When I tally up my most-played artists of the last year, the vast majority of my Top 10 is basically indistinguishable from my Top 10 most-payed artists from 20 years ago. Is it my fault they insist on still putting out strong, fresh material?
Being There still feels monumental 25 years later. It also announced the arrival of Wilco: The Band That Jams and Takes Risks. Risks like recording a double album, opening it with a 45-second drums-and-feedback freakout, and then spending the next 76 minutes alternating between ennui-filled ballads and surreal-nonsense-filled bangers.
Fourteen of the 30 tracks below are either by a female solo artist, a band with a frontwoman, a male-female duo, someone who doesn’t subscribe to binary gender identifiers, or a Canadian indie-supergroup prominently featuring Neko Case.
The past year was nothing if not a “low-flying panic attack” … .
Ha! You thought this blog was done for. Surprise! I’m back. (Fair warning, though: There might not be another post until New Year’s Eve 2016.…
The album is dead. Long live the album. Increasingly, my listening habits tend to revolve around individual tracks, so I tried to adjust my year-end…
I don’t know about you, but for me, 2011 was not a year of discovery. Most of the songs that bubbled their way to the…
In a category usually dominated by schmaltzy duets, it’s a pleasure to see a stompin’, southern gothic, traditionalist shit-kicker like “Barton Hollow” nominated.
Like a lot of people, music got me through that week.
I’m about 10 minutes into listening to The Whole Love, Wilco’s eighth studio album, and I’m already ready to declare it the best thing the…