Category Archives: mixtapes

Best of 2025

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This past year kind of felt like a transitional year for me in terms of listening to music. I managed to not obsess over discography completism as much as I had in previous years, for starters. I also dialed back the incessant need to listen to everything, which was also using up all kinds of brainspace and keeping me from actually retaining any of it.

I felt that this was a year of trying out different things instead, so that meant that not every band I liked previously stuck with me this time out. Several albums that got a ton of kudos from bloggers and music sites tended to pass me by. On the other hand, something obscure like Automatic’s Is It Now? or Coral Grief’s Air Between Us connected deeply with me. There were of course the mainstays like Doves and Grandbrothers, whose albums I listen to frequently during writing sessions, that kept me entertained.

None of it was bad, per se. It’s just that I’m in a place where I wanted to change up my tastes and listening habits, that’s all. Perhaps 2026 will be another transitional year in which I find new artists and albums to latch onto, or perhaps something will arrive that will completely blow my mind. Or maybe by chance, it’ll be a year full of stellar releases. We shall see when the time comes!

So without further ado, here’s my list of what I listened to the most, and what stayed with me over the last several months. As always, my favorite album and song of the year are in bold. I’d have created a Spotify playlist for my own best-of-year that sits in my library, but alas said website is on the outs with several friends and music listeners for not properly paying musicians, among other things. Ah well.

Albums
Andy Bell, pinball wanderer
Automatic, Is It Now?
Coral Grief, Air Between Us
Crushed, no scope
Doves, Constellations for the Lonely
GoGo Penguin, Necessary Fictions
Grandbrothers, Elsewhere
Miki Berenyi Trio, Tripla
Motion City Soundtrack, The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World
Packaging, Packaging
Peter Murphy, Silver Shade
Suzzallo, The Quiet Year
The Beatles, Anthology 4
The Hives, The Hives Forever Forever the Hives
The Verve Pipe, Reconciled

Songs
Automatic, “Is It Now?”
The Beatles, “I Am the Walrus [Take 19 – Strings, Bass, Clarinet Overdub]”
Blushing, “So Many”
Bob Moses, “Better Broken”
Bob Mould, “Here We Go Crazy”
Coral Grief, “Starboard”
Doves, “Renegade”
J Mascis, “Breathe”
Packaging, “Running Through the Airport”
Peter Murphy, “Swoon”
Pulp, “Spike Island”
Sparks, “Do Things My Own Way”
SPELLING, “Portrait of My Heart”
The Neighbourhood, “Hula Girl”
The Verve Pipe, “Tattoo”

The Singles 2025 Playlist:

1. Blushing, “So Many”
2. SPELLING, “Portrait of My Heart”
3. The Hives, “Legalize Living”
4. Steve Queralt, “Lonely Town”
5. Doves, “Renegade”
6. Motion City Soundtrack, “She Is Afraid”
7. HighSchool, “Sony Ericsson”
8. Ashes and Diamonds, “On a Rocka”
9. Peroccupations, “Ill at Ease”
10. Automatic, “Is It Now?”
11. Hannah Jadagu, “Doing Now”
12. Lucy Dacus, “Ankles”
13. Flock of Dimes, “Keep Me In the Dark”
14. The Chameleons UK, “Feels Like the End of the World”
15. Snapped Ankles, “Smart World”
16. SPRINTS, “Descartes”
17. Throwing Muses, “Drugstore Drastic”
18. The Charlatans UK, “We Are Love”
19. Hatchie, “Lose It Again”
20. Heartworms, “Extraordinary Wings”
21. Suzzallo, “River”
22. Bob Moses, “Better Broken”
23. JR Richards, “Alive”
24. Peter Murphy, “Swoon”
25. The Beatles, “Free As a Bird [2025 Mix]”
26. Bob Mould, “Here We Go Crazy”
27. Air, “Cemetary Party”
28. Doves, “Cold Dreaming”
29. Nine Inch Nails, “As Alive As You Need Me to Be”
30. J Mascis, “Breathe”
31. Tortoise, “A Title Comes”
32. Pulp, “Spike Island”
33. Florence + the Machine, “Everybody Scream”
34. Packaging, “Running Through the Airport”
35. Sea Lemon, “Stay”
36. The Neighbourhood, “Hula Girl”
37. Cut Copy, “Belong to You”
38. GoGo Penguin, “Fallowfield Loops”
39. Unbelievable Truth, “You’ve Got It”
40. Brandi Carlile, “Returning to Myself”
41. Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke, “Back in the Game”
42. Just Mustard, “We Were Just Here”
43. Dead Pioneers, “My Spirit Animal Ate Your Spirit Animal”
44. Steven Wilson, “Perspective”
45. Dropkick Murphys, “Who’ll Stand with Us?”
46. Mogwai, “God Gets You Back”
47. Andy Bell, “I’m in love…”
48. Paul Meany, “Scenic Route”
49. Garbage, “Chinese Fire Horse”
50. above me, “out of body out of mind”
51. David Byrne & Ghost Train Orchestra, “Everybody Laughs”
52. The The, “Unrequited”
53. The Verve Pipe, “Tattoo”
54. Celeste, “Woman of Faces”
55. The London Suede, “Disintegrate”
56. White Lies, “Nothing On Me”
57. Coral Grief, “Starboard”
58. PLOSIVS, “Death Kicks In”
59. The Reds, Pinks & Purples, “The World Doesn’t Need Another Band”
60. Crushed, “starburn”
61. The Hives, “OCDOD”
62. Grandbrothers, “We Collide”
63. The Beatles, “I Am the Walrus [Take 19 – Strings, Bass, Clarinet Overdub]”
64. HAIM, “Down to Be Wrong”
65. Motion City Soundtrack, “Your Days Are Numbered”
66. OK Go, “Love”
67. Too Much Joy, “Song for a Girl Who Has One”
68. Anna von Hausswolff, “The Iconoclast”
69. Nation of Language, “Inept Apollo”
70. Miki Berenyi Trio, “8th Deadly Sin”
71. Automatic, “Mercury”
72. Depeche Mode, “In the End”
73. Massage, “Daffy Duck”
74. Inhaler, “Open Wide”
75. Franz Ferdinand, “Audacious”
76. Bob Moses, “Waiting on the World”
77. Sparks, “Do Things My Own Way”

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See you next year!

A year without mixtapes

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Alas, I did not have the time, nor the inclination, to make any mixtapes this year. I’m pretty sure I’ll still do my year-end playlist/mix, but other than that, I just never got around to it. But that’s okay! This isn’t the first time I’ve gone through a musical dry spell. Between 2006 and 2011, I only made eight mixes in total — two of them were for someone else, and the last was when I’d decided to resurrect the year-end mix.

The main reason for not making one? Well, I’d hinted at it late last year when I’d wanted to spend more time listening the albums I downloaded rather than focusing on the discography completism spiral I’d fallen into over the last couple of years. I felt too disconnected from the music in my own library and wanted to change that. So over the course of 2025, I gave my favorites some more repeat listens. Got to know them a bit better. Found a few singles and deep cuts that caught my attention. Not to mention revisited a lot of my favorite albums from recent years, with the occasional deep dive into an oldie but goodie. And I replayed a lot of albums during my writing sessions!

The other reason for not making one is because I just hadn’t had time or the ability to listen to them other than at my desk. There’s also the fact that we’d recently moved and

So, will I be making more of said mixtapes in 2026? We shall see. I’m not going to confirm or deny at this point. If I’m in the mood for it, I’ll do it. If I do, I might try revisiting the style of my oldest mixes by allowing older songs, something I haven’t done in ages. [A lot of my most recent non-writing-soundtrack mixes usually stick to newish releases from the last few months.]

Either way, the point isn’t just to make the mixes, but to enjoy the tunes I put on them. And I think I’m finally on the way back to that point.

It’s been a while…

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Shocking revelation: I haven’t made a mixtape since the year-end collection back in December.

To be honest, part of it was due to prepping and packing and moving and unpacking and banking and settling in and everything else that goes along with buying a home while still juggling the Day Job. I put my mixtapes (and in effect, this blog) aside for a little bit while I got my life back in order once more.

I’d been tempted multiple times, but I just didn’t have the time or the inclination. Similar to my putting aside the journaling and the word counting and the whiteboard schedule, I felt it was time to properly step away for a bit to recharge. Aside from the book-centric mixes I’d been creating for my writing, I hadn’t been listening to the ones I’d made over the last couple of years, and that started to annoy me. They’re good mixes, they’re just not getting played, and that’s because I needed the brainspace.

We’ve been living here for at least three months now, and that itch to make mixtapes is returning. Sometimes I think about where and when I’d actually listen to them, considering I can’t really do that at my Day Job, and my commute is a seven-minute, sixteen-block drive. Days off and during writing sessions, then. And it occurs to me — that kind of thinking is exactly what’s turning me away from it instead of towards it. Mixtape listening isn’t about setting aside a specific time to put in that latest volume of Walk in Silence or Untitled or Re:Defined. One of the main reasons I chose to disconnect from mixtape-making was the same reason I’d stopped the whiteboard schedule: I was making myself too regimented, and that was taking all the fun and the spontaneity out of it.

As expected, the time away has given me time to connect (or reconnect) a bit closer to my music library, especially now that I’ve managed to back away from the mad frenzy of discography completism and obsessive listening to KEXP (which I still do, just to a lesser degree). I’m relearning how to just enjoy the music I hear, and I’m glad about that. I’m feeling a lot more connected in the right ways once again.

Interestingly, the outcome of this is that making any mixtapes now feels a bit like when I started making them in earnest back in May-June of 1988. I’d made a ton of mixes before that of course — what I refer to as my ‘radio tapes’ era for obvious reasons — but I hadn’t made any personal sourced-from-records/tapes mixes before, at least none made with any seriousness, up until that point. Those original first mixtapes were not about making seasonal mixes at all — they were about collecting my favorite songs at the time, songs I didn’t have in my collection that I could borrow from others, and most of all, they were mixes I could enjoy at any time.

And I think I’m finally getting to that point once again, for the first time in years.

Goodbye Goodbye Goodbye

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It occurred to me the other day that it’s been twenty years since I’d moved away from my hometown in Massachusetts. For some people that might be just another life event, but for me it was something pretty big. Until that day in March 2005 (the 6th, to be exact) I’d always lived in MA, five years of them in Boston, then spending just shy of ten years back at the family house getting my affairs, finances and creativity in some semblance of order. All of that changed near the end of 2004 when I started going out with A. in a long distance relationship, then turning that into frequent road trips down to New Jersey (a little over two hundred miles one way) to spend the weekend. It was a three hour drive but it was totally worth it.

All of that changed in early 2005 when we finally made the decision for me to move down there with her and her roommates. We both felt it was something I’d needed to do, and a long time in coming. I was ready for it, and had been looking to moving on for quite some time. The plan was to move down to NJ and eventually find a place somewhere near her workplace, but that ended up going in an altogether different direction later that summer.

It was a year of a lot of major life changes for me, so I allowed my writing to fall by the wayside for a bit. To wit: moving out of my old hometown, moving away from family, moving in with said girlfriend, springing the question and eventually marrying said girlfriend shortly after, visiting another country (that was not Canada, and which included acquiring a passport and flying on a commercial airline for the first time), doing office work instead of warehouse or retail for the Day Job, and eventually moving to the west coast where we’ve been ever since.

I made the above mixtape the night before I left, even though I dated it to the day I got in the car and drove away. I listened to it a few times on the way down to Jersey along with the other mixes I’d made around that time. The themes of the mix were moving out, moving on, escaping, feeling free, and looking toward the future. Little did I know just how much my life would change in just a few months, but I wasn’t going to complain.

You burrowed like a summer tick

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I was just thinking earlier yesterday about how some of my music listening habits tend to be on the fleeting side these days, and how that sometimes bothers me as it feels like don’t allow myself to resonate with these songs as I once did.

It’s definitely not that I’m just not into anything new these days, far from it. My obsessive listening to KEXP (both online and its local terrestrial outlets) has me latching onto new bands and songs all the damn time. No, it’s the sheer volume of it all that distracts me from letting it burrow deep and stay in my head for months at a time. My music brain can only work one way or the other, it seems.

During my ongoing review of my Bridgetown Trilogy playlist, I noticed that may just be the case, especially when it comes to the mixtapes I made at the time. Many of the songs on those tapes from nearly a quarter century ago still play crystal clear in my mind. And why is that? Because this was stuff that got a high amount of repeat play.

It wasn’t just during my writing sessions in the Belfry, either. It was also on my commutes to and from work at Yankee Candle — an almost exact thirty-minute drive from driveway to parking lot meaning I could listen to most of side one of a mixtape or a full album on cassette. It was also during my weekend road trips around New England, whether it was my weekly visits to Boston, local bookstores, or just driving around the back roads in central Massachusetts.

Alas, this is something I haven’t really been able to do all that much these days. Mind you, I am certainly not complaining that my current commute is ten minutes/eight blocks on foot (and shorter if I take the car or bus), but that doesn’t leave me time to listen to my mixtapes or albums I want to listen to.

Instead I’ve been trying to retrain myself to latch onto songs that capture my attention and keep them there for a while. I’m essentially relearning how to listen to the music I love so much, and it’s turning into an interesting experience, to be honest. Not everything completely clicks, but a lot of it is starting to burrow in there like I hope it will.

Embracing the Hourglass: The Singles 2024

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This was definitely an interesting year for music! We had several ‘comeback’ albums from musicians who hadn’t had a studio release in over a decade — not just the Cure, but The The, The Softies and The Wolfgang Press — and we also had several excellent anniversary reissues popping up as well.

While my listening habits pretty much remained the same, I was super excited by the news that my favorite station, KEXP, would start broadcasting here in the Bay Area! We’ve desperately needed a good alternative rock station for years (I’m sorry, Live 105, but you are not cutting it even despite recently rising from the ashes), and they’ve always had a super strong fanbase here. So far they’ve been quite successful!

Musically I found myself leaning towards electronic and shoegaze once again, but that’s not to say I was firmly entrenched; the local label Slumberland has been consistently putting out some brilliant jangle pop and lo-fi gems and I’ve become a loyal fan. Still, a lot of non-KEXP listening was focused primarily on moods and vibes this year, mainly for a need of soundtrack music while working on Theadia, my first space opera.

So! Without further ado, here’s my official end-of-year playlist/mixtape for your listening enjoyment!

This one’s a long playlist/mixtape collection of 129 songs so I’ll spare you the list here. So instead, on with my favorite releases of the year! This time I’m merely listing them in alphabetical order as I tended to enjoy all of these equally, with the bolded title being my top favorite of the year. As I’ve mentioned quite often, these were albums that got a lot of play here in Spare Oom, whether on days off or during writing sessions.

ALBUMS
Bastille, “&” (Ampersand)
Bibio, Phantom Brickworks (LP II)
Coldplay, Moon Music
Elbow, AUDIO VERTIGO
Four Tet, Three
GIFT, Illuminator
Hooverphonic, Fake Is the New Dope
Kelly Lee Owens, Dreamstate
La Luz, News of the Universe
Linkin Park, From Zero
Ride, Interplay
The Cure, Songs of a Lost World
The Fauns, How Lost
The Reds, Pinks & Purples, Unwishing Well
The Softies, The Bed I Made
The The, Ensoulment
Torres, What an enormous room
Underworld, Strawberry Hotel
Various Artists, Everyone’s Getting Involved: A Tribute to Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense
Various Artists, Red Hot Org Presents TRAИƧA

SINGLES
Bad Bad Hats, “My Heart Your Heart”
Corridor, “Jump Cut”
deary, “Selene”
DIIV, “Brown Paper Bag”
Elbow, “Things I’ve Been Telling Myself for Years”
English Teacher, “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab”
GIFT, “Later”
Girl and Girl, “Hello”
Kamasi Washington, “Prologue”
Kelly Lee Owens, “Love You Got”
La Luz, “Strange World”
Orcas, “Under the Milky Way”
Orville Peck & Beck, “Death Valley High”
Ride, “I Came to See the Wreck”
RÜFÜS DU SOL, “Music Is Better”
The Cure, “And Nothing Is Forever”
The Fauns, “Doot Doot”
The National, “Heaven”
Torres, “Collect”

REISSUES
American Football, American Football 25th Anniversary Edition
Cocteau Twins & Harold Budd, The Moon and the Melodies
Cranes, Collected Works Vol 1
Garbage, Bleed Like Me Deluxe Edition
George Harrison, Living in the Material World 50th Anniversary
His Name Is Alive, How Ghosts Affect Relationships 1990-1993
Hugo Largo, Huge, Large and Electric: Hugo Largo 1984-1991
Ivy, Long Distance 25th Anniversary Edition
John Lennon, Mind Games: The Ultimate Collection and Mind Games: Meditation Mixes
Kristin Hersh, Hips and Makers 30th Anniversary Edition
New Order, Brotherhood (Definitive)
REM, We Are Hope Despite the Times
Seal, Seal (1994) Deluxe Edition
The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Still Barking (1967-1972)
The Dream Academy, Religion, Revolution and Railways: The Complete Recordings
The Police, Synchronicity Super Deluxe Edition

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So what do we have coming in 2025? Good question. So far I know we have new albums coming from Franz Ferdinand, Ringo Starr, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory, Doves (!!), Manic Street Preachers and Mogwai. Stay tuned!

Hope everyone has a great 2025! See you in the next year!

2024 Year in Review: September

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When we started the year, the last thing I expected was for several of my favorite bands — and ones that influenced me greatly in my teens — to suddenly resurface and release brand spankin’ new albums! These days you’d expect a surprise reunion single, but not a full-on project! Still, these reunions made for a very interesting an highly entertaining year of music.

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The The, Ensoulment, released 6 September. Matt Johnson had been doing soundtracks for the last several years, but after a few one-off singles and a two highly successful comeback tours, he dropped his first rock album since 2000’s NakedSelf to high praise. This new album interestingly reminds me of his first album Burning Blue Soul, focusing more on moods and experimentation.

Hinds, VIVA HINDS, released 6 September. We were able to catch this wonderfully fun band from Madrid at Outside Lands a few years back, and after a long wait they’ve returned with an excellent record full of indie rock gems like “Boom Boom Back” (which features Beck, who seemed to show up all over the place this year!).

Sea Lemon featuring Ben Gibbard, “Crystals” single, released 9 September. This indie band leans heavily in Death Cab for Cutie territory yet with a slight shoegazey twist, so it’s no big surprise that DCFC’s Ben Gibbard shows up on this duet that got a ton of play on KEXP.

Robyn Hitchcock, 1967: Vacations in the Past, released 13 September. This is essentially a tie-in record for his memoir of the same name, a book telling the story of his youth, having just moved to a small who-knows-where town in England and started attending a boys’ school. It’s a year of musical inspiration, personal awakening and coming of age, and this soundtrack of sorts is mostly a cover album of the songs of that era that changed his life.

bloococoon, bloococoon, released 13 September. Every now and again, one of the DJs on KEXP will drop a completely random song that someone suggested from Bandcamp or elsewhere, and more often than not it’s a mindblowing track that sense several listeners towards the site to listen and/or purchase. This noisy shoegaze band was one of my favorite finds this year.

Hugo Largo, Huge, Large and Electric: Hugo Largo 1984-1991, released 13 September. Not too many people remember this band from the college-rock era, but they were a surprisingly creative and influential quartet that may have partially inspired quietcore. REM’s Michael Stipe was a major fan, not only giving them publicity but showing up on their first album as well. This is a two-disc collection featuring both of their albums plus a selection of rarities.

Nilüfer Yanya, My Method Actor, released 13 September. One of my favorite finds of 2022, she’s an indie guitarist who seamlessly blends rock with a bit of hip-hop and trip-hop and ends up with a sound that’s both catchy and quirky. This was a great follow-up record and the single “Like I Say (I runaway)” gets stuck in my head.

Mixtape/Playlist, Re:Defined 2404, created 19 September. This one got a fair bit of play for a good month or two, and I really like how this one flows, even with its occasionally surprising track selection.

The Cure, “Alone” single, released 26 September. If you’ve been a fan of this band for any length of time, you’ll know that Robert Smith will constantly report that the band is either breaking up or finishing up a new album, and then nothing will happen for a good few years. They’ll even hint at completely new tracks during their ongoing tours, though they never quite surface…until now. No one expected a brand spanking new Cure single — their last having surfaced way back in 2008. And it wasn’t just a one-off either…

Linkin Park, “Heavy Is the Crown” single, released 26 September. This band chose to reconvene even after Chester Bennington’s passing back in 2017, with the addition of Dead Sara vocalist Emily Armstrong joining in. The end result is an excellent heavy track very similar to their Meteora-era work, a single written specifically for the 2024 League of Legends Championship. [I don’t play LoL, but I’m a huge fan of their worldbuilding and their consistently brilliant soundtracks and music tie-ins (especially the k-rock quartet K/DA).] It’s great to have them back.

The Wolfgang Press, A 2nd Shape, released 30 September. Now this was a band I did not expect to reunite! They’d broken up way back in 1995 after the great but largely ignored Funky Little Demons album. I found it fascinating that they chose to return not to the groove-oriented rock of their latter years that had given them some success, but even further back to their noisier and experimental early years. They’re not for everyone, but they’re definitely one of my favorites.

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More tunes to come!

2024 Year in Review: June/July

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This is a two-fer as while there were some great records that dropped around this time, there weren’t too many that utterly captured my attention. There were also several reissues that I’ve skipped here (aside from one I mention below).

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Goat Girl, Below the Waste, released 7 June. This indie band kind of reminds me of Caroline Polachek’s former band Chairlift, with its quirky blotchy sound that goes in interesting directions. “Ride Around” got a decent amount of play in Spare Oom at the time.

Angélica Garcia, Gemelo, released 7 June. “Gemini” is yet another earworm for me, having heard it constantly on KEXP during the summer, and the rest of the album is just as catchy and weird. Definitely worth checking out.

The Decemberists, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again, released 14 June. It’s been quite a few years since their last album, and it seems they’ve returned to their original indie sound that’s equal parts folk tale, sea shanty and irresistible pop. “Burial Ground” was a favorite early in the year as a teaser single, and the rest of the album is just as great.

Seal, Seal (1994) Deluxe Edition, released 14 June. This is my favorite of Seal’s albums, and it’s also his most popular one, having several charting hits on it like “Kiss from a Rose” and “Don’t Cry”. I played this a hell of a lot back in that sucktastic year of 1995, but it sounds even better and clearer than ever on this expanded reissue.

Been Stellar, Scream from New York, NY, released 21 June. I still have issues with band names that are essentially bad puns of famous people’s names (see Com Truise, Ringo Deathstarr, Joy Orbison and so on — I just find it lazy) but on the other hand, several of them are sometimes quite good, like this one.

Remi Wolf, Big Ideas, released 12 July. I found myself listening to this one quite a bit over the summer, partly as “Alone in Miami” got significant play on KEXP, but also that it’s a fantastic if slightly leftfield album that goes in interesting directions.

Travis, LA Times, released 12 July. Good to see these Glaswegians are still going strong, still writing excellent and quirky alternapop, and this album is right up there with 12 Memories with its upbeat rock and catchy melodies.

Robin Guthrie, Atlas EP, released 19 July. Well, of course I’m going to be listening to anything new from one of my favorite guitarists! Heh.

Orcas, How to Color a Thousand Mistakes, released 19 July. After hinting a the lovely cover of that Church classic “Under the Milky Way” earlier in the year, this band dropped a wonderful and relaxing album of quiet beauty. This is definitely something I’d have listened to back in the 80s as well.

Mixtape/Playlist, Re:Defined 2403, created 25 July. This is probably my favorite of this year’s Re:Defined mixes. By this time I’d basically created an empty folder and pasted in any songs that captured my attention around that time, and the end result is a very interesting mix that goes all over the place yet flows really well.

Wand, Vertigo, released 26 July. This band reminds me a lot of Shearwater, actually. As I like to say, you can hear the math on this one. Artfully crafted and highly inventive, it’s an excellent listen and one of my favorites during writing sessions.

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Stay tuned for August, which features a few of my year-end favorites!

2024 Year in Review: April

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Looking back on my writing diary, it looks like I’d started the fourth and thankfully final version of my novel Theadia. For this go-round I chose to do what I’d done with A Division of Souls by pretty much starting from scratch again. A lot of the work stayed the same, but I was completely rewriting the first several chapters. Normally I’d just revise once I get to the Revision stage, but this one definitely needed a lot more work than just a dusting and cleaning. As it stands, I’m very close to the final chapters, so while it’s taken me a long time to work on this one, I’d like to think it was worth going at a slow pace to make all the improvements needed.

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Mixtape/Playlist, Theadia 4, created 1 April. The fourth (and possibly final) soundtrack mixtape for my current WIP novel and one of my favorites. The idea behind this series was for it to be a mix of moody and cinematic sounds (like the tracks from Eluvium, The Fauns and Big Wreck) as well as quirky alternative rock (such as Ducks Ltd, Middle Kids and Torres)…basically stuff that the two main characters would listen to while at work! I really like how this one came out.

Garbage, Bleed Like Me Deluxe Edition, released 5 April. I remember this one coming out way back in April of 2005, one of the first albums I’d bought after I’d moved down to New Jersey a month previous. It was seen as a sort of comeback album after 2001’s club-oriented Beautiful Garbage and a return to form similar to their guitar-heavy 1995 debut.

Jane Weaver, Love in Constant Spectacle, released 5 April. Weaver is a singer that crossed my path a few years ago via KEXP but rarely got much play, but this one stuck out for me. She’s very similar to St Vincent in sound, only more contemplative and less abrasive. This one got a lot of play during my writing sessions!

The Black Keys, Ohio Players, released 5 April. Despite their unfortunate tour debacle, this album was highly lauded by critics when it came out. While it sounds like they’re moving away from their noisy indie roots, they’ve returned to their love of blues and heavy rock. It’s definitely an off-kilter album but a very enjoyable one.

Vampire Weekend, Only God Was Above Us, released 5 April. Speaking of off-kilter indie bands, they’ve pretty much decided to slide even further away from their light twee pop and towards more adventurous sounds. This is also a very strange but highly enjoyable album as well.

Bad Bad Hats, Bad Bad Hats, released 12 April. This one showed up on my radar via AllMusic of all places, getting a decent review. It only took the first track on the album (the above “My Heart Your Heart”, one of my favorite songs of the year) to make me fall in love with it! Pretty much in line with female-led bands like Wet Leg, they revel in their quirkiness by writing super catchy pop tunes that get stuck in your head.

Linkin Park, Papercuts, released 12 April. A sort-of greatest hits collection from this band that features several of their best songs as well as a new track (see above), an outtake from their last album with Chester Bennington, One More Light. A great place to start. And yes, this band will show up again on this series soon!

Nia Archives, Silence is Loud, released 12 April. Yet another KEXP find, she’s a singer that defies genre…you’re not sure if she’s r&b, electronic, alternative, or just a mangle of all three. Interestingly enough I sense a Wire vibe in her music, both experimentally and melodically.

English Teacher, This Could Be Texas, released 12 April. Another KEXP find — and they actually name-drop the station on this album! — their track “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab” is both strange and catchy as hell, and well worth picking up. It’s a super fun record, and all the critics seem to love it.

The Reds, Pinks & Purples, Unwishing Well, released 12 April. Yet another album from my favorite super-local band (and not the only one this year!), this one feels lighter and brighter than some of his previous work. “Learning to Love a Band” got stuck in my head that spring!

Pearl Jam, Dark Matter, released 19 April. Proud to say I’ve been a fan since Ten and I haven’t given up on them yet! I love that their last couple of albums really bring them back to their classic hard riff/introspective lyric style. There’s a lot of tension in this one that works really well with my writing sessions!

Orcas, “Under the Milky Way” single, released 19 April. Don’t mind me, just fawning over a quite lovely cover of one of my all-time favorite songs. Their album which they’d drop a few months later is quite wonderful too!

Corridor, Mimi, released 26 April. Another album that popped up on my radar thanks to AllMusic. This is definitely a band I’d have heard on college radio and seen on 120 Minutes back in the late 80s with its post-punk style. “Jump Cut” is one of those songs that gets stuck in my head.

Pet Shop Boys, Nonetheless, released 26 April. A lot of critics and fans see this one as one of their best out of the latter half of their career, and I’m inclined to agree. They’ve chosen to veer away from the dancefloor on this one, and it’s an interesting choice as it reminds us that they wrote brilliant mid-tempo tunes and ballads as well. It’s wild to see that they’re still going strong after all these years, and still writing amazing music.

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More to come in May!

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!