Category Archives: favorite tracks

2024 Year in Review: February

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While February may not have been as exciting or mind-blowing as January, it did contain its own stellar releases that I often returned to over the course of the year. I was still kind of getting my head back on straight around this time, spending most of my mental focus on reworking Theadia into a much better novel and prepping Queen Ophelia’s War for eventual release.

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The Last Dinner Party, Prelude to Ecstasy, released 2 February. I’d heard many critics giving this one a very positive review, and having only heard the teaser single “Nothing Matters” (on KEXP, natch), I was pleasantly surprised by this record. I was kind of expecting one of those MTV-ish alternapop bands (and this single is very much in that style) but there’s so much more going on that I found myself intrigued.

J Mascis, What Do We Do Now, 2 February. He’s definitely channeling his early 90s Dinosaur Jr sound here, the lighter and more radio-friendly stuff that made them so popular in the first place, but that’s what makes this album so fun! Regarding the above video, I admit I’m not a big fan of AI per se, but I do appreciate the few artists who have been using it to create freakishly weird and possibly drug-influenced images like this, and somehow it makes sense to have J singing over it!

Brittany Howard, What Now, released 9 February. The Alabama Shakes singer’s latest solo record is full of blues and funk dialed up to 11 this time out, and it’s a great listen. Yet another record I got into via KEXP, of course.

IDLES, TANGK, released 16 February. I’ve been a fan of this band for quite a while now, and it’s all due to their full embrace of loud and relentless punk rock in the old school sense. They’re not about the speed, however, but the power behind their songs. Even with a ridiculously fun and light-hearted track like the single “Dancer”, they reel you in and take you for a wild ride.

Geographer, A Mirror Brightly, released 23 February. I’ve been embracing a lot more local groups over the last few years, including this quirky synthpop one-man band. We got to see them a few years ago at Outside Lands and really enjoyed them. His songs are mostly quiet and contemplative yet still full of danceable grooves.

Whitelands, Night-Bound Eyes Are Blind to the Day, released 23 February. I’ve also been listening to a lot of shoegaze pop lately as well (no big surprise there), and this band definitely has that drenched-in-reverb sound I love so much. As expected, this is another great album to listen to while writing.

The Dream Academy, Religion, Revolution and Railways: The Complete Recordings, released 23 February. The first of several reissues this year that captured my attention. If you loved “Life in a Northern Town” as much as I have, this collection is definitely worth checking out. It features not just their three albums but several b-sides and rarities as well. Highly recommended.

Curve, Unreadable Communication: Anxious Recordings 1991-1993, released 23 February. Recently someone on Threads asked about trying out different shoegaze bands, and I suggested they sample this band. They lean more towards the My Bloody Valentine style of wall-of-guitar sound than the dreamlike reverb of Slowdive, but they remain one of my favorite bands of the early 90s. This is an excellent collection of their first two albums, the first EPs, and several remixes and b-sides. Highly recommend this one as well.

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More to come with March releases!

2024 Year in Review: January

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And so we approach the end of the year, and it’s time once again to take a look at some of my favorite albums and singles! As always, the playlist is all over the place: old favorites, new discoveries, dreamlike grooves and dense walls of sound. KEXP was once again the impetus for my finding and downloading a lot of these albums.

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SPRINTS, Letter to Self, released 5 January. “Up and Comer” got a lot of airplay on KEXP at the beginning of the year, enough that I just had to see what the rest of the album was about, and I was not let down. It’s post-punk in the classic sense, full of restrained twitchiness without going off the rails with messy abandon, which can sometimes be the downside to classic punk rock.

Nailah Hunter, Lovegaze, released 12 January. Hunter defies multiple genres in her music; it’s not quite indie rock, not quite new age, not quite David Lynch-style creepy jazz, but an otherworldly mix of it all. You’re never quite sure where the songs are going to go, yet they still transport you into an alternate reality of calm contemplation and unsettling displacement.

The Fauns, How Lost, released 19 January. This is one of the first albums of the year that struck a chord with me and stayed in my playlist throughout most of it. Partly due to the unexpected yet lovely cover of Freur’s synthpop classic “Doot Doot” but mostly because I’ve been leaning very heavily on the shoegaze these last couple of years. And yet they’re also steeped in that snythpop groove as well, a mix that works perfectly and lands right my wheelhouse. Album closer “Spacewreck” is one of those dreamy epic ballads that hits me right in the feels. This one got a lot of play while I worked on Theadia.

Sleater-Kinney, Little Rope, released 19 January. This band’s evolution has been a fascinating one, veering from riot-grrl punk to noise pop to jangle and swerving to moody contemplation. This record appealed to me because of its lighter touch yet still refusing to let up on the tension.

Green Day, Saviors, released 19 January. The sad thing about commercial alternative stations like Live 105 here in San Francisco is that they’ll premier the new song by this band, and yet a month later it’ll disappear only to have Dookie-era singles remaining on their playlist. And this is a local band!! While this may not have hit everyone’s buttons, it’s a good example of a band that refuses to go quietly and does so by remaining strong and doing what it does best.

The Umbrellas, Fairweather Friend, released 26 January. One of my favorite uber-local bands (they’re here in the Richmond District, as I recall), this jangle-pop quartet takes inspiration directly from classic indie bands like Beat Happening (complete with a lead singer with a deep and sonorous voice) and writes super fun and catchy tunes that are loved both by fans and critics alike.

Ty Segall, Three Bells, released 26 January. Segall has always been a bit of a weirdo (and a prolific one at that) with a sound that’s not quite Flaming Lips and not quite Pere Ubu yet somewhere in between. And yet he’s quite reserved and contemplative on this album, revealing yet another level of his style that you can’t ignore.

The Smile, Wall of Eyes, released 26 January. Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood (and Tom Skinner) have been keeping busy with this side project of theirs, releasing not one but two full albums this past year. The unsettling “Bending Hectic” had been released as a teaser single at the end of 2023, and the ensuing album was just as strange and compelling.

TORRES, What an enormous room, released 26 January. She’s been around for over a decade now, but it’s only recently that I finally got into her music, first with 2021’s Thirstier (which got a lot of play on KEXP). This newest follow-up feels more cohesive and demanding than that previous album, especially with its hooky and in-your-face single “Collect”. This album also got quite a lot of play in Spare Oom during my writing sessions, and it’s one of my favorites of the year.

Mixtape/Playlist, Re:Defined 2401, created 30 January. I actually started making this one in the latter half of 2023 as a Walk in Silence mix, yet I couldn’t quite figure out why it wasn’t entirely gelling for me. After the new year I realized the issue was that I was constricting myself, trying to force a mix that wasn’t appealing. A few tracks got dropped, a handful thrown in, and a renaming made it work! I’d used the Re:Defined moniker in the early 00s as a way to give these mixes more breathing room with several kinds of styles and sounds. I’m glad I did, because these ended up getting a lot of play!

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Coming up: February tunage!

Coming up: end of year review!

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I’ll admit I never got around to doing an end of year review for 2023 for varying reasons — mainly a major PC issue and some personal stuff going on — and when I finally had the time to focus, it was already late January and I felt it was better to just move on. Embrace the new year and see where it took me.

This past year has been one of dusting out the cobwebs, raising the windows and letting fresh air in, so to speak. I’ve spoken about the various personal choices and journeys over the last few years, making peace with some things, moving on, and looking forward. The resultant clarity has been much needed and welcomed.

So on that note, I’ll be revisiting some of this year’s releases over the next several weeks here at Walk in Silence. Some of these albums were merely entertainment, but some resonated deeply enough to become heavy rotation favorites. Which albums and singles will we see? Stay tuned!

New Mixtape — Re:Defined 2404

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Making the new Re:Defined mixtapes have definitely been an interesting experience, as I’ve given myself a reason to work not just with tracks that are getting a decent amount of play on KEXP but deep cuts that catch my attention when I’m listening to the albums at other times. I think I’ve finally hit a groove with this mix, as there’s a certain vibe that I hadn’t reached in quite some time. Have fun and give it a listen!

Track listing:

SIDE ONE
1. Hinds, “Boom Boom Back” (feat. Beck)
2. Mavis Staples, “Worthy”
3. Orcas, “Under the Milky Way” (a lovely cover!)
4. Cassandra Jenkins, “Delphinium Blue”
5. Liam Gallagher & John Squire, “Just Another Rainbow”
6. DAIISTAR, “Tracemaker”
7. The Softies, “23rd Birthday”
8. Jane Weaver, “Love in Constant Spectacle”
9. GIFT, “Going in Circles”
10. Bastille, “Emily & Her Penthouse in the Sky”
11. Ride, “I Came to See the Wreck”

SIDE TWO
1. Orville Peck & Beck, “Death Valley High”
2. deary, “Selene”
3. BADBADNOTGOOD, “Last Laugh”
4. GIFT, “Later”
5. Quivers, “Apparition”
6. Yannis & the Yaw with Tony Allen, “Rain Can’t Reach Us”
7. Wand, “Mistletoe”
8. Glass Animals, “Wonderful Nothing”
9. The Softies, “I Said What I Said”
10. beabadoobee, “Take a Bite”
11. Iress, “Mercy”

Favorite songs: Isolation

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Every now and again I think about this EP, and how it’s affected me over the years. It’s Mark Pritchard of Global Communication and Kirsty Hawkshaw (formerly of Opus III, you know her from two covers: Jane’s “It’s a Fine Day” King Crimson’s “I Talk to the Wind“). I first discovered them on a quirky seasonal compilation called Invocation — the same album that introduced me to Jocelyn Pook. I listened to that album constantly during the final months of 1997 and into 1998, using it as a soundtrack to my writing at the time.

The song itself (Part 1 lasts a bit over eleven minutes, and Part 2 a bit over eight) is what I imagined as the best example of ambient electronic music: there was melody, but there was also mood and atmosphere. It was like the culmination of everything I loved about 4AD bands like Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance. It also felt widescreen in my mind. Cinematic in its own way, telling a story with its weavings of highs, lows, bursts and quietness. There was something about it that somehow hit me viscerally, and it felt almost like…a spiritual leaving.

I used that feeling some years later when I wrote a pivotal scene in The Balance of Light with the final moments between Denni and Saisshalé.

This track was actually what got me into Global Communication soon after, picking up both their brilliant 76:14 (highly recommended) and their album of Chapterhouse remixes, Pentamerous Metamorphosis, both of which had recently been reissued in the US. Those two albums, along with Invocation, became some of my favorite go-to albums when writing the Bridgetown Trilogy, especially when I needed something deeply atmospheric.

When I think about the pandemic…

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…I often think about this particular song by The Clockworks, which remains one of my top favorite songs of the last five years.

Why does this song remind me of the pandemic? Actually it’s the video.

There’s a day-end drone shot of the Bay Bridge here in San Francisco at around the 2:20 mark (and again at 3:05) that brings up the memory of my thirty-mile commute to and from Concord in the East Bay, and whenever I see it in this video, I wonder if my car is somewhere in that shot, heading westward into the city at the end of yet another hellish day. Even though the band released this track in late 2021, at least a year after I’d quit that particular job, the song perfectly encapsulates what that job had been doing to me over the last decade.

This was also around the time I’d been listening to KEXP almost religiously at this point, already an Amplifier (I still donate to them on a monthly basis!), and this track had gotten some major airplay, and I don’t blame them for putting it on heavy rotation as it’s still a hell of a banger. That station got me through a hell of a lot over the last five or so years.

It’s been over four years since I left that job in March 2020 (and I’m still glad I did), and a few years since the peak of that particular pandemic wave (and I’m still wearing a mask to work and still Covid-free) (knock on wood), so this song definitely emulates a feeling of weariness and uneasiness for me, reminding me that none of us really know what the hell was going on at the time, or how long it would last.

TFW a new band you like does a cover of your favorite song

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Ooh, this is lovely! This was a teaser single dropped a few months previously by the band Orcas before they released their new album How to Color a Thousand Mistakes this past week. [This is also their first album in over ten years!] They’ve got that dreamlike echo-heavy electro sound similar to Washed Out and Beach House, but lean a little more towards post-rock instead, so doing this Church cover in that style is quite unexpected yet intriguing. I’ve been listening to their new album on Bandcamp lately (and it’s in the cart to be purchased soon), so now I really want to check out what their other albums sound like!

All you do to me is talk talk

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When every choice that I make is yours
Keep telling me what’s right and what’s wrong
Don’t you ever stop to think about me?
I’m not that blind to see that you’ve been cheating on me

Every now and again I think about this song, especially during tense political climates. Sure, it’s a song about a failing relationship, but sometimes you can read lyrics different ways. Sometimes this particular lyric pops into my head whenever I hear conservatives go on about how much they know what I need. Despite never asking ahead of time for my input.

Which is why I’ve stopped listening to that party quite some time ago.

[And as an aside, I absolutely love the piano work on this track. One of my all-time favorites.]