Best Camarones al Mojo
Okay, granted, El Toro Loco isn’t the kind of hipster-beloved “authentico” Mexican joint you find on Summer Avenue, but if you can find a tastier dish than this grilled shrimp, garlic, rice, melted cheese(!), onions, tomatoes, avocado, peppers, etc. concoction, well, go for it. For my money, a frosty margarita and ETL’s camarones al mojo is hard to beat. — Bruce VanWyngarden
Best Movie Reference
It’s been dangerous out on these roads the past couple years, what with the reckless driving, drag racing, and donuts being spun around intersections and in the middle of the street. Surely there’s a reason for this ceaseless vehicular tension. Well, according to one mayoral candidate who shall remain unnamed, the root cause of all these out of control drivers is … the movie Grease? Watch out for those Memphis youth, adorned with pompadours and black T-shirts, cigarettes rolled up in their sleeves, taking to the roads in their pink 1948 Ford De Luxe “Greased Lightning” convertibles. It’s chaos out there, I tell ya! — Samuel X. Cicci
Best Indictment
The Brian Kelsey circus continues. After a federal indictment by a grand jury for violating campaign finance laws, the former Tennessee senator eventually pleaded guilty, was sentenced to jail time, and had his law license revoked. But then he pointed the blame at his original attorneys, before firing them, and hiring new representation, and then this month claiming prosecutors violated his plea deal. Lots of finger-pointing going around, but who is really at fault here? Hopefully there’s a mirror in his cell. — SXC
Best Spelling
Earlier this year, the 36th annual Africa in April Cultural Awareness Festival decided to honor the Republic of … Rawanda? That big ol’ typo was front and center on a festival billboard, with the people of Rwanda left to rue the fact that no one conducted a spell-check. To double down, the billboard featured the green, yellow, and red colors of the country’s old flag, which had been discontinued in 2001. — SXC
Best Beer
The best craft brewers come up with some interesting concoctions, and Memphis has some of the best breweries around. But Meddlesome takes the cake this year with its Mashed Potato & Gravy black and tan, basically a Thanksgiving side dish in a can, that released on April 1st. The only downside is that this beer isn’t, well, real. Oh well, April Fools! — SXC
Best Solo Debut
A lifelong musician — and member of local bands Spacer and Magik Hours — multi-instrumentalist Cheyenne Marrs released his solo debut in late August. While upon first rotation, moments may give a reminiscent glimmer of The Beatles, Elliott Smith, The Strokes, or The Beach Boys, Everybody Wants to Go Home carries a depth and breadth all its own.
A pensive lyrical exploration of isolation and loss, it simultaneously encompasses loneliness and connection, melancholy and hope. The listener is set adrift with sleepy, sweeping guitar riffs that circle like a carousel and build into raucous fits like mood swings, dragging us low only to lift us up again. There’s a playfulness that eases the weight of it, brought in with shimmery synth, the stray jingle of bells, the clang of a xylophone, or the floaty flit of a flute.
In the opening track, Marrs commiserates, “You don’t have to stay down in your hell all alone.” And throughout the album, he muses on the state of not knowing — upon wrestling with the void left when processing a death, fighting one’s way through the darker parts of life, or navigating the shifting landscapes of our innermost thoughts and emotions.
The catchy melodies on standout tracks, “Tweedy Bird,” “Fortune Faded,” and “Call Out” (they’re all standouts, tbh), implanted themselves as earworms for me, and as I write this, the line “I don’t have it all together, but you do — ain’t that what it seems?” is on a loop in my head.
After a few playthroughs, I’m reminded of the not-directly-translatable Welsh word, “hiraeth,” which embodies a grief and longing for a home that no longer exists, or maybe never did — a nostalgic yearning for a time, place, or feeling that cannot be reached.
Recorded in longtime Memphis musician/producer Graham Winchester’s home studio and released on Memphis-based Red Curtain Records, Everybody Wants to Go Home is both a lullaby and an alarm call that takes us on a journey from confusion and desperation to consolation and acceptance as we dig through the shadows and find the light. — Shara Clark
