April 2020

Lists are tough, especially when the list is basically saying, \”Here is the music that makes up who I am.\” It\’s like you\’re distilling yourself (which is impossible) into 14 albums (which is restrictive, and impossible). I\’m sucking it up, though. I had a lot of albums that probably \”should\’ve\” been on this list, but […]

I came to Sufjan Stevens through a strange path — and by strange path I mean specifically The Danielson Famile, a Christian freak-folk collective that makes some distinctly WEIRD music…which I happen to love. Stevens was a loose member of the group, playing drums mostly, and singing background vocals. In my pursuit of Danielson lore

I remember reading this issue of \”Rolling Stone\” sometime in \’96, and they asked a bunch of artists — everyone from rappers to rockers to weirdos — about their favorite albums from that year.

A lot of people say grunge died when Kurt Cobain killed himself.

I would argue that Kurt\’s death was like a bullet in the gut for grunge, but the death was much, much slower.

I don\’t think we talk enough about how great the early aughts were for music, especially indie rock.

I mean, think about it — The Strokes, The Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, The Walkmen, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Thermals, etc. etc. — all put their first albums out there in the early 2000s. It was just an explosion of really good indie rock, despite the fact that boy bands were ruling the charts at the time.

You ever hear an album that just carries you away? Just takes you somewhere else entirely — into a memory or into an emotion you can barely describe?

Jeff Buckley did that to me.

I fell in love with jazz slowly. At first, I was introduced to \”fusion jazz,\” which grabbed from rock, funk and R&B music to create this smooth, sometimes syncopated, progressive sound. I enjoyed listening to musicians who were just insanely talented like Dave Weckl, a drummer who played like he literally had eight arms, or

I don\’t know if this is a hot take, but I think \”It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back\” is hip-hop\’s punk rock record.

Don\’t laugh, because I\’m serious about this one. 311 is as widely reviled as they are revered, and while they\’ve dropped some truly HIDEOUS songs in more than 20 years as a band (there\’s no consensus on the WORST song, but a lot of fans argued about it here), they still make one of the