This month saw quite a few familiar faces returning with both highly anticipated and mildly anticipated albums alike. Some of the ones that fell more into the latter category I just haven’t had much time to dig into despite being Colin favorites, since they came out toward the end of the month (like Wilco’s Cruel Country or Craig Finn’s A Legacy of Rentals). Also, as much as I always look forward to a new Sharon Van Etten album, for whatever reason, her new We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong hasn’t quite been hitting with me. Maybe this is because much like I found with 2014’s excellent Are We There, her music is just a little hard to embrace during the sunnier parts of the year, even if this summer has already manifested just how much we’ve been going about this all wrong. Continue reading →

April wasn’t quite as hot of a month music-wise as the other two I’ve covered so far this year. Which is perfectly ok since March 25 saw the release of so many noteworthy albums that I’ll have plenty to talk about here. In addtion Destroyer’s last album (which I covered last month), the first three albums I’ll be covering actually came out on that release date and served as some of my most-listened-to albums throughout April. Continue reading →

This month was another strong one as far as albums go, so I guess I’ll once again talk about some of my favorites. I’ll also give a shout-out to albums that I liked, but I just didn’t get around to listening to enough to make sense of how much I liked them. Those include: Wild Loneliness by Superchunk, Squeeze by SASAMI, and Running with the Hurricane by Camp Cope. Meanwhile, How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars by The Weather Station is a nice little companion piece to last year’s fantastic Ignorance, but feels a little too low-stakes for it to really stand out on its own. Continue reading →

Here’s the thing. I still like writing about music, but it’s been hard the past few years to figure out the best way to write about music. Full-fledged reviews often feel both a little too precious and like I’ve missed my window since I’m not a professional music critic and don’t get to listen to albums before their release dates. Also, waiting until the halfway point or end of the year often feels like too long of a wait between the time I first found my sweet spot of listening to a new album and actually getting around to writing about it. So maybe I’ll try out giving my thoughts on albums I liked from the past month I’ve lived through. Although, it’s possible I just feel compelled to write about some of the music from February 2022 because it’s been absolutely packed with albums I’ve been excited about after 2021 as a whole fell a little flat music-wise. So let’s see how this goes… Continue reading →