Tag: Wolf

AF 2020 IN REVIEW: Our Favorite Albums & Singles of The Year

In a year that’s been like no other for the music industry, it feels a bit weird to make a best of 2020 list – there have been no tours, venues and clubs across the globe are in danger of closing their doors for good, release schedules were shuffled beyond recognition, and musicians have had to find other ways to make ends meet while those in the U.S. await the next round of paltry stimulus checks. With a situation so dire, the metrics have changed – should we ascribe arbitrary value to the skill of producers, songwriters, performers, and the execution of their finished projects, or simply celebrate records that made us feel like the whole world wasn’t crumbling?

Definitively ranking releases has never been the Audiofemme model for looking back on the year in music. Instead, our writers each share a short list of what moved them most, in the hopes that our readers will find something that moves them, too. Whether you spent the lockdown voraciously listening to more new music this year than ever before, or fell back on comforting favorites, or didn’t have the headspace to absorb the wealth of music inspired by the pandemic, the variety here emphasizes how truly essential music can be to our well-being. If you’re in the position to do so, support your favorite artists and venues by buying merch, and check out the National Independent Venue Association to stay updated on what’s happening with the Save Our Stages act. Here’s to a brighter 2021.

EDITOR LISTS

  • Marianne White (Executive Director)
    • Top 10 Albums:
      1) Mary Lattimore – Silver Ladders
      2) the Microphones – Microphones in 2020
      3) Soccer Mommy – Color Theory
      4) Megan Thee Stallion – Good News
      5) Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher
      6) Amaarae – The Angel You Don’t Know
      7) Dua Lipa – Future Nostalgia
      8) Adrianne Lenker – songs/instrumentals
      9) Perfume Genius – Set My Heart On Fire Immediately
      10) Lomelda – Hannah
    • Top 5 Singles:
      1) Kinlaw – “Permissions”
      2) Billie Eilish – “Therefore I Am”
      3) Little Dragon & Moses Sumney – “The Other Lover”
      4) Yves Tumor – “Kerosene!”
      5) Megan Thee Stallion – “Shots Fired”

  • Lindsey Rhoades (Editor-in-Chief)
    • Top 10 Albums:
      1) Land of Talk – Indistinct Conversations
      2) Dehd – Flower of Devotion
      3) SAULT – Untitled (Black Is)/Untitled (Rise)
      4) Public Practice – Gentle Grip
      5) Cindy Lee – What’s Tonight to Eternity
      6) Fiona Apple – Fetch the Bolt Cutters
      7) Benny Yurco – You Are My Dreams
      8) Eve Owen – Don’t Let the Ink Dry
      9) Porridge Radio – Every Bad
      10) Jess Cornelius – Distance
    • Top 10 Singles:
      1) Little Hag – “Tetris”
      2) Elizabeth Moen – “Creature of Habit”
      3) Yo La Tengo – “Bleeding”
      4) Caribou – “Home”
      5) Jess Williamson – “Pictures of Flowers”
      6) Adrianne Lenker – “anything”
      7) Nicolás Jaar – “Mud”
      8) Soccer Mommy – “Circle the Drain”
      9) New Fries – “Ploce”
      10) El Perro Del Mar – “The Bells”

STAFF LISTS

  • Alexa Peters (Playing Seattle)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Deep Sea Diver – Impossible Weight
      2) Blimes and Gab – Talk About It
      3) Perfume Genius – Set My Heart On Fire Immediately
      4) Tomo Nakayama – Melonday
      5) Matt Gold – Imagined Sky
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Stevie Wonder – “Can’t Put it in the Hands of Fate”
      2) Tomo Nakayama – “Get To Know You”
      3) Ariana Grande – “Positions”

  • Amanda Silberling (Playing Philly)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Frances Quinlan – Likewise
      2) Bartees Strange – Live Forever
      3) Told Slant – Point the Flashlight and Walk
      4) Diet Cig – Do You Wonder About Me?
      5) Shamir – Shamir
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Kississippi – “Around Your Room”
      2) Sad13 – “Hysterical”
      3) The Garages – “Mike Townsend (Is a Disappointment)”

  • Ashley Prillaman (Contributor)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Perfume Genius – Set My Heart On Fire Immediately
      2) Lasse Passage – Sunwards
      3) Megan Thee Stallion – Good News
      4) Grimes – Miss Anthropocene
      5) Yves Tumor – Heaven To A Tortured Mind
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Megan Thee Stallion – “B.I.T.C.H.”
      2) Perfume Genius – “On the Floor”
      3) SG Lewis & Robyn – “Impact” (feat. Robyn & Channel Tres)

  • Cat Woods (Playing Melbourne)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Jarvis Cocker – Beyond the Pale
      2) Róisín Murphy – Róisín Machine
      3) Run the Jewels – RTJ4
      4) Emma Donovan & The Putbacks – Crossover
      5) Various Artists – Deadly Hearts: Walking Together
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Emma Donovan & The Putbacks – “Mob March”
      2) Laura Veirs – “Freedom Feeling”
      3) Miley Cyrus – “Never Be Me”

  • Chaka V. Grier (Playing Toronto)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Lianne La Havas – Lianne La Havas
      2) Joya Mooi – Blossom Carefully
      3) Lady Gaga – Chromatica
      4) Witch Prophet – DNA Activation
      5) Tremendum – Winter
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Lianne La Havas – “Green Papaya”
      2) Lady Gaga – “Free Woman”
      3) Allie X – “Susie Save Your Love”

  • Cillea Houghton (Playing Nashville)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Chris Stapleton  – Starting Over
      2) Brett Eldredge – Sunday Drive
      3) Little Big Town – Nightfall
      4) Ingrid Andress – Lady Like
      5) Ruston Kelly – Shape & Destroy
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) The Weeknd – “Blinding Lights”
      2) Billie Eilish – “Therefore I Am”
      3) Remi Wolf  – “Hello Hello Hello”

  • Eleanor Forrest (Contributor)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Grimes – Miss Anthropocene
      2) Rina Sawayama – SAWAYAMA
      3) Allie X – Cape Cod
      4) LEXXE – Meet Me in the Shadows
      5) Gustavo Santaolalla, Mac Quayle – The Last of Us Part II (Original Soundtrack)
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) CL – “+5 STAR+”
      2) Yves Tumor & Kelsey Lu – “let all the poisons that lurk in the mud seep out”
      3)  Stephan Moccio – “Freddie’s Theme”

  • Gillian G. Gaar (Musique Boutique)
    • Top 10 Albums:
      1) Dust Bowl Faeries – Plague Garden
      2) Ganser – Just Look At That Sky
      3) Oceanator – Things I Never Said
      4) Loma – Don’t Shy Away
      5) Maggie Herron – Your Refrain
      6) Pretenders – Hate for Sale
      7) The Bird and the Bee – Put up the Lights
      8) Partner – Never Give Up
      9) Bully – Sugaregg
      10) Olivia Awbrey – Dishonorable Harvest

  • Jason Scott (Contributor)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Mickey Guyton – Bridges EP
      2) Katie Pruitt – Expectations
      3) Mandy Moore – Silver Landings
      4) Dua Lipa – Future Nostalgia
      5) Cf Watkins – Babygirl
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Mickey Guyton – “Black Like Me”
      2) Ashley McBryde – “Stone”
      3) Lori McKenna feat. Hillary Lindsey and Liz Rose – “When You’re My Age”

  • Jamila Aboushaca (Contributor)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Tame Impala – The Slow Rush
      2) Khruangbin – Mordechai
      3) Kid Cudi – Man on the Moon III: The Chosen
      4) Tycho – Simulcast
      5) Run the Jewels – RTJ4
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Tame Impala – “Lost In Yesterday”
      2) Phoebe Bridgers – “Kyoto”
      3) Halsey – “You should be sad”

  • Liz Ohanesian (Contributor)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Róisín Murphy – Róisín Machine
      2) Jessie Ware – What’s Your Pleasure?
      3) Phenomenal Handclap Band – PHB
      4) Khruangbin – Mordechai
      5) TootArd – Migrant Birds
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Anoraak – “Gang” 
      2) Kylie Minogue – “Magic”
      3) Horsemeat Disco feat. Phenomenal Handclap Band – “Sanctuary”  

  • Michelle Rose (Contributor)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Dua Lipa – Future Nostalgia
      2) Taylor Swift – folklore
      3) Shamir – Shamir
      4) Jessie Ware – What’s Your Pleasure?
      5) HAIM – Women in Music Pt. III
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Porches – “I Miss That” 
      2) Annabel Jones – “Spiritual Violence”
      3) Wolf – “High Waist Jeans”  

  • Sara Barron (Playing Detroit)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Summer Walker – Over It
      2) Yaeji – WHAT WE DREW
      3) Liv.e – Couldn’t Wait to Tell You
      4) Ojerime – B4 I Breakdown
      5) KeiyaA – Forever, Ya Girl
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Yves Tumor – “Kerosene!”
      2) Kali Uchis, Jhay Cortez – “la luz (fin)”
      3) fleet.dreams – “Selph Love”

  • Sophia Vaccaro (Playing the Bay)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Charli XCX – how i’m feeling now
      2) The Front Bottoms – In Sickness & In Flames
      3) Zheani – Zheani Sparkes EP
      4) Various Artists – Save Stereogum: A ’00s Covers Comp
      5) Halsey – Manic
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Charli XCX – “forever”
      2) Doja Cat – “Boss Bitch”
      3) Wolf – “Hoops”

  • Suzannah Weiss (Contributor)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Galantis – Church
      2) Best Coast – Always Tomorrow
      3) Overcoats – The Fight
      4) Holy Motors – Horse
      5) Suzanne Vallie – Love Lives Where Rules Die
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) CAMÍNA – “Cinnamon”
      2) Naïka – “African Sun”
      3) Edoheart – “Original Sufferhead”

  • Tarra Thiessen (RSVP Here, Check the Spreadsheet)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Brigid Dawson & The Mothers Network – Ballet of Apes
      2) Ganser – Just Look At That Sky
      3) Death Valley Girls – Under The Spell of Joy
      4) The Koreatown Oddity – Little Dominiques Nosebleed
      5) Ghost Funk Orchestra – An Ode To Escapism
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Miss Eaves – “Belly Bounce”
      2) Purple Witch of Culver – “Trig”
      3) Shilpa Ray – “Heteronormative Horseshit Blues”

  • Victoria Moorwood (Playing Cincy)
    • Top 5 Albums:
      1) Lil Baby – My Turn
      2) A$AP Ferg – Floor Seats II
      3) Polo G – The Goat
      4) The Weeknd – After Hours
      5) Teyana Taylor – The Album
    • Top 3 Singles:
      1) Cardi B & Megan Thee Stallion – “WAP”
      2) Roddy Ricch  – “The Box”
      3) Big Sean & Nipsey Hussle – “Deep Reverence”

INTERVIEW: Introducing Julia Wolf

Perusing through Julia Wolf’s Instagram, the combination of quirky photoshopped selfies, documentary style videos shot with her younger sister, and peeks into her songwriting process made her feel instantly familiar to me – like someone I may have grown up with, or met at the classical music festivals I attended as a kid. As it turns out, we haven’t crossed paths in this lifetime, but in conversation her vulnerability and openness was magnetic. A classically trained pianist, vocalist, and brilliant top liner – WOLF’s music embodies old soul dynamic energy with a modern flare and 808s. The stage name WOLF was actually inspired by her little sister’s childhood protective imaginary friend. “Every night she’d say, ‘Good night, Wolf’ to her imaginary pet. It kind of just stuck with us through the years,” she remembers. “She still says it now, just out of habit.” It was a natural choice for Julia’s stage name, which she says she “didn’t want to be super contemporary – I wanted something that was going to really stand out.”

Wolf began releasing songs last year, beginning with “Captions,” “Immortale,” and “Chlorine,” introducing her honey silk vocal tone and confessional, stream-of-consciousness lyrical style: “The nostalgia trips me up/I miss being small like the first time/Driving with no parents in the car/Need to stop quitting before I start/Got my flip flops cutting me up while I walk.” The cadence of her flow and succinct melodies expressed a duality of emotional depth and vulnerability with a pinch of defiance and empowerment. A love child from a cross-genre mixtape your first crush made for you in middle school, wrapped in aged holiday paper, slipped through the space between the window and the seat on the after school bus.

Since the age of seven, Julia Wolf found refuge playing classical music on a white baby grand piano that was gifted as surprise from her father to nurture and develop her musical talents. A rigid dichotomy between social introversion and a passion for performance eventually led to routine participation at her school’s talent shows. “As a teenager I was extremely shy, and I just couldn’t talk to people. It didn’t make any sense why I was always performing, but it was the one thing that I just loved to do,” she says. “Eventually my teacher said, if you want to perform in the senior showcase talent show, it has to be an original song. I was mortified. My first song kind of wrote itself. It was about my best friend at the time. I was a senior, and she was a junior. I was going to be leaving for college and it was about always finding time for each other no matter what. Although I couldn’t connect with most people face to face, it was surprisingly easy for me to express myself through songwriting, almost an unhealthy justification for being so quiet.” Though that song is unreleased, Wolf dissects these indelible personality traits on recent single “Pillow”:  “I will never act like something I’m not/Don’t blame my shyness/I just don’t wanna talk/But I think a lot/People can interpret it however they want.”

Though her songs seem effortless and natural, it took a long time for Wolf to bring them to life. She studied at the SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music, focusing on music composition and taking a gap year to study classical under Darren Solomon, who encouraged Julia to consider a future as a concert pianist. She eventually returned to her left-field indie pop songs, independently producing demos out of necessity, but they fell just short of what she longed to achieve with them. “Throughout college and then the years following that, I was constantly hitting up different producers because my knowledge only took me to a certain level,” she says. “It still wasn’t matching what was in my head. Trying to find people to work with was so unsuccessful. It became really heartbreaking because I would send demos to be mixed and I would get mixes back that were literally unrecognizable. I even cried, and I’m not a crier.”

This disappointment led to her father suggesting a return to his hometown in Italy and starting a family run pizza business. Both of Wolf’s parents are native Italians – you can hear Wolf’s heritage in bilingual single “Immortale” – and felt that a fresh start as an American artist in Italy would provide a new beginning for Julia and be a good move for the family overall. At first, Wolf didn’t see it that way. “I just was so devastated. I thought my music career wasn’t going to work out for me based solely on the fact that I just couldn’t find people to help bring to life the vision,” she says.

A serendipitous internet connection with Jackson Foote (of NYC-based electro-pop duo Loote) changed everything. Foote stumbled upon a soundbite from a live performance posted on WOLF’s Instagram story and casually asked if he could take a stab at flushing out production for the track. “I had been searching for collaborative artists for years before meeting Jackson and it was one dead end after the next. I never realized finding someone on the same wavelength as me, who understood the sound I wanted, would be so completely impossible,” Wolf says. “But when Jackson and I started working together there were two things I immediately knew: one was how rare our musical alignment was, and two that I wanted to continue working with him for as long as our creativity would let us.” This organic partnership would eventually birth the first batch of tracks that matched her true sonic vision. Her cross-genre, R&B-tinged pop has since gone viral on Spotify.

Wolf’s distinctive music style might come as a surprise to some; she says she’s often pigeonholed as the singer-songwriter type at a glance. “When people look at me… they’re always surprised when I say, like, yeah, I listen to rap or, you know, this is what my music sounds like,” she says. “I feel like I have definitely been boxed in, at least for like the beginning half of my career. And that’s why I never put music out, because it wasn’t exactly what I was envisioning to represent myself.”

By teaching herself Photoshop, Wolf’s surrealist artwork (heavily inspired by the album art of Tyler the Creator) completes her sonic world. Her imagery carves out a unique visual space for the project, and separates Wolf from the typical self-promoting artists taking selfies at coffee shops in Silver Lake. She creates whimsical collages, layering skeleton fingers over a fleshed out hand holding a vintage mirror, shooting laser beams or dribbling crystalized tear drops from her deep set eyes.

The lyrics always come first for Wolf as the main focal point followed by the melody. She gets most of her inspiration from Soundcloud, where she spends time discovering up-and-coming rappers. She’s also heavily influenced by the lyricism and genius of Frank Ocean: “It’s just really the attention to detail that I love so much about him and the way he could say so much with so little. I think that’s one of the hardest things to do, is to just simplify how you’re feeling,” she says. She says SZA is another big influence for the same reason, adding, “I’ve always gravitated towards rap. I don’t know if it’s the beat that’s behind it or the change up in flow and being able to keep a song so interesting without melody. Blows my mind.” You can hear those influences strongly on her latest single, “Play Dead,” which dissects the “evil” behavior she’s guilty of acting out in a doomed relationship. But she’s also inspired by pop punk bands like The Front Bottoms. “I was always the first in the mosh pit, and really let loose,” she says. “Their live shows are just so much fun, and it’s also inspiring to see people storm the stage and just feel like they can completely be themselves.”

Wolf has been riding out the pandemic in NYC, and while the isolation is not unusual for a writer who values her solitude, she says, the biggest difference between her normal hermetic routine and quarantine is that the latter “feels way more forced – and that has definitely challenged the creative process.”  Of course, the location itself has a silver lining. “Being in NYC in general has taught me that artists can find inspiration in all types of circumstances; there’s a fundamental need to create when you feel you have something to say,” Wolf points out. “The state of the world right now is a heavy mixture of chaos, unjustness, sadness… but watching people create change is 100% motivating and highlights the beauty that comes from speaking your truth.”

For now, her plan is to drop a few more singles before turning her gaze to a full-length release. “I’m getting a lot closer to releasing an album but want to make sure the timing is right,” she says. “It’s a body of work I’m proud of and while I’m tempted to just release it, like most things in life, rushing always backfires.”

Follow WOLF on Facebook for ongoing updates.

YEAR END LIST: Top 10 Album Covers

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Let’s all just agree to agree that hip hop as a genre won the album cover contest this year, okay? Much of the new heavy metal out this year bore covers that ran the gambit between overstatedly woodsy to just plain inexplicable, and pop albums favored stark, angular glamor shots and occasionally left us confused as to why these artists are so mad at us. Release for release, hip hop had some stellar, memorable artwork, much of it instantly iconic portrait art, like Drake’s diptych of his child self mirrored with a matching image of himself as an adult. However, one exclusion from our favorite cover art of 2013 is a hip hop album worth mentioning: Kanye West’s Yeezus.

I know, I know: Yeezus saves. Equally loved and detested, West’s new album will, I predict, come to be one of the lasting albums from 2013, and he’s had his share of notable, exquisite, and ridiculous moments. But Yeezus’ album cover art isn’t any of the above. First of all, the red tape slapped onto the homemade CD is at best a humble-brag for the contents’ breadth and slick production–the record itself is far more magnum opus than it is demo tape, and both West and Yeezus know it. Secondly, it’s neither iconic nor indicative of the year West has had–the image is tepid, and in 2013, the rapper was anything but. Number 10 in our Year End Album Cover countdown employs the same understated formality of Yeezus’ image, but goes for an effect more subtly surreal.

10. Kid Cudi – Indicud

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The contrast of the stately frame makes the fire in this image come alive, as if it’s three-dimensional. Dangerous, uncontainable things come inside unassuming packages, and this image is so memorable because it’s unpredictable, framing a scene that doesn’t naturally observe boundaries.

Listen to “Unfuckwittable” off of Indicud here via Grooveshark:

 

9. Warm Soda – Someone For You

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Flat, room-temperature yellow backs this ambivalently nostalgic cover, bringing listless summer days to mind. In fact, the image captures the album’s blistering-but-catchy, vaguely seventies-era sound perfectly.

Listen to “Someone for you” off of Warm Soda here via Grooveshark:

 

8. The Civil Wars – The Civil Wars

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High-definition billowing smoke, a black and grey scale, and the austere white script across the dark grey cloud make this album cover memorably melancholy and archaic. This image looms, foreboding, channeling the loneliness and stark beauty of this band’s self-titled album.

Listen to “From This Valley” off of The Civil Wars here via Soundcloud:

 

7. The National – Trouble Will Find Me

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This odd, and vaguely threatening, photograph evokes a chilly quirkiness that The National’s Trouble Will Find Me delivers.  The sterility of the floor–bathroom tiles, maybe–lends a particular spookiness to this shot.

Listen to “I Should Live In Salt”, off of Trouble Will Find Me here via Grooveshark:

 

6. Bill Callahan – Dream River

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The broad brushstrokes of the album’s title look almost like vandalism, as if they’d been painted over an otherwise stylistically intact impressionistic scene. Vast and epic, the foggy image draws my attention to that peeking square of sky above the mountains, and the music on this record is equally complex and easily obscured.

Listen to “The Sing” off of Dream River here via Grooveshark:

 

5. Tyler, the Creator – Wolf

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The yearbook aesthetic is brought off with hilarious attention to detail, but what really makes this cover so bizarre are the faces Tyler, the Creator makes here. Simultaneously nostalgic for and mocking innocence, this rapper nails high school’s un-selfaware awkwardness (no surprise, since the rapper was only twenty-one when this picture was taken).

Listen to “Awkward” off of Wolf here via Grooveshark:

 

4. A$AP Rocky – Long. Live. A$AP

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Sweet baby Jesus, this album cover is terrifying. Strongly evocative of a screenshot from The Ring, A$AP Rocky huddles with his head down, cloaked in an American flag, as the (presumably) VHS film recording him stutters between frames.

Listen to “Purple Swag” off of Long.Live.A$AP here via Grooveshark:

 

3. Daft Punk – Random Access Memories

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Adapting the cursive script made iconic by Michael Jackson’s Thriller to a shiny, austere image of their own, Daft Punk set the standards high for their 2013 release. The album delivered on a grand, complicated scale, setting the band’s course for dance music that was at once nostalgic and intensely intellectualized.

Listen to “The Game Of Love” off of Random Access Memories here via Grooveshark:

 

2. Death Grips – Government Plates

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There’s nothing frill about this stark, badass album, and nothing frilly about the stark, badass album art, either. As nihilistic as the music within, this image zooms in on the message.

Listen to “Birds” off of Government Plates here via Soundcloud:

 

1. Deafheaven – Sunbather

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Like shoegaze metal itself, this cover–an utterly pink black metal album–seems like an illogical combination of things (see the album’s gorgeous Abstract Expressionist-inspired Vinyl design up top as our featured image), but makes glorious sense taken altogether. The image represents a view of the sun from behind your eyelids, a harsh and not wholly possible ascent towards the sublime that perfectly mirrors the journey the group takes over the course of the album.

Listen to “Dream House” off of Sunbather here via Bandcamp: