#31 on the 2019 Bacon Top 31 — Operators
Happy new year, and new decade! I honestly can’t believe it’s already 2020. It seems not that long ago we were all frightened about what Y2K would bring when that clock struck 12:00 — that was 20 years ago! Everyone knows that time speeds up as we get older (due to your personal experiences growing less and less unique the more you experience throuhgout your lifetime). It’s just a small but significant part of being human.
The same is true of music: the older we get, the smaller our individual world of undiscovered music gets. Happily, a huge amount of new music is dumped into the world every year, making it impossible to ever feel that you’ve heard it all, even if what you believe constitutes “good” music gets narrower as you age. That’s just the result of your tastes being refined, your knowledge of musical theory (whether studied in classrooms or absorbed through audio osmosis — audsmosis?) expanded, and the avenues through which and opportunities to hear new music dwindled.
As we get older, it would be very easy to stop listening to new music. I’m sure a lot of friends that are my age or older have done just that, content in the 40+ years of music they’ve added to their collections. I purposefully push against that friction; much like a daily crossword is meant to keep the brain functioning better well into old age, I believe a continuous, healthy dose of new music helps to keep those neurons firing at a youthful clip.
The Top 31 is my own personal battle against the inevitable atrophying of my brain. Because I know I’ll be cataloging things at the end of the year, it pushes me to want to always first check Apple Music’s “New Music” category when I’m putting on something to listen to. Most of the music I find in there is not great, but if I’m compelled to listen to something more than once, it gets added to my library and is easily found in my “Recently Added” category. 95% of the time, when I want to hear something, I start there.
But listening to new music for most of my available music-listening time has a downside, too: forgetfulness. I couldn’t possibly recall what new music I was listening to a month ago, let alone five or more years ago. And that’s where the Bacon Review Top 31 comes in. This 2019 Top 31 is my eleventh countdown. That’s 11 years, each with 31 albums of history, available for review at my fingertips. Looking for an older album to listen to but not sure where to start? Look back at the 2013 countdown (for instance) and pick something great that you’d forgotten about.
As every year nears its end, I toy with the idea of stopping the countdown. It’s a hefty chunk of work, it puts an added burden on me and my family throughout the month of January, and I could easily just leave it all behind. But then I remember past years, and how happy it makes me feel when a friend of mine tells me they’ve enjoyed listening to something that they first read about here. That alone is motivation enough to keep going. And so here we are, a brand new decade, and another year’s full of music to recap. Let’s dive in with #31:
Radiant Dawn by Operators
I’ve always fallen on the Spencer Krug (#27 in 2011, #23 in 2013, and #31 in 2018) side of the Wolf Parade (#17 in 2010 and #14 in 2017) fence, but Dan Boeckner, former lead singer of the Handsome Furs, former co-lead of the Divine Fits (#11 in 2012), and current lead of Operators, has been a quiet force of musical output for 20 years now.
I’m fairly certain that Operators should still be considered a “side project,” (to Wolf Parade’s “main project”), but that doesn’t mean Operators music is any less brilliant. Close your eyes and listen — you’d be hard pressed to guess that this isn’t just another Wolf Parade album. Boeckner, like his Wolf Parade co-leader Krug, is a Canadian singer/songwriter with an insatiable appetite for creating new music. Over the past 20 years, Boeckner has released 17 different EPs and albums, under five different monikers. His voice, affected and unmistakably his, is like a strong sour ale: an acquired taste.
If you’ve liked Wolf Parade, Divine Fits, Handsome Furs, or even Operators’ previous output (this is the 2nd full-length release from the project — the first was 2016’s Blue Wave), then there’s no reason for you to not like this album.
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2009-2018 Top 31s