After spending much of my life believing Black Sabbath to be wholly evil (as a child in the Evangelical Church) or wholly outdated (as a self-serious hipster), I’ve spent the last couple years slowly working my way through their catalogue—and learning just how wrong I was.
Throughout the early records, the band gets progressively heavier with each release. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath certainly doesn’t stop that trajectory at all, but neither does it rely on heaviness alone as a compositional device. The result is some of the most cathartic and gorgeous music ever written.
I started 2020 with the realization that 
Speaking of 
A few months ago, I realized that despite years of guest features, tours with bands I love, and general cultural osmosis, I had never actually knowingly listened to Manchester Orchestra.
For the last twenty-three years, Sigur Rós frontman Jón Þór Birgisson, better known as simply Jónsi, has traversed the deepest nearly every span of the human experience, from the glacial joy of Agaetis Byrjun to the isolated chill of Valtari to the dense grief of Kveikur to the bounding, pastoral joy of Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust. And that’s all without mentioning Sigur Rós’ more abstract works or the work of Jónsi & Alex, his ambient collaboration with his partner.
There are precious few figures in pop music history who can truly be called Icons: singular performers who are without peer. Artists like 
In the twenty-five years since the release of 
In 2002-2003, I was a sixteen-year-old emo kid who discovered all my music through scouring message boards, cross-referencing the thank yous in CD liner notes, or watching hours of Fuse TV. I was ingesting a healthy diet of Thrice, Sunny Day Real Estate, Fugazi, pre-hiatus Weezer, Zao, and the like.