365 – New Music Daily

Hello again – and look! Things look different. Check out the homepage – hopefully that image won’t stay static as long as I can keep up with things over here – hope you dig it.

It’s been a while! I think about this blog from time to time, click about, and am tempted to write – but often the temptation fades, my eyes have had enough screen, or I don’t have time. Alas – here I am, temptation won, and I do miss the self reflective posts, juvenile reviewing of music, and just having a space to write a bit more creatively than my faculty focused newsletters for work. Anyways. I have a new idea. You can jump to it here, but come on. Read to it. It’s been a while, no?

So yeah, the music? Dude?

Yeah. At least while I’m here, I’ll give you some of my updates music-wise, and hopefully send a recommendation or two out.

Album listening wise, I’m nowhere near my clip – but I still do listen to a decent bit of new albums. My two favorite albums of 2024 so far (that came out this year, and is certainly subject to change) – Wall of Eyes by The Smile, and Blue Lips by Schoolboy Q. The Smile are the latest iteration of Thom Yorke, a man that has grown on me though remains pretentious in my eyes, (and yeah, Radiohead, they’re good) and has some absolutely beautiful tracks that range across genres. Some of those first few acoustic songs are so good!

Blue Lips is the latest from Schoolboy Q, rapper and member of TDE, and is packed to the brim with incredible instrumentals, and his deliveries are so good. I’ve always liked Schoolboy Q (and pretty much everyone in TDE), his album Blankface is (and remains my favorite of his) a super unique album with tons of different sounds and deliveries – something Q missed the mark on with his past album (something he admitted when recently ranking his own albums on twitter). My favorite song off of that – and of Schoolboy Q’s is John Muir – funky, crazy beat and amazing chorus. Blue Lips really misses the mark with some of the features, but overall the album is a really good rap album.

Older “New” Albums

What else is new, musically? I was keeping track of the different albums I’ve listened to, but much like my poop tracker, I couldn’t keep up with it. Through January 25th, I had pooped 19 times. My kicks and trends…

Kick and Trend 1: 70’s rock and other genres around 1971 – I swear this was like a mini golden age of music. Of the stuff I’ve been listening to lately: Innervisions (duh, 1973), Early/good Hall & Oates (Abandoned Lunchonette, 1973), Velvet Underground (various things, late 60’s early 70s), JJ Cale (1972-74), Carole King Tapestry (1971), Paul Simon, Steely Dan, The Stones, it goes on and on!

This style of rock – to me – captures the beginning of so many different subsections of the genre, evolving it (again) from the more classic rock sound, as well as beginning the shift away from an era so dominated by The Beatles. So, so many subsects of rock have come out of this era – and it makes sense – so many people were putting out great, innovative rock music.

Some of my favorite songs from that era at this moment:

• J.J. Cale – Cajun Moon (1974)
• Velvet Underground – Pale Blue Eyes (1968)
• Carole King – I Feel The Earth Move (Duh) (1971)
• Hall & Oates – Had I Known You Better Then (1973)
• Hall & Oates – Sara Smile (1975)
• Steely Dan – Only A Fool Would Say That (1972)
• Stevie Wonder – Jesus Children of America (1973)
• Rolling Stones – Gimme Shelter (1969)

So many more – Rabies Radio has lots of 70’s in it if you’re interested!

Kick and Trend 2: Acoustic guitar based music! This sort of meshes with the other one, as there is a ton of overlap, and maybe it’s the poor, infrequent guitar playing (pretentious? probably.) but acoustic guitar based shit has really been calling my name. This involves the Grateful Dead, Neutral Milk Hotel, Bill Withers, Hall & Oates (they’ve been my #1 lately) and some interspersed random artists.

Kick and Trend 3: The crown jewels of the 2023 mission – Radiohead and The Strokes. I know, I know, Radiohead mentioned again. They have grown on me so much, and have some compositions that are just absolutely amazing. I mentioned the new Thom Yorke album, it’s great, and even diving into their 2016 “Moon Shaped Pool”, their versatility in consistently being able to put out great, but very different, shit is just remarkable. What a band.

What more can I say about Jules and the boys? The Strokes are arguably my favorite band of all time after just lightly knowing them before July 2023. I love them. Here’s a fun one I found of theirs just recently.

Anyways – what’s the point of this?

It’s not just a one off blog post! Though this has taken me a week or so to complete… I have an idea. In line with my love of a certain era mentioned above, I got to thinking – what about a year by year music journey? I am not going to set a goal relating to output (e.g., an album a day) – but I think it might be fun to go through the different years of music.

The logistics are still being worked out – but something like starting in 1965. Listening to A) The three (three? five? ten?) best selling albums of that year B) The three (or more) best reviewed albums of that year (largely going off rateyourmusic and albumoftheyear), and C) Albums from genres that I like. Reflecting. Reviewing. All that.

The major problem with the goal last year – I didn’t get to appreciate the music as much, reviews felt much more tedious. This is certainly going to be a much slower project than the last one, with the reviews going into more depth on the eras of music, the individuals producing them, and largely will be longer form.

The intention of the last goal – taste expansion (achieved, imo). This one will achieve that to an extent, but will aim more to be a personal journey through music history. I’ll include other tidbits too, which I’m sure you’re yearning for.

I am busier and busier at work, so this may well be a very slow process. But I do love this blog, and writing about music is really a passion of mine. Stay tuned, send suggestions, and thanks for reading.