titles with the most frequent—and highest-placed—appearances on those ballots were tallied and ranked as our Top Films of the year. Scroll down to see our picks and read our reasoning behind them.
Late night performances are a weird, mixed bag for artists and listeners alike. Not counting Later…With Jools Holland, most late night shows tack on their musical guests as some footnote to everything else that’s going on. They can strip the power of artists and their songs (which the artists are probably playing at their most-polished), mainlining them as some curious side attraction to whatever comedy bits stand to take the Internet by viral storm. That said, late night performances are also the platform from which many artists kickstart their public momentum, indulging the whims of up-too-late teens who may grow up to be music nerds (or music journalists). Given that the past year inspired some massive changes to this platform, with David Letterman’s and Jay Leno’s retirement preceding the consecration of Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert in their new positions (and guiding the inevitable rise of Seth Meyers), we’re seeing late night television retake its place as a major engine for up-and-coming artists of all genres.
Even though The Orwells started this year off with a stage-writhing bang, we’re not saying a whole lot about them now. A year of non-stop stellar releases from visionary artists of all genres yielded more than enough stand-out performances to pack this list. Is your favorite below? By Sameer Rao
This was a good year for actors to explore what it’s like to be human, or what it’s like to be a woman, or what it’s like to have a tempestuous relationship with your mother, or what it’s like to be an actor. From the humanity of Scarlett Johansson (who’s on here twice!) to the ferocity of young Antoine-Olivier Pilon, 2014 was packed with incredible performances. To boil it all down, this year was about performativity; the personas we create and embody and showcase to the world around us. And here are the very best. By Kyle Turner
2014, the year that U2 invaded the privacy of half a million Apple users and Mark Kozelek fought The War on Drugs. Ariel Pink also went to battle with Madonna and Grimes. And Taylor Swift shook it off all the way to the best first week U.S. album sales in 12 years, but U.S. album sales also hit a record low (best illustrated by Paula, Robin Thicke’s big flop of an attempt to win back his estranged wife, Paula Patton).
Chris Walla left Death Cab for Cutie, Neutral Milk Hotel announced their final shows, Vivian Girls called it quits, and Guided By Voices broke up again (but don’t worry, Robert Pollard probably has five new solo albums already in the works). On TV we said goodbye to Sons of Anarchy, The Newsroom, Boardwalk Empire, The Colbert Report, Psych, True Blood, and, in one of the most disappointing series finales this side of Lost, How I Met Your Mother (spoiler alert: the mom dies).
But then Slowdive, Sleater-Kinney, OutKast, Ride, and Pink Floyd all returned. And we got TV series premieres for Fargo, True Detective, Missing, The Flash, The Leftovers, Gotham, and Garfunkel & Oates. Richard Linklater’s 12-years-in-the-making opus Boyhood was finally released and we checked into Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel. We helped Benedict Cumberbatch play The Imitation Game and Chris Pratt guard the galaxy. PlusDavid Lynch and Mark Frost announced that they were taking another twisted trip to Twin Peaks in 2016. “Weird Al” Yankovic was also back in a big way, getting “handy” and “tacky” with a bunch of viral videos and his first ever #1 album.
But it wasn’t all fun and games. We may have just landed a probe on a comet for the first time ever, but 2014 was a tumultuous year for world events, both in America and internationally. One passenger jet disappeared without a trace and another was shot down in Ukraine, while a Virgin Galactic test flight also fatally crashed. The Ebola Virus ravaged Africa. The police shooting of unarmed suspect Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, sparked massive protests and renewed the dialogue on police shootings and racism in America. ISIS’ reign of terror and beheadings continued unabated and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict also worsened. Robin Williams and Philip Seymour Hoffman both died under tragic circumstances and we also lost Bobby Womack, Gravenhurt’s Nick Talbot, Harold Ramis, Bob Hoskins, Rik Mayall, Lauren Bacall, and music photographer David Redfern. The 44% of Scottish people who voted for independence were left disillusioned. The U.S. midterm elections were either disastrous or victorious, depending on your party affiliation. And, spoiler alert, Beth died on The Walking Dead!
Despite all the disease and terror and protests and zombies, we’ll always have the music of 2014 to look back fondly on. And what a year it was for tunes. Other music magazines and websites might present you a Top 50 albums of 2014, a Top 100 at most, but we couldn’t leave it at that-too many great albums would be left out. So here we have the Top 140 Albums of 2014. It’s a slight, but helpful, coincidence that “14” appears in both numbers.
Here’s how it went down. Twenty-four of our writers and editors (including our two publishers) each submitted their personal Top 45 albums of 2013 lists and then those were all combined and calculated together to form this master list. For an album to make the list it had to be picked by at least three writers and when all the calculating was done we came up with 140 titles and just went with it. Our #1 album was the runaway winner, with all but four of those who voted having it on their list somewhere (many at #1, most in their Top 10). But our #2 album also made a very strong showing.
So now that you’ve finally dried off and warmed up from that ice bucket challenge you did back in the summer and have survived another Black Friday (and up to a record seven feet of snow in late November if you live in Upstate New York), sit back and peruse our choices for the best that music had to offer in 2014. And let us know in the comments below if we somehow left out anything you loved or you have any other thoughts on the list. By Mark Redfern
Welcome to Ranked, our recurring series in which one of our writers takes an artist’s catalogue and ranks all of their official studio albums from most essential to least essential. The order is decided by the individual writer, rather than our editors. If you disagree with our ranking then please let us know in the comments section. This time Dan Lucas ranks U2.
There can be few bands who suffer as much opprobrium in these Internet days as U2. Sure, the likes of Beady Eye and Nickelback perhaps attract more vehement attacks, but the sheer scale of everything about U2-their album sales, sound, and frontman’s persona-means that they surely stand alone. Much of this is deserved, be it for increasingly diminishing returns on the quality of their music or for their questionable marketing. The average online hater though is a person of short memory: over the course of 13 “proper” albums they produced records that either defined an era or went all out and changed it. There are duds, sure, mostly towards the latter part of their career, but the task of ranking said 13 albums reveals-as if such a fact needed revealing-that U2 are a band with a rich, varied and brilliant history that’s worth celebrating… no matter how many “Elevations” they release. By Dan Lucas
This week is Walking Dead Week on Under the Radar’s website. Season five of the wildly popular and critically acclaimed post-apocalyptic zombie drama starts this Sunday, October 12, at 9 p.m. (8 p.m. Central) on AMC. In anticipation of the show’s return, for this special theme week of coverage we have interviewed around 10 members of the show’s current cast and will be posting one to two Walking Dead interviews every day this week. Also, here’s a Walking Dead list.
As The Walking Dead‘s success is at least partly built upon its ability to provide a constant supply of shocking moments, narrowing down a list to only 10 entries is no simple task. You find yourself leaving off scenes such as The Governor biting off Merle Dixon’s fingers or Michonne digging out The Governor’s eye because they aren’t quite shocking enough. That said, a truly shocking moment isn’t just a scene that caused you a moment of temporary discomfort and repulsion but one that remained memorable because it represented an unexpected shift in the storyline, one that changed the trajectory of the show. Here are the 10 moments that remain burned into the memories of Walking Dead fans. By Matt Fink
This week is Walking Dead Week on Under the Radar’s website. Season five of the wildly popular and critically acclaimed post-apocalyptic zombie drama starts this Sunday, October 12, at 9 p.m. (8 p.m. Central) on AMC. In anticipation of the show’s return, for this special theme week of coverage we have interviewed around 10 members of the show’s current cast and will be posting one to two Walking Dead interviews every day this week. Also, here’s a zombie-themed list.
Horror films are as old as the medium itself, but as audiences change, the monsters on the screen change along with them. It’s fitting, then, that The Walking Deadis among the best horror available these days, when television is considered more artistic and engaging than a typical feature length film. But it is built on a long history of zombies on film, and each representation has played a key role in reflecting the fears and the unspoken realities of the people screaming in the safety of the theater. The Walking Dead has decades of inspiration to draw on, from the ridiculous and comical, to the gory and terrifying.
In honor of the return of The Walking Dead, here is our list of the most essential zombie films. By Cody Ray Shafer
We have had a special theme on Under the Radar’s website over the last week which we’re simply calling Scotland Week. All throughout the week we have been posting interviews, reviews, lists, and blog posts relating to Scotland and in particular Scottish music. Here’s a list of the Top 9 essential Cocteau Twins songs. The legendary dream pop band was founded in Grangemouth, Scotland in 1979 by Robin Guthrie, Elizabeth Fraser, and Will Heggie (who left in 1983 and was replaced by Simon Raymonde). Read our recent interview with Guthrie and Raymonde on the creation of their album Blue Bell Knoll. And read on as Mack Hayden breaks down his favorite Cocteau Twins songs.
I’ve always thought it was kind of fitting I first really got into Cocteau Twins after finishing David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks. Perhaps it’s because the tone of their music so closely matches the tone of that series. It’s alternately dark and heavenly, making beauty out of the purgatory we most often call the planet earth.
Like Twin Peaks, Cocteau Twins always feels too off-kilter to be familiar and too comforting to be foreboding. Cocteau Twins never so much mapped out a new sound as they did use a sonic palate that was limitless and infinite. They paint with the kind of colors that fall outside the spectrum we’re used to and make us feel like we’re reaching beyond ourselves into some transcendent mystery. At the center of their music is Robin Guthrie’s eternal and effects-laden guitar work and Elizabeth Fraser’s angelic, delicate and difficult-to-understand vocal style. Together, they created music as vast and awesome as a stormy ocean and as bizarrely meaningful as the night sky’s constellations. There are songs on the first couple records which sound so foreboding that they could’ve been played with the tentacles of Cthulhu but by the time you get to albums such as Treasure or Heaven or Las Vegas, they’re coming up with tracks which would inspire Kevin Shields, Robert Smith, and God himself alike.
If you haven’t dove into their work yet, here’s nine songs (one from each of their records, in chronological order) that will get you standing on the shoulders of these dream pop giants. By Mack Hayden
We have a special theme on Under the Radar’s website this week which we’re simply calling Scotland Week. All throughout the week we will be posting interviews, reviews, lists, and blog posts relating to Scotland and in particular Scottish music.
Belle and Sebastian built their artistic and fan-friendly reputation in the mid- to late-‘90s releasing terrific EPs in between their highly acclaimed and monochromatically decorated LPs, a rare feat for any post-‘60s band. Choosing 10 songs from a deep and consistent catalog that best represent the group’s long and storied career seems more fitting than choosing what would surely be a hotly contested best-of list. Therefore, this is ranked in chronological order. By Gary Knight
Somewhere in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there’s room for these 15 characters.
With Comic-Con in our rearview mirror and Guardians of the Galaxy due out this week, comic book movies and TV series have once again taken over pop culture. Once again, Marvel basically took Twitter out of commission for a few hours during its panel at Comic-Con where they showed footage of their sure-fire hits and teased a few tidbits about future projects.
But this year, there was something missing from Marvel’s big presentation. While in the past we’ve gotten announcements/hints about Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, and other Marvel properties, this year all we got was a Guardians of the Galaxy 2 release date-there weren’t any new film or TV announcements. So to help Marvel along, we put this list together of 15 Marvel Comics characters/teams who should get their own movie or TV show. They’re loosely ranked in order from “Admittedly, this is a longshot” to “How has this not been announced yet?!” A quick caveat: This is the part where we remind you Marvel only owns the rights to certain characters-so the list doesn’t include anyone who primarily exists in the worlds of X-Men, Fantastic Four (film rights both owned by Fox) or Spider-Man (film rights owned by Sony). In any case, hopefully plenty of these will soon make their way to a theater near you.
Invariably, that’s the response I get from fellow Americans when trying to discuss Pet Shop Boys with them. And I’m tired of it. Sick and tired of it, folks.
Don’t get me wrong, I love “West End Girls” and “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money),” but there is so. Much. More.
I’m fanatical about Pet Shop Boys. I’m fanatical about them in the same way the Depeche Mode fans who commented on my recent Depeche Mode piece are. Although, I think I’m less angry? Then again, perhaps not. The conversation outlined above does make my blood boil and fill me with inexplicable rage. But I mean, I’m not so fanatical of a fan that I can’t recognize when Pet Shop Boys put out a clunker; Bilingual, Nightlife, andReleaseweren’t great. Rather spotty, if I’m being honest. In fact, some bits of that album run are downright silly.
But still.
Here are some things, according to Wikipedia, Americans should know about Pet Shop Boys right freaking now:
Guinness Book of World Records has named Pet Shop Boys the most successful duo in U.K. music history.
According to Billboard, as of 2003, they were listed as the 4th (behind Madonna, Janet Jackson, and Donna Summer) most successful act on the U.S. Dance/Club charts.
They’ve sold over 50 million albums worldwide, had 42 Top 30 singles, and 22 hits in the U.K. Top 10.
They are three-time Brit Award winners and six-time Grammy nominees.
But I won’t. Instead, I present for your edification, 10 Pet Shop Boys songs that are not “West End Girls,” but just as good, maybe even better? (And these songs weren’t even singles!)
Once again, we’ve dumped these tunes into a Spotify playlist for ya, too.
Let’s face it: Depeche Mode haven’t released a good album in nearly a decade. And Playing the Angel was good, not great. They haven’t released a great album in over 20 years. Last year’s Delta Machine was unlistenable. 2009’s Sounds of the Universe was similarly excruciating (except “In Chains”-that song was pretty dope). Some say this slow and steady decline is a result of Martin Gore allowing Dave Gahan to bully his way into the songwriting (to what extent Gahan actually “writes” songs is unclear). But that’s letting Gore off the hook. Gahan has only had writing credits on a handful of tracks since 2005, and one of them is “Suffer Well,” which is the best Depeche Mode song since 1997’s “Barrel of a Gun”. Things really started to go downhill once Alan Wilder left after Songs of Faith and Devotion. And we still have no idea what Andy Fletcher does, right?
Truth is, they sound tired. Bored. Burnt out. But shit, they’ve been around for almost 35 years. They’re still touring and they still put on astonishingly good shows. And the Music for the Masses-Violator-Songs of Faith and Devotion trifecta is still one of the best album runs in pop music history. Plus they gave us “Policy of Truth.” ‘Nuff said?
Anyway, here are 10 Depeche songs that aren’t on nearly enough iPods. (Are iPods still a thing?) We even dumped them into a Spotify playlist for ya.
William Friedkin’s 1973 film The Exorcist is just as famous for its use of Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” as it is for its 360 head turn—perhaps, in fact, even more so. Richard Strauss’ Nietzsche-inspired tone poem “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” is probably much more commonly referred to as the music from the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey than it is by its real name. The point we’re trying to make: sometimes the marriage of movie and song are so inseparable, so capable of encapsulating the mood of the sequence, that all other meanings and contexts are lost. In honour of these inspired “needle drops,” we’ve collected a list of the best choices made by some of the best directors. By Lauren Down
What links Choke (2008), The Shipping News (2001), Chocolat (2000), The House of Mirth (2000), and The Cider House Rules (1999)? That’s right. You guessed it. They’re all movies that credit the casting director Suzanne Smith-Crowley. A second thing they have in common is that they are all movies that were based on books. If there’s anything contemporary Hollywood loves more than avoiding dreaming up original ideas, it’s discouraging, dampening, and destroying those individuals who do love to dream up original ideas. That’s why television is the place you go to these days for original and innovative content, while Hollywood churns out its uninspiring remakes, reboots, “reinventions,” adaptations, dodgy sequels, dodgier prequels, and every five minutes announcing who will be the next (probably British) actor to play Spiderman, Superman, or Howard the Duck. Books are precious things. They can be repugnant things too. Hitler wrote a book. Piers Morgan’s written several. Some books are too brilliant, complicated, strange, or just plain bad to ever be transferred successfully to film. With that in mind, we present our top 10 books that Tinsel Town would be wise to leave well alone. By JR Moores
Based on George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice novels, HBO’s fantasy epic series Game of Thronesis currently in its fourth season. I’ve been covering each episode of this season so far, which has been a blast, but since HBO decided to take a Memorial Day break this week, I thought I’d go back and do a quick recap of what I think are this season’s best moments so far. Here we go.
The 86th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will happen this Sunday, March 2nd. This week we’ve taken a look at this year’s short film competitions. The Academy defines a short film as an original motion picture running 40 minutes or less, and excludes all advertisments, unaired or unsold television episodes, or credit sequences from feature-length films. Our critic, Shawn Hazelett, watched and ranked all of this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts. In this final installment, he’ll look at this year’s live action category.
Portlandia’s fourth season debuts tonight on IFC at 10/9 central, so we thought we’d take a look back at some of the best, strangest, or ironic sketches from our favorite unlikely comic duo. Here are our favorites, from an out of control game of hide and seek, to an all too familiar binge session of Battlestar Galactica, and the near-perfect introduction to the show, “Dream of the ‘90s.”
Portlandia is one of the most unique and consistently hilarious sketch shows to come along since Mr. Show, and these sketches serve as a sampler platter of some of the best Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein have to offer. (And remember that Fred and Carrie are on the cover of Under the Radar‘s current issue. Also read a review of tonight’s season premiere here.)
The 86th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will happen this Sunday, March 2nd. Leading in to Oscar weekend, we’ll be taking a look at this year’s short film competitions. The Academy defines a short film as an original motion picture running 40 minutes or less, and excludes all advertisments, unaired or unsold television episodes, or credit sequences from feature-length films. Our critic, Shawn Hazelett, watched and ranked all of this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts. Today, he’ll look at this year’s documentary category.
The 86th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will happen this Sunday, March 2nd. Leading in to Oscar weekend, we’ll be taking a look at this year’s short film competitions. The Academy defines a short film as an original motion picture running 40 minutes or less, and excludes all advertisments, unaired or unsold television episodes, or credit sequences from feature-length films. Our critic, Shawn Hazelett, watched and ranked all of this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts. Today, he’ll look at this year’s animated category.
Welcome to Ranked, our recurring series in which one of our writers takes an artist’s catalogue and ranks all of their official studio albums from most essential to least essential. The order is decided by the individual writer, rather than our editors. If you disagree with our ranking then please let us know in the comments section. This time Scott Dransfield ranks The Shins.
It seems impossible to write about The Shins without starting with a mention of the band’s first big exposure: Natalie Portman’s famous name-dropping of them in Zach Braff’s film Garden State, and the inclusion of two of their songs on the film’s trendsetting indie soundtrack. This is because in the beginning, The Shins, in the sound of their music, recording quality, and odd, whimsical lyrics, perfectly exuded the kind of quirkiness that movie needed. Subsequently, they were seized by a young generation and a music press hungry for an outfit that married an old-school ‘60s feel to lyrics that reflected the silly and scattered thoughts of kids with short attention spans. It’s hard to look back over the 13 years since that first album was released and not see the influence of The Shins written all over indie music.
Featuring one of indie rock’s most down-to-earth and likeable frontmen, James Mercer, The Shins established themselves early on as melodic powerhouses, and over the span of their career provided a constant output of quality. With the success of third album Wincing the Night Away (Sub Pop’s best first-week-charting album), the band had a promising future, only to be dissolved by Mercer and replaced with new members for a 2012 reunion. Now in 2014, with Mercer once again focusing on side project Broken Bells, it remains to be seen whether The Shins will continue, but at least they’ve left behind a legacy.
Ranking The Shins’ discography is simultaneously easy and difficult: easy, because it’s only four full-length albums long; and difficult, because all four albums are so near-perfect (yes, even 2012’s divisive Port of Morrow) that it’s tempting to just say they all tie for number one and call it quits. This list, however, will attempt to perform said ranking. Take it with a grain of salt.
The modern golden age of television’s luster certainly continued into 2013 with current classic shows ending celebrated runs being replaced by new classics. Not all of the writers of our humble music magazine are avid TV watchers, but eight of our staff (including our two publishers) submitted their Top 20 favorite TV shows of 2013 lists, from which the master list below was derived. Any show that aired new episodes in America in 2013 was eligible. Of course, the definition of “aired” has changed slightly in recent years, with several of this year’s best shows streaming exclusively on Netflix and many watching shows after they’ve first aired via DVR, DVD, or streaming services.
It was a photo finish for our #1 show of 2013. The Walking Dead took our top spot in 2012, but couldn’t fend off an attack from Walter White. Breaking Bad‘s final episodes constituted one of the most acclaimed seasons ever of one of the most lauded shows ever. Diehard Doctor Who fans will likely forever debate whether or not the show is headed in the right direction, but most seemed to agree that November’s much hyped 50th anniversary special lived up to expectations and that was enough to land it at #3 on our list.
This year we not only bid farewell to Breaking Bad, but the following, among others, also aired their series finales in 2013: Fringe, Eastbound and Down, 30 Rock, Burn Notice, and The Office.The baton was passed-what a year for new shows, with the following all in their freshman season in 2013: Broadchurch, Masters of Sex, Orphan Black, Hello Ladies, The Americans, The Blacklist, Orange is the New Black, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Goldbergs, Top of the Lake, The Bridge, House of Cards, Maron, The Returned, Hannibal, Rectify, Ray Donovan, and Rick and Morty.
It almost feels strange to list Yeezus as the “best hip-hop album of the year,” as Kanye has become the rare artist that transcends both the genre and pop culture to which he belongs. Like no artist since Michael Jackson, he’s a household name, a punch-line, and a musical visionary-and nearly every album he makes is now an instant classic. Yeezus is a curious album from an artist that has reached that status, though, as West strips back the creative excess that usually accompanies his ambitions and ends up with a minimalist setting that actually provides more space for his outsized ego. He might not be the greatest rapper ever, the greatest lyricist ever, or the greatest producer ever, but he keeps turning out album after album that reimagines and redefines what hip-hop can be, all the while establishing him as one his generation’s most compellingly conflicted personalities. Still, it’s a shame that no matter how great he is, he’ll still fall short of how great he thinks he is.
The rest of the year belonged to eccentric upstarts, from Chance the Rapper’s instant leftfield classic to Danny Brown and Earl Sweatshirt’s genius-confirming turns as post-fame success stories. Storytellers (Kevin Gates, Le1f, Ka) had a good run in 2013, too, but even the year’s most serious artistic statements (Run the Jewels, Migos) had a thick undercurrent of fun running through them. Overall, this is a top heavy list but a deep one, with five classic or near-classic albums and over a dozen more that suggest that hip-hop has rarely had so many distinctive personalities pulling in so many different directions at one time. By Matt Fink
While the days of watching music videos on television are long gone, over the past several years the visual art form has certainly found second life (like so many other things) as an excellent online commodity. In 2013 many music videos went beyond just being a cool visual acccompaniment of a favorite song to become standout pieces in their own right. Whether they were cinematically compelling, told a great story, were creatively off-beat and did something different, or were just incredibly entertaining, the here are Under the Radar‘s favorites from a fantastic year.
2013 was another great year for film, particularly for science fiction (Gravity, Her, Pacific Rim), and intensive character portraits (Nebraska, Inside Llewyn Davis, Frances Ha, Blue Jasmine.)
To put together this list, our film contributors submitted their personal Top 10s (with the option to extend it to a Top 20) and our final rankings were calculated from those ballots. We present Under the Radar’s Top 20 Films of 2013 below.
For some, “electronic” may be roughly as useful a term as “alternative” these days, but the intriguing breadth of work listed below points toward 2013 being a banner year electronic music. Daft Punk aimed for the top of the pop charts and made it, while artists such as The Knife aimed right between the eyes and hit their own target.
Throughout the year, many stellar performances go underseen, are overlooked, or are otherwise underrated. In this piece, cinema writer John Oursler spotlights several of 2013’s overlooked performances.
Either 2013 was just a really, really great year for music or we’re a bit indecisive. Whatever the case, instead of our traditional Top 100 albums list this year we present the Top 125 albums of 2013. How did we arrive at such a massive list? Twenty-two of our regular writers and editors (including our two publishers) each submitted their personal Top 45 albums of 2013 lists and then those were all combined and calculated together to form this master list. Then we took the Top 10 from the initial vote and did a second vote to determine our #1 album and the order of the Top 10. For an album to make the Top 125 it had to be picked by at least three writers. And every writer’s #1 album of the year is represented somewhere on the list.
This was a year of spectacular comebacks (Suede, My Bloody Valentine, David Bowie, Primal Scream), exciting debuts (CHVRCHES, Foxygen, HAIM, Younghusband), and fantastic new albums from reliable mainstays (Vampire Weekend, The National, Camera Obscura, Foals). Read on and let us know if we missed something or you otherwise have thoughts on this list.
As 2019 draws to a close, it’s time to look into our collective crystal balls and look to see whose future shines brightest for the twelve months ahead. It’s been an exciting year for new music, not least in watching so many emerging artists dazzle both in the flesh and on tape. Bearing that in mind, Under The Radar asked its contributors to pick 20 of their hottest tips for 2020 so here are the acts we’re most excited about over the coming months ahead.
Bailen
This New York City trio is made up of three siblings: twin brothers Daniel and David Bailen and their little sister, Julia. Their acoustic sound feels like it came from a dusty, ‘70s rock LP, giving us the occasional Fleetwood Mac vibe and some of the best sibling harmonies we’ve heard since the Beach Boys. Their debut LP, Thrilled to Be Here, was released in 2019, but while the singles have gotten heavy play from local tastemakers WFUV, the band’s yet to really break out beyond the city in a huge way. That should hopefully change in 2020: the kids have the chops to at least be the next HAIM. Try out their heartfelt “Something Tells Me,” or the moody “I Was Wrong.” More recent releases include a cover of BRMC’s “Salvation,’ and for some holiday fun, their own take on “Christmas is All Around” from Love Actually. (bailentheband.com). (Austin Trunick)
Body Type
Sydney-based quartet Body Type released their critically acclaimed debut EP1 last year and generated a huge buzz after playing SXSW in 2019. The band who comprise of Sophie McComish (guitar and vox), Annabel Blackman (guitar and vox), Georgia Wilkinson-Derums (bass and vox), Cecil Coleman (drums) released their second EP, entitled EP2 this year. “Free To Air” may well be the tune that initially hooks people in. It’s slightly more reflective than their previous release the spiky jagged glory that was “Stingray” but proves that Body Type has got what it takes to make a huge dent in 2020. “Free To Air” eddies and flows driven by spidery guitars and gorgeous vocal harmonies. It’s a song tinged with beauty and poignancy and is a perfect example of how to craft artful, dazzling, intelligent evocative indie-pop with some style. (Andy Von Pip)
Do Nothing
Nottingham might be 175 kilometres from London but in terms of its music scene, the city is up there with any of its larger and more celebrated peers. Having bestowed us with the likes of Sleaford Mods, Eyre Llew, Six By Seven and Tindersticks in recent years, there’s a new wave of artists about to break spearheaded by arty post punk quartet Do Nothing.
The four members - Chris Bailey (vocals), Kasper Sandstrom (guitars), Charlie Howarth (bass) and Andrew Harrison (drums) - played together in another band before taking time out to go back to the drawing board, where Do Nothing was born. Bailey’s louche delivery has already drawn comparisons with both Mark E Smith and James Murphy while their musical journey can take you anywhere from Talking Heads and Spandau Ballet to Iceage, Parquet Courts and any number of places in between.
Former singles “Handshakes” and “Gangs” subtly hinted at their promising unpredictability while current release “LeBron James” represents their finest if most unsettling five minutes to date. (Dom Gourlay)
Dry Cleaning
South London has a history in producing some of the UK’s most innovative bands in recent years. The latest are Dry Cleaning, a four-piece who combine wiry post punk with intelligent, observational lyrics that reference Meghan Markle, sexual encounters in Travelodge hotels and Vikings amongst other things. One review compared them to “Phoebe Waller-Bridge fronting The Fall”, and while that probably sounds a little too unpalatable to contemplate, it’s actually quite plausible. They’ve put out two EPs this year which stand shoulder to shoulder gracefully alongside anything else released in 2019 while their live shows have already become the stuff of legend.
With an album scheduled for release in the coming months and several festival slots already in the bag, it’s probably fair to say you’re going to hear a lot more from Dry Cleaning in 2020. (Dom Gourlay)
52 Hertz Whale
Some of the most exciting music we’ve heard recently has emerged from mainland Europe. One of those acts responsible are 52 Hertz Whale, a five-piece hailing from the Slovakian capital of Bratislava. They describe their music as “post everything” which wouldn’t be a bad descriptive were they not as relevantly present as it gets. Led by the inimitable talent that is Dominik Prok, a forceful presence that’s equal parts Mark Lanegan (vocally) and Cedric Bixler (performance-wise). Musically there are elements of grunge, punk, shoegaze and even metal which makes their repertoire a brutal yet potent concoction of styles and ideas.
Recent single “Thin Skin” came out earlier this month and represents arguably their most visceral statement of intent to date. With more new music on the way shortly and live shows about to be confirmed beyond their native motherland, 2020 could be the year these guys become household names in your neck of the woods. (Dom Gourlay)
Goddesses
Emerging from the deep existential fuzz of their 2016 self-titled debut, Goddesses have reconfigured their sound, with real songcraft breaking through the sonic fog. II is the augmentation of long jams and live recorded one-take guitar, bass and drums sessions at Derby’s Dubrek studios and overdubs and effects added later.
With additional mixing at Black Bay Studios in the Scottish Isle of Lewis, II is the sonic representation of these locales - desolation and beauty from both built environments and untouched nature. Yes, this music will draw Radiohead comparisons but bubbling in the mix is shoegaze swirls, motorik rhythms and pop sensibilities, not least in the album’s vocal harmonies. In a time of undoubted darkness this is Goddesses finding the light, reigning in the noise but losing none of its power. II, which is coming early in 2020, proves that there can be power in subtlety. Goddesses is a band waiting to be discovered.(James Thornhill)
Guhm
Guhm is comprised of members hailing from London, Spain and Brazil, and consist of Laura Guerrero Lora (vocals), Marina MJ (bass), Jojo Khor (guitar) and Vicki Butler (drums). They met after bassist Marina placed an advert on Gum tree (hence the name Ghum). They’ve had a fantastic 2019 in the wake of their dark brooding second EP The Coldest Fire which garnered them national airplay in the UK.
There’s a dark uneasy intensity apparent in much of their output to date, channelling the dark spirit of Joy Division and the edgy post-punk energy of Savages. Lead track ‘Saturn’ tells the story of a toxic relationship, but the bleak subject material is illuminated by some masterful guitar flourishes from Jojo Khor and the fiery intense passionate vocals of singer Laura Guerrero Lora. They have described The Coldest Fireas a “reintroduction to Guhm” after releasing an excellent self-titled debut EP back in 2017, and this year they have turned things up several notches, expanded their sonic palette and sound like they mean business. 2020 looks set to be an interesting and exciting year for Guhm. (Andy Von Pip)
Happy Couple
Ooh it’s been a while since a new band has inspired me to air guitar. And while no wave three-piece Happy Couple aren’t exactly playing epic lead or catchy riffs, favouring barrages of distortion and walls of noise instead, it’s still the satisfying explosion of sound only guitars, a huge amp and a fully stocked pedalboard can produce. Scraped strings meet rapturous howls and menacing utterings as London based troika Lena Pilshofer (vox \ bass), Ben Thompson (Guitar) and George Miles (drums) generate the perfect cacophony to soundtrack your fall into hell. They kick off the year with the release of the ironically titled abrasive single “Feel Better” on limited edition vinyl in January. (Jimi Arundell)
Honeymoan
This South African four-piece have already made significant inroads thanks to recent singles “Low Blow” and “Still Here” finding their way onto numerous Spotify and radio playlists worldwide. Of course that wouldn’t make an iota of a difference if the band didn’t have more songs and a live set to live up to any set preconceived expectations. Which thankfully they do, as anyone fortunate enough to be present at any of their recent shows in Brighton and London last month will testify.
Newly signed to Communion Records with an EP scheduled for release in February (Weirdo), their potent mix of slick r’n'b, dream pop and occasional flurries into shoegaze make them one of the most exciting propositions we’ve seen and heard in a very long time. (Dom Gourlay)
Juniore
Paris outfit Juniore excel in the art of aural seduction, crafting their hypnotic tunes from the pop history of their French homeland. Their self-coined “yéyé noir” sound merges classic 1960s French pop, from Serge Gainsbourg to Francoise Hardy, surf rock grooves and retro-futurism propelled by post-punk rhythms and the quirky humour of the country’s 70s new wave scene.
Yes, it is that good! It makes sense that the past year or two has seen them feature across film and TV soundtracks like the critically-acclaimed Killing Eve, their cinematic qualities captivating audiences. Live they are no less enthralling slowly winning slots supporting the likes of the Dandy Warhols.
Forthcoming new album Un Deux Trois (coming in February), elevates their sound even further as the band sink deeper into their own unique sound, familiar but unplaceable! Latest single “Ah Bah D’accord” is every nostalgic image of the swinging 60s filtered through a post-punk lens. Hypnotic, seductive and funky as hell.
Juniore is exactly what you need in your life right now. (James Thornhill)
Low Hummer
Though wildly derided, gritty city Hull has a well-kept secret in the form of its excellent local music scene which, after the recent successes of LIFE is rapidly bubbling and looks ready to burst right across the UK. Next in line for success are krautrock informed indie rockers Low Hummer. The quintet translate the Northern experience into some truly catchy tracks which have seen them splashed across tastemakers feeds,appearing in numerous articles and getting prominent 6 Music airplay. If you haven’t heard them, check out “Don’t You Ever Sleep” and “I Choose Live News” right now!! (Jimi Arundell)
Nadia Reid
For those of us already in the know, the three years between New Zealand songwriter Nadia Reid’s albums have been an excruciating wait. A wait no doubt earmarked by endless listens to her pristine sophomore album, Preservation. On March 6, Reid will release her third album, Out Of My Province, on her own aptly named Slow Time Records. The album will release outside of New Zealand on Spacebomb, and yes, she made the trek to Richmond, Virginia, to receive the full Spacebomb production treatment of strings and lush arrangements. First single and video, “Best Thing” is already out. Reid has a voice that is at once delicate, but also sturdy enough to command attention and instill an instant addiction. A voice that stands up to any instrumentation thrown her way and earns whatever superlatives you care to apply. Reid only first toured out of her native home to neighboring Australia in 2016 and maintained her job at a cafe up to that point. Since then, Reid has performed in the U.K., Europe and barely in the U.S. As her new album predicts, Reid will undoubtedly find herself extensively out of her province in the ensuing year. Already having been nominated for numerous awards at home, the rest of the world will soon figure out that she is a necessary fixture in their listening libraries. (Mark Moody)
Neighbours Burning Neighbours
The Netherlands has produced a wealth of great music in recent years ranging from The Homesick’s angular post punk and Pip Blom’s winsome indiepop to Canshaker Pi’s slacker grunge and The Sweet Release Of Death’s experimental noise rock.
There’s another name to add to that list in the shape of Neighbours Burning Neighbours, a four-piece from Rotterdam. They also share a member with the aforementioned Sweet Release Of Death in singer, songwriter and guitarist Alicia Breton Ferrer. Fusing caustic and often brutal shards of noise with insatiable melodies, Neighbours Burning Neighbours are the sweet and sour dessert exquisitely crafted guitar music has been craving for a while.
Debut single “Grace” came out earlier this month on Subroutine Records and with slots already confirmed at both Ment and Peel Slowly And See festivals, it’s going to be a busy and exciting year for Rotterdam’s newest noiseniks on the block. (Dom Gourlay)
Pet Crow
Based in Derby, slap bang in the middle of England, Pet Crow couldn’t be further from the sea. And yet their party punk blasts are infused with big surf licks. Take The Edge Off is another tricky second album, but not in the classic sense. Despite the positive punk blasts, the album navigates a turbulent period for the band’s members - anxiety, depression, drug addiction, recovery, OCD, ADHD are all tackled, speaking from direct experience.
Despite all this they are still here, turning heads as one of the best new live bands in UK and readying an album where the dark subjects are fueled through their blend of tight funky rhythms, punk riffage and surf rock party vibes. Danielle Ross’ detached vocals are the epitome of styling out your problems. It’s so good, that US label No Sleep heard it and immediately signed them!
Pet Crow believe you can dance and sing your way through your problems. They want you to join them! (James Thornhill)
Ratboys
Whether singing about frozen pets in the basement or frozen people in a cryogenic chamber, it’s been a minute since Chicago-based Ratboys last album, 2017’s GN. We were graced with the teaser of a lovely follow-up four song EP, GL in the interim. The core duo of Julia Steiner (vocals, guitar) and Dave Sagan (guitar) have been backed by a revolving door of rhythm sections to this point, but have announced permanent members in Marcus Nuccio (drums) and Sean Neumann (bass). The cohesiveness certainly shows on their upcoming third album. Printer’s Devil (another stumbled upon and appealingly odd title) releases via Topshelf on February 28, and the opening track and first single, “Alien With A Sleep Mask On” charges hard out of the gate. If you have a hankering for guitar-based indie rock, Sagan really lets it fly and Steiner’s agile vocals cruise ably alongside without showing any signs of cracks. The band doesn’t hesitate to throw in some alt-country vibes or drone-drenched passages, but Steiner’s contributions always keep things buoyant. With the new album and an extensive tour poised for the spring thaw (including SXSW dates), the upcoming Chinese Year of the Rat looks primed to be renamed the Year of the Ratboys. (Mark Moody)
Sorry
Genre traversing North London collective Sorry have been bubbling under the radar for a couple of years now. Centred around the creative nucleus of childhood friends Asha Lorenz and Louis O’Brien, the band’s ability to fuse apparently disparate musical elements into something cohesive and unique is just one of the reasons people are getting very excited about this band. They don’t play by the rules and mix lo-fi indie-pop with thumping electronica, hip hop beats and soaring distorted riffs. They take their influences from everywhere and anywhere rather than allowing themselves to be constrained by artistically reductive by ill-advised genre tagging. Since signing to Domino Records the band have shown no signs of playing it safe and continue to be as experimental and off the wall as ever. Their debut album 925 will be out via Domino in 2020. (Andy Von Pip)
Squid
Rewind to January and its Sunday lunchtime at Rockaway Beach festival, where the opening act - a relatively unknown five-piece called Squid - are proving to be the perfect remedy for the previous night’s hangovers.
Formed in Brighton four years ago but now based in London. The quintet spent the interim period honing their combined influences into an affluent melting pot of styles and sounds. Indeed, Squid are something of a quandary in that they’re almost impossible to categorise by genre. Which can only be a good thing and undoubtedly adds to the band’s universal appeal. Currently signed to highly revered independent Speedy Wunderground, a label with a track record for sniffing out the finest new talent. Recent EP Town Centre more than lived up to the expectations derived from the band’s live shows, and with an album expected in the not too distant future, 2020 promises to be the year of the Squid. (Dom Gourlay)
The Chats
Three chords and boredom are a powerful concoction. Just ask Australian “shed rock” trio The Chats, just back off a sell-out UK tour and readying a full-length debut. The sheer explosion of teenage joy at each live date proves they are more than viral-video sensations (yeah, you love “Smoko” - we all do!) but they are the garage-punk heroes we need right now.
Revelling in the mundanity of modern teenage life, The Chats write tongue-in-cheek odes to smoke-breaks, masturbation, online issues and not being told what to do. There is complexity in their simplicity with solid, driven rhythms propelling the garage rock riffs. It’s perfect punk party music. Sometimes just living life, how you want to live, is a revolutionary act. The Chats live that, and even if they don’t, they don’t care! They are readying a punk classic for 2020.(James Thornhill)
Walt Disco
Glaswegian band Walt Disco has already gained a certain amount of notoriety in their home town for their incendiary, flamboyant live shows. They’ve already sold out King Tuts Wah Wah Hut and have gained rave reviews for their performances at Live At Leeds and The Great Escape this year and have released an impressive clutch of singles which have echoes of early Psychedelic Furs, The Sisters Of Mercy and the Associates.
Last year’s single ”Drowning In Your Velvet Bed” is probably the best introduction to the band’s oeuvre for the uninitiated replete with thundering bass lines frenetic guitars and lead singer James Potter’s somewhat unhinged vocals. He says of the track “it’s our own camp, glamorous interpretation of angry post-punk.”
The band state their influences as ”derived not from just music itself, but much more so from love, glamour and androgyny.” Their music is a gateway to a space of lust, loss and everything in-between. This year the band have made further inroads with a brace of stunning singles in the shape of “Strange To Know Nothing” and “Paste Tense”. (Andy Von Pip)
Working Men’s Club
Savage and stylish, I absolutely love the hedonistic rush of rising dark synth-pop stars Working Men’s Club. Choosing to play along to a drum machine can be a wee bit stifling during most live performances, but for WMC it ensures their sets remain tightly wound which retains their razor-sharp edge on stage. Finding a home on the iconic label Heavenly Recordings, the West Yorkshire band have already released “Bad Blood” that has that killer bass line and the truly infectious “Teeth” which is most definitely my single of the year. We are hearing reports they’ll be sticking with Jeff Barrett for the release of their debut album early next year and I need a copy - NOW! (Jimi Arundell)
In the past we’ve avoided posting midyear best albums lists. It seemed somehow impatient and premature to evaluate the year’s albums halfway through. And how do you decide which period the list covers, which arbitrary release date do you work out is the cut off point, as every midyear list seems to cover a different period? But 2017 is a year that demands a partial evaluation. The first half of the year has already produced enough strong albums to easily fill a Top 50, but also the second half of 2017 is stacked with so many high profile releases that threaten to overshadow some of the gems released so far. For example, we’ve already heard some August and September releases that we’re certain will make the upper echelons of our final best albums of 2017 list come December.
To make this list an album had to be released for the first time (no reissues) somewhere between January 1, 2017 and last Friday, July 7. That means there are some good albums out tomorrow (such as Waxahatchee, Japanese Breakfast, and The Dears) that may made this list had we extended the period that far. Fourteen of our writers and editors (including myself and my co-publisher/wife Wendy Redfern) each submitted a list of their 20 favorite albums released this year thus far. Their number one album was worth 20 points, their number two worth 19 points, and so on until their number 20 album and any honorable mentions were worth one point each. All of that was calculated into the final list. By the way, this year we’ve interviewed 38 of the artists in the Top 50 and reviewed almost all these albums, so continue reading Under the Radar, both in print and online, for further proof that in-depth music journalism is far from dead. By Mark Redfern
The 87th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will happen on Sunday, February 22nd. This week we’ve taken a look at this year’s short film competitions. The Academy defines a short film as an original motion picture running 40 minutes or less, and excludes all advertisments, unaired or unsold television episodes, or credit sequences from feature-length films. Our critic, Shawn Hazelett, watched and ranked all of this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts. In this final installment, he’ll look at this year’s documentary category.
The 87th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will happen this Sunday, February 22nd. This week we’ve taken a look at this year’s short film competitions. The Academy defines a short film as an original motion picture running 40 minutes or less, and excludes all advertisments, unaired or unsold television episodes, or credit sequences from feature-length films. Our critic, Shawn Hazelett, watched and ranked all of this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts. In this installment, he’ll look at this year’s animated category.
The 87th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will happen this Sunday, February 22nd. This week we’ve taken a look at this year’s short film competitions. The Academy defines a short film as an original motion picture running 40 minutes or less, and excludes all advertisments, unaired or unsold television episodes, or credit sequences from feature-length films. Our critic, Shawn Hazelett, watched and ranked all of this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts. In this first installment, he’ll look at this year’s live action category.
