It was a cliché to talk about the 2020-ness of 2020, so I'm loath to mention that 2021 kept up with that same energy. But, as the previous trip around the sun was, this too was a strange year. Like all facets of life, my music listening habits were askew. Unlike 2020's hundreds of mileage spent listening to music on long, hot runs, my legs just didn't have it in me this year. Or when they did, I wanted to listen to podcasts like a big dork. The benefit to listening to tons of music pods is you can think about music a ton, but the downside is you spend less time listening to music. And the tastemakers on your pod end up impacting what you listen to. I guess that's not really a downside so much as an interesting observation. Last year I started listening to Steven Hyden & Ian Cohen's Indiecast pod, and Cohen's AOTY ended up also being mine. That was only a taste - my whole top ten (spoiler alert) is more or less Cohencore, which is a joke that like 12 people on the internet would get. Pods! Community!

Anyway, I want to run through some albums I enjoyed (and, in the case of Jan-August, vaguely remember enjoying) and talk about what was going on that month as to excuse how it seems like I only listened to fourteen new things this year.

​This is the one where I try to tell you we were wrong about Nickelback. If you aren’t receptive to that I implore you to keep reading. Twenty years into this century is long enough to draw out a new millennium’s malaise of ironic, self-sabotaging and arbitrary dislike of, well, anything. But perhaps nothing in music world is as universally loathed as Nickelback’s 2001 album Silver Side Up. For the band, it was an exciting and enormous breakout. For fans, it was the very end of their hard rock days, a final rattle before setting into more pop country and southern rock soundscapes on their more insipid, less fun work that is worthy of the disdain. “Photograph”? Garbage. Silver Side Up? Perfect hard rock album. Let’s go.
Despite what all your Tool’s or Smashing Pumpkins might suggest rock doesn’t need to be “smart,” I love Melon Collie as much as your average music fan, but damn, is rock supposed to be difficult? Despite the utterly indifference of a Julian Casablancas with long hair, dark sunglasses and a leather jacket strutting in their neat little outfits, isn’t the point of rock music that shlubby dudes in bad jeans and a ringer t-shirt get to be cool? I don’t want to relitigate Gen X’s war against commercialism but aren’t we, mostly, happy when our rock and roll bands get songs in tv ads? I couldn’t give a shit that The Raconteurs are trying to sell me an electric car, I get to hear “Salute Your Solution” during daytime tv now! Yes, The White Stripes playing little dive bars across the Midwest is more “cool” than seeing an alterative rock radio superstar group play a solid out sporting arena, but wouldn’t you rather riffs bounce off of the widest radius possible before slamming back into your brain? I’ll put it like this: The Beatles don’t make Revolver until they make “Hold Your Hand” first.
And now that I’ve evoked The Beatles I can give our good Canadian friends Nickelback their due. Similar to the lads from Liverpool, Nickelback are four dudes: two brothers Chad and Mike Kroeger (lead guitar and vocals, bass respectively) and two Ryans, Peake (rhythm guitar) and Vikedal (drums). Silver Side Up was their third album and was as inescapable as their massive single, “How You Remind Me,” released in June, ahead of the album’s September 11, 2001 release date.
Its funny to celebrate the milestone this album is crossing, and its even funnier to “celebrate” Nickelback. As the most hated band in rock and roll music, the idea of praise for their last true hard rock record seems as foreign as a time before Chad Kroeger’s weird ramen noodle hair was memed into oblivion. Not for nothing, the gang seems to have a pretty positive attitude about their universal hatred. Before Silver Side Up, they were an indistinguishable hard rock band from Canada. After, they slid into alternative pop country band.
In its moment, Silver Side Up neatly argues against the cool guy garage band rock moment in New York, Detroit, and elsewhere. Similarly, it makes for a nice antithesis to Radiohead’s dour and experimental Kid A/Amnesiac one-two punch. Instead of innovating, or instead of being challenging, Nickelback dared to do something conventional. This is not to say they are in a class of their own, but for every “How You Remind Me” there’s a dozen “Blurry” by Puddle of Mudd or “Wasting My Time” by Default. Both totally forgettable songs compared to what I believe is the single best rock song of the first decade of the new millennium. You know that Elvis album, “10,000 fans can’t be wrong?” “How You Remind Me” sold a million units, and a million people definitely can’t be wrong.
A counter-history on this band and this album is a fool’s errand though: you’ve already decided how you feel, and for better and for worse, Nickelback put the lightening in a bottle and moved on with their ridiculously successful career after Silver Side Up. So much for not making it as a wise man! We, popular culture, have a fixed opinion on this band and I can only suggest you reconsider, and give it a fair shake. There’s ten good rock songs, which is all anybody should expect from a rock record.
For a while, I wondered if sounding like a good rock song was different than being a good rock song. Twenty years with Silver Side Up presents an answer: a hard rock, riff heavy collection of unpretentious songs, made and presented in total earnest is not only the most perfect form of “Dudes Rock,” it is also the most perfect form of how fun, if not a little mindless, rock music can, and should be.
In “Good Times Gone,” the album closer, Kroeger asks, “where the good times gone? / all the stupid fun / and all that shit we’ve done / where the good times gone?” Man, they’re right in front of you. And in an assessment of Nickelback’s legacy (weird sentence to write I know) those good times are both before and ahead of Silver Side Up. The album is six times platinum in the United States. Every album they’ve released since has been huge and somehow, Nickelback still is a pop culture punching bag. I hate to evoke the same argumentative tactics I did in middle school, which coincidently was where I was at in my life when I bought Silver Side Up on CD, but maybe everybody shits on Kroeger and crew because they’re jealous! In “Woke Up This Morning,” which has as good a guitar riff as anything Jimmy Page every played, Nickelback laments: “I’m hating all of this,” and bemoans “I felt like shit when I woke up this morning.”
That song is more than likely another song about a former flame. But, what if the “I” in that song is actually one of Nickelback’s million antagonists preemptively calling the band dead on arrival: “I paid my last respects this morning on an early grave / already said goodbye nothing left to say” is as good a write off as anything else said about this band. Read that way, “Woke Up This Morning” holds a mirror up to the scores of joyless haters. Having to face yourself – “a loser all my life I’m not about to change / if you don’t like it, there’s the door nobody made you stay” – would make me feel like shit too.
This is to say in order to be in favor of Silver Side Up you also have to be against the concept of “guilty pleasures.” “Money Bought” describes a character who “has a toke and makes a joke about the alley man / never pleasured from the treasure in a garbage can.” Maybe its damning by faint praise, but I believe Nickelback dares us to consider the alternative: finding pleasure from “the treasure in the garbage can.” Not that an album peaking at number two (behind friggin’ Jay Z’s The Blueprint) after being released on the literal worst day in modern American history could really be considered garbage or anything.
In Silver Side Up we are given tales of scorned lovers, a ballad about a man who has lost it all, a Johnny Cash-meets-Megadeth domestic abuse revenge fantasy, and the biggest rock song of the 21st century. The songs are good, they come and go, never once outstaying their welcome. There’s a tight cohesion track and track, and the focus – despite the tone of each song – remains steady. These four dudes wanted to make us a rock record and they did exactly that. Who the hell are we to reject that?
 

​JAY-Z is as tied to New York City as the signature baseball team. In “Empire State of Mind” he says, “I can make a Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can” and the NY embossed over hard fabric is as much a signifier of Shawn Carter as the blue tones shading The Blueprint’s album art. JAY-Z is also as tied to New York City as the hometown heroes in Madison Square Garden, again JAY-Z raps: “sitting courtside Knicks & Nets give me high-fives.” This is, after all, where he’s from.
It is utter coincidence that the best album from New York’s best rapper was released on New York’s worst day. The worldwide reputation of the city remains tied to JAY-Z’s career lyrically, narratively, and in the instance of the September 11, 2001 release of The Blueprint, also in tragedy. Mournfully JAY-Z sings, “ain’t no love, in the heart of the city / I said where’s the love? / ain’t no love, in the heart of town”, but in the shaken spirit of New Yorkers in the days, weeks, and months that followed the collapse of The World Trade Center, much of that love was to be found among New Yorkers.
In The Blueprint JAY-Z is doing what JAY-Z does best: talking story about the grimy life of street hustlers and gangsters. In a tender performance from The Concert For New York City, a benefit concert for first responders just over a month after the September 11th terrorist attacks “Ain’t No Love (In the Heart of the City)” morphs into a celebration of finding each other in previously unimaginable hatred and violence. Coincidently, the concert recording (which also featured an acoustic performance of “IZZO (HOVA)” ala the MTV Unplugged session) was my gateway to JAY-Z, and really, all hip hop. Strange as it may seem, I can’t help but merge these seemingly unrelated events: the release of JAY-Z’s sixth studio album and September 11th both as remember exactly where you were when, and yet, I’m in my grandmother’s van listening to a CD with a guy called JAY-Z orating “thanks for comin’ out tonight / you coulda been anywhere in the world, but you’re here with me / I appreciate that”. Having not grown up with hip-hop I’d never heard anything like that before, just a simple ad lib that, on the album is a simple break from the evisceration of “Takeover” and acts as a bridge into the more pop R&B “Girls, Girls, Girls”.
But in the context of that benefit concert, it is a great moment of hospitality from the genre’s most gifted and, in this instance, generous emcee.
***
The Blueprint opens like any good epic with a recap. “The Ruler’s Back” fills in the blanks since 2000’s posse album The Dynasty: Roc La Familia and JAY-Z’s last proper solo album Vol. 3 … Life and Times of S. Carter (1999). He sounds familiar, ad libbing “I wanna thank everybody out there for they purchase / we surely appreciate it” which JAY-Z does similarly on Vol. 3, and like a good host, gives a preview: “what you about to witness is my thoughts (just my thoughts, man) / right or wrong / just what I was feelin’ at the time / you ever felt like this, vibe with me.” JAY-Z also comes out sounding invigorated: “Gather ‘round, hustlers, that’s if you still livin’.” And then, as promised, the ruler shows his face.
This first face is a mean one. We bounce into a Kanye West-produced Doors sampling battle rap to put Nas, and everybody else barely worth half a bar, to bed for good. Instead of thinking about JAY-Z from a historical perspective, or trying to read The Blueprint narratively, you simply could read the lyrics to every single bar in “Takeover” to understand why this was the most important album of 2001 and while it remains one of the genre’s most important albums 20 years later. JAY-Z is a mean mother fucker, but he’s also an extremely skillful and artful mother fucker.

​“Takeover” somehow isn’t even the third best Kanye joint JAY-Z raps on, but “IZZO (HOVA)” is easily tied for best. (Even today) I wouldn’t want to pigeon hole the guy, but Kanye West is such a good producer and its so obvious in the way he twists JAY-Z’s hustler street smart businessman lyrics around a radio-friendly beat. The sample is warm, captures the grandiosity of autobiographical moments that would fit in an ensemble number in a musical: “Hov is back, life stories told through rap / n****s acting like I sold you crack / like I told you sell drugs, no, Hov did that / so hopefully you won’t have to go through that.” Blueprint’s worldbuilding somehow both projects JAY-Z into the future as a money-minded mogul and sets the scenes of his Reasonable Doubt-era come up. In anybody else’s hands it would smack of inauthenticity, but deftly, JAY-Z sells “I was raised in the projects, roaches and rats / smokers out back selling’ they mama’s sofa” as a real scene, a necessary scene so we can cheer along with him: “what else can I say about dude? I gets busy.”
If “IZZO” dips its toe in pop rap territory, the sometimes cringey “Girls, Girls, Girls” is an absolute pop R&B megahit. Some of the lyrics haven’t aged as well as others, but you gotta belly laugh when JAY-Z raps in French: “ma cherie amour, tu es belle / merci, you’re fine as fuck, but you giving me hell.” You gotta wonder how often this one gets played in the Carter/Knowles household, but as a hot song of the summer contenders, “Girls, Girls, Girls” transcends its deeply flawed concept. Plus, friggin’ Q-Tip pops up for the chorus. What more can you ask for?

​“U Don’t Know” gets The Blueprint back into battle rap territory and on a personal note, opens up my all time favorite genre of JAY-Z lyric: him doing math. Literally every line on the skittering big precision chipmunk soul beat Just Blaze puts together is memorable, but as a thesis statement JAY-Z’s last verse really puts one era of the hungry hustler to bed before Black Album’s maximalist braggadocio (what JAY-Z will go on to mythology in Blueprint 3 with: “used to rock a throwback, ballin’ on the corner / now I rock a tailored suit lookin’ like an owner.”). He raps with the ferocity:
                        I sell ice in the winter, I sell fire in Hell
                        I am a hustler baby, I’ll sell water to a whale
                        I was born to get cake, move on and switch states
                        Cop the coupe with the roof gone and switch places
                        Was born to dictate, never follow orders, dick face
                        Get your shit straight, fucker, this is Big JAY-Z.
The demand is simple and even easier to follow. “Hola’ Hovito” dials back the power in favor for what can be best described as Timbland’s best effort at a Dr. Dre g-funk SoCal production. It’s a better sonic experiment than the eastern tones of “Jigga that N***a” (which is better captured in Blueprint 2’s “The Bounce” in 2002) but both provide bridges between the better songs in the mix.

And as far as better songs go, none soar as high as the untouchable “Heart of the City (Ain’t No Love)” which returns to the same well of radio ready mega rap hits The Blueprint opens with. Another autobiographical track, “Heart of the City” closes the gap with “The Rule’s Back,” once again setting the scene. “now every day I wake up / somebody’s got a problem with Hov? / What’s up? Y’all n****s all fed up ‘cause I got a little cheddar / and my record’s movin’ out the store?” The whole song goes in with memorable lines, and opens up the album for the next few more mellow, more autobiographical tracks.
“Never Change,” for example, brings back the chipmunk soul and sees a reflective JAY-Z-Z rapping about how he’s “still fuckin’ with crime, ‘cause crime pays” and dispensing wisdom: “we all fish, better teach your folk / give him money to eat, the next week he’s broke / ‘cause when you sleep, he’s reachin’ for your throat.” Or, “Song Cry” gives listeners a preview of the self-critical 4:44 with a downright majestic soliloquy about infidelity: “It was the cheese, helped them bitches get amnesia quick / I used to cut up they buddies, now they sayin’ they love me.” Its pretty wild to jump from “U Don’t Know” to the vulnerability on display here: “shit, I’ve got to live with the fact I did you wrong forever.” It’s a poem, man.
“All I Need” is the lesser of the Carter-family hits that make use of Tupac’s “Me and My Girlfriend” and begins the falling action of The Blueprint, which doesn’t end as strong as it does jump out of the gates. “Renegade” rolls out Eminem, and if not for the home and home co-headlining tour JAY-Z and Em did in Detroit and New York in 2010, I’d write off entirely. Eminem kind of sucks, but you might like this song. Structurally its interesting to see these two trade verses off twice; it’s a long song, and its weird for JAY-Z to give Eminem the last word, but at least Em is set up to call himself “a regular modern-day Shakespeare” setting up corny English teachers (yours, truly) to bring rap music in the classroom forever.
Is “Blueprint (Momma Loves Me)” technically a title track? It feels like the credits roll on a movie, and The Blueprint plays through highs and lows scene-to-scene like a feature film, so it’s a nice moment of closure for JAY-Z-Z’s clam recounting of the family members off stage supporting him in the wings. We hear about Ti-Ti, who JAY-Z would literally kiss on the forehead, we hear about the origins of the rapper: “Clark sought me out, Dame believed … Reasonable Dout classic, shoulda went triple” but ultimately fixates on, and returns to Gloria Carter, the titular Momma.
Of course, the movies ends. JAY-Z raps: “Police pursued me, chased, cuffed, subdued me / talked to me rudely ‘cause I’m young, rich, and I’m black and living a / movie.”
 
***
What’s funny about The Blueprint is how hard it sounds like JAY-Z is trying to convince listeners, record labels, and himself, how classic the album is, how established he is as an artist and a rapper. This is in tension with lyrics boasting about transcending the streets and rap music. In “Heart of the City,” for example, JAY-Z challenges: “Look, scrapper, I got nephews to look after / I’m not lookin’ at you dudes, I’m lookin’ past ya / I thought I told you characters I’m not a rapper / can I live? / I told you ’96 I came to take this shit and I did / handle my biz.” The both-and really makes JAY-Z a vital voice in his own movie: calling back “Can I Live?” from Reasonable Doubt in order to argue he’s succeeded his way out of the game, in the middle of what is obviously the biggest hit single from his current album? Hilarious.
JAY-Z of course goes on to make an ill received sequel to Blueprint before utterly exploding every possible metric for hip-hop success with The Black Album and then lists into his late-career period with some occasionally exciting, often uninspired albums. Frozen in time, as September 2001 already is, The Blueprint really gives a picture of a JAY-Z on what we know to be an early ascent, seemingly about to max out. We’re in year 25 of JAY-Z’s career, and he hasn’t really released a piece of shit album yet, and yet, among those 13 releases, there are still obvious highlights. That’s pretty good sign for a guy who’s “music bangin’ like vatos locos,” who “got rap in a chokehold” (You know I had to sneak some JAY-Z rapping in Spanish on y’all).
One last interesting thing to note in the years of JAY-Z’s late-late career (including, sadly, two washed-ass verses on the two least interesting prestige rap records of 2021, Kanye’s Donda and Drake’s Certified Lover Boy) is how gracefully The Blueprint has, unlike a lot of JAY-Z’s current works, aged. The hottest song on the album is built on a sample from The Doors, who were well-established as dad-rock mid to bottom shelf music in the early aughts. “Five to One” is classic rock canon. In 2021, JAY-Z was admitted into the rock and roll half of fame is now his own piece of classic rock canon. Do we call JAY-Z dad rap the same way we call Wilco dad rock? Maybe, but I certainly won’t be as foul-mouthed around my little man.
A reflection on The Blueprint could really be short work: the best of JAY-Z’s large bag of tricks come out in full force, including flows, rhyme and lyric structures, his team of extremely gifted producers. You’ve got like five of JAY-Z’s top ten best on this album. JAY-Z’s own daughter is named after this album, so if we were to be skeptical of The Blueprint’s 20 year legacy we might look no further than Shawn Carter’s nine year old daughter.
But maybe the easiest way to ponder The Blueprint’s place in the history books would be to listen to literally any of album’s 13 tracks and decide if we’ve heard anything quite as good sense?
​
I’ll save you the trouble: we have not.
 
 

Girls are probably the last band of the blog era to have such an un-searchable name and still find success. Even then, their run from their 2009 debut Album, the Broken Dreams Club EP in 2010, and their final album, 2011’s Father, Son, Holy Ghost has a blink-and-miss-it aura that floats like a fog over one of San Francisco’s greatest modern indie rock bands.
Girls was primarily a two piece, joining Christopher Owens as songwriter and lead singer with Chet “JR” White who played bass guitar and produced. Touring and studio members filling in the band’s soundscapes came and went through a revolving door, which Owens cited as a reason for leaving the band, tweeting: “I didn’t feel like I had other people that were in the band over the years. It was 21 – a giant amount of people. That’s feeling disappointed 21 times over.”
After leaving Girls, White receded into his role as a producer, most recently adding his signature retro sheen to Tobias Jesso Jr.’s (excellent) 2015 album Goon. Sniping at each other in interviews, it became clear their partnership and friendship were deeply wounded. Tragically, White passed away in October of 2020 at only 40 years old, ending both the possibility for more production work from White and a reunion of Girls.
In “Die,” which is the album’s most rocking track with loud, soloing guitars high in the mix, Owens shouts “no, nothings gonna be alright / no, we’re all gonna get fucked up tonight / no, nothings gonna be okay / no, it’s all going down the drain tonight” you can’t help but wonder how much of his dissolving relationship with White he’s writing about, how much Girls is wrestling with their massive fame from album hype and touring between 2009 and 2011, and at the risk of being craven about White’s passing, also a little prophetic: “we’re all gonna die / we’re all gonna die / we’re all gonna die.” Like every partnership, friendship, every band, and every classic album, “Die” winds down, first with some furious guitar riffing, but then, it merely echoes out into an abyss.
The end and epilogue of Girls is extremely sad. Owens, without the studio magic White brings into his songwriting, goes on to release three solo albums: the conceptual, ornate if not pretentious rock opera Lysandre (2013), the gospel-infused roots rockin’ A New Testament (2014), and a back-to-basics Chrissybaby Forever (2015), which mostly succeeds at bringing Owens’ solo sound as close as possible to what Girls did so right. In 2017, Owens released an EP called Vante with a new group called Curls but promises for more music fizzed out.
In “Vomit,” which is the album’s most epic track, with sprawling refrains and soaring choirs weaving between tight verses and little stabbing guitar work like a motorbike darting around traffic in San Francisco’s hilly streets, Owens whispers: “Nights I spend alone / I spend ‘em running ‘round looking for you, baby” and then howls: “looking for love / looking for love / looking for love / looking for love.” You could read “Vomit” as an artist’s statement of purpose: “there’s something that I get from myself / and there’s something that you give to me / well, I got one / without the other, well, it’s not enough.” As Girls, Owens finds that something. Beyond Girls, Owens’ drive to create, to give, gets swallowed up by its own ambition. Mournfully, “Vomit” chugs along, chanting “come into my heart / my love” long into the track’s run time. I’ve never heard a song with such a fun guitar part sound so miserable.
These days, Owens isn’t talking about music as much. In “Magic,” he opines for a lover: “just a look was all it took / suddenly I’m on the hook / it’s magic.” Between their three releases, Girls only gave us 30 proper songs – barely a look – but in Father, Son, Holy Ghost, listeners are treated to such a memorable universe of music it seems almost like magic.
Owens is a lyricist (and social media personality) who wears his heart on his sleeve, so it makes sense that the cover of Father, Son, Holy Ghost, would feature a stark white color with the lyrics from all 11 songs printed in black using various typefaces. Inside the gatefold are similarly black and white photographs of famous San Francisco locales: the Golden Gate Bridge and Café Zoetrope, flanked by the Transamerica Pyramid with more lyrics superimposed over them: “looking for love” haunts this concrete skyscraper. The artwork volunteers this geographical allusion so I know it isn’t just because I happened to live in San Francisco during the public break down of the band that Father, Son, Holy Ghost is such a Bay Area piece of art. It couldn’t also be that my apartment was a few blocks from Christopher Owens’ and that occasionally he’d be getting coffee at our local spot, or that sometimes – more than you’d think – he’d be on walks in Panhandle Park playing a flute while I was on the phone with my wife, both of us pacing waiting for better days to come. Once, Owens bummed a light off of me outside of Amoeba Records before an in-store performance by Real Estate (remember those guys?).
I don’t mean to brag, and I certainly don’t mean to name drop, but when you’ve seen the guy who wrote “Love Like a River” in the flesh, can read the weight of the question, “lay my burden down / down by the river’s edge” while just existing in a city, the emotional stakes become higher. When Owens sings “And don’t you know I’d hold you / if I could find a way / if I could only catch you / if only you would stay” you really understand what he means. Girls made no pretentions: you were in the broken hearts, broken dreams, broken whatever club with them.
Maybe that’s what’s so remarkable about Father, Son, Holy Ghost to begin with: these aren’t sadsack songs, or, they are sadsack songs that don’t sound like sadsack songs. Take for example the album opener, “Honey Bunny.” Its got a guitar dive Vampire Weekend later borrow in 2013 for “Dianne Young” and it absolutely sweats exuberance. “I know you’re out there,” Owens confidently sings, “You might be right around the corner / and you’ll be the girl that I love.” This isn’t the emo shit that “Vomit” or essentially all of the Broken Dreams Club, lists into. This is unabashed crushin’ music: “I need a woman who loves / me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me!” It is impossible to not fall for this infectious of an album opener.
Or how about “Alex,” another semi-surf rocker, that only takes a few minutes to get from the playful “Alex has blue eyes / well who cares? No I don’t” to “Alex has a boyfriend / oh well, I’m in hell / I’ll sing you a song.” Its funny, its melodramatic, but between the talented cast of players (many of who would go on to play these songs with Owens during 2014’s A New Testament tour dates) and White’s precise nostalgic ear for production, “Alex” mostly rips. It makes you want to dance. Not all these songs are rockers necessarily, but they are all rooted in pure pop. Some more nakedly than others, like the excellent “Saying I Love You” which could have been in the arsenal of any singer-songwriter troubadour from Golden Gate Park’s halcyon era of love and grooviness. It reads trite on paper – “I hear you crying now / what can I do? / You threw my heart away / you made me blue” – but when you dress it up in the lush world of Girls’ music, its like the best song you’ve ever heard.
And that’s just about the best way to sum up any song from Girls’ too short run. I think, like any mythic band with a sad ending, and an even more upsetting epilogue, it makes sense to end with “Forgiveness.” Whispering, Owens sings that “Nothing’s gonna get any better / if you don’t have a little hope” (a drum patters) “if you don’t have a little love / in your soul” (a cymbal crashes, he repeats himself) “Nothings gonna get any better / if you’re drowning in your fear” (White’s baseline fills in the empty space) “if you’ve got nothing but sorrow / in your soul” (the song starts to warm up) “and you’ll have to forgive me, brother / and you’ll have to forgive me, sister / and I’ll have to forgive you” (Owens warbles, his voice nearly falling apart) “if we’re ever gonna move on.”
​

Like any band, like any song, like any guitar solo, like anything shared between friends, “Forgiveness” eventually ends. I like to think somewhere after the end of Girls Owens and White came together, or at the very least, came to understand what happened between each other.
Maybe that came in a whisper, or in words, or in the fog lifting over their adopted San Francisco homes. Who knows. We can never know the personal lives of professional musicians, but in the sad case of Girls, and their tremendous final album, we can hope they found closer like the final chorus of “Forgiveness:”
 
And I can hear so much music
And I can feel everything now
And I can see so much clearer
When I just close my eyes.
​

 ​

​This was a weird year, that despite its many, many, many disappointments, ended up producing a lot of great music. Or maybe this weird year gave us more time to enjoy more music? Hard to say. Hard to say, too, how the halted concert and touring industry impacted blockbuster releases like Lady Gaga’s “Chromatica” or The Weeknd’s “After Hours” (which rips, by the way, that lead single was never not playing in my apartment the month it came out) and smaller acts (and venues, for goodness sakes) alike. I will say this: for circumstance or happenstance I found myself digging way more into acts of a smaller caliber than I typically would, and I think that made for a better year of music. I want to specifically shout out Bandcamp Friday as a great vehicle for helping artists make a lil extra cash, and for amplifying artists who might not have broken out as large without the intentional signal boost.
   
Another thing unique to this year, for me and music, was how seasonal all of these releases ended up being. When I went back through the calendar, I was shocked at how memory holed some albums that, back in March say, I would have taken a bullet for. The excellent and quiet “Local Honey,” Brian Fallon’s full turn to singer songwriter & third solo effort, was everything when frost still touched the tops of the grass in my very small world. I’d forgotten it came out this year until this morning. Jason Isbell’s excellent dad rock “Reunions” which, coincidently came out right before I became a (pet) parent this summer was probably the only thing I listened to in June.
   
This is all to say, almost none of these albums made it through the whole year as constant listens. I don’t think this is an indictment on these albums, which are, in their own rights, some of the best pieces of music released in this goddamn awful year. One of the few perks of this goddamn year, though, was how easy it was to make time for music from years past that I’d missed (I got into Steely Dan this year, for example) or the money saved from only needing to drive my car approximately 9 times made more room in the budget for record collecting, and the obsessive listens that come with that (as of writing I’ve got every White Stripes vinyl release and variants that Third Man’s put out since opening doors in Nashville, 2009). This was a year where, as much as I explored new shit, was listening to bands, tediously consuming their discographies, really digging in. I obsessed as much as I explored, maybe more. As an aside, I also got heavy into audiobooks and podcasts as an easier-to-pace-with companion to training for the multiple half-marathons I ran this year.
  
Since my listening habits changed along with everything else this year, I figure I’m allowed to change the format of my own year end album list, which, since time is a meaningless commodity, I’ll overstuff with #content. Unique to my list this year is the addition of three new categories: 5 Favorite Vinyl Buys, 5 Favorite Live &/or Reissues, 20 Unranked Favorite Albums, and of course, my Top 10 Albums of 2020. I’m going to Punctuate the 20 Unranked List with the top 5s to add narrative tension, if you just want to know where “Punisher” by Phoebe Bridgers ranks on my top ten, like every other credible indie-adjacent year end list, scroll down.


20 Favorite – but Unranked! – Albums of 2020
This first batch are all alumni of top ten lists in years pasts, go figure:
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Microphones in 2020 – The Microphones
 “Microphones in 2020” maintains the confessional, stream-of-consciousness Mount Eerie & Phil Elverum fans are used to, reaching back into the lo-fi roots of his previous recoding name, this song length album acts as a state of the union for music, the world, for Elverum, all set in the pastoral scenes his music paints so beautifully. Refreshingly light, considering his more recent works, “Microphones in 2020” is heavy by virtue of the gorgeous physical object the LP is: a double-gatefold, full of art, poetry, and essays Elverum found in his sock drawer is a great companion to the 40 minute song, stretched across 3 sides of vinyl.
 
Dedicated Side B – Carly Rae Jepsen
Carly Rae Jepsen’s B-Sides are better than most pop singers’ A-Sides, and while Side B’s songs were rightly left off of last year’s impossibly good “Dedicated”, these songs put Jepsen into more sonically interesting and genre-bending occasions that even casual fans will savor. “Window” is the killer track: https://youtu.be/z90WurQZMNo
 
Letter to You – Bruce Springsteen
Every review for “Letter to You” goes on and on about how it’s the most vital and exciting music from Springsteen in years, if not decades. I’ll admit, The Boss’s powers are much more clear when he’s playing front & center and as band leader. Recorded live in studio with The E Street Band, there’s such a tremendous unity to these songs, timeless, brawny rockers in a year when we couldn’t head into the stadiums to do rock-god-revery. No worries, “Letter to You”’s got anthems: 2 minutes shy of an hour of anthems.
   
I don’t know, I might have just been on a Springsteen tear this year – one of the many, many audio books I took out with me on runs was his memoir – an expansive companion to the Netflix presentation of his Broadway stint as a storyteller and personal historian. I loved that book, loved Springsteen’s voice warbling through his own tale, loved the frantic searches on YouTube for shitty crowd shoot footage of gigs and songs he’d refer too off hand. But what I love more is not the man himself in the spotlight, but the Boss, and the people he is ostensibly the boss of: the E Street Band. Listen to that title track and tell me I’m wrong.
 
Local Honey – Brian Fallon
For Brian Fallon’s third solo album, he wanted to scale back: the stories are less anthemic, more autobiographical, and all written on a piano and performed, so sparingly, on Fallon’s acoustic guitar. If you show up to “Local Honey” wanting Gaslight Anthem, or even yearning for some of the more rootsy rock tunes of Fallon’s previous solo LPs, you’ll be disappointed. But as an all too brief showcase of songcraft, it is clear Fallon is becoming a tremendous talent. “21 Days” is the slow jam of the year: https://youtu.be/wVBJqt6elVM
    
Bridge to Quiet – Animal Collective
I’ve been a fan of Animal Collective for a little over ten years now, and in the fervent fan community there is much to do about something we call “demoitis” where fans are given more time with bootlegs of live renditions going through the road-tested workshop for future studio songs. The story goes, you spend a year with the prehistoric version of a jam like “Guys Eyes” and the studio version misses the colossal highs a summer tour’s worth of live improvisations on the track sets.  
   
I say this to say that late in 2019 Animal Collective debuted some of the most promising material they’ve ever played live, and then the pandemic interrupted their studio plans. “Bridge to Quiet” is NOT those road-tested. Embracing the constraints of recording safely this year, “Bridge to Quiet” is a small 5 song moment (one of which is a tedious instrumental) stretched across 30 minutes. Released exclusively to Bandcamp, the album is a low-stakes affair, and while “Piggy Knows” will surely become an all-time classic, “Bridge to Quiet” never extends itself beyond an offering to fans, while we wait for the proper studio sessions to capture the magic (or not!) of those songs from late 2019.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuYKDaxaxyw&ab_channel=AnimalCollective
   
5 Favorite Live &/or Reissues of 2020
Speaking of those goofballs in Animal Collective, I gotta cheat a bit for this first one:
  
2019 Fall Tour Bootlegs from Meow Wolf, Big Sur, and Desert Daze Fest – Animal Collective
It’s a good problem to have when the new songs you’re demoing at live shows are so good they make the studio album you put out a few months later forgettable. About 20 new songs, fit in great harmony with live AnCo staples, these bootlegs have been essential listening. Some of the greatest live music I didn’t get to see before the pandemic.
  
“A Dream in the Dark: Two Decades of Okkervil River Live” – Okkervil River
Embracing the many line-ups, sounds, and styles of Will Sheff’s long-running Okkervil River project, “A Dream in the Dark” complies the best of River’s year-long anthology of live releases. Cased in a beautiful book-spine triple gatefold, the six sides of vinyl pair nicely with Sheff’s liner notes, photos of the band over the years, and capture some of the best of his substantial catalogue of songs.
   
“All That You Can’t Leave Behind (20th Anniversary Expanded Edition) – U2
Bono is an arduous dude, no doubt about it. “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” isn’t U2’s best album, nor their most ambitious, but damnit if it isn’t the most U2. Tagging on a disc of remixes, a disc of (mostly) awesome b sides, and a live album from U2’s huge tour, you get some of U2’s biggest songs in the biggest way possible. Does it make up for my being 10 years old, and unable to go see that arena tour? No, but can I close my eyes when “Beautiful Day” is blowing the roof off of the venue and pretend? You betcha.
  
“Everything Will Change” – The Postal Service
You wouldn’t think The Postal Service is a band that needs a live album treatment, and even if that were true, I’d still be about this release: I was at the Berkely, CA tour date, which makes this extra, extra special. I think though, even if I weren’t at the you-gotta-be-there reunion tour back in 2013, Ben Gibbard, Jimmy Tamborello, and Jenny Lewis bring great depth and texture to the computer bleeps and bloops of “Give Up”’s tracks. Toss in some covers, and Gibbard’s voice way higher in the live mix, and you got yourself a pretty spectacular live record. 
     
   
“De Stijl XX” – The White Stripes
No surprise here: the meticulously crafted 20th anniversary celebration of The White Stripes’ tremendous second album culled from Ben Blackwell and Jack White’s respective vaults to present an essential collection of photographs, lyrics sheets, b-sides, alternative takes, and an entire double-live album documenting The White Stripes one inch away from their explosion into the mainstream with “White Blood Cells”. This is to say, the prime before their prime. Great, great, great shit.
    
20 Favorite – but Unranked! – Albums of 2020… continued!
Want some gentle folk, stunning songcraft, and high-quality easy listening?
  
“Gold Record” – Bill Callahan
Killer track: “The Mackenzines” https://youtu.be/hMMEUgts6i0
  
  
“9 Songs About Love” – J.E. Sunde
Part of that untouchable talent pool in Western Wisconsin. Something in the water in that part of the Midwest!
   
  
“The Third Gleam” – The Avett Brothers
Their best music and songwriting since “I & Love & You”. I can’t say killer track, for reasons that will make sense when you listen to: “I Should Have Spent the Day With My Family” https://youtu.be/z69P7RDim88
   
How about some rap music?
   
“RTJ4” – Run the Jewels
You know this is the only year-end list that doesn’t have this record in the top ten, and maybe if their opening slot (and the whole shebang) for Rage Against the Machine’s reunion tour didn’t get canceled and I got to experience these songs in a bigger context than my headphones, things would be different. At this point, we get Run the Jewels: their sound is big, their bars are foul, and they’re Dangerous with a capital D lyricist. Sometimes corny, sometimes poignant, all the time good for doing cardio exercise.
      
  
“A Written Testimony” – Jay Electronica
Long awaited and well received. In early March when Electronica’s album dropped it seemed like this was going to be a big year. Half right? Killer track: “Shiny Suit Theory” https://youtu.be/k-NkmUPfIw4
  
  
“Alfredo” – Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist
Decidedly not as good as 2019’s “Bandana”, Gibbs and Alchemist team up for an extremely solid rap album. Gibbs’s acrobatic flows sound so at home on Alchemist’s warm production, a rewarding listen for sure. Killer track: “Baby $hit” https://youtu.be/KaFCp0huJ3w
   
   
“Song Machine, Season One” – Gorillaz
The first exciting collection of songs from this band in a decade fully embraces the band’s ethos as not-a-band and opts for a “season” of music, songs built around collaborations with a wide range of genre artists that makes for a mixed, playlist of songs that are bound by their non-cohesion in an exciting and refreshing way. Find a feature on a track you like and start there.
  
  
“Pray for Paris” – Westside Gunn
Shout out to Walt for putting me on to Westside Gunn, ran a lot of miles to this record.
   
  
5 Favorite Vinyl Buys of 2020
 
“The Age of Adz” – Sufjan Stevens
“The Age of Adz” was in the same Amazon package my copy of Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” arrived at my college apartment in and frankly, got a bum wrap. The bars on “Monster” were far more appealing to my ear when I was 20 than the blips and bloops and the strange, unfamiliar humanity of Sufjan’s magnum opus. In the wave of press for “The Ascension”, comparisons between the new record and “Adz” were both frequent, and apt. “Ascension” revisited themes and sonic palettes similar to its ten-year-old precursor. After being floored by Sufjan’s new record, I had to give “Adz” a second shake, and in its sprawling, double-gatefold glory, the long sweeping set pieces and complex movements of music demands the album be consumed as a whole, taking only pause to flip from sides a to b and then c to do. “Adz” might have spent more time on my turntable than “Ascension” and, afforded more free time than usual, I more than made up for lost time with “Adz”’s 20 minute closing track “Impossible Soul.” You should too.
    
  
The Triple Decker Record – The Dead Weather
There are a lot of holy grails and great white buffalos in Jack White’s world of record collecting, but none are more sought after – at least not from the Nashville 2009 and onwards era of Third Man Records – than The Dead Weather’s impossibly stupid, frightfully cool, and profoundly limited release of their 12” single “Blue Blood Blues” which has nested inside in a 7” single featuring two unreleased songs. To hear the unreleased tracks (one of which I’ve heard is on their 2015 album “Dodge & Burn”) you have to cut into the 12” and break out the 7” single. I imagine I’ll spend much longer toiling over opening that up than I spent trying to find a copy at the right price.
Update: days after writing this paragraph, I did crack it open, and I’m so, so, so glad I did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ3c3WZ-3UU&ab_channel=OfficialTMR
   
 
  
“The Most Lamentable Tragedy” – Titus Andronicus
If there’s any band you can trust to cut a solid hour plus punk rock opera it’s the hard workers in Titus Andronicus. Since the album’s 2015 release I’ve wanted to experience the set piece in one sitting on LP, but the triple feature always felt a little too steep. I figured this would be a good record to buy on one of the first Bandcamp Fridays.
  
  
Forget how good the songs are, and how good the whole concept album is, this has to be one of the coolest, most difficult-to-listen-to sets of LPs I’ve got. The sequence of the records is LP 1, side A, LP 3 side A, LP 1 side B, LP 2 A&B, and LP 3 side B. LP 3 spins at 45, the others at 33. Crazy shit. Thought my iTunes copy had been out of order the first time I listened straight through. Good times!
   
  
“Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV: Volume 2: No World For Tomorrow” – Coheed & Cambria
Coheed had big plans for this year: their own music festival cruise, the 4th chapter of the album spanning Neverender tours behind one of my favorite of their albums, and, the presumptive reissue of their most sought after vinyl record. Having scrapped the first two, this fall, the band elected to clear out the storage unit and release the “Gunslinger” Variant of their 2007 album out into the world – lucky for me, now when the tour does reschedule I won’t have to cradle it for dear life in a mosh pit, I guess – and boy is it beautiful. Three sides and an etching in a full-art double gatefold, adorned with the comic book style imagery from the science fiction story Coheed & Cambria’s concept albums, comics, and novels tell. The vinyl itself is a translucent gold with brown, orange, red, and black whisps of smoke. This thing looks as good as it sounds, I only wish I hadn’t sprung for the original pressing months earlier!
   

“14:59” – Sugar Ray
No shame in my game. This got me through the cold extended winter into April’s earliest true Spring days. You haven’t heard “Every Morning” until you’ve heard it with the warm crackle of a vinyl record.
   
20 Favorite – but Unranked! – Albums of 2020… continued!
How about some vibes?
   
  
“Apple” – A.G. Cook
Imagine the weirder, more digital, riskier version of Sufjan Stevens (who I bet we hear from one more time on this list wink wink). That’s A.G. Cook. Killer track: “Superstar” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5alfOXbhHF0
  
   
“All Things Being Equal” – Sonic Boom
This would have been an extremely good album for all the road trips that got canceled this year. Still, Spaceman 3 alumni and frequent Panda Bear collaborator Sonic Boom brings all of outer space right into your ear holes, one slick track at a time. Slick track: “Just Imagine” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFsppY8r1_4
  
   
“Magic Oneohtrix Point Never” – Oneohtrix Point Never
A love letter to FM radio. Much more comfortable than Oneohtrix’s recent soundtrack work for “Uncut Gems”. The whole thing, front to back, is best listened in a chair out in a warm breeze, or, you guessed it, on a long drive, if you can manage one.
   
  
“Imploding the Mirage” – The Killers
The nice thing about The Killers’ 6th studio album manages to skyrocket over the colossally low expectations. Does it quite recapture the massive “Hot Fuss”? Of course not. But it gets closer than they have since “Sam’s Town”. Killer track: “Caution” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrpBgN_iUnA
   
  
Punk? Emo?
   
“Ground Aswim” – Sinai Vessel
Tapping into the same vein the earliest Death Cab for Cutie does, Sinai Vessel manages to hit some current-sounding emo that’s dusted with nostalgia. The songwriting is great, the production is crisp, and the tunes are awesome. But don’t take it from me, Sinai Vessel’s creative mind hopped on twitter a few months ago to say that his own album was ‘slept on.’ Kinda funny, but also kinda true. Don’t sleep!
   
    
“Ultra Mono” – IDLES
The lads in IDLES are good sports, especially after spending the “Ultra Mono” release cycle getting dunked on by cynics and critics. Are they a little corny in their messaging? Sure, but is their messaging good & pure? Yes, and probably. And anyway, on riffs alone, “Ultra Mono” is all killer and no filler, regardless of how you feel about their politics, the tunes go hard. Killer track: “Grounds” https://youtu.be/mRkUt9VnaR0
   
   
“Melee” – Dogleg
Quick facts: the album is loosely based on the video game Super Smash Bros Melee, which members of the band are supposedly whizs at; Dogleg is from Metro Detroit; they have an early EP about Star Wars. IF that’s not enticing to you, how about this: a harder-edged Weezer with riffs as classic and memorable as anything you’ve heard. Just a good ass loud and fast punk record. Killer track: “Kawasaki Backflip” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjjygwmqG9M&ab_channel=TripleCrownRecords
     
  
Top 10 Albums of 2020

 
10. “Punisher” – Phoebe Bridgers
It was a cold and damp day, the first time I listened to the second album from critically acclaimed and culturally beloved social media & indie music sensation Phoebe Bridgers. I’d first heard her music along with Bright Eyes (who, shit, that album they dropped this year was such a let down and I’m sorry to take space away from Phoebe to say that but goddamn…) in Better Oblivion Community Center and thought her voice was really interesting, and assumed the musical direction of that band was more Connor Oberst’s doing.
  
So here I am, on a long run that would end way, way early, trying out this beloved album by this lauded artist genuinely eager to fall for the colossal hype. I was already in a bad mood, stressed, or nervous, or anxious about some laundry list of troubles, and it was cold, and damp. Like on all my runs, it takes about a song and a half to get into the huffin’ rhythm where I stop focusing on my labored breathing and get into the mystical headspace of whatever I’m listening to. Luckily, “Punisher”’s opening instrumental track chewed that up so I could be fully astonished by “Garden Song”’s churning and soft guitars, and Bridger’s audacious lyrics. “And when I grow up, I’m gonna look up / from my phone and see my life” and holy shit after a year of our lives happening on those screens hits different. Thank god for “Kyoto”;s arena-ready size, man, that would have been a great song at Bridgers’ canceled tour dates opening for The 1975.
  
The album goes on, delicious lyrics, light hearted but still complex arrangements and tuneful songs. The hype around “Punisher” is well, well, placed. In fact, the album’s only weakness (and #10 spot) is that the first time I listened to it was last week. I imagine keeping warm with “Punisher” well into next year. It is wonderful and unique and sad. But, back to “Garden Song” where Bridgers sings “No, I’m not afraid of hard work / I get everything I want / I have everything I want” all I could do was stop running and start walking slowly back to my apartment.
    

9. “Reunions” – Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit
If the year ended in July “Reunions” would have not only been my album of the year but I would have sworn Jason Isbell was the best working musician. I cannot overstate how much I loved, and listened to this record after it’s May release. Like Bridgers, though, the calendar conspires against “Reunion”’s cool balance of dad-rock and folk-country tunes.
  
  
“Be Afraid” is the only country-rock song about politics that doesn’t suck ass, and “What’ve I Done to Help” is just a stone-cold guitar song in league with Sturgil Simpson’s “SOUND & FURY”. One of the real gems on the album is the astonishing “It Gets Easier” which gives a raw first-person perspective on Isbell’s sobriety. “It gets easier / but it never gets easier” might read a little cliché, but with the 400 Unit’s musical flourishes and Isbell’s delivery solidify the song as honest and memorable.
   
  
Two of my favorite music critics both wrote about “Letting You Go” and “Dreamsicle”’s heartbreaking father-daughter storytelling, the latter a sad-sap sticky fiction, the former a gorgeous ode to parenting. I say with zero irony and total self-awareness how ridiculous it was that on the drive to Fort Wayne, Indiana, to pick up our eight-week old puppy Desi from the breeder, that I listened to “Letting You Go” fifty times in a row and wept the entire way back to Southfield. “Reunions” guided me home steadily, and while I was the slowest car on the interstate, I had The 400 Unit’s gentle urging that we’d be taking the dog home to a good home.
   
   
And that’s a dog daughter, god willing the next few years are good to Rachel & I I’ll pull this one off the shelf and discover these songs in a whole new way.
  
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Speaking of dogs …
​   
8. “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” – Fiona Apple
Revisiting this album for this writing was such a joy. I’d wondered if maybe “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” massive moment might have burned too bright in April, after all, this was a year where a perfect 10 score on Pitchfork couldn’t hold too much media attention. Cynically, I wondered if the album – its early release narrative, Apple’s slow (read: perfect) work ethic, its topicality, the height of quarantine, round one – would hold eight months later. I knew “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” was destined for year end list ubiquity, but I wondered if it would be one of those albums that crushed lists and fell into obscurity.
  
The egg fell on my face about thirty seconds into album opener “I Want You to Love Me”. Yes, “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is receiving hyperbolic, nearly fanatical praise. Yes, I was wrong. Yes, it deserves it.
One thing I’d forgotten is how weird “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is. Distanced from its zeitgeist moment of flash-in-the-pan perfection you get to really enjoy how strange Apple’s orchestrations are: we know percussion includes kitchen appliances recorded at home, we know Apple’s dogs make a few crucial features that a lesser artist might have sanitized.
   
Me and the dog were on a walk when I popped “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” on, and, for a moment the album wasn’t a product of its enormous moment, and instead just something really catchy and fun and smart that I was listening to, and readers, I hope for you to enjoy Fiona Apple’s tremendous album without the specter of its stakes. Those stakes are earned, but – at least for me – I forgot that beneath at all were 13 incredible songs.
   
7. “Live Forever” – Bartees Strange
I read a lot about Bartees Strange this year, and on the one hand, that’s super annoying, because I don’t have anything new or interesting to say about “Live Forever”. It does play with a lot of different genres, there are big pop songs, big rock songs (talking about you “Stone Meadows” – that song could obliterate an arena venue), RnB, emo. Strange wears many hats, extremely well, and “Live Forever” is a rewarding listen each time through.
On the other hand, Bartees Strange seems like an extremely genuine guy deserving of the praise being heaped upon him and his work. So, don’t listen to me, don’t listen to the experts. Go listen to Bartees Strange.
 
   
6. “Teenage Halloween” – Teenage Halloween
I love, love, love, love, love Teenage Halloween’s self-titled. Its such a good record. The killer track is all of them, and you just have to go listen to it. Also peep the band’s twitter feed for a chance to buy their homemade salsa. I can’t say enough good about Teenage Halloween, their songs rip, they are a force of good in an otherwise evil world, and you gotta go listen to their album right now.
 
  
5. “Shamir” – Shamir
Shamir’s self-titled album is 28 minutes long, but if it were seventeen hours, you’d still like it. Since 2015’s major label debut “Ratchet”, Shamir has been chasing his sound and his voice. Going indie after dropping the label over creative differences, Shamir moved away from the disco dance pop into guitar rock and lo-fi music, and while the many releases since 2015 have made following Shamir’s work worthwhile, this self-titled album finally captures the best of what Shamir’s unique voice and keen ear for pop music are capable of.
   
Its clear in the songs how happy with these songs Shamir is, and that’s an infectious thing for a listener. In “Diet”, for example, boasts the great songwriting conceit that culminates with the chorus’s “maybe taste his blood / because I always want to try it / but I won’t let it become part of my diet” which is a great mid-career Death Cab for Cutie exhibition of gross body metaphors for a romance, but then also squeezes in kind of a banging guitar solo. That’s fun! Or how about “Running” which could be a Carly Rae Jepsen song with its big bass line and also gives a lyrical nod to R.E.M. Like Bartees Strange, Shamir is operating between different genres and showcasing different influences, and I can’t help but wonder if firm lines between genre and influence continue to become less important. Something something in the era of digital streaming and algorithm playlists….
    
In its brevity, “Shamir” is a quick listen, and the album opener “On My Own” really nicely foreshadows the different sonic palettes and themes Shamir explores, so if, like me, you listen to this album a few times each time you listen to it, “On My Own” acts like the legend to a map, a sort of safe, home base for the rest of the tracks. In years, this song will be recognized in the pantheon of all-time stone-cold classic break up songs that sound happy, and I think that’s a tremendous accolade in of itself.
   
 
4. “The Ascension” – Sufjan Stevens
Like I wrote earlier, “The Ascension” is not really a continuation in the soundtrack work Sufjan Stevens has been doing recently, nor is it in the same vein as “Carrie & Lowell”. “Ascension” picks up where “The Age of Adz” left off ten years ago, expanding on the sprawling blips and bloops and the strange, unfamiliar tones of those songs. “Ascension” goes as far as to borrow the massive closing track, albeit a few minutes shorter than “Adz”’s unbelievable “Impossible Soul.” To wit: if you cut out side D of this record, “The Ascension” would only lose two of its 15 songs and would be under an hour. While the big finish, “America” doesn’t quite meet the same highs of “Impossible Soul”, its scope is impressive.
   
The title track, though, does in five minutes what “America” can’t do in twelve: wrap up the themes and sounds of the rest of the record laid bare: “when I am dead and the light leaves my breast / nothing to be told nothing to confess / let the record show what I couldn’t quite confess / for by living for myself, I was living for unrest”. Even without the real-world context of Stevens’ publicly renouncing his Christian faith, it is clear in the lyrics the speaker is going through a tremendous change of spirit. Later, he sings “and to everything, there is no meaning / a season of pain of hopelessness”, which by the way is a hell of thing to say in a song in 2020, “I shouldn’t have looked for revelation / I should have resigned myself to this / I thought I could change the world around me” isolates the speaker in their own self-reliance, which, perhaps lonely, perhaps isolated, activates this whole new power within. After the song’s long and slow build culminates in a small, but emotionally potent, conclusion, Sufjan practically whispers, “what now?”
   
Its almost too bad this beautiful confessional answers its own question by evoking the clumsiness of “America”’s neo-Whitman, “don’t do to me what you did to America” because it is the interiority of the album that makes “The Ascension” so grand to me: the largess of introspection. Maybe I rigged the record to play in favor, after all, the first time I listened to it in a single sitting was not while sitting at all and instead doing a 20 mile run on Detroit’s gorgeous Belle Isle on a cool morning. I had a lot of time to ponder myself during that run.
   
I feel like I’m making the record sound too serious. It isn’t. “Video Games”, for example, it’s a straight up dance track (at least as close to a dance track Sufjan Stevens can make). “Landslide” is a sexy slow jam with some impressive guitar work, “Death Star” teases out some late-album energy, “Sugar” ends the album proper (I’m calling side d a sort of encore) as good as any album closer.
  
But for me, “The Ascension”’s secret weapon, the song that kept me coming back, is “Die Happy.” “Die Happy” is almost six minutes long, it has one lyric – “I wanna die happy” – and the song repeats it twenty-one times to the point where the words have no meaning. If “to everything, there is no meaning / a season of pain and hopelessness” felt bleak when you read it earlier, the utter instance of “Die Happy” still echoing from earlier in the album when you encounter the title track in sequence sounds a lot different, and when Stevens asks “what now?” at the end of that very same song, we have our answer.
  
 
3. “Shore” – Fleet Foxes*
The nice thing about being quarantined with my wife in a very small apartment is that I didn’t (literally) have enough room to pick up any bad habits this year save for one: I joined reddit. This was mostly to talk about Jack White records with the worst kind of people on the internet (other Jack White fans) and to talk about Star Wars with the worst kind of people on the internet (other Star Wars fans). With this in mind, I’ll talk about “Shore” as I remember it, as opposed to how it was:
  
One day, I was sad (hah, this year!) and I thought, man, I wish Fleet Foxes would drop another LP, I wonder what they have going on. I jumped onto the Fleet Foxes reddit page and posted, “hey, what’s going on with new music and the Fleet Foxes”. The first ten comments called me Hitler for calling Robin Pecknold’s band “The Fleet Foxes” and the 11th encouraged me to check out new music Pecknold was debuting on his Instagram page. The demos and snippets were incredible and made my thirst for new Fleet Foxes grow.
   
Then, on a Monday, Pecknold announced a new album, “Shore.” On Wednesday – the autumnal equinox of all days - Fleet Foxes released their fourth album, “Shore.”
   
Having done this free write, I checked my history: On Sunday, September 20th, posters seemingly advertising the new album were spotted in Paris. On Monday, September 21th, the album was officially announced, and I was wrong, it was Tuesday the 22st that “Shore” dropped. Not quite the out-of-nowhere surprise of Beyonce’s “Beyonce”, “Shore” still astonished in its seemingly out-of-nowhere release. I was in the car and had to pull over to order the vinyl variant, which doesn’t ship until late February 2021, so maybe “Shore” will pop up on my year’s end list next year, god willing we all make it that long. It goes without saying it is a monument to Pecknold’s talent that he himself recorded many of the parts himself, and really challenges the notion of what a “band” is.
   
Coming down from the arduousness of “Crack Up”’s dense orchestration, academic lyrics, and (at least for the band) massive world tour, the relative ease and accessibility of “Shore” is, and especially was this year, a welcomed casual affair. I promise that’s not a slight. Fleet Foxes sound best to me when Fleet Foxes are effortless and whimsical. Gone are the 10+ minute epics of “Crack Up” or “Helplessness Blues”. Instead, more grounded and tuneful moments like “Sunblind” or “Jara” paint their pastoral and hang it up; “Can I Believe You” hits that pre-encore set ender creschedo and bows out – not without an all-time classic Pecknold howl, the titular question drawn out to breaking point “caaaan I beeeeeEEEEELLLIIIIIIEEEEVVVEEEEE yooouuuUUUUU.” Hell yes we can.
   
 
*Alternative review: listen to “Wading in Waist-High Water” and “Sunblind” and (1) try not to smile real huge and (2) convince yourself this isn’t some really special music.
   
 
2. “Dear Life” – Brendan Benson
It’s been 14 years since The Raconteurs entered into the orbit around Jack White, the self-proclaimed Seventh Sun (get it?). “Steady, As She Goes” is as strong an argument that White’s voice isn’t the only worthy of a spotlight on a tune he’s playing guitar on. The ‘other’ voice, of course, is another sacred son of the garage rock scene in Detroit, and White’s elder. I point this out, not to draw comparisons between Benson & White’s rags-to-riches stories (although Benson got the major label accolades years before The White Stripes) nor to hitch myself to Benson’s wagon solely on the strength of his buddiness with White (although I’d be lyin’ if I said that didn’t get me to listen) and definitely not to compare them musically (Benson has been on a singer-songwriter trajectory way, way longer). No, I mention this to say that I’d known something for nearly a decade and a half that I only discovered, really, this spring:
  
Brendan Benson fuckin’ rips. He’s a tremendous songwriter, his characters live through fictions that feel genuine, real, lived in the way the best parts of the Star Wars universe do. In “Dear Life” he tells parallel stories about a veteran struggling to return to civilian life and the prisoner a loveless marriage, and while these pastiches nod towards these characters as the punchline in their sad stories, instead, Benson explores their “hangin’ on to dear life” with empathy, admiration for their strength to go on. He loves the people he’s singing about. In “Baby’s Eyes”, another heartbreak song, instead of fixating on Baby’s troubles, he sings “I always see the shine in Baby’s eyes.” Benson doubles down, “here I am with no disguise / I see the best in me shine through / in Baby’s eyes.” His affection is infectious.
   
And what’s more, Benson wrote, recorded, and performed all the parts himself – a skill further displayed during his frequent 4:20 solo performances live on Instagram that included some really cool loops and studio magic to make this one guy sound like a huge, whole band. Musically, “Dear Life” sounds like what you’d expect if you’re as half-assed a Brendan Benson fan as I’ve been: there’s some big Raconteurs-esque guitar songs, but shades of punk (“Freak Out”), R&B, maybe a little disco (“Good to Be Alive” – that might be the incredible music video projecting), bar rock (“I Can if You Want Me To”), shit, there’s even a riff on whatever genre you want to call Broken Bells – alternative/indie/techno? – in the great album closer “Who’s Gonna Love You?”
   
I’d wanted to try to lock onto a killer track, or even an essential run of 3-4 tracks, but like I said, Benson fuckin’ rips. The album is so good I really can’t narrow it down – “Half a Boy (Half a Man)” which sadly isn’t a sequel to Britney Spears’s “Not a Girl (Not Yet a Woman)” is an arena-ready rocker, but it doesn’t top the Donovan riffing acoustic sing-a-long “I Quit” and it absolutely can’t touch the bubblegum pop dad-rock ode to Benson’s wife and children. He sings: “ever since your birth / its been heaven on earth / and you’re perfect in my eye / I’ve got two perfect beautiful babies / and one hell of a good lookin’ wife / got twice the love and half the money / and I feel like the richest man alive.” Especially after Benson’s candid recounting of his recent sobriety during The Raconteurs’ 2019 tour cycle, it is such a joy to hear this kind of a sweet clap-a-long rocker.
   
Having only gotten this album on vinyl, it might skew the play count a bit, but I 100% listened to this bright pink LP more than any other record I got this year. This guy loves, and that’s impossible not to love; this guy’s rich, and in “Dear Life” Brendan Benson shares those riches with us. 
      
 
1. “Lament” – Touché Amoré
FROM PEAKS OF BLUE – COME HEROINE a guy shrieks, a guitar winds up for a fraction of a second, drums explode, quickly, a melodic rhythm takes shape, “Come heroine / with several suns you light the way / when each day begins …”
  
… and so begins “Lament”, an album I knew nothing about, by Touché Amoré, a band I knew nothing about, other than that a music critic who wrote a review I hate about an album I dislike by a band I love, said these guys were the real deal. Why’d I take that recommendation seriously enough to give Touché Amoré a shot? This guy’s bread and butter were emo and hardcore bands, genres I barely listen to. Was it an issue of boredom? I’d say I’d ran out of shit to listen to, but like two thirds of the thirty albums on this list came out in the fall, so that wasn’t it. Maybe I was curious to get into [redacted critic’s] head? Maybe I wanted to think it sucked so I could dunk on him on Twitter? Maybe [redacted critic’s] intense passion for Touché Amoré sent an echo of kinship I was familiar with – they were, it seemed, this guy’s 1996 cinema masterpiece “Twister.” Its easy to love shit people love fanatically.
    
On Friday, October 9th I went for a 31 minute and 41 second run. “Lament” is 36 minutes long, which means during mile two, which I ran a whole minute faster than mile one, I was listening to “Feign”, chugging it to the lyrics: “I say the wrong thing / at the perfect time” Touché Amoré shouted, asking me “do I die a little less often?” Or maybe it was the incredible “Reminders” with shades of accessible punk rock, its melodic chorus: “I need reminders of the love I had / I need reminders, good or bad.” I mean, shit, that’s about as good as I gets. A hard run is maybe not a good way to encounter new music, but “Lament” connected with me instantly. Prior to knowing Touché Amoré’s previous album (the also exceptional “Stage Four”) was a bitter, naked, honest recoking with lead singer Jeremy Bolm’s mother dying of cancer in 2014, the emotional veracity of Touché Amoré’s songwriting was clear: “So I lament / then I forget / So I lament / till I reset”. Man.
    
In “Limelight” which features the silver voice of Manchester Orchestra’s Andy Hull, Bolm sings “I’m tired and I’m sore” and, that was probably towards the end of that speedy second mile, but you get the idea. I don’t want to reduce “Lament” to a time & place moment of kismet, because the record is just too good, but that run, the way the sun hung in the sky, that first listen was unlike any other experience I’ve ever had with an album.
   
That night, haunted by the opening lines – “from peaks of blue – come heroine” – I ordered the album and waited for it arrive. Sitting down and listening to the record in one dose was as rewarding, if not a little more relaxing, than the precious first spin, and really, as I listen to it while typing this “Lament” continues to echo in ways no album has before, definitely not this year. I can’t stress this enough: I do not listen to melodic hardcore, I do not listen to post-hardcore, I do not listen to screamo, and yet, like on October 9th near the end of my run, I’m floored to a halt by the one-two punch of album closers “Deflector” (“I’m too delicate”, Bolm screams – been there man – “been a broken record / a continuous deflector”) and “A Forecast.”  
  
It’s that last track that really lets “Lament” shine: it begins with a piano, Bolm alone, speaking, not singing: “I’ve healed more than suffered.” You’re rewarded for knowing the contexts, but even without, the song’s narrative catches you up: “So here’s the record closer / still working out its intent / I’m not sure what I’m after / but it couldn’t go left unsaid” – the band comes in, big, Bolm, shouting to survive” “I’m still out in the rain / I could use a little shelter / now and then.” The song airs grievances, both personal and political (“I’ve lost more family members / not to cancer, but the GOP / What’s the difference? / I’m not for certain / they all end up dead to me” – shit!) but all given an intense earnestness that’s impossible to ignore.
   
I ended that run pretty far from home and had to walk it off. Once “Lament” ended I thought about how good it was, pondering what was unique about this record that records like it didn’t have; I thought about how it reminded me of the first Gaslight Anthem record, “Sink or Swim,” which made me think of their last album, “Get Hurt” that was panned by [redacted critic] in 2014.. I’m not sure if this is a parable about criticism or taste or how sometimes people whose opinions on twitter you sometimes hate are sometimes extremely right or if its all just a funny coincide. I put on “Sink or Swim” and thought about how wrong [redacted critic] was about Gaslight Anthem, what an asshole [redacted critic] was but by the time I’d gotten home I’d taken his recommendation again.
   
​It was the first time I listened to “Lament” again, but it was far from the last.

​What was the first concert you ever saw? For me, there are three true answers. One, the musical RENT, at a touring production in Akron, Ohio. Two, Tool, with the duo Big Business, in Youngstown’s Covelli Center. That was the first time I smelled (SMELLED, not SMOKED) weed. Third, finally, are the number of basement shows I saw my friends’ bands play at, most notably FAKE BAND. At the time, I had no idea I was at “basement shows” or part of (or adjacent to) “a scene.” Pretty cool for Poland, Ohio.
Those are the true answers, and I probably wouldn’t trade them for anything, but RENT is more of a musical than a rock show (although the guitar solo in the title track still to this day rips), Tool profoundly sucks and what good is a rock show that you get back to your parents’ house before curfew anyway? My real answer to that question spawned an ongoing joke between my dad and I, who – despite being a concert guy when he was a young guy – kinda didn’t seem to understand what was clearly becoming more of a habit than an extravagance for me. The show was in Cleveland, Ohio, a cool hour from home, I believe on a school night. Dad waited up and asked how the show was, with just a pinch of bite in the ask. I said, dad, it was the best night of my life. 
​We’d go back and forth on that q & a for the first dozen or so shows I went to, and then it sort of became an assumption. I’ve had a lot of best nights of my life since that first one. Here, lemme tell you about thirty of them:

1. The Avett Brothers – Beachland Tavern – Cleveland, Ohio - May 18, 2008

It was a long time coming from riding my bike to work at Chapter’s Café blasting “Paranoia in b Flat Major” on a shock resistant CD player to being at my first club rock show, singing lyrics to songs I loved with other people who loved those lyrics. Emotionalism-era Avett Brothers was one of the first bands to earn the distinction of ‘favorite band’ status among the oft-played CDs and MP3s of my earliest players. The show ripped, of course – late oughts Avettt Bros live shows owned with all the chotic energy their punk ethos brought to bluegrass and country-folk songs. I remember, groggy, feeling cooler than cool in my brand new band shirt at high school the next day. Something in me had woken up, and it wouldn’t go back to sleep ever again.

1. The Wombats w/ This Is My Suitcase! – The Basement – Columbus, Ohio - September 5, 2008

The first of many, many shows with all-time concert buddy and co-pilot Eric. This particular was an odyssey in two parts: first, I met up with Eric in Akron the morning of the show by-way-of a long hangout with my college roommate Matt Kitten (who was not yet my roommate – we were still a few weeks from starting college). We drove down to Columbus, were like the third people in line outside The Basement, and lost our minds alongside local opener This is My Suitcase! who I would go on to stan during my four years in Columbus.
Then The Wombats came out and played most of their debut CD, Tales of Boys, Girls, and Marsupials which was on heavy, heavy rotation at Chapters, where Eric & I worked together. I remember three things from the show: (1) it ripped so hard, (2) we had to pee so hard but couldn’t escape the crowd to go do so and (3) the guitarist from This is My Suitcase! came and moshed during “Let’s Dance to Joy Division”. Awesome night.

1. Streetlight Manifesto w/ Outernational! – The Agora – Cleveland, Ohio - September 26, 2009

It blows my mind that this show was only $16 dollars because, as a reunion of our high school friend group now apart at different colleges around Ohio had approximately 9 million dollars of fun. Ska is what it is, but if you and your crew messed with Keasby Nights or Somewhere in the Between as hard as we did, you’d lose your marbles front row in front of the trombone player same as we did.

1. Tokyo Police Club – The Basement – Columbus, Ohio – July 28, 2010

During one of the most fun summers of my life, my buddy Neil and I, living utterly unsupervised by adults in dorm, spent most nights watching World Cup Soccer, playing Virtua Tennis on Neil’s Sega Dreamcast, and drinking beer. But on this night, we unfurled our Canadian Flag, and went to see Tokyo Police Club play the hits from their newly released Champ. They signed the flag, they played the hits, we moshed ourselves sore to “Breakneck Speed”.

1. Girl Talk w/ Penguin Prison – LC Pavilion – Columbus, Ohio – January 6, 2011

2011 started in central Ohio with a vicious blizzard, which hardly slowed Girl Talk’s pace for throwing a frantic, pop/rap dance party with more confetti than, well, anywhere. It took like two hours to get from Otterbein to downtown Columbus, a typically 20 minute drive, but it was worth it. Neil, Matt Kitten, and I got our groove on with the bass heavy 80s homage yacht pop of Penguin Prison (listen to “Don’t Fuck With My Money” – a long standing tune in Matt & I’s apartment for months to follow) and then got our shit kicked in for one of the best Girl Talk sets I’ve seen.

1. Okkervil River w/ Titus Andronicus & Future Islands – The Newport – Columbus, Ohio – June 11, 2011

Sometimes a show’s billing makes a ton of sense, and there’s a great harmony. Other times, in the case of this show, a billing makes no sense at all, and there is magnificent chaos. Titus, hot off of The Monitor bring all the brash and balls of a historically literate and mosh-ready punk rock to the room. Okkervil, touring behind their excellent (in retrospect) I Am Very Far play it a little more softly and close to the heart. Future Islands, pre “Seasons (Waiting on You)” fame by a few years, sound like pop music for vampires. Chaos. Beautiful chaos.
Still, even among the head scratching line up, there was something sublime about being with Pat, Jon, and Poop to sing along to one of my all-time favorite songs, “Lost Coastlines” with the band on stage.

1. Cold War Kids – Madison Theater – Covington, Kentucky – August 5, 2011

Cold War Kids always had, and continue to have, a stellar live show. This one happened to be the last time I saw the gang with their original line up. Madison Theater is a beautiful venue and Covington is a cool town, the road trip from Columbus was a nice drive, just long enough to almost run out of shit to talk about with Neil.
What made the CWKy show so memorable though, was the phone call from one of Neil’s buddys, inviting us to go swim at the pool of the mansion he was house sitting. Only one catch, the dude said: its in Covington, Kentucky, you guys up for a road trip?
We’ll be there after the show. And we were. And it was great.

1. Watch the Throne featuring Jay Z & Kanye West – The Palace of Auburn Hills – Detroit, Michigan – November 26, 2011

Nothing like listening to Matt Kitten sing along to “Run This Town” from the cheap seats of the now demolished Palace. Pyrotechnics, a crazy arena-stretching stage, lights, all spectacle. West & Jay Z on the absolute peak of their game. What more can I say? (get it?). They played the encore, “Paris”, the second most number of times at our show, a whopping seven.

1. Turquoise Jeep – The Independent – San Francisco, California – August 27, 2012

The thing above novelty rap music is that nobody thinks they tour, and why would they? Answer: novelty rap is hilarious, and Turquoise Jeep, fronted by Flynt Flossy, is no exception. After quickly connecting over “Lemme Smang It” new M.F.A. buddy Calvin (Kevin) copped two tickets to my first, and one of the most memorable, Bay Area shows.

1. Surfer Blood – The Crepe Place – Santa Cruz, California – February 24, 2013

Moving to California didn’t stop Eric from being an all-time great concert co-pilot, and while he came to visit twice (!!!) (for a music festival!) the drive down the coast to Santa Cruz on Highway 1 was the more memorable of his two visits for two key reasons: (1) we were heavy into Surfer Blood’s chilled-out Weezer vibes, and (2) The Crepe Place is an actual restaurant and an extremely weird place to see a rock show.
While waiting for the band to set up, we ate crepes. We caught up. We watched the lead singer of the band try to get a girl’s phone number and strike out magnificently. He saw us see him. We said what’s up. He said nothing. Then he and his band played an amazing set – in front of the kitchen. Surreal trip.

1. Legends of Summer Tour featuring Jay Z & Justin Timberlake – Candlestick Park – San Francisco, California – July 26, 2013

Objectively, this tour was extremely stupid. Justin Timberlake playing the guitar solo to “99 Problems”? Ridiculous. Jay Z kinda vibing in the background of “Rock Your Body”? Asinine. Screaming “poof, vamoose SON OF A BITCH” with my roomie Cait (and a football stadium of fans)? Spectacular.

1. Treasure Island Music Festival featuring Animal Collective, Atoms for Peace, James Blake, Sleigh Bells, Starfucker, Real Estate, and Dannnnny Brown – Treasure Island, San Francisco Bay, California – October 19 & 20, 2013

Okay, its Animal Collective’s set that gets TIMF on the list, but of similar note was my roommate nearly getting crushed to death during Sleigh Bells’ set, or Real Estate’s “Its Real” playing with the setting sun, rolling fog, and San Francisco skyline as a backgroup, or maybe Danny Brown noticing I was wearing a Detroit Tiger’s hat and giving me a nod during “Blunt After Blunt” that made it a classic weekend.
No, it was definitely the Animal Collective set. I’d seen them a few times by then, and a few times sense, and never has the whole band been as dialed, in, breathing new life into old songs (“The Purple Bottle” performance jumped Feels lightyears ahead of any of their other albums as my favorite). Plus, at a festival, you get all the obligatory hits. Just a magnificent way to get wrapped up in fog and feels on a fall evening.

1. The xx – The Lyric – Oxford, Mississippi – April 4, 2014 (also Nelly at the Grove – University of Mississippi)

The xx and Nelly are not similar. The shows were not similar. The venues were not similar. But, both shows happened on the same night, so I’m counting this as one show. Sorry not sorry.
This was also my first visit out to see Rachel at University of Mississippi. Because I’m a bastard, I got her tickets to see a band I like for her birthday. Always the game sport, she had a great time and digs The xx. The Lyric is a great rock club with a generous balcony for short fans (shout out to Rachel!) and The xx, warming up for a studio session that would later become 2017’s I See You, played a great set of deep cuts and hits, including “Intro” which provoked a goofy “oh yay” in absolute earnest from yours truly.
Then we went back to campus and saw Nelly play a show for the university students gathered in the grove. “Hot In Here”, “Country Grammar”, and friggin’ “Shake Ya Tailfeathers”. Good shit.

1. Panda Bear – The Fillmore – San Francisco, California – May 22, 2014

The nice thing about Animal Collective is they let their fans record shows, and the nice thing about Animal Collective fans is that they share their recordings. So, during the long year plus roll out of Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper there was a lot of material to listen to, including, blissfully, the show I got to see.

1. Death Cab for Cutie – LC Pavilion – Columbus, Ohio – September 19, 2015

In August 2015 I moved to Michigan. In July 2015 Rachel moved back to Ohio. It’s a tale as old as time, and kind of solid content for a DCFC song. Imagine the odds that Death Cab would play in Columbus during my first visit back to Ohio after moving to Detroit to start teaching college writing. Laid out on a blanket on the sloping green hill of the LC with my boo – bliss.

1. The Formation World Tour featuring Beyonce – Soldier’s Field – Chicago, Illinois – May 27, 2016

Traveling with your s/o is a weird bag when you guys live apart, but an opportunity to go on a trip together – that is, somewhere neither of us lived, and to see Beyonce no less – was too good to pass up. I had to end class a few minutes early the morning tickets went on sale so I could queue up online to grab them and hurray I did!
The drive to Chicago was soundtracked by Chance the Rapper’s fairly recent release Coloring Book (which I wrote a rapturous review of here), the sun was shining, the road was long, and the trip was sublime. You really get to know someone you love while driving their car to a place the two of you have never been. Once in the city, we walked around the Loop, ate at Al’s Italian Beef, and – finally – went to see Beyonce.
Our seats were way up in the upper deck and a very sudden thunderstorm rolled in from over Lake Michigan. This, in an uncovered upper deck NFL stadium, was one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever experienced. It was like the sinking of the Titanic, I assume: people were screaming, everything was cold and wet, people were abandoning ship for drier places. Eventually the squall passed and the show could resume, and when The Queen came out, a different kind of storm shook the stadium.

1. The Gories w/ Pretty Ghouls & Mexican Knives – El Club – Detroit, Michigan – August 5, 2016

I’ve gone to many, many, many most excellent shows with my Uncle Bill, but raucous hometown Gories show in Southwest Detroit has to take the cake. If you’re a Midwesterner, you already know how hot August can get, and if you’re a Detroit garage rock fan, you already know how hot the always oversold El Club can get too. If you’re a Gories fan, well, you just know.

1. Fleet Foxes w/ Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion – Columbia, Maryland – July 29, 2017

Animal Collective has an album that you may have heard of called Merriweather Post Pavilion that took them from beloved blog band to massive paradigm shift in indie music. In 2012 they disappointed critics with Centipede Hz and in 2016 they disappointed fans with Painting With but if, like me, you were still along for the ride, the 2010s were some peak Animal Collective – lots of touring, two solid albums several more than solid Eps, and lots, lots, lots of outstanding bootlegs.
On the Painting With tour the band, with assist from drummer Jeremy Hyman, was in top form, transforming cult-classic hits (“Alvin Row”, “Loch Raven”) into three-times-a-week mid-set staples and those shows had the same cool, chaotic energy of the album. But none of those shows topped the one-ff pavilion set with co-headliners Fleet Foxes.
Sitting on the lawn with my buddies Neil & Hannah in the murky Maryland summer haze, ping-ponging between the frantic tunes of AnCo and the perfection-at-dusk vibes of Fleet Foxes, long returned from their early 2010s hiatus, this was an unlikely show that I’m unlikely to ever forget. Plus, got a great D.C. trip out of it!

1. JAY Z – Little Caesars Arena – Detroit, Michigan – November 18, 2017

Dubbed (by me) as the JAY Z Apology World Tour, the now turned dad rapper was in top form, blistering through hit after hit (after hit, after hit -  c’mon the guy’s discography is mostly untouchable), creating space for well received songs from the recently released 4:44 album. Hov ended the show with a touching tribute to the recently deceased Chester Bennington of Linkin Park that swapped out the (overplayed) show-closer “Forever Young” with a stunning rendition of the “Numb/Encore” mash up. Arena shows are often stale, distant, and lame – but when your stage design centers a performer as dynamic and talented as JAY Z, it doesn’t matter how big the room around it is – you get pulled into the center’s massive orbit.

1. Vampire Weekend – Echo Beach – Toronto, Ontario, Canada – June 5, 2019

Dubbed (by Rachel) as our Maple Moon, we took our honeymoon up to the great white north of Canada’s finest city for some poutine, baseball, the CN tower, and of course, a concert. Coincidently, the weekend I picked for our trip across the border coincided with the opening date of Vampire Weekend’s Father of the Bride Tour (what luck!).
I gotta give some props to Echo Beach – it’s a large outdoor venue that is not quite pavilion sized but bigger than your average city amphitheater, and the general admission area is, as the venue suggests, sand. Anakin Skywalker would hate it, but I gotta tell you, it was pretty rad. It was a little cool out, and it was on and off drizzling, but being on a little jutty off into Lake Erie, on a sand beach, watching Vampire Weekend’s summertime vibes and new jam band line up was a real treat, and a great way to kick off a honeymoon.
Wait, no Jack White, no Coheed, no Gaslight? Come on, you guys know I had to make a special categories for those cats.
Coheed & Cambria:

1. Headliners – Louisville, Kentucky – No World for Tomorrow Tour – August 17, 2009

The first Coheed show I saw was at the Starland Ballroom in New Jersey just one year earlier. My Coheed Guru, Bryan, his girlfriend Brittany, and his mom packed into a car in Cleveland and made the drive the day of the show. Seeing Coheed play at the storied venue where, years earlier they had recorded a live DVD I’d studied leading up to the show was immense. But, with all the excitement, the long drive, the venue sold past capacity, I can’t say it was the best Coheed show I saw. It was memorable though.
The trip down to Louisville, however, was much more reasonable, the venue, I’m pleased to say was unpleasantly full, as opposed to unbearably, and by the time Coheed came out on stage to rip through cuts from No World for Tomorrow and treat my virgin ears to live “The Final Cut” as an encore, I wasn’t an unseasoned and overwhelmed rookie, I was initiated, I was among the Children of the Fence.

1. LC Pavilion – Columbus, Ohio – Summer Tour w/ Taking Back Sunday – July 23, 2018

Thinking about early ‘Heed shows (of the 10 I’ve seen, hah) is what makes later-era Coheed tours so much fun. Take, for example, two summer tours ago: while the more recent Unheavenly Skye tour – featuring friggin’ Mastodon! – was a better setlist, friggin’ “Gravity’s Union”?!, better production, etc, etc. What made the 2018 summer tour so special wasn’t the show itself, but who I got to be in the crowd with: Bryan, my Coheed-guru, his now-wife Brittany, and the guy I got to be a Coheed-guru too, Matt Kitten! Nothing beats a chummy bear hug around your buddies while screaming about manning jackhammers and the like!
The Gaslight Anthem:

1. Bernie’s Distillery – Columbus, Ohio – The 59 Sound Tour – September 13, 2008

I pained over this show or the 2008 59 Sound Reunion tour of 2018 (Riviera Theater, Chicago) but really, that show wouldn’t have meant a hill of beans to me if not for this show, my very own shot heard ‘round the world. The Bernie’s basement show was probably one of the first 5 concerts I’d seen in my entire life, and it was the first I saw alone. Not by choice (although I’ve come to really dig seeing shows solo now) mind you. This was orientation weekend at Otterbein College, and I somehow managed to convince my new (and fortunately fast friend) roommate who had a car to drive me downtown. Well, not quite downtown. To Capital University – Otterbein’s rival – where an acquaintance from high school went, and more importantly, who had his own acquaintance and a car that were also going to this Gaslight Anthem show.
So Matt drops me off at Cap and heads back to Otterbein. I call Trevor. Trevor does not answer. I spend probably an hour walking around Cap’s disgusting, awful, piece of shit campus trying to get a hold of him. Finally he gets at me, we meet, and we play Guitar Hero with some of his bunds. Another hour passes. I ask when we’re going to leave for the show, Trevor responds, “Oh yeah I’m not going to that, neither is my buddy, sorry.” So I’m stuck at Cap with no ride to this show and damnit, I’m going.
So I start walking from Bexley to downtown Columbus, which isn’t a short walk, let alone in the mid-September heat. I hail a cab, not the last time I’ll do so tonight. I get to the venue on time because I’d left Otterbein for the show like 6 hours early and find my way down into the basement of Bernie’s Distillery. I make my way to the front. Cool, cool.
I’ll admit freely I was more of a ’59 Sound Gaslight Anthem than a Sink or Swim Gaslight Anthem fan, so if I’d done my homework, Polar Bear Club’s opening set would have made much, much more sense to me, but as it didn’t, I was utterly unprepared for the chaos their brief (and in retrospect amazing) set brought, including a kick in the back of the head from a crowd surfer. At least when Gaslight Anthem came on I’d managed to keep my piece up by the front of the stage and held my own during their set.
It was transformative. I don’t even know how to describe it, so I won’t try. If there’s a young band that you love and when touring happens again go see them in a bar basement, but watch for the back of your head.

1. The Fillmore Detroit – Detroit, Michigan – Co-headlining w/ The Hold Steady – July 15, 2010

Obviously the kick didn’t turn me off because in the years to follow I’d see Gaslight a bunch of times, but none as fun as the double-bill so good we had to do a there-and-back roundtrip from Columbus to Detroit to see The Hold Steady, another favorite of my buddies share the legendary Fillmore stage in Detroit.
The highlight of the show was Brian Fallon joining The Hold Steady for Stay Positive hit “You Can’t Make Him Love You” or maybe the highlight of the show was not dying after foolishly accepting a beer from a stranger in the crowd. Talk about midwestern hospitality! It was hot in there, I wasn’t thinking straight!

1. Stage AE – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – Get Hurt Tour – July 19, 2015

I think about this show all the time. Of all my buddies, my dude Jon was the most into Gaslight Anthem and we got to see them together a bunch. When I was living in California and Handwritten came out we did a live Skype listening party together. Much pizza was eaten and much beer was drank between Jon and I and this band, so it made sense that we’d cap off the U.S. dates of what would be their last tour before announcing a hiatus with the short drive from Youngstown to Pittsburgh. Rachel tagged along and I remember we played cards while waiting in line outside the venue.
On the bill was Murder By Death (pretty good) and Conor Oberst’s revived Desaparecidos (extremely good). Once on stage though, Gaslight Anthem were in complete control, running a setlist cater made of Jon & my favorite songs. At one point Brian Fallon said something about being hungry and one song later a fan was passing a hot pretzel up to him. As if they knew, their final song was a cover of The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” and if I close my eyes really tightly I can remember what the lights flashing looked like, what the beads of sweat on my forehead felt like, and exactly how the band sounded the last time (I thought) I would see them live. A near-perfect moment.
 
Jack White & Jack White Adjacent:

1. The Dead Weather – The Fillmore Detroit – Detroit, Michigan – July 31, 2010

The Dead Weather are a near perfect band, their first two albums Horehound & Sea of Cowards routinely rank higher than most solo Jack White and The White Stripes. There’s just this unbeatable raw crunchiness to it; they harness both sonically and in their personalities the ugliest of sleazy leather jacket rock music (its too bad 2015’s Dodge & Burn couldn’t capture the energy but I suspect not touring those songs didn’t help, but that’s another story for another time).
Uncle Bill & I got to see The Dead Weather once on each tour, once in Columbus, and this show in Detroit. This particular date was smack dab in the middle of a week long visit to Michigan, so I was already in an extremely good mood even prior to getting to see this show. And this show did not disappoint – although the guy near us who fired up a joint during the band’s walk-out song and then quickly ushered out before Jack White could so much as smash a cymbal might have been disappointed.

1. The Raconteurs - MI Fest, line up included: Jeff Daniels, The Romantics, Sheryl Crow & Ronnie Dunn – Michigan International Speedway – September 17, 2011

Speaking of shows in Michigan and shows with Uncle Bill can you believe that I saw a single day music festival that featured the aforementioned line up? I can hardly believe it myself. Any day that begins with a zaatar and cheese manueesh and ends with Jack White’s ball-busting “Blue Veins” guitar solo is not one you’re going to forget. And if you sprinkle “Soaking Up the Sun” and some Ronnie Dunn in there, well, here we are.

1. Jack White – Bill Graham Civic Auditorium – San Francisco, California – August 22, 2014

Jack’s San Francisco stint was a double-header, and I of course went to both nights. Each set was dynamic and explosive, the master tearing through songs from all of his projects, centered around songs from Lazaretto and playing to every inch of the large Auditorium. During night one (the 22nd) Jack twisted his ankle during a particularly explosive rendition of “Ball & Biscuit” and later that night, a minor earthquake struck the city. I’m not sure if that was echoes from the night prior, or the night to come, but it definitely had something to do with Jack White’s guitar.

1. Jack White – Third Man Records Cass Corridor – Detroit, Michigan – April 18, 2018

Jack White’s record store in Detroit is very small. Conversely, Jack White’s music is very large. Right around noon on a weekday I was sitting at my office computer in my dorky pleated slacks and a button up shirt when I saw that Jack White was announcing a free (free!) in-store performance that night. First two hundred people get in. Right around 1:15 on that very same weekday I am standing outside Third Man Records Cass Corridor. Right around 8:00 on that very same weekday, Jack White and his Boarding House Reach touring band are standing 20 feet in front of me on the raised stage of a room I’ve been in so many times before. It is electric and the closest I have ever been to an earthbound god working his miracles.
It is unforgettable, and even if it weren’t, this show crossed off a bucket list, record collector’s wildest vinyl dream: being at a show committed to wax.

1. Jack White & Brendan Benson – Third Man Records Cass Corridor – Detroit, Michigan – July 9. 2019

This was another pop up show, albeit announced a few days ahead of time. For $3 you could see Jack White and fellow Raconteur Brendan Benson play their songs acoustic. For $6 you could also take your Uncle.
We ate thai food, we wandered into the store, we took spots just outside the camera frame for the eventually released dvd of the performance! and we were treated to about 40 minutes of tunes, tales, laughs, and what felt like an intimate hangout between two buddies – set to strum on two beautiful acoustic guitars.