Welcome to the new year! I’ll be taking a break from blogging for the next couple of weeks simply because I can. See you on the 14th!
It’s a new dawn
It’s a new day
It’s a new life
For me
And I’m feeling good
Fly-by: Feeling Good
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Tag Archives: personal
Embracing the Hourglass: The Singles 2024
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: October
As the year winds to a close, I’ve realized that I’m getting a bit closer to the levels of music immersion I’d been missing for a while. After several years of what I tend to describe as ‘surface listening’ — liking a lot of new stuff but not really letting it resonate all that deeply, thus not establishing that wonderful feeling of letting the music speak to you — I’ve started to relearn how to listen and feel that resonance again. Repeated listens to certain albums. Slowing down on the constant influx of new music every Friday. Allowing myself to connect with the sounds that truly excite me. And most of all, making the time to return to earlier music so it doesn’t flit off into the ether to be forgotten.
It’s all really kind of complicated, my relationship with music. Perhaps I should think about this a bit more and do a blog series about it.
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Godspeed You! Black Emperor, ‘No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead’, released 4 October. This influential post-rock band continues to excite its fans with its unique sounds: sometimes adventurous, sometimes droning, sometimes quiet, sometimes ear-splitting.
The Smile, Cutouts, released 4 October. Thom Yorke’s side project surprised us with a second all-new album, this one just as odd and imaginative as January’s Wall of Eyes.
Coldplay, Moon Music, released 4 October. This band continues to follow its path of alternating between glossy pop albums and meandering experimental ones, and this one feels like a bit of each. It’s definitely got the quieter tones similar to 2019’s Everyday Life but also the poppier moments of 2021’s Music of the Spheres. This got a lot of repeat play here!
Public Service Broadcasting, The Last Flight, released 4 October. This is actually NOT the first concept album about Amelia Earhart this year (Laurie Anderson surprised us with her first album in fourteen years with August’s Amelia). PSB’s continuing fascination with flight works well here, focusing on its early history.
John Lennon, Mind Games – Meditation Mixes, released 9 October. John’s son Sean curated this two-hour ambient experiment as part of the multi-format remaster/reissue of John’s 1973 album, and it works surprisingly well. It takes the title song we all know and turns it into ten tracks that feel very much like a Global Communication project. It’s extremely relaxing, not to mention a perfect writing session soundtrack!
RÜFÜS DU SOL, Inhale / Exhale, released 11 October. This Australian alternative dance trio sounds very similar to the alt-electro scene that gave us bands like Bob Moses. It’s a record that could easily fit in at a dance club yet also work perfectly on indie radio like KEXP. This is exactly the kind of music I love listening to while working on big projects like Theadia and MU4.
Gut Health, Stiletto, released 11 October. Fast and twitchy, this band definitely wears its 70s post-punk/No-Wave influences on its sleeve, and they’ve put out a super fun and exciting debut album well worth checking out.
Kelly Lee Owens, Dreamstate, released 18 October. Speaking of dance beats, this Welsh singer and former bassist for The History of Apple Pie (one of my favorite finds of 2013!) stays out in the periphery of her genre by doing similar work to Rufus Du Sol and Bob Moses — beat-heavy yet extremely melodic and full of emotion and creativity. One of my favorite albums of the year.
Japandroids, Fate & Alcohol, released 18 October. Their first new studio album in seven years, it is also, alas, their final album as they chose to break up after its release. Still, it’s a hell of a great way to go, going out on a high note and dropping yet another super fun noise fest of a record.
Phantogram, Memory of a Day, released 18 October. This band continues to fascinate with its electronic-alternative hybrid sound. This one sounds similar to their earlier work, yet that’s not a bad thing.
L’Arc~en~Ciel, “You Gotta Run” single, released 19 October. Their first new single in three years, it was recorded as the opening theme for the Beyblade X anime series but works just as well as a standalone single, featuring their signature heavy rock sound.
Bastille, “&” (Ampersand), released 25 October. This was a bit of a strange album, considering they’re more well-known for more radio-friendly tracks like their biggest hit, “Pompeii”. [For instance, the opener “Intros & Narrators” shifts recording speed within the first minute, causing the listener to wonder if their copy is defective.] It’s a quiet and contemplative record and definitely not chart-friendly, and yet I think it’s one of their best yet. Highly recommended.
The Clockworks, “Blah Blah Blah” single, released 25 October. This band continues to be one of my top favorites of the last five years, and they haven’t let me down yet. Like other rock bands like IDLES, they evoke that classic post-punk feeling of discomfort and agitation yet reel you in with incredible songwriting.
311, Full Bloom, released 25 October. I’ve been a fan of this band since my post-college days, and it’s great to see that they’re still going strong and still funky as hell. It’s a super fun album to listen to.
Ben Folds, Sleigher, released 25 October. You never quite know what Folds will be up to next, and yet every surprising release tends to evoke a ‘well, it doesn’t surprise me that he did something this odd’. And this time out he’s released a lovely and fun holiday album of both standards and originals.
Underworld, Strawberry Hotel, released 25 October. I was pleasantly surprised by how great this album is, as I’ve always been a fan of the band and yet never sat through a full record of theirs without needing to take a break from all the heavy beats and mumbly lyrics. There’s something about this album that just struck me as full of heart and emotion and stayed with me for weeks. I highly recommend it.
Pixies, The Night the Zombies Came, released 25 October. I’ll admit this one feels more like a Frank Black solo album than a Pixies album, and I think it’s that they’ve finally started to move away from their old angular punk sound that had given them so much success in the past. I’d say it does remind me a bit of 1990’s Bossanova, which focused more on surfy melodies than the noisefest of their other early works.
Mixtape/Playlist, Songs from the Eden Cycle Vol 10, created 28 October. Wow, I’m already on ten volumes here? Granted, I only restarted the series in 2018 so it’s even more impressive that I got six done in six years during the years I haven’t been working consistently on the next Mendaihu Universe book! Heh.
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We’ll wrap this up on Thursday the 26th with November and December’s tunage in order to fit in my best-of lists on the 31st! See you soon!
2024 Year in Review: September
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!
Coming up: end of year review!
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!
The season’s upon us…
WELP. Our store has started playing holiday music as of yesterday. It was only a matter of time, really. They usually start it mid-November, mixing the regular playlist with just a slight dusting of Christmas music, but once Thanksgiving has come and gone, it’s holiday music 24/7.
I don’t mind, really…as a matter of fact, I quite enjoy the holiday music!
Coming up on year’s end…
I never got around to creating an end of year mixtape for 2023 — or a best-of list, come to think of it — and to be honest, I had good reason for it. While it was a good year for the most part, there were other personal things going on that took precedence, and it just fell by the wayside. I just didn’t have the spoons for it. It is what it is, though. It’s not the end of the world.
Now that we’re a month and a half away from the end of 2024, I’m pretty sure I’ll have something to go in the last week of December. I caught up on mixtape-making this year by reviving the Re:Defined series that I’d created back in the early 00s for similar reasons: changes in music tastes, changes in personal life, changes in outlook.
And there’s definitely been a lot of good stuff out there this year. I don’t always get to listen to it as frequently as I’d like (and I’d like to change that habit in the new year), but on the other hand there were quite a few albums I’ve been returning to on a consistent basis. Songs that get stuck in my head for days at a time.
We’ll see where this all leads in the coming weeks!
Do you hear that thunder?
You will not catch me staring at the sun
Not sucking on a dum dum
Not turning round to run
No Hallelujahs and no kingdom comes
So you will not catch me staring at the sun
Do you hear that thunder?
That’s the sound of strength in numbers
Fee fee fi fi fo fo fum
I smell the blood of a million sons
A million daughters from a hundred thousand guns
Not taught by our teachers
On our curriculum
Do you hear that thunder?
That’s the sound of strength in numbers
I am I
Unify (hey)
Not a single thing has ever been mended
By you standing there and saying you’re offended
Go ahead, tell them what I’ve intended
I’ll say what I mean, do what I love
And fucking send it
Do you hear that thunder?
That’s the sound of strength in numbers
There’s nothing brave and nothing useful
You scrawling your aggro shit on the walls of the cubicle
Saying my race and class ain’t suitable
So I raise my pink fist and say black is beautiful
Do you hear that thunder?
That’s the sound of strength in numbers
I am I
Unify
I am I
Unify, unify, unify
Do you hear that thunder?
Fly-by: for obvious reasons
I’m avoiding the internet for most of today as I’d rather not get entangled in all the doomscrolling and worst case scenarios and…well, everything else. I’m cautiously optimistic, but I know better than to spend the entire day on an anxiety high.
We’ll know the outcome soon enough. We can only hope for the best.
Favorite Albums: Pretty Hate Machine
Kinda like a cloud I was up way up in the sky
And I was feeling some feelings you wouldn’t believe
Sometimes I don’t believe them myself
And I decided I was never coming down
Just then a tiny little dot caught my eye
It was just about too small to see
But I watched it way too long
It was pulling me down
I knew where Trent Reznor was going with these lyrics, but my interpretation in the autumn of 1989 when I first heard it was personal: it was a parallel to the past two years of my life, when I’d finally found my own close circle of friends, only to have them leave upon graduation. See, back then there were two things I had to deal with as a teenager: one, the lack of any kind of social media or easy (and inexpensive) way to remain in contact with them…and two, undiagnosed ADHD that had me hyperfocusing on all the wrong things. “Down In It” encapsulated what I felt at the time: having lost what had been a really great thing followed by the triple-punch of maintaining a long-distance relationship, the inability to find my place at college, and my inability to properly focus on schoolwork. Most of that first year in college was spent in a slow but constant spiral.
I mean, I was also drawn to the band’s unique sound, a mix between the grooving EBM beats of Front 242, the heavy anger of Ministry’s distorted industrial metal, the sterile synthetics of mid-80s Depeche Mode, the clinical experimentation of Severed Heads, the atmospherics of 4AD, and the goth doom of Skinny Puppy. [Reznor admits this song was definitely a riff on their single “Dig It” from 1986.] It was an album that bridged the sounds and lyrics of 80s and 90s electronic music, taking the listener towards a kind of darkness they might not be prepared for. It was the perfect soundtrack to what was going on in my head at the time.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of the second single and album opener “Head Like a Hole” — I felt it didn’t quite capture the tense desperation of “Down In It” — but it certainly worked as a big fuck you to my roommate, who I should not have been roommates with. But the second track, “Terrible Lie”…
…that was an even bigger and more violent fuck you to the world in general. I was not a happy person then, obviously.
Side-closer “Something I Can Never Have” was part of that. I’d been put through so many emotional wringers over the last several months and saddled with so many stressful situations I wasn’t mentally or emotionally prepared for that this song was the closest to how I felt at the time: exhausted, lost, and numb. I knew I had to deal with these spirals, not to mention having to figure out workarounds that would help me academically, but I wasn’t entirely sure if I had the strength to keep it up. I kept feeling like I was heading in a direction I didn’t want to go in.
Just a fading fucking reminder of who I used to be.
I’ve said plenty of times that I used to listen to my copy of this on my Walkman on train rides home for the weekend during those first few college years. Friday nights on the Leominster-Fitchburg line, having escaped the stress of school and looking forward to a few all-too-quick hours with my girlfriend T. A day or so to recharge before I headed back into Boston on Sunday afternoon, ready for another go. Pretty Hate Machine was a reminder of where I was at that point in time, a way of prepping myself for the inevitable facing of another day in a situation I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in.
Which is why I loved that “Kinda I Want To” opened side two. It was a complete change of direction: you know what? Fuck it. Let’s do this. Let’s see where this all goes, good or bad. As much as I thought I needed emotional and mental stability at the time, I also knew I needed to BREAK THE CYCLE.
Nothing quite like the feel of something new…
“The Only Time” was part of that as well. After the chaos of the track (and third single) “Sin” and the pain of “That’s What I Get”, we’re finally at the point where I want to say enough is fucking ENOUGH already. In my head I had to break so many cycles: my Catholic upbringing, my small-town mindset, my pleasing others often to the detriment of my own happiness. I had to cut ties somehow. Or at least ride it all out until I could escape.
Ending the album with “Ringfinger” may not have helped matters, because to me it was a reminder that change could not and would not happen overnight, and not without my needing to take the necessary steps first. Some of those steps would be immediate, others would take a few more years. But I had to make that move. Emotionally exhausted or not, there was no other direction I could move at that point.
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This album popped into my Threads feed the other day, as it had celebrated its 35th anniversary on Sunday. “Down In It” had also popped up on KEXP the morning I’d had to drive A down to SFO for one of her business trips, and it got me thinking about just how close I’d gotten to this album back in 1989 and into 1990. My cassette copy of the album had been played so often that most of the lettering had worn off it. It got a major amount of play throughout the years (except for a few where The Downward Spiral took its place in the mid-90s) and resurfaced again during the Belfry years. I still equate it to that time in my life where I felt like I was on a precipice. Decades have passed and I’ve figured out mental workarounds and achieved emotional stability. I never thought of that time as “just being a fucked-up kid”, to be honest, because I was trying not to be. I just had a lot of growing up to do and had to do it with little to no guidance, and I had to do it without help or influence, one way or another.
I’ve remained a Nine Inch Nails fan, though I don’t think I’ve ever resonated so deeply with an album as I did with Pretty Hate Machine. It’s an album that came out at a specific point in time, provided a life soundtrack, and kept me balanced in its own unique way.
Walk In Silence 