47. TYLER CHILDERS - PURGATORY (2017) Modern hillbilly getting high, drinking moonshine, growing a beard, trying to call his girl, but getting a shot instead. This was a breakthrough album for this artist who represents a modern kind of country; Americana - a very rich, strong flavor in the mouth kind. The new America:
81. BILL CALLAHAN - APOCALYPSE "Yeah it's all coming back to me now My apocalypse, my apocalypse The curtain rose and burned in the morning sun"
...so it goes on "One Fine Morning" - the sumptuous, but harrowing closer of this majestic album from 2011. I actually caught him live in a church in Brighton in 2008 and it was one of the most hushed, graceful, well-executed concerts a young man could wish for.
Apocalypse, in my opinion, is this singer-songwriters best work. It might not get his best score on Metacritic or whatever, but for the most part, it's his most impactful and demonstrating the broadest range. The urgent march of "America," the sputtering-smoothness of "Baby's Breath" and the lyrical overlaps of "Riding For The Feeling" - c'est aperetive. The perfect follow-up to 2009's Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle, which was hella hush-hush - he's been slowly building up quite a name as a lo-fi, organic folk hero, separate to his output as Smog - a whopping 13 albums! - and now 6 under this name - we can add hashcakes of #prolific #consistent #worldly #instabill #callahan4eva #americasnexttopcrooner
A band that had an "island trilogy" between 2006 and 2010, Shearwater had always sat with me as their name suggests, uncontaminated and concerned with sanctity. Not anymore, what we have here is a quasi-electronic throwback to late 70's that smacks of Fleetwood Mac and is politically righteous at times in all the best possible ways.
"Quiet Americans" is the prime example of this. A synthy-anthem of gargantuan irony. On the side it's making me want to go out tonight. It is pre-game dynamite and is fuelled by the chorus: "Where are the Americans?.........The only sound... The only light........only only!"
The above is only a snippet. The first four lines also have that chilling, penultimate doom that has been absent in a lot of the bands recent work.
"I can't help it if all the world is ending. All the life is gone while you're calling out this name. Where are the Americans?"
And ultimately the best thing the band have ever written is on this LP, "Backchannels" is the natural side to Shearwater and gives the album the refrain that gives the album all the proportions of balance and glory that come when you care.
47. TYLER CHILDERS - PURGATORY (2017) 
