2024 Music Regurgitated: Manning Fireworks

MJ Lenderman – Manning Fireworks

Well, we’ve almost made it through another stupid year and it’s time to look back at the pop culture that got us through it all. As for writing about music, I definitely didn’t do that a ton this year, but hey, that’s what these short year-end reviews are for – catching up a bit before we head into posting our Top 10s. I’ll try to fit a few of these reviews in the next couple weeks, but as always, the hustle and bustle of the holidays and the end of the year may prevent me from writing as many of them as I’d like. Anyways, I haven’t written about new music since the summer, so what better place to start than an album that brought some strong late summer vibes, but through its sturdy songwriting has stuck with me into these colder months. Continue reading →

Every Beach Boys Album Ranked

Today is the last day of Summer! So in honor (or memoriam) I give you my official Beach Boys Album Ranking. But first! A quick word from yours truly…

One of my favorite musical projects over the past two years has been diving deep into band discographies. Have I spent hours listening to albums better left forgotten? Absolutely. Is there anything to learn from enduring Van Halen III? You’d be surprised.

If it’s a band you love, experiencing their highs—and their lows—brings you closer to them. You note how they respond, album by album, to success and failure. You see them retool or double down on their sound. You feel the impact of lineup changes, shifts in creative direction, and evolving instrumentation and production. It’s more than just hearing a band evolve; it’s hearing the music industry evolve.

So how had I not listened to all of The Beach Boys until this past summer? They’re one of my all-time favorite bands. Hell, I once fought through a sea of drunk boomers at a winery just to see Brian Wilson reunite with the band.

For one, the band has 29 albums. And (spoiler alert) they peaked early. Sure, there were solid albums in the early ’70s and a good song or two later on, but the Beach Boys never had that great “comeback” album. No great albums post-1971 at least in my opinion. Still, there’s a lot to appreciate in their 50+ year journey.

Where do we begin? How about a tier list? Remember when those were popular for a hot minute? Plus, if you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, you can just glance at the pic below and peace out.

Note: I did not include the 2011 SMiLE Sessions release as it’s not an official Beach Boys album. It’s good though!

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Born To Bruce

I can’t remember the last time we did a concert review on Mildly Pleased. However, I wrote a bunch of words about seeing Bruce Springsteen at Citizen’s Bank Park in Philadelphia on August 21, in the midst of Criterion Month. Since I felt like publishing them somewhere, here are those words…

Bruce Springsteen is an artist that I’ve loved since probably my sophomore year of high school. A few years prior, I first became aware of him watching early ’00s VH1 specials that chronicled his Born In The U.S.A. era and how it at that time tapped into a certain type of ‘80s nostalgia. What these first impressions of Bruce didn’t convey was the amount of artistry, passion, and fervor for rock and roll mythology that were inherent in his records that came before Born In The U.S.A.

But then I remember listening to every track on Born To Run for the first time in sequential order on Limewire, because despite my boomer-leaning musical tastes at the time, I was still at heart a millennial. Born To Run is one of those few albums that aims to sound like a masterpiece and against all odds, succeeds. It started me on my Bruce fandom journey that led me to Darkness On The Edge of Town, The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, Nebraska, and on and on. In fact, as has been chronicled on this blog, I’ve listened to every single Bruce Springsteen album, which is not a habit I have for most artists who keep recording into middle age. Continue reading →

Colin’s Favorite Albums of 2024 (So Far), Pt. 2

Now let’s take a look at some of the more recent albums that transitioned us from Winter to Spring to Summer. As you may notice, a lot of these albums are a bit more high profile or ones I had already been anticipating, but well, those are just the albums you end up listening to the week (or month) of their release. Hopefully, there will be a few more low-key albums out there from this first half of the year that I’m able to catch up with as the year progress. And who knows, maybe I’ll end up writing about them at year’s end.

For the first three albums, I don’t need to go too in-depth with them, since I already praised them on episodes of The Pick. But they’re albums so nice, they’re worth talking about twice. Continue reading →

Colin’s Favorite Albums of 2024 (So Far), Pt. 1

For the first part of this year, writing about music got away from me.

I’m not exactly sure why, but the easiest answer is probably just the general decline in us writing consistent reviews of anything on this blog. Additionally, my general mood about online music writing also hasn’t been helped by the announcement that Pitchfork, the one critical voice that was always dependable, was being folded into GQ, not to mention the other online pop culture sites that have been gutted the past few years.

But really, the more optimistic reason for why I haven’t been posting music reviews on here is that there’s been a fairly overwhelming amount of good music to listen to this year. So much so that every time I’ve found a new favorite album of the moment, a new one gets released the next week. And even when there hasn’t always been a new album out there to mesmerize me, there have also been plenty of high-profile pop albums this year that despite their varying quality, at the very least felt like necessary listening. Perhaps this doesn’t all excuse my laziness, but either way, there have been a lot of albums worth diving into, and it’s made it hard to know where to start. Well, let’s start here. Continue reading →

John’s Top Ten Albums of 2023

I once read a survey that said on average, most people stop looking for new music at the age of 30.5. I’m older than that so the fact that I find any new bands is a good feeling, but if I ever reach an age where I do stop looking, I’m okay with that.

2023 was the first year I didn’t stress about “discovering” new music. I am no longer concerned with trying to “out-cool” anyone by slotting “hip” new artists into my top ten. I check Pitchfork sometimes. I listen to KEXP when I can. Occasionally, I find cool new stuff on my Spotify “Discover Weekly” and occasionally, I don’t.

I’ve been spending a lot more time digging into artists from the past I’ve never given much time to. Just today, I finished listening to Cat Stevens’ last album he did before leaving music for 28 years. Did I really need to listen to 11 Cat Stevens’ albums instead of seeking out more 2023 albums? Probably not, but it made me happy, and at the end of the day, that’s why we do it, don’t we? So here is my stress-free list of 2023 albums I somehow listened to.

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Sean’s Top 10 Albums of 2023

There’s no denying that 2023 was the year of Taylor Swift. Her tour set all sorts of records, including here in Seattle, where she caused record-breaking seismic activity; she saved the NFL just by showing up (debatable if this is a good thing); then her concert film revitalized post-Barbenheimer cinema; and of course she was the person of the year. This was, without a doubt, peak Taylor Swift (arguably as big a peak as anyone has ever had) and while you can feel another backlash coming on (and also people just naturally starting to look for someone new to worship) as a relative newcomer, this has been a lot of fun. That said: despite releasing two albums and being the artist I listened to the most, Taylor Swift will not be appearing on my top 10 this year. And the very simple reason for that is that the majority of Swiftie-ing I did was a playlist of the Eras Tour setlist, most of which did not come out in 2023. To make up for that, I’ll give you some Taylor opinions after the break.

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