Best Music of 2016!

December 30, 2016 in Arts & Culture, Uncategorized

What a year, what a year of music. There were drone attacks, midnight surprise drops, the 1990s, earthquakes, tsunamis, low-flying panic attacks. Although I have to say, and this may be apparent by the fact that it's going up on December 30, this year has been among the least prepared I’ve felt going into a best of music list. There was a lot of music I liked a ton for sure, but there was also a lot out there I feel like I didn’t get to. Maybe a sign of busyness, or the slow-motion trainwreck that the year was. I felt more distracted from art in musical form than in other years. (I swear I'm going to get back to my podcast)

Best Music of 2015

December 16, 2015 in Arts & Culture

I love year end lists. Love reading them, love writing them. Something about listing music in particular captures the spirit of the year in a bottle. So here's mine. I don’t have many thematic insights this year, except the fact that in some years my favorite artists let me down and this was not one of those years. I think Calexico, Protomartyr, and Sleater-Kinney of all bands, put out records at the top of their body of work. And some surprises from bands like Jamie XX and Grimes, who I was only a little into before but blew me away this year. And of course, all of the runners up, mostly because I just haven't had a chance to listen enough—Titus Andronicus, Beach Slang, Eskimeaux, a Mount Eerie record I somehow completely missed. So without further ado.

Best Music of 2014

January 04, 2015 in Arts & Culture

I was kind of down on 2013 in general when I did a roundup last year, but I have to say that 2014 is the best year for music I can remember, since maybe 2007. Which makes me think maybe there’s some kind of math thing that creates a surge of great music every seven years, although more likely it means I have some kind of brain disorder. But the striking thing about 2014 is how deep the bench was. There were some standouts, but the list of great music that I liked was really long, and consistent. And there was so much I just never got to. I have a long list of music to catch up on and I’m finding all kinds of great stuff buried in others people's lists.

Best Music of 2013

December 22, 2013 in Arts & Culture, Blog

When I look back at my 2012 list, and how great that year in music was, it’s probably not surprising that 2013 seemed to be a year of disappointments. That’s not to say it was a year of bad music. But while making this list, I found myself remembering music I really liked and looking it up only to find out it was from 2012. Or even worse, scrolling down a list of music releases and coming across records I completely forgot about. That phenomenon is the main reason I say it was a year of disappointments, because those records I had completely forgotten about, in many cases, were from artists that I really like, if not love. Kanye, Fuck Buttons, Daft Punk, Nick Cave, Boards of Canada, Mount Kimbie, James Blake, My Bloody Valentine for god’s sake, and on and on. They weren’t bad records, exactly. I just sort of forgot about them. They never dug in. (Okay, some of them were bad records)

The upside is that, all those records were bumped out of my listening attention by a lot of totally out of the blue stuff, which may say something about my tastes shuffling about, or about the ongoing splintering of musical genre and variety. In any event, only 4 of my the 15 favorite records of 2013 were by musicians I had ever listened to before this year. That’s pretty cool. And before I completely write off my standby favorite artists, there were a few that delivered well beyond my wildest hopes.

Best Music of 2012

December 26, 2012 in Arts & Culture, Blog, Writing

This year I made a Top 15 List instead of a Top 10 list, a decision I stand by because of the sheer volume of great music this year. Not only that, the Top 5 was crowded by the same big guns across so many people's year end lists. As a result, the 6-15 for most people are a lot more interesting than the top five. For example, it's impossible to ignore Frank Ocean, but it would also be a shame for me to not mention Neneh Cherry and The Thing. So 15 it is. It was a really great year in music for me, best I can remember since 2007 and 2001 before that. And there are so many that I had to leave off that I’m considering making a second wild card list, because there were about a dozen amazing records that weren’t favorites but were just weird or interesting or thought-provoking in ways the music listed here is not. Dan Deacon, Dirty Projectors, Converge, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Death Grips, Miguel, on and on. But here are my favorites.

Mr. Chair's Best Albums of 2010!

January 05, 2011 in Arts & Culture, Blog, Writing

Originally published on Mrchair I read this post by John Roderick of The Long Winters for Seattle Weekly, and it made me rethink end of year list-making. I highly recommend the read, and he makes some fine points, especially that we don't experience music in the way list-making would suggest or demand. That said, I think non-list-makers will never truly understand list-makers, and vice versa. We list-makers are well-aware and (usually) in command of what a list is: a framework, a guide, a tool for mapping and exploring. That, and we really have no control over whether we make them or not. So that in mind, here's my favorite music from 2010.