Musing

This has to be a rather brief summary of both the 2024 and 2025 awards, because I'm a slacker. 2024 Album of the Year: Elbow, Audio Vertigo 2025 Album of the Year: Doves, Constellations For The Lonely 2024 Song of the Year: “Things I’ve Been Telling Myself for Years” 2025 Song of the Year: “A Drop in the Ocean” 2024’s near-miss for AOTY was The Decemberists’ As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again which is a fantastic album marred by a rollout that included the wrong digital files multiple times, vinyl albums using the wrong mix, and CDs with an unknown mix/master. “Joan in the Garden” – are you kidding me? 19 minutes and 20 seconds of prog bliss. Really the only other new release in 2025 that is worth mentioning is Lord Huron’s The Cosmic Selector, Volume 1 . This one channeled a lot of Strange Trails energy and includes the wild back-to-back combo of “It All Comes Back” / “Used to Know”. They also put on a hell of a show in Indy over the summer. Easily the...

2023 made it easier to break out the tiers as I've done in the past.  I also need to close the loop on the ones I mentioned last year that I didn't get around to - nothing terribly special there.  There's one hold over that I didn't know had finally been released as it had been delayed a few times and that's the Fort Frances album below, but I learned about it this fall, so I've had time to think about it.  I didn't know about Half Moon Run's "Salt" until just a couple of days ago, so I'm not ready to weigh in on that yet.   Great albums:   The Veils, ...And Out of the Void Came Love Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, Council Skies City and Colour, The Love Still Held Me Near The National, First Two Pages of Frankenstein Andrew Bird, Outside Problems Fort Frances, Look At What Tomorrow Brought Us    Meh albums:   Bell X1, Merciful Hour Local Natives, Time Will Wait For No One   WTF? albums:   The National, Laugh Track Dave Matthews ...

2022 almost got it right.  A grand total of 21 new releases - one short of perfect - crossed my desk last year.  It was enough that I couldn't even get to all of them.  So with apologies to Turnover, Jaws of Love, Richard Edwards, Trampled by Turtles, and Beirut, their albums aren't going to feature in this post in any other capacity.  I've probably heard half of the Turnover album already just because they released so many singles, but I haven't found the right moment to sit down with this one and all of the other mentioned. The full list of eligible albums is:   Florence + the Machine Dance Fever Glen Phillips There Is So Much Here Collective Soul Vibrating Charlie Winston As I Am Death Cab for Cutie Asphalt Meadows Muse Will of the People Embrace How To Be A Person Like Other People Hanson RGB Liam Gallagher C'mon You Know Andrew Bird Inside Problems Shearwater The Great Awakening The Smile A Light for Attracting Attention Bear's Den Blue Hours Arcade Fire WE...

Even now, I'm not sure if this is an entirely fair assessment. I'm quite behind on all of the things that came out in 2021.  Since my reading schedule was mainly long and challenging works, I couldn't do a lot of simultaneous critical listens to new albums.  Anything that isn't mentioned below is probably missing because I haven't yet given it enough time.  As for the rest: These 13 by Andrew Bird & Jimbo Mathus This one's a lot of fun. I'm more partial to Andrew's voice than Jimbo's, so there's what I would consider an unfortunate number of Jimbo-lead songs here. The recording itself is very loud and can be harsh on the ears at times. I understand the artistic decision there, but it's still regrettable. How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last? by Big Red Machine BRM's second LP is a solidly progressive step forward from the first album. Sprawling across 64 minutes, it feels like maybe they pulled in some of the Volca...

Honestly I expected more of 2020.  I thought that a year when everyone is expected to stay home would see a whole host of projects released for consumption by all of those bored, quarantined consumers, whether it was a music album or a book or anything else.  I heard a variety of reasons tossed around as to why it didn't happen that way, although they didn't all hold water. So in large part, it meant I continued working hard on the TBR pile of books in SF/F and assessing the music collection where it stands.  I was able to purge quite a few of the 62 books I was able to finish this year, but the CDs are about as trimmed as they can get.  The reading focus moves to general fiction and the philosophy/theology bookcase this year.  Though those collections are smaller, there are books that have been there since college that I've meant to read but just haven't bothered with yet.  The rule here is the same - every book I don't need to take across the country to ...

There were quite a few "big names" in my library that released new albums this year.  For the most part, everyone's effort was appreciated.  As usual, we have the Outstanding, Good, and Eh? groups of albums. Outstanding: Violet Street by Local Natives Local Natives went a bit sideways with their second and third albums, so I wasn't really tuned in to their 4th album's recording status.  They recorded videos for several tracks that were recommended to me through YouTube; luckily I trusted the system enough to click and watch.  Not only is the album Album of the Year, the song "When Am I Gonna Lose You?" - video below - grabs Song of the Year. Consequence of Sound has a great track-by-track breakdown of the whole album by the band that talks about the evolution of each final song that's really interesting.  There's also a "leftover" that was just released called "Nova" that's really good. My Finest Work Yet ...

[I'll never figure out why scheduled posts don't work for me.  This should have posted on NYD.  Sorry.] I honestly didn't think I'd be able to name ten albums that I listened to this year.  If last year was mostly pleasant surprises, this year was mostly bland disappointments from established favorites.  Discovery artists carried the year. Animal Spirits Vide Noir Post Traumatic I'll Be Your Girl  Always Ascending Wildness High as Hope   Square 1 Wrong Creatures Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino The Other Side of Blue Delta   Come Tomorrow Thank You For Today Simulation Theory Love is a Basic Need  My New Moon Although it doesn't quite match the start-to-finish awe of Strange Trails (but really, I doubt they'll be able to capture that lightning in a bottle again), Lord Huron's Vide Noir gets the nod for Album of the Year.  It rocks harder than we're used to hearing these boys rock, and "Never Ever" comes m...