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Blogging & drinking coffee with a consolation sigh.Come for the Twister jokes, stay for the 30 item lists I started writing the year I turned ... you guessed it!, or the too-good-for P*********s.com pop culture writing, or occasional dispatches from the writing classroom. It'll be a laugh and a half, at least.
Note: this blog got merged from one tdp.1, and then again from tdp.2, so the "November" batch are posts from several years of writing.
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Chronological & then highly arbitrary list of ten albums that were my "favorite" this year12/22/2021 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. Winter (Jan - April)
Spring/Summer
Fall/Winter
The Ole Top Ten Albums of the Year10. White Blood Cells (20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) – The White Stripes Believe me, dear reader, I almost didn't want to include this. It feels cheap to include a reissue (of a reissue) but between the beautiful red/white pinwheel vinyl repress, and the deluxe digital edition, Third Man really did roll out the red (and white) carpet for The White Stripes' breakthrough album's 20th birthday. Some digital re-master-hooey notwithstanding, the real treat in this release is a previously vinyl/memory-only live show captured at the now-burned-down Gold Dollar in Detroit where the band played White Blood Cells top to bottom. I'm obligated to resent when the vinyl-only shit crosses over but god damn if that set didn't sound good in my car speakers. And we drove back and forth to Ohio a lot in June, and this was the damn near only thing I listened to. I went long for Pop Matters, while I was still writing for those dorks, on the reissue here. 9. Little Oblivions – Julien Baker I forgot this album came out this year. It isn't Julien Baker's fault, this is an essential album. A bit of a magic trick that the album is so mellow but also not boring (like some of the other prestige albums of Q1). The thing is, my year didn't end very quietly, but it did end in a way that is almost unrecognizable to the way it began. In "Crying Wolf," Baker sings: "Cuz I'm not crying wolf / I'm out here looking for them" is as bad-ass a thesis statement to the beginning of a difficult important year as any lyric written for 2021. I'm glad I got to dig it out of the memory-hole. 8. I Became Birds – Home is Where I became a fan of emo music this year, and it is because of the extremely online frontwoman Brandon Macdonald (credited on the album as playing harmonica, "singing saw" and "tantrum") and her championing of the so-called fifth wave emo movement. I think it started a private joke between her, her friends, and their peers, but it became a crucial living document (and sometimes toxic) discourse charting bands desperate to make ends meet without the income of touring and merchandise sales hampered by the supply chain crisis. Through Macdonald's shitposting, listmaking, and cheerleading, me and a bunch of other tasteless dorks got exposed to a zillion cool bands (including ily, check them out, they're not my thing but you can just tell how sick they are) via her twitter feed. Hey I should talk about I Became Birds. Its sub-twenty minutes and it is a full-blown album not an EP thank you very much. Just listen to it, who cares what I think (oh, you care what I think? well, it has the best parts of Neutral Milk Hotel with a modern thirst for raucous punk music through the shimmer of midwestern emo twinkle guitar). Brandon's voice is fucking incredible. Just check it out. 7. Sour – Olivia Rodrigo This was one of the only pieces of new music I could listen to during the height of dissertation mania, which I guess is kind of a diss on the album. What it lacks in substance (for me, a married, old dude) it makes up for in tunes. And damn does Olivia Rodrigo have tunes: this album is wall-to-wall balladry reminiscent of the best lady crooners of the 90s and/or the best lady pop-punkers of the 00s. I'm not above being seduced by nostalgia, and neither should you. That song "driver's license" isn't stuck in your head because it sucks, ya know? Bonus points, Rachel & I really loved the Disney show she's in where the drama from a few of those songs were supposedly born. I'm not too old to stan a queen! (am I saying that right?). All kidding aside, Sour has some serious chops as a fun debut album. Rodrigo backs it up in her live performance: I remember taking a break from the thrill-a-minute Keywords in Writing Studies research to watch the "Sour Prom" which was an elaborate, melodramatic, live production of a few album cuts. Extremely memorable stuff. I think, to quote a grizzled old fart from Star Wars, that "we'll watch her career with great interest." 6. Open Door Policy – The Hold Steady New Hold Steady, meh. New Hold Steady featuring Franz Nicolay, the heart and keyboard of the band? Yuuup. New Hold Steady featuring Franz Nicolay with all the dust of a Hold Steady w/o Franz Nicolay shaken off thus ushering in that full-band comfort that makes Boys & Girls or Stay Positive classics? ALL DAY BABY. Drip fed singles leading up to the release, Open Door Policy is -ultimately - a low stakes studio album for a band that lives and dies by their live show but man does it kick some understated ass. "Spices" is The Hold Steady's most confident heavy metal song. "Heavy Covenant" is a classic THS organ-piano-guitar liturgy. Its just a good ass record that's extremely easy to enjoy. 5. Gami Gang – Origami Angel If two-piece featuring drummer and guitar/vocalist didn't get me, the dorky Star Wars sampling "Mobius Chicken Strip" (Anakin, "This is where the fun begins" - indeed young Skywalker) did, and even at a glance on the tracklist you can tell Origami Angel has a rock and roll sense of humor: consider songs like "Neutrogena Spektor" or "Tom Holland Oates" and you right away know the only serious thing about this two are their musical chops and the riffs. Oh, the riffs. If you loved Weezer's "Blue" album and wished there subsequent albums sounded like that look no further than "Gami Gang." Last year these nerds shut down a Minecraft server where they were "playing" a "live" show. Their albums name-check old Pokemon games, but, again, it all comes back to those riffs. As a part of fifth-wave emo these guys hit the sunnier, poppier side of the genre and I anybody who gives this album a spin is all the better for it. 4. SKA DREAM – Jeff Rosenstock Speaking of fun, remember all that noise about the "ska revival" of 2021? I had mine in 2020 when I tracked down a vinyl copy of Keasby Nights. I mention 2020 to point out that beloved guitar guy Jeff Rosenstock dropped the album NO DREAM, which was a little too hot for my taste. On April 20th (hah) this year Rosenstock dropped this out of the blue: this being an all-ska revision of the album. Friends, it OWNS. The punk jams translate extremely well to ska: nasty little guitar solos recreated with brass instruments, song titles (again with the jokes) making little ska puns. Example: "Scram" becomes "SKrAm" or "NO TIME TO SKANK" takes the place of "NO TIME". Shit like that is sugar to me, and the album is sweet enough on its own. I think Rosenstock says it best: As with most things ska in my life, what started out as a fun goof with friends eventually morphed into “Hey, what if we tried to make it good though?” All of us have a pretty deep history playing and touring the country in punk/ska bands. We all understand the stigma that comes along with ska, we’ve all dealt with the pitfalls of it, and we’ve all kept on truckin’ regardless. If you are one of those people who loves music as long as it isn’t ska, that’s cool, we see you. This record isn’t for you and you don’t have to listen to it. Byeeee. 3. In Spite Of – for your health Here's the deal, I'm famously "not a fan of screamo" though a few years ago I famously wasn't a fan of emo at all until that Hanif Abdurraqib essay about My Chemical Romance prompted a good faith listen and boom. The benefit of obsessively consuming music writing is you learn a lot about a lot you wouldn't know anything about, and if - like me - you were a guy who didn't want anything to do with bands who use voice as weapon and instrument, you would have missed for your health. Not going to dwell on it, but this was a shitty year for a lot of folks in a lot of ways. For me, it was six months of back-and-forth car trouble and the third time the dealership hosed me for a grand I wanted to listen to something ugly and mean. enter FYH. Through the year I'd been getting a little more into hardcore by way of more melodic emo bands, and FYH definitely has elements of that, but Hayden Rodriguez's vocals skew a lot more towards screamo than melodies. When their debut album came out in February to much acclaim, I couldn't dig it. By the fall though, I was ready for it. If you can get past the challenge of their intense vocals and dire lyrics, "In Spite Of" has lots of softer moments to help propel the more aggressive ones. Plus, they're a Columbus band! Can't be mad about that - although album closer "this city will crumble and lots of people will die" maybe hits a tad different knowing most of the people I love live in Columbus lol. Was cathartic to sing (scream) along with Hayden, and what's really special about FYH and maybe emo/punk/hardcore in general is that listening in headphones or the car or where ever really does get close to capturing the feeling of seeing a band live in ways that other genres can't quite get. Coincidently my favorite new band of 2020 (Touche Amore) played a gig with these guys at one of my all-time favorite venues, Cleveland's The Grog Shop, a few weeks ago and it was weird to both so badly want to go and know how out of place and old I'd feel at that show. I've been kicked in the head at a show before (accident!) and at 18 it was easy to bounce back. Not sure I have those kinds of batteries anymore though. Luckily, in my little v-neck sweatshirt in my shitty (but working!) car, I can *almost* approximate the experience, which is to say I'm not aging out of anything that I like. 2. GLOW ON - Turnstile Maybe I'm tired because the year's almost over, or because I'm about a thousand words long on this, or what, but I think this album says more itself than anybody can say about it (which is saying something because GLOW ON is appropriately enjoying extreme critical praise. I'll say this: someone shit in their mosh pit at a show on this tour and the show did not immediately end. Could a lousy band pull that off?? If pressed to comment further I would say Turnstile is running a masterclass in the power of album openers. "Mystery"'s shimmering synths set a tone of curiosity that is near-instantly resolved with a gnarly riff, drums, and then about 30 seconds into the song it all comes together. The highs of that song are matched in "BLACKOUT"'s most pure execution of 'hardcore' which, like almost every album on this list, is a genre that's flirted with by the album not fully committed to. Of these ten artists (White Stripes notwithstanding) these guys I wish I could see the most. I mean, look. 1. Draw Down the Moon - Foxing In the title track, Foxing front man Conor Murphy yells (I mean really yells the thing) "I want to show you I / I can keep it all together." I know these dudes didn't write this album for me, a person who hadn't even heard of Foxing before "Go Down Together" dropped way in advance of the album's release, but it felt like they had. It was a tough year, luckily not in the sense that a lot of bad shit happened, but in the sense that I was faced with many challenges. We had to find a house before the lease ended at our shithole apartment in the worst housing market Metro Detroit has ever seen, or so they say. Because of austerity (and bloodsucking leeches wasting resources) I lost my bonus year of Ph.D. funding and meant I had to defend my dissertation in August, but I also had to write and defend a prospectus in February. I was on the job market - and successfully, I might add, at least for a one-year appointment, which meant I really had to finish in August. We found a house. We got pregnant. We moved. We had our boy early. He was fine. We are fine. Everything is fine. But the road to fine was long. So when Conor Murphy says "I want to show I / I can keep it all together," what he is saying is what I am thinking about my onw life. Not so heavy, right?
Early August, with an offer pending on the house I'm listening to the Draw Down the Moon vinyl in right now, my diss defense closely looming and fatherhood not so far behind it, my buddies from college had the idea to go on a little trip. We stayed in the beautiful cabin (above) in Hocking Hills in Southern Ohio. We drank, we hiked, we had a fire, there was a hot tub, we grilled and ate and drank coffee and laughed. We laughed so goddamn much that weekend. Not to be on some Transcendentalism tip but it was so nice to breathe real air. Like in "Beacons" I "was floating there for so long / king of nothing, but the space I take up / I felt it all at once / I felt it all at once." The woods, their vastness, the rolling hills, all of it. My anxieties hundreds of miles away in SE Michigan. "Becaons of that shame, left behind / for the first time I felt alive / I thought I couldn't move my feet / But I'm running with you now." Bliss. Why talk about my long weekend? you may wonder. That long weekend coincided with the release of Draw Down the Moon and wouldn't you know it I drew the short straw for cooking breakfast for the crew on the most hung over morning. I started with a pot of coffee and a sit in the hot tub while dipping my toe into the new Foxing album I'd been reading so much buzz about. The opening track, "737," is a ballad about anxiety and burnout that paints a rubric for the sonics of the album and the songs themselves; the forth verse cleverly nods to the album's other 9 songs). I was hooked. I stepped back inside, popped in headphones, and listened to the album on repeat while making bacon, eggs, biscuits, gravy, sausage, and of course more coffee. What's most striking about the album are how nakedly desperate the lyrics are. In "737" Murphy insists "I can't do this alone" and he sings that like a dozen times while the song winds down. In "Go Down Together" (above) he sings "You said we'll go down there together / you and I / side by side / and if you should fall, I'll follow behind." Yes, I think to myself while stirring gravy, finally, married dude-core. It occurs to me that my wife and our dog are a hundred miles away and how much that sucks. A few disco-groove songs later, in "Bialystok" Murphy somehow captures my stream of conscious ruminations at 7am on top of a mountain, "I feel so homesick everywhere I go without you / I feel so homesick everywhere I go / I'm homesick everywhere I go." Look man, if you're trying to have a house for your very-much-soon-to-be-real kid and you're a ways away from your s/o this idea is punishing. Luckily (and also not luckily - the trip was one of the highlights of my year, shouts out to the boys!) I got to go home eventually. Also luckily, the album is also extremely fun to listen to. And luckily for me, we closed the gap on those hundreds of miles, we closed on that house, and our baby boy is here and healthy so I don't have anything to be homesick about because at the end of the year we're all here and okay and together.
Here's the deal: independent of any weird personal narrative Draw Down the Moon sometimes dips into for me, the songs are there. They're just great, infectious, genre-bending tunes. They rule so hard. They're married dudecore, but they're also emo, and also electronic, and indie, and who knows what other genre/hypen core they'll come up with next. When the album closer, "Speak With the Dead" comes to a finish, there's such a quiet atmosphere. It matches perfectly with the pre-crescendo half of "737." It invites you to flip the record over and start again, which, seeing as how the baby and dog are still napping, I think I will do right this very second.
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