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...

[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...