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...

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...

Arcade Fire's The Suburbs Editor's Note: This is the 5th in a weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2010. New reviews go up every weekend through the end of the year. Many reviews of this album sound disappointed. Many reviews of this album make comparisons to their first, best-of-its-decade album. Many reviews remark that there are a number of great tracks on this album with other tracks between those that are merely good. This is one of those reviews. Oddly, most of those same reviews adore "Empty Room." I am baffled as strongly by those reactions as I agree with the others. I'll go one step further and admit that if it was up to me, "Month of May" and "Suburban War" would have been left off of the album entirely and used as b-sides. That creates problems in thematic flow, but at least the album wouldn't feel like it drags after you hit 12 tracks or so. Arcade Fire aimed to show us the drudgery of suburban lif...