Lists

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 →

2022 Year End

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

2022 was an absolutely bonkers year for new music. It seemed like every musician who had to stop touring in 2020 finally finished their lockdown-era albums, and dozens of defunct acts came out of the woodwork. It was a year of stunning debuts, surprising reunions, and more music than anyone could keep up with. There are dozens of great albums that I just didn’t have the capacity to care about (e.g., Soul Glo, Ethel Cain, Spoon, Wilco, Death Cab…).

But there were even more records that hit me dead square in the chest. I purchased more music than I ever have before, even when I was showing some semblance of impulse control.

And because I am an immense music nerd, I have organized it all in a list.

Continue reading →

2021: Best of the Year

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

2021 was a spectacularly immense year for music. It felt like all of the bands who weren’t able to tour last year spent 2020 writing and recording new albums. Then this year, they released them.

With such a flood of new music, it’s worth noting that almost every year end list I’ve seen looks entirely different. Many publications that I could usually predict with decent accuracy (NPR, Pitchfork, etc) listed dozens of albums that I never even heard of. I listened to more music this year than ever before, but I’ve never been so aware of what I was missing. Many albums that I would have/should have liked were released to widespread acclaim (i.e., Quicksand, Every Time I Die, Low, Maybeshewill, Failure, the list goes on) and yet I watched them go by, my attention already stretched to its limits.

In any case, here are the records that really grabbed me this year.

Continue reading →

2020 Year End

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

For all of the personal, political, and global calamity of the hellacious year that was 2020, there was a lot of great music that came out. Like…a LOT. 

It makes sense: with tours, festivals, and live shows canceled, most bands turned to the studio instead. The result is perhaps the most challenging year to quantify into a nice, neat list.

But that hasn’t stopped me from trying.

And while I often cop out and just make a list of all the music I’ve purchased, this year is difficult because I’ve purchased all of this music this year, on one format or another.

Continue reading →

The Worst Debuts From Great Bands

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

There’s a certain art to a good debut.

On the one hand, the debut has to be captivating enough that it can stand as a self sufficient statement on its own. On the other, there has to be enough untapped potential to keep future releases from getting stale. It’s generally a bad idea to just keep releasing the same record over and over again.

But sometimes, even great artists whiff it at their first at-bat. In fact, some of the artists responsible for some of the most gorgeous music ever started their careers with albums that barely have even have a glimmer of what they would go on to create.

Disclaimer: not every album on this list is bad per se. They just fail to offer any sort of representation of what the band would be capable of.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

She’s So Heavy: Female-Fronted Metal and Hardcore You Should Know

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

It’s no surprise that heavy music is a bit of a boy’s club.

While all genres have their own struggles toward gender equality, metal and hardcore often treated as inherently masculine, channeling aggression and anger with big meaty riffs and growling vocals.

But there are plenty of women out there who are proving that there is just as much room for feminine voices in heavy music.

Continue reading →

2018 Year End Lists

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 2 Comments

At midnight tonight, the earth will continue another circle around our star.

And while it might be a pretty arbitrary marker of time, it’s a great way to group music together to quantify it. And since I am an amateur music critic, I’m obligated to create my own year-end lists.

2018 was a banner year for music—not just because of the relentless onslaught of incredible new albums, but I also saw more shows than ever and discovered a fair amount of music that I missed. And in this article, I’m counting them all down. Continue reading →

Bands Who Did Their Best Work While The Public Wasn’t Paying Attention

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Public opinion is a fickle thing.

Once you catch the public’s attention, it can be difficult to keep it. A hit single is no guarantee that you’ll maintain relevance. Just ask any of the hundreds of artists deemed “one-hit wonders.”

But a number of these alleged one-hit wonders actually have long and storied careers that the general public has largely ignored.

And by God, it makes me so irritated.

Today, I’m counting down my favorite bands whose best work went mostly unnoticed.

Continue reading →