Bonus Notes: February
Freshly Minted
New music weekly :)
Quarter Note Questions
I’d love to hear from you all about the ways you listen to music and what you’re listening to! So beginning this month, I’m asking a monthly question for discussion! Comment your answers below or email me if you’d like.
This month’s question:
What is most important to you in music? The vibe? The lyrics? The virtuosity? The catchiness?
Also, what is the FIRST thing you latch onto with music: lyrics or sound/texture/vibe?
MWE Recap
Every February, Gary Suarez hosts #MWE (Music Writer Exercise) on Twitter. The goal is to listen to an album you’ve never heard every day and write about it on Twitter. I didn’t quite succeed at doing it every day, but here are some of my favorite new (old) discoveries from the month:
February Album Recommendations
If a set of hanging porch chimes were made of finely-tuned guitar strings, it would sound like the fragmented wanderings of Adeline Hotel's gorgeous new album, Good Timing.
Listening to Mogwai is like watching those Oddly Satisfying compilation videos. Everything fits exactly as intended. On their 10th studio album, As the Love Continues, the post-rock veterans carry us up mountain peaks just to stare out in wonder at the beauty around us.
On Carnage, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis don’t tread any new paths. However, when you’ve been creating meaningful music for 40 years, novelty need not be the goal. Instead, they preach the same truths they’ve always held in a new context: In the midst of one of the hardest years in recent history, love still drives through the rain. Hope overcomes evil. Life overcomes death. These ideals aren’t sexy or cutting edge. In the wrong hands, they become cliché. But what Cave and Ellis have crafted with Carnage is a refreshing respite from chaos, a record that sits at the burning edge of dawn and anticipates destruction’s undoing.
Julien Baker is just one of those songwriters who you can trust to put out a top-tier album before ever listen to it. Little Oblivions, her third solo venture, is bleak and beautiful, lush and lonely, saturated in doubt and hard questions without venturing to offer easy answers.
Reading/Viewing Recommendations
I learned a new word, “sprechgesang,” from Jazz Monroe’s fantastic review of Black Country, New Road.
I haven’t read much this month unfortunately, but I did begin Ian Johnston’s 1994 biography, Bad Seed: The Biography of Nick Cave.
Watched the glorious Aretha Franklin concert documentary Amazing Grace yesterday, and can’t recommend it enough. (It’s on Hulu)
I also visited the new National Museum of African American Music in downtown Nashville and had a wonderful time. The museum is informative, interactive, and celebratory. I’ll definitely be getting an annual membership.
Shameless Plugs
I reviewed slowthai’s phenomenal sophomore record, TYRON for Consequence of Sound: “On TYRON, slowthai doesn’t make grand statements or platitudes like a politician. He simply offers his own story of perseverance, hand extended and Mona Lisa smile brimming.”
I also wrote about Iggy Pop, Phil Collins, Dr. Dre, Lauryn Hill, and Beyoncé in a collaboration with Jacob Nierenberg naming 10 Solo Albums That Every Music Fan Should Own.
Thank You For Reading!
