Month: December 2019

The 2010s: Best Of A Decade

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

The 2010s were an odd decade. We endured the end of the world several separate occasions, between various crackpot pastors and the long-speculated Mayan Calendar. We lost a number of legendary performers, including many of the best to ever live (Prince, Bowie, Lemmy, etc). We watched terrorism and fascism rise as the lines between truth and opinion blurred and vanished. Memes rose and fell like empires.

And in the midst of it, an onslaught of incredible music was released. Personally, my record collection grew from under a hundred to over a thousand. My tastes shifted drastically and corrected course throughout the course of the decade.

Reducing those ten years to fifty records feels like a fool’s errand, but here I am.

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2019: A Year In Review

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 2 Comments

As we sit on the cusp of a new year—and a new decade—it’s become customary to look back and quantify all of the music produced into a neat little list of what’s noteworthy.

While these lists are always bound to vary from person to person and between publications, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so much variation as in 2019. This year was an undeniable banner year for music, with excellent release after excellent release piling up relentlessly without ceasing. If you slipped behind, there was no hope of catching up.

As I look back on the year, I keep being surprised by all the stuff I missed—either ubiquitous barn burners like Lizzo or Lana Del Ray’s NFR or artists I love like Solange and Deerhunter. Even among releases I loved and purchased, quantifying all of it into a top ten list proved a much more difficult task than most years.

And so, as much as I stand by this list, I’m fully aware how flawed a ranked top whatever format is for describing just how magnanimous this year’s musical output was.

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Record #644: Blonde Redhead – 23 (2007)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

As much as I try to stay atop notable new releases, it’s inevitable that some will escape my attention for a while.  In this case, “a while” is twelve years, as the first listen I gave to Blonde Redhead’s magnificent 23 was just last week.

And what a waste it’s been, because this would have been one of my favorite records from my college years if I discovered it earlier. It’s the perfect mixture of thick My Bloody Valentine-y textures, Radioheady beat work, and grade-A pop hooks.

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“You die, bro?”

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

So, it’s been over a month without a post. And for that, I apologize.

One of those instances of life happening and happening and happening over and over again. My wife and I ran a launch on our webcourse in November, so that took most of my extra time, then we pushed hard prepping our shop for the Holiday shopping season, and then I got bronchitis, then I’ve been catching up from having bronchitis.

But, I’m back, and boy, have I gotten some good discs.

Resume transmission.