THE MARINADE WITH JASON EARLE'S "BEST" (READ: FAVORITE) ALBUMS OF 2021 | PART II

Every December I try to think of some clever way to recap the year’s musical releases, but nothing ever seems right. We have access to so much great music in today’s world; and, people all over the world are making incredible pieces of art.

It is tough to decide which albums I want to highlight. I spend a lot of time listening to records. The majority of that time is allocated to doing research for The Marinade, so any year-end or favorites list is naturally going to include Marinade guests or folks who are Marinade adjacent.

I don’t consider myself much of a critic, so when I say “best” albums I mean my favorites. These are the albums that have been on heavy rotation at my house, in the car, and during my workouts. These are the works that captured my attention for extended stretches of time. They are the albums that came to mind when I thought about doing a “best of” piece.

This is Part II of two “Best of” recaps. You can read Part I here. The records are presented here without regard for any ranking. If you would like to hear more about why I included these albums, and how I would rank them, head over to patreon.com/marinadepodcast and subscribe for the price of a latte or a nice IPA.

Sturgill Simpson The Ballad of Dood and Juanita

Willie Nelson’s Redheaded Stranger changed my expectations for albums. My father is not a musician - and only a casual music fan for the most part - but when he is passionate about something he becomes an evangelist. He turned me on to Tom T. Hall and Waylon Jennings. He instilled a love of bluegrass. 

When I started to get passionate about albums, I asked him what the best record of all time was in his opinion. He said something that sounds like what I would now tell a young person. That’s an impossible question, but you can’t go wrong with Redheaded Stranger.

Sturgill came off of two bluegrass re-imaginings of his incredible catalog with a lot of critical acclaim and the support of his fervent fan base. Still, I did not give Cuttin’ Grass Vol. 1 and 2  more than one spin. Not because they were not good. They were very good. I just have come to expect so much from Sturgill. Sound and Fury was a masterpiece. As was A Sailor’s Guide to Earth and Metamodern Sounds in Country Music. Hell, the whole damn arsenal is brilliant. 

If he wanted to put out a bluegrass record, I would like some new Sturgill tunes. That is probably not fair. It is a criticism based on my own expectations and not some objective commentary. 

No matter. All is forgotten with The Ballad of Dood and Juanita. Parents will be answering the question about great records with most of Sturgill’s catalog and this record is a perfect example of why.

The Roseline Constancy

This record came into my life because I lost my keys and got stuck in the garage. Craig of All Knowing McGill suggested I listen to The Roseline to pass the time and I got hooked from the first spin. Click here to read my Review Under Two of the record.

Nathan Bell Red, White, and American Blues (It Can Happen Here)

Nathan Bell is a thoughtful, smart dude. This record says so much of what I am feeling about the world today in a way I could never. Red, White, and American Blues (It Can Happen Here) got the Review Under Two treatment right about the time it was released. Check that out here. Also check out our conversation with Nathan here.

Waltzer Time Traveler

Time Traveler is a breath of fresh air and Waltzer is too cool. Waltzer writes tunes that are catchy and reflective, kooky and honest. This album was a constant companion in 2021 because of its unwillingness to be what anyone expects. It is an expression of Sophie Sputnik embracing who she is as an artist and a person.

Sophie sat down for an episode of The Marinade around the record’s release. We had so much damn fun and she gave the listeners a window into what makes her songwriting and playing so special.

Andrew Bryant A Meaningful Connection

Andrew Bryant found meaning and connection in an unconventional way during 2020. He stopped drinking, moved houses, and created the most impressive record of his exceptional career. A Meaningful Connection bridges the gap between the literal struggles of 2020 and the metaphors that carried Bryant into the next phase of his life. 

In July of 2020, Bryant turned forty and stopped drinking. Those two things alone would be a lot to bear for most of us, but Bryant was enduring more. His father-in-law was sick. He was moving his family. He had just released a record at a time when no one could leave their house and the leader of the nation was telling people to ignore the facts about a lethal once-in-a-generation pandemic.

For this record, he set out to write about things other than himself. The reality is, Bryant is interesting. His life is interesting and he is self-reflective about that life. In discussing A Meaningful Connection’s stunning cover art on The Marinade with Jason Earle, Bryant said he always found it strange that windows both reflect and allow you to see through them.

The picture is of a shirtless Bryant sitting up in bed. His wife lays next to him looking up as the artist holds his phone and looks into the camera. The scene is tender and vulnerable, honest and reflective. A mirror held up to a collective and personal transition into something better. A Meaningful Connection achieves what its title promises.

Review Under Two: Constancy by The Roseline

Review Under Two is a segment of The Marinade with Jason Earle podcast where host Jason Earle reviews a work he finds inspiring in under two minutes.

Our Review Under Two for Episode 100 with singer-songwriter Ryan Anderson focuses on the excellent new record Constancy by The Roseline.

The Roseline’s Constancy is a slice of pumpkin pie as imagined by a cutting edge chef. Reminiscent of bands like Whiskeytown and The Flying Burrito Brothers but insistent on tackling familiar themes and exploring comfortable sounds from an original perspective. 

Constancy is a hopeful record. Its characters do the messy work of looking back and examining the changes that need to be made. They acknowledge the messes in their lives and refuse to be defined by them. They decide to persevere instead. 

The backbone of the album is a tune called “Hunker Down.” It is a perfect encapsulation of the record’s prevailing theme. Constancy’s characters are in varying stages of getting to know themselves, with those in “Hunker Down” getting as close to self-actualization as one could dream. 

“All I wanna do is mostly nothing/Hunker down with you and try to tame/All my pecadillos and bad habits/Lay ‘em to waste”

“Hunker Down” is the excavation of life as a work in progress. It digs up the days of “flirting with service industry women” and “spending a shift’s worth of wages or more” in one night- those floundering moments of foolish youth that feel like they are necessary rites of passage. Maybe they are. Maybe the big takeaway should be that our bad habits and mistakes are necessary to develop constancy as a skill. 

The narrator in “Hunker Down,” has overcome the false urgency of a night wasted to experience the beauty in doing “mostly nothing” with people you love. 

We could all use a healthy dose of constancy, and The Roseline is an able ambassador for fortitude in the face of a precarious global landscape.

Review Under Two: Van Plating's The Way Down

Photo by Bethany Blanton

Review Under Two is a segment of The Marinade with Jason Earle podcast where host Jason Earle reviews a work he finds inspiring in under two minutes.

Our Review Under Two for Episode 98 with singer-songwriter Jeremie Albino focuses on Van Plating’s record The Way Down.

Van Plating’s forthcoming record The Way Down is a top self bourbon served neat on the back deck at twilight. Its complexities are immediately apparent but still best enjoyed with slow, rapt attention and an awareness of their context.

Plating spent her 20s playing and singing in indie rock bands. When her band Pemberley broke up she decided to take some time off from touring and making records. Then life happened and a little time off turned into years.

Once the need to create, the pang that pushes one to make beautiful things, enters the system it never leaves. Like a blood flute quietly doing its work, the need to make art will rear its head even decades after the bug first arrives. 

Photo by Bethany Blanton

Plating’s 2019 self-titled record was the first manifestation of the creative bug pushing itself from the cocoon. The Way Down (set for release on 11/19/21) is where the butterfly takes flight. A decade of reflection and growth baked into a collection of songs that celebrates the person Plating has become and is becoming. 

So often we think of creative change in terms of rebound or redemption. An artist who overcame addiction or was left for dead by the industry. In the case of Van Plating’s The Way Down, the change is not a return from oblivion. It is a leap back into a life that was always there percolating just below the surface of a “normal” existence.

The spiritual centerpoint of the record is the final track “Oxygen.” It is a song about the loss and recovery of love. Its imagery is stark and powerful, with the ocean setting the stage for an examination of what it means to lose something essential and recover it through perseverance. 

“Whose side are you on? My wings are made to soar.”

“Oxygen” is the second song on the record to mention wings- the appearance of which nods both to Van Plating’s complicated relationship with the church and her determination to rise above the noise. Who should make art? How and when should it be made? Throughout The Way Down Plating decides the answers to those questions on her terms. 

“Oxygen” is a fitting closer to the record. With little more than three chords and an acoustic guitar, Plating makes apparent that while she may have had a hard time breathing at points in her life, on this record the creative airways are clear.

Review Under Two: Tennessee Jet's South Dakota

Tennessee Jet spent a lot quarantine consuming records. While he enjoyed many of those releases, none of them were capturing what he was feeling in this moment. So he set out to make such an album. The result is a stripped down performance meant to capture the moment- imperfect but powerful and poignant. TJ, a guitar, and sometimes his harmonica are the instruments that lay his characters bare. 

South Dakota is a record that examines the present through the lens of its rich characters. Among his greatest strengths as a songwriter perhaps the strongest is the richness of his 

characters. In just a few short minutes he gives us enough backstory to understand why we should care, opens the door to empathy and understanding, then leaves us wanting to know more about these people and their stories.Characters and the layers of their lives are a bright spot of any TJ record. On South Dakota they are ambassadors of self-reflection and examination. 

The album ends with a song called “The Good.”

“I will kill your hatred/Your conscience I’ll make clear/my love has no conditions/I will see this mission through/Till like me you see the good in you”

On its face the song is about a loved one, a reminder that while flawed they are beautiful and full of potential. The subject seems to be going through a struggle of some sort. It is a gorgeous reminder to look for the good in all of us. But if you listen to Tennessee jet with any regularity, you know he is rarely content to leave things at surface level. These ears hear a call to action for Americans. An invitation to acknowledge the messes that have been made while also looking for - or reminding ourselves of - the good in US.

Review Under Two: Bendigo Fletcher's Fits of Laughter

Louisville, KY, is the Istanbul of The South. A town at the crossroads of East and (Mid)West. A place suited to spawn My Morning Jacket, Muhammad Ali, Hot Browns, and Louisville Sluggers. A city proud of its heroes and icons. 

Louisville is a Southern town and a Midwestern town. It is country and cosmopolitan. Edgy with an insistence on being refined. Above all, Louisville is one of the jewels of Kentucky- a state whose pride in its creative contributions to American culture could never be over-inflated.

While those icons endure, a new generation carries on the legacy while forging their own trace. In furtherance of that lofty tradition stands Bendigo Fletcher. A band whose music is the feeling of first acceptance after a tough breakup, of the promise that a jarring and unexpected decision brings. Bendigo Fletcher’s Fits of Laughter is an album drunk with familiar sounds melding in the mind to create the buzz of a Sunny Sunday afternoon in the fall. 

As they take the stage at Americanafest’s 2021 Commonwealth of Kentucky showcase a group of twenty-somethings makes their way to the front of the crowd. For the next all-too-short thirty minutes they are all of us who have fallen for this band. Ryan Anderson’s lyrics spanning from party anthem worthy to ruminations on existence and communing with nature. The sounds from Bendigo Fletcher’s tight group of players running through myriad soundscapes to create a sound that is both mature and fresh. 

Ken Coomer, who played drums with Uncle Tupelo and early Wilco, produced Fits of Laughter. His influence on the record is clear. Anderson described their partnership as natural. They began working together by talking about music they loved. To hear him talk about the process sounds like a joy. Joy is the emotion Bendigo Fletcher’s Fits of Laughter evokes. 

From the twenty-something folks dancing and singing every lyric right up front to the music journalist twice their age sporting a grin wide as the Cumberland Gap, Bendigo Fletcher’s record Fits of Laughter and their performance at Americanafest 2021 ignites joy in all who listen. 

A Series of Essays on The Marinade's Favorite Albums of 2020 | Fetch the Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple

Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters blasted into the world while much of the United States was still in quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Do you remember when you first listened to it? I was in my living room. My partner and I had just played a game of Scrabble and I succumbed to my Twitter-checking reflex. My feed is full of artists and fans of art so just about every other Tweet referenced the triumph of Apple’s surprise album.

We dialed it up in an instant and listened while dinner was prepared. About once a week for a couple of months we listened together, not to mention the times we each listened alone. Fetch the Bolt Cutters is unlike anything I have heard this year or any other. It is unpredictable, powerful, honest, cathartic, pop, rock, hip hop, soul. Every time I think I have the record figured out another listen sets me straight.

Fetch the Bolt Cutters comes from a place of liberation and this year in so many ways felt like a personal liberation for me. I was forced to confront my anxiety about mortality without the benefit of escape. I was faced with an examination of my commitment to causes I have long made noise about but which require more than just noise. And, I insisted on being paid what I’m worth. 

Apple’s masterpiece was a fitting soundtrack to a tumultuous year of growth. It was messy, complicated, and challenging. There were fits of anger and bursts of hope. At the end, as difficult as it may seem, love won a lot more than hate. Anger was channeled into action. And, the future looks brighter than the past. 

A Series of Essays on The Marinade's Favorite Albums of 2020 | Roll On by Water Liars

This is the second in a series of short essays looking back at the records we loved from 2020. The series focuses on how each album impacted Jason Earle’s life this year.

Few records rise to all occasions. There are songs for dancing. Those for drinking. Music for lounging. Road trip music. Songs for fucking. Sometimes an album overlaps in a couple of those places. Other records remain siloed. 

Then there are albums like Roll On by Water Liars. The rare artistic effort achieving universality of mood. An album for any moment.

You get home from one of those days for which you were unprepared. The kind where dominoes seem to resist gravity.

You just got a promotion, have been feeling good and taking care of yourself- eating right and exercising. You want to rock. Bounce up and down and sing at the top of your lungs. 

It’s Saturday. The rest of the family is out doing family things. They let you sleep in because you are a lucky mother fucker with a bad ass family. You enjoy the luxury of a slow cup of coffee sitting by the window and watching your world awaken.

Roll On does what its title track promises- carrying the listener through whatever life presents. Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster’s writing spans a lyrical spectrum from epic ruminations on love and perseverance to sparse, abstract nods to anxiety. The imagery is vivid. The mood in each song is set. 

“Down Colorado I followed your shadow/And credit card receipts/The cocaine receding, the western sky bleeding/The mountains in relief/I never deserve you but how could I earn you/When stone ain’t made to bleed?”

On the whole I have been one of the lucky ones in the year 2020. The pandemic slowed me down and made me rethink my day-to-day. I was able to refocus on the relationships that mattered and distance myself from those that were taking more than they were adding. I stood up and advocated for myself. I fought the right battles and let go of the other stuff. 

There were personal and professional challenges, both self-created and as the result of outside forces. It was not a perfect effort but again, relative to most folks I was fortunate. 

July and August was a tough stretch of the year. COVID-19 cases were climbing. Schools weighing whether to re-open despite not having the resources to keep people safe. The 2020 election loomed as the potential final nail in the coffin of our eroded democracy. 

Roll On was delivered right on time. The record was made in 2015 but released in the middle of this year. It may not have reached my ears in 2015. Hell, even if it did I may not have needed it so bad five years ago. Roll On was there for what turned out to be a second half full of hope in 2020. 

I kept coming back to the record, bingeing it and finding new nuggets during each listening session. I also went back into the Water Liars catalog and those of its individual members. I found comfort in the atmosphere of Water Liars. Roll On was a steady friend and a willing partner in the second half of 2020.

Album Review | American Aquarium's Lamentations

It feels like yesterday American Aquarium released Things Change, a record begging the listener to live in its characters. A man consoling his partner who devastatingly recognizes the “world is on fire.” Someone coming to the hard realization they are better off confronting their addictions. Characters wrestling with the unconscionable and somehow making sense of it. 

Things Change was strong enough that new realizations continue to bubble to the surface. My initial reaction to the news that American Aquarium was headed into the studio with Shooter Fucking Jennings was, “I get you have a lot to say BJ, but we ain’t done processing the last one.”

Things Change was released in 2018. Since then, the pace of the real world has accelerated to warp speed while the power of American Aquarium’s Things Change has kept pace. When BJ Barham removed the governor from his songwriting motor several years ago, the result was an ascendancy to the upper echelon of his generation of tunesmiths. 

Lamentations, American Aquarium’s latest release straddles the raucous honky tonk rock of early American Aquarium and the more socially conscious nature of Barham’s last collection of songs. The themes are familiar - hard work, substance abuse and sobriety, the South, sad stories. With Lamentations, Barham has taken another huge step forward in songcraft. 

As we have come to expect, the album opens with a kick-in-the-teeth tune that comes to a soaring, anthemic coda. These things usually need time to marinate before we declare superlatives. Nonetheless, the title track is Barham’s finest songwriting. “Me + Mine (Lamentations)” sets the tone for an album full of scorching hot songs that feel like they were recorded at an American Aquarium show somewhere in Texas, the band’s home away from home. 

If you have seen them there, you know what I mean. American Aquarium always brings it regardless of venue. BJ and the boys (this lineup and those past) are professionals who take their craft seriously. But, the band is fueled by the fervor of its fans and folks in Texas take it up a notch.

More than any other studio release, Lamentations captures the spirit of American Aquarium’s greatest live shows- a testament to the touch of producer Shooter Jennings. Shooter seems to be the bridge between early, raw American Aquarium and the renaissance that began with Burn. Flicker. Die.

Most importantly, Barham has taken another stride in his examination of the South. We are living in a time where a generation of southern writers are taking on the South with a warm demanding hand. Folks like the Bitter Southerner, Jason Isbell, Drive-by Truckers, Lee Bains III- the list is long and growing. A group of people who are not content to make excuses for the way things are and the way things were. 

“I believe in a better south,” Barham sings on the album’s eighth track. It is a tune showcasing his acute ability to use critical observation as a source of hope. Hope for a better South, a better nation, a more honest examination of the ills that plague us collectively and individually. Lamentations is more than a new American Aquarium record. It’s a manifesto of the power of our best instincts.

Overdue Review | Elizabeth Cook's Exodus of Venus

View fullsize

Elizabeth Cook’s Exodus of Venus is a grilled pimento cheese sandwich dipped in a Sriracha bath- all the comfort of Southern delicacies served up by grandma but with enough fire and rebellion to be easily confused as something other than a country staple. Cook sticks to the truth part of country music’s three chords and the truth formula, but her impact on the consumer cannot be reduced to bromides.

Exodus of Venus is a brilliant record. A record about place- geographical, metaphysical, spiritual, monumentally multi-dimensional. Her descriptions of life’s travails carry that most-desirable musical quality- relatability.

Whether she is talking about breaking down in London or visiting houses of ill repute in Central Florida, Cook has the ability to make any situation feel applicable to the listener’s life. There is a nugget of wisdom in each tune. Some are hard-earned lessons, others the kind we all experience but struggle to express.

The first half of Exodus of Venus is about getting away- releasing, escaping. “Exodus of Venus',” “Dyin’,” “Evacuation,” “Dharma Gate,” “Slow Pain,” even the titles suggest a journey away from current circumstances, a getaway from perceived reality. My mother had a family friend once tell her that you spend the first half of your life trying to get away from home and the second doing whatever you can to return. I have learned not to take such advice literally. Home is more than the place we were raised.

Exodus of Venus takes us home to heal on side B. Much of the record describes places in and around where Cook was reared. “Methadone Blues” ostensibly describes trips to the methadone clinic in Jacksonville, FL, but its message of continually chasing elusive relief could refer to the struggles of folks imprisoned by myriad circumstances around the world. The fact that Cook writes what she knows gives us a foothold for our own spiritual climb wherever we may need it.

“Orange Blossom Trail” is a tune set just down the road from Cook’s native Wildwood. OBT as it is colloquially know, is a stretch notorious for its prostitutes and drugs. Cook’s “Orange Blossom Trail,” much like “Straightjacket Love” before it, juxtaposes that setting with comforting companionship- a sordid tale buoyed by a shoulder-shaking melody and infectious hook.

The record ends with the heartbreaking yet hopeful “Tabitha Tuder’s Mama,” a song about missing children, a story all-too-often repeated in headlines today. While the story of Tabitha, who went missing in 2003 at the age of thirteen is a painful one, the message of the chorus is to pray, “even if you don’t pray at all.” We can blow up our own world. So long as we survive we have a chance to get back.

Maybe we need to return to the physical place we were raised, to a spiritual understanding of ourselves, or to awareness that bad things happen but we must keep fighting for answers. Exodus of Venus is the soundtrack to that fight.

-Jason Earle