We continue our list of best albums in 2022 and reveal the best albums. All top five records are extremely catchy and favor hooks to pretention. Gyasi gets an LP vinyl release for the first time on Bomp label, known for its catchiness through out the history of rock’n’roll. Vitus Mataré and John Rosewall continue with Petrified Max project and keep cranking high quality music from year to year. Joey Rubbish of Chicago’s Rubs leaves no filler on his hook laden album Dust. Alicja Trout gets together with Sweet Knives and delivers a jewel of an album with a good mix of guitars, bubblegum and synthesizers. But the most complete album this year is in my opinion brought to us by the New Zealand outfit Best Bets. On An Unhistoric Night is a fun record without much pretention, but a fantastic flow that would likely make it a classic in years to come. The rest of the list is pretty great as well and features 3rd Secret, Aoife O’Donovan, Harlan T. Bobo, Jack Broadbent, The Americans, Ghost Woman, Tony Molina, Gentleman Jesse and multiple entries by David Nance. Check it out!
Gentleman Jesse – Lose Everything;
Tony Molina – The Last Time;
David Nance and Simon Joyner – Clingy And Thick;
David Nance – Yesterday Don’t Matter;
Ghost Woman – Along;
The Americans – Sore Bones;
Jack Broadbent – Ride;
Harlan T Bobo – Free;
Aoife O’Donovan – Phoenix;
3rd Secret – Diamond in the Cold;
Gyasi – Feed Your Face;
Petrified Max – Long Way Around;
The Rubs – Dana;
The Rubs – I Don’t Wanna Wait;
Sweet Knives – Oh Danny;
Sweet Knives – On A Grey Day;
Best Bets – The Point;
Best Bets – Whataworld.
01 Best Bets - On An Unhistoric Night
02 Sweet Knives - Spritzereta
03 The Rubs - Dust
04 Petrified Max - Everything's Beautiful Now
05 Gyasi - Pronounced Jah-See
06 3rd Secret
07 Aoife O'Donovan - Age of Apathy
08 Harlan T Bobo - Porch Songs
09 Jack Broadbent - Ride
10 The American - Stand True
11 Ghost Woman
12a David Nance - Wet Candles
12b David Nance Pearl Lovejoy Boyd James Schroeder - Ash Wednesday
13 Tony Molina - In the Fade
14 Gentleman Jesse - Lose Everything
15 Julie Christensen - 11 from Kevin
16 Sylvia Rose Novak - A Miss A Masterpiece
17 King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava
18 Murlocs - Rapscallion
19 2nd Grade - Easy Listening
20 Breanna Barbara - Nothin' But Time
21 Sisteria - Dark Matter
22 David Craven & Jon S Williams - Urban Trio
23 So Gung Ho
24 Schizophonics - Hoof It
25 Tav Falco - Club Car Zodiac
26 The Missed - Activation
27 Momma - Household Name
28 Black Lizard - Heads
29 Berries - High Flying Man
30 A Place to Bury Strangers - See Through You
We continue our countdown to the best albums in 2018 and in this episode we announce two albums which share the title of the best one at The Little Lighthouse in the past year. I Am The Polish Army debut album My Old Man struck us with its great enthusiasm, musicianship, songwriting and playful performance. Harlan T. Bobo finally put out his record The History of Violence out on Goner, which just might be his greatest yet. Chip Kinman, along with the help of his son on guitar and his brother behind the knobs created a post-modern patchwork of an album with an astonishing amount of historical and rock references under the Ford Madox Ford moniker. Two ladies, Bat Fangs brought us a quick and powerful rock’n’roll album with hits going steady. Tony Molina on his Kill The Light is even more brief, but the brevity just makes you play the album over and over again. Bad Sports brought an excellent barrage of love punk rock tunes worthy of the greatest examples in the past. Patsy Gelb and her Rats compiled all those perfect singles from their inception on a single record, seriously contending Singles Going Steady as one of the strongest compilation records in the history of rock music. Schizophonics with their amps turned to the max gave us an album that floats like a perfect MC5 tribute. Mama Rosin teamed up with Mick Collins on a collection of cajun and zydeco chants. Ty Segall is as active as ever, but his main release this year entitled Freedom’s Goblin is one of the deepest he recorded yet. Krist Novoselic is back with Giants In The Trees. And that’s our top 10 this year! Looking back at that top 10, this was a really good year and we can only wish 2019 can be at least as good as this one.
We continue our list of best albums in 2017, this time with top 14 albums. This year was full of albums that will surely stay and I will definitely keep coming back to these many times in my life. Chris Church has came up with with a power pop album that can stand next to all the classics from that disarming genre that only seems effortless on the surface. Big Hogg offered us their extremely playful version of modern day prog rock. If you think Alien Lanes are a classic record, you should definitely look into Stevens and their album Good. Similar albums with great melodies, low fi and clever segues were always in the top of my albums in the past years. Matthew Melton and his wife Doris started a new project Dream Machine and The Illusion definitely made a mark, even politically (although unwittingly). Hayley Thompson-King and her concept record about the biblical woman is truly a deep album that goes from country over garage rock and ends up in opera. Tin Foil are newcomers from Detroit with an addictive set of songs on their album without a title. Pink Tiles return with a record that definitely puts them on a map of serious bands with fun content. David Nance comes from Omaha and has created an album sounds so well crafted, as if he was putting albums for a really long time. Americans on I’ll Be Yours reach depths and territories that were only visited by House of Freaks in the past. Emmett Kelly and his Cairo Gang continue with a series of truly timeless albums with Untouchable. Harlan T. Bobo’s new album came out only a month ago, and there was not enough time to come back to it many times, but it definitely made me rearrange my playlist and put him up on the high third place. It might be his strongest yet. On the top we have Sweet Apple and Bash & Pop. There’s a lot in common to these albums. Both are genre defying and disarmingly playful works of rock’s veteran warriors who know exactly where the sources of this music is. It was a good year for rock.
What a year for Matthew Melton. He put out four albums, one with Warm Soda, two with Dream Machine and one new solo. His lovely Yugoslavian wife Doris got unjustly accused for fascism, Castle Face them both out of their label and then they relocated from Austin to Netherlands. And one of those Dream Machine albums is also new. We check that out in today’s show and wish them better luck with the new label. We also have new music from The Golden Boys (also from Austin) and Steelism. We also introduce The Hooten Hallers. But the biggest new album this week is the brand new one from Harlan T. Bobo. It’s called Hector, The History of Violence, and it’s perfect. At the end of this episode, we say goodbye to Johnny Hallyday who passed away last week after a long battle with colon cancer.
Today we say goodbye to Jesse Winchester, a wonderful singer songwriter from the South, who moved to Canada in the late sixties to avoid being drafter to Vietnam war. After that he recorded some of the greatest records in the seventies, with songs which were full of sorrow, nostalgia and longing for his homeland. He passed away on April 11 this year. Besides a tribute to Jesse, we also play some new music. Jim Lauderdale has a new record with songs co-written with Robert Hunter. Paul Starling is another new singer songwriter from LA area. The Singles from Detroit are back as a duet. Baseball Project super-group is also back with another record based around baseball themes. Left Lane Cruiser had a great albu last year called Rock The Back To Hell and now a record that compiles their earliest recordings is also out. Also, check out a really cool, rare live appearance of Harlan T. Bobo’s The Fuzz recorded last week in Cleveland.
Things are very complicated this year. There are two excellent bands with the name of (The) Fuzz. Both are special projects from previously well established musicians. There is Fuzz (without “the”) from San Francisco lead by Ty Segall, a band that has captured attention of music fans all over the world. The other Fuzz is The Fuzz, they are from Memphis and they are lead by Harlan T. Bobo. You won’t hear that much about this band in fancy web portals though, except in this one.
A couple of new things today. Ty Segall is in action again, putting out a demo version of his last year’s album Twins, now renamed into Gemini. So the concept is now closed, it’s a twin record. He also has a band called Fuzz, but now, to complete the confusion, there’s a different band called The Fuzz, from Memphis, fronted by Hector, supposedly brother of Harlan T. Bobo, although I’m not so sure if it’s really not the same elusive rock’n’roll songwriter. Jazz pianist Keith Jarrett recorded a jam boogie record in 1986 called No End, in which he recorded all the instruments. This came out only now, after 27 years. The rest of the show is bit more conventional. We have a new band called White Denim from Austin, TX and a New Orleans cellist Leyla McCalla who recorded an LP with Langston Hughes lyrics. By the way, the house in which he lived in Cleveland is 
Eamon McGrath comes from Canada. He grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canadian Western province, North of the US state of Montana, with lots of prairies. This is where he started to come up with his first songs, recording them in his house and distributing them around on cd-rs to friends and fans. There is about 15 to 20 of those proto albums that he made in very small amount of copies and it is unclear what exactly is contained in those releases. Perhaps some songs repeated in multiple versions, but what we can tell for sure, they were all recorded relatively cheaply in lo-fi technology.
Every year about this time, The Little Lighthouse puts together a list of best albums that we rocked out at the show in the past year. This year is no exception. 2010 was quite exciting as far as the new albums go. I’d say that at least top 10 of the albums are modern classics, with all ingredients that a really big rock’n’roll record should have. I think it’s not so surprising that Sweet Apple with Love And Desperation took the number one. I was fortunate enough to see this album coming out of John’s sketches and forming into a full blown LP. But, even without that part, this record reminds us what a true rock record should be, without twists and frills. The real thing. The we also have Eamon McGrath as a surprising new songwriting talent and also Harlan T Bobo establishing himself as probably the greatest on in past 10 years. The rest of the list follows here: