2020 Music Resuscitated: No Dream

Jeff Rosenstock – No Dream

Well, we’re almost through another year, though I don’t think anyone will be sad to see the miserable dumpster fire that was 2020 come to an end later this month. As is typical of most years, I’ll be taking a look at a grab bag of albums that I didn’t get around to reviewing on the blog. While I managed to keep a pretty good handle on reviewing my favorite albums (or at least mentioning them on podcasts or Quarantine Diaries), there were still a few that slipped through the cracks. But most importantly, we need these posts to make sure this year doesn’t feature our lowest post count ever (I got my eyes on you, 2018). 2020 brought us a lot of lows, but let’s try to prevent another one.

Talking about this album may feel a little redundant, since I did talk about Jeff Rosenstock earlier this year in my Top Ten Albums of the ’10s as well as a shout-out to his 2019 live album. However, I never actually talked about the album that he released in May, possibly because I wrote it off a bit at first. Fortunately, 2020 has been a year with plenty of opportunity to give things you didn’t pay too much attention to earlier a second look, because what the hell else did we have to do? So while No Dream initially struck me as a very solid Rosenstock album (if one that didn’t feature any huge steps forward), it has grown on me due to a great mixture of Rosenstock’s ability to be loud and energetic paired with a melodic craft often underseen in punk rock. Continue reading →

Switchin’ Up Positions For A New Year

Ariana Grande – Positions

If there’s one good thing to come out of 2020 (other than the obvious one that happened a couple weeks ago), it’s that there’s been a lot of unexpected album releases. Some of these have been albums that were long in production (Run The Jewels’ RTJ4, Fiona Apple’s Fetch The Bolt Cutters) and some of them have been surprisingly great albums that were recorded on a whim during quarantine (Taylor Swift’s Folklore, Fleet Foxes’ Shore). Either way, the surplus of albums from prominent artists in 2020 clearly seems to be born out of the fact that musicians are stuck at home with nothing better to do than record songs as well as a need to communicate with listeners. Now, I’m not sure that the world needed another Ariana Grande album in 2020 after she put out two of the better pop albums of the 2010s in the last two consecutive years, but it’s still another welcome surprise. Continue reading →

Letters For Two

Bruce Springsteen – Letter To You

It’s hard to say why my first instinct last Thursday night, when the vote counts started to turn in Joe Biden’s favor, was to put on my headphones and go for a walk while listening to Bruce Springsteen. Though I have a few theories. For one, his latest album Letter To You had just been released, so The Boss has been at the forefront of my mind lately. Also, Bruce and Biden are both seasoned veterans of their trades from the tri-state area that have very storied and successful careers, and yet still somehow manage to retain their working-class roots. But most of all, Bruce is just one of those artists that brings me some level of comfort in times of uncertainty. Yet most of his songs, no matter how anthemic, always seem to have a level of overcoming darkness, which has not only been on the edge of town the past 4 years, but has threatened to swallow it up completely. Continue reading →

Greatness Getting Greater?

I know there are more pressing things going on than Rolling Stone’s new edition of the 500 Greatest Albums of All-Time being released last week, while things are also on the verge of getting a whole lot spookier on this blog. Still, I feel compelled to share some thoughts on this new edition of the RS 500 list, since this new list is quite an overhaul of the original one that was published in 2003 (there was also a slight update to the list in 2012). I’m not sure that Rolling Stone necessarily needed to publish an updated version, since it’s already become apparent that contemporary tastes in “great albums” have changed considerably since the 2003 list came out, whether or not there was a list to confirm it. But I’m glad they did, as the new list both preserves what was good about the original 500 while also adding plenty more albums that feel much more applicable to today’s music landscape. Continue reading →

Summer Music Catch-Up: Folklore

Taylor Swift – Folklore

For some reason, the other albums I reviewed this week were pretty easy to write about, despite being admittedly cold takes, though this one feels a little harder to know what to say about. Which is a bit odd considering it happens to be the newest album I’ve reviewed this week. However, a new Taylor Swift album doesn’t play by the same rules as other album releases, especially one that was as complete a surprise (in more ways than one) as Folklore was. So, there have inevitably been all kinds of takes since this album came out three weeks ago — from discussions about Taylor’s indie cred to questionable theories of certain songs’ queer-baiting — but I think the most important one is that this is almost certainly the best example yet of Swift’s talents as a songwriter. Continue reading →

Summer Music Catch-Up: Gaslighter

The Chicks – Gaslighter

Perhaps the most pleasant discovery of doing The People’s Albums — a series I hope to continue sometime soon — was finding that The Dixie Chicks are actually kinda great. They’re not a group that often gets recognized as such, possibly because there still isn’t anything all that cool about the late ’90s explosion of country music into the mainstream. But what set The Dixie Chicks apart is that they remained uniquely true to their bluegrass roots when a lot of their contemporaries were basically making pop-rock with a little bit of twang thrown in. Of course, they were ostracized completely from the country music establishment after their comments about George W. Bush in relation to the Iraq War (back when celebrities could get canceled for not loving the President), so they unsurprisingly embraced pop a little more after this media whirlwind. Now renamed The Chicks, they’ve done a little bit of both — getting a bit away from country music while also retaining the musical touches that have always been at the heart of their sound. Continue reading →

Summer Music Catch-Up: That’s How Rumors Get Started

Margo Price – That’s How Rumors Get Started

Margo Price’s 2017 album, All American Made, was an album I liked quite a bit when it came out, but I never got around to writing about it. This might have just been part of an aversion to writing about genres I’m not as much of an expert on coupled with the fact that Price’s traditionally solid singer-songwriter style isn’t exactly the juiciest style of music to write about. Which, of course, isn’t fair. So before I let another very good Margo Price LP pass us by, let’s take a look at yet another album whose release was affected by the coronavirus. Continue reading →