Month: December 2023

Year End 2023

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

As another year draws to a close and I look to other year end lists to see what I might have missed out on, 2023 felt like the most out of the loop I’ve been in a while. Major statements either escaped my notice entirely, didn’t do anything for me, or I was too emotionally drained to give them the investment they needed (looking at you, Sufjan).

And while my first full year as a father has definitely lessened the amount of time I spend listening to new music, (most of my listening was spent getting into Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Cure for the first time) I loved an awful lot that came out this year. This list might be shorter than the last few years, but that’s no indictment of the number of great releases the year held.

Anyway, here are my favorites from the year. Continue reading →

Record #960: The Kinks – Kinda Kinks (1965)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

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I have said, often and loudly, that the Kinks were the best band of the British Invasion’s first footfalls. Compared to their contemporaries at the time, their songs were more electrifying than the Who, more charming than The Beatles, and had more swagger than the Rolling Stones.

But the ferocity of their brand of rock and roll had some drawbacks—namely, a few violent tempers that led to violent fights both within the band and with roadies that got them banned by the American Federation of Musicians. Essentially blacklisted in the biggest music market in the world, the Kinks soldiered on through the rest of the globe. During a brief trip back to Britain after a tour in Asia, they recorded their second full length in just two weeks. The tight turnaround made it so they were unable to address any of the unhappiness they had with the sessions, and Ray Davies in particular has expressed his displeasure with the finished product many times over the years.

Regardless of how the band feels about the record though, it is hardly a poor example of the group’s prowess.

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Record #959: Holy Fawn – Realms (2015)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

When Holy Fawn’s Death Spells made them the It Band of 2019, they were given a lot of praise for being one of the best new bands in the scene.

Problem there is that they weren’t exactly new. In fact, they had released their first album four years prior. But Realms sat in relative obscurity—even as Death Spells gathered them new fans. It sat as a sort of curiosity on their Spotify page, failing to offer the same crushing heaviness as the record we all came for.

However, as their star has continued to rise—thanks to tours with the likes of Thrice and Deafheaven—more and more fans found their way back to their debut. And while it might indeed lack the moments of black metal catharsis they’ve come to be known for, their trademark dazzling atmospheres and lush sonics were already in full bloom.

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Record #958: Forestlike – Forestlike (2023)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Being a part of the Great Lakes indie scene the last few decades, it’s pretty hard to avoid the Rutabega. The South Bend stalwarts have been slinging their brand of irresistible slacker rock around the Midwest since the early 2000s, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Owen and Taking Back Sunday while cementing themselves as fixtures of regional festivals and college radio, all while releasing a steady stream of untouchable studio albums that blend winding Built To Spill-esque guitar jams with infectious hooks.

So when Rutabega mastermind Joshua Wayne Hensley announced a new project with longtime friend Jared Myers of Daytime Volume, my ears perked up. The project, Forestlike, sees the pair utilizing nylon guitars and huge harmonies to explore the nuance that might go ignored in their louder projects.

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Record #957: The Goo Goo Dolls – Dizzy Up the Girl (1998)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

As a college freshman who thought he was way more knowledgeable about music than he was, I repeated often and loudly that there was one band that everyone loved, no matter what kind of music they usually listen to.

That band was the got dang Goo Goo Dolls. And as far as my horizons have been expanded since then, I still stand by it.

While on the surface, there might not seem to be anything all that exceptional about their brand of uber-radio-friendly pop rock, there are several reasons this record went 5x Platinum—and absolute megahit “Iris” is only one of them.

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Record #956: MONO – Gone (2007)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

The year is 2009. I am a recent college graduate making the transition between living at home and moving in with a friend who has the largest record collection I have ever seen. They are constantly loading my iPod with what they deem essential releases, operating as a sort of crash course for what I might hear when we live together.

At the same time, I am very early in a dating relationship with my now wife. In the awkward limbo of dating while both of us are still living with our parents, we would frequently sit in my car at the park to talk and listen to music. I often used these times with my girlfriend to work through the enormous catalogue of post punk, new wave, Krautrock, shoegaze, noise rock, lo-fi, and so much more that my friend gave me. In one of these instances, I threw on Gone: A Collection of EPs 2000-2007.

At the time, I had no language to describe what I was hearing. Despite listening to bands like Sigur Ros, Saxon Shore, and Unwed Sailor, I had never heard the term “post rock.” I had no idea that the cinematic, largely instrumental music I loved was part of a larger movement, nor that MONO was one of the major players in that movement. As the collection unfolded, I struggled to find the words to react to it.

Then, my girlfriend summed it up in three words. “This is epic.”

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Record #955: The Go-Gos – Vacation (1982)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

It took me a long time to become a poptimist. For much of my formative years as a music fan, pop was a four-letter word. I felt deeply that music had to MEAN something, and that the music should make an effort to stretch beyond the typical four chord, four four banality dominating the airwaves.

But as I’ve grown up, I’ve realized that there’s a reason those simpler formats are as popular as they are—and not because they’re easy to write. It takes a rare skill to take these archetypal building blocks and create something electrifying.

That realization came over several years, but it probably would have come a lot faster of someone would have showed me this as a teenager.
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Record #954: Lilys – In the Presence of Nothing (1992)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

There’s never been another record like Loveless. But that hasn’t stopped anyone from trying. The sonic sea change that My Bloody Valentine’s seminal masterpiece ushered in was as singular as it was influential, with bands still looking to its rose-tinted soundscape of guitars for guidance on their own sounds

And while it famously took Kevin Shields twenty-two years to release its follow up, it took Lilys about a year.

Granted, empires have risen and fallen as the debate between inspiration and derivativeness has raged on. And if I’m honest, I’m not interested in continuing it. While In the Presence of Nothing owes most of its sonic palette to Loveless, replicating those sounds are a feat in itself. I would also feel much differently if these songs weren’t so dang good.

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Record #953: Lift to Experience – The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads (2001)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

It seems no matter how deep I dig (and boy, do I dig deep sometimes), there’s always some seminal release I’ve missed—even in the exact scenes I’ve been trudging through. Take for example Lift to Experience, whom I had never heard of before a review referred to my own band as “We have Lift to Experience at home” (a favorable comparison, I hope).

I’m constantly fascinated by the points of reference other people have when they hear us, so I checked out this band that we were purportedly ripping off. Truth be told, it seems like the only immediate comparison is our shared devotion to overdriven guitars and reverb pedals. But when I divorced them from the comparison, I found a wonderfully idiosyncratic record that lands directly in that sweet spot between shoegaze and post rock that I love so much—bad hip hop parody artwork aside.

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Record #952: Fiddlehead – Death is Nothing to Us (2023)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

By now, it’s become pretty apparent that Fiddlehead has overcome every curse that befalls supergroups. While many similar groups are crushed by the weight of their own hype before their first record, Fiddlehead continues to get better.

Death Is Nothing To Us continues the band’s penchant for observing grief through a lens of fist-pumping, emotional post-hardcore, but this time around, they magnify the nuance of both their sound and mourning to subatomic detail.

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